Stephen Lendman

For 33 years, Sonoma State University's (SSU) Project Censored (PC) has engaged in pioneering research on, and advocacy for, First Amendment issues. Founded by Carl Jensen in 1976, it's now headed by Professor Ben Frymer. On July 1, he took over from Professor Peter Phillips who stepped down after 13 years of distinguished service as Director.

PC works cooperatively "with numerous independent (US) media groups," primarily to train SSU students "in media research and First Amendment issues and the advocacy for, and protection of, free press rights in the United States."

For over three decades, it's "trained over 1,500 students in investigative research" and continues doing it through "a partnership of faculty, students, and the community," cooperatively engaged in "research on important national news stories that are underreported, ignored, misrepresented, or censored by the US corporate media."

Each year, it ranks the top 25 and publishes them in its yearbook, "Censored: Media Democracy in Action." The latest "Censored 2010: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2008 - 09" just out is the subject of this review. The book may now be purchased locally, online, and most easily at projectcensored.org/store.

The current edition is larger than even, and includes the year's honorable mention choices as well as additional chapters covered below.

In the preface, Peter Phillips and former Associate Director Mickey Huff highlight Censored 2010's theme in explaining the corporate media's emphasis on commercialism, the "inane", the "irrelevant," and their willful suppression of real news and information on vital issues.

Their betrayal of the public trust reveals them to be "a gossip rag or screed sheet, a veritable three-ring circus sideshow of spectacle and distraction," and a "dying system" relying on disinformation, faux reporting over real journalism, and the main threat to democracy in America that can't flourish without a free and open media able to supply everyone with real news and information.

In its annual editions and daily on its web site (projectcensored.org), PC offers the best of what the corporate media censor or suppress. Censored 2010 offers more of it than ever, and credit for it goes to Peter Phillips, Mickey Huff, and the entire Project Censored team. As Dahr Jamail ends his introduction, "we are (indeed) fortunate to have (a valued) ally like Project Censored."

Tricia Boreta and Peter Phillips explain why:

-- because "the absence of real news from corporate media has never been so complete;

-- Lies, deception, propaganda, superficial coverage, and overt censorship are on the rise;" and as a result

-- democracy is being willfully destroyed.

But PC isn't standing pat, and allied with 28 professors nationally have incorporated PC "curricula and investigative procedures into their classrooms." They, and a free and open Internet, are the future. But not without a long tough struggle against powerful dark forces determined to hold on and control all news and information sources. It's for public outrage and committed organizations like PC to stop them. It's our country and our choice.

Zombie Newspapers - Dead A Generation Ago, Their Corpses Are Showing Up

Buffalo State College Journalism Professor Michael Niman highlighted the decline of US dailies at a time of economic crisis. Some have shut down. Most have downsized, while others are going virtual over print. However, "the collapse of journalism is old news. Newspapers have been dead for quite a while." We're just now seeing their corpses, but the concentration of media monopolies, the proliferation of one-newspaper towns (in 98% of US cities), and the destruction of media diversity made it predictable.

Content is heavily censored by conglomerates controlling media empires for profit, "not to inform, educate, and agitate...." With no competition, they cut staff, use wire services over their own reporting, and lost "significance as sources of (real) news." Avoiding controversy and pleasing advertisers counts most, and on political issues they "suck up to power and don't ask (hard) questions...."

The relevant one for consumers is "why the hell should we pay for their misinformation?" In increasing numbers, they've stopped, preferring instead to get reliable information from independent print and online sources.

It shows that "while there might not be a future for soulless, zombie monopoly newspapers, there is a future for journalism." Niman sheds no tears for the corporate kind and hopes that many credible alternatives will replace them.

PC's Top 25 2008 - 2009 Stories

(1) US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street

Americans get the best democracy money can money, coming more than ever today from Wall Street. "Since 2001, eight of the most troubled firms have donated $64.2 million to congressional candidates, presidential candidates and the Republican and Democratic parties." Is it surprising that they own them? As senators, Barack Obama and John McCain got "a combined total of $3.1 million."

Influential House and Senate finance and banking committee members got $5.2 million from bailout recipients like Goldman Sachs, Citibank, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and others. In the last election cycle, Obama received at least $4.3 million from the same ones, investments that yielded big returns.

From 1998 - 2007, financial and banking companies "spent $1.7 billion on federal campaign contributions and another $3.4 billion on lobbyists." In 1999, Glass-Steagall was repealed, the landmark 1933 law that curbed speculation and separated commercial from investment banks and insurance companies. In January 2000, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act legitimized swap agreements and other hybrid instruments, at the core of today's problems by preventing regulatory oversight of derivatives and leveraging, thus letting Wall Street legally pillage and speculate, so they did.

The result was a financial coup d'etat "cement(ing) the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders" who choose candidates, control elections, weaken financial regulations, and run the country for their own self-interest. As a result, Washington today is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Wall Street financial giants. What they want, they get, no questions asked.

(2) US Schools Are More Segregated Today than in the 1950s

According to a UCLA Civil Rights report, "schools in the US are 44 percent non-white, and....Latinos and blacks, the two largest minority groups, attend schools more segregated today than during the civil rights movement forty years ago." The result is:

-- unequal education denies disadvantaged youths access to college and better jobs;

-- growing numbers of them become "virtually unemployable" for anything more than menial labor or the military; and

-- they're vulnerable to future poverty, poor health, gangs, crime, and incarceration in America's gulag prison system in each of the 50 states.

The report stresses the need for "leaders who recognize that we have a common destiny in an America where our children grow up together, knowing and respecting each other, and are all given the educational tools that prepare them for success in our society."

Instead, Barack Obama, like his predecessor, backs privatizing public education, destroying a 374 year tradition in America, ending government responsibility for it, and making it another business profit center at the expense of future generations of disadvantaged youths.

(3) Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates

By blaming the victims, the international community and dominant media have ignored the "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." Foreign interests have been using hundreds of vessels to loot "the country's food supply," according to the High Seas Task Force (HSTF), stealing "an estimated $450 million in seafood from Somali waters annually" and ruining the livelihoods of Somali fishermen.

Instead of rectifying the problem, the UN passed "aggressive resolutions that entitle and encourage transgressors to wage war on Somali pirates." NATO, the EU, and other countries issued similar orders. Starving Somalis are responding as they have every right to do, yet are called criminals for defending their own waters and protecting their rights.

(4) Nuclear Waste Pools in North Carolina

Progress Energy's North Carolina Shearon Harris nuclear plant "contains the largest radioactive waste storage pools in the country." If the cooling system malfunctions, "the resulting fire would be virtually unquenchable and could trigger a nuclear meltdown." According to Helen Caldicott and other experts, the likelihood of one happening somewhere is virtually certain - the result of human error, faulty maintenance, a terrorist attack, or for some other reason. If a major city is located downwind, forced evacuation would follow and residents prevented ever from returning because of irremediable toxic radiation.

According to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Shearon Harris has a history of unresolved safety issues and numerous emergency shutdowns. Problems there "continue with chilling regularity." Yet the NRC ignores the potential risks. As a result, the plant is "a nuclear time bomb," and millions in the region are at risk.

(5) Europe Blocks US Toxic Products

Unlike in America, European countries "are moving toward a....model of insisting on environmental and consumer safety" that requires assessing thousands of chemicals for their potential toxic effects. New regulations will mandate that companies seeking market access eliminate toxic substances and produce safer electronics, automobiles, toys and cosmetics.

Without compliance henceforth, the products of hundreds of US companies may be excluded from European markets, and according to Mark Schapiro, author of Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power, "only five percent of all chemicals in the US have undergone even minimal testing." Further, new EPA requirements consider the "costs to industry" in assessing an "unreasonable threat to public health" as a reason to side with industry and keep regulations minimal to nil.

The divergence between US and European regulation has made America "the dumping ground for toxic toys, electronics and cosmetics. We produce and consume the toxic materials, from which other countries around the world are protected."

(6) Lobbyists Buy Congress

In 2008, The Center for Responsive Politics reported that "special interests paid Washington lobbyists $3.2 billion in 2008," higher than any year on record and 13.7% more than 2007. It amounts to $17.4 million for each day Congress was in session, or $32,523 per legislator day.

Health interests spent the most for the third consecutive year, $478.5 million, followed by the FIRE sector (finance, insurance and real estate) at $453.5 million. It's a small investment yielding big returns for these and other industries, competing at the public trough for as much as they can get. The payoff is in the billions, and for Wall Street pledged trillions as well as interest free money from the banker-owned Federal Reserve.

(7) Obama's Military Appointments Have Corrupted Pasts

After promising not to politicize intelligence and to keep lobbyists out of top government posts, Obama appointed many "former lobbyists or former board members of companies directly doing business with the Pentagon" and retained Robert Gates as Defense Secretary despite his history at CIA of having cooked the books for political reasons.

According to Agency insiders who knew him, he "corrupted the intelligence product" to suit the White House and further his own self-interest. He facilitated Iran-Contra and helped boost military spending by exaggerating the Soviet threat. He frustrated independent counsel Lawrence Walsh enough to write that despite Gates' touted memory, he "denied recollection of facts thirty-three times," and when GHW Bush nominated him for CIA Director, a virtual insurrection among CIA analysts erupted over his penchant for having politicized intelligence.

Obama's Deputy Defense Secretary, William Lynn, is just as tainted. The former Raytheon vice president and company lobbyist got Senator Charles Grassley to object over his "very questionable accounting practices" as Pentagon Comptroller during the Clinton years.

Obama's Undersecretary of Defense, Robert Hale, served as Assistant Air Force Secretary Financial Comptroller under Clinton, and according to author Andrew Hughes, he and Lynn "lost enough taxpayer money to pay for Obama's stimulus plan four times over." They now again oversee DOD spending.

The list goes on and includes National Intelligence chief, Admiral Dennis Blair, who backed Indonesia's terror, mass-killing, and occupation of East Timor in 1998. General James Jones is a Trilateralist and former NATO commander. Obama's entire national security team is composed of recycled appointees very much committed to continued imperial wars and outlandish amounts of military spending for them.

(8) Bailed Out Banks and America's Wealthiest Cheat IRS Out of Billions

It's an old story. "Only the little people pay taxes," according to former tax cheat Leona Hemsley (1920 - 2007), and rarely does anyone like her get caught.

In 2008, 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. AIG, Bank of America, Citigroup, and 11 others got government bailouts. In addition, Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) helped wealthy clients "cheat the IRS out of over $20 billion in recent years, according to the Department of Justice."

Other notorious tax havens include Austria, Luxembourg, the Channel Islands, Singapore, Hong Kong, Andorra, Monaco, Gibraltar, the Bahamas, the Cook Islands, and Turks and Caicos. In 2008, they saved Goldman Sachs billions of dollars through "changes in (its) geographic earnings mix." For many other companies, it's much the same through legal provisions in the tax code. According to some estimates, "trillions of dollars in both corporate profits and personal wealth have migrated offshore, (and) the offshore banking world now harbors $11.5 trillion in individual wealth alone...."

(9) US Arms Used for (Israel's) War Crimes in Gaza

For decades, America has supplied Israel with tens of billions in aid, interest-free loans, and the latest in new weapons and technology, including illegal white phosphorous shells used against Gazan civilians during Operation Cast Lead.

In addition, Washington supplies F-16 fighters, attack helicopters, tactical missiles, 1,000 or more bunker-buster bombs, a wide variety of other munitions, and undisclosed new weapons for testing in real time combat situations against Palestinian or other Arab civilians.

In Gaza, shell fragments revealed names of US defense contractors, including Raytheon. Another was marked the Pine Bluff Arsenal in Arkansas. In shocking support for Israel's war of aggression, in violation of international and US law, both Houses of Congress overwhelmingly endorsed its continuation, and Obama stayed silent in the run-up to his January 20 inauguration.

(10) Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate

"In November 2008, Ecuador became the first country to undertake an examination of the legitimacy and structure of its foreign debt." In violation of Ecuadorean law, predatory international lenders were involved in hundreds of illegitimate irregularities. Billions in foreign debt at exorbitant interest rates resulted in debt service far exceeding the principal borrowed, at a staggering human cost. In December, President Rafael Correa announced his country would default. In April 2009, he was re-elected overwhelmingly.

Ecuador exposed the corrupted international finance system that could set a precedent for the poorest of indebted countries. Correa asked other Latin American nations "to forge a united response (and for) the United Nations to help develop international norms to regulate the foreign debt market."

The April 2008 House passed Jubilee Act was a positive step forward. However, the Senate failed to pass its S. 2166 version, then cleared the legislation from its books.

In June 2009, Ecuador agreed with 91% of its creditors to pay 35 cents on the dollar for its debt. Other countries may now follow suit, especially the most impacted by the global economic crisis.

(11) Private Corporations Profit from the Occupation of Palestine

US, Israeli, and other international corporations profit from the occupation of Palestine. They "lead real estate deals, develop the Israeli (settlements) and infrastructure," and help solidify the continued land theft, economic exploitation, and apartheid separation of Muslims and Jews, in violation of international law.

In addition to Gaza under siege, West Bank Palestinians have endured an oppressive 42-year military occupation. On their own, with virtually no outside support outside of growing grassroots movements, they keep waging a heroic struggle for their self-determination and freedom.

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