On September 23, 2014, a few days before Jodi Arias sentencing retrial, Steve Benson from The Arizona Republic published a ‘cartoon’ titled Mid East Has ISIS, Arizona Has Arias with the caption Media Manipulators.

Arias the huge threat to humanity

Pardon my French, but my first reaction was to say ‘Are you shitting me?’ After mulling it over for a while, I had to admit to myself that the Arizona Republic has been somehow moderate so far about the Arias case compared to some of their counterparts, and that there was indeed some truth to the fact that Arizona was considering this Latina girl from Yreka California like the worst thing to ever set foot on their territory.

Calamity Jodi was born in an Arizona courtroom and if they had their way, they would have put her to death because of the great menace created and promoted by the media. Hell, they tried once and when it failed, they cried foul and are giving the sentencing phase a do over.

The lynch mob was unreal during all phases of this twofold saga.

Fat ladies singing & rejoicing at guilty verdict

OK so the State of Arizona considers Jodi Arias also known as Candy Crush because of her super addictive nature, like a crisis deserving of more media attention than ISIS.

They have proven it so far with their incessant and loud media coverage. She is such a threat to national security that they spent millions of dollars to make sure she would be treated like the worst terrorist on the planet.

Nothing is more dangerous than this woman. Right? After all, she has killed her abusive boyfriend by ‘cutting his throat’ so that would qualify her as a member of the Islamic State.

Are you shitting me? So terrorists who are trained to hate and who have used the media to terrorize the world by cutting the throats of reporters are comparable to a young woman who ended up in a battle to the death with her boyfriend? And this woman has manipulated the media like ISIS?

So far, every time Candy Crush has talked to the media, it has exploded in her face.

She did two long interviews while in jail and what did not end up on the floor from the hours of tape, was a mashup of negativity that was played at trial by the prosecution.

Who can forget the number one manipulation? ‘Mark my words, no jury will convict me.’ It worked so well that the jury used it to find her guilty.

How arrogant of her to say that. And the two intruders’ story worked so well that it once again, sank her credibility like if she had attached cement weights to her own ankles. So bravo for Arias, she is such a master media manipulator.

Since she has cut the media pipeline and objects to cameras in the courtroom, we keep hearing the same tune: Media manipulator. What part of she is not talking to the media, she is not on twitter and she does not give interviews don’t they get?

Her art is for sale online because this is the only way she will be able to afford a defense or have any kind of money. Have you seen Nurmi in action or should I say in inaction? She has a lousy defense team and unlike Casey Anthony, no dream team jumped to her defense and she had no photos of her offspring to sell for cash flow. She is indigent.

If she was wealthy, she would have been out on bail during the five years preceding her trial and probably would have never been charged to begin with. So when I hear that she is a master media manipulator, I think who is zooming who here? She has never had any power and was manipulated by the media who offered to tell her story and proceeded to make her look guilty as sin.

Arpaio-Media whore extraordinaire

Arpaio has refused the request of a film crew who wanted to make a documentary about Candy. I am sure that he wants to make sure that no objective footage ever comes out of his Estrella cell block.

He is the only one who is allowed to toot his own horn and mug for the camera. If I was in her prison shoes, I would love to have a director say ‘Do you want the truth to come out?’

After her 1^st degree verdict, she gave interviews and once again, was accused of trying to influence viewers, but after being the object of a relentless hateful media campaign for so long, didn’t she have the right to try to tell her side of the story?

I get the feeling that she is naive enough to believe that some people will really listen to her and see that she is not the monster they make her out to be. But once again, it was an epic fail because she is still perceived as an international threat. The Ebola of Arizona.

During the investigation, Flores and some of Travis’ acolytes were trying to scare the population into thinking that she was going to kill other victims like the Hughes, her new beau and Alexander former girlfriend Lisa. Are you shitting me?

Isn’t it how terrorists try to scare us? By spreading the fear of other attacks? I do not believe that it was Candy Crush playing terrorist in this situation, but the authorities and the victim’s circle of friends. Be afraid, be very afraid because the threat of Arias is eminent and she is coming for you. Boo!

Arias wrote a letter to Ryan Burns to assure him that she was not a threat. They even went as far as talking about her having buried other boyfriends in the desert.

The Hughes made up the rabbit boiler nickname at that moment. The conspiracy to turn her into a national threat was going full steam, but it did not come from the bottom of her cell bunk where she was busy drawing, and trying to survive on peanut butter and beans while asking herself how on earth this could have happened to her life. The fear and terror campaign was taking place without her in the media.

ISIS

Isis was, in Egyptian mythology, the goddess of fertility and motherhood. She was the daughter of the god Keb (Earth) and his wife/sister the goddess Nut (Sky). She was the sister-wife of Osiris, judge of the dead, and mother of Horus, god of day. She is described in ancient writings as having great magical skill, and she was represented as human in form though she was frequently described as wearing the horns of a cow, or as a winged woman.

Isis was believed to be powerful in the ways of magic, having the ability to create and destroy life with mere words. She not only knew the words which needed to be spoken to cause certain things to occur, but was also able to use exact pronunciation and emphasis in order for the desired effect to occur.

It is believed that if the best effect was to be produced by words of power they must be uttered in a certain tone of voice, and at a certain rate, and at a certain time of the day or night, with appropriate gestures or ceremonies. Only when these conditions have been met can true magic occur.

This is obviously not the ISIS wreaking havoc and scaring the world right now. But we can clearly see that Candy did not have any power with words and no rabbit came out of a hat to save her because of her magic skills to influence the media or the jury. So we can cross that one off the list.

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham or ISIS is what we constantly hear about these days. The throat cutters of news gatherers who have used the media to promote their message of terror.

The group has been described by the United Nations and the Western and Middle Eastern media as a terrorist group and the US designated them as a foreign terrorist organization. They are accused of grave human right abuses.

They recently beheaded two American journalists; James Foley and Steven Sotloff. Foley was kidnapped in 2012 and executed recently followed by Sotloff. This militant group fighting to establish an Islamist state, is the heir apparent of al-Qaeda and they are spreading into Syria and other regions. They say the executions are the result of Obama’s decision to conduct airstrikes in Iraq against ISIS, which calls itself the Islamic State.

Everybody’s talking about it and that’s exactly what they want. They want to cut through the media,” Aki Peritz, a former CIA counter-terrorism analyst who was responsible for watching the beheading and execution videos of al-Qaeda in Iraq, said from Washington. “A very explicitly gruesome, but very effective tactic to get into the press. The ISIS guys are true believers and they believe Allah is on their side so they have become relentless.

Despite these barbaric displays, it’s been successful. They’ve been able to grow and flourish, and they have been able to attract people to their cause despite this barbarity and perhaps because of it.

They seem to want to attract a U.S. military response and are using the media to boost their membership and reputation and to trick the world into thinking they are bigger than life. As commentator Bill Maher said, we have to be careful not to fall into this trap. It is not like we are going to be beheaded while lining up to buy our iphone 6. They are using the media to make the threat look much bigger. After all, the reporters knew the risks when they entered that kind of territory.

“War makes these kinds of organizations stronger. If you can bring America in a big way, they can quickly paint them as stooges of their Shia government in Baghdad,” Peritz said. “Long term, they want to create another enemy out of us.”

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told CNN that the goal of the United States is to “degrade and destroy” the capabilities of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, “it’s not contain, “It makes you sick to your stomach, but it again reminds you of the brutality and barbarism that is afoot in some places in the world,” Hagel said. “… It won’t just recede into the gray recesses of history until we stop it.”

So their media manipulation seem to have attracted the right response and I sincerely hope that the U.S. will think twice before entering a full fledge attack on a group that might as well have created a gross exaggeration of their true power because of shock videos promoted by the media.

The Media

The media means mass communication such as television, radio and newspapers when they are regarded collectively.

When you have non-profit Broadcasting corporations or newspapers, you might be able to expect a fair and balanced account of public events and affairs, but considering that most media outlets are for profit only, we can see where the element of objectivity becomes fairly impossible.

If you want sponsors, you have to deliver the goods and it means sensationalism.

The beheading of the two American journalists became huge stories on CNN and other stations where the viewer became enthralled and enraged by the event. And it is walking right into the trap set by groups like ISIS. They want to wag the dog to rise themselves to the ranks of great warriors and saviors of their nation real or imagined. The media is not going to keep any of this under wrap because their sponsors want huge ratings so it becomes a vicious circle.

Crime has become a huge industry also in the U.S. and the same principle applies so they have to create heroes and villains to collect the ratings and rake the money.

It is a double edge sword because at times, the media can save lives, find missing persons or bring attention to a wrongful conviction. It is a lot like the cops, we love them when there is an emergency but they get away with a lot of abuse of power.

The Social Media has entered the sphere of the media in a very insidious way. What used to be social interaction among people in which they create, share or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks has now interfered with the mainstream.

To sustain their ratings, television shows and news programs now need to inject tweets from viewers. All of us feel the need to be included in the process; present company included with my blogs. If I do not find the kind of conversation I am looking for in the media, I will write it myself.

The main stream articles about ISIS or Jodi Arias seem to always lean in the same direction; if you stray, you could lose your sponsors and your ratings so it is a risky proposition. So bloggers can express their thoughts because they do not have a horse in the race or a direct vested interest.

It opens the door to a lot of superficial hogwash because it became obvious to me that a lot of people on social media have not studied the details of a criminal case anymore than the ISIS crisis. And no matter how hard you try to show them evidence or lack thereof, they have made up their mind.

Ryan Burns

I read a blog recently where the author said that her husband who was a hand surgeon (sic) knew for a fact that Jodi Arias’ tendon was cut when she stabbed Travis Alexander. So her finger was never fractured by Travis in an earlier fight.

The only problem is that Ryan Burns testified that Jodi, the day after the murder, had very tiny cuts and band aids on her fingers. Nothing like a cut tendon that would have been debilitating.

People let their imagination run wild and do not bother with facts. Chris Hughes also forgot that important detail when he said during an interview that Jodi had big bandages and deep cuts, which he had never seen anyway.

But the more troubling aspect of the ‘finger mystery’ is that it did not matter anyway if she had cuts or not because she admitted stabbing him.

I will never forget when HLN correspondent Jean Casarez covered the Jodi Arias trial and was chastised for saying that she sounded honest on the stand. When Jodi pleaded for her life, Casarez had tears in her eyes, but had to say she was suffering from allergies that day so that viewers or her employer would not read her the riot act. She was supposed to join the ranks of the haters because it was the party line.

The media has become unreliable and has been purchased and wrapped with a bow every step of the way by big money, so it is difficult to judge the real situation on ISIS or on any criminal trial, if you stick to what their numerous tentacles decide to present to you. The menu of the day depends on what is in season.

Will it be fish or chicken today? Well it depends on who is buying and what they want you to believe and whose pockets they want to fill.

What we the consumers gobble up are the images of beheading like in the cases of the American journalists or of Travis Alexander. The horror remains but the details become foggy and are justified according to the gospel of the protagonists. We cannot forget that every puzzle has many pieces even if the result looks easy on the picture of the box cover. It is not always a slam dunk to assemble and can be treacherous.

ISIS might have been manipulating the media but they were right there for the taking. They did not have to show these images and start a fear campaign that is helping boost the ego and recruitment of this group of misguided, virgin hunting and desperate souls searching for glory.

The media has eaten Candy Crush for breakfast and spitted her out into the Roman arena so that the lions could feast on her while the Christians roared. So don’t come and tell me that she has any kind of power of manipulation over them.

She is in a cage in Arizona where the media has put her on display like Pluto the polar bear stuck on a tropical island. And now she has become a real threat like ISIS and has magically acquired some power of persuasion.

What trial have they been watching? Of yes, the one where everything was controlled and manipulated by the MEDIA; the real cutthroat, powerful and encompassing bearer of truth or dare.

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A video clip to illustrate the situation. Oh and in times of trouble, it is always a great idea to prep your lips with silicone, wear a fancy dress and put down your President.