Stephon Clark, Branding, the Corpserate Media – and Pathways for Peace

Another media sleight-of-hand distraction atrocity. Those in the know, know that the corpserate media (portmanteau for corporate media that overlooks or condones the making of corpses) is driven by profit and social control, not truth.

This time it was the sheer ballistic numbers that pushed my emotional button and prompted this little essay, rant, or whatever it is... it is words attempting to convey emotions, attempting to cause an emotion in the reader so that somehow the accumulated effect improves something for someone somewhere.

At Common Dreams (though at the bottom of the page so I had to scroll to find it):

“Died For the Crime Of Being A Young Black Male, Yet Again”:

“Police in Sacramento killed 22-year-old Stephon Clark, nicknamed Zoe, Sunday night as he stood in his own backyard behind the house he shared with his grandparents and siblings. Police were responding to a call about someone breaking car windows in the neighborhood when they confronted Clark; because they "feared for their safety," two officers shot him 20 times - 10 times each - within seconds of shouting for him to show his hands and then frantically screaming "Gun! Gun!" After they murdered him, they muted the audio on their body cameras and talked for five more minutes before approaching Clark and handcuffing him as he lay on the ground. They offered no medical help. Once reinforcements arrived, they questioned Clark's grandmother for several hours before telling her that her grandson was dead. He left behind two sons, 3 and 1.”[1]

So then I checked CNN online to find headline:

“Trump is now facing a triple-barreled litigation drama involving a porn actress, a reality show star and a former Playboy model that promises further embarrassing allegations.”

Then I checked USA Today online to find headline:

“She wanted a Hollywood career. Her agent wanted sex.”

To their credit CNN and USA Today did post articles which I found by specifically web-searching for them: “Sacramento police shot man holding cell phone in his grandmother's yard” & “Grieving mother joins March for Our Lives in the name of Stephon Clark, other black males taken by gun violence,”[2]

Even IF Stephon Clark was smashing windows, that is not a crime worthy of a human-being being treated like target practice. Can you understand the sheer zombiefied hypocrisy, the blatant un-empathetic approach of the corpserate media to avoid highlighting such incidents? Not to mention the cruelty and insensitivity of the police FORCE.

And while it may be challenging to pick a top story, you see (or don't see), that whoever becomes (or doesn’t) the poster person or persons for the corpserate media is a selective thing often having very little relevance as to what is actually going on with the world. This is important to remember because whether an individual, a high school, or an entire country (see USEmpire warring in Yemen, Niger, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Libya,[3] the headlines shape minds and ensuing discussions until topics become mainstream, becoming trends, becoming part of the fabric of so-called culture - yet other incidents get swept under the rug. The hyped media markets tragic events as a rarity, an abnormality, but tragic events are all too normally abnormal, as repeatedly shown in a book of potent and eye-opening essays, Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? by Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Take me away from your leader
Though they claim it is for “non-offensive” use, the fact that Google is working with the Department of so-called Defense on drone technology[4] is cause for eyebrow-raising if not outright concern.

For many years it has been common lingo to say “I Googled....” instead of the more accurate “I web-searched...” This is an example of how commodity consciousness affects the mind; that “Google” has become a generic e-verb shows both the power a corporate brand wields, as well as the populace's facility for going along with it.

To say that Hitler was popular among the German people, may at first seem a stretch of a comparison with Google's popularity but if you consider, for example, that the USEmpire and allies unleashed a holocaust of death and destruction 15 years ago with their Invasion of Iraq - abetted by the corpserate media and now proven to be based on lies - then there is a deeper point to this. Of course this is not saying Google is like Hitler, rather it is pointing to the tendency for masses of a nation's people to be mentally played by one side at the ignorance of another. Thus, for examples, ignoring the atrocities of Iraq et al, the violence against minorities, or poverty and health issues on Native Peoples' reservations while not missing a beat on Facebook, Instagram (owned by Facebook), etc. is mindlessly being swayed by the Techno-Leaders. The German word “Führer” means “leader” - but these Techno-Leaders are part faceless (though Zuckerberg issued an apology)[5] data-mining corporation and part gadget; have not the cyborgs already arrived?! (And, yes, they provide helpful networking and social connecting for many.)

Despite the, ahem, media furor about Russia possibly affecting the presidential election, it is now officially bunk: “The House Intelligence Committee has voted to formally end its Russia probe. Lawmakers found no evidence of collusion between associates of President Donald Trump and Russia”.[6] And despite such lengthy corpserate media distractions, let's remember how subtle the modern persuasion can actually be within the so-called homeland itself; hint: it doesn't need a screaming supremacist maniac with a small rectangular mustache:

“Just weeks before he demonstrates whether his campaign's blend of grass-roots appeal and big media-budget know-how has converted the American electorate, Sen. Barack Obama has shown he's already won over the nation's brand builders. He's been named Advertising Age's marketer of the year for 2008.”[7]

 For a more up-to-date report on the ongoing modus operandi, see: “The Mind-Benders: How to Harvest Facebook Data, Brainwash Voters, and Swing Elections.”[8]   The global corpserate media is a brand, politics are a brand, as are the products promoted in-between the subtler branding fanfare; this commodity consciousness has turned much of the populace into consumer sheeple allowing themselves to be, wait for it, branded.  Kudos to the banned from appearing on corpserate media professor Noam Chomsky for the following quote:  “There’s been nothing like this in history. It’s kind of an outrageous statement, but it happens to be true, that the Republican Party is the most dangerous organization in human history. Nobody, not even the Nazis, was dedicated to destroying the possibility of organized human life. It’s just missing from the media. In fact, if you read, say, the sensible business press, the Financial Times, BusinessWeek, any of them, when they talk about fossil fuel production, the articles are all just about the prospect for profit. Is the U.S. moving to number one and what are the gains? Not that it’s going to wipe out organized human life. Maybe that’s a footnote somewhere. It’s pretty astonishing.”[9]

Yet I would not limit it to “Republicans,” and worth adding is that “fossil fuel production” also affects Mother Earth, air, water, and all beings who live so-called outdoors.

Fossil fuel is not the only greed-based industry wreaking havoc, as the passing of Sudan, reportedly the last male northern white rhino, at age 45 attests to:

“According to the conservation group, the demand for rhino horn in traditional Chinese medicine in Asia and dagger handles in Yemen wiped out the white rhino populations in Uganda, Central African Republic, Sudan and Chad.”[10]

When in Rome, don't do as the Romans do but use their gadgets
Some of the upsides to modern technology-gadgets are: the ability to record an abuse, which in some cases – as when the world is watching a protest – can help prevent abuse; the ability for the common person to have a news show, podcast, etc., in other words, journalism from the ground up, not the ivory tower down; the ability of virtually anyone to report on virtually anything. Yet there are challenges in that department too, as the following headline indicates: “In 'Affront to Freedom of the Press,' Canadian Journalist Faces Criminal Charges for Covering Protest,”[11] and, as Abu-Jamal points out in his book, videotaped atrocities do not necessarily convince the legal system!

Perhaps it is only a matter of time before the consciousness shifts, before people's attention shifts, in effect bankrupting the mind-sway of the corpserate media which nowadays includes Techno-Leaders with their propaganda news-feeds.

On the theoretical surface, police brutality against minorities can be attributed to: racism, fear, domination, and hatred. Yet Abu-Jamal's pamphlet, “To Protect and Serve Whom?”[12] (also included in the book, Have Black Lives Ever Mattered?), highlights some key, practical pathways for peace:

* The words “police” and “politician” are from the same Greek root “polis” meaning “city-state”; “Police are the employed servants of the state, and as such the instruments of state policy.”[13] Therefore, revamping the system requires deep changes in “policy.”

* The police force as an institution has its origins in “slave patrols” and “Armed white supremacists … were the true Founding Fathers of America's police system; and fear of Blacks and Native Americans drove whites to add the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”[14]

* Abu-Jamal also cites the outside-the-system-box ideas put forth by Dr. Huey P. Newton in 1980, a highlight of which is a “Citizen's Peace Force... to serve local community needs”...with training and education “in areas of urban problem solving.”[15]

Minorities, male mental-emotional health, and the military
With guidance from elders, Native youth helped initiate the Standing Rock water-protector efforts both with a 2,000 mile run to Washington DC to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline and with a prayer camp at Standing Rock.[16] Perhaps the recent March For Our Lives wave of students and parents literally crying for stricter gun-control can become a voice loud enough to make change. To do so, it would be wise for their efforts to be conjoined with the concerns of minorities, weakening the military-industrial-complex whose weapons feed wars worldwide (and whose unused equipment and weapons can filter down to police forces), and issues of mental-emotional health among high school males as well as the out-of-control police.

From an article, “Protests Shut Down Sacramento Kings Game, Freeways Over Stephon Clark’s Death”[17]:

“The officers, who fired 10 rounds each at Clark, said they believed he was holding a gun. The police department also said officers thought Clark was carrying a toolbar used to smash windows. [A toolbar is a cyber thing, but anyway.] The only thing officers found on Clark was a cellphone.”

“Stephon’s brother Stevante Clark spoke to the crowds outside of the Kings’ game, saying that the police 'killed and murdered' his brother. 'They think we’re animals,' he said. 'They’re killing us like animals.'”

The rhino named Sudan became one-of-a-kind; now there are none.

Stephon Clark has now become one of an already too-long list of those considered by some as a disposable brand of human beings.

NOTES:
[1] “Died For the Crime Of Being A Young Black Male, Yet Again.”

Also: “Sacramento police shot man holding cell phone in his grandmother's yard”

[2] See here and here.

[3] “The U.S. Engaged in 7 Wars With No Sign of Retreat”

[4] “Google is using its AI skills to help the Pentagon learn to analyze drone footage”

[5] “Zuckerberg takes out full-page apology ads in British Sunday newspapers”

[6] See here.

[7] “Obama Wins! ... Ad Age's Marketer of the Year” 

[8] See here.

[9] “Noam Chomsky on the Populist Groundswell, U.S. Elections, the Future of Humanity, and More”

[10] “Sudan, the world's last white northern Rhino, dies”

[11] See here.

[12] See here.

[13] Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? - Mumia Abu-Jamal, City Lights Books/Open Media Series, 2017, p.182.

[14] Ibid, p.187.

[15] Ibid, p.199.

[16] “Standing Rock is everywhere: one year later” &
“Native Youth Run 2,000 Miles to Washington DC to Protest Dakota Access Pipeline”

[17] See here.

Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is an essayist and resident poet at Axis of Logic. In addition to his work as a writer, he is a small press publisher and Turtle Islander. See his new book of nonfiction with a poetic touch, “photo albums of the heart-mind”. 

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