JonBenet Ramsey and Abeer al-Janabi
Overseas readers who don't watch US-based cable news may not know that there is a news blackout on the 24 hours news stations, which have shown endless hours of useless speculation on a ten year old small town murder case. Why the cable news channels in the US behave in this stupid and lemming-like fashion no doubt has to do with the severe discipline of the advertising market and its dependence on ratings. I.e., news has to generate 20 percent profits, which it cannot do, and so lurid infotainment is substituted. It is also possible that they are deliberately attempting to turn American gray matter into mush so as to ensure that nobody on this continent notices what is really going on around them.
But although I mind this pollution of the air waves with something that is not, whatever it is, news, the main thing I mind is the racism.
The case of Abeer al-Janabi, the little fourteen-year old Iraqi girl who was allegedly raped and killed after being stalked by a US serviceman would never be given the wall to wall coverage treatment.
That is frankly because the victim was not a blonde, blue-eyed American, but a black-eyed, brunette Iraqi. Both victims were pretty little girls. Both were killed by sick predators. But whereas endless speculation about the Ramsey case, to the exclusion of important real news stories, is thought incumbent in cabalnewsland, Abeer al-Janabi's death is not treated obsessively in the same way. In the hyperlinked story above, CNN even calls the little girl a "woman" at first mention, because the US military indictment did so. Only later in the article is it revealed that she was a little girl. The very pedophiliac nature of the crime is more or less overed up in the case of al-Janabi, even as looped video of Ramsay as too grown up is endlessly inflicted on us.
The message US cable news is sending by this privileging of some such stories over others of a similar nature is that some lives are worth more than others, and some people are "us" whereas other people are "Other" and therefore lesser. Indeed, it is precisely this subtle message sent by American media that authorized so much taking of innocent Iraqi life in the first place. British officers have repeatedly complained that too many of those serving in the US military in Iraq view Iraqis as subhuman (one used the term Untermeschen). Where did they get that idea?
posted by Juan Cole @ 8/22/2006 06:33:00 AM
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17 Comments:
Thank you so very much, Juan. We have all been thinking this. Just yesterday I was writing a letter to my local print cabalnews outlet, protesting the narrative of "no matter what concessions we give to muslims, they hate us, (so it's OK for us to hate them)" that has shown up in several recent columns and letters. I referred them to the Esposito article you linked to Sunday, and noted 'linked to by Juan Cole, who you (the news editors) must be reading since he is THE indispensible soourse for Iraq, giving us all sorts of information your AP can't find.'
Either we as American consumers can get together and affect the advertising revenues of cabalnewsnetwork by action directly against them, or action against their advertisers, or we cannot. In one case the planet lives, in the other case it dies. No matter how much you like pro football or amateur singers, if you watch them on Faux without writing ferocious letters to their advetisers AND sabotaging their advertisers products in the marketplace, you are killing democracy in America and our planet's future.
another perfect post. spot on.
Well done Juan! The white world is up in arms about the murder of a child turned into a Barbi doll by the parents who may have murdered her. This is pure racism and the networks are racist to the core. These vile "fair and objective" news broadcasters take no exception to the starvation, disease, and slaughter of thousands upon thousands of children in the Middle East which the US and Israeli governments support in the name of their higher "civilizations". This is racist barbarity.
Forget about Iraq - black girls get raped and killed in this country and even then the media doesn't care as much... There is an economic racism in the news editorial decision making - The "community interest" is decisive in picking stories when the viewing Community in question has the largest buying power - and that happens to be White viewers fussing over White victims.
When people here don't have empathy for black kids dying 8 miles away from their door steps, how can you expect them to have any context for compassion for black kids dying 8,000 miles away? People here suckle on their TV sets like its mother's milk, expecting to be soothed and sedated, except that it is big brother's bosom that they are clenching on to.
I think you're confusing cause and effect, Prof Cole. The cable news companies have (rightly?) calculated that more Americans would turn off their TV sets if the news was about an Iraqi girl, and keep it on in case of a girl from rich suburban America. The cable companies are not creating any message about the relative value of lives, they are simply faithfully reflecting what is already there.
Further, we do not see wall-to-wall coverage about these cases:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/8/21/201719/923
Amen. Isn't it wonderful that we have an topically specific Internet to really understand what is going on in the things that matter. The miracle medium of TV seems to have devolved into a confluence of infotainment and soaps (when it's not pure advertising anyway).
"It is also possible that they are deliberately attempting to turn American gray matter into mush so as to ensure that nobody on this continent notices what is really going on around them."
Seems like overkill at this point.
But Iraq lies somewhere beyond the rim of the American universe -- i.e., it is _not_ within the known [American] universe. Why bother with something so remote & unreal? How many Americans -- seriously -- would _want_ to hear about anything outside their own universe? something which cannot have any connexion with them, which they cannot visualise? That is why US soldiers thought of Iraqis as untermenschen: they are not Americans, after all -- & therefore not really people.
I'm going to share your comments with as many people as I can. It's a precise statement about the complete disregard for Iraqi casualties even when they're NOT CASUALTIES of war but of CRIMES committed by our so-called army of liberation.
Keep on truth-tellin.
I almost always agree with Prof Cole, but I think these remarks are off base.
"Local" newspapers always have the local crime, the PTA meetings, the county zoning commissions, etc.
So US national media are going to specialize in US crimes. I'm sure its the same in England, France, Algeria, etc.
People are always interested in people like themselves. If this is racism then the entire world is racist. But I don't choose to call this racist. To me, racism is believing that an individual who is in front of you is inferior because of their race despite any evidence to the contrary.
By Prof Coles standard, the fact that Blacks concentrate their interest on crimes against blacks is racist.
The true kernal underlying Prof Coles remarks is that it is not in White America's best interest to be interested in a minor crime. They should be interested in how their foreign policy has been hijacked against their best interest, and in how they can manage to cease this distortion.
But commercial TV has stockholders.
this is no surprise. i have never quite understood the media's preoccupation with the jonbenet case... i tend to agree with an earlier comment however, about the relationship between programming and the network's target audience. if we weren't collectively interested in white suburban victims, the networks would change their priorities.
Dish TV does offer Link TV & Free Speech TV. 9410 n& 9415 I watch Deutsch World News Journal at 10 PM every weeknight. ( on at 4PM as well) Following that is Mosaic News of the Middle East a complization of Lebanese, Israeli, Al Jazerra, Dubai,& Iranian TV news broadcasts. ( I notice some spin on Mosaic News, but DWNJ doesn't have a horse in this race, and they have learned their lessons well. Their news reporting is straight and clean!
Did you know that a Swedish Nuclear Power plant was 7 minutes from a meltdown several weeks ago?
Didn't think so! It wouldn't
do to show a negative aspect of nuclear power, when BushCo is pushing it as an alternative fuel method!
R U CVognizant
remembering to remember abeer hamza on her birthday [August 19, 1991--12 March 2006]
came my liberators dressed in stealth
shyly, band of brothers taking liberties
guaranteed by prophets without honor
writing beneath the wall of kisses
another greeting of sweets and flowers
all along deserted streets
from young girls in stained cotton.
old enough to butcher, old enough to bleed.
tracing blood prints soft as petals,
made the stones themselves think.
to hide the coming bulk of death.
anaconda, anaconda
what dark forms were they?
below the tower
insects
rushing helter-skelter
packing suitcases of logistics
towards a void
a hole
you knew me, asked my name: told you little.
there was something about it in the news,
all the same.
then there were golf scores.
the distance was great
between you and there.
yet your children made
the path behind her house.
we didn't see it all,
but could looking ever convince us?
we don't want these broken ones
and curse the offering..
it burst the small skull.
he silky hair stuck with brains.
there is less silence than you would expect
of those who can not bear to leave.
drop monuments from your mind.
-- why don't you?--
I guess we'll have to stay the course.
they die so for nothing
for there comes not even good of it.
flowers flowers
last seen, that blurry picture
among the others, where the faces
are also flowers, just the same.
what these guys
won't turn out to do to you!
take you death,
that makes a girly flatly equal.
complicit in a web
how can she spin enough blood to get out?
clung to whispers from the above-ground,
guided in and cut sideways.
will you remember her if she makes it out?
or, wrap her in this story
till you force her twice down?
we could always say
in her day a purple ribbon
looped in the hair was
the high style enough
but we are dark:
a girl mirrored clear
in a pool
to wash our face in death
she was creamy as the long curl,
her eyes wild
promised nothing.
look along the war
the petals to throw.
and once--ah, not so angry, dear!—
whispered so softly even she could hear,
"You yourself are the flower of flowers!"
written in a name.
just before spring.
with all birds, its blossoms,
leaves and grasses.
in the perfumed breeze
the scent of cloves
mystical incense, a tattered robe
child-like aglow
that swept the floor.
she is altered forever.
a small, tiny, brown wrapper sort of thing with little dreams inside
Dead on post, and the remark by Billmon, too!
What Americans should worry about is the fact the Iraqi girl story has legs. It resonates everywhere except here. We ignore this at our peril.
I apologize for pedantry in the face of atrocity, but "lemming-like" is --- mything the point. See the wikipedia entry on the movie "White Wilderness."
Lemmings do not follow a leader blindly into disaster --- but that is the version of reality (far more important than reality?) brought to us by Disney (CapCities? ABC?)
http://tinyurl.com/ory2t
The US media is controlled by the CIA per Wm. Colby and remarks by Wm. Casey. Look up the ownership and management some time.
Of course this crime is horrible, and it DOES have legs, if not mainstream. While it happens randomly in the USA, and while similar acts have been performed by brutal and duplicitous Wahabbis, this act was directly caused by US intervention in a sovereign nation. It's as if Rumsfeld and Bush participated in that rape/murder, as hitmen who ordered it. The fact that they did not order this crime directly, is of little consequence.
The soldiers were schizophrenically instructed by superiors in the chain-of-command to view Iraqis and non-human animals, disposable props, and at the same time instructed to follow certain military protocols. In addition, they have been sideways instructed that this family bombed the World Trade Center, when clearly tons of relevant history indicates that it was the CIA who did that. Osama Bin Laden, or someone claiming to be him, told Americans to read "Rogue State" by Wm. Blum.
Likewise, ordinary citizens are instructed to absorb violence and mysoginy for entertainment or "news", oppose the same, approve of gross lies and corruption, be moral, all by the same corporate institutions. No wonder the American mindset is confused. This is more than "the market". This is intentional manipulation. The JonBenet Ramsey extravaganza (which turned out to be fake) was nothing more than a vicarious child pornography special to entertain and to distract from deeper issues, to frighten and demoralize.
There is also an effort afoot by the govt/media to get people to HATE THE TROOPS. Remember what happened in Vietnam when hippie antiwar protesters aligned with the soldiers who were trained to kill and seasoned in the field --- and then converged on the Capitol. Were govt officials frightened? No doubt. Then CIA asset Kerry got the vets to convert their rage to political theater in Congress, and the War was ended. Be careful who you blame, and consider ALL media to be a psychological operation on all of us. Even innocuous comedies.
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