FRIDAY, AUGUST 12, 7:30PM

First Congregational Church
2345 Channing, Berkeley

Movie - PLUS

Peter Phillips & Mickey Huff of Project Censored talking with John Pilger via Skype

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In the last 35 years, the so-called mainstream media have been co-opted into a propaganda machine for the transnational corporate power structure, which serves a US/NATO Military Industrial Media Empire instead of We the People.

Project Censored resists the goals of global empire at the expense of human rights, we resist top down managed news in favor of a truly free press, and we resist censorship in all its guises.

Media Democracy in Action is our belief and we will firmly continue to build media from the bottom up by supporting independent news sources and validating content with our expanding number of affiliate colleges and universities worldwide.  Functioning democracies are the result of an informed and participatory public and we need an informed electorate now more than ever to protect our civil liberties, our economy, and our Constitution.

Please Support this effort by making an Anniversary Gift to Project Censored.  Gifts of $35 or more will be shown our gratitude with a copy of Censored 2012 upon release in September, with an introduction by former director Dr. Peter Phillips, and signed to you personally by current Project Censored director Mickey Huff.

Select a level of giving that best fits your capabilities:

• o $35.00   o $135.00   o $350.00   o $3,500.00

Send in Checks to:

Project Censored
P.O. Box 571
Cotati, CA 94931

Or Donate Securely Online – www.projectcensored.org/support

Preview of Censored 2012 (Available Now)

For Censored 2012, we continue to divide our annual publication into three sections as we broaden, grow, and diversify efforts to illuminate examples of censorship in the corporate mainstream US press.  Further, we continue to promote ways to improve our systems of reporting and communicating to the public at large about the most crucial issues we face as a society.

The first section of this year’s book, on the News that Didn’t Make the News and Why, houses the traditional top censored news stories from the past year, which are now analyzed in what we call Censored News Clusters.  Within these Clusters, Project Censored’s team of media experts and their student interns analyze and connect the dots between stories based on similar themes or topics rather than simply list the top stories as ranked in importance by Project Censored judges.  For the first time, we focus on the connections between censored stories as the structure of this chapter, flushing out why some topics are prone to such underreporting, and what we might do about this problem, rather than simply list and summarize top censored stories.

In the second chapter, Censored Déjà vu, we check for any new or increased coverage of previously underreported top stories.  Most receive little if any coverage in the corporate mainstream press, but if they do, we monitor and remark upon it here, ever in hopes that the corporate media may be improved, but not waiting for such to take place as we advocate for the coming media revolution.

In chapter three, Adam Bessie joins the Project Censored director, Abby Martin of Media Roots and student interns to analyze the ubiquity of Junk Food News and the growing problem of News Abuse, including framing and propaganda in US media.  This year we include a case study in how pubic workers (teachers especially) have been negatively portrayed in the corporate press as a major example of News Abuse.

Chapter four, with San Francisco State University professor of Holistic Studies Kenn Burrows, brings out the best in underreported news as we look at the positive, the signs of health and community building as published in the independent press, which the corporate media tend to deride, downplay, or outright ignore.  The problems we face do not merely include the sordid things that are going on around us that the corporate media do not report, they also include the many positive things that are going on often right in front of us that the corporate media do not recognize, hence contributing to a sense of disconnection among many in society.

Chapter five brings back our media activism showcase which includes examples of media democracy in action, highlighting what other activists, scholars, and organizations are doing to achieve the media revolution, supporting the First Amendment, in maintenance of self governance and democracy.  This year we welcome the Park Center for Independent Media, PR Watch, Media Alliance, Media Roots, Courage to Resist and more.

Section two focuses on what we call the Truth Emergency.  This Truth Emergency we face is a result of the lack of factual reporting by the so-called mainstream media over the past decade.  Americans are subjected to mass amounts of propaganda, from misinformation to disinformation, on a daily basis about some of the most significant issues of the day.  Whether this involves the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East, the health care debate, election fraud or economic collapse, most Americans are unaware of all the facts of how we got where we now are as a society.  It is the duty of the constitutionally protected free press to report factually to the public on these matters.  However, as our work shows dating back to 1976, that is not happening.  One way of combating this Truth Emergency is by understanding the nature of propaganda.  This year, our Truth Emergency section is a primer on Propaganda Studies, which includes a brief history, theory, application, and case studies all presented to enhance media literacy among the general public.  We are pleased to bring some of the best and brightest in the field to offer insight on this ever-important area of study.  Randal Marlin gives a brief history of propaganda; Jacob Van Vleet looks at one of the key theorists of propaganda, Jacques Ellul.  Robert Abele offer a philosophical and structural analysis of propaganda for readers while Elliot D. Cohen and Anthony DiMaggio look at specific areas, like the importance of Net Neutrality and astroturf activism in the so-called Tea Party, where understanding communication politics and media literacy really matter if a society is to be truly democratically functional, able to operate outside the propaganda matrix of the corporate media and establishment public relations machine.

The final section of the book is Project Censored International, which is a collection of various studies and media commentary that not only look at problems of global media censorship, but also examine how these important issues are handled, or ignored here in the US corporate press.  This section brings us a diverse group of scholars and activists, including Cynthia Boaz, Ann Garrison, Jon Elmer with Nora Barrows-Friedman, Robin Andersen, Margaret Flowers, and Ina May Gaskin.  The significant issues in this section include the Fair Sharing of the Common Heritage, introduced by Mary Lia, on moving toward an embrace of the human commons; understanding non-violence and how media depict such movements for peace and social justice; and the deconstruction of various myths– from the incredibly biased reporting on Africa to distorted views of recent disaster coverage, plus the ongoing skewed coverage concerning Israel/Palestine. This section continues on issues of health with an analysis of the top down denial of mass public support for single payer healthcare, and we round out Censored 2012 by looking at how corporate media distort life itself, from birth, by examining how corporate media have either ignored or demonized the efficacy of natural childbirth and midwifery in the US, despite that the facts surrounding homebirth culture clearly refute the mainstream coverage.

All in all, this is a work in progress and it involves hundreds of dedicated scholars, and students at over two dozen college and universities all over the world.  These are people from all walks of life across the globe who have at least one thing in common:  the belief in democracy and the role a free press plays in creation, protection, and maintenance of it.  Thanks to all who made this work possible, to all the tireless and selfless contributors, to all the readers and supporters of a free and vibrant people’s press, one that is always and only uncensored.

Your support is greatly appreciated:

Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored Board of Directors

Mickey Huff, Peter Phillips, Elaine Wellin, Mary Lia, Carl Jensen, Cynthia Boaz,

Bill Simon, Derrick West, Dave Mathison, Nora Barrows-Friedman, Andy Roth, Miguel Molina, Dennis Bernstein, Kenn Burrows, and Noel Byrne

 

 

---

 

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Sponsored by SSU Sociology Club, Campus Allies for Racial Responsibility—CARR, Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored,
Information at: 707-664-2588 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 707-664-2588 end_of_the_skype_highlighting

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Alfred Frederick Andersen 1919- 2010

Nominations are being accepted for the Fair Sharing of the Common Heritage Award. These submissions can be published or unpublished articles, or works in progress that express the ideas behind the original economic and social theories of Alfred Frederick Andersen. Andersen believed that every sentient being – human and non-human – has a right to the fair share of the material and economic benefits of the Common Heritage Wealth. Included in this Common Heritage are all earth’s natural resources: such as land surfaces, sub-surface minerals and fuels; water and air, indeed the entire physical environment. Also included are the inventions and knowledge created by previous generations. Cyberspace is such an example.

The Common Heritage Award articles should propose and describe ways in which such sharing could be accomplished. Andersen’s work is recognized by the Media Freedom Foundation and Project Censored as an annual award to be given to the person that best reflects how the Fair Sharing of the Common Heritage can work in our culture. An example of such sharing would be the promotion of an idea that natural resource extractors would be required to pay the value of the resources into a Common Heritage fund for all living things.

1. First place winner will receive $3,500 award
2. Second place winner will receive $1,500 award

Winners will receive their award at the annual Media Freedom Foundation/ Project Censored Awards Ceremony in Berkeley, California, February 5, 2011. Transportation costs to Berkeley will be available to the winners.

To submit a nomination send no more than a one-page summary of completed articles and specific URL to the original article to: commonheritageaward@gmail.com. For unpublished articles, submit full copies to:

MEDIA FREEDOM FOUNDATION

The Common Heritage Award

P.O. BOX 571 COTATI, CA 94931

All nominations must be received by January 5, 2011. Winners will be announced and notified by January 10, 2011. Winning articles will be linked to the Project Censored website and published online. Dorothy N. Andersen and family have provided funding for this award. Judges are comprised of family members and board directors of Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored (www.projectcensored.org). The decision of the judges is final and appeals will not be accepted. No late entries will be considered.

We look forward to the process of honoring the values of Alfred and Dorothy Andersen.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Common Heritage Award Alfred Frederick Andersen:

Biography

Alfred Frederick Andersen dedicated his life to the philosophical pursuit of ideas that became manifest as the Fair Sharing of the Common Heritage which is a principle, which states that income from land, resources and the inventions of past and current generations be fairly shared. His overall concern was the creation of “sustained justice for all sentient beings.” His ideas are as compelling and revolutionary as when Alfred first began developing them.

Alfred was born on June 27, 1919 in Bridgeport Connecticut. Al’s studies in nuclear physics ignited a profound passion to study philosophy and holistic thinking regarding community and global challenges. He received a degree in civil engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and studied philosophy at Harvard, Columbia, Ohio State and Lincoln University. He is the author of, Liberating the Early American Dream and Challenging Newt Gingrich Chapter by Chapter. He taught math at the junior and senior high school levels and philosophy of science at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and philosophy of education Simon Fraser University in Canada. And he believed with a great passion that everyone should have a fair share of the Common Heritage.

He was convicted of refusing induction into military service during WWII. He was sentenced to two years in prison and released after eight months for “good behavior.” After his release from prison, he began attending meetings with the Yellow Spring Ohio Friends and other subsequent Friends Meetings. He and his family joined a community of thirty other families at the Tanguy Homesteads in Pennsylvania. He was an avid supporter and participant of intentional community living. He did not pay federal income tax on the basis of his deeply felt philosophical values.

Alfred demonstrated unusual creativity, resourcefulness and inventiness in his approach towards supporting himself and his family. He was a professor, teacher, salesman, inventor, and philosopher. He managed his father’s machine shop, worked as a groundskeeper, ran a bakery, was a lecturer, and Dean at Oakwood Friends School. He invented and patented a ratchet wrench the rapid grip. Alfred also designed, manufactured and sold a kitchen flourmill. He was a man of vision who created wealth for his family but whose conscience was also invested in ideas which would create wealth for all sentient beings.

Alfred authored two books and several pamplets. Howard Zinn commented on his work, Challenging Newt Gingrich Chapter by Chapter stating, “Alfred Andersen has performed a valuable task for all of us. In this timely, thoughtful dissection of the right wing agenda, he not only takes on Newt Gingrich with painstaking clarity, but suggests an alternative agenda for achieving justice in America.” This alternative agenda for justice was not only addressed in books but in the public forum as well.

In 1976 Alfred traveled to Vancouver, Canada to participate in a forum of non-governmental organizations associated with the United Nations Special Sessions on Habitat and Human Settlements. He helped compose a concluding statement proclaiming that housing, basic services, energy, land use, participation, and financing problems can only be solved by a global and integral approach which has to go to the heart of the matter and transform the economic, social and political structures which cause them.

Al’s life was a reflection of his values. A friend said, “I have never seen (or imagined) such devotion as his to the principles of justice and community. They were woven into the fabric of his soul; he spoke of them with the upmost depth and centrality of feeling, I know he lived by them and it was always touching to hear him voice how vital and seriously urgent they were for him.”Similar Posts:

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Independent media, both on the local, national, and international level is at risk and we believe that it is vital to support the expansion of news from independent sources worldwide. Project Censored is not only working on new underreported stories but spreading the word via our new Daily Censored website, Facebook page and our Media Freedom Foundations Daily News Feed site which aggregates independent news from many of the most reliable sources around the world.

Some of the top most important censored stories of the year include:

Global Plans to Replace the Dollar Threaten US Economy

Defense Department is the Worst Polluter on the Planet

Internet Privacy and Personal Access at Risk

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Operates Secret Detention Centers and Violates Due Process Rights for Immigrants

Blackwater (Xe): The Secret US War in Pakistan and Other Illegal Activities

Please make your tax deductible donation using paypal below using a credit card or bank account:

or Checks to: Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored, P.O. Box 571, Cotati, CA 94931

Managed News: Inside The US/NATO Military Industrial Media Empire

By Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff

“There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.”
–– Charles Dickens

We face what appears to be a military industrial media empire so powerful and complex that truth is mostly absent or reported in disconnected segments with little historical context. A case in point: The London Times reported on June 5, 2010, that American troops are now operating in 75 countries. Has President Obama secretly sanctioned a huge increase in the number of US Special Forces carrying out search-and-destroy missions against al-Qaeda around the world? If so, this increase is far in excess of special-forces operations under the Bush administration and reflects how aggressively Obama is pursuing al-Qaeda behind his public rhetoric of global engagement and diplomacy. Somehow this information didn’t make it into the US media.
The US, in cooperation with NATO, is building global occupation forces for the control of international resources in support of Trilateralist—US, Europe, Japan— corporate profits. A New York Times report on the availability of a trillion dollars  in  mineral wealth in Afghanistan, on top of the need for an oil/gas pipeline from the Caspian Sea, suggests other reasons for U.S objectives in the region.
Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service writes on June 15, 2010, “The timing of the publication of a major New York Times story on the vast untapped mineral wealth that lies beneath Afghanistan’s soil is raising major questions about the intent of the Pentagon…Blake Hounshell, managing editor at Foreign Policy magazine, says that the US Geological Service (USGS) already published a comprehensive inventory of Afghanistan’s non-oil mineral resources on the Internet in 2007, as did the British Geological Survey. Much of their work was based on explorations and surveys undertaken by the Soviet Union during its occupation of Afghanistan during the 1980s.”
Given the previous reports, there is nothing new about resources in Afghanistan that the Pentagon and US multinational corporations didn’t already know. On the contrary, the public should consider whether  the surfacing of this resource story is a managed-news press release being done at a time of sensitive concerns regarding NATO’s mission in Afghanistan. A deliberate news insertion such as the mineral wealth story is designed to create support for a US/NATO global empire agenda.
Managed news includes both the release of specific stories intended to build public support as well as the deliberate non-coverage of news stories that may undermine US goals.  Have you been told  about the continuing privatization of this global war? Independent journalist Jeremy Scahill, wrote in The Nation magazine November 23, 2009, how Blackwater (Xe) operatives in the Pakistani port city of Karachi are gathering intelligence and helping to direct a secret US military drone bombing campaign in that country.
There has not  been much coverage of the report in Global Research, May 27, 2010, regarding new US capabilities for cyber warfare, announced recently by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates as the activation of the Pentagon’s first computer command and the world’s first comprehensive, multi-service military cyber operation. CYBERCOM is based at Fort Meade, Maryland, which also is home to the National Security Agency (NSA).
The US’s Israeli partner in the Middle East demonstrated a skilled manipulation of the global media’s coverage of the May 31 attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. Israel controlled the news and images that emerged from the attack on the ships, asserting that the invading Israeli paratroopers were viciously attacked by crewmembers—resulting in the killing of several in “self defense.” Israel sought to divert the focus of public discussion away from the illegitimate use of excessive force against a group of humanitarians– of diverse religious and national affiliations– to the blaming of the victims for causing their own deaths.
Managed news creates a Truth Emergency for the public inside the US/NATO Military Industrial Media Empire. Deliberate news management undermines the freedom of information on the doings of the powerful military/corporate entities though overt censorship, mass distractions, and artificial news— including stories timed for release to influence public opinion (i.e., propaganda).

A Truth Emergency is the lack of purity in news brought about by this propaganda and distraction. It is the state in which people, despite potentially being awash in a sea of information, lack the power of discernment resulting in a knowinglessness about what is going on in the world. In short, we are living in a time where people do not know whom to trust for accurate information and yearn for the truth.
One antidote to the ongoing Truth Emergency is the creation of validated independent news by colleges and universities around the globe where students and professors use research skills and databases to fact check and verify information that is reported to the public. For more about this, and what we can all do to counter managed news, see Project Censored International’s new website at http://mediafreedominternational.org. Together, we can build accountability in our media and breathe life back into our withering republic.
_______________________

Peter Phillips is professor of sociology at Sonoma State University, President of Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored, former director of Project Censored, and co-editor of Censored 2010.

Mickey Huff is associate professor of history at Diablo Valley College, Director of Project Censored/Media Freedom Foundation, and co-editor of Censored 2010.Similar Posts:

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E

Huwaida Arraf was one of those kidnapped activists, on board a US-flagged vessel called Challenger 1. In the following interview on Wednesday, Arraf recounted her experience during the commando attack, in Israeli detention, and her brutal release:

Dennis Bernstein: First of all, how are you doing? How are you feeling?
DB: Do you have any information now about who died … and how many are wounded?Huwaida Arraf: A little bruised, but no complaints. I’m okay, I’m just worried about the rest of my colleagues, especially those that are in hospitals who we don’t have complete information about. I’m definitely devastated about the loss of lives that was completely unnecessary.

HA: Unfortunately not yet, and I just spoke to the lawyer that we have coordinating visitations to everybody that is still held, whether in a hospital or in jail here, and he said that they’re desperately trying to ascertain this information from the Israelis, and the Israelis are not being forthcoming — denying information when actually the lawyers go to the hospitals to try to check up on people to find out where they are, who they are, how they are doing. They [the lawyers] are not being allowed access.

DB: We’ve seen a lot from the Israelis, we’ve seen some edited tape, the story is that these commandos came under fire, under attack, that they were violently assaulted and thrown over the side of the ships, which left them no choice but to defend themselves. You were on one of these ships, you were with a lot of people who have seen a lot. Give us your best shot in terms of what you understand happened here….Read the entire article hereSimilar Posts:

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“There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.” –Charles Dickens

The Corporate News Media:  Not in the Business of News

The late New York University media scholar Neil Postman once said about America, “We are the best entertained least informed society in the world.” That was twenty-five years ago and after two-plus decades of more deregulation and the growth of conglomerates in the media, that trend has continued. From Tyra Banks’ shifting figure and the Balloon Boy hoax, to the celebrity death of Michael Jackson and the Obama Beer Summit, Americans are fed a steady “news” diet of tabloidized, trivialized, and outright useless information laden with personal anecdotes, scandals, and gossip.

Topics and in-depth reports that matter little to most people in any meaningful way are given massive amounts of attention in the corporate media. In recent years, this has only become more obvious. For instance, CNN’s coverage of celebrity Anna Nicole Smith’s untimely death in early 2007 is arguably one of the most egregious examples of an over abused news story. The magnitude of corporate media attention paid to Smith’s death were clearly out of synch with the coverage the story deserved, which was at most a simple passing mention. Instead, CNN broadcast “breaking” stories of Smith’s death uninterrupted, without commercials, for almost two hours, with commentary by lead anchors and journalists. This marked among the longest uninterrupted “news” broadcasts at CNN since the tragic events of September 11, 2001.  Anna Nicole Smith and 9/11 are now strange bedfellows, milestone bookends of a deranged corporate news culture.[1]

While news outlets were obsessing over Smith’s death, most big media giants were missing a far more important story.  The US ambassador to Iraq misplaced $12 billion in shrink-wrapped one hundred dollar bills that were flown to Baghdad.  This garnered little attention due to the media’s morbid infatuation with Smith’s passing.  This is clearly news judgment gone terribly awry if not an outright retreat from journalistic standards. The once trivial and absurd are now mainstreamed as “news.”  More young people turn to late night comics’ fake news to learn the truth or tune out to so-called reality shows often scripted as Roman Holiday spectacles of the surreal.  This hyper-reality creation of corporate media in the 21^st century has led to what Postman presciently warned about:  an infotainment society.[2]

The trend of mass coverage of trivial events in corporate media continued in 2009. British tabloid News of the World published an exclusive photo of Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps smoking marijuana from a bong on Sunday, February 1, 2009, with the headline, “What a Dope.” The picture was allegedly taken during a November house party while Phelps was visiting the University of South Carolina. The incident occurred nearly three months after the swimmer won eight gold medals for America at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China. Phelps quickly apologized to the public for his “regrettable behavior. ” The bong’s owner reportedly tried to sell it on eBay for $100,000. In the weeks following, Phelps lost his sponsorship from Kellogg’s cereal. Did anyone ask:  is this really a newsworthy issue? Or, why is this a news story? Why instead was there not a discussion about the almost one-and-a-half million marijuana user arrests in 2006 and 2007?[3]

Photos of Jessica Simpson performing at a Florida Chili Cook-off looking a bit heavier than usual surfaced during the week of January 26, 2009. The purportedly unflattering shots of a curvier looking Simpson in an outfit that included “a muffin-top-inducing leopard belt” immediately made news headlines. Was she pregnant? Was she picking up eating habits from her NFL star quarterback boyfriend? Or was she simply hungry for publicity? During a pre-Super Bowl interview, President Obama even noted that Simpson was “in a weight battle.” Again, why is this a news story and why is the leader of the free world commenting on it? Why does this get coverage by hard news outlets at all? Why was there not a discussion about the worsening problems of hunger, homelessness, and poverty in America?[4]

The US is not only becoming a nation of obese people, but is on the verge of another phenomenon the equivalent of cultural and mental obesity.  We, in America, are a nation awash in a sea of information yet we have a paucity of understanding.  We are a country where over a quarter of the population know the names of all five members of the fictitious family from The Simpsons yet only one in a thousand can name all the rights protected under the first amendment to the US Constitution.  Journalistic values have been sold out to commercial interests and not even our core, national and constitutionally protected values are sacred. Far too often, important news stories are underreported or ignored entirely by corporate news outlets, especially on television, where over seventy percent of Americans get their news, even though only an astounding twenty-nine percent say it is accurate. In short, Americans are living in a state of Truth Emergency.[5]

Truth Emergency:  Keeping the Facts at Bay

“The truth comes as conqueror only because we have lost the art of receiving it as guest.”–Rabindranath Tagore

What are some of these truths, that not knowing them creates a literal state of emergency for human society? Here are two of many possible examples. A 2008 report from The World Bank admitted that in 2005, over three billion people lived on less than $2.50 a day and about forty-four percent of these people survive on less than $1.25. Complete and total wretchedness can be the only description for the circumstances faced by so many, especially those in urban areas of so-called developing nations. Simple items Americans take for granted like phone calls, nutritious food, vacations, television, dental care, and inoculations are beyond the possible for billions of people.[6]

In another ignored but related story, Starvation.net logged the increasing impacts of world hunger and starvation. Over 30,000 people a day (eighty-five percent of children under five) die of malnutrition, curable diseases, and starvation.  The number of deaths has exceeded three hundred million people over the past forty years. These stories should be alarming headlines, certainly more significant than celebrity tripe and tabloid hype.[7]

Continuing on the theme of human poverty and its ramifications, farmers around the world grow more than enough food to feed the entire world adequately. Global grain production yielded a record 2.3 billion tons in 2007, up four percent from the year before, yet, billions of people go hungry every day. The website Grain.org describes the core reasons for continuing hunger in a recent article “Making a Killing from Hunger.” It turns out that while farmers grow enough food to feed the world, commodity speculators and huge grain traders like Cargill control the global food prices and distribution. Starvation is profitable for corporations when demands for food push the prices up. Cargill announced that profits for commodity trading for the first quarter of 2008 were eighty-six percent above 2007.  World food prices grew twenty-two percent from June 2007 to June 2008 and a significant portion of the increase was propelled by the $175 billion invested in commodity futures that speculate on price instead of seeking to feed the hungry. This results in erratic food price spirals, both up and down, with food insecurity remaining widespread.[8]

For a family on the bottom rung of poverty a small price increase is the difference between life and death, yet no US presidents have declared a war on starvation. Instead they talk about national security and the continuation of the war on terror as if these were the primary issues for their terms in office. Given that ten times as many innocent people died of starvation than those in the World Trade Centers on September 11, 2001, why is there no war on starvation as there was a so-called War on Terror? Is not starvation, especially if preventable, a form of inflicted terror by those who profit from it or even stand by and do nothing? Where is the Manhattan Project for global hunger? Where is the commitment to national security though unilateral starvation relief? Where is the outrage in the corporate news media with pictures of dying children and an analysis of those that benefit from hunger? Could the same not be said for those that die due to lack of healthcare coverage, to the tune of 45,000 a year?

While news stories on realities of global hunger remain under-covered in the US, topics closer to home are often ignored as well. For example, racial inequality remains problematic in the US. People of color continue to experience disproportionately high rates of poverty, unemployment, police profiling, repressive incarceration and school segregation.

According to a recent civil rights report from UCLA, “Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21^st Century Challenge,” by Gary Orfield, schools in the US are currently forty-four percent non-white, and minorities are rapidly emerging as the majority of public school students.  Latinos and Blacks are the two largest minority groups. However, Black and Latino students attend schools more segregated today than during the civil rights era. Over fifty years after the US Supreme Court case: Brown VS Board of Education, schools remain separate and not equal. Orfield’s study shows that public schools in the Western states, including California, suffer from the most severe segregation in the US, rather than schools in the southern states as many people believe.[9]

This new form of segregation is primarily based on how urban areas are geographically organized—as Cornel West so passionately describes— into vanilla suburbs and chocolate cities.[10] Schools remain highly unequal, both in terms of money, and qualified teachers and curriculum.  Unequal education leads to diminishing access to colleges and future jobs for the afflicted demographics. Non-white schools are segregated by poverty as well as race. These “chocolate” low-income public schools are where most of the nation’s drop-outs occur, leading to large numbers of virtually unemployable young people of color struggling to survive in a troubled economy.

Diminished opportunity for students of color invariably creates greater privileges for whites. White privilege is a concept that is challenging for many whites to accept.  Whites like to think of themselves as hard working individuals whose achievements are due to deserved personal efforts. In many cases this is partly true; hard work in college often pays off in many ways. Nonetheless many whites find it difficult to accept that geographically and structurally based racism remains a significant barrier for many students of color. Whites often say racism is in the past, that Americans need not think about it today. Yet, inequality stares back at society daily from the barrios, ghettos, and from behind prisons walls.

For these factual stories to not be reported upon by major media outlets is clearly a matter of censorship and top down information control. The aforementioned are two riveting examples of a failure of the free press to accurately inform the public about critical issues facing our global and national society. Sadly, there are many more examples.

Fourth Estate Sale:  Censorship, the “Free” Press, and Truth Emergency

“Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” –A.J. Liebling

The corporate media in the US like to think of themselves as the official, most accurate source for news reporting of the day. The New York Times motto of “all the news that’s fit to print” is a clear example of this perspective as is CNN’s “most trusted name in news” and at Fox News they go so far as to remind news consumers “we report, you decide” and that they are “fair and balanced.” However, with corporate media coverage dependent on fewer reporters as a result of downsizing that increasingly focus on a narrow range of celebrity updates, news from official government and institutional sources (almost three quarters of cited sources), and sensationalized crimes and disasters, the self-justification of being the most fit or trusted is no longer valid for American journalism. This shift away from fact-based, socially relevant reporting constitutes a principle form censorship at the base of this ongoing truth emergency. However, this is not the only form of censorship.

There is a growing need to broaden understanding of censorship in the US. The dictionary definition of direct government control of news as censorship is no longer adequate. The private corporate media in the US significantly under covers and/or deliberately censors numerous important news stories every year. The corporate media in the United States are ignoring valid news stories, even when based on university quality research. It appears that certain topics are simply forbidden inside the mainstream corporate media today.  To openly cover these news stories would stir up questions regarding “inconvenient truths” that many in the US power structure would rather avoid. An example of one group that is doing this is Project Censored, and the Project has done so every year since 1976. They cover the inconvenient truths, expose the junk news patterns, and call for a more independent, research driven, transparent and fact-based system of reporting on all relevant topics for our democratic society.

Some of these inconvenient truths that remain taboo for corporate media include civilian death rates in Iraq, post-9/11 erosion of civil liberties, levels of violence by side in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the coup in Haiti, election fraud in the US, and questions concerning the very events and subsequent official investigations of 9/11. Here are some more details of the ongoing truth emergency.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and a professional survey company in Great Britain, Opinion Research Business (ORB) report that the United States is directly responsible for over one million Iraqi deaths since our invasion six and half years ago.  In a January 2008 report, ORB reported that, “survey work confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003 . . . We now estimate that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been of the order of 1,033,000.” A 2006 Johns Hopkins study confirmed that US aerial bombing in civilian neighborhoods caused over a third of these deaths and that over half the deaths are directly attributable to US forces. Iraqi civilian death levels in the summer of 2009 likely now exceed 1.2 million. John Tirman, executive director and principal research scientist at MIT’s Center for International Studies writes in The Nation, January 28, 2009, “we have, at present between 800,000 and 1.3 million “excessive Deaths” as we approach the six-year anniversary of this war.[11]

Some common themes of the most censored stories from 2006-2008 were the systemic erosion of human rights and civil liberties in both the US and the world at large. The corporate media ignored the fact that habeas corpus can now be suspended for anyone by order of the President. With the approval of Congress, the Military Commissions Act (MCA) of 2006, signed by Bush on October 17, 2006, allows for the suspension of habeas corpus for US citizens and non-citizens alike. While media, including a lead editorial in The New York Times, October 19, 2006, have given false comfort that American citizens will not be the victims of the measures legalized by this Act, the law is quite clear that ‘any person’ can be targeted. The text in the MCA allows for the institution of a military alternative to the constitutional justice system for “any person” regardless of American citizenship. The MCA effectively does away with habeas corpus rights for all people living in the US deemed by the president to be enemy combatants.[12] In September 2009, President Obama quietly pledged to continue the program as it was instituted by the Bush administration with little fanfare.[13]

A law enacted allowing the government to more easily institute martial law was another civil liberties story ignored by the corporate media in 2007. The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 allows the president to station military troops anywhere in the United States and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to “suppress public disorder.” The law in effect repealed the Posse Comitatus Act from 1878, which had placed strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement in the US marking an end to the post-Civil War Reconstruction period.[14]

Additionally, under the code-name Operation FALCON (Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally) three federally coordinated mass arrests occurred between April 2005 and October 2006. In an unprecedented move, more than 30,000 “fugitives” were arrested in the largest dragnets in the nation’s history. By 2008, the number grew to 54,000. Unfortunately, most of those arrested were not, in fact, violent criminals according to the government’s own statistics. The operations, coordinated by the Justice Department and Homeland Security, directly involved over 960 agencies (state, local and federal) and are the first time in US history that all of the domestic police agencies have been put under the direct control of the federal government. As of July 2009, the sixth effort of the FALCON raids has increased the number of “dangerous fugitive felons” arrested to more than 91,000 (of which only 991 were murder suspects, and only 2,269 were gang members despite that these were the very groups they were claiming to round up).[15]

Finally, the term “terrorism” has been dangerously expanded to include any acts that interfere, or promotes interference, with the operations of animal enterprises. The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA), signed into law on November 27, 2006, expands the definition of an “animal enterprise” to any business that “uses or sells animals or animal products.” The law essentially defines protesters, boycotters or picketers of businesses in the US as terrorists. This is a clear infringement of first amendment rights.[16]

Most people in the US believe in the Bill of Rights and value personal freedoms. Yet, the corporate media in the recent past have failed to adequately inform the public about important changes concerning civil rights and liberties.  Despite the busy lives people lead, they want to be informed about serious decisions made by the powerful, and rely on the corporate media to keep us abreast of significant changes. When corporate media fail to cover these issues, what else can it be called it but censorship? These are issues are of considerable concern for the public at large. Conclusions on such matters can only be arrived upon after scrupulous analysis of all known facts. Given that all the facts about these stories are not widely reported, if at all, this leads to a significant crisis for any democracy.

On October 25, 2005 the American Civil Liberties (ACLU) posted to their website forty-four autopsy reports, acquired from American military sources, covering the deaths of civilians who died while in US military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2002-2004. The autopsy reports provided proof of widespread torture by US forces. A press release by ACLU announcing the deaths was immediately picked up by Associate Press (AP) wire service making the story available to US corporate media nationwide. A thorough check of Nexis-Lexis and Proquest library data bases showed that at least ninety-nine percent of the daily papers in the US did not pick up the story, nor did AP ever conduct follow up coverage on the issue.[17]

Not only do daily newspapers fail to cover the inconvenient truths presented by their own wire service, as illustrated in the aforementioned AP example, but the wire service itself is filled with internal bias.  AP is a non-profit cooperative news wire service. The AP, with 3,700 employees, has 242 bureaus worldwide that deliver news reports twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week to 121 countries in five languages including English, German, Dutch, French, and Spanish. In the US alone, AP reaches 1,700 daily, weekly, non-English, college newspapers, and 5,000 radio and television stations. AP reaches over a billion people every day via print, radio, or television.

Bias and censorship is also evident in stories concerning the ongoing Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Alison Weir, Joy Ellison, and Peter Weir of the organization If Americans Knew conducted research on the AP’s reporting of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The study was a statistical analysis of the AP newswire in the year 2004, looking comparatively at the numbers of Israeli and Palestinian deaths reported. In 2004 there were 141 reports of Israeli deaths in AP headlines and lead paragraphs, while in reality there were 108 Israeli deaths. During this same period, AP reported 543 Palestinian deaths, while 821 Palestinians had actually been killed. The ratio of actual number of Israeli conflict deaths to Palestinian deaths in 2004 was 1:7, yet AP reported deaths of Israelis to Palestinians at a 2:1 ratio.

The same could be said of AP’s reporting of children’s deaths. Nine reports of Israeli children’s deaths were reported in AP headlines and leading paragraphs in 2004, while eight actually occurred. The AP reported only twenty-seven Palestinian children deaths when 179 children actually died. While there were twenty-two times more Palestinian children’s deaths than Israeli children’s deaths, the AP reported 113 percent of Israeli children’s deaths and fifteen percent of Palestinian children’s deaths. In fact, the actual deaths ratios for the three week bombings of Gaza January 2009 were over a hundred Palestinians killed per single Israel death.[18]

Looking to Haiti for yet another example, on February 29, 2004, AP widely reported that Haitian rebels ousted President Aristide and that the United States provided an escort to take him out of the country to a safe asylum. Within 24 hours an entirely different story emerged through independent radio. Instead of the US being the supportive facilitator of Aristide’s safety, Pacifica Radio News reported that Aristide was actually kidnapped by US forces.

AP quickly changed their story. On March 1, 2004, an AP report by Deb Riechman said, “White House officials said Aristide left willingly and that the United States aided his safe departure. But in a telephone interview with the Associated Press, Aristide said: “No. I was forced to leave.”

The last AP report of Aristide’s claiming that he had been kidnapped by the US in a State Department coup was on June 27, 2004. Since then there have been more than sixty news articles by AP including Aristide’s name. Of these stories none mentioned Aristide’s claim that he was kidnapped by the United States military. None mention the US backing of the coup. AP’s bias in favor of the State Department’s version of the Aristide’s removal seems to be a deliberate case of AP-sanctioned forgetting.

AP is a massive institutionalized bureaucracy that feeds news stories to nearly every newspaper and radio/TV station in the United States. They are so large that top-down control of single news stories is practically impossible. However, research clearly indicates a built-in bias favoring official US government positions.[19]

Reform Media Reform:  Pursuit and Reporting of Truth Emergency Issues

“Reformers who are always compromising, have not yet grasped the idea that truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.” –Elizabeth Cady Stanton

There is a literal truth emergency in the United States, not only regarding distant wars, torture camps, and doctored intelligence, but also around issues that most intimately impact our lives at home. For example, few Americans know that there has been a thirty-five year decline in real wages for most workers in the country, while the top ten percent now enjoy unparalleled wealth with strikingly low tax burdens.

George Seldes once said, “Journalism’s job is not impartial ‘balanced’ reporting. Journalism’s job is to tell the people what is really going on.” Michael Moore’s top-grossing movie Sicko is one example of telling the people what is really going on. Health care activists know that US health insurance is an extremely large and lucrative industry with the top nine companies “earning” $30 billion in profits in 2006 alone. The health-care industry represents the country’s third-largest economic sector, trailing only energy and retail among the 1,000 largest US firms.

Nevertheless, at least sixteen percent of Americans still have no health insurance whatsoever and that number will not soon decline, as insurance costs continue to rise two to three times faster than inflation. The consequences are immediate and tragic. Unpaid medical bills are now the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the country, and a recent Harvard Medical School study estimates that nearly forty-five thousand Americans die prematurely each year because they lack coverage and access to adequate care. That’s fifteen times the number of people killed on 9/11. In fact, 2,266 veterans died in 2008 due to lack of health coverage.  For a nation awash in “Support the Troops” rhetoric, bumper stickers, magnets, and other paraphernalia, it seems odd the US press largely ignored the Harvard Medical School study that discovered this troubling statistic. Yet, despite these scholarly findings, the US Congress cannot seem to pass a public option or single payer bill even though a majority of the public and health practitioners support these policies. Corporate media has largely shut these approaches out of the discussion, often even when dealing with veteran’s affairs.[20]

US private health care services differ markedly from other industrialized countries where single payer systems provide everyone with medical care as a basic human right. Unfortunately, objective media coverage and comparisons of single payer public health care with our current profit-driven corporate system are almost non-existent at this time. To protect their bloated bottom lines, private insurance companies and HMOs invest heavily in lobbyists and corporate-friendly political candidates that promote their “indispensable” role in any future health care reforms. Besides their insider political influence, these firms deploy massive advertising budgets to discourage media investigations of the economic interests shaping health policies today.

Political analysts have long counted on exit polls to be a reliable predictor of actual vote counts. The unusual discrepancy between exit poll data and the actual vote count in the 2004 election challenges that reliability. However, despite evidence of technological vulnerabilities in the voting system and a higher incidence of irregularities in swing states, this discrepancy was not scrutinized in the corporate media. They simply parroted the partisan declarations of “sour grapes” and “let’s move on” instead of providing any meaningful analysis of a highly controversial election.

The official vote count for the 2004 election showed that George W. Bush won by three million votes. But exit polls projected a victory margin of five million votes for John Kerry. This eight-million-vote discrepancy is much greater than the error margin. The overall margin of error should statistically have been under one percent. But the official result deviated from the poll projections by more than five percent—a statistical impossibility.(12)

Tens of thousands of American engaged in various social justice issues constantly witness how corporate media marginalize, denigrate or simply ignore their concerns. Activist groups working on exposing issues like 9/11 truth, election fraud, impeachable offenses, war propaganda, civil liberties abuses, torture, and many corporate-caused economic and environmental crises have been systematically excluded from mainstream news and the national conversation leading to a genuine truth emergency in the country as a whole.

A growing number of media activists are finally joining forces to address this truth emergency by developing new journalistic systems and practices of their own. They are working to reveal the common corporate denominators behind the diverse crises we face and to develop networks of trustworthy news sources that tell the people what is really going on. These activists know we need a journalism that moves beyond forensic inquiries into particular crimes and atrocities, and exposes wider patterns of corruption, propaganda and illicit political control to rouse the nation to reject a malignant corporate status quo.

An international truth emergency, now in evidence, is the result of a lack of fact based, transparent, and truthful reporting on fraudulent elections, compromised 9/11 investigations, illegal preemptive wars, compounded by top down corporate media propaganda across the spectrum on public issues. Glenn Beck was able to say on national Fox News television in June of 2009 that the 9/11 Truth movement openly supported the shooting at the Holocaust Museum. Beck claimed that 9/11 Truth proponents saw shooter James von Brunn as a “hero.” Beck’s statement is completely without factual merit and represents a hyperrealist slamming of a group already slanderously pre-labeled by the corporate and much of the progressive media as “conspiracy theorists.” These ad hominem attacks are no substitute for factual reporting and fair coverage. In fact, they are simply lies. Further, journalists are supposed to be trained to ferret out conspiracies against the public, not shy away from them for fear of being attacked.

Conspiracies tend to be actions by small groups of individuals rather than massive collective plots by entire governments. However, small groups can be dangerous, especially when the individuals have significant power in huge public and private bureaucracies. Corporate boards of directors meet in closed rooms to plan to how best to maximize profit. If they knowingly make plans that hurt others, violate laws, undermine ethics, or show favoritism to friends, they are involved in a conspiracy.

In addition to attacking, labeling, and the reporting of falsehoods, another method of critics of unofficial investigations into 9/11, election fraud, and other controversial issues is to lump together all the questions and/or lines of inquiry as if they all have equal validity.  Obviously, they do not.  This, however, allows critics to dismiss fact-based, transparent inquiries into major problems with official explanations of these crucial matters by focusing on the most absurd claims only.  These are fallacies including overgeneralizations, straw persons, appeals to questionable authority, and red herrings that provide distractions from actual fact-based, scientific investigations (or ones based on actual journalist principles).  These tactics avoid the debates about truth entirely.  We the people must not be afraid to openly discuss, research, and validate these issues.

Here is yet another case in point:  former Brigham Young University physics professor Dr. Steven E. Jones and almost 1,000 scientific professionals in the fields of architecture, engineering, and physics have now concluded that the official explanation for the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings is implausible according to laws of physics. Especially troubling is the collapse of WTC 7, a forty-seven-story building that was not hit by planes, yet dropped in its own “footprint” at nearly freefall speed in the same manner as a controlled demolition.

To support his theory, Jones and eight other scientists conducted chemical research on the dust from the World Trade centers. Their research results were published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal Open Chemical Physics Journal. The authors write, “We have discovered distinctive red/gray chips in all the samples. The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material and highly energetic.” Thermite is a pyrotechnic composition of a metal powder and a metal oxide, which produces an aluminothermic reaction known as a thermite reaction and is used in controlled demolitions of buildings.  This data raises significant critical questions about the events of 9/11, regardless of what one believes.  This should be a part of our political discourse given how much of the policy in the past eight years has been based on assumptions about 9/11. In a free society, this type of inquiry would be a matter of civic principle, not national ridicule, which it what it has largely been when it has not been totally ignored by corporate media. To challenge the official narrative of 9/11 in the US is akin to denying the existence of god, the ultimate blasphemy or heresy, in a theocratic culture.[22]

These are some of the reasons we are in a truth emergency, which is predicated on the inability of many to distinguish between what is real and what is not­. Corporate media, Fox in particular, offers “news” that creates a hyper-reality of real world problems and issues.  Consumers of corporate news media—especially those whose understandings are framed primarily from that medium alone—are embedded in a state of excited delirium of knowinglessness. This lack of factual awareness of issues like election fraud in 2000 and 2004, and the increasing evidence of 9/11 Commission Report inaccuracies and omissions, leaves people politically paralyzed. The real free press is supposed to inform and embolden citizen action, not distract and misinform to the point of a dysfunctional democracy.

To counter knowinglessness, media activists need to include truth emergency issues as important elements of radical-progressive media reform efforts. We must not be afraid of corporate media labeling, or any other, and instead build truth from the bottom up, with all available facts. Critical thinking and fact-finding are the basis of democracy, and we must stand for the maximization of informed participatory democracy at the lowest possible level in society.

The truth movement is seeking to discover, in this moment of Constitutional crisis, ecological peril and widening war, ways in which top investigative journalists whistleblowers and independent media activists can transform how Americans perceive and protect their world. In order to maintain democracy, the free press must thrive. We the people must become the media. Our survival as a free society depends upon it.[23]

In Conclusion:  Words from our Revolutionary Sponsors

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” –George Orwell

The purpose of the free press, as enunciated by key founders of America, was to keep the citizenry informed, engaged, and in dialogue with one another about the crucial issues of the day. The health of any democracy can be diagnosed by the degree to which information flows freely in the culture. Anything that interferes with that free flow of information is a form of censorship, which acts to derail, distort, and deny the efficacy of any true democratic experiment.

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison supported a vigorous public arena of discourse, debate, and competing ideas. In short, they wanted to encourage the process of dialogue and free expression as vehicles to achieve the best of democratic possibilities.

Jefferson opined that newspapers would better serve the country, by reporting the facts of matters at hand, than any form of government. In his first inaugural address, Jefferson said, “If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” Now imagine Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly advocating honest, open dialogue on their corporate media programs.

Madison warned, “A popular Government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives.” Now envision that Americans demand that the truth be spoken across the so-called public airwaves. The sharing of knowledge becomes a dialogue that leads to informed opinions and choices, ones that measure up to the national values and principles in the founding documents.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness are not just words on parchment. They are the very concepts that make us humane in the modern world. The media, the supposed free press, should be encouraging robust dialogues while fighting for the future of all Americans, not just for the insurance companies, banks, big pharma, and the military industrial complex. In keeping with the founders’ notions of natural rights and intent in providing for the general welfare, we would do well to note that healthcare is a human right, workers have the right to the fruits of their labor, environmental degradation is a crime against humanity, and war is terrorism. These positions should all be part of national discourse in a truly free press. Where are these voices in the corporate media cacophony?

Instead, the privileged institutions of corporate media are daily miring the public in cynicism (reports of personal scandals, rumors of rampant corruption, and Congressional stagnation), rationalizing the populace into deep denial (falsely claiming the recession is over while key public indicators on unemployment, wage losses, and foreclosures refute this), and leaving taxpayers footing a multi-trillion dollar tab for Wall Street bailouts and illegal wars (TARP, Iraq, Afghanistan, but nothing left for the public at home). A truly free press would herald these vile decrees and deeds as those of charlatans and demagogues. We must be the change we wish to see and we must not rely on spoon-fed, top down, corporate media propaganda. We must become the media in the process of sharing knowledge with each other on the road to a better world. Since the corporate media are not in the business of news and are not beholden to empirical truths, rather, only to shareholder profits and their own bottom line, they should not be trusted.

If a failing corporate media system ensconced in hyper-reality creates an excited delirium of knowinglessness, that system must be declared incapable of accurately informing the citizenry. The public must turn to independent journalism based in muckraking traditions, with transparent fact-based reporting that asks the tough and critical questions of itself and its leaders. An actual free press would provide factual knowledge and encourage us to engage with each other in our local communities on a daily basis in the quest to solve societal problems.[24]

This is possible with our collective efforts, so long as we simultaneously reject the projected imaginings of the corporate media profiteers and their industry of illusion. This must be the crucial focal point of media reform, which actually is more of a media revolution. The health and meaningfulness of our cultural dialogue, as well as the future of our republic, may well depend upon how swiftly and significantly we address the current Truth Emergency and what we do about it.

________________________________________________________________________

Mickey Huff is Associate Professor of History, Diablo Valley College; former associate director of Project Censored; Executive Committee, Media Freedom Foundation and Media Freedom International

Peter Phillips is Professor of Sociology, Sonoma State University; former director of Project Censored; President, Media Freedom Foundation and Media Freedom International

The authors would like to give thanks to former Project Censored interns Frances A. Capell and Andrew Hobbs for their research assistance and contributions.

2 For more on under-covered stories of the time, see chapter one, stories one and two, from Peter Phillips and Andrew Roth, Censored 2008, (New York, Seven Stories, Press, 2007) and Peter Phillips and Andrew Roth, Censored 2009, (New York, Seven Stories, Press, 2008); or see Censored 2008 and Censored 2009 stories online at http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/category/y-2008/ and http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/category/y-2009/ respectively.

3 Georgina Dickenson, “14-times Olympic gold medal winner Michael Phelps caught with cannabis pipe,” News of the World, February 1, 2009, online at http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/150832/14-times-Olympic-gold-medal-winner-Michael-Phelps-caught-with-bong-cannabis-pipe.html; “Phelps acknowledges photo of him smoking a bong,” FOXSports.com, February 2nd, 2009, http://msn.foxsports.com/other/story/9160136/Report:-Picture-shows-Phelps-using-bong; “Michael Phelps escapes pot charges,” The Vancouver Sun, February 16, 2009, http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/Michael+Phelps+escapes+charges/1295645/story.html; for marijuana arrests see http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/20-marijuana-arrests-set-new-record/.

[4] “Please Stop Calling Jessica Simpson Fat,” http://www.nbcbayarea.com/around_town/the_scene/Stop-Calling-Jessica-Simpson-Fat.html, February 6, 2009; “Jessica Simpson Shocks Fans with Noticeably Fuller Figure,” FOXNews, January 27, 2009, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,483204,00.html; Marcus Baram, “Obama Talks Football, Troop Withdrawal, Malia and Sasha’s School, and Jessica Simpson,” Huffington Post, February 1, 2009, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/01/obama-talks-football-troo_n_162971.html.

[5] For further reading on some of the themes here, see Rick Shenkman. Just How Stupid Are We?  Facing the Truth About the American Voter (New York:  Basic Books, 2008); For data in this paragraph from the on what Americans know, see pp. 13-14. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press study, “Press Accuracy Rating Hits Two Decade Low Public Evaluations of the News Media: 1985-2009,” September 13, 2009. Online at http://people-press.org/report/543/; For more on the Truth Emergency concept and movement, see http://truthemergency.us which is the website for the conference co-organized by the authors of this piece in January of 2008.

[6] From the Share the Wolrd’s Resources website at http://www.stwr.org/globalization/world-bank-poverty-figures-what-do-they-mean.html.

[7] See http://www.starvation.net/

[8] See the report at http://www.grain.org/articles/?id=39 and for more details see http://www.grain.org/foodcrisis/..

[9] See the UCLA study from the Civil Rights Project “Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge” by Gary Orfield at http://www.scribd.com/doc/11021700/Reviving-the-Goal-of-an-Integrated-Society. Also online at http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/2-us-schools-are-more-segregated-today-than-in-the-1950s-source/.

[10] Professor Cornell West quoted from a talk at USC, November 16, 2006, http://www.blackvoicesonline.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticle&ustory_id=c6224b88-e419-47f9-bb1b-dc76dadb60e5.

[11] Phillips, Censored 2009, pp. 19-25.  This story is the number one censored story for Project Censored in this volume, archived online at http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/1-over-one-million-iraqi-deaths-caused-by-us-occupation/ and for the earlier casualty numbers see http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-polya070207.htm. John Tirman, “Bush’s War Totals,” The Nation, January 28, 2009, online at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090216/tirman.

[12] Phillips, Censored 2008, pp. 35-44.  Online at http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/1-no-habeas-corpus-for-any-person/ and http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/2-bush-moves-toward-martial-law/;

13 For President Obama’s continuation of this policy at Guantanamo Bay see http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2342276720090924?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

14 Phillips, Censored 2008, chapter one, stories one and two; See these top Project Censored Stories for 2007 and 2008 online at http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/1-no-habeas-corpus-for-any-person/ and http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/2-bush-moves-toward-martial-law/.

15 Phillips, Censored 2008, chapter one, story six; see the story online at http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/6-operation-falcon-raids/; for updates see the official government site for the operation at http://www.usmarshals.gov/falcon09/index.html.

16 Phillips, Censored 2008, chapter one, story twenty; online at http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/20-terror-act-against-animal-activists/, or see the Vermont Journal of Environmental Law, March 9, 2007, http://ccrjustice.org/learn-more/faqs/factsheet:-animal-enterprise-terrorism-act-%28aeta%29; also see the Center for Constitutional Rights at http://ccrjustice.org/learn-more/faqs/factsheet:-animal-enterprise-terrorism-act-%28aeta%29.

[17] For more on the ACLU study “U.S. Operatives Killed Detainees During Interrogations in Afghanistan and Iraq” from 10/24/2005, see http://www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights/gen/21236prs20051024.html; and for more on the bias of the Associated Press see Project Censored’s study online at http://www.projectcensored.org/articles/story/a-study-of-bias-in-the-associated-press/.

[18] For more on Allison Weir’s data at If Americans Knew see http://www.ifamericansknew.org/.

[19] See Project Censored’s previously cited study of AP bias for details on Haiti and more online at http://www.projectcensored.org/articles/story/a-study-of-bias-in-the-associated-press/.

[20] Reuters, “Study links 45,000 U.S. deaths to lack of insurance,” September 17, 2009, online http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE58G6W520090917. Though this was reported, it seems to have had little impact on the political policy discussion on healthcare reform. For the Veteran’s study, see Democracy Now!, “Study: Over 2,200 US Veterans Died in 2008 Due to Lack of Health Insurance,” November, 11, 2009, online at http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/11/study_over_2_200_us_veterans.

[21] Peter Phillips, Censored 2006, “Another Year of distorted Election Coverage,” (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005, p.48).

[22] The Open Chemical Physics Journal, Volume 2, 2009, ISSN: 1874-4125, Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe pp.7-31, Authors: Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, Kevin R. Ryan, Frank M. Legge, Daniel Farnsworth, Gregg Roberts, James R. Gourley, Bradley R. Larsen, online http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM. For more on architects and engineers supporting new 9/11 investigations see the research of Richard Gage, AIA, and other scientific professionals challenging the official reports on the events of 9/11 online http://ae911truth.org, and for broader analysis and questions surrounding 9/11 itself, see Professor David Ray Griffin’s work at http://davidraygriffin.com/ and research scientist Jim Hoffman’s work at http://911research.wtc7.net/index.html. For more on 9/11, American mythology, and the role corporate media play in the propaganda of historical construction see Mickey Huff and Paul Rea, “Deconstructing Deceit: 9/11, the Media, and Myth Information,” online at http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20090309170952776 or in Phillips, Censored 2009, chapter fourteen.

[23] For more on how to Be the Media, see David Mathison’s website http://bethemedia.org. For more on Project Censored and the Media Freedom Foundation see http://projectcensored.org and http://mediafreedominternational.org. For more on the themes developed in this article, see Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff, Censored 2010 (New York:  Seven Stories Press, 2009).

[24] For more on the concept of hyper-reality, see Jean Baudrillard, “Simulacra and Simulations,” in Selected Writings, Mark Poster, ed. (Stanford:  Stanford University Press, 1988, pp. 166-184); also see John Tiffin and Nobuyoshi Terashima, eds., Hyperreality: Paradigm For The Third Millennium, (New York:  Routledge, 2001).

This piece was written as a chapter to the forthcoming book “Media and Social Justice” edited by Sue Curry Jansen, Lora Taub-Pervizpour, and Jeff Pooley of Muhlenberg College.Similar Posts:

• Message from Project Censored Director Mickey Huff
• Project Censored In Washington DC March 19 and 20
• Project Censored Needs Your Support!
• The Release of Censored 2012 in September Celebrates 35 Years of Project Censored

For 35 years Project Censored has been committed to bringing the most vital stories to public awareness with the belief that genuine democracy depends on freedom of the press. The new Censored 2011 yearbook has drawn international attention to some of the most important under-reported stories of our times and we are researching many stories for our next book already. You can see all the nominations for 2010-11 stories on our Validated News Sites. We continue to need your vital support of Project Censored as we transition and expand our work to bring forth the most important news stories of the year both in print and online.

Independent media, both on the local and national level, is at risk. This is just one of the reasons that Project Censored and the Media Freedom Foundation are now hosting the Morning Mix Radio show on KPFA every Thursday morning at 8:00 AM PST.

Project Censored is not only working on new underreported stories but spreading the word via ourDaily Censored website, Facebook page and our daily news site featuring independent news from many of the most reliable sources around the world.

Project Censored is also involved in an ongoing and growing collaboration with the college and university affiliates program through Media Freedom International. Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff not only continue to pursue censored media with this effort, but in addition there are also now over 30 affiliates with more on the way, including some from Latin America, Europe, and Asia.  The 2011 book contains work from eleven of the affiliates, with a few placing stories in the top ten.  

The MFI website will be a home base for affiliate work and continue to publish Validated Independent News stories and more detailed academic, investigative reports year round in the effort to combat censorship and the ongoing Truth Emergency in the United States and around the world.

As Mickey Huff begins his second year as Project Censored director we would like to personally ask each of you to consider a gift of support so that we may continue our work.  Our project requires us to raise $100,000 every year and given the cutbacks in the California public college systems, your support is more vital to us now more than ever. Please make your tax deductible donation at http://www.projectcensored.org/about/support/

Sincerely,

Mickey Huff, Director Project Censored

In cooperation with Peter Phillips, President: Media Freedom Foundation

Media Freedom Foundation is the Fiscal Non-profit Fund Raising Corporation that Supports Project Censored and related Media Freedom Efforts.

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The Daily Censored News website has been around for one year now and we are getting stronger by the day. We now have over 1,000 people each day visiting the site, over 70 sites linked in, and almost 350 organizations following our newsfeed. Although we have grown tremendously over the past year, in order to fight corporate biased media we need more help.

If you or someone you know likes to blog about what is going on in the world today, here is your chance. We are now accepting new Guest Bloggers and Permanent Writers for The Daily Censored News. You will have your chance to say what you think about current issues, ideas, and topics not commonly covered in the mainstream media. You can contact Adam Armstrong at adam@dailycensored.com if interested. Please include a small biography and a picture of yourself if you would like to start blogging. We will set up an account for you and get you on your way to exposing the REAL news.

We would also like to thank our current contributors for their recent entries. Here are a couple recent entries:

Why Does the Government Ignore Our Wishes? By Mark J Adams MBA

http://dailycensored.com/2009/09/11/why-does-the-government-ignore-our-wishes/

Citizens Prevented from Making Government Accountable by the Denial of Access to Impartial Judicial Review of Malfeasance.  By Isidoro Rodriguez

http://dailycensored.com/2009/09/21/citizens-prevented-from-making-government-accountable-by-the-denial-of-access-to-impartial-judicial-review-of-malfeasance/

How Bush’s Court May Undo Democracy. By Dr. Michael I. Niman

http://dailycensored.com/2009/09/20/how-bushs-court-may-undo-democracy/

Thank you for your continued support. If you are involved in an organization or website and would like to exchange links or are interested in advertising, please contact:

Adam Armstrong at Adam@dailycensored.com

For more information about corporate media and censored news visit http://www.projectcensored.org

And http://www.mediafreedominternational.org

P.S. If you would like to support The Daily Censored but don’t want to contribute you can comment on any article and remember, clicking on the Ads helps to support the site.Similar Posts:

• Message from Project Censored Director Mickey Huff
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Here’s the rest of the story. The Top Censored Stories of 2008-09, edited by Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff in cooperation with students and faculty at Sonoma State University and numerous other colleges and universities, is to be officially released September 30, 2009. The Censored 2010 yearbook features the twenty-five most important censored news stories of 2008-09 as selected by Project Censored. The annual yearbook from Project Censored at Sonoma State University is available in bookstores nationwide from Seven Stories Press or can be ordered on-line in both English and Spanish at www.projectcensored.org Project Censored was the winner of the 2008 PEN Oakland Censorship Award.

Censored 2010 provides over 400 pages of media criticism and analysis from dozens of researchers and academics with assistance from students on nine college and university campuses. “It is the most comprehensive yearbook we have ever released,” said Peter Phillips, recent past director of Project Censored.  After thirteen yearbooks, Dr. Phillips  turned over the directorship of Project Censored in the summer of 2009 to Ben Frymer assistant professor of Liberal Studies at Sonoma State University. Dr. Frymer will continue the thirty-four year tradition of researching and publishing the most important news stories not covered by the corporate media in the United States. “We are carrying on the research started by our founder Dr. Carl Jensen in 1976,” stated Dr. Frymer.  Carl Jenson celebrated his 80^th birthday this year and remains active on the non-profit board of directors of the Media Freedom Foundation—the 502-C-3 fund-raising organization for Project Censored. (http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/)

Also featured this year in Censored 2010, is the annual Déjà vu chapter with  updates on the most significant news stories still not covered in the corporate media from previous years; the Junk Food News chapter addressing the most frivolous news stories that were covered in the media such as Michael Phelps smoking of an illegal substance and the presidential first puppy; and a special chapter on the positive news stories of hope and citizen activism so often left out of our corporate media.

Censored 2010 welcomes back the biting political cartoons of Khalil Bendib and contributions from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s annual Fear and Favor review, the Center for Media and Democracy’s special report on pentagon propaganda, and the annual international report form the London based Index on Censorship.

“We are honored to have international independent journalist Dahr Jamail provide a strong introduction to this year’s book,” said Mickey Huff co-editor. “Jamail has won numerous awards for his work on the Middle-East and represents one of the best examples of independent investigative reporting in this decade,” added Huff.

As Peter Phillip’s final yearbook, Censored 2010 address many of the criticisms regarding Project Censored efforts over the past fourteen years.  “We take on the long time critics who claim that Project Censored is a Left-leaning organization,” said Dr. Phillips. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Why stories about the powerful in government and big business are left leaning is beyond our understanding. It seems that this is just good journalism—the journalism that is missing in the corporate media—it could just as well be middle-leaning journalism or right-leaning journalism. Project Censored supports the news stories that hold the powerful in society accountable for their decisions and actions, which is what a free press is supposed to do.” Phillips added. Phillips was the 2009 recipient of the Dallas Smythe Award from the Union for Democratic Communications.

Chapters in Censored 2010 include topics on the Truth Emergency in the US, the hyperreality of television news, election fraud in 2008, issues from the World Water Forum, human trafficking, Lesbian and Gay standpoint films, and the importance of  expanding investigative research to support media democracy. Authors of these chapters include academics and media researchers Brad Friedman, Aashika Damodor, Andrew Roth, James Dean and Andrew Hobbs.

All the  top censored news stories for 2010 are listed below.  Full text on each story is available online at www.projectcensored.org and in the annual yearbook. Media and college instructors may contact Seven Stories Press for review copies.  (crystal@sevenstories.com)

The Top Censored Stories of 2008 and 2009

1. US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street

Sources:

Truthout, October 2, 2008

Title: “Lax Oversight? Maybe $64 Million to DC Pols Explains It”

Author: Greg Gordon

Capitol Eye, February 10, 2009

Title: “Congressmen Hear from TARP Recipients Who Funded Their Campaigns”

Author: Lindsay Renick Mayer

Rolling Stone, March 19, 2009

Title: “The Big Takeover”

Author: Matt Taibbi

Student Researchers: Jocelyn Rapp, Indian River State College

Caitlin Ruxton, Sonoma State University

Faculty Evaluators: Samual Mikhail PhD Economics, Indian River State College

Chip McAuley, PhD,  Sonoma State University

Federal lawmakers responsible for overseeing the US economy have received millions of dollars from Wall Street firms. Since 2001, eight of the most troubled firms have donated $64.2 million to congressional candidates, presidential candidates and the Republican and Democratic parties. As senators, Barack Obama and John McCain received a combined total of $3.1 million. The donors include investment bankers Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, insurer American International Group, and mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

2. US Schools are More Segregated Today than in the 1950s

Source:

The Civil Rights Project, UCLA, January 2009

Title: “Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21^st Century Challenge”

Author: Gary Orfield

Student Researchers:  Rena Hawkins, Southwest Minnesota State University and

Melissa Robinson at Sonoma state University

Faculty Evaluator:  Sangeeta Sinha, PhD , Southwest Minnesota State University

Schools in the United States are more segregated today than they have been in more than four decades. Millions of non-white students are locked into “dropout factory” high schools, where huge percentages do not graduate, and few are well prepared for college or a future in the US economy.

3. Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates

Sources:

Al Jazeera English, October 11, 2008

Title: “Toxic waste behind Somali piracy”

Author: Najad Abdullahi

Huffington Post, January 4, 2009

Title: “You are being lied to about pirates”

Author: Johann Hari

WardheerNews, January 8, 2009

Title: “The Two Piracies in Somalia:  Why the World Ignores the Other”

Author: Mohamed Abshir Waldo

Student Researcher:  Christine Wilson

Faculty Evaluator:  Andre Bailey, EOP Advisor

Sonoma State University

The international community has come out in force to condemn and declare war on the Somali fishermen pirates, while discreetly protecting the illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fleets from around the world that have been poaching and dumping toxic waste in Somali waters since the fall of the Somali government eighteen years ago.

4. Nuclear Waste Pools in North Carolina

Source:

CounterPunch, August 9, 2008

Title: “Pools of Fire”

Author: Jeffrey St. Clair

Student Researchers: Krisden Kidd and Karene Schelert

Faculty Evaluator: Heidi LaMoreaux, PhD

Sonoma State University

One of the most lethal patches of ground in North America is located in the backwoods of North Carolina, where Shearon Harris nuclear plant is housed and owned by Progress Energy. The plant contains the largest radioactive waste storage pools in the country.

5. Europe Blocks US Toxic Products

Sources:Scientific American, September 30, 2008Title: “European Chemical Clampdown Reaches Across Atlantic”Author: David Biello Environmental Defense Fund, September 30, 2008Title: “How Europe’s New Chemical Rules Affect US” Democracy Now! February 24, 2009Title: “US Lags Behind Europe in Regulating Toxicity of Everyday Products”Author: Mark Schapiro Student Researchers: Annie Sexton, Gwendolyn Brack, Hallie Fischer, Bernadette Gorman,Paige Henderson, Daryl Mowrey, and Taylor Prodromos at De Pauw UniversityAnd Caitlin Ruxton, Sonoma State UniversityFaculty Evaluators: Jeanette Pope, Professor of Geology, DePauw Universityand Robert Girling, PhD, Sonoma State University

US deregulation of toxic substances, such as lead in lipsticks, mercury in electronics, and phthalates (endocrine disruptors) in baby toys, may not only pose disastrous consequences to our health, but also to our economic and political status in the world.  International markets are moving toward a European model of insisting on environmental and consumer safety. Hundreds of companies located in the US produce or import hundreds of chemicals designated as dangerous by the European Union.

6. Lobbyists Buy Congress

Source:

Open Secrets.org

Title: “Washington Lobbying Grew to $3.2 Billion Last Year, Despite Economy”

Authors: Center for Responsive Politics

Student Researchers: Alan Grady and Leora Johnson

Faculty Evaluator: John Kramer, PhD

Sonoma State University

According to a study by The Center for Responsive Politics, special interests paid Washington lobbyists $3.2 billion in 2008—more than any other year on record. This was a 13.7 percent increase from 2007 (which broke the record by 7.7 percent over 2006).

7. Obama’s Military Appointments Have Corrupt Past

Sources:

ConsortiumNews.com, November 13, 2008

Title: “The Danger of Keeping Robert Gates”

Author: Robert Parry

Global Research, February 13, 2009

Title: “Obama’s Defense Department Appointees- The 3.4 Trillion Dollar Question”

Author: Andrew Hughes

Democracy Now! January 7, 2009

Title: “Obama Nominee Admiral Dennis Blair Aided perpetrators of 1999 church Killings in East Timor”

Interviewee: Allan Nairn

The Hill, November 24, 2008

Title: “Ties to Chevron, Boeing Raise Concern on Possible NSA Pick”

Author: Roxana Tiron

Student Researcher: Chris McManus

Faculty Evaluator: Diana Grant, PhD

Sonoma State University

Obama’s retention of Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense makes Gates the first appointment from an outgoing administration of opposing party to be kept in the position. Gates served on the board of directors of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), which reported $7.5 billion earnings in 2005. SAIC is involved in everything from intelligence gathering to Iraq reconstruction for the Pentagon.

8. Bailed out Banks and America’s Wealthiest Cheat IRS Out of Billions

Sources:

Bloomberg, December 16, 2008

Title: “Goldman Sachs’s Tax Rate Drops to 1% or $14 Million”

Author: Christine Harper

The Huffington Post, February 23, 2009

Title “Gimme Shelter:  Tax Evasion and the Obama Administration”

Author: Thomas B. Edsall

Student Researcher: Valerie Janssen,  Southwest Minnesota State

and Aimee Drew, Sonoma State University

Faculty Evaluators: BC Franson, JD, Southwest Minnesota State

Robert Girling, PhD, Sonoma State University

A 2008 study done by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that eighty-three of the top publicly held US companies have operations in tax havens like the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and the Virgin Islands. Fourteen of these companies, including AIG, Bank of America, and Citigroup, received money from the government bailout. The GAO also reported that activities of Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) are directly connected to tax avoidance.

9. US Arms Used for War Crimes in Gaza

Sources:
Human Rights Watch, March 25, 2009
Title: “White Phosphorus Use Evidence of War Crimes Report: Rain of Fire: Israel’s Unlawful Use of White Phosphorus in Gaza”
Author: Fred Abrahams

Consortium News, January 18, 2009
Title: “Is Israel’s Gaza War a New War Crime?”
Author: Dennis Bernstein

Flashpoint Radio ( KPFA) Gaza Special ( January 2009)
Producers‑Dennis Bernstein and Nora Barrows-Friedman

Guardian/UK, February 23, 2009
Title: “Suspend Military Aid to Israel, Amnesty Urges Obama after Detailing US Weapons Used in Gaza”
Author: Rory McCarthy

Inter Press Service, January 8, 2009
Title: “US Weaponry Facilitates Killings in Gaza”
Author: Thalif Deen

International Middle East Media Center News, January 8, 2009
Title: “US military re-supplying Israel with ammunition through Greece”
Author: Saed Bannoura

Foreign Policy Journal, January 09, 2009
Title: “US Senate Endorses Israel’s War on Gaza”
Author: Jeremy R. Hammond

Student Researchers: Erin Galbraith and Curtis Harrison

Faculty Evaluators: Andy Merrifield, PhD, Cynthia Boaz, PhD, and David McCuan, PhD Sonoma State University

Israel’s repeated firing of US-made white phosphorus shells over densely populated areas of Gaza during its recent military campaign was indiscriminate and is evidence of war crimes, Human Rights Watch said in a report released March 25, 2009.

10. Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate

Sources:

Alternet, November 26, 2008

Title: “As Crisis Mounts, Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate and Illegal”

Author: Daniel Denvir

Utube, Fall 2008

Title: “Invalid Loans to Ecuador: Who Owes Who”

Producer: Committee for the Integral Audit of Public Credit

Foreign Policy in Focus, December 15, 2008

Title: “Ecuador’s Debt Default”

Authors: Neil Watkins and Sarah Anderson

Student Researcher: Rosemary Scott, Sonoma State University

Community Evaluator: Tim Ogburn, State of California Expert

In November 2008, Ecuador became the first country to undertake an examination of the legitimacy and structure of its foreign debt. An independent debt audit commissioned by the government of Ecuador documented hundreds of allegations of irregularity, illegality, and illegitimacy in contracts of debt to predatory international lenders. The loans, according to the report, violated Ecuador’s domestic laws, US Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, and general principles of international law

11. Private Corporations Profit from the Occupation of Palestine

Sources:

WhoProfits.org

Title: “Who Profits? Exposing the Israeli Occupation Industry”

Authors: The Coalition of Women for Peace

Palestine News Network, August 26, 2008

Title: “US Tax Breaks Support Israeli Settlers”   

Workers World Newspaper, February 9, 2009, and Global Research, February 11, 2009

Title: “The Tunnels of Gaza, An underground economy and resistance symbol”

Author: Sara Flounders

CommonDreams.org, February 24, 2009

“Can Gaza Be Rebuilt Through Tunnels? The Blockade Continues-No Supplies, No Rebuilding”

Author: Ann Wright

Student Researchers: April Rudolph, Natalie Dale, and Kerry Headley

Faculty Evaluator: Jeff Baldwin, PhD

Sonoma State University

Israeli and international corporations are directly involved in the occupation of Palestine. Along with various political, religious and national interests, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza, and the Golan Heights is fueled by corporate interests. These occupying companies and corporations lead real estate deals, develop the Israeli colonies and infrastructure, and contribute to the construction and operation of an ethnic separation system, including checkpoints, walls and roads. They also design and supply equipment and tools used in the control and repression of the civilian population under occupation.

12. Mysterious Death of Mike Connell—Karl Rove’s Election Thief

Sources:

The Raw Story, September 29, 2008

Title: “Republican IT consultant subpoenaed in case alleging tampering with 2004 election”

Authors: Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane

The Brad Blog, December 22, 2008

Title:  “OH Election Fraud Attorney Reacts to the Death of Mike Connell“

Author: Brad Friedman

Democracy Now! December 22, 2008

Title: “Republican IT Specialist Dies in Plane Crash”

Interviewee:  Mark Crispin Miller

Student Researchers: Ashleigh Hvinden, Christine Wilson and Alan Grady

Community Evaluator: Mary Ann Walker

Sonoma State University

Karl Rove’s chief IT consultant, Mike Connell—who was facing subpoena in connection with 2004 Presidential election fraud in Ohio—mysteriously died in a private plane crash in 2008.  Connell was allegedly the central figure in a longstanding plot to electronically flip votes to Republicans.

13. Katrina’s Hidden Race War

Sources:

The Nation, December 17, 2008                                                                                                    Title: “Katrina’s Hidden Race War”

Author: A.C. Thompson

The Nation, December 18, 2008

Title: “Body of Evidence”

Author: A.C. Thompson

Democracy Now! December 19, 2008

Title: “Katrina’s Hidden Race War: In Aftermath of Storm, White Vigilante Groups Shot 11 African Americans in New Orleans”

Student Researcher: Aimee Drew

Evaluator: Susan Kashack

Sonoma State University

A shocking report in The Nation magazine exposes how white vigilante groups patrolled the streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, shooting at least eleven African American men.

14. Congress Invested in Defense Contracts

Source:

Opensecrets, April 3, 2008

Title: “Strategic Assets”

Author: Lindsay Renick Mayer

Student Researchers: Leora Johnson and Michael Seramin

Faculty Evaluator:  Peter Phillips PhD

Sonoma State University

The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics has calculated that more than 151 members of Congress have up to $195 million invested in major defense contractors that are earning profits from the US military occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

15. World Bank’s Carbon Trade Fiasco

Source:

Upside Down World, February 11, 2009

Title: “The World Bank and Climate Change: Sustainability or Exploitation?”

Author: Mary Tharin

Student Researchers: Victoria Masucci and Christine Wilson

Faculty Evaluator: Elaine Wellin, PhD, Sonoma State University

In the name of environmental protection, the World Bank is brokering carbon emission trading arrangements that destroy indigenous farmlands around the world.

16. US Repression of Haiti Continues

Sources:

Haiti Liberté, September 4, 2008

Title: “UN Military Base Expanding: What is Washington up to in Cité Soleil?”

Author: Kim Ives

Upside Down World, June 25, 2008

Title: “Bush Administration Accused of Withholding ‘Lifesaving’ Aid to Haiti”

Author: Cyril Mychalejko

Upside Down World, August 4, 2008

Title: “RFK Center Releases Documents Outlining US Actions to Block Life-saving Funds to Haiti”

Authors: RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights

Student Researchers: Elizabeth Vortman, Leora Johnson, and Rob Hunter

Faculty Evaluators: Karen Grady, PhD and Sasha Von Meier, PhD

Sonoma State University

The US government plans to expropriate and demolish the homes of hundreds of Haitians in the shantytown of Cité Soleil to expand the occupying UN force’s military base. The US government contractor DynCorp, a quasi-official arm of the Pentagon and the CIA, is responsible for the base expansion.

17. The ICC Facilitates US Covert War in Sudan

Sources:

Inter Press Service, March 9, 2009

Title: “Aren’t There War Crimes in The US? Legitimacy of Global Court Questioned Over Sudan”

Author: Thalif Deen

Dissindentvoice.org, Black Star News, and San Francisco Bay View, March 6, 2009

Title: “Africom’s Covert War in Sudan”

Author: Keith Harmon Snow

Michelcollon.info, April 1, 2009

Title: “The Darfur crisis: blood, hunger and oil”

Author: Mohamed Hassan interview with Grégoire Lalieu and Michel Collon

Student Researcher: Curtis Harrison

Faculty Evaluator: Keith Gouveia J.D.

Sonoma State University

The United States promoted the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) indictment of Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir for war crimes in Darfur, in order to justify continuing Western exploitation and military interventions in the resource-rich region.

18. Ecuador’s Constitutional Rights of Nature

Source:

Upside Down World, September 25, 2008

Title: “Ecuador’s Constitution Gives Rights to Nature”

Author: Cyril Mychalejko

Student Researcher: Chelsea Davis

Faculty Evaluator: Elaine Wellin, PhD, Sonoma State University

In September 2008 Ecuador became the first country in the world to declare constitutional rights to nature, thus codifying a new system of environmental protection.

19. Bank Bailout Recipients Spent to Defeat Labor

Source:

Huffington Post, January 27, 2009

Article: “Bailout Spent to Defeat Labor”

Author: Sam Stein

Student Researchers: Ben Kaufman and Rosemary Scott

Faculty Evaluator: Kelly Bucy, PhD, Sonoma State University

On October 17, 2008, three days after Bank of America Corporation received $25 billion in federal bailout funds, they hosted a conference call to organize opposition to the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). Participants, including AIG, were urged to persuade their clients to send “large contributions” to groups working against the EFCA, as well as to vulnerable Senate Republicans who could be used to help block the passage of the pro labor bill that would make it easier for employees to organize into unions.

20. Secret Control of the Presidential Debates

Sources:

Open Debates, September 18, 2008

Title: “Pro-democratic Groups Call on Debate Commission to Make Secret Contract Public”

Author: George Farah

Democracy Now! October 2, 2008

Title: “No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates”

Interviewee: George Farah

Student Researchers:  Erin Galbraith, Natalie Dale, and Kerry Headley

Faculty Evaluator: Mickey Huff, Diablo Valley College

The Obama and McCain campaigns jointly negotiated a detailed secret contract dictating the terms of the 2008 debates. This included who got to participate, what topics were to be raised, and the structure of the debate formats.

21. Recession Causes States to Cut Welfare

Sources:

Mother Jones, January 15, 2009

Title: “Brave New Welfare”

Author: Stephanie Mencimer

Associated Press, March 26, 2009

Title: “States consider drug tests for welfare recipients”

Author: Tom Breen

Student Researchers: Samantha Barowsky, Southwest Minnesota State University

Malana Men, Sonoma State University

Faculty Evaluator: Douglas Anderson, Ph.D., Southwest Minnesota State University

Many states are in the midst of an aggressive action to push thousands of eligible mothers off Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), traditionally known as welfare. Families are being denied aid so that savings can be redirected in state budgets.

22. Obama’s Trilateral Commission Team

Source:
August Review.com, January 30, 2009

Title: “Obama: Trilateral Commission Endgame”

Author: Patrick Wood

Student Researcher: Sarah Maddox
Faculty Evaluator: Peter Phillips, Sonoma State University

Barack Obama appointed eleven members of the Trilateral Commission to top-level and key positions in his administration within his first ten days in office.

23. Activists Slam World Water Forum as a Corporate-Driven Fraud

Sources:

AlterNet, March 17, 2009

Title: “Fifth World Water Forum Marked by Violence and Repression”

Author: Jeff Conant

AlterNet, March 18, 2009

Title: “An Inside Peek: Why the World Water Forum Is a Sham”

Author: Jeff Conant

Democracy Now! March 23, 2009

Title: “Water Rights Activists Blast Istanbul World Water Forum as ‘Corporate Trade Show to Promote Privatization’”

Interviewee: Maude Barlow

KPFA, “Sunday Sedition,” March 29, 2009

Title: “Andria Lewis interviews Maude Barlow”

Student Researcher: Frances Capell, Diablo Valley College

Faculty Evaluator: Andrew Roth, PhD, Sonoma State University

Water rights activists blasted the World Water Forum, held in Turkey in late March of 2009, as a corporate trade show promoting privatization of water.

24. Dollar Glut Finances US Military Expansion

Source:

Global Research, March 29, 2009

Title: “Economic Meltdown: The “Dollar Glut” is What Finances America’s Global Military Build-up”

Author: Michael Hudson

Student Researcher: Frances Capell, Diablo Valley College

Faculty Evaluator: Mickey Huff, Diablo Valley College

The worldwide surplus of dollars is forcing foreign central banks to bear the costs of America’s expanding military empire.

25. Fast Track Oil Exploitation in Western Amazon

Sources:

PloS One, August 2008

Title: “Oil and Gas Projects in the Western Amazon: Threats to Wilderness, Biodiversity, and Indigenous Peoples”

Authors: Matt Finer, Clinton N. Jenkins, Stuart L. Pimm, Brian Keane, and Carl Ross

The Guardian, August 13, 2008

Title: “Amazon rainforest threatened by new wave of oil and gas exploration”

Author: Ian Sample

Student Researcher: Rob Hunter

Faculty Evaluator: Sasha Von Meier, PhD, Sonoma State University

The western Amazon, home to the most biodiverse and intact rainforest on Earth, may soon be covered with oilrigs and pipelines. Vast swaths of the region are to be opened for oil and gas exploration, putting some of the planet’s most pristine and biodiverse forests at risk, conservationists have warned.

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