Photo credit: Mickey Z.
How to de-occupy a media smear
Mickey Z. -- World News Trust
July 14, 2012
“As force is always on side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion.” --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 well…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.
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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.
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