- Founded in 1976 by Carl Jensen, Mickey Huff now heads
PC, working cooperatively with former director Peter Phillips' Media Freedom
Foundation (MFF) and other investigative research and media related organizations.
Together they counter major media real news and information censorship
and suppression - what PC and MFF call "managed news" along with
infotainment and miscellaneous "junk food news."
-
- As a result, a "truth emergency" exists at
a time, more than ever, real information is needed because media giants:
-
- -- support privilege over populism;
- -- endorse imperial wars and sham elections;
- -- suppress corporate lawlessness;
- -- ignore growing poverty, hunger, homelessness, despair,
and
-
- -- an unprecedented wealth gap;
- -- 9/11 truth;
- -- a private banking cartel controlling the nation's
money and stealing it at public expense;
- -- democracy for the select few alone; and
- -- much more of what matters most to working Americans.
-
- PC and MFF provide antidotes. Besides annual PC editions,
both offer daily web site daily updates, accessed through the following
links:
-
- http://www.projectcensored.org/
-
- http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/
-
- The latest Censored 2011 covers the top 2009-10 stories
and more in PC's richest ever volume, a collector's item like previous
ones. Besides the top 25, it includes Junk Food News and News Abuse, Signs
of Health, and FAIR's 10th anniversary of Fear and Favor in the News Room.
-
- In addition, a new Truth Emergency section addresses
State Crimes Against Democracy plus analysis of corporate media misinformation
- the kind promoting imperial wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, expanded
to Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Occupied Palestine, as well as covert
actions in dozens of countries, and atrocities wherever America encroaches.
-
- PC and MFF are there and expanding with over 30 college
and university affiliates, because growing numbers of people everywhere
know corporate and state-controlled news suppress what informed citizens
need to know. Instead they're fed sanitized junk and
- treated like mushrooms - well-watered, in the dark, and
distracted by "everything to sell and nothing to tell."
-
- PC's Latest Top 25
-
- (1) Global Plans to Replace the Dollar
-
- In his book "Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy
of Imperial America," PC award-winner Michael Hudson explained the
dollar's importance, and how a "dollar glut" finances:
-
- -- US corporate takeovers;
-
- -- speculative investments creating bubbles and economic
crises;
-
- -- America's reckless spending, foreign wars, and hundreds
of global military bases;
-
- -- its overall imperial agenda; and
-
- -- culture of militarism and belligerence at the expense
of democratic freedoms, beneficial social change, and human and civil rights.
-
- It also keeps America economically dominant as long as
other nations go along under a Washington controlled WTO/IMF/World Bank/Bank
for International Settlements (the Central Bank of Central Banks in Basel)
system, using the dollar as the world's reserve currency.
-
- Other nations, however, are now balking, a June 2009
Yekaterinburg, Russia meeting with top officials of the six-nation Shanghai
Cooperation Organization (led by China and Russia) took the first step
to end dollar supremacy, perhaps replacing it eventually with a single
global currency.
-
- Today, America remains unchallenged militarily, its economic
supremacy, however, weakening as it staggers under growing debt, while
nations like China, Brazil, India, Russia and others are rising.
-
- In July, 2009, Russian President Medvedev advocated a
supranational currency. In September, the UN Conference on Trade and Development
proposed an artificial one to replace the dollar. Other alliances, including
nine Latin American countries, support a regional currency. China wants
its yuan protected, and Russia plans to begin trading in the ruble and
local currencies.
-
- If these ideas take hold, America's permanent war agenda
and overall hegemony will falter. Under the present system, what Hudson
calls a "sinister dynamic:"
-
- "the US payment deficit pumps dollars into foreign
economies (that have) little option except to buy US (debt) which the Treasury
spends on financing an enormous, hostile (global) military build-up,"
and its ready-to-unleash-anytime war machine. In other words, foreign US
Treasury buyers may, in fact, be financing their own endangerment.
-
- Many now weary want it stopped, Hudson saying:
-
- Foreign countries seek "to create an international
monetary system in which central bank savings do not fund the United States'
military deficit....Russia, China, India and Brazil have taken the lead...."
Look for others to follow.
-
- The situation, however, remains fluid. The Fed keeps
flooding markets with dollars. "Finance has become the new mode of
warfare." Currency wars are in play for economic competitiveness,
one nation jockeying against others during a transition period toward more
stability and a fairer world economy. Because of today's global weakness,
that condition may be years in the making with no assurance of winners
or losers.
-
- (2) US Department of Defense is the Worst Polluter on
the Planet
-
- Given America's imperial wars, global presence, heavy
reliance on oil, and use of radioactive and other toxin emitting weapons,
it's no surprise that the Pentagon "is responsible for the most egregious
and widespread pollution of the planet." Yet virtually none of this
gets reported, nor do environmental groups show concern. Worse still, "the
Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements,"
effectively giving it carte blanche to contaminate air, water and soil
freely wherever it operates.
-
- According to Barry Sanders, author of The Green Zone:
The Environmental Costs of Militarism, "the greatest single assault
on the environment, on all of us around the globe, comes from" America's
military, spreading death, destruction and contamination virtually everywhere.
Expect no major media reports explaining it. Instead they hail America's
armed forces as defenders of democracy, and governments under both major
parties as servants of the people - omitting which ones, why global wars
are waged, who pays for them, and who wins and loses.
-
- (3) Internet Privacy and Personal Access at Risk
-
- Post-9/11, both Bush and Obama administrations expanded
intrusive government surveillance, including through Internet monitoring
of personal communications. On April 1 last year, the Senate introduced
two bills endangering a free and open Internet - S. 773: Cybersecurity
Act of 2009 and S. 778 to establish a White House cybersecurity czar.
-
- Both measures would give federal authorities unprecedented
power over the Internet by:
-
- -- federalizing critical infrastructure, shifting power
away from providers and users to Washington; and
-
- -- letting the president shut down Internet traffic for
reasons of "national security" or during a claimed "emergency."
-
- If passed, these measures will compromise personal privacy
and security through one provision alone - by giving the Commerce Secretary
access to all relevant data relating to critical infrastructure networks
without restriction. In other words, privacy and judicial review protections
guaranteed under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Privacy
Protection Act, and financial privacy regulations no longer will apply.
-
- Post-election, perhaps during the lame duck session,
cybersecurity will again be addressed by combining S. 773 and 778. The
new measure will let the executive shut down parts of the Internet, as
well as businesses and organizations, not complying with national emergency
declared orders.
-
- In addition, on September 20, 2010, S. 3804: Combating
Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) was introduced. Its purpose
- to literally break the Internet one domain at a time, by requiring domain
registrars/registries, ISPs, DNS providers, and others to block Internet
users from reaching certain websites. In other words, if passed, COICA
will let Washington suppress free speech and block access to non-infringing
material, inflicting enormous constitutional damage in the process.
-
- Because of widespread criticism, the bill stalled. It
may be softened, but in some final form will likely move ahead. Moreover,
another post-election unnamed measure is planned - one that will end personal
privacy by requiring all Internet communication providers (including ISPs,
Facebook, Skype and others) to rebuild their systems to give Washington
backdoor access to everyone's personal Internet communications.
-
- In addition, Net Neutrality is seriously threatened.
In fact, plans are to subvert it, according to a leaked September 2010
House Energy and Commerce Committee draft bill. If enacted, it will let
cable and telecom giants establish, among other provisions, premium higher-priced
lanes (two Internets), effectively destroying Net Neutrality, compromising
the last free and open space.
-
- An October 2007 global measure, overriding national sovereignty,
also threatens Net Neutrality, consumer privacy, and civil liberties. Called
the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), secret negotiations seek
to subvert them, ostensibly to protect copyrighted intellectual property,
including films, photos, and songs. ACTA remains a work in progress, but
developments going forward bear watching, especially if a global agreement
is reached.
-
- These and perhaps other measures, including presidential
Executive Orders, threaten America's First Amendments freedoms, without
which all others are at risk.
-
- (4) ICE Operates Secret Detention and Courts
-
- On November 25, 2002, the Homeland Security Act (HSA)
established the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Then in March 2003,
its largest investigative and enforcement arm was created - the US Immigration
and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Charged with protecting public safety
by identifying and targeting "criminal" and "terrorist"
threats, most often undocumented immigrants are victimized, most here because
NAFTA globalized trade rules destroyed their livelihoods at home. As a
result, they came out of need, not choice, and aren't terrorists.
-
- Yet they're treated that way - sought, rounded up, and
detained oppressively, thousands in unlisted, unmarked subfield offices
before secret court hearings deport them.
-
- "People are held in a vast network of more than
three hundred detention facilities in nearly every state in the country,"
yet no major media reports explain it or how they're treated. Instead victims
are racially profiled, vilified and terrorized as criminals, laws like
Arizona's making all resident Latinos suspected intruders, authorities
empowered to demand citizenship if asked or be detained and then deported.
-
- In the past decade, constitutional protections have seriously
eroded en route to eliminating them altogether, repressive agencies like
ICE, the FBI, local goon squads, and others on the prowl against anyone
for any reason, including peaceful demonstrators.
-
- (5) Blackwater (Xe): The Secret US War in Pakistan
-
- Operating covertly with CIA and Special Forces operatives,
America wages war with Pakistan despite official Pentagon denials, saying
"There are no US military strike operations being conducted in Pakistan."
In fact, they've been ongoing for years on the ground and through predator
drone attacks, mainly against North and South Waziristan provinces, targeting
suspected militants and civilians alike, including by assassination squads.
-
- America's imperial strategy flouts US and international
laws, including letting trained killers operate extralegally throughout
the world. Obama, in fact, acts more aggressively than Bush while claiming
he's working for peace.
-
- (6) Health Care Restrictions Cost Thousands of Lives
in US
-
- America's new healthcare legislation enriches providers
at the expense of consumers by making a dysfunctional system worse. As
a result, available care "remain(s) dismal for many Americans, resulting
in continuing deaths and personal tragedies."
-
- Besides exponentially rising costs, the uninsured will
get no help until 2013, and when all provisions take effect, millions will
remain uninsured. No wonder Ralph Nader calls Obamacare a "pay-or-die
system that is the disgrace of the Western world." Even worse, for
some who can pay, it's a death sentence for anyone gravely sick whose plans
don't cover expensive treatments, only cheaper ineffective ones with big
deductables.
-
- (7) External Capitalist Forces Wreak Havoc in Africa
-
- US major media almost never report on Africa, a continent
plagued by conflicts, repression, land grabs, resource exploitation, extreme
poverty, and in places starvation, disease and early deaths. As a result,
press silence helps Western profiteers plunder hugely, and when not enough,
America's long imperial arm helps more.
-
- (8) Massacre in Peruvian Amazon over US Free Trade Agreement
-
- Under US/Western free trade, provisions exclude fairness,
the US/Peru deal one of many examples, its one-sided rules harming indigenous
people gravely. By opening their land to extractive mining, oil exploration
and logging, besides agribusiness biofuel plantations, poor Peruvians are
entirely left out.
-
- As a result, they reacted by protesting against "a
conspiracy afoot to (exploit their land and keep them) from making use
of (their) natural wealth." In response, government forces responded,
killing around two dozen and wounding 100 more. As public opposition continues,
state-sponsored terrorism confronts it, the way repressive states always
operate, regional militaries taught at the School of the Americas (SOA),
now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC),
the new name leaving SOA's school of assassins mission unchanged.
-
- (9) Human Rights Abuses Continue in Palestine
-
- For decades they've included:
-
- -- violence;
- -- regular incursions;
- -- home invasions and demolitions;
- -- land and resource theft;
- -- dispossessions;
- -- targeted assassinations;
- -- mass imprisonment;
- -- torture;
- -- free movement, assembly and expression restrictions;
and
- -- overall denial of virtually all freedoms under military
occupation, ongoing for over 43 years.
-
- Palestine is occupied and oppressed. Israeli Arabs are
also denied rights afforded solely to Jews, but not without growing outraged
millions. Unsupported by Western and most other nations, human rights groups,
ordinary people of all religions, and initiatives like the Global BDS campaign
have effectively raised public awareness. It's not enough, yet combined,
it's an important step toward Palestinian liberation on their own land
in their own country, what surely one day will come.
-
- (10) US Funds and Supports the Taliban
-
- If you can't beat 'em, buy 'em off, or at least try.
As a result, "American tax dollars end up paying members of the Taliban
and funding a volatile environment in Afghanistan." Part of it is
a protection racket, America and private contractors paying resistance
fighters to grant supply convoys free passage. More funds them not to fight
coalition forces. Yet no strategies helped end America's nine year war,
being lost, not won.
-
- (11) The H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic: Manipulating Data to
Enrich Drug Companies
-
- The WTO-declared "pandemic" was, in fact, a
mouse that didn't roar, a hoax to enrich drug giants and expose billions
globally to toxic vaccines crucial to avoid. Word spread, millions reacted,
avoiding potentially grave illnesses later on, but likely new campaigns
lie ahead, as deceptive and dangerous as the 2009 H1N1 one. Forewarned
is forearmed. According to Viera Scheiber, the world's foremost vaccine
expert, all vaccines are dangerous and should be avoided, especially experimental,
untested, toxic ones like for H1N1.
-
- (12) Cuba Provided the Greatest Medical Aid to Haiti
after the Earthquake
-
- After the January 12, 2010 quake, America militarized
Haiti, opened it for business, protected well off areas, ignored Haitian
needs, and obstructed aid deliveries. In contrast, Cuba was first there
with medical aid, providing hundreds of doctors and supplies, setting up
facilities, and delivering heroic services under the most adverse conditions.
-
- Yet virtually no major media accounts reported it, or
that America came to exploit like it always does, not help. As a result,
nearly 11 months post-quake, 1.5 million or more Haitians remain homeless,
lacking basic essentials, including sanitation, enough food, and adequate
healthcare for the sick because Cuban and other volunteer doctors can't
do it all when donated funds aren't coming. Instead, they're earmarked
for development and predatory NGOs. Affected Haitians thus struggle on
their own, unwanted and abandoned, despite a potential disastrous cholera
outbreak.
-
- (13) Obama Cuts Domestic Spending and Increases Military
Corporate Welfare
-
- Especially since the 1980s, it's been America's way -
handouts to rich, austerity for the poor, and open-checkbook spending for
the nation's war machine, fueling its permanent imperial agenda.
-
- It gets worse with deeper austerity planned by more social
program cuts. Moreover, on the pretext of reform, destroying Medicare and
Social Security are also planned by privatizing them, earmarking them for
Wall Street, the same way 401ks killed corporate pensions.
-
- Moreover, Washington plans to control the remaining private
pension plan trillions. The scheme involves exchanging them for a guaranteed
government annuity, but watch out. In the words of one independent expert,
it won't be worth "the paper it is written on," and the real
idea is to expropriate the funds covertly, giving government more resources
for militarism and corporate welfare.
-
- (14) Increased Tensions with Unresolved 9/11 Issues
-
- Growing millions know the official 9/11 story is bogus,
a bald faced lie. Clear evidence proves it, but coverup and media suppression
continue relentlessly. Nonetheless, over 1,200 Architects & Engineers
for 9/11 Truth (http://www.ae911truth.org/) demand "a truly independent
investigation with subpoena power in order to uncover the full truth surrounding
the events of 9/11-01 - specifically the collapse of the World Trade Center
Towers and Building 7."
-
- Clearly the official story was falsified to protect culpable
top officials. It also created a climate of fear to enact repressive homeland
laws, and enlist public support for imperial wars, ongoing in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Occupied Palestine, and elsewhere covertly. Given
how roguish America has become, revealing the true 9/11 story is more crucial
than ever.
-
- (15) Bhopal Water Still Toxic Twenty-Five Years After
Deadly Gas Leak
-
- On December 2, 1984, 40 tons of toxic gas poisoned Bhopal's
air. To this day, it's the worst ever industrial disaster, killing 8,000
immediately, later on up to 20,000 or more. In addition, "Hundreds
of thousands of others were harmed, in many cases permanently, with lung,
liver, kidney, and immune system damages, and blindness."
-
- It was later determined that over 520,000 people, to
one degree or other, were affected, "poisons circulating through their
bloodstream(s) causing different degrees of damage to almost all systems
in their bod(ies)." Twenty-five years later, Bhopal's water is still
toxic, disaster survivors getting little more than $500 "for a lifetime
of suffering...."
-
- (16) US Presidents Charged with Crimes Against Humanity
as Universal Jurisdiction Dies in Spain
-
- The well-established UJ principle holds that certain
crimes are too grave to ignore, including genocide, crimes of war and against
humanity. Thus, under UJ, nations may investigate and prosecute foreign
nationals when their country of residence or origin won't, can't, or hasn't
for any reason.
-
- Previously, Spain had been a venue against human rights
violators in Guatemala, Argentina, China, Israel, and elsewhere. However,
in October 2009, "under great pressure from the United States, (its)
government.... decided to limit its own jurisdiction in cases of genocide
and crimes against humanity, thus closing one of the last windows of opportunity"
to prosecute culpable US officials, guilty of these heinous crimes. As
a result, they're free to commit them with impunity unless another nation
dares offer a venue, what most or likely all fear doing.
-
- (17) Nanotech Particles Pose Serious DNA Risks to Humans
and the Environment
-
- Atom-sized nanotech particles are everywhere in products
few suspect and think are harmless, including cosmetics, articles of clothing,
personal hygiene items, drugs, paints and others. Yet in some cases, they
"sicken and kill workers in plants using nanotechnology," because
of permanent lung damage. Moreover, many species of aquatic wildlife are
also affected that, in turn, "threaten the global food chain."
-
- (18) The True Cost of Chevron
-
- The world's second most profitable US company in 2008
is also one of the most dangerous because its handsome returns depend on
imperial wars, lost lives, harmed health, "communities destroyed,
environments decimated, livelihoods ruined, and political voices silenced."
-
- Chevron is a global predator. In America alone, it "buys
political influence" locally and nationally "to circumvent or
(disregard) laws that would (otherwise) protect people and environments
from (its) destructive practices." Of course, practically all other
large and many smaller companies also do it, bottom line interests trumping
public welfare, the way America protects the powerful, not the people.
-
- (19) Obama Administration Assures World Bank and International
Monetary Fund a Free Reign of Abuse
-
- Under the WTO's Financial Services Agreement, over 100
nations must implement "major deregulation, or in effect, mandate
policies that caused today's financial crisis harming them most. Yet none
of these countries voted for it in their parliaments," and were instead
so ordered under WTO rules. Moreover, according to Jesse Griffiths of the
London-based Bretton Woods Project:
-
- Throughout their existence, IMF, World Bank, and WTO
policies have been destructive. Besides the current economic crisis, their
"system has failed to create equity and eradicate poverty. (They)
failed to ensure that human rights are protected, and (they) failed to
address environmental issues." Instead they ran roughshod over popular
interests, serving powerful ones alone.
-
- (20) Obama's Charter School Policies Spread Segregation
and Undermine Unions
-
- Like Bush, Obama embraces destructive public education
privatizations, his Race to the Top continuing No Child Left Behind policies
and more. As a result, quasi-public/private "Charter schools continue
to stratify students by race, class, and sometimes language, and (more)
racially (isolate students) than traditional public schools" in virtually
all large metropolitan areas nationally.
-
- Ultimately, non-union privatized public education is
planned, charter schools an interim step to get there by destroying a 375
year tradition, one getting inner city kids like this writer into two top
schools, followed by a successful career for four decades.
-
- Bush and ObamaEd want millions of others denied that
chance, under marketplace rules, commodifying education, ending government
responsibility for it, and making it another business profit center.
-
- (21) Western Lifestyle Continues Environmental Footprint
-
- Evidence shows Western consumption levels are unsustainable,
their environmental effects alone proving hugely destructive. Radical lifestyle
changes are thus essential to avoid serious, likely irreversible consequences.
-
- (22) 1.2 Billion People in India to be Given Biometric
ID Cards
-
- They'll contain a person's name, age, birth date, fingerprints
or iris scans, "though no caste or religious identification."
Then in five years, a giant computer will hold data for half of them, receiving
a 16-digit ID number by 2014 during the project's first phase.
-
- Thereafter, its use will be required for all government
and private services from drivers' licenses to hospitals to banking. Critics,
however, balk, saying "the project will turn India into an Orwellian
police state (able to) spy on citizens' private lives." Despite government
denials, it may be precisely for that purpose.
-
- Thus far not enacted, America's Real ID Act plans the
same thing, widespread state opposition over the cost having stopped it
up to now.
-
- (23) Afghan War: Largest Military Coalition in History
-
- Under NATO and other coalition contributors, the Afghan
war is being waged by "the largest military coalition in history,"
overall including contingents from up to 50 nations as part of the US-led
NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). The war's only beneficiary
is America and "a rapidly emerging global NATO" as its imperial
strike arm.
-
- (24) War Crimes of General Stanley McChrystal
-
- A man James Petras called a "notorious psychopath,"
McChrystal served as a hired gun, an assassin, a man known for committing
war crime atrocities as head of the Pentagon's infamous Joint Special Operations
Command (JSOC). Established in 1980, it used special ops teams as a virtual
executive office assassination wing engaged in extrajudicial killings,
systemic torture, bombing of civilian communities, and various search and
destroy missions.
-
- Its war crimes are legendary, McChrytal a known expert
at committing them. It's why he got command authority in Iraq and Afghanistan.
His mission wasn't to win hearts and minds. It was to bludgeon both countries
into submission, objectives thus far not achieved nor will they under Petraeus,
his successor in Afghanistan, a man with more than Generalissimo aims,
hoping to parlay his position to high political office, the nation's highest
if he succeeds and our loss.
-
- (25) Prisoners Still Brutalized at Gitmo
-
- Though promising to close Guantanamo and end torture,
Obama continued it more aggressively though media accounts suppress it,
and the fact that victims are entirely innocent, not dangerous terrorists
as claimed.
-
- Challenged in late October on the Daily Show about delivering
business as usual not change, Obama disingenuously responded:
-
- "When we promised during the campaign 'change you
can believe in,' it wasn't change you can believe in 18 months. It was
change you can believe in but, you know what, we're going to have to work
for it."
-
- Rubbish! Committing high crimes at home and abroad, Obama
so far delivered global wars, failure, betrayal, economic ruin for millions,
a climate of instability and insecurity, and a burgeoning police state
threatening everyone. Whatever lies ahead, his legacy is indelibly written.
-
- A Final Comment
-
|
