Contrary to an enormous amount of propaganda from the fanatical fringe, often with the help of the mainstream media, there is no war on the Mexican Border and Hispanic Americans aren't going on wild killing sprees all the time, including undocumented immigrants. Only two out of over a dozen major cities that I found on or near the border have above average murder rates, and only one of those two is actually on the border; and both those are only moderately above the national average murder rates.
By contrast there are at least one hundred and twenty-five cities (listed on Wikipedia, List of United States cities by crime rate, 250,000+ scroll down for smaller cities, and presumably more that aren't listed there,) throughout the country that have more than double the national average murder rates, many of these are four or five times the national rate, and a few are even eight to fifteen times the national rate. Most of the cities with high murder rates are larger ones, until a couple of years ago the only one of ten with more than a million people with below the national average rate was San Diego, which is also the only one a short distance from the border.
Only seven or eight (based on the fifteen year average there's only seven, but in the past four years New York City has been below average,) out of thirty-five of the cities with more than half a million people are below average, and in addition to San Diego one of those seven is El Paso, which is directly on the border and the murder rates are less than half the national average and it has eighty percent Hispanic population. Brownsville, which is 94.4% Hispanic, is also on the border, and also has less than half the national average murder rate. Several of the other cities also have high Hispanic populations with low murder rates often less than half the national average even though many of these cities are low income, which usually correlates with higher murder rates; the biggest exception is Laredo, which is only about 10% above the national average rate not nearly as bad as the long list of abandoned inner cities with limited funds for education or other social programs that could reduce violence.
The enormous amount of hype is distracting the public from the fact that the biggest problem with violent crime isn't from Hispanics, at all, whether their illegal immigrants or not. They're also distracting the public from the lack of educational or economic opportunities in these abandoned inner inner cities and that there are enormous efforts to constantly cut funds that could be used to repair this problem before it escalates. Funds for education economic development and child care are far more effective than funds for courts and prisons, yet the later is the one the government is constantly funding, in a wasteful manner.
The hype demonizing immigrants is also distracting from other contributing causes of violence including early child abuse that leads to escalating violence, which may be even more important than the abandoned inner cities, and many other contributing causes including ones that are a result of corporate corruption, like gambling, insurance, pay day-lenders, union busting, and other activities increasing poverty which is a major cause of crime.
There are plenty of people in the media that fully understand one of the most fundamental principles of propaganda, often ironically attributed to Vladimir Lenin, "a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth," or at least it seems to, especially if it's accompanied by appeals to emotion, with other propaganda tactics like pseudo-patriotism encouraged by loud crowds supporting demagogues like Donald Trump. Another basic principle of propaganda is that this is far more effective if they can repeat their lies and they don't get challenged, which means that they must understand that by not constantly rebutting many of these claims they're allowing these demagogues to get away with it.
James Carville and George Stephanopoulos recognized that when Michael Dukakis didn't respond to false claims fast enough they stuck which is why they cam up with their famous rapid response team, which has been forgotten by the majority of the public now, but the political operatives in the media and in campaigns haven't forgotten this. Frank Luntz has virtually confessed that he's studying how to manipulate the public, and there are plenty of other people in the academic world, often working for major corporations or political parties with an agenda, that also understand basic pribnciples of propaganda and how to educate the public so they don't fall for these scams.
If they wanted to mention these basic simple statistics they could have and would have, yet instead of doing that the mainstream media provided an enormous amount of obsession coverage for one demagogues after another, leading up to Donald Trump. This includes Hillary Clinton, who once said that she "knows how to handle men who get off the reservation," which is an obvious racist and elitist comment demeaning Native Americans or other middle class or poorer people that use rough language.
As exposed in several of the E-mails released by Wikileaks, DNC Describe Wink And Nod Method For Bribes & Indoctrination Studies, Hillary Clinton and her advisers have also demonstrated that they understand how to manipulate the public, including Hispanic voters that she convinced to trust her, often with bad appeals to emotion including a famous scene where she took Karla Ortiz, a small child who was terrified she might be deported, into her arms and told her that she would prevent her from being deported, without reminding them of her previous statement that, "We have to send a clear message: Just because your child gets across the border, that doesn’t mean the child gets to stay. We don’t want to send a message that’s contrary to our laws or will encourage more children to make that dangerous journey.”" Hillary: Minors crossing border must be sent home 06/18/2014
The mainstream media is now obsessively trying to distract us from the content of these Emails which many people are quickly forgetting, and acting as if the people who leaked the information about their efforts to manipulate and indoctrinate the problem and that it's the divine right of the elites to study manipulation and fraud in secrecy, without addressing the legitimate concerns of the majority of the public, including the real contributing causes of crime and violence!
In a previous article about Immigration Policy And Outsourcing Are Virtual Slavery I cited credible reports from The Southern Poverty Law Center and The Sentencing Project showing that immigrants are much less likely to commit crimes than citizens and pointing out other problems with our current immigration policy including the fact that by driving them underground they make them less inclined to report crimes; and there's plenty more credible research providing additional details however this rarely ever gets mentioned by the traditional media. Occasionally they point out some of the most extreme views from Donald Trump and cite a few facts contradicting them, acting shocked that some members of the public would believe Trump's claims; however they fail to discuss how much obsession coverage they provide for his demagoguery or how it could be prevented if they provided more level headed coverage of the facts that they keep to a minimum.
They same media pundits provide obsession coverage for a small number of candidates supported by the political and media establishment while refusing to cover candidates that look into the higher quality research that is only reported on lower profile alternative media outlets that they treat as fringe. In addition to helping to rig the nomination for Hillary Clinton without reminding the public about how she clearly adopts some of the same policies as Donald Trump with slightly less rhetoric despite her promises to Karla Ortiz she also gave tacit approval to the Honduras coup (How Hillary Clinton Militarized US Policy in Honduras 04/05/2016 and Here's Why Activists Don't Buy Hillary Clinton's Justification for the Honduras Coup 07/17/2016) and a quick search of the internet turns up an enormous amount of fraud from the Clinton Foundation in Haiti among other places.
Like the Republicans the vast majority of the Democrats, if not all of them, supported by the establishment continue to ignore the history of our countries foreign relations which is actually contributing to violence around the world sometimes from immigrants that come from war torn countries. In many cases the conflicts in other countries are a result of our own government's activities including, most famously, coups in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile, as well as other activities from our government in Latin America.
It's tempting to say that the people in other countries know far more about the activities of our own government than people in the United States, and many people from reform movements often do, however, it is only partially true. If you watch some alternative media outlets close enough you might find some stories about well informed people educating the working class or poor about these activities, often citing far better sources than our own media does; however there are also stories about some of them observing their fellow countrymen falling for some of the same propaganda that we deal with here and believing it, even though it rarely stands up to scrutiny when people check the facts. They often use the same manipulation tactics that our own government does.
Regardless of how many people believe this propaganda there are facts that can be confirmed by those willing to do the research including additional research about how our government has been involved in many Latin America countries often supporting one tyrant after another contributes to high violence rates in Latin America countries that the United States has been manipulating for the benefit of multinational corporations. According to Wikipedia: List of countries by intentional homicide rate many of the countries the United States intervened in including Nicaragua, Honduras El Salvador, Panama, Guatemala, Haiti, Columbia, Venezuela, and Brazil have exceptionally high murder rates and it shouldn't be hard to find good research to show how efforts to destabilize these countries by tyrants supporting the financial interests of multinational corporations have contributed to these high rates of violence.
A few exceptions include Cuba which managed to stand up to the United States efforts to reinstall the same people supporting Batista and Chile which finally ousted Pinochet and managed to implement some major reforms on their own. The United States often tries to portray these high crime problems as justification for their intervention but there are numerous instances where their efforts to destabilize countries like Cuba and Nicaragua did far more harm than good and made the violence much worse.
Many of these immigrants are refugees from these countries and the reason they're fleeing is because they're unable to participate in the governing of their own country as a result of the damage done by the United States; and the same people that claim to defend democracy often vote to deprive them with the right to vote either here or in their own country.
If the media wanted to they could provide far more coverage for some of the best researchers for any given subject; however they're a for profit organization and as they've consolidated into six oligarchies they've abandoned almost all attempts to even pretend to look out for the best interests of the public, which anyone accustomed to looking at better research or alternative media might recognize, unfortunately many of the less educated people or people distracted by sports or celebrity worship, might easily fall for this propaganda.
In a series of previous articles listed below I went into some of the most important contributing causes to violence with a series of relatively simple studies comparing the states; even though these are somewhat rough and not peer reviewed each subject was also backed by additional sources that are peer reviewed, although most of it isn't widely available on mainstream media. This should be enough to show that anyone with access to a library and alternative media outlets sincerely trying to do better than the national media can almost certainly succeed without much trouble.
The subject I looked into the closest with a lot of previous articles using work from many credible researchers is how early child abuse, often involving corporal punishment, leads to escalating violence much later in life. Even though the best research involves far more detail one of the simplest statistics demonstrating how important this is, is the fact that the states which use corporal punishment the most, both at home and in schools routinely have the highest murder rates, and practically never make it into the bottom five, rarely into the bottom ten.
Corporal punishment and authoritarian upbringing is also a major contributing cause for racism and indoctrination teaching children to blindly obey their leaders and go along with the crowd even when the crowd is behaving in a fanatical manner like Nazi Germany. It makes them more susceptible to propaganda supporting wars based on lies, which we fight over and over again. It makes children more inclined to fall for propaganda designed to convince them to vote for politicians that routinely betray their best interests instead of listening to the grass roots candidates that are only covered in alternative media outlets that are often much more sincere than the ones promoted by corporations that control the economic system.
A large percentage of the public might be inclined to fall for many of these emotional appeals, especially if they're not informed about the leading causes of violence which is why many people have accepted the choice between two political parties that both represent the multinational corporations instead of the public.
These same corporations are the ones that are outsourcing jobs and trying to prioritize all the functions of government, including education, especially in low income area. they're rigging the economic system against the majority and using the poor for scapegoats taking advantage of bigotry to help convince some segments of the public to help support their agenda. these multinational corporations caused disadvantaged people to be herded into these abandoned inner cities and lobbied heavily to prevent them from getting the funds they need to educate their children and prevent all the violence that is taking place in these abandoned inner cities.
Both Parties are working for the same economic elites, while grassroots candidates that might actually support the best interests of the public can't get any media attention. Those that control economic, political and media establishments refuse to educate the public about the most important issues; instead using propaganda to distract them and convince them to vote against their own best interests as part of a divide and rule tactic enabling an economic system where a large segment of society does most of the work to make it function while a small segment of wealthy people takes the vast majority of the benefits, creating a state of virtual slavery disguised as democracy!
The following are the crime statistics for some of the biggest cities on or near the border with Mexico, they include reference to largest megachurches in these cities, which I reviewed in previous articles and found that there are higher murder rates in cities with megachurches than the national average; however even though, Hispanic Communities on the border have above average number of megachurches they also contradict that correlation as well, with below average murder rates:
El Paso Texas, 679,000, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 2.4 median household income in 2016: $43,200 80.7% Hispanic 13.1% White Abundant Living Faith Center 12,400; a total of four megachurches others range from 4,000 to 2,000
Brownsville Texas, 183,800, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 2.16 median household income in 2016: $36,584 94.4% Hispanic International Christian Center 2,000
Laredo Texas, 258,000, above average murder rate from 2002-16: 5.86 median household income in 2016: $36,195 96.4% Hispanic Iglesia Cristiana Misericordia 2,400
McAllen Texas, 142,200, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 3.53 median household income in 2016: $43,062 85.6% Hispanic Baptist Temple Church 2,000
Mission Texas, 83,550, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 2.41 median household income in 2016: $40,945 85.4% Hispanic Palm Valley Church 3,700
Del Rio Texas, 36,080, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 2.21 median household income in 2016: $43,061 85.4% Hispanic
Hidalgo Texas, 13,500, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 3.85 median household income in 2016: $38,525 98.4% Hispanic
Edinburg Texas, 87,640, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 3.01 median household income in 2016: $41,319 89.4% Hispanic
Alamo Texas below average murder rate from 2002-16: 2.23 median household income in 2016: $35,986 84.6% Hispanic
Yuma Arizona, 94,900, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 4.44 median household income in 2016: $42,731 58.8% Hispanic 33.3% White Hispanic
San Luis Arizona, 31,000, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 1.32 median household income in 2016: $33,313 96.8% Hispanic
National City California, 60,340, above national average but below state average murder rate from 2002-16: 5.59 between Chula Vista with rates of 2.69 and San Diego with a rate of 3.67 median household income in 2016: $44,901 65.8% Hispanic Cornerstone Church of San Diego 6,300
San Diego California, 1.38 million, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 3.67 median household income in 2016: $71,481 42.8% White 30.0% Hispanic The Rock Church congregation 14,000 or lower estimate of 12,864; total of seven megachurches with rest ranging from 7,000 to 1,800
Chula Vista California, 267,170, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 2.69 near San Diego with a rate of 3.67 median household income in 2016: $68,699 59.6% Hispanic EastLake Church 6,280
Imperial Beach California, 27,150, below average murder rate from 2002-16: 1.98 median household income in 2016: $51,109 51.5% Hispanic 31.9% White
In between these cities there are few major population centers so if there is one murder here or there, related to immigration or not, it will send the local rates for that area skyrocketing, which is typical for a very small percentage of rural areas that have rare murders.
Nowrasteh: Everything is Bigger in Texas — except the illegal immigrant crime rate 03/12/2018
Undocumented Immigration Doesn’t Worsen Drug, Alcohol Problems in U.S., Study Indicates 08/01/2017
Immigrants Do Not Increase Crime, Research Shows 02/07/2017
Reports find that immigrants commit less crime than US-born citizens 03/19/2017
The corporate media ignores the rise of oligarchy. The rest of us shouldn't, Bernie Sanders 03/16/2018
Because 'Corporate Media Ignores Rise of Oligarchy,' Sanders Says Rest of Us Must Fill the Void 12/1/2017
Bernie Sanders is right about the corporate media ignoring the rise of oligarchy; and when he discusses the issues he is far better on almost all of the other politicians that the media is willing to cover; in addition to providing poor coverage of the rise of oligarchy the media also provides poor coverage on causes of crime and many other issues.
His conclusion that the rest of us need to fill the void by providing alternative media outlets and taking advantage of the ones that are already there is also correct; however we need to rely on a more diverse source of media and candidates to represent us; and we need to be prepared to hold those accountable and switch if they seem to be caving to the oligarchy. Even though I like Bernie Sanders far more than any other establishment politician and agree with him on almost all the issues, when the nomination was rigged against him, he caved and declined to speak out about some of the worst rigging, instead endorsing Hillary Clinton, which is part of the reason why Donald Trump was able to get elected.
We can't get reform by relying on, or in some cases worshiping, any one candidate or media outlet; instead we need to teach the majority of the public to sort through the best media outlets and candidates and hold them accountable, moving as much of the decision making process to the public, not the representatives, as possible!
The following are some of my previous articles about contributing causes of crime including one about how organized gambling and Donald Trump's own Casinos, which had a high number of murders on the premises for a few years with minimal media coverage, are contributing to higher crime:
Las Vegas Massacre Is Just A Minuscule Fraction Of Gambling Crime Between 2008 and 2011, 1 in every 8 murders in Atlantic City took place at Trump's Taj Mahal casino
Scapegoating human trafficker to protect corporations?
Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation Should Become a Priority Again!
Ignored evidence linking corporal punishment, poverty and crime grows
Does lack of education increase violent crime? Religion?
How much does Income Inequality Affects Crime Rates?
States with high murder rates have larger veteran populations
Teach a soldier to kill and he just might
The tragedy of gambling politics in United States
How does gambling and gun control impact violent crime?
Politics, not technology, caused botched executions
Troy, Cameron, Gary all innocent? And executed?
Democrats do a bad job on crime; Republicans and the Media are worse!!
Politicians increase crime; Grass roots efforts reduce crime; Politicians steal the credit
Life Insurance and media companies are encouraging lots of murders
Union Busting adds to corrupt bureaucracy and incites crime
No comments:
Post a Comment