on page a3 of the gannett/the alexandria daily town talk, saturday, 30 july 2011, newspaper edition and on their website here, gannett/town talk editors reproduced -- in its entirety, what amounts to a press release written by sgt. rebekah malone from the louisiana national guard and presented it to its readers as legitimate news.
all a press release is regardless of who issues it is just a propaganda piece designed to present the press releasers side in the sexiest way possible.
for a legitimate news organization, or for what passes as a legitimate news organization these days, to just publish an entire press release word-for-word with no follow up questions a/k/a reporting is not news gathering, or news reporting or practicing journalism at all.
all they are doing is just spreading governmental propaganda and disinformation as news.
for example, one question that any reasonable citizen would have is "so how much did this 24 month massive covert operation cost?"
the operation was comprised of 200 agents including:
terrebonne sheriff's office narcotics task force
louisiana state police narcotics division
st mary parish narcotics division
drug enforcement agency - nola
probation and parole
houma police department
70 national guard troops + 2 uh-72 lakota helos with pilots and crew.
to get in a parish of well over 100,000 residents:
only-
25 search warrants
73 arrest warrants
698 grams of narcotics
22 weapons
$50,000 in cash
you ever notice how the police always love to use the metric system when they're talking about "illegal narcotics"? at first look a number like 698 seems pretty substantial.
however, when one takes the time to convert 698 grams into the our american system of weights and measures you learn that its actually about 1 1/2 pounds or just just 24.62 ounces.
this is an amount that's easily (and probably already has been) replaced in the length of time it takes to drive one carload of dope in from houston, miami, mena, arkansas or wherever.
then they say that "22 weapons" were confiscated. weapons is a misleading word because a weapon could be anything from a sling-shot, brass knuckles, black-jack, tree limb or a stone that a fleeing suspect tossed at his pursuers.
$50,000 [35,000 eur]. fifty thousand dollars? you gotta be kidding. that must be walking around money for what the state is attempting to sell to us as a major drug ring that warranted 200 agents and a twenty-four month covert investigation.
where's the beef? now we know what happened to all those feds who were looking for usama bin laden all those years -- they got transferred to louisiana.
a paltry 73 arrest warrants issued and more than likely the vast majority, if not all, of the arrestees will get a public defender, again paid for by the taxpayers.
is anyone stupid enough to actually believe that right now there is not any drugs available for sale in all of terrebonne parish, louisiana?
probably at a cheaper price than ever before too ... that is at least until the new crime gang that replaces the old crime gang gets itself established.
and thats another thing. for all we know this crime gang that was just taken down might have been getting a little uppity. maybe they were cutting into someones market. maybe they were becoming reluctant to pay protection money anymore.
so perhaps the powers that be a/k/a criminals on the loose decided to take them out and put in some people they could work with.
so before you climb into your pick-up truck and fly down to houma, which we would advise against --since its probably still hot down there -- at least for outsiders.
consider what a state we could live in if instead there were 70 national guardsmen with the time, taxpayer money and resources that was dedicated to this little exercise investigating all the corrupt louisiana politicians, governmental and elected officials, legislators, sheriffs, mayors, council/aldermen, police jurors, police chiefs, districts attorney, banksters, "journalists," judges and lawyers.
now that would take a real bite out of crime that we could all benefit from.
who knows, maybe the guard could use the usa patriot act of 2001 (H.R. 3162 public law 107-56) and its progeny like the military commissions act of 2006 (H.R. 6166 public-law 109-366) to take them all out and shoot them.
though we would prefer guillotining them since that would be cheaper with no bullets or gun maintenance to pay for. they could just send a private with a file out every once in awhile to sharpen the blades.
