This week, mainstream media, one of the most effective propaganda tools the government has at its behest, attempted to incite a race war — and very nearly succeeded.
By obstinately focusing solely on yet more fatal police shootings of black men and race as a factor in the Charlotte riots — debating whether or not the real epidemic of law enforcement violence even exists — the media manipulated the public mind to pit whole populations of people against one another, fueling division which led to rioting in Charlotte, which further highlighted the growing chasm.
But the truth is, although police disproportionately target and brutalize minorities, state violence asserts itself on all of us — anyone not a member of either blue culture or the political elite can fall victim to its irrational and unreasonable belligerence at any time.
Rather than focusing on potential solutions to the acceptability of excessive force behind the thin blue line, corporate media subtly furthered victim-blaming and what it inaccurately surmised to be a matter of black versus white as the cause for rioting in Charlotte — rather than that overzealous officers stole yet another life for which justice almost certainly won’t follow.
In the few moments the mainstream wasn’t stoking the flames of race war, it shoved triviality down our throats — the divorce of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie — as if someone’s personal life is of serious consequence to the rest of us because they hail from the upper economic echelons.
These ridiculous divisive tactics are precisely why alternative, independent media exists — and while corporate media bullhorned these narratives, indie journalists continued covering any number of issues of astonishing importance unfolding in the background.
Flint, Michigan — once the subject of constant mainstream news coverage — continues to rely on bottled water while politicians fight each other over which of them is responsible for poisoning the city’s water supply with lead, instead of acting swiftly to correct the unfathomably criminal mistake.
Worse, it was recently revealed the state of Michigan maneuvered red tape to make it impossible for the city of Flint to sue for damages over the lead contamination or resulting problems which still may occur.
Although the controversial emergency manager no longer makes decisions for Flint, enough state control still remains that when the city filed a letter of intent to sue — a pure formality undertaken as the deadline for the court filing came — bitter Michigan politicians changed the rules, requiring Flint to ask the state for permission to sue it.
Now, the residents of Flint — who must travel to designated drop off points to obtain water safe enough to drink, bathe, and cook with — cannot even sue for damages should they develop the harrowing effects of lead poisoning or if the city should need financial assistance to correct the problem the state’s emergency manager caused in the first place.
As Native American nations, indigenous peoples, activists, and advocates from around the world continue gathering in support of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to protect water and protest the unabashed corporate-government exploitation that is the Dakota Access Pipeline, politicians in Utah are affecting the first land grab from Native Americans in over 100 years.
The Free Thought Project’s Matt Agorist reports:
“Three years ago, Utah Congressmen Rob Bishop and Jason Chaffetz came up with a proposal called the Utah Public Lands Initiative. This proposal would turn more than a quarter of the Ute Tribe’s land into oil and drilling zones. Now, after pining away for three years, the initiative has transformed into HB5780 and will be pushed through the U.S. House of Representatives in just a few weeks.”
In typical fashion, the congressmen fashioned the legislation in the guise of public interest and conservation, when in reality, it marks another Big Oil handout and usurpation of the pathetically little land the U.S. government designated to the indigenous peoples from which it stole in the first place.
Despite the guise of conservation, the bill’s intended oil and gas development — of which Bishop is an ardent supporter — do not bode well for the Ute, considering the Standing Rock Sioux discovered to their horror Big Oil’s construction crews deliberately decimated sacred sites.
Apparently, the U.S. government harbors no intention of ending the exploitation of Native Americans — and instead wishes to inflict further inexcusable harm.
In a last ditch effort to save insects responsible for pollinating an estimated one-third of our entire food supply, on Wednesday the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed listing the rusty patched bumblebee as an endangered species.
Although the move is a vital necessity, it speaks to the utter decimation of the once prevalent species — if not the peril of our food supply. And after spraying to combat zika virus-carrying mosquitoes in South Carolina recklessly and suddenly left millions of bees dead, protecting the rusty patched bumblebee is an absolute imperative.
According to experts, the bumblebee contributes around $3.5 billion to farms growing everything from blueberries to tomatoes.
Behemoth Agrichemical companies like Bayer and Monsanto — whose recent merger set off blaring alarm bells — have pushed their pesticides as beneficial to agriculture for years. But in the first long-term study of its kind, neonicotinoid pesticides were linked to steady declines in bee populations — exactly as had been suspected — and that pesticide makers’ own studies proved long ago neonics were deadly to bees.
After an investigation by its watchdog Department of Justice Office of Inspector General, the FBI has now been permitted to continue impersonating journalists — essentially legalizing the CIA’s original propaganda campaign, Operation Mockingbird.
Begun during the chill of the Cold War, Operation Mockingbird employed journalists to parrot narratives the CIA found useful to its international and domestic goals. Such prominent outlets as the New York Times, Reuters, the Associated Press, NBC, CBS, and many others participated actively and willingly in the propaganda-pushing program. An investigation in the mid-1970s revealed much of Operation Mockingbird’s inner workings, and then-CIA director George H. W. Bush was pressured into ending the program — though many suspected the claim to be a false palliative to alleviate public concern about governmental control of the media.
From time to time, rumors Mockingbird continued gained support — CNN’s Anderson Cooper, for example, interned and trained with the CIA while in college, but did not train to be a journalist. It is widely suspected Cooper landed his prominent role for reasons other than journalistic talent.
In 2007, the FBI impersonated the Associated Press to identify and capture a teenager who had been emailing a series of bomb threats to his high school. After the agency’s plot came to light, the inspector general reviewed the controversial ploy to determine whether agents followed guidelines — and found such impersonation could be perfectly justified during future criminal investigations.
Although the FBI claims to have since put further restrictions on future impersonations of the media, constitutional rights and civil liberties advocates argue a free press depends on separation from government.
It would seem Operation Mockingbird continues deceiving the public over five decades since its inception.
While mainstream media furthers the racial divide and debates the finer points of the breakup of Brangelina, U.S. foreign policy continues wreaking absolute havoc in the Middle East — putting the entire world at risk for all-out war.
An attempted humanitarian ceasefire in Syria officially ended after U.S.-backed rebels violated the agreement over 300 times.
In fact, just before the ceasefire officially fell apart, the U.S.-backed, Saudi Arabia-led coalition struck Syrian government forces actively fighting the Islamic State — killing at least 80 — leading Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin to accuse the United States of supporting ISIS during an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council.
John Kerry ironically called for de-escalation by grounding all aircraft in Syria — perhaps forgetting the U.S. has been responsible for continually escalating the conflict and indirectly causing the end of the ceasefire.
Escalating tensions between Russia, China, and the United States in Syria and elsewhere appear highly likely to set off an actual World War III.
Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/charlotte-media-race-war-distractio/#27VVHcZgf70umBIp.99
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