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October 14, 2011

Euphemism as Blatant Dishonesty; “Nat Geo,” Rupert Murdoch & Mexican Cartels

Although the policy they are paid to enforce is one of drug prohibition, the bureaucracy prosecuting America’s “war on drugs" stubbornly insists their aim is one of control, while assiduously avoiding any use of the long-discredited “P” word. Such flagrant intellectual dishonesty on behalf of a destructive policy raises euphemism to the equivalent of a war crime and tarnishes the American mainstream media that have been so loathe to question it since Richard Nixon was allowed to bury the Shafer report back in March, 1972.

Nixon's escalation of a failing policy into a metaphorical war was empowered by John Mitchell's Controlled Substances Act just over four decades ago; the DEA and NIDA, the agencies created to wage it, are an overlooked legacy of Nixon's truncated second term; they were created by Executive Order shortly before his forced resignation. That the agencies themselves, and the failures of the DEA have escaped critical scrutiny by our Fourth Estate is an enduring irony, given the media's role in Watergate. One would think the drug war's dubious intellectual origins might have prompted more searching scrutiny than they have received so far from our "free press."

A pertinent contemporary example of both Drug War duplicity and its dishonest media support can be found in Rupert Murdoch's "Nat Geo," which produces a "documentary" series entitled Border Wars. It's shot entirely from the standpoint of our "heroic" Border Patrol without regard to the plight of the desperately poor Mexicans they chase across the Sonoran desert with Blackhawk helicopters, or the horrific cartel violence now threatening Mexican society with implosion. Nor does it factor in the murder an estimated 10,000 Mexicans per year since 2006, when the Bush-Cheney White House requested that newly elected Mexican President Calderon "clean up" cross border smuggling.

I had a small measure of satisfaction this morning upon hearing over the car radio that Murdoch was heckled off a podium in San Francisco he had probably paid good money for .

Doctor Tom

Posted by tjeffo at October 14, 2011 04:16 PM

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