-Caveat Lector-
Online Journal - http://www.onlinejournal.com
06-25-01: Chomsky's proof
By William Rivers Pitt
"The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the
rigidity of the system of ideological control-'indoctrination,' we might
say-exercised through the mass media." -Noam Chomsky
-------------
June 25, 2001-In the early morning hours of Thursday, June 22, 2001, a man
named Jared T. Bozydaj took to the streets of New Paltz, New York, with an
Intrac Arms 7.62 semi-automatic assault rifle. He fired pointedly at
police officers, wounding one officer named Jeffery Quiepo in the arm. The
shooting went on for several hours before Bozydaj was disarmed and
arrested.
Bozydaj was described as being highly upset by the execution of Timothy
McVeigh. He apparently had decided to take revenge in McVeigh's name on
the police, whom Bozydaj referred to as "control mechanisms for the
government." Weapons and literature in his apartment indicated that
Bozydaj had been planning this attack for some time.
New Paltz is a small community near the Hudson River about an hour north
of New York City. The downtown district is filled with small stores, as
well as a number of bars that cater to the students of the State
University of New York (SUNY) New Paltz, the campus of which is only a few
blocks away from where this shooting occurred. The best word to describe
the place is 'quaint.'
My girlfriend was born and raised near this town. I have spent many
drunken hours with her in the bars that now bear the bullet holes from
Bozydaj's rampage. My girlfriend's parents report that much of downtown
New Paltz is roped off with yellow police tape today. One can see quite
clearly the damage done by Bozydaj's assault rifle, and the police believe
it is a miracle that no one was killed. One SUNY student reported that
eight bullets passed through her bedroom wall, and said that she would
have been shot in the head if her radiator had not deflected the rounds.
I discovered this story on the forums of DemocraticUnderground.com, where
someone had posted it as a topic for discussion about McVeigh-oriented
violence. I forwarded the link, a story from the Zwire news service, to my
girlfriend, for obvious reasons. She called her parents and got the story
from the ground. The local New Paltz paper, the Times-Herald Record,
covered the shooting in detail, and she sent me the link to their story.
The next day, my girlfriend called me.
"I haven't seen this story in any of the newspapers," she said. "It wasn't
on CNN or Peter Jennings last night. Why do you think they aren't
reporting this? Some guy shot up my town, and shot a cop. That's news,
isn't it?"
I am a news junkie, and had myself noticed that this interesting and
disturbing story had not appeared anywhere in the national news media.
Using the words "New Paltz" and "Bozydaj," I searched The New York Times,
an obvious place for this story to appear, and came up empty. I did the
same at CNN.com, The Washington Post, ABCNews.com and several other news
outlets, and found nothing.
A man, motivated by the execution of Timothy McVeigh, had gone on an
hours-long shooting rampage directed exclusively at cops in a small New
York town with a sophisticated assault rifle. He blew a hole in a cop, and
shot hell out of every storefront in the vicinity. He nearly put a bullet
through the head of a sleeping college student. Somehow, this was not
deemed newsworthy by virtually every major news outlet in America,
including the Times of New York, the state where this shooting took place.
Why?
An immediate explanation is that the editors of these news sources were
acting out of a sense of responsibility. For most Americans, the name
Timothy McVeigh is synonymous with pure evil. It is likely that a decision
was reached among the purveyors of our information that nothing should be
published or broadcast that will give ear to those who consider McVeigh a
martyred hero. The fear, I suppose, is that if enough of these kinds of
stories get out, some of our militia-oriented citizenry will think the
Revolution is finally at hand, and take to the streets of their own small
burgs with rifles at the ready.
This kind of quiet censorship, however, raises some disturbing questions.
If unreported McVeigh-motivated shootings like this are happening in New
Paltz, where I am lucky enough to have eyes on the ground, where else are
they happening, and going unreported? I have no friends in Akron, Butte,
Silver Springs, Kissimmee, El Paso, or Needles. Where else in America is
violence like this breaking loose?
Why are we not being told of it?
What else is being withheld?
Noted linguist Noam Chomsky has observed many times that the national
media is not the information-disbursing entity created by our love for the
First Amendment of the Constitution. Rather, the national media is the
propaganda wing of the status quo. The national media tells us things in a
certain way to keep our eyes on the ground, and to keep us from
questioning power too closely. When no other avenue is available to
control the masses, the national media simply refuses to inform us at all.
We have seen this phenomenon many times in many places. How many of us
truly know the level of poverty that exists in America? How many of us
know the toll our sanctions in Iraq have taken on the civilian populace of
that country? How many of us know the number of dead that were left at the
hands of CIA-trained and armed murderers in Nicaragua during the Reagan
administration? How many of us truly know the extent to which corporations
run the government of this country?
Were we told all the facts in unpolished newspaper prose, a howl of
outrage the likes of which has never before been heard would rise from the
throat of the American populace. This, more than anything, is the reason
we are left in our uninformed state of bliss. Were we to be truly informed
by the media outlets, so much would change so fast, and so many of those
who hold the power and the purse strings would be run out of town on a
rail, that the very nature of power in this country would be shattered
forever. Those who sup on the teat of the status quo want nothing to do
with this. Ergo, we are left in the dark.
Such a condition is beyond the concepts of Left or Right. Political
affiliation is mere window-dressing in the high apartments of true power
in America. One need only look at the corporate connections of Gore and
Bush, our last two presidential challengers, to know that party politics
doesn't matter a damn at the end of the day. Everything boils down to the
central question: who rules?
Not us, friends. Not when we are kept safe and uninformed. It is better
this way, when the tree-shakers are kept out of the loop.
The fact that Mr. Bozydaj's shooting rampage went completely unreported by
the national news media, an entity entrusted with informing this vast
nation about the truths that happen within its borders, should shake your
confidence in what we are told to its foundations. I don't care for Mr.
Bozydaj's views, and I despise anyone who would attack police officers
with an assault rifle. But, simply put, he happened. We deserve to know.
If the news media can report on a consensual relationship between adults
for two years, they can report on Mr. Bozydaj. If the news media can
report on every school shooting, despite the real danger of inciting
copycat outrages, they can report on Mr. Bozydaj. And if they can report
the actions of Mr. Bozydaj, they can certainly report other stories, as
well.
We deserve to know who runs this country.
We deserve to know where we are at war, and who is dying.
We deserve to know where we have been at war, and whom we killed.
We deserve to know who is starving in our country, and why.
We deserve to know what happened in Florida.
We deserve to know many things we are never told of, or are lied to about.
When we are not told, we are deprived of the right and ability to
determine the course of this country, as is our purpose as citizens. We
all know the dangers of making uninformed decisions, having done so to our
woe many times in our daily lives.
How many decisions have we made in the name of this nation without all the
relevant facts in hand? How many more such decisions will we make?
Too often, others do our thinking for us. The story of Mr. Bozydaj is just
one example of this phenomenon. If you love this country, fear in your
soul what other areas in the life of our country you are not allowed to
participate in, simply because someone else decided you didn't need to
know.
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