Thursday, April 20, 2023

Suffering inflicted on Migrants long before Advent of Border Predators

More than a Century of Foreign Intervention

Earlier this year a writer published with the New York Post seemed to express “migrant” shock. Americans express “shock” a lot—often over crises they have caused, contributed to, or created.

Americans seem to like that word so much so that when the sadists in and around Washington attacked Iraq under demonically false charges in 2003—they like demonizing too—they named their murderous spree “Shock and Awe.”

When Americans led by government officials and loud media are not feigning “thoughts” and “prayers” and thanking unwilling sheep for sacrificing themselves to slaughter or mental maiming, they are feigning shock.
  • · Shock for rabid violence.
  • · Shock for rabid corruption in and around government.
  • · Shock for homelessness and poverty and inferior education and rabid drug taking

    And, yes, as this New York Post author is shocked that people forced from their homelands by actions taken by USA entities are further injured on entry or when trying to enter the USA.
In commemoration of “Human Trafficking Awareness”— the Americans together with the UN like designating “days” for this and that (like mouthing vacuous thoughts and prayers) but not cooperating with each other and with nations in solving problems—the writer reports that:

Migrants are “deposited on the streets of (U.S.) cities and in towns of border states.” Some are “transported to destinations around the country where they are often isolated and vulnerable to exploitation and trafficking.”

Migrants are often picked up by traffickers promising jobs but who “lure them into indentured servitude, peonage, sex trafficking, extortion.” Traffickers will “demand” that migrants “pay off their debts by working for smugglers.” New York Post January 1, 2023 by Jessica M. Vaughan “Biden’s border policies facilitate shocking modern slavery,” https://nypost.com/2023/01/10/bidens-border-policies-facilitate-shocking-modern-slavery/

Americans also have deliberately short memories. They present a character of calculated ignorance. They love casting blame. All of these the writer demonstrates.

But the story is much bigger and deeper—far more horrendous—then the writer pretends. There is always a prior, a previous happening.

In this case, the prior is a decade’s long unquestioned (unchecked and unchastened) phenomenon: United States officials and their partners and paymasters’ interfering with violent aggression in other nations all across Asia, the Americas, Europe, and Africa.

Below is reflected part of the phenomena of injury inflicted on people long before they become migrants; and land on the borders of people who take pride in inflicting further injury on migrants and on the homelands of people forced by foreign aggression and interference to leave their homelands.

USA Foreign Invasions, Interventions
Involvement in Regime Changes

Pre-Cold War 1800s-early 1900s
Cold War 1947-1991

Pre-Cold War 

  • Mexican–American War (1846-1848)
  • Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom-coup d’état against Queen Liliʻuokalani (1893)
  • United States Invasions in Latin America: “Banana Wars” (1898-1934)
  • United States Occupations (Provisional Government) of Cuba:
  • First Occupation 1898 / Second Occupation (1906-1909)
  • United States Military Government in Cuba (1906-1909)
  • United States involvement in the Mexican Revolution/Mexican Border War (1910-1919/20)
  • United States occupation of Nicaragua (1912-1933)
  • United States occupation of Veracruz (1914 April - November Veracruz, Mexico
  • United States occupation of Haiti (1915-1934)
  • United States occupation of the Dominican Republic (1916–1924)

Cold War era (1947-1991)

Italy (1948–1960s)

Coup d’état Syria (1949)

Albania (1949–1953)

Coup d’état Iran (1953)

Coup d’état Guatemala (1954)

Syria (1956–1957)

Indonesia (1957–1958)

Assassination attempts on Fidel Castro (1959–2000)

Cambodia, Bangkok Plot to topple Prince Norodom Sihanouk (1959)

Coup d’état Congo (1960)

Bay of Pigs Invasion/Cuba (1961)

Operation Mongoose/Cuba (1961)

Dominican Republic (1961)

Coup d’état South Vietnam (1963)

Coup d’état Brazil (1964)

Dominican Civil War (1965)

Indonesia (1965–1966)

Coup d’état Brazil Ghana (1966)

Coup d’état Bolivia (1971)

Coup d’état Chile (1973)

Chile (1970–1973)

Angolan Civil War (Cold War era Communist v anti-Communists 1975–1992; 1st and 2nd Congo War1996-2002)

Coup d’état Argentina (1976)

Coup d’état El Salvador (1979)

“Operation Cyclone” Afghanistan (1979–1989)

Nicaragua, Contras (1981–1990)

Somalia 1981/1988/1991- present

Chad (1982)

United States invasion of Grenada (1983)

United States invasion of Panama (1989-1990)


 Post Cold War 1991-Present 

1991-2013-2014-present [In a December 2013 speech before the “US–Ukraine Foundation,” a U.S. State Dept employee revealed that “the US had spent about $5 billion on democracy-building programs (read: programs of internal meddling, indoctrination, destabilization) in Ukraine since 1991” (emphasis added)

1991 Iraq

2003–2021: Iraq

1991 Haiti

2004: Haiti (coup d’ état)

1992-1996 Iraq

2005: Kyrgyzstan

1994–1995: Haiti

2006–2007: Palestinian Territories

1996 Coup d’état attempt: Iraq

2005–2009: Syria

1996–1997: Zaire

2011: Libya

1999: Bombing of Yugoslavia

2012–2017: Syria

2000: FR Yugoslavia

 

2001–2021: Afghanistan

2015-present: United States Army SF/ Navy supported KSA in Yemen/Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy conflict

 

  Reference and news sources


United States officials and lawmakers have involved this nation in foreign interventions

throughout the history of the United States of America.


Some “400 military interventions between 1776 and 2019” have been documented. Half of these occurred since 1950. More than a quarter of them occurred during the post-Cold War era.

A variety of objectives were asserted by someone. Al involved force, aggression, harm. Interventions have been reported to have “revolved around economy, territory, social protection, regime change, protection of US citizens and diplomats, policy change, empire, and regime building.

All have involved force, aggression, harm. All involved waste, want, fraud, and abuse. All caused migration, displacement, disease, starvation, illness, injury to mind and body. 

In one way or another, all have caused loss, ruin, or death.

But distracted Americans are not listening. 

These Americans seem to prefer ignorance. And government officials and media (traditional and nontraditional) are more than willing to serve up round-the- clock distraction, propaganda and pageantry, ignorance, blame casting, and utter nonsense.





Composition and Commentary excluding quoted material and individual images
Copyright © Carolyn LaDelle Bennett
Author’s links: www.BennettsAmericanEpitaph.com
https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett
https://insightbeyondtodaysnews.blogspot.com/
https://www.xlibris.com/en/search?query=Carolyn+LaDelle+Bennett
https://www.xlibris.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/828689-epitaph

Tuesday, April 18, 2023

Radio Broadcast in Rochester Metro Reflects Nationwide Ruin of Theater of the Mind

Concentration Kills

I’m a long-time listener to good (well-prepared, well-presented) radio. 

I’m a person who appreciates excellence in broadcasting: good voice, good delivery, and good content—regardless of slant, subject matter or genre (news, analysis, humor, etc). Good “theater of the mind” should offer knowledge, useful learning—without preaching, proselytizing, or demonizing. I like learning and having my own knowledge challenged, broadened, expanded. I like respectfulness. Good radio respects its audience.

I abhor trash, vulgarity, carelessness; and unprepared, unstudied, intellectually inferior content. I abhor delivery in poor voice quality, unsuitable timbre, and delivery in nonstandard English language. I abhor rank amateurs (unprofessional broadcasters or podcasters), ignorant personalities and entities, parrots and rip and readers who spread trash and ignorance and pander to the basest and most ignorant element in society.

Unfortunately, that last bit reflects the caliber of iHeart and other concentrated media owners, employers and operators whose personalities and programming broadcast on radio in Metropolitan Rochester, New York.

Takeover and Vulgarization

Orchestrated Decline of Radio Broadcasting

United States Federal and Private Entities conspired in removing Rules and Regulations and proper Standards in Broadcasting and have thus Stymied all Possibility of true Excellence in Broadcasting

1987: Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Fairness Doctrine of 1949 (requiring that audiences be exposed to a variety of viewpoints) was repealed.
Before destruction of the Fairness Doctrine, broadcast license holders were required to present “controversial issues of public importance;” and to do so in a manner determined by FCC rules to be “honest, equitable and balanced.” (And clean!)
1990s: FCC relaxes regulations on ownership of multiple radio stations.
Entertainment Communications (aka Entercom) in 1999 purchases 43 radio stations from Sinclair Broadcasting and becomes the fifth-largest radio broadcaster in the United States its ownership totaling “88 stations in 17 markets.”
Without broadcasting standards, shock jocks begin to rise and pander to pop and commerce and the basest of society: tough-guy aggression, vulgarity-driven, and culturally divisive.
2008-launched: iHeartMedia owned iHeartRadio (aka "iHeart"), a “freemium broadcast, podcast and radio streaming platform”

2010-launched: Audacy (orig CBS Radio acquired by prev. Entercom 1968–2021, aka Radio.com) owned by Audacy Inc (launched 2010) ownership exceeding 235 local radio stations in the United States

2011: FCC rips the rules from the Federal Register and the decline accelerates with on-air personalities and their promoters’ pledging their allegiance to the recklessness that “anything goes.” 

2015: Conglomerate Clear Channel Communications becomes conglomerate “iHeartMedia”

2017: Entercom merges with CBS Radio.

2018: CBS Radio’s corporate successor Entercom (turned Audacy, Inc.) enters shock jock genre

2019: iHeartRadio national umbrella brand for iHeartMedia’s radio network claims “128 million registered users” in the United States

Concentration corresponds with Decline in Quality Broadcasting

2011: 90 percent of United States media controlled by six companies

In the six is Murdoch’s News Corporation that split (June 28, 2013) into two separate companies: in News Corp publishing assets and Australian media assets; in 21st Century Fox broadcasting and media assets. 

iHeartMedia (formerly Lester Lowry Mays’ Clear Channel Communications) claims ownership of more than 1,200 stations.


BROADCASTER                                                                                NETWORKS

iHeartMedia       

 

  • Premiere Networks
  • The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
  • Fox News Radio
  • Fox Sports Radio
  • TheBlaze
  • TTWN Media Networks
  • NBC News Radio
  • Black Information Network

 

 

Cumulus Media        

 

  • Nash FM
  • Westwood One
  • Dial Global Local
  • NBC Sports Radio
  • Westwood One News

 



Audacy, Inc.

  • CBS Sports Radio
  • Sabres Hockey Network
  • New York Yankees Radio

 


Reference Sources: Encyclopedia last updated February 2023
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_in_the_United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_radio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audacy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IHeartRadio
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_ownership
https://sports.yahoo.com/shaq-on-the-draymond-green-stomp-i-would-have-done-the-same-thing-155655039.html


All the “freedom” Talk among Americans (Particularly freedom of speech talk) is no more than talk. 

Empty words.


To understand what these talkers mean by “freedom,” one has to look to their actions.  


When Americans mouth (recite, mantra, parrot) “freedom,” they are focusing on themselves, their individual (self-centered) words, ideas, thoughts; that which is “possessed” or is believed to be possessed by them—in whatever situation they find themselves. 

Their actions reveal their true beliefs.

Americans embrace an individual, selfish, notion of “freedom.” The notion of freedom that they subscribe to is a freedom intended exclusively for them and theirs. 

In their minds, the notion of freedom extends only to them; and, contrary to any intelligent reading of the Bill of Rights under the U.S. Constitution (or any universal declaration of human rights), freedom of speech is not the inalienable right of all human beings, a societal right under law. They do not differentiate license and rights. (One can buy a license but should not be able to buy a human or   constitutional right.) 

These Americans do not understand the principle of societal responsibility; or that, by definition and design, a narrow-mindedly drawn or applied freedom of speech robs others of utterance, platform, freedom of expression.
Speech should not be the possession of concentrated wealth or of the loudest speaker.
Freedom of speech should not be a commodity subject to bulldozing by billionaires.
Freedom of speech should not be subject to commercialization or the buying and selling by entities or individuals capable of or interested buying and selling or cornering the market (denying utterance to others).
At the same time, speech should be disciplined. It should be subject to and bound by proper principles and standards, rules and regulations. 

Freedom should not presume, infer or permit anarchy or violence of language or action. The right of free speech should not be the private possession or domain of concentrated wealth or commerce nor of merger, force or belligerence.



Composition and Commentary excluding quoted material and individual images
Copyright © Carolyn LaDelle Bennett
Author’s links: www.BennettsAmericanEpitaph.com
https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett
https://insightbeyondtodaysnews.blogspot.com/
https://www.xlibris.com/en/search?query=Carolyn+LaDelle+Bennett
https://www.xlibris.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/828689-epitaph

Monday, April 10, 2023

Americans Slaughtering their own Mirror their leaders’ Indelible Marks of Slaughter Abroad

(Brand USA)

  • Bush2 ordered unspeakable obliteration citing nonexistent WMDs. 
  • Obama kept a hit list and ordered foreign executions. 
  • Trump ridiculed peoples and nations; withdrew from peace treaties and ordered assassinations.
  • All of these men and partners threw up barricades, sanctioned, stole, starved, and terrorized by act, order, lawmaking or acquiescence.

U.S. Aggression, Death Toll Abroad 2022 update


United States leadership is directly or indirectly (by order, legislation, act or acquiescence) conducting aggression under the pretext of “fighting ‘terrorism’ in 76 countries.” 

The deadliest of these sadistic acts have reportedly occurred against the nations, peoples, institutions and cultures of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Business Insider Daniel Brown and Azmi Haroun, August 26, 2022, “The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have killed at least 500,000 people, according to a report that breaks down the toll,” https://www.businessinsider.com/how-many-people-have-been-killed-in-iraq-and-afghanistan


Killing Fields Update 2021

“At least 929,000 people have been killed by direct war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan.”

Since 2001, “more than 387,000 civilians have been killed in the fighting.”
United States hysteria and reckless actions following the event occurring on September 11, 2001, in New York City and Northern Virginia have forced “at least 38 million” people from their dwellings and homelands of “Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya, and Syria.” Except World War II, the displacement total “exceeds the total of people displaced by every war since 1900.”

Creating terrorist and terrorism: Countries against which the U.S. has committed aggression, destabilization and occupation have turned into laboratories “in which militant groups… hone techniques of violence and recruitment” spread across the South, Central and West Asia, and beyond. 
Source: https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/figures/2019/direct-war-death-toll-2001-801000



Mirrored: Monkey see Monkey do
Sadism in the Homeland

Firearm Deaths, Injuries                                                

Year 2023 to date   

APRIL 12 UPDATE

 

Firearm Deaths, Injuries


•           Gun Violence Deaths (all causes) total: 11,777

•           Gun Violence Injuries total: 9,042

•           Mass Shootings: 147

Deaths, Injuries of Young people

•           73 dead children

•           411 dead teens (ages 12-17)

•           165 injured children

•           989 injured teens

                                                 
Gun Archive’s latest report April 10, 2023
  • Gun Violence Deaths (all causes) total: 11,525
  • Gun Violence Injuries total: 8,820
  • Mass Shootings: 146
Deaths, Injuries of Young people
  • 71 dead children
  • 398 dead teens (ages 12-17)
  • 157 injured children
  • 973 injured teens

Mass Shootings Ending MARCH, Early April

KILLED – INJURED

MARCH 25- 29, 2023                                                            APRIL 1 – 10, 2023

March 25

Hempstead, New York: 0 - 4 

Shreveport, Louisiana: 1-5

Macomb, Illinois: 1-10           

 

March 26
Minden, Louisiana: 0 - 4        

Little Rock, Arkansas: 2 - 5

Minneapolis, Minnesota: 0- 6 

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 2 - 2

 

March 27

Milwaukee, Wisconsin: 0 – 5

Nashville, Tennessee:  7 -0

 

March 29

Memphis, Tennessee:  2 – 5

            April 1

Baltimore, Maryland   3 – 1

 

April 2

Fayetteville, North Carolina:  1 - 4

Moreno Valley, California:     0 - 4

Washington, D. C.: 0 - 4

 

April 3

Pueblo, Colorado: 1 – 3

Atlanta, Georgia: 1 – 3

Tennessee, Jackson: 0 - 4

 

April 4

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 1 – 4

 

April 5

Virginia Beach, Virginia: 0 - 4           

April 6

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: 0 - 4

 

April 7

New Orleans, Louisiana: 0 – 4

Isle of Palms, South Carolina: 0 – 5

           

April 8

Houston, Texas: 0 – 4

 

April 9

Orlando, Florida: 3 – 2

 

April 10

Louisville, Kentucky:  5 - 4

 

April 11 

 District of Columbia: 1-3

https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting


Wikipedia reported “List of mass shootings in the United States in 2023” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2023

APRIL 1-11 EXCERPT

1st
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
3 killed, 3 injured at shootout
Los Angeles, California
1 killed, 3 injured in retail parking lot
Baltimore, Maryland
3 killed, 1 injured

2nd
Fayetteville, North Carolina
1 killed, 4 injured at shopping center bar
Washington, District of Columbia
4 injured
Moreno Valley, California
4 injured

3rd
Jacksonville, Tennessee
5 injured discovered in automobile
Atlanta, Georgia
1 killed, 3 injured apartment complex
Pueblo, Colorado
1 killed, 3 injured

4th
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1killed, 4 injured in a neighborhood

5th
Virginia Beach, Virginia
4 injured
Kansas City, Kansas
6 injured at scene of drug investigation

6th
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
4 injured in a neighborhood

7th
Isle of Palms, South Carolina
6 injured on beach
New Orleans, Louisiana
4 injured on Interstate 10
Park Forest, Illinois
1 killed, 3 injured at family gathering

8th
Harris County, Texas
4 injured in parking lot of apartment complex

9th
Orlando, Florida
3 killed, 2 injured at Easter egg hunt in park.

10th
Louisville, Kentucky
5 killed, 8 injured at Downtown bank (shooter recently terminated employee)

11th
Washington DC
1 killed, 3 injured at a funeral home


Americans’ Record Killing their Young hits Headlines.

“Gun deaths of U.S. kids up 50 percent in grim new record,” Xinhua (sourcing Canadian TN and Pew Research), April 11, 2023, Global News, Editor, https://english.news.cn/northamerica/20230411/3cc7f8cbde7d4be9aee11aff355ac3d0/c.html

Reported in 2021 were an estimated “2,590 gun deaths of children and teenagers under the age of 18.”
Statista Research Department October 19, 2022, report on Assaults in the USA - Year 2021
  • “1.4 million Assaults … (using) personal weapons (e.g., hands, fists, feet)”
  • “69,423 Aggravated Assaults (using) handguns

“Percentage of violent crimes reported to the police”

  • Overall “45.6 percent”
  • Aggravated assault reported: 60.5 percent
  • Rape and sexual assault reported: 21.5 percent
https://www.statista.com/statistics/251919/number-of-assaults-in-the-us-by-weapon/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/251934/usa--percentage-of-violent-crimes-reported-to-the-police/


World Population Review “Stabbing Deaths by Country 2023”
North America (excerpt)
  • “Knife-related homicides accounted for less than 20 percent
  • “Firearm deaths were responsible for roughly 76 percent of all homicides
[Stabbing data indicate percentage of homicides committed using knives and sharp objects but are not indicative of the homicide rate or the total number of homicides in a given country] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/stabbing-deaths-by-country

American Leaders’ Lessons to America’s Young

The masters’ message (mirrored among the masses) is this. When something goes other than “your” way, turn on the tantrum of the child— but this tantrum must be (and is) far… far worse than any tantrum of any child. 

Commit a most heinous act (or a series of them). Kill or maim. Destroy some person, place, or thing. Destroy anything and everything. And, as you are operating in the image of and on orders from a god almighty blame-casting Exceptionalism (conjured up in your own warped mind)—expect to get away with Murder. Expect to get off scot-free—unchecked and unchastised no matter what act or how horrific the act you have committed.

There’s something seriously wrong in a homeland where homegrown powers cavalierly and boastfully slaughter over here and over there. And, on top of that, when they carry on a local-to-global business of creating killers and other destroyers.



Composition and Commentary excluding quoted material and individual images
Copyright © Carolyn LaDelle Bennett
Author’s links: www.BennettsAmericanEpitaph.com
https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett
https://insightbeyondtodaysnews.blogspot.com/
https://www.xlibris.com/en/search?query=Carolyn+LaDelle+Bennett
https://www.xlibris.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/828689-epitaph

Wednesday, April 5, 2023

Private Ownership of Public Airwaves owns Public Space and Expression, Human Thought and Possibility

Koch’ed or Soros’ed Six of one half dozen of the other

NPR unconcerned about censor until Censor censored NPR

I have long dropped the privately owned “National Public Radio” from my news listening schedule. When I want to hear the views of politicians or private investors, I research the direct words of the horses.

The problem of clean and clear, accurate and well-sourced news programming does not begin or end in with hypocrisy or the labeling of this or that media source as “State-affiliated” or “State- sponsored.” The rot is infested in the all-round cycling in and out of public and private entities each paying off and kicking back, funneling or redistributing, exchanging and laundering dollars (or something else) for domain, private wealth for public policy and public space. Money plays, calls the shots: all is reduced to a price set by the highest bidder. To those who set the terms, anything is saleable or purchasable—and nothing is sacred.

The labeling (State-affiliated) that Americans and their kissing cousins have clamped onto Russian and Chinese media to effectively marginalize and censor news coverage and content that extends beyond the echo-chamber of the Washington Beltway—has attached, perhaps legitimately, to America’s National Public Radio (NPR). And NPR is squirming.

A high-tech billionaire media magnate has reportedly defined his (or somebody's) designated “State-affiliated media” as outlets where “the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.” This sounds somewhat like NPR, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go far enough.

Far more Insidious than the State affiliation Veneer


First, the nebulous term “state” does not point specifically to people such as powerful politicians and politicians on the payroll of concentrated interests, and the names of the big shots on whose payroll are both media (again people) and public officeholders (people). No state, government, or entity is without human beings (big wigs, principals, underlings, et.al., all human beings).

Second, Washington, D.C.-headquartered NPR like much of the U.S. media (including airport noises such as CNN and the FOXes) are pretty awful and not worth listening to—except for purposes of contrast and to sort out truth from fiction, propaganda from actual facts on the ground.

Third, the cycle of concentrated ownership has corrupted and virtually destroyed the public airwaves—public space, the marketplace of ideas, even the possibility of independent thought. What is left is a state of erosion (rot) that runs from private, “nonprofit” and “nongovernmental” industries through government offices; and back again. It is a made-in-the-USA crisis, by insidious design, in corruption and error and ignorance.

Public Media, Public Office
Bought by Private Interest Koch-Soros Billionaires


A few Examples
  • Koch Family member David Koch “donates upwards of $23 million to (USA) ‘public television.’”
  • George Soros’ Open Society Institute “donates $1.8 million” to NPR-affiliated programming; “Soros’ foundation announces donation of “$1 million” to public broadcasting project “Media Matters.”
  • 2022 Koch Industries donates “$1.5 million” to the Koch brand of congressional entities and affiliates.
  • 2022 Soros donates “$128.5 million to his outside group ‘Democracy PAC’” which then funnels millions to super PACs supporting the Soros brand of candidates.
  • 2022 midterm election cycle saw spending increase by nearly $2 billion compared to 2018 figures: “10 wealthy individuals poured $540 million combined into the 2022 elections (source OpenSecrets).
  • 2022 An anonymous donor gives “$56 million” to Minnesota Public Radio.
 

When Public Service (Public Servants) was believed to hold Public Trust


In the 2000s, according to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) bookkeeping, the level of “Federal funding” in 2009 for USA Public Broadcasting— “of all public radio broadcasting stations” (via the CPB)—was “11.3 percent.” Three years later, Federal funding dropped to 10 percent.

In the latter half of the twentieth century (70s, early 80s), National Public Radio's majority funding came from the United States Government.


Connivance in Madness or Mad Connivance 


In their folly, the malleable and corruptible (perhaps like the delusional gambler’s impossible dream to beat the house) join with the obscenely wealthy in marshaling and maintaining a state of ignorance among the masses.

The clampdown or containment of knowledge; the restricted pursuit of knowledge is America’s downfall: its harmfulness and fearfulness, its backwardness.



Sources and notes

OpenSecrets July 25, 2022 “Supreme Court curbs EPA regulatory power after Koch-tied groups’ push,” by Jorja Siemons, https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2022/07/supreme-court-curbs-epa-regulatory-power-after-koch-tied-groups-push/
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/koch-industries/recipients?id=d000000186
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/soros-fund-management/recipients?id=D000000306

https://www.npr.org/sections/ombudsman/2011/05/24/136216017/worthy-cause-controversial-funding-source

Star Tribune June 8, 2022, “MPR (Minnesota Public Radio) receives $56 million from anonymous donor,” by Neal Justin and Kelly Smith Star Tribune https://www.startribune.com/mpr-receives-56-million-from-anonymous-donor/600180310/

Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) November 29, 2021, “Koch Spent Nearly $150 Million in 2020 to Extend His Influence and Promote His Agenda, by David Armiak, https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2021/11/29/koch-spent-nearly-150-million-2020/

Truthout May 22, 2013 “The Corporate Dictatorship of PBS and NPR: Thanks to the giant transnational corporations that own them, mainstream media outlets tailor their programming to appease their corporate backers” by The Daily Take Team https://truthout.org/articles/the-corporate-dictatorship-of-pbs-and-npr/

Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) November 29, 2021, “Koch Spent Nearly $150 Million in 2020 to Extend His Influence and Promote His Agenda, by David Armiak, https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2021/11/29/koch-spent-nearly-150-million-2020/

The Hill May 11, 2022 “Here are the 10 biggest donors in the midterm elections,” by Karl Evers-Hillstrom, https://thehill.com/lobbying/3720141-here-are-the-biggest-donors-in-the-midterm-elections/

PEG

RT world news April 5, 2023, “US public broadcaster gets ‘state’ tag on Twitter: NPR has reached out to have the ‘state-affiliated media’ label removed from its account,” https://www.rt.com/news/574251-npr-labeled-state-twitter-musk/



Composition and Commentary excluding quoted material and individual images
Copyright © Carolyn LaDelle Bennett
Author’s links: www.BennettsAmericanEpitaph.com
https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett
https://insightbeyondtodaysnews.blogspot.com/
https://www.xlibris.com/en/search?query=Carolyn+LaDelle+Bennett
https://www.xlibris.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/828689-epitaph

Saturday, April 1, 2023

Like a Drunkard Stumbling from crisis to crisis

Never seeing clearly or Taking Responsibility, Never Correcting course, Clearing Wreckage

A Broken, Unprepared Homeland


USA Aircraft Crashing, Falling


2022

January 24: Pilot and six sailors are injured and runway damaged when USN F-35C crashes in South China Sea after a hard landing on USS Carl Vinson.

March 18: Four-member Flight crew dies when U.S. Marine Corps MV-22B participating in military exercise crashes in Norway (Gråtådalen valley, Beiarn municipality, Nordland county)

March 23: Pilot is rescued in Central Louisiana after ejecting from a crashing Air Force F-16 assigned to the 138th Fighter Wing of the Oklahoma Air National Guard. An Air Force F-16 assigned to the 138th Fighter Wing of the Oklahoma Air National Guard crashed today in Beauregard Parish after departing from Texas for a routine training mission, according to the Oklahoma National Guard March 23, 2022, Nexstar Media Inc https://www.klfy.com/louisiana/military-retrieves-pilot-after-f-16-fighter-jet-crashes-near-deridder/

June 8: Five Marines die when Osprey aircraft crashes near Coachella Canal Road and Highway 78 on the southeast border of the United States adding to “at least 46 deaths since the military began testing the MV-22B Osprey aircraft”: 2000 (April 8) 19 Marines die during an Osprey crash in a training exercise at Marana Northwest Regional Airport in Arizona; 2014 in Arabian Sea Marine Corps crew chief dies during takeoff of Osprey aircraft https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-06-09/all-5-marines-on-aircraft-that-crashed-in-imperial-county-were-killed-officials-

November 12: Six people die in Dallas, Texas when a Boeing B-17 “Flying Fortress” and “Bell P-63 Kingcobra” collide in mid-air and crash.

2023

February 15: Two crew members die when a Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter (belonging to the Tennessee Military Department) crashes on Highway 53 near Harvest, Alabama.

March 24: Two operators of a helicopter die in Southern California. Authorities quoted in news reports failed to disclose what kind of aircraft, what the operators were doing and why. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-24/2-killed-in-rural-riverside-county-helicopter-crash
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/sheriff-2-dead-in-southern-california-helicopter-crash/ar-AA1932ac

March 29: Nine people die when two U.S. Army Sikorsky HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopters collide in mid-air over Trigg County, Kentucky. https://www.albawaba.com/news/military-helicopters-collide-kentucky-1513750


USA Personnel Sick on the job


A counterintelligence and special agent of the “Pentagon Force Protection Agency” attached to the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Tuesday March 14, 2023, was found dead in a vehicle parked in a lot located north of the Pentagon across Virginia Highway 110 in the proximity to the Potomac River.

Members of the Joint Staff are comprised of all six branches of the military and serve under the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the office of the secretary of defense (currently Lloyd James Austin) and the military’s combatant commands.
The deceased was identified as Master Sgt. Juan Paulo Ferrer Bordador (age 42, Philippines-born), a husband and father of five who, in 2010, had been stationed in Iraq. The U.S. Department Defense’s “standard practice is to wait until 24 hours after next of kin are notified before a dead service member is publicly identified.”
Stars and Stripes by Doug G. Ware March 15, 2023 “Military service member found dead in Pentagon parking lot,” https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2023-03-15/servicemember-dead-pentagon-parking-lot-9502789.html

Military Times by Meghann Myers March 30, 2023, “Remembering Master Sgt. Juan Paulo “JP” Bordador,” https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2023/03/30/soldier-found-dead-in-pentagon-parking-lot-was-joint-staff-nco/

Stars and Stripes by Doug G. Ware March 29, 2023 “Soldier found dead in Pentagon parking lot was intel specialist for Joint Staff, Army says,” https://www.stripes.com/branches/army/2023-03-29/pentagon-dead-soldier-parking-lot-9644467.html

Stars and Stripes sourcing Associated Press March 31, 2023 
“US Navy deploys more chaplains for suicide prevention” by Giovanna Dell’Orto: “One recently embraced prevention strategy is to deploy chaplains—(preachers instead of talk therapy psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists)—as regular members of the crew on more ships. The goal is for the clergy to connect with sailors, believers and non-believers alike, in complete confidentiality—something that has allowed several to talk sailors out of suicidal crises.” https://www.stripes.com/branches/navy/2023-03-31/navy-chaplains-suicide-prevention-9659368.html

USA “Thoughts and Prayers” 
“Thanks for Your Service” 
Unending War making
Cavalier callousness, Carelessness:
Chronic Sickness and, in every sense of the word, Unpreparedness


USA Rail Crashing, Spilling Poisons
Rail disasters 2023


January 28

Union Pacific train derailment in Keachi, Louisiana, spills more than 10,000 US gallons (38,000 L) of acid products. Total derailment 16 cars of which two leaked chemicals. Spill volume reported by “officials”:10,000 U.S. gallons of acetic anhydride; less than 1,000 U.S. gallons (3800 L) of propionic acid. Part of town evacuated.

February 1

Train derailment on bridge in Detroit, Michigan, causes train cars to hang over street below

February 3

Norfolk Southern freight train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, spills toxic chemicals (primarily vinyl chloride and butyl acrylate). Area evacuated. Ohio National Guard activated.

February 13

Train crashes into crossing 18-wheeler causing train derailment in Splendora, Texas. 18-wheeler truck drives dies. Diesel fuel spills. No reported train spills.

March 4

Norfolk Southern train (28 of 212-car) derailment at a State Route 41 crossing near Springfield, Ohio, downing power lines and causing 1,500 residents to lose power.

March 8

CSX coal train (4 engines, 22-car) derailment after colliding with a rockslide near Sandstone, West Virginia; one engine falls into the New River. An “unknown amount” or diesel fuel spills. Three train employees (crew members) sustain injuries. Other rail service between Huntington and Washington, D.C., was canceled.

March 17

BNSF Railway two-engine derailment in Anacortes, Washington, spills more than 3,000 U.S. gallons (11,360 L) of diesel fuel. Contaminated soil facing clean-up crews: 2,100 cubic yards (1600 m³); contaminated groundwater: 4,300 U.S. gallons (16,280 L). Full contamination and total cleanup are unclear.

March 27

Canadian Pacific train (31 or 70-car) derailment spills undisclosed amount of ethylene glycol and propylene chemicals near Wyndmere, North Dakota. Several roads area roads were shut down.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rail_accidents_(2020%E2%80%93present)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_railroad_accidents
Global News The Associated Press staff “Canadian Pacific train derails in rural North Dakota, spilling hazardous chemicals,” March 27, 2023https://globalnews.ca/news/9583101/cp-train-derailment-north-dakota-chemicals/

Concentration of Private Power
Deregulation by Public Officials
Bent on Pandering for Private $'s

BNSF Railway HQ Fort Worth, Texas; subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway (chairman and CEO Warren Buffett, HQ Omaha, Nebraska); three transcontinental routes providing rail connections between the western and eastern United States

Norfolk Southern Railway HQ Atlanta, Georgia (leading subsidiary of the Norfolk Southern Corporation) with chief competitor CSX Transportation command “duopoly” on “transcontinental freight rail lines in the eastern United States.”

CSX Transportation subsidiary of CSX Corporation HQ Jacksonville, Florida, a freight railroad Class I company operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec; in a joint purchase in 1999 with competitor Norfolk Southern Railway, CSX “acquired approximately half of Conrail.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BNSF_Railway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfolk_Southern_Railway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkshire_Hathaway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSX_Transportation

Canadian Pacific Railway (HQ Global Calgary, Alberta, HQ USA Minneapolis, Minnesota) owns approx. 20,100 kilometers (12,500 miles) of track in seven provinces of Canada and into the United States, stretching from Montreal to Vancouver and as far north as Edmonton; its rail service network in the United States including Minneapolis–St. Paul, Minnesota; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Detroit, Michigan; Chicago, Illinois; Albany, New York.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Pacific_Railway

All the Thoughts and Prayers 
Public Praying, Wringing of Hands 
All the Thanks for your Service 
Feigning concern… 

Will not Atone 
for 
Self-inflicted, Perpetual Crises
Unending Wars
Cavalier Callousness 




Composition and Commentary excluding quoted material and individual images
Copyright © Carolyn LaDelle Bennett
Author’s links: www.BennettsAmericanEpitaph.com
https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett
https://insightbeyondtodaysnews.blogspot.com/
https://www.xlibris.com/en/search?query=Carolyn+LaDelle+Bennett
https://www.xlibris.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/828689-epitaph

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