How to de-occupy a media smear
Mickey Z. -- World News Trust
âAs force is always on side of the governed, the governors have nothing
to support them but opinion.â --David Hume
Upon arriving at the gym on the morning of July 11, one of the ubiquitous
televisions was silently blaring the latest news (sic):
Occupy Wall Street DNA Linked to 2004 Murder
A nearby woman (unaware of my connection to OWS) instantly swallowed the
hype and started a conversation about it with me (of all people). As
calmly as I could, I said:
"It sounds like an unsubstantiated rumor being used to smear Occupy Wall
Street. Isn't it funny how when a cop shoots an unarmed person or a U.S.
predator drone kills an entire family in Pakistan, we're cautioned to
wait until all the facts are in before making a judgment? But when it's
Occupy, they run full speed ahead with a blatant rumor. I promise you,
this will be recanted before the end of the day."
And here's how it went...
That morning, a New York Post story opened with this paragraph:
"The unsolved murder of a Juilliard student eight years ago took an
incredible turn yesterday as investigators matched DNA from the crime
scene to a sample collected from an Occupy Wall Street protest in
Brooklyn, sources said."
Eleven paragraphs into the article, the Post got around to mentioning the
vast "number of persons the OWS sample could have come from."
(Hmmm... when did it become standard operating policy for Bloomberg's Army to
collect DNA samples from scenes of civil disobedience and promptly
release alleged lab matches to the media?)
By mid-day on July 11, the New York Times was reporting that the DNA match
"was the result of a laboratory error at the city Medical Examiner's
office."
Mic Check: The all-too-predictable retraction arrived way too late. The
smear had already taken hold -- as it was designed to do.
Upon arriving at the gym on the morning of July 13, I found that same woman
and asked her if she had seen the retraction. She said she hadn't
(insert my lack of surprise here).
As I explained a few articles ago, the pervasive and willful distribution
of misinformation is typical of life within a society dominated by a
corporate-run press. Hence, OWS will be -- in the minds of millions
heavily conditioned by
relentless media propaganda -- forever linked to the high profile murder
of a white woman.
To the growing list -- lazy, selfish, unwashed, rapists, drug addicts,
terrorists, etc. -- the 1% has added: murderers
(of white women).
The bogus Occupy-DNA connection gives the
huddled masses yet another reason to ignore the truth about OWS thus
allowing them to remain blissfully unconcerned about the endless, fully
substantiated and admitted mass murders performed in their name.
Sure, the death of Sarah Fox was a tragedy but why aren't more of us up in
arms over the daily, taxpayer-subsidized murders committed by the U.S.
military and law enforcement agents across the globe? (President Obama
has a kill list, which includes American citizens, for crissake.)
Why aren't there sensationalist headlines about the animals murdered in
labs and slaughterhouses and well... just about everywhere?
Why aren't we checking the DNA of those responsible for the entire
eco-systems wiped out by ocean floor trawling or forest clear cutting or
corporate pollution or suburban sprawl or fracking or off-shore
drilling or wellâ¦just about everything?
I'd suggest a two-part answer to these and similar queries:
* It's the job of the corporate media to keep us distracted from the
global
killing sprees brought to us by their owners and advertisers.
* It's the job of the police to robotically follow orders, fabricate
evidence, release lurid leaks, squash free speech, and well... break the
law in
the name of protecting their owners. They're not "overreacting" when
they do stuff like arrest people for knitting. They are doing exactly what
they are paid to do.
Mic Check: We can't and shouldn't expect anything else from the
disinformation and repression wings of the 1%. It's in their cultural DNA.
For the rest of the 99% living in a police/propaganda state, our cultural
deoxyribonucleic acid predictably guides us onto a path of passive
consumption.
Genetic DNA can often be tough to challenge but
cultural DNA, not so much. In fact, our cultural DNA can be re-invented
at any time, as often as we choose. You don't need a college degree, a
big bank account, or permission from the powers-that-be to make the
choice to see with new eyes.
Mic Check: By contemplating what is possible, we break free of what is
accepted.
This is part of what immediately attracted me to OWS. The camp at Zuccotti
Park/Liberty Square gave potential Occupiers a glimpse at how humans
could interact outside the oppressive influence of cultural DNA -- a far
more cooperative, creative, participatory, tolerant, and downsized way
of living.
Free food, music, medical care, art, and books; the
People's Mic, bicycle-generated electricity, pop-up occupations and Town
Squares; hand signals, permaculture, and of course, an all-inclusive,
consensus-based, horizontal collective model of human interaction.
Instead of wasting our time and resources trying to change the essentially
unchangeable police and press, let's work to detach ourselves from the
cultural DNA destroying us (and all life) and create spaces in which
each and every one of us can rediscover the subversive pleasure of
independent thought and collective action.
***
Mickey Z. is the author of 11 books, most recently the novel Darker Shade
of Green. Until the laws are changed or the power runs out, he can be
found on an obscure website called Facebook.
© WorldNewsTrust.com -- Share and re-post this story. Please include this
copyright notice and a link to World News Trust
http://worldnewstrust.com/is-ows-in-your-dna-mickey-z
Â
Classical economics is only value-free on its surface. In actual fact
it ignores power in the world. In actual fact it ignores that its
outcomes ALWAYS hurt the lesser much more than they do the greater.Â
Economics is not just the dismal science, it is the shameful fancy window
dressing of the exercise of naked power by the rich and the owners against
the poor and the workers. It is the condom which makes safe and obscure
the ways we are screwed.  Wythe Holt 5/21/09
>Â
>Solidarity is the path as well as the destination of socialism.
Solidarity grieves when a worker loses his job or sees her pension
slashed. Solidarity cheers when a union wins middle-class pay. Solidarity
rejects the greed of insurers as the distributor of healthcare and
demands single payer for all. Solidarity smells the rat who divides
white from black, black from gay, native from newcomer, or America from
the rest of humanity. By Phillip Bannowsky
>
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