White (Riot) Privilege: Sports Fans Rioted, Again —That's OK, They're Just White Kids Having 'Fun'

Broncos Fans Rioted, Media Displays Typical Double Standard with Little Coverage


By Ricky Riley
After the Denver Broncos won Super Bowl 50, fans took to the street and a “peaceful” celebration turned into a riot with 12 people arrested. Major media outlets seem to have blacked out the event because images of the riot have not been plastered across TV screens and social media outlets.

Here is the video of the incident from The Denver Channel:

Sports riots are common in cities where a team either wins or loses. While Black people who riot over the multitude of social injustices in the country are called “animals” or “savages,” white rioters in these sports riots are given a slap on the wrist and not dehumanized.

Here are some major examples of the double standard. After the 2010, 2012 and 2014 World Series, San Francisco Giants fans took to the streets, flipped buses and caused major damage.

Photo by Jessica Christian / The Chronicle

In 2011, during the Jerry Sandusky child molestation investigation into Penn State University, fans who supported Coach Joe Paterno after he was fired took to the streets to riot.

After a 2015 college football championship, Ohio State fans were responsible for an estimated 90 fires.

That same year, University of Kentucky fans destroyed property after their Final Four loss. There were 31 arrests, according to the New York Daily News.

These riots are just a small sample of the double standards and racial undertones at play in news coverage. These events of dangerous property damage and arson involved majority-white crowds, while “riots” in Baltimore and Ferguson happened after incidents of social injustice in poor Black communities.

The coverage is always different. It also shows the real ugliness of racial bias and white privilege many in the dominant society are oblivious to.

Originally published in Atlanta BlackStar 

Donald Trump Talks at a 4th-Grade Level. Maybe That’s Why the Fox News Audience Loves Him

The culture of anti-intellectualism in America is fueling hateful, racist demagogues -- in politics and on TV. While study after study demonstrate that political conservatives are relatively stupid.

Illustration provided by Graham Richardson.

___________

"Several studies even found a positive correlation between how often one watches Fox News and the degree to which one’s worldview is misinformed."

By Phil Torres
It’s a cliché to say that democratic states can’t function properly without an informed electorate. But it’s absolutely true. And this is why, heading into the 2016 election year, I’m nervous about the future. With Donald Trump leading the Republican presidential contenders, even many Republican die-hards are shaking in their boots.

But Trump isn’t the cause, just the symptom. The deeper cause is a strain of anti-intellectualism that runs through the roots of American culture. And while this strain is found on both sides of the political spectrum (see some liberals on vaccines and chemtrails), it’s mostly concentrated among religious conservatives on the political right. For those who espouse anti-intellectualism, conspiracy theories have the same clout as legitimate science, the opinions of non-experts are just as credible as those of the experts, and ideology takes precedence over the cold hard facts.

The US has fostered a culture of anti-intellectualism more than “most other Western countries.” While traveling through Europe and the UK for extended periods of time, I’ve often been quite envious of how respectful other countries are toward those with knowledge in the fields of science and the humanities. In the UK, for example, it’s generally not seen as “uncool” to have a higher degree from a good university. Often, it confers the degree-holder a certain social respect and admiration. Many of the top comedians in the UK have attended institutions like Oxford and Cambridge, including Michael Palin, Eric Idol, John Cleese, David Mitchell, Richard Ayoade and Stephen Fry. And shows such as “QI,” which combines academic discussions with uproarious, irreverent humor, are popular hits.

Not only is the U.S. unique for its love affair with anti-intellectualism, but this romantic relationship appears to have grown stronger over the past few decades. A primary reason for this is no doubt the huge influence that conservative media have had on American culture, such as Fox News, which is currently the most trusted news network in the country. The problem is that “Fox News” is a misnomer. The network is, to quote Jon Stewart, more of a “relentlessly activist” organization for conservative causes than an intellectually honest conveyor of information. Indeed, there are to date at least seven academic studies that have found that Fox News’ viewership constitutes the most misinformed audience out there.

From climate change to healthcare, the Iraq War to the country of Obama’s birth (no, it’s not Kenya), denizens of Fox News are more confident about falsehoods than viewers of any other news network. Several studies even found a positive correlation between how often one watches Fox News and the degree to which one’s worldview is misinformed.

What’s most dangerous about Fox News, though, isn’t its cynical use of Orwellian doublespeak, as in “Fair and Balanced” and “No Spin Zone,” to conceal a conservative agenda. Nor is it the network’s repeated failure to accurately report the facts. Rather, the most dangerous consequence of Fox News is that it discourages that most important form of rigorous curiosity called critical thinking. If people want a single phenomenon to blame for the gradual decline of the American empire, direct your wagging finger at the devaluation of critical thinking skills.

It’s not an accident that Fox News wants an audience that isn’t preoccupied with carefully dissecting complex social, political, economic and religious issues. Critical thinking is perhaps our very best strategy for apprehending the true nature of reality, and as the great comedian Stephen Colbert once declared, “reality has a well-known liberal bias.” In other words, critical thinking could lead to liberalism — or worse, to that most dreaded form of liberal fanaticism called secular progressivism.

Scientific studies actually back up this line of reasoning. Consider a 2012 studypublished in Science, one of the most prestigious journals in the world. This study found that when people are prompted to use their critical faculties, they become less likely to affirm religious statements. In other words, there’s a causal link between “analytical thinking” and religious disbelief. Perhaps this is why the Republican Party of Texas literally wrote into its 2012 platform that, “We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs [that] have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs.” God forbid children start questioning their “fixed beliefs” about religion — or politics.

Yet another peer-reviewed paper found that people who think “deliberately” and “effortfully” about certain topics tend to express more liberal views. As the authors put it, “political conservatism may be a … consequence of low-effort thought,” meaning that, “when effortful, deliberate thought is disengaged, endorsement of conservative ideology increases.” Moving from how people use their brains to the brain’s innate capacity, multiple studies have reported that liberals (and atheists) have higher average IQs than conservatives. One study even found that low childhood IQ predicts conservative and racist beliefs later in life. It follows from such data that the divide between right and left isn’t just about differing social, political, and economic philosophies. It’s also about the the role of the intellect in determining our normative worldviews.

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Big Media Protects White Men: ‘Willing to Kill’ Extremists Turned Into Peaceful ‘Rancher’s Rights Protesters’

By Ben Norton
Of all extremist groups, the far right is consistently given the kindest news coverage in US corporate media. This weekend, the world witnessed a prime example of such friendly treatment in action.

Armed far-right anti-government militants occupied a federal building in Oregon late on January 2 and announced they would remain there indefinitely. Although the armed occupation was ostensibly organized to protest the imprisonment of ranchers on arson charges, the ultra-conservative militants made it clear from the beginning that they were willing to use violence, and hoped to inspire a larger anti-government uprising.

Major US media outlets ignored these basic facts, nevertheless, instead characterizing the far-right militants as peaceful “ranchers’ rights protesters” and “activists.”

The armed occupation was organized by Ammon and Ryan Bundy, sons of right-wing extremist Cliven Bundy. Cliven led a similar standoff with the federal government in 2014, in which scores of heavily armed far-right militants occupied federal land, many pointing guns at government authorities. No militants were killed, or even injured, in the incident.

When the ongoing Oregon occupation began, the extremists said they would use violence if need be to fight what they deemed government “tyranny.” Early on the morning of January 3, Ian Kullgren, a politics reporter for the Oregonian local newspaper, spoke with Ryan Bundy, who told him the far-right occupiers are willing to kill and be killed.

I talked to Ryan Bundy on the phone again. He said they're willing to kill and be killed if necessary. #OregonUnderAttack

— Ian Kullgren (@IanKullgren) January 3, 2016

The armed militants stressed to Kullgren that they are “ready to die”:

Bundy said feds' actions are violation of constitution. Founding fathers were ready to die, and so are they. #OregonUnderAttack

— Ian Kullgren (@IanKullgren) January 3, 2016

Before the occupation began, participant Jon Ritzheimer posted a declaration on YouTube (12/31/15; Indian Country, 1/3/15) in which he encouraged the head of the ranching family to “die a free man” fighting the “oppressive, tyrannical” federal government, and announced he was “100 percent willing to lay down my life to fight against tyranny in this country.”

There were few photos of the armed occupation at this time, but Guardian photographer Jason Wilson visited the site on the night the occupation began, and shared a picture of the extremists with heavy weapons. Wilson’s photo made it indisputable, from the start, that the militants were armed. Many media reports would later question or even downright ignore this fact.

This is as close as I was allowed to get to the armed militia occupying the Malheur Wildlife Refuge HQ. #burnsoregon pic.twitter.com/DPztu0VsVU

— Jason Wilson (@jason_a_w) January 3, 2016

The Associated Press, which many local outlets rely on for coverage of national and international news, released one of the earliest reports on the incident on the night of January 2. The piece began:

A peaceful protest Saturday in support of an eastern Oregon ranching family facing prison terms for arson was followed shortly afterward by an occupation of a building at a national wildlife refuge.


Peaceful protest in Oregon rancher arson case followed by building takeover at national wildlife refuge: https://t.co/nsIKxQlyIu

— The Associated Press (@AP) January 3, 2016

Leading with the description of a “peaceful protest” suggested that this movement–led by people willing to “kill and be killed”–was a nonviolent one. This article did not make it clear that the militants were armed; in fact, it implied they weren’t, reporting:

Some local residents feared the Saturday rally would involve more than speeches, flags and marching. But the only real additions to that list seemed to be songs, flowers and pennies.

(The pennies were a reference to protesters throwing pennies at the courthouse doors to signify that “civilians were buying back their government.”)

AP published a more detailed follow-up piece on the night of January 3 with the ambiguous, contextless headline, “Oregon Standoff Latest in Dispute Over Western Lands.” This article did point out in the opening line that the right-wing occupiers are armed and motivated by “anti-government sentiment.”

The New York Times (1/2/16) was similarly vague in its reporting. The leading US newspaper employed the passive voice to obscure who was responsible for the armed occupation. “Wildlife Refuge Occupied in Protest of Oregon Ranchers’ Prison Terms” was the headline for its report—glossing over the fact that those occupying this federal installation were armed right-wing extremists prepared to use lethal force.

The New York Times (1/3/16) published a follow-up piece that conveyed in the headline that the occupiers were armed: “Armed Group Vows to Continue Occupation at Oregon Refuge.”

NBC (1/3/16) characterized the militants as “rancher’s rights protesters.” It headlined its report on the story “Ammon Bundy, Rancher’s Rights Protesters Occupy Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon.”

NBC euphemistically referred to the extremists as “reportedly armed protesters,” even though its report was published hours after the Guardian photographer Wilson publicly shared the aforementioned photo showing that the militants were heavily armed.

The Wall Street Journal (1/3/16) initially titled its report “Protesters Occupying Oregon Wildlife Refuge Ask Militia Members to Join Them.” Later, the Journal acknowledged that the militants were armed, changing the headline of the piece to “Oregon Armed Protest Leader Says Group Will Defend Occupied Building.”

Reuters (1/3/16) headlined its report “Protesters Occupy Oregon Wildlife Refuge as Dispute Over Western Range Flares,” again euphemistically characterizing the right-wing extremists as mere “protesters.” Only in the middle of the piece did Reuters acknowledge that the militants are armed.

Numerous news outlets employed similarly misleading tactics, downplaying the extremism of the armed occupation and ignoring details that had been widely known hours before.

CNN, for instance, described the paramilitary occupation as an “armed protest” and the militants as “armed protesters” in its interview with extremist leader Ammon Bundy.

In general, large corporate media conglomerates were much more euphemistic in tone and acontextual in their reporting. Smaller independent media outlets tended to be more accurate. Mashable (1/3/16), for instance, reported on “the armed militants occupying a federal building in Oregon.”

The double standards in reporting were striking, particularly compared to the way in which US media treated Black Lives Matter civil rights protests and victims of police brutality. Media outlets have frequently characterized peaceful Black Lives Matter activists as dangerous, with protests in Ferguson, Missouri, blamed on “outside agitators.” Corporate media are quick to jump on sketchy claims of African-American and left-wing threats, as with claims of an “anarchist plot to ambush cops on Halloween” or a “Teen Purge” in Baltimore, but when actual right-wing militants openly declare an armed insurrection against federal “tyranny,” that somehow fails to alarm journalists.

This hypocrisy was vociferously condemned on social media.

Terrorist: To be, or not to be- that is the question #OregonUnderAttack pic.twitter.com/rTVQMSnS1q

— Carlos Latuff (@LatuffCartoons) January 3, 2016

If only people of color could were privileged enough to be labeled a "militia" when occupying federal building w/ guns. #oregonunderattack

— Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) January 3, 2016


Did I miss the call for the national guard in Oregon? I recall them in Ferguson and Baltimore. #OregonUnderAttack

— rolandsmartin (@rolandsmartin) January 3, 2016

The infamous “terrorism” double standard was sometimes remarked upon in corporate media itself. The Washington Post (1/3/16) published an op-ed asking “Why Aren’t We calling the Oregon Occupiers ‘Terrorists?'” CNN (1/3/16) ran a more forceful opinion piece, “Face it, Oregon Building Takeover Is Terrorism.”

Media double standards vis-à-vis far-right extremism are a commonplace by this point. The hands-off response of the government—which said it had no plans to deal with the armed occupation—is striking, if not unexpected; the response of the media even more so.

As much as the right complains about the US media’s supposed “liberal bias,” news outlets were enormously euphemistic and gracious in their portrayal of the Oregon occupation. Such graciousness is not extended to other extremist groups.

___________
Ben Norton is a journalist and writer based in New York City. He is currently a politics staff writer at Salon. His website can be found at BenNorton.com, and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.

Reprinted with permission from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

CNN Cites Racist Twitter Trolls to Undermine Black CEO Who is Pushing for Diversity: Claims 'CEO Takes Heat for Diversity Remarks' - The 'Heat' Came from Right-Wingers and Neo-Nazis

CNN sites tweets by @_AltRight_ and @PoliticalShort. But a close look at @_AltRight_'s timeline reveals anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and anti-gay rants and attacks on working women "who are on strike against bearing children."  A look at @PoliticalShort's timeline reveals @PoliticalShort tweeting stuff like, "Obama sympathizes with Islam" and a photograph of Donald Trump in a car pointing a gun and saying, "Get in, Pussy. We're making America Great again."

It appears that CNN deliberately used racist twitter to undercut the diversity goals of an African-American corporate CEO.

By Sara Ashley O'Brien
Rosalind Brewer, CEO of Sam's Club, said she prioritizes diversity at the company. And she's getting a lot of heat for it.

In the interview with CNN's Poppy Harlow that aired last week, Brewer talked candidly about her commitment to diversity.

CNN cited this Twitter user as one of the critics of an African-American CEO that should be taken seriously.
The CEO, Rosalind Brewer, was attacked by racist trolls for trying to bring diversity to corporate America.

"I demand it of my team," said Brewer, who is the first woman and first African American to lead a division within Walmart, which owns Sam's Club.

She said she also talks to her suppliers about diversity: "Every now and then you have to nudge your partners. You have to speak up and speak out. And I try to use my platform for that. I try to set an example."

Brewer, who has been CEO since 2012, shared an anecdote about meeting with one supplier earlier that day.

"The entire other side of the table was all Caucasian male," she said. "That was interesting."

She said that while she chose not to address it with everyone in the room, she was "going to place a call" to the supplier.

That comment spurred a lot of backlash. People called Brewer a "racist" and encouraged a boycott of Sam's Club stores using the hashtag #boycottracistsamsclub.

Sam's Club is anti-White, Boycott them. Boycott Walmart as well. #BoycottRacistSamsClub
— Alt Right (@_AltRight_) December 15, 2015

DYK that the official stance by @SamsClub is to discriminate against White people as CEO Rosalind Brewer explains https://t.co/aWQrAWzx1m
— Nick Short (@PoliticalShort) December 14, 2015

Hundreds of social media posts in past day have contained the hashtag, according to Keyhole, a real-time social tracking company. The vast majority of these posts have come from male users.

Doug McMillon, Walmart President and CEO, is in Brewer's corner.

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The American Newspapers that Praised Hitler

The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, The Cleveland Press, The New York Herald Tribune, and The Columbus Dispatch were among the newspapers that had kind things to say about The Führer.

By Rafael Medoff
“The train arrived punctually,” a Christian Science Monitor report from Germany informed its readers, not long after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. “Traffic was well regulated” in the new Germany, and policemen in “smart blue uniforms” kept order, the correspondent noted. “I have so far found quietness, order, and civility”; there was “not the slightest sign of anything unusual afoot.”

RELATED STORY: Who Funded Adolf Hitler? - The Answer Might Surprise You

As for all those “harrowing stories” of Jews being mistreated—they seemed to apply “only to a small proportion”; most were “not in any way molested.” Overall, the Monitor’s dispatch declared, the Hitler regime was providing “a dark land a clear light of hope.”

Why did many mainstream American newspapers portray the Hitler regime positively, especially in its early months? How could they publish warm human-interest stories about a brutal dictator? Why did they excuse or rationalize Nazi anti-Semitism? These are questions that should haunt the conscience of U.S. journalism to this day.

Some of the U.S. press coverage of Hitler’s first weeks in power was rooted in unfamiliarity with the man and his movement. The Nazis had risen from barely 18 percent of the national vote in mid-1930 to become Germany’s largest party only two years later, and gained power just months after that. Knowing little about Hitler and Nazism, many American editors and reporters assumed, based on previous experience, that a radical candidate would show some restraint once in office.

An editorial in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin on Jan. 30, 1933, asserted that “there have been indications of moderation” on Hitler’s part. The editors of The Cleveland Press, on Jan. 31, claimed the “appointment of Hitler as German chancellor may not be such a threat to world peace as it appears at first blush.” Frederick Birchall, Berlin bureau chief for The New York Times, found “a new moderation” in the political atmosphere following Hitler’s rise to power.

Events on the ground quickly overtook those optimistic predictions. Soon after Hitler assumed power, all Jews were dismissed from government jobs and ousted from a wide range of other professions, from dentistry to the movie industry. Sporadic anti-Jewish violence erupted throughout the country—and was amply reported in the American press. The Chicago Tribune described assaults in which Jews were “hit over the heads with blackjacks, dragged out of their homes in night clothes and… taken off to jail and put to work in a concentration camp.” The New York Evening Post reported that “an indeterminate number of Jews… have been killed. Hundreds of Jews have been beaten or tortured. Thousands of Jews have fled. Thousands of Jews have been, or will be deprived of their livelihood. All of Germany’s 600,000 Jews are in terror.”

Yet some American journalists presented a very different view of Germany. Birchall of the Times, in a March 12 radio broadcast from Berlin, reported that “German violence had been spent” and predicted that “prosperity and happiness” would soon prevail. A page-one dispatch from the New York Herald Tribune’s Berlin correspondent on March 25 asserted that while the situation of German Jewry was “an unhappy one,” many atrocity stories were ”exaggerated and often unfounded.”

[...]

Some American editors and reporters perceived Nazi actions against Jews not so much as attacks on Jews per se, but rather as resentment over some aspects of the Jews’ own (alleged) behavior.

The New York Herald Tribune’s Berlin correspondent, John Elliott, claimed the Nazis were targeting Jews not because of their “race,” but because they were political opponents of the Hitler regime. According to Elliott, even Albert Einstein was “detested by the Nazis more for his pacifism than for his Jewish blood.”

The editors of The Columbus Dispatch believed the Nazis were reacting to the “large Jewish element in the financial, commercial, professional, and official life of present-day Germany.” A Christian Science Monitor editorial declared that it was the Jews’ own “commercial clannishness” which “gets them into trouble.”

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Donald Trump is an Example of How Relying On TV for Your Main Source of Information Will Rot Your Mind

It's not an accident that his attention span lasts exactly one news cycle. He's exactly like the rest of America, except that he's making news, not following it – starring on TV instead of watching it. Just like we channel-surf, he focuses as long as he can on whatever mess he's in, and then he moves on to the next bad idea or incorrect memory that pops into his head... He surely believes he saw that celebration of Muslims in Jersey City, when it was probably a clip of people in Palestine. When he says, "I have a great relationship with the blacks," what he probably means is that he liked watching The Cosby Show.

— Matt Taibbi

Illustration by DonkeyHotey

It's Too Late to Turn Off Trump: We can't change the channel on the culture he's exposed

By Matt Taibbi
Some people in the news business are having second thoughts this week about their campaign strategy. They're wondering if they created a monster in Donald Trump.

The LA Times published a piece about how the tone of Trump's TV appearances has changed, now that's he's fully out of the closet as an aspiring dictator, with his plans to ban all Muslims and close the Internet and whatever else he's come up with in the last ten minutes.


The paper noted that the candidate had unusual trouble on Morning Joe, a show that usually doubles as Trump's weekly spa treatment:

"Typically, the billionaire TV personality is able to bluster his way through morning talk shows. But Trump had an unusually contentious appearance Tuesday morning on MSNBC's 'Morning Joe,' where co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski grilled him on his proposals to keep Muslims out of the U.S....

"'It certainly puts the burden on the people conducting the interviews to be tougher the more controversial his comments are,' Scarborough told The Times after the exchange."

The paper went on to dig in to the ethics of covering Trump:

"Trump represents something of a quandary for the media, especially TV networks. Privately, TV news producers acknowledge that Trump has turbocharged their ratings…"

Essentially, TV news producers are wondering: "How do we keep getting the great ratings without helping elect the Fourth Reich?"

In the same piece, Joe Scarborough said the problem was that Trump gives such great access to the media, just like John McCain did in 2000. "When John McCain was letting members of the press on his Straight Talk Express bus," Scarborough explained, "other Republicans always said he got the benefit of the doubt."

In other words, Trump is so open and accommodating with the press that it makes it hard for reporters to hammer his insane ideas. Scarborough doesn't seem to realize it, but that's a pretty damning admission.

There are some people now who are urging the media to ignore Donald Trump, and simply not cover him. But it's a little late for that.

The time to start worrying about the consequences of our editorial decisions was before we raised a generation of people who get all of their information from television, and who believe that the solution to every problem is simple enough that you can find it before the 21 minutes of the sitcom are over.

Or before we created a world in which the only inner-city black people you ever see are being chased by cops, and the only Muslims onscreen are either chopping off heads or throwing rocks at a barricades.

This is an amazing thing to say, because in Donald Trump's world everything is about him, but Trump's campaign isn't about Trump anymore. With his increasingly preposterous run to the White House, the Donald is merely articulating something that runs through the entire culture. It's hard to believe because Trump the person is so limited in his ability to articulate anything. Even in his books, where he's allegedly trying to string multiple thoughts together, Trump wanders randomly from impulse to impulse, seemingly without rhyme or reason. He doesn't think anything through. (He's brilliantly cast this driving-blind trait as "not being politically correct.")

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The White Heroin Crisis:  Do White Pundits and TV Producers Have a No-Snitch Policy On Exposing Crises in the White Community?

Scot Nakagawa has criticized William Schneider of MSNBC for using Asian-Americans—thirty-eight culturally distinct groups—as a model minority, arguing that Schneider is aiming to shame black people by comparison. He contends that such labeling conceals the problems—like sex trafficking and poverty—that afflict some Asian-American communities.—Ishmael Reed

Photo by Iqbal Osman.

Why We’re Shocked by White Heroin Use

Do White pundits and TV Producers Have a No-Snitch Policy On Exposing Crises in the White Community?

By Ishmael Reed 
The way former Kremlinologists were able to detect trends behind the Iron Curtain was to read the poems of Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Andrei Voznesensky. My white students have been writing poems for years about dysfunctional behavior behind the lesser-known “Suburban Curtain.” They write about absentee white fathers who were “tourists” in their homes or absent parents who gave them money, which they spent on drugs. “Debutantes sniffing cocaine from dirty toilet seats” appeared in my student J. Cody Peterson’s “La Jolla. In 3 Acts,” about one of California’s high-income cities.

Now suddenly, that curtain has been drawn back. Three MSNBC moderators—Tamron Hall, Andrea Mitchell and Luke Russert— were recently shocked to discover that white people use heroin. Hall said white people are not the image that one usually associates with the drug. On April 17, Mitchell said that she came to focus on the heroin epidemic only when the governor of Vermont addressed it in a speech. On April 18, Russert described Connecticut as an “unlikely” zone for heroin use. “Unlikely” because for decades the media have associated heroin with black people. And even when filming addicts in a clinic and concealing the identity of three white men, MSNBC showed the face of a black addict who was seeking help.

Black people and families were first diagnosed with a “tangle of pathologies” in Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s notorious 1965 The Negro Family: The Case for National Action. He said black women were on the way to creating a new species, even though any matriarch on welfare at the time was likely a member of the senator’s own tribe: Celtic-American. Charles Murray, author of The Bell Curve, a pop-sociological update on Moynihan’s themes, is also of Scots-Irish descent. Now National Review writer Kevin Williamson, author of a recent article about Appalachia called “The White Ghetto,” cites a tangle of pathologies among white people of Scots-Irish descent.

Why turn this incriminating lens from black people to white people? There have been reports of drug epidemics in white communities since at least 1995, when on March 20 of that year The New York Times reported, “The typical person whose death is related to heroin in the Philadelphia area is likely to be white, employed and living in a middle-class suburb.”

Since the 1990s, the epidemic in white rural and suburban areas has grown. No curtain is big enough to draw across the suffering on display, with 669,000 Americans using heroin in 2012, a 65 percent increase from 2002. A recent film, Gateway to Heroin, quoted a Boston undertaker who had buried “hundreds” of white kids who had died from opiate overdoses. Another filmmaker attuned to the problem of the white underclass is Debra Granik, with her award-winning films Down to the Bone and Winter’s Bone.

Maybe if the pundits and reporters had paid attention in 1995, almost twenty years ago, the problem wouldn’t be as devastating. At the time, a study emerged indicating that all was not well in suburbia. A 1997 SUNY study surprised its authors when their interviews with white women revealed that 92 percent of those interviewed had experienced battering or had seen their mothers or sisters battered. “Domestic violence is not a phenomenon found only in poor and working-class homes,” Weis said in a press release, but is “found widely in very privileged homes as well.” Weis added that the 31 black women respondents were much more open about the violence they saw and experienced. “The white women in the study, on the other hand, were very secretive,” Weis wrote. She speculated that such secretiveness served to protect the popular image of family life in the white community and that shame and secrecy were encouraged by the media focus on demonizing black people.

Do white pundits, reporters and TV news producers have a no-snitch policy on exposing social crises in the white community? While popular culture, novels, film and theater portray the black boogeyman as a threat to women (more so than the mostly white men who deny Medicaid to the poor and send black and Hispanic women to prison for drug crimes), white men’s treatment of white women is rarely discussed. I’ve challenged the white men who finance black boogeyman products to address the issue of domestic violence against white women. Why isn’t Nicholas Kristof on this?

Meanwhile, Scot Nakagawa has criticized William Schneider of MSNBC for using Asian-Americans—thirty-eight culturally distinct groups—as a model minority, arguing that Schneider is aiming to shame black people by comparison. He contends that such labeling conceals the problems—like sex trafficking and poverty—that afflict some Asian-American communities.

The latest shedding of light on the “tangle of pathologies” in the white community is to be encouraged. Better late than never. Maybe no longer will the white community be treated as Lake Wobegon, with the black community as a sort of waste disposal across the tracks for the country’s social problems.


Originally published in The Nation,  June 4, 2014

'Donald Trump is a Bigot and a Racist and It's Time We Said So' — Washington Post Columnist

So-called "liberal media" won't call Donald Trump out for the bigot and racist that he truly is.  Meanwhile the right-wing media has called Obama a "traitor, communist, Nazi" and have claimed that he is not a "real American."
—Ronald David Jackson

Donald Trump: Is he waving at the crowd of giving the fascist salute? (Photo by Gage Skidmore)

_____________

Donald Trump is a Bigot and a Racist

By Dana Milbank
Let’s not mince words: Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist.

Some will think this an outrageous label to apply to the frontrunner for a major party’s presidential nomination. Ordinarily, I would agree that name-calling is part of what’s wrong with our politics.

But there is a greater imperative not to be silent in the face of demagoguery. Trump in this campaign has gone after African Americans, immigrants, Latinos, Asians, women, Muslims and now the disabled. His pattern brings to mind the famous words of Martin Neimoller, the pastor and concentration camp survivor (“First they came for the socialists…”) that Ohio Gov. John Kasich adroitly used in a video last week attacking Trump’s hateful broadsides.

It might be possible to explain away any one of Trump’s outrages as a mistake or a misunderstanding. But at some point you’re not merely saying things that could be construed as bigoted: You are a bigot.

It has been more than a quarter century since Trump took out ads in New York newspapers calling for the death penalty for “criminals of every age” after five black and Latino teens were implicated in the Central Park jogger case. The young men, convicted and imprisoned, were later cleared by DNA evidence and the confession of a serial rapist – and Trump called their wrongful-conviction settlement a “disgrace.”

Since then, Trump led the “birther” movement challenging President Obama’s standing as a natural-born American; used various vulgar expressions to refer to women; spoke of Mexico sending rapists and other criminals across the border; called for rounding up and deporting 11 million illegal immigrants; had high-profile spats with prominent Latino journalists and news outlets; mocked Asian accents; let stand a charge made in his presence that Obama is a Muslim and that Muslims are a “problem” in America; embraced the notion of forcing Muslims to register in a database; falsely claimed thousands of Muslims celebrated the 9/11 attacks in New Jersey; tweeted bogus statistics asserting that most killings of whites are done by blacks; approved of the roughing up of a black demonstrator at one of his events; and publicly mocked the movements of New York Times (and former Washington Post) journalist Serge Kovaleski, who has a chronic condition limiting mobility.

He hasn’t gone after Jews recently, but his backers have, and Trump was uncharacteristically silent when prominent booster Ann Coulter, responding to Republican candidates’ support for Israel in a debate, tweeted: “How many f---ing Jews do these people think there are in the United States?”

Read More

Is US Media Mere Propaganda?: See If Your Favorite News Source Can Pass This Test

Photo by InSapphoWeTrust.

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The US Media and Propaganda

By Dave Lindorff
Are the American corporate media largely propaganda organs, or news organizations?

Here are a few points to consider, and then you the reader can decide. Check out how one should objectively answer these questions below, and then check how the US corporate media generally answer them:

1. If ISIS or Al Qaeda deliberately attacks a civilian venue as in Paris, killing dozens of civilians indescriminately, is it terrorism?

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: Yes

2. If the US deliberately attacks a a civilian venue as in the case of the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing dozens of civilians indescriminately, is it terrorism?

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: No

3. If the Chinese government takes control of a tiny island claimed by another nation, expands it, and puts a military installation on it, is it an example of aggression, a violation of international law, and a provocation?

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: Yes

4. If the US government takes control and then refuses to relinquish a portion of a tiny
island owned by another country, in this instance Cuba, expands it and puts a military installation on it (as it has done now for decades in the case of Guantanamo Bay on the island of Cuba, is it an example of aggression, a violaton of international law and a provocation?

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: No

5. If the leader of a party that wins a national election by a landslide is not herself elected, but announces that she will in fact be making all the important decisions for the newly elected government, as Suu Ky just announced she will do in Myanmar, is it an example of undemocratic behavior, or caudillismo?

Objective answer: Yes
US Media answer: No

6. If the leader of a party steps down as president but then continues behind the scenes to act as the real authority on important issues even though someone else (his brother) was elected president, as Fidel Castro has done in Cuba, is this an example of undemocratic behavior and a kind of caudillismo?

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: Yes

7. If a foreign country places missiles pointed at another nation on the territory of a country adjacent to the target country, as the USSR once did in Cuba with respect to the US, is that a threat to the target country?

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: Yes

8. If the US places missiles in Poland and points them at Russia, as the US has done, or puts nuclear weapons in Germany also targeting Russia, as the US also does, is this a threat to Russia?

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: No

9. If Iran provides military assistance to insurrectionists in a neighboring country like Yemen and those armed fighters, the Houthis, successfully drive an autocrat from power, is that subversion?:

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: Yes

10: If the US provides funds to organizations inside another country, which then
organize protests, marches and bloody assaults, and ultimately drive the elected
government out of office, as the US did in Ukraine, is that subversion?

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: No

11. If Iran, a signatory of the International Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, seeks to develop the capability to refine uranium-235 which could someday be used to make a nuclear bomb, but agrees to international supervision and inspections, is that a grave threat to regional stability in the Middle East and to world peace?

Objective answer: No, since there is already a powerful nuclear nation in the
Middle East with the capability of totally obliterating Iran — namely Israel.
Media answer: Yes

12: If Israel, which has never signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which refuses to allow
inspections of its nuclear facilities, and which is known to have hundreds of nuclear
weapons as well as the planes and missiles to deliver them anywhere, is that a
grave threat to regional stability in the Middle East and to world peace?

Objective answer: Yes
US media answer: No

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A Black Man Threatens Whites and it's Labeled Terrorism — But Not When a White Man Writes a Manifesto and Kills Blacks

Dylann Roof and Floyd Lee Corkins.

By Shaun King
Are you familiar with the Family Research Council? It's the conservative anti-gay group that Josh Duggar worked for before he stepped down recently after admitting he had molested his sisters and a babysitter. The FRC was designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center back in 2010.

Well, in 2012, a black man with a gun and 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches walked into the offices of the Family Research Council and planned on shooting the employees and rubbing the sandwiches on their faces (here are the literal sandwiches). He didn't do it and was disarmed by the security officer in the building who held him there until the police showed up.

The federal government called that terrorism. The feds even prosecuted him as a terrorist, and he was the first person ever convicted under a 2002 anti-terrorism act and was sentenced to serve 25 years in prison:

He pleaded guilty to the charges in February.

U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen heralded the sentence as sending a strong message on terrorism.

“A security guard’s heroism is the only thing that prevented Floyd Corkins II from carrying out a mass shooting intended to kill as many people as possible,” Machen said in a statement.

OK? So, a black man walks into a building of conservative white folk with some chicken sandwiches and a gun, gets manhandled by security, and he's a full-fledged terrorist sentenced to 25 years in prison for terrorism.

But, a white man researches the most historic black church in South Carolina with a state senator as its pastor, speaks on his desire to start a civil war, goes into that church, kills a state senator and eight other African Americans, but it's not terrorism?

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Google Manipulating News & Information: Demands Website Remove Stories On US Torture in Iraq and the War in Ukraine — Blocked Advertising To Site

Google demanded Antiwar.com delete an article on the civil war in Ukraine and remove content on torture by the US military in Iraq. Google also blocks ads to websites in nations against whom the US has imposed sanctions

When the big bucks starting flowing, Google got very evil. (Steve Rhodes. Flickr, CC)

By, Eric Harris, IPA
Founder and director of Antiwar.com, Garris just wrote the piece “Google Doubles Down: Demands Review of All Antiwar.com Content,” which states: “On Wednesday morning (3/18/15), Google AdSense suspended ad delivery to Antiwar.com demanding that we remove our 11-year-old pages that showed the abuse by U.S. soldiers of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib. We publicized this and got a bit of coverage. [See in Gawker: 'Google Suspends Site from Ad Network for Abu Ghraib Photo."]

“Yesterday [Thursday] Google contacted us and told us that they had given in and would be restoring ad service to Antiwar.com shortly.

“However, this morning [Friday] they contacted us demanding that we remove this article.

“Antiwar.com has no intention of allowing Google to dictate our content. We are looking into alternate sources of advertising and will not likely be working with Google AdSense in the future.”

JILLIAN YORK, jillian at eff.org, @jilliancyork, @onlinecensors
York leads the new project onlinecensorship.org at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She said: “While Google is well within its legal rights to regulate content — and has good reasons to ensure certain violent content doesn’t make it to AdSense, in this case it came down on the wrong side of what was clearly content in the public interest: images that demonstrate torture by the U.S. military.”

In her article “Can Apple Refuse to Sell a Laptop to an Iranian Citizen? Maybe,” York noted: “Google reportedly blocks Persian-language advertisements because of the prohibition on financial transactions targeting Iranians. Given that there are only small pockets of Persian speakers outside of Iran, it would be difficult for Google to argue they’re not targeting Iranians with ads in Persian; therefore, blocking the advertisements entirely ensures that they’re in compliance with the regulations.”

RAPIST: He's Accused of Raping Multiple Women Over Many Years — No, Not Bill Cosby, Bill Clinton (Video)

So why is Bill Clinton treated so differently from Bill Cosby? And why are all the "defenders of women" so silent on Bill Clinton? Simple — Political power.  One has it, the other doesn't.

"Slick Willie" — He's even slicker than you think. . . And so are his defenders.

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Bill Clinton and Bill Cosby: Birds of a feather?

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RELATED STORY: Longtime Bill Clinton sex-assault accuser says Hillary 'enabled it to happen again and again and again and again'

RELATED STORY: Rape allegations hurt Bill Cosby but Sail Past Bill Clinton

RELATED STORY: The Bush-Clinton Mafia: Dynasties Merry-Go-Round - How Did It Come About?

SHOW NOTES:

Bill Clinton: A Long History of Alleged Rape and Sexual Assault

Bill Clinton’s long history of sexual violence against women dates back some 30 years

FLASHBACK – Alleged rape by Bill Clinton

Clinton Settles Paula Jones Lawsuit for $850,000

Kathleen Willey suspects Clintons murdered husband

The Clinton Chronicles

Rand Paul is very concerned about Bill Clinton

Episode 246 – Meet The Clintons

How to Stop Hillary 2016

Reprinted with permission from The Corbett Report.

How US Media Covers for Racism in Israel: New York Times Posts Article on Netanyahu's Racism — Then Completely Re-writes It

Word must have come down the chain of command at the New York Times that the article must be changed to 'soften' the image of blatant racism coming from the very top of Israel's political system

BEFORE Headline:

"Netanyahu Expresses Alarm That Arab Voter Turnout Could Help Unseat Him"

AFTER  Headline:
"Deep Wounds and Lingering Questions After Israel's Bitter Race"

By Ben Norton
On March 17, the day of the 2015 Israel election, Prime Minister Netanyahu warned Jewish Israelis that Arabs were voting “in droves” (alleging, in a conspiratorial manner reminiscent of white supremacists in the US Jim Crow South, that “Left-wing organizations are busing them out”).

Second-class Palestinian citizens voting is supposed to be a very bad thing in Israeli democracy.
The New York Times published an article about the incident—and more generally about Netanyahu’s bigoted, jingoistic, far-right tactics to attract more votes—titled “Netanyahu Expresses Alarm That Arab Voter Turnout Could Help Unseat Him.” The piece was written by Isabel Kershner and Rick Gladstone. At least, for the moment, that was the case.

Several hours later, the NYT published a rewrite of the article—a rewrite not just of parts of it, but of all of it. According the the website NewsDiffs which tracks edits to “highly-placed articles on online news sites,” between 5:13 pm and 9:08 pm on March 17 100% of the article was re-written to mostly erase the focus on Netanyahu’s racism.

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USA Today Tried To Pin Shooting of Cops in Ferguson on Protesters

By Jim Naureckas
Here's the headline (3/16/15) over the lead story in USA Today (daily circulation: 4.1 million):

Ferguson Protester Held in Shooting

Online, the headline (3/15/15) was basically the same:

Protester Charged With Shooting Officers in Ferguson

These headlines echo reporter John Bacon's lead–though you'll note that in the lead, the information that suspect Jeffrey Williams is a "protester" is attributed to "authorities," rather than stated as fact:

A 20-year-old protester has been charged with shooting two police officers in Ferguson, Mo., last week, authorities said Sunday.

County prosecutor Robert McCulloch is paraphrased as saying Williams "was involved in the demonstration that was wrapping up when the incident took place"–though one of the charges against him is "firing a weapon from a vehicle," which is an unusual place to be if you're taking part in a protest.

But later, eight paragraphs into the front-page story, we learn that–contrary to the headline–Williams may not have been a protester after all:

Bishop Derrick Robinson of the Kingdom Destiny Fellowship International, who has been an organizer of Ferguson protests, later told CNN he spoke with Williams — and that Williams said he was not involved in protests. He said Williams told him the shooting occurred after he had been robbed by an unknown assailant.

Robinson's account of what Williams told him meshes with what the suspect reportedly told police: "McCulloch said Williams admitted firing the shots but said he was shooting at someone else." In a video that accompanies the story, McCulloch says, "It's possible at this point that he was firing shots at someone other than the police, but struck the police officers."

It's obviously a critical political question whether the two cops–both of whom survived the shooting–were victims of a "protester" or were merely bystanders to a crime that had nothing to do with police. Leaping to a conclusion in the headline is not only irresponsible, it serves to lower the pressure on police to do something about the pattern of racial discrimination the protests have exposed.

But then, this is the paper that spun statistics to make it seem like shootings of police were soaring when they were actually relatively low (FAIR Blog, 12/22/14)–and ran this headline as police in Ferguson were attacking protesters and arresting journalists:

Reprinted with permission from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.

False Flags Not a 'Conspiracy Theory': Presidents, Prime Ministers, Congressmen, Generals and Cops ADMIT to False Flag Terror

Not Theory … Admitted Fact

By Washingtonsblog
There are many documented false flag attacks, where a government carries out a terror attack … and then falsely blames its enemy for political purposes.

In the following instances, officials in the government which carried out the attack (or seriously proposed an attack) admit to it, either orally or in writing:

(1) Japanese troops set off a small explosion on a train track in 1931, and falsely blamed it on China in order to justify an invasion of Manchuria. This is known as the “Mukden Incident” or the “Manchurian Incident”. The Tokyo International Military Tribunal found: “Several of the participators in the plan, including Hashimoto [a high-ranking Japanese army officer], have on various occasions admitted their part in the plot and have stated that the object of the ‘Incident’ was to afford an excuse for the occupation of Manchuria by the Kwantung Army ….” And see this.

(2) A major with the Nazi SS admitted at the Nuremberg trials that – under orders from the chief of the Gestapo – he and some other Nazi operatives faked attacks on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles, to justify the invasion of Poland.

(3) Nazi general Franz Halder also testified at the Nuremberg trials that Nazi leader Hermann Goering admitted to setting fire to the German parliament building in 1933, and then falsely blaming the communists for the arson.

(4) Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev admitted in writing that the Soviet Union’s Red Army shelled the Russian village of Mainila in 1939 – while blaming the attack on Finland – as a basis for launching the “Winter War” against Finland. Russian president Boris Yeltsin agreed that Russia had been the aggressor in the Winter War.

Media Silence on Libya — Totally Destroyed by the US and NATO

Screen capture from YouTube video.

By Margaret Kimberley, BAR
Despite the all-encompassing belief in democracy and a free press, Americans have very little democracy left and perhaps the worst media in the world. Even people who make efforts to be informed don’t know what is happening domestically and internationally because of the constant lies and disinformation they are exposed to by the corporate media. They act as spokespersons for the powerful instead of providing analysis and information for readers and viewers. The result is a world turned upside down, with lies being sold as the truth. Libya is just the latest example of press malfeasance.

In 2011 the leaders of NATO appeared to pull off the perfect crime. That year they used the Arab Spring democracy movement as a cover to destroy Libya, kill its president, Muammar Gaddafi, and turn that nation over to jihadists supported by the Persian gulf monarchs.

Migrant Prisons of Libya: Europe or Die - Trailer

Regime change was the only issue ever on the agenda. They used the dubious doctrine of Responsibility to Protect, R2P, as a means of getting away with murder. This was no mysterious conspiracy either. The American secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said quite publicly that her government wanted Gaddafi dead. “We hope that he can be captured or killed soon,” said the characteristically undiplomatic diplomat. After the deed was done she again spoke openly about killing a head of state. “We came, we saw, he died.”

The American government unleashed a race war in the intervention and, to this day, African migrants and darker skinned Libyans are at risk of assault and death. The town of Tawergha was turned to rubble and inhabitants who survived the assault were forced to flee. America’s first black president was responsible for this terror.

2011 was the year that Barack Obama made his bones and a fiendish re-election campaign commercial by going on a killing spree in the Middle East. Osama bin Laden, Gaddafi and American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki were all victims of the U.S. hit squad, in a clear violation of law.

Now Libya is back in the news and this very recent past is never mentioned by corporate media. When ISIS decapitated 21 Egyptian Christians the horror was separated from American involvement in that country. The murder of the American ambassador in 2012 is used by Republicans as a club to beat Obama but none of them question the very premise of American involvement there.

Libya is now a ruin. As Vladimir Putin pointed out, everything America touches will end up the same way. The once prosperous country is now in a tumultuous civil war, with war lords fighting for their own piece of the action and ISIS using the media to spread fear and outrage. None of this would have taken place had NATO left Libya alone.

One wouldn’t know this of course from watching the news or reading the newspaper. The United States role in the destruction of Libya has been shoved down the Orwellian memory hole, never to be seen or discussed again.

Boko Haram’s rampages in Nigeria and jihadists incursions in Mali are all a result of the fall of the Gaddafi regime. Death was unleashed not just in Libya, but throughout the region. The killing of the United States ambassador at Benghazi in 2012 was a harbinger of things to come as the jihadists repeat their standard operating procedure toward their benefactors. Now Libyans and Egyptian migrant workers pay the price for western aggressions.

It is staggering to see the depth of manipulation directed at the people of this country. If the president openly calls for the overthrow of a sovereign state, networks and newspapers go along and regurgitate every word. When the project goes south, no one who bragged about it in 2011 will now admit to their role in the disaster and the press continues to repeat official policy like the good little scribes they have always been.

The ISIS story has been dumbed down to tired analysis about a clash of civilizations and whether or not Islam is a religion of peace. Muslims can be peaceful or warlike but the hand of American involvement and the silence about it is the real story.

Therein lies the perennial problem. This is not the first time in history that an administration directed what the media does and doesn’t report. Journalists know that they have to play ball so to speak. If they want the good gig and access to senior officials they will write only what they are told to write. They won’t stray from the script or tell any inconvenient truths like the United States spending the last nearly forty years supporting jihadists who they later end up fighting.

When the next ISIS video of immolation or beheading is released, the history of American involvement ought to be told too. But no one should hold their breath and think that the press will report on any such thing.

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Margaret Kimberley's Freedom Rider column appears weekly in Black Agenda Report, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com.

Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City, and can be reached via e-mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

 Reprinted with permission from Black Agenda Report.