THREAD. I noticed something fascinating: around the same time in recent days, each major corporate news source began talking about a new crime hysteria: a supposed crisis of theft from the railroad industry. But if you look deeper, something very scary is happening.
For context, recall I outlined an incredible coordination between corporate/police PR departments and corporate media reporters around retail theft. Here's a thread I wrote about how the same words, sources, and phrases began appearing everywhere at once:
For the railroad story, I'll start with the New York Times story because it is in arguably the most reputable news source and because it is one of the most dangerous and irresponsible articles. Here's the story: nytimes.com/2022/01/19/us/…
As I’ve shown time and again with the New York Times, if you just go through their stories and list the sources relied on, it becomes obvious who is influencing the news and how it is framed. This is a list of the stories’ sources in chronological order, and it’s astonishing:
-“Authorities”
-LAPD Captain
-“The police”
-LAPD Captain (twice more)
-Railroad corporation (twice)
-Railroad corp. spokesperson
-Association of American Railroads
-LAPD Captain
-Asst. prof. of "marketing"
-Railroad corp.
-Railroad spokesperson
-DA
-LAPD Captain (5 more times)
Imagine being a reporter at the most influential, prestigious news org in the U.S. and writing a major story at a time of rising fascism and just repeating police and corporate talking points about needing more punishment without seeking a single other perspective. Incredible.
In typical NYT fashion, cops make wild claims with no evidence or scrutiny. It all leads up to big moment: the last 5 paragraphs of the piece, all given to LAPD, give away the game: this is about more $$$ for cops: “They are really trying, but we are all understaffed,” he said.
What does New York Times omit? That LAPD already has an astonishing $3 billion budget, most of it spent on low-level traffic, drugs, homelessness, mental illness related stuff AND that LAPD is in midst of big budget fight trying to get a 12% increase.
The NYT also omits one of the most crucial facts you need to know. The LAPD and LA Sheriff together have 67 full-time employees working on PR and propaganda. People don't realize that they spend a lot of money and time to plant these stories:
But I digress. This story began with letter from railroad monopoly lobbyist complaining about not enough human caging by "progressive" LA prosecutor. Almost immediately, and we don't yet know how, a pro-cop CBS reporter took a viral video of tracks that corporate/police boosted.
A lot of actually thinking people like @dennisjromero@JessPish@RottenInDenmark immediately noticed some suspicious things about the "organized train robbery" story, including some potential vendettas and corporate insurance games.
If you look at all these stories, you'll see a lot of the same turns of phrase, sources, and claims. As always, it’s quickly seized on by pro-fascist groups and corporate democrats to argue for more money for police, more profitable surveillance, prosecution, and human caging.
The corporate media portray the railroad monopoly Union Pacific as some kind of hapless victim overrun by "organized" groups of "homeless" thieves. Union Pacific has more revenue ($19.5 billion) than the entire City of Los Angeles.
The corporate/police PR campaign worked almost immediately though. The Governor of California was soon seen literally picking up trash by the railroad tracks and announcing more investment in a “statewide coordination as law enforcement and prosecutors.” fox40.com/news/californi…
Alarmingly, with no evidence, Newsom compared the train thefts to the retail thefts and said “the train thieves are equally organized and need to be prosecuted as such.” Then, a “group of Republican Senators” sent a letter urging massive national federal crackdown on train theft.
And so we saw, in a few days and in real time, how cops, corporations, and media combine to concoct a narrative of *panic* around a truly minor problem compared to ecological collapse, rising fascism, lack of healthcare/housing, etc. which leads to repressive policy.
Finally, this brings me to one of the most important threads I’ve ever written. It’s about how corporate media, police, and wealthy elites work hard to shape what problems we think are urgent and what aren’t. Read it and think about it:
And see also this great reporting on profits and layoffs. Among the many huge questions NYT and other corporate media weren't asking about whether any of this is real and about what easy solutions there might be that aren't "more money for cops and cages."
Update: And here is the CBS journalist who started it all with a viral video boosting cops and a railroad monopoly. As predicted, the story is really different after a little more reporting and evidence! But cops/railroad already got what they wanted.
The events described in this article are the kinds of things people experience under fascism. The Texas Attorney General's conduct reflects a complete breakdown in democratic institutions.
The failure of the Department of Justice and the judiciary to prevent authoritarian abuse like this should be an alarming moment for the legal profession. It's the kind of thing that should be front-page news in every paper and emergency conversations in every law class.
Federal "law enforcement" officials are behaving as if this is not an urgent situation. Instead of devoting resources to investigating illegal authoritarian abuse, federal resources in the state are mostly doubling down to help Texas officials fearmonger about the border.
THREAD. The Democratic Party platform presents such a profound crisis if we have any hope of avoiding fascism.
Kamala Harris and other Democrats would essentially only need to say that they will condition aid to Israel on compliance with international law (i.e. follow existing U.S. law on weapons). The refusal to say something so simple presents a point of no return, for a few reasons.
Here is an image of everywhere bombed in Gaza, mostly with U.S. bombs. 100,000s have been killed by conservative estimates in medical journals. The entire infrastructure (schools, hospitals, water, history, etc) destroyed, and many thousands kidnapped, raped, tortured, maimed.
THREAD. A few years ago, we were worried about the hidden epidemic of prosecutor misconduct. Why do so many prosecutors break the law? Why does nothing happen to them? Why does it stay secret? So, we tried to do something. What we found was more shocking than we imagined.
We worked with a group of the country's leading law professors to file ethics complaints against prosecutors in cases where either judges or their own prosecutor offices had already found them to have broken the law. We filed FIFTY of these complaints in New York alone.
A prosecutor breaking the law in a criminal prosecution--which can result in wrongful incarceration and family separation for years--is among the most serious violation of the code of ethics to which lawyers are bound. Ethics boards can discipline them to protect people.
I’m not sure I’ve seen anything more depraved and dishonest in my tracking of the New York Times. In its article about Netanyahu’s speech, it not only fails to report that Netanyahu flagrantly lied, but it repeats the lie with no acknowledgment Israeli media has proven it false.
You can read more about some of the most astonishing lies, and the grotesque applause for them here. But how is the reaction of a *newspaper* simply repeat the lie. It's some of the most shameful complicity in genocide imaginable, and yet normal.
Instead, one of the most fascist moments in U.S. political history--adoring applause and chants for obvious, knowable lies in support of genocide--is portrayed as "forceful" without any correction of the lies. It's a breathtaking low point for @anniekarni and @SangerNYT
In a landmark federal court victory yesterday, we won our 1st Amendment lawsuit against New York judges and officials concerning secretive ethics proceedings against prosecutors. In most cases no one knows why the state does nothing when DAs break the law. Much more to come...
This work--to shed light on how officials in the punishment bureaucracy, from police to prison guards to prosecutors to probation officers to judges, evade accountability at every level--is more and more vital in times of rising authoritarianism.
The work that @CivRightsCorps and a number of amazing law professors across the U.S. are doing to enforce basic norms of accountability and transparency is more vital than ever. You can read more at accountabilityny.org
THREAD. One of the things I explore in my new study of the propaganda surrounding police body cameras in the U.S. media and by Democratic politicians are its similarities to both international development propaganda and colonial counterinsurgency strategy.
As James Ferguson has shown in one of the seminal studies of the issue, decades of discourse about “reforming” the bureaucracy of international development follows a similar pattern.
Observers acknowledge the continuous failures of international government and non-profit aid to end poverty, make the world meaningfully more equal, or prevent ecological catastrophe.