DECEPTIVE US MEDIA HIDING THE TRUTH: Third Self-Immolation Protest & Hiding The Dead
The mask is off with Gaza. The corporate death state can no longer hide their reality.They’re frantically jogging in their closet to protect the scam.
“You don’t get in trouble for lying, you get in trouble for telling the truth.
They’re not afraid of lies, they’re afraid of the truth.”
— Comedian Jimmy Dore, (8/30/24)
By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (9/17/24)
With few exceptions, the US mainstream media has been a reliable protector of the corporate American Empire. CIA crimes have been ignored, lies for wars left unchallenged, corporate collusion with our corrupted “representatives” shuffled aside and the lie of our being blessed with a ‘representative democracy’ promoted like a favorite cereal brand.
But October 7th and the resulting journalistic malpractice — outright PsyOps — of American mainstream media has exposed their rot. A relentless stream of social media videos of shredded children, bombed out and desecrated neighborhoods and 40-foot wide bomb craters in the middle defenseless refuge camps has made the scale and scope of media deception abundantly clear.
Having worked as a print journalist I haven’t been naive about questioning the corporate media narrative. I experienced firsthand the reality of corporate censorship and buried stories. But what has been happening with the reporting and headline manipulation on the US/Israel Gaza genocide has been shocking to me.
The mask is off with Gaza. The corporate death state can no longer hide their reality. That’s why there are frantic calls for “moderation”, “standards”, “fake news guidelines”, “monitoring” and outright banning of social and alternative media. They’re frantically jogging in their closet to protect the scam.
Here are two especially egregious examples of the deceit we Americans are being fed through non-reporting of stories and explosive facts.
This man, Matt Nelson, set himself on fire outside the Israeli Consulate in Boston, Massachusetts on September 11, 2024. There has been almost universal ignoring of the story by the US corporate media. (Photo: YouTube/screen grab)
Media Ignores Third Self-Immolation In Protest Of US/Israel Genocide In Gaza
In a video, Nelson said he would set himself ablaze "to stop supplying Israel with the money and weapons it uses to imprison and murder innocent Palestinians" and "to pressure Israel to end the genocide in Gaza."
By Brett Wilkins
Common Dreams (9/13/24)
For the third time since Israel launched a war on Gaza for which it is currently on trial for genocide at the World Court, a person in the United States has set themself on fire to protest Israel's killing of more than 41,000* Palestinians and U.S. complicity in the slaughter. [*Actual numbers of deaths in Gaza are estimated to be 186,000-plus, and multiplying daily with US/Israeli attacks on refugees. — MT]
In an incident all but completely ignored by the U.S. corporate media, a man identified as Matt Nelson set himself alight near the Israeli Consulate in Boston at around 8:15 pm local time on Wednesday, September 11.
"My name is Matt Nelson and I'm about to engage in an extreme act of protest," he said in a video first uploaded to YouTube on Wednesday. "We are all culpable in the ongoing genocide in Gaza."
"We are slaves to capitalism and the military-industrial complex. Most of us are too apathetic to care," Nelson continued. "The protest I'm about to engage in is a call to our government to stop supplying Israel with the money and weapons it uses to imprison and murder innocent Palestinians, to pressure Israel to end the genocide in Gaza, and to support the [International Criminal Court] indictment of [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu and other members of the Israeli government."
"A democracy is supposed to serve the will of the people, not the interests of the wealthy," he added. "Take the power back. Free Palestine."
According to NBC Boston, first responders confirmed a man suffered serious burn injuries. Nelson's current condition has not been reported.
Deceptive reporting
NBC Boston and other local media took flak from critics on social media, who noted that the outlets chose to report the incident's location as "outside the Four Seasons Hotel" instead of by the Israeli Consulate.
Nelson is the third person known to have self-immolated in Gaza-related protests in the United States since October.
On December 1, a woman—whose identity remains unknown—carrying a Palestinian flag was hospitalized in critical condition after setting herself alight outside the Israeli consulate in Atlanta. Police called it an "act of extreme political protest." Israeli Consul-General Anat Sultan-Dadon called it an act of "hate and incitement toward Israel."
Then, in an incident that gained worldwide attention, Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old active-duty U.S. airman, doused himself in an unknown accelerant, donned his service cap, and set himself ablaze in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. on February 25.
Bushnell repeatedly screamed "Free Palestine" as he burned. Secret Service officers quickly rushed to the scene, with at least one of them drawing his pistol and pointing it at the burning man while ordering him to "get on the ground, you fucker."
As he screamed and writhed in agony, Bushnell managed one final, garbled, yet unmistakable "free Palestine" as his body was engulfed in flames. He died later that day.
Link to story and 1-minute video
Aaron Bushnell Wanted His 'ashes to be scattered in a free Palestine,' Says Will
'I would love for my ashes to be scattered in a free Palestine,' US serviceman wrote in will, according to Memories of Aaron Bushnell, recounted by friends
Israel Has Killed 8% Of Gaza's Population. That Is The Equivalent Of 26 Million Americans
Relative to population, that's also more than 7,700 9/11s. The New York Times and large media outlets are silent on the true scale of the suffering.
By Steven Donziger
Donziger On Justice (9/16/24)
Want to understand the extent to which Palestinian suffering is being erased by Israel and most US media outlets? What I’m about to explain likely will never be reported in the New York Times or on CNN.
I’ve run some basic calculations on the back of a napkin (see picture below) and concluded that at least 8% of Gaza’s pre-conflict population of 2.3 million has been killed by Israel in less than one year. This is based on an extremely conservative estimate of 186,000 deaths in Gaza published recently in The Lancet, a prestigious medical journal that calculated both direct deaths (from IDF bombings and targeted assassinations) and indirect deaths due to starvation, disease, and the IDF’s deliberate destruction of medical facilities and sources of food. (For that article, see here.) Since that article was published in July, and relies on data from two months ago, it is likely the actual impact is much worse. [Far, far more than ‘likely’. It is much worse. — MT]
The reality is that what is happening in Gaza relative to population might be the worst example of a deliberate mass civilian killing in modern history. And it is happening with US weapons and the financial support of US taxpayers while our media ignores the true scope of the impact.
Other credible academics have estimated the actual death toll since October 7 could be at least 300,000 if one compares the rate of indirect death to other wartime conflicts where famine set in. Consumer advocate and lawyer Ralph Nader has suggested the death toll could easily rise to 500,000 or more without a ceasefire, wiping out at least 25% of the territory’s population. Regardless, the actual death toll in Gaza is being dramatically underreported.
Consider: if one compares the rate of killing and death in Gaza since October 7 to population, the territory has experienced the rough equivalent of 7,700 September 11 events in the last year. It would be as if 26 million people in the US were killed in one year relative to our current population. Even the entire combined civilian death toll from Hiroshima and Nagasaki pales in comparison to the extent of Israel’s destruction of civilian life in Gaza in the last year, relative to population.
Sanitizing grim reality
As horrific as Israel’s mass killing of Palestinians is to witness, the media and both major US presidential candidates — not to mention Hamas itself — are for various reasons sanitizing the reality to make it look far less bad than it actually is. All have a vested interest in keeping the actual number lower than it is.
The reality is that what is happening in Gaza relative to population might be the worst example of a deliberate mass civilian killing in modern history. And it is happening with US weapons and the financial support of US taxpayers while our media ignores the true scope of the impact.
As responsible citizens, we cannot let the truth about the extent of civilian death in Gaza be extinguished by any government or any media outlet.
Ralph Nader In The Capitol Hill Citizen Exposing The Gaza Death Undercount
“There was an interview in February on Al Jazeera by a Gaza undertaker who’s doing this free of charge and crying every day with his assistants on the open graves. He says he’s buried 17,000 bodies, including 800 in one day, and that was back in February.” — Ralph Nader, Democracy Now! (9/10/24)
Your opening quotation of Jimmy Dore sums up one strong element of 2024's upside-down backwardness: renegade "comedians" have become expositors of truth while "news reporting" reliability is reduced to a sheer joke.
Great article. The more they lie, shuffle their feet, cough, refuse to make eye contact and prevaricate, the less relevant they become in the lives of those they hope to deceive.