wanttoknow
Project Censored specializes in covering the top stories which were subjected to press censorship either by being ignored or downplayed by the mainstream media each year. Project Censored is a research team composed of more than 200 university faculty, students, and community experts who annually review between 700 and 1,000 news story submissions for coverage, content, reliability of sources, and national significance. The top 25 stories selected are submitted to a distinguished panel of judges who then rank them in order of importance. The results are published each year in an excellent book available for purchase at their website, amazon.com, and most major book stores.
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3. Obama Authorizes International Assassination Campaign (For full story, click here)
4. Human Caused Food Crisis Expands (For full story, click here)
5. Private Prison Companies Fund Anti–Immigrant Legislation (For full story, click here)
6. Google Spying? (For full story, click here)
7. U.S. Army and Psychology’s Largest Experiment–Ever (For full story, click here)
8. The Myth of Clean and Safe Nuclear Power (For full story, click here)
9. The Government is Manipulating the Weather (For full story, click here)
10. Real Unemployment: One Out of Five in US (For full story, click here)
Thanks to the San Francisco Bay Guardian and Rebecca Bowe for parts of the above summaries.
Project Censored specializes in covering the top stories which were subjected to press censorship either by being ignored or downplayed by the mainstream media each year. Project Censored is a research team composed of more than 200 university faculty, students, and community experts who annually review between 700 and 1,000 news story submissions for coverage, content, reliability of sources, and national significance. The top 25 stories selected are submitted to a distinguished panel of judges who then rank them in order of importance. The results are published each year in an excellent book available for purchase at their website, amazon.com, and most major book stores.
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1. More US Soldiers Committed Suicide Than Died in Combat
(For full story, click here)
For the second year (2010) in a row, more US soldiers killed themselves (468) than died in combat (462).
In 2009, the 381 suicides of active-duty soldiers recorded by the
military also exceeded the number of deaths in battle. The Good report,
which references the Congressional Quarterly as a source, was published
in January 2011, just weeks after military authorities announced that a
psychological screening program seemed to be stemming the suicide rate
among active-duty soldiers. “This new data, that American soldiers are
now more dangerous to themselves than the insurgents, flies right in the
face of any suggestion that things are ‘working,’” Good Senior Editor
Cord Jefferson wrote.
Sources: Good Report, “More US Soldiers Killed Themselves Than Died in Combat in 2010” Truthdig, “Death and After in Iraq” Alternet, “Can You Face the True Consequences of War?"
2. US Military Manipulates the Social Media (For full story, click here)
The
US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate
social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet
conversations and spread pro-American propaganda. Anyone suspicious of
“sock puppets” ... would be unnerved by the US military’s “online
persona management service,” a little-known program described in The
Guardian UK, Raw Story, and Computerworld stories. The U.S. Central
Command (Centcom) is developing the program. Using up to 10 false identities, they can counter charged political dialogue with pro-military propaganda.
These "personas" can be given detailed, fictionalized backgrounds to
make them believable to outside observers, and a sophisticated identity
protection service
to back them up, preventing suspicious readers from uncovering the real
person behind the account.
Sources: Guardian UK, “Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media” Raw Story, "Military’s ‘persona’ software cost millions"; Computerworld, "Army of fake social media friends to promote propaganda"
3. Obama Authorizes International Assassination Campaign (For full story, click here)
The Obama administration has quietly put into practice an ‘incomplete idea’ left over from the G.W. Bush
presidency: creating a de facto ‘presidential international assassination program.’ U.S. citizens suspected of encouraging “terror” are being put on “death lists” without any due process of law.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the U.S. military have the
authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad without a trial and outside war
zones if strong evidence exists that they’re involved in terrorist
activity, the Washington Post reported in a front page story. A moral,
ethical, and legal analysis of the assassinations seems to be
significantly lacking inside the corporate media. In December of 2010,
Human Rights Watch asked for clarification of the legal rationale behind
this practice after a judge dismissed a lawsuit challenging the notion.
Source: Human Rights Watch, “Letter to President Obama – Targeted Killings” Inter Press Service, “Judge Declines to Rule on Targeted Killings of U.S. Citizens” Salon, “Obama Authorizes Assassination of U.S. Citizen” Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings
4. Human Caused Food Crisis Expands (For full story, click here)
A
new worldwide spike in agricultural commodity and food prices is
generating both predictable and extraordinary fallouts.
The search for causes once again leads to a conjuncture of flawed
policies in trade, environment, finance and agriculture that is likely
to produce more dangerous volatility in years to come. David Moberg,
offering an in-depth breakdown of the global food crisis in In These Times, places the blame for rising food prices and increasing malnutrition on flawed economic policies. “Hunger is currently a result of poverty and inequality, not lack of food,”
he concludes. “Since 2010 began, roughly another 44 million people have
quietly crossed the threshold into malnutrition, joining 925 million
already suffering from lack of food,” Moberg writes. “If prices continue
to rise, this food crisis will push the ranks of the hungry toward a
billion people.”
Sources: In These Times, “Diet Hard: With A Vengeance”
5. Private Prison Companies Fund Anti–Immigrant Legislation (For full story, click here)
Over
the past four years roughly a million immigrants have been incarcerated
in dangerous detention facilities in our taxpayer-financed private
prison system.
Children were abused, women were raped, and men died from lack of basic
medical attention. When Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer ran for reelection in
2010, her greatest out-of-state campaign contributions came from
high-ranking executives of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), one
of the nation’s largest prison companies. CCA profits directly from
building and operating prisons and detention centers. CCA previously
employed two of Brewer’s legislative aides as lobbyists. Peter
Cervantes-Gautschi spotlights Brewer’s links to CCA and goes deeper
still, offering an historic account of how investors in CCA and
prison giant Geo Group have for years actively pushed for legislation
that would result in the widespread incarceration of undocumented
immigrants.
Sources: Social Policy, "Wall Street & Our Campaign to Decriminalize Immigrants"
6. Google Spying? (For full story, click here)
Earlier
this year the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigated Internet
search engine giant Google for illegally collecting personal data such
as passwords, emails, and other online activities from unsecured Wi-Fi
networks in homes and businesses across the US and around the world. A
flurry of stories aired in the spring of 2010 when it became apparent
that Google Street View vehicles, in the process of collecting data for
its mapping service, also picked up consumer “payload” data on Wi-Fi
networks, including e-mail messages, website data, user names, and
passwords. The tech giant publicly apologized for what it characterized
as a mistake, saying it had “failed badly.” The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) admonished Google in a letter, but declined to pursue it further. Project
Censored authors claim that the FTC abandoned its inquiry because a
week earlier, Obama attended a Democratic Party fundraiser at the Palo
Alto home of Google executive Marissa Mayer, citing a San Francisco
Chronicle article about the $30,000-per person affair.
Sources: United States Federal Trade Communication, Personal Communication of David Vladeck; San Francisco Chronicle, "Google’s Marissa Mayer Hosting Obama At $30,000-A-Head Fundraiser Tonight"
7. U.S. Army and Psychology’s Largest Experiment–Ever (For full story, click here)
In
the January 2011 issue of American Psychologist, the American Psychology
Association (APA) dedicated 13 articles to detailing and celebrating a
117 million dollar collaboration with the US Army, called Comprehensive
Soldier Fitness (CSF).
It’s being marketed as a resilience training to reduce adverse
psychological consequences to soldiers who endure combat. Comprehensive
Solider Fitness (CSF) is described as a “holistic approach to warrior
training,” emphasizing positive psychology as a means to counter mental
health problems arising from horrific combat situations. Yet there
are many questions about the wisdom of launching a required, untested
psychology program for more than a million soldiers, one that encourages
soldiers to think positive even in the face of traumatizing events. This “training” program might better be described as a research project. The core hypothesis of this massive program’s success
has yet to be confirmed through further research.
Sources: Truthout, “The Dark Side of Comprehensive Soldier Fitness” Psychology of Well Being, A Holistic Approach to Warrior Training; Truthout, “Army’s 'Spiritual Fitness' Test Comes Under Fire”
8. The Myth of Clean and Safe Nuclear Power (For full story, click here)
The
terrifying meltdowns of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactors reignited
worldwide debate about the wisdom of relying on nuclear energy as an
electricity source. While Germany opted to phase out its nuclear
facilities by 2022 in the wake of the tragedy, the U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) came under scrutiny after a Union of
Concerned Scientists report analyzed 14 “near misses” at nuclear power
plants in 2010, revealing the shortcomings in NRC inspections. Yet
mainstream media’s treatment of nuclear power is all too willing to
endorse the idea that nuclear power is safe. Major news
publications readily go along with the nuclear industry’s branding of
the power source as “clean” and “carbon free” when it’s really not.
Nuclear power presents a security threat of unprecedented proportions:
It’s capable of a catastrophic accident that can kill hundreds of
thousands of people, with a byproduct that is toxic for millennia. To
call nuclear power “clean” is an affront to science, common sense, and
the English language itself.
Sources: Union of Concerned Scientists, “Nuclear Reactor Crisis in Japan FAQs” Nuclear Information and Resource Service, “Nuclear Energy Is Dirty Energy"; U.S. NRC, “Radiation Exposure and Cancer”
9. The Government is Manipulating the Weather (For full story, click here)
Rising
global temperatures, increasing population, and degradation of water
supplies, have created broad support for the growing field of weather
modification. The U.S. government has conducted weather modification
experiments for over half a century, and the military-industrial complex
stands poised to capitalize on these discoveries. One of the latest programs is HAARP,
the High-Frequency Active Aural Research Program. This technology can
potentially trigger floods, droughts, hurricanes and earthquakes.
The scientific idea behind HAARP is to “excite” a specific area of the
ionosphere and observe the physical processes in that excited area with
intention of modifying ecological conditions. HAARP can also be used as a
weapon system, capable of selectively destabilizing agricultural and
ecological systems of entire regions. At a recent international
symposium, scientists asserted that manipulation of climate through
modification of cirrus clouds is neither a hoax nor a conspiracy theory
and is fully operational.
Sources:
Global Research, “Atmospheric Geoengineering: Weather Manipulation, Contrails and Chemtrails” Dr. Coen Vermeeren, Symposium speech; Commonwealth Club, “Man-Made Climate Change in the Skies”
[For highly revealing documentaries on HAARP by Canada's CBC and the History Channel, click here]
[For highly revealing documentaries on HAARP by Canada's CBC and the History Channel, click here]
10. Real Unemployment: One Out of Five in US (For full story, click here)
The
corporate media wants America to feel secure during a time of
unemployment crisis, but people deserve to know what is really happening
rather than a statistical lie. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
(BLS) calculates the “official unemployment rate” by counting everyone
who had no job, was available for work, and had actively sought work in
the last four weeks, according to the BLS website. But alternative BLS
statistics incorporate so-called “discouraged workers,” unemployed
individuals who’ve given up on the job hunt. In the first four
months of 2011, the national unemployment rate officially stood at
around 9 percent, while a BLS statistic incorporating discouraged
workers and the marginally employed bumped that figure up to 15.9
percent. Yet according to San Francisco-based economist John
Williams, who maintains a website called Shadow Government Statistics,
the “real” unemployment rate is actually 22.1 percent, or more than one
out of five US residents.
Sources: Information Clearing House, “9% Unemployment Rate is a Statistical Lie” Shadow Government Statistics, "Alternate Unemployment Charts"
Thanks to the San Francisco Bay Guardian and Rebecca Bowe for parts of the above summaries.
11. Trafficking of Iraqi Women Rampant (For full story, click here)
Human
trafficking occurs throughout the world, yet has become increasingly
more prevalent in
Iraq due to the instability produced by the war. Many Iraqi women and
girls are widowed or orphaned by wartime casualties. Currently, more
than 50,000 Iraqi women have fled to Jordan and Syria and are trapped in
sexual servitude with no possibility of escape.
12. Pacific Garbage Dump: Did You
Think Your Plastic Was Being Recycled? (Story here)
Many
people do not realize that there is a swirling mass of plastic in the
middle of the Pacific ocean that qualifies as the planet’s largest
garbage dump. Recent research
sponsored by the National Science Foundation suggests the affected area
may be twice the size of Hawaii. The 5 Gyres Project estimates that
there are 315 billion pounds of plastic in the ocean right now.
13. Will a State of Emergency Be Used to Supersede Our Constitution? (Story here)
A
program dating back to the Eisenhower
era is now converted to bestow secret powers on the president for
anything he considers an emergency. Recent “Continuity of Government”
planning has quietly removed time-honored constitutional protections and
increased the militarization of civilian law enforcement. For the first
time in US history, military troops are allowed to do police actions
in US cities. Recently the US Army established an active-duty brigade
trained to manage civil unrest and crowd control. Historically this has
been illegal. There has been a loss of local authority and sustained
preparations for the possibility of martial law.
14. Family Pressure on Young Girls for Genitalia Mutilation
in Kenya (For full story, click here)
Girls
as young as nine years old were threatened with death if they tried to
escape the Kamunera location, where they awaited female genitalia
mutilation in Kenya. Some are still in hiding, fearing that their
parents will disown them for running away to avoid circumcision.
Many girls have been forced to cut short their studies and married off
at a young age because of parental fear the daughters will be ostracized
if too educated.
15. Big Polluters Freed from Environmental Oversight (For full story, click here)
The
Obama administration has distributed
billions of dollars in stimulus money to some of the nation’s biggest
polluters and granted exemptions from basic environmental errors. The
administration’s main goal in Energy Secretary Steven Chu words was to
“get the money out and spent as quickly as possible”.
16. Sweatshops in China Are Making Your iPods While Workers Suffer (Story here)
Apple’s suppliers
routinely violate China’s “Law on the Prevention and Control of Occupational Diseases.”
Several manufacturers replaced alcohol with n-hexane, which is used to clean parts.
It is a chemical that works better than alcohol, but poisons workers.
In these factories the workers, often women in their teens or 20s, were forced to work with the poison in unventilated rooms.
17. Superbug Bacteria Spreading Worldwide (For full story, click here)
Lethal
superbugs are emerging that do not respond to any known drugs. The
World Health Organization states that the New Delhi or NDM-1 superbug
was recently found in UK patients and has reached a critical point.
These super bugs are resistant to carbapenem antibiotics, which is a
major concern to experts because they are used for hard to treat
infections that evade other drugs. Already 25,000 people die each year
from superbugs in Europe.
18. Monsanto Tries to Benefit from Haiti’s Earthquake (For full story, click here)
In
May 2010, five months after an earthquake destroyed Haiti, the American
multinational Monsanto donated the country 60 tons of corn and vegetable
hybrid seed.
USAID took charge of the seed distribution. A month later, on June 4,
2010, around 10,000 Haitian farmers demonstrated against Monsanto’s
donation. Haitian farmers denounced
Monsanto’s seeds as they can’t be reused each year, which leads to the
necessity of buying new seed from the multinational every new sowing
season. This dependence could also extend to the fertilizers and
herbicides required by the american multinational who also produces
them.
19. Oxfam Exposes How Aid Is Used for Political Purposes (For full story, click here)
In a
new report, Oxfam has found that billions of dollars in international
aid which could have transformed the lives of many people in some of the
poorest countries in the world, was spent on unsustainable, expensive
and dangerous aid projects which international donor governments used to
support their own short-term foreign policy and security objectives.
This type of aid often bypasses the poorest people and dangerously
distorts the line between civilian and military activity. The
politicization and militarization of aid has in some places made it much
harder for aid agencies to provide help to those in need.
20. US Agencies Trying to Outlaw GMO Food Labelling (For full story, click here)
There
is increasing concern over the health impact of growing and eating
genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The World Health Organization has
identified allergenicity, antibiotic resistance, gene transfer,
outcrossing, escape of GM genes
into the wild population, gene stability, susceptibility of non-target
organisms (insects), and loss of biodiversity as potential issues of
using GM seeds. Multiple, reliable sources show that you may be eating
genetically modified food daily which scientific experiments have repeatedly demonstrated can cause sickness and even death in lab animals. (More here)
21. Lyme Disease: An Emerging Epidemic (For full story, click here)
Lyme
disease is one of the most political and controversial epidemics of our
time. Lyme originates from a bacteria transmitted through the bite of a
tick which can remain hidden for years, with symptoms mimicking other
diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis, ALS, and ADHD.
And it is growing – new cases of Lyme occur each year at a rate ten
times higher then that of AIDS and the West Nile Virus combined. Yet
doctors risk losing their license if they treat Lyme as the chronic
disease it is known to be. (Powerful documentary here)
22. Participatory Budgeting: A Method to Empower Local Citizens, Communities (Story here)
“Participatory
Budgeting” (PB) is a process that allows citizens to decide directly
how to allocate all or part of a public budget. The process typically
involves a series of meetings, work by community “delegates” or
representatives, and ultimately a final vote. It was first implemented
in the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1990, and has since spread.
23. Worldwide Movement To Ban or Charge Fees For Plastic Bags (For full story, click here)
Shoppers
worldwide are using 500 billion to one trillion single-use plastic bags
per year. These bags pollute our waters, smother wetlands and entangle
and kill animals. As larger animals eat smaller plastic-laden creatures,
this also affects our health as we end up eating some form of plastic
in our sea food.
Now 35 countries have already banned the use of plastic bags, nine
countries have passed levies and fees on use, and 12 countries are
considering bans or fees.
24. South Dakota Takes Extreme Measures to Be the Top Anti-Abortion State
(Story here)
South
Dakota is taking extreme action against any person who performs an
abortion within the states borders. The South Dakota House is taking up a
bill to redefine “justifiable homicide” that may “make it legal to kill
doctors who perform abortions,” Mother Jones reports.
25. Extension of DU to Libya (For full story, click here)
President
Obama’s undeclared and Congressionally unauthorized war against Libya
may have been compounded by the crime of spreading toxic uranium oxide
in populated areas of that country. Concern has been voiced by groups
such as the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons, which
monitor the military use of so-called depleted-uranium (DU) anti-tank
and bunker-penetrating shells.
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