So fascinating, so not surprising … that in the days before the RNC the homes being raided are media crews. What do they have planned that they can’t have iWitness documenting, is what I want to know. Except that I already know, and so do you.
In 1999 I was in Washington DC, watching the news on the eve of a massive protest over World Bank and IMF policies and watched with my own two eyes as the cops displayed a makeshift gas mask — plastic soda bottle cut in half with a wet rag stuffed into it, vinegar soaked, they were supposed to be, as I recall — something to put over your face and filter the tear gas — and the police stood there and announced they’d found molotov cocktails and evidence (duct tape, card board tubes, pocket knives) of bomb making from homes where protesters were staying. Not one reporter present asked whether a molotov cocktail doesn’t need a glass bottle to be effective. Not one reporter said “huh, but that smells like vinegar, not gasoline.” Not one reporter asked why the bottom of the bottle had been cut off. They all just accepted it.
This morning, listening to the news on the radio, I heard that they’re planning to deploy the National Guard in New Orleans “to prevent the kind of looting that occurred in the aftermath of Katrina.” I’ve said it before, but you really should go see Trouble the Water if you have started to forget a little bit that “looting” after Katrina was pretty isolated, while starvation, dehydration, people sitting in the sun for days without any aid or assistance whatsoever: those were rampant. NPR did observe that the local authorities had dismissed rumors of the squalid conditions at the Superdome until news crews confronted them with evidence to the contrary.
We need more than independent media, we need media that has the wherewithal to question authority and not just eat whatever is fed to them. Chew it up and feed it back like worms to baby birds.