The problem with our Media in regards to ISIS

So I'm wading into the trenches again for the ISIS debate trying to bring rationality to such an irrational debate. This time I am going to highlight the main cause for the irrationality. The media. I know many aren't going to like what I'm about to say and think that THEY came to the conclusion to hate ISIS on their own, but that is wrong. The reason you fear ISIS is because of the media and the media alone. They call into question ISIS' violence, terrorism, and above all hate for the west. They ask for a comparable situation at home. Well I brought this topic up in my last thread on this issue, Are All Terrorists Muslims? It’s Not Even Close, so I started looking online for some statistics and comparisons to really drive this point home.

The biggest and still growing threat to America are the CARTELS. The cartels have destabilized Mexico and Central America through the infusion of black market money from drug purchases. All originating from the war on drugs. This has resulted in an escalation of force between our police forces and the cartels causing increasing militarization of the police and shady, freedom stripping laws designed to capture drug runners. It has rapidly caused a HUGE decay in the respect for authority. America has the world's HIGHEST incarceration rate, with most of the people locked up in there for non-violent offenses (namely drugs). And to top it all of, none of it is working. drug use is at an all time high. We aren't even winning the war.

So without further ado, I come to my article to show how our priorities are misplaced.
Mexican drug cartels are worse than ISIL

The horrific rampage of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has captured the world’s attention. Many Western commentators have characterized ISIL’s crimes as unique, no longer practiced anywhere else in the civilized world. They argue that the group’s barbarism is intrinsically Islamic, a product of the aggressive and archaic worldview that dominates the Muslim world. The ignorance of these claims is stunning.

While there are other organized groups whose depravity and threat to the United States far surpasses that of ISIL, none has engendered the same kind of collective indignation and hysteria. This raises a question: Are Americans primarily concerned with ISIL’s atrocities or with the fact that Muslims are committing these crimes?

For example, even as the U.S. media and policymakers radically inflate ISIL’s threat to the Middle East and United States, most Americans appear to be unaware of the scale of the atrocities committed by Mexican drug cartels and the threat they pose to the United States.

Here are some numbers to peruse to get you started:
11 Numbers To Help You Understand The Violence Rocking Mexico

A recent United Nations report estimated nearly 9,000 civilians have been killed and 17,386 wounded in Iraq in 2014, more than half since ISIL fighters seized large parts on northern Iraq in June. It is likely that the group is responsible another several thousand deaths in Syria. To be sure, these numbers are staggering. But in 2013 drug cartels murdered more than 16,000 people in Mexico alone, and another 60,000 from 2006 to 2012 — a rate of more than one killing every half hour for the last seven years. What is worse, these are estimates from the Mexican government, which is known to deflate the actual death toll by about 50 percent.

Wow, ISIS is pretty bad. They killed thousands of people. Wait, what's this? The cartels are responsible for some 60,000 deaths within 6 years and that number may be deflated? But hey, ISIS likes to behead people on television you say in response.

Statistics alone do not convey the depravity and threat of the cartels. They carry out hundreds of beheadings every year. In addition to decapitations, the cartels are known to dismember and otherwise mutilate the corpses of their victims — displaying piles of bodies prominently in towns to terrorize the public into compliance. They routinely target women and children to further intimidate communities. Like ISIL, the cartels use social media to post graphic images of their atrocious crimes.

Oh yeah, the cartels have got that in spades too. Now you are going to talk about the atrocities against non-believers and/or women.

The narcos also recruit child soldiers, molding boys as young as 11 into assassins or sending them on suicide missions during armed confrontations with Mexico’s army. They kidnap tens of thousands of children every year to use as drug mules or prostitutes or to simply kill and harvest their organs for sale on the black market. Those who dare to call for reforms often end up dead. In September, with the apparent assistance of local police, cartels kidnapped and massacred 43 students at a teaching college near the Mexican town of Iguala in response to student protests. A search in the area for the students has uncovered a number of mass graves containing mutilated bodies burned almost beyond recognition, but none of the remains have been confirmed to be of the students.

Ok, so next you'll bring up the dead journalists in the Middle East. Fair enough.

While the Islamic militants have killed a handful of journalists, the cartels murdered as many as 57 since 2006 for reporting on cartel crimes or exposing government complicity with the criminals. Many of Mexico’s media have been effectively silenced by intimidation or bribes. These censorship activities extend beyond professional media, with narcos tracking down and murdering ordinary citizens who criticize them on the Internet, leaving their naked and disemboweled corpses hanging in public squares. Yet American intellectuals such as Sam Harris appear to be more outraged when Muslims protest or issue threats in response to blasphemous or anti-Muslim hate speech than when cartels murder dozens of journalists and systematically co-opt an entire country’s media.

Ok, so much of that is in Mexico, which isn't our country though it is a LOT closer to us than the Middle East. Let's talk about threats at home.

The cartels’ atrocities are not restricted to the Mexican side of the border. From 2006 to 2010 as many as 5,700 Americans were killed in the U.S. by cartel-fueled drug violence. By contrast, 2,937 people were killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Over the last decade, some 2,349 Americans were killed in Afghanistan, and 4,487 Americans died in Iraq. In four years the cartels have managed to cause the deaths of more Americans than during 9/11 or either of those wars.

[cont]

Even Obama is being duped by the media manipulation game

Barack Obama’s administration claims ISIL poses a severe threat to U.S. interests and national security. However, the militants were primarily concerned with seizing and holding territory in Iraq and Syria until the U.S. began targeting them. Even now, while they have called for lone wolves to carry out attacks on targets in the United States, so far those arrested in connection to ISIL have been trying to go and fight abroad rather than plotting domestic attacks. To the extent ISIL wants to kill Americans, its primary tactic has been to try to lure U.S. troops to its turf by publicly executing citizens they already hold hostage. In fact, several U.S. intelligence officials have asserted that ISIL poses no credible threat to the United States homeland. However, the same cannot be said of the cartels.

Narcos have infiltrated at least 3,000 U.S. cities and are recruiting many Americans, including U.S. troops and law enforcement officers, to their organizations. They have an increasingly sophisticated and robust foundation in the U.S., with Mexican cartels now controlling more than 80 percent of the illicit drug trade in the United States and their top agents deployed to virtually every major metropolitan area. There are no realistic assessments indicating that ISIL could achieve a similar level of penetration in the United States.

This just speaks loads about how manipulated you all are by the media. Why aren’t we speaking out against these cartel groups? They are clearly WAY worse than ISIS could ever hope to be, and to top it off, they have a sound economics backing their reign of terror. All the profits from drugs fuels it. But I’m not done yet.

It is clear that the anti-ISIL campaign is not driven by the group’s relative threat to the United States or the scale or inhumane nature of their atrocities. If these were the primary considerations, the public would be far more terrified of and outraged by the narcos. Perhaps the U.S. would be mobilizing 50 nations to purge Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel rather than shielding it from prosecution, helping it polish off its rivals or even move drugs into the United States.

Some may argue that despite the asymmetries, the cartels are less of a threat than ISIL because ISIL is unified around an ideology, which is antithetical to the prevailing international order, while the cartels are concerned primarily with money. This is not true.

EVERY thing that is wrong with ISIS, the cartels are worse with. Where is the outrage for them? They are at our doorstep. THEY are crossing our borders, infiltrating our cities and governments. They are doing what everyone is fearing the Muslims are doing, and not only succeeding, but doing it right under our noses. Wake up. Stop listening to media fear propaganda and start doing your own thinking. There are worse things afoot than Muslims extremists.

A good deal of the cartels’ violence is perpetrated ritualistically as part of their religion, which is centered, quite literally, on the worship of death. The narcos build and support churches all across Mexico to perpetuate their eschatology. One of the cartels, the Knights Templar (whose name evokes religious warfare), even boasts about its leader’s death and resurrection. When cartel members are killed, they are buried inlavish mausoleums, regarded as martyrs and commemorated in popular songsglorifying their exploits in all their brutality. Many of their members view the “martyrs” as heroes who died resisting an international order that exploits Latin America and fighting the feckless governments that enable it. The cartels see their role ascompensating for state failures in governance. The narco gospel, which derives fromCatholicism, is swiftly making inroads in the United States and Central America. In short, the cartels’ ideological disposition is no less pronounced than ISIL’s, if not worse.

They’ve even got their own religious fundamentalism, and hey look it’s CHRISTIAN.

So the next time you get outraged over a Muslim attack, think to yourself, do I really care about these people? Or do I care because the media is telling me to care?

Isis are bastards and so are the Mexican cartels .
Thanks for the heads up, no pun intended.

Cartels bring in the money for black budgets and the corporate/prison complex. ISIS brings fear which allows for easy profits for the military/industrial complex.

I often ask why we promote ISIS violence in our media when that would be exactly what the terrorists want. To scare us so bad we change our ways. Why is the media helping ISIS achieve their goals?

I have done a lot of research into MSM recently and must say I couldn't agree more.

Anything broadcast by the big outlets is outright controlled propaganda.

There is no 'truth' put out by fox, cnn, msnbc, abc, cbs or abc, it is all agenda driven by the elite owners.

People really need to research this. But a lot get upset when you tell them their favorite version of lies is BS.

There is proof that the 'controlers' intentionally use networks like fox and msnbc to fuel hate against each other.

I hope your thread gets the attention it deserves. We are all being played.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

I think you raise some good points, but I'm not sure what exactly you are trying to do? Yes, ISIS is bad. Yes, the mexican cartels are probably even worse. What is it you would like to see done? How would you propose the U.S deal with mexican drug cartels that are so deeply entrenched with corrupt mexican government officials they are practically untouchable? Invade mexico?

Also, calling the Cartels Christians is freakin laughable. Most of them practice Santeria, which is a form of witchcraft that incorporates some Catholic imagery into it's practices, but is most certainly not Christianity.

originally posted by: DeadSeraph
a reply to: Krazysh0t

I think you raise some good points, but I'm not sure what exactly you are trying to do? Yes, ISIS is bad. Yes, the mexican cartels are probably even worse. What is it you would like to see done? How would you propose the U.S deal with mexican drug cartels that are so deeply entrenched with corrupt mexican government officials they are practically untouchable? Invade mexico?

I, personally, would like to end the war on drugs. Cut them off at the knees. If they don't have all the profits from drugs to rely on, they WILL get much weaker. Yes, I know that they will turn to other sources of income, but those sources aren't going to be NEARLY as lucrative as drugs are.

Though, what I was trying to show in the OP was the hypocritical nature of our reactions to this. We get all mad at these people halfway across the world, but there is a larger threat at home and no one wants to talk about them. Well, no one, in this case being the media, and naturally as an extension the people who listen to the media.

Also, calling the Cartels Christians is freakin laughable. Most of them practice Santeria, which is a form of witchcraft that incorporates some Catholic imagery into it's practices, but is most certainly not Christianity.

By that same token, I wouldn't call Muslim fundamentalists Muslims either. If they say they are Christian, then I let them be Christian. But, in any case, why does their religion matter? It is religious fundamentalism no matter WHAT you call it.

originally posted by: stosh64
I have done a lot of research into MSM recently and must say I couldn't agree more.

Anything broadcast by the big outlets is outright controlled propaganda.

There is no 'truth' put out by fox, cnn, msnbc, abc, cbs or abc, it is all agenda driven by the elite owners.

People really need to research this. But a lot get upset when you tell them their favorite version of lies is BS.

There is proof that the 'controlers' intentionally use networks like fox and msnbc to fuel hate against each other.

I hope your thread gets the attention it deserves. We are all being played.

ETA: I mentioned proof. If anyone is really interested look up council on foreign relations, CFR, and media members.

OOPS, hit quote instead of edit......

a reply to: Krazysh0t

Fantastic idea for a thread.

I know exactly what you're doing pal...
Spreading light & truth to the bigger threat to America...

Many are going to come in here and play the reversal card & I'll be here all the way to back you up.



ISIS is a threat... That's undeniable...
I hope people don't come in here claiming you're denying that, because that is a cop out.




I've been thinking about ISIS as a whole...

Do some of them behead innocent people... Yes.
Does every ISIS member know that these people are innocent... Hard to say.

Do some of them rape people... Yes.
Does every ISIS member know of this... Hard to say.

Do they intimidate people for a backward ideology... Yes.
Does every ISIS member know that it's just propaganda... Hard to say.

Do some ISIS members think they're fighting a righteous fight due to the slaughter of children and lack of initiative from fellow Muslims during the invasions...
I'd be hard pressed to say that none of them have bought into that message.

Do some ISIS members think theyre fighting the righteous fight due to the drone attacks that kill 28 civillians for every terrorist that's taken out...
Again, I'd be hard pressed to say that none of them have bought into that message.



The honest mistake of some of these ISIS members, is to think that the ISIS propaganda is the truth & righteous...

Freedom Fighters who want to do the right thing have been influenced and tricked into believing ISIS is the answer to the atrocities of others...
Not realising they align themselves with Psychos who are equally abhorent as those they wish to dish out the retribution to.

We have the luxury of hearing all sides to this story...
Others don't and that's a sad reality that the media also avoids to tell the West...


That is no way a defence of the atrocities that have occured under the Black Flag...
Just a perspective that many will not think about due to the media narrative...


As for the Cartels...
The same could probably be said for many of their affiliates & members too...


The media...
Is just as much of a threat to humanity as the Cartels & ISIS...

Just in a different sense, that they can influence the death of a group of people with a sound bite...

Like Politicians are just as dangerous as Soldiers...
They can influence the death of a group of people with the stroke of a pen...



Complex topic.
& the research you put into this Krazy, is great.



Hopefully people understand the perspective instead of going on the defensive.

S&F.

IMHO these are much more dangerous and relevant threats to us (in terms of North American and global security):

1). Political Corruption and corruption in security agencies
2). Cartels/Organized Crime (Mexican cartels, Russian mafia, Triads, Yakuza, etc.)
3). Street gangs/loosely organized crime (bloods, crips, latin kings, biker gangs, etc.)
4). Mass media and their relationship with political/security corruption
5). Financial scams on wall street, and in large religious organizations that are non profit
6). Pollution and the manipulation of earth's weather related to sucking out resources
7). Reliance on Middle Eastern oil
8). NATO/USA foreign policy
9). Taliban
10). Hezbolla
11). ISIS

a reply to: CharlieSpeirs

Oh, I'm sure the standard fare of people calling me an ISIS sympathizer will show up. They always do. I'm sure I'll also be yelled at for not recognizing how ISIS is poised to overrun the world in genocide and slaughter. I wonder how many will stop to consider that they are ignoring a much greater threat at home while worrying about the issue overseas? ISIS certainly is a threat, but if we want to play the numbers game, the cartels have them beat by a mile.

a reply to: Krazysh0t
I noticed this on an old thread:

Throughout the history of U.S. military actions, there have been one of two events preceding all use of the military:
1) A build-up of public opinion manipulation through media sources
-or-
2) A major anger-generating event

~Mister.Old.School, 9/2006/ATS

I added my own thoughts to this, but lost the post. I don't how, but I did. Anyway, this post is far more astute than anything I might have written.

But I agree, and sometimes I have to be kicked in the head to accept something. Lately CNN, with all their 24-7 Muslim Bashing, has given me that kick.

S&F

a reply to: ladyinwaiting

Just wait, in about a month or two, the media cycle will rollover and all this anti-Muslim rhetoric will die down in favor of some new terror. The people perpetuating this hysteria won't admit that they were complicit and got wrapped up in it. I know I won't receive any apologies for all the nasty things said to me for just being on the other side of the debate. I didn't get any apologies for the nasty things said about me during the Ebola scare either. Rationality in America is dying, and the media is leading the campaign against it.

a reply to: Krazysh0t

By that same token, I wouldn't call Muslim fundamentalists Muslims either. If they say they are Christian, then I let them be Christian. But, in any case, why does their religion matter? It is religious fundamentalism no matter WHAT you call it.

You aren't listening... Santeria is not Christianity. It's a completely different religion. Is voodoo Christianity because it incorporates Catholic iconography in some of it's rituals? No. It's not. Santeria is not a "fundamentalist" denomination of Christianity. It's not Christianity at all. Period.

a reply to: DeadSeraph

Again. Why does it matter? If this is important to you, make a thread about it. But it is really off-topic. Stop distracting from the issue at hand. Why aren't we all upset about the cartels' massive violence that eclipses ISIS'?

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: DeadSeraph

Again. Why does it matter? If this is important to you, make a thread about it. But it is really off-topic. Stop distracting from the issue at hand. Why aren't we all upset about the cartels' massive violence that eclipses ISIS'?

How is it off topic? You're the one who brought it up, and made the accusation that mexican cartels were Christians. You're wrong.

a reply to: DeadSeraph

Well I still view them as Christian regardless of what you think. In my eyes they are just as Christian fundamentalist as ISIS are Muslim fundamentalist in their teachings. The no true scotsman fallacy says that no one is wrong here, so I want you to move on if you aren't going to discuss the thread topic at hand and instead focus on this red herring.

originally posted by: Krazysh0t
a reply to: DeadSeraph

Well I still view them as Christian regardless of what you think. In my eyes they are just as Christian fundamentalist as ISIS are Muslim fundamentalist in their teachings. The no true scotsman fallacy says that no one is wrong here, so I want you to move on if you aren't going to discuss the thread topic at hand and instead focus on this red herring.

Gladly. You're not worth the energy if you can't admit when you are demonstrable error.

We should all know the media is totally being controlled by now. All they do is send disinformation and create fear in the society.

a reply to: Jacob64

Yes, so why do we agree with the media when they tell us what we want to hear? Shouldn't we try to actively seek out other outlets? Maybe QUESTION the message? When I hear something that I want to hear, I immediately question it. Things are never like they seem.