Here are some stories currently under review at Media Freedom Foundation and Project Censored as compiled by the Director, Dr. Peter Phillips.

These are validated independent news stories ignored, distorted, or undercovered by the corporate mainstream media. This is part of a new and ongoing role Project Censored is playing in reporting valid news, vetted by college and university students and professors, and making the stories available to the public.

*The United States is operating secret “floating prisons” to house those arrested in its war on terror. According to human rights lawyers, the US has also attempted to conceal the number and whereabouts of detainees. Reprieve, a human right’s organization, claims there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006 and that the US may have used as many as 17 ships as “floating prisons” since 2001. Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations, it is claimed. By its own admission, the US government is currently detaining at least 26,000 people without trial in secret prisons, and information suggests up to 80,000 have been ‘through the system’ since 2001.

*In October of 2008, over 5,000 U.S. physicians signed an open letter calling on the President and Congress “to stand up for the health of the American people and implement a nonprofit, single-payer national health insurance system.” The letter follows a survey last spring that shows 59 percent of U.S. physicians support national health insurance, The letter argues that whereas most leading Democrats offer a “mandate model” of reform—under which the government would require people (or their employers) to buy private health insurance—this would merely augment the role and profits of private insurers, whose overhead is four times that of Medicare’s Dr. Oliver Fein, signer of the letter, comments that the single-payer approach provides care to all who need it and requires no new money.

*The Guardian in London has compiled detailed evidence of alleged war crimes committed by Israel during the 23-day offensive in the Gaza Strip earlier this year, involving the use of Palestinian children as human shields and the targeting of medics and hospitals.

A month-long investigation also obtained evidence of civilians being hit by fire from unmanned drone aircraft said to be so accurate that their operators can tell the color of the clothes worn by a target.

Some of the most dramatic testimony gathered by the Guardian came from three teenage brothers in the al-Attar family. They describe how they were taken from home at gunpoint, made to kneel in front of Israeli tanks to deter Hamas fighters from firing, and sent by Israeli soldiers into Palestinian houses to clear them.

Medics and ambulance drivers said they were targeted when they tried to tend to the wounded; sixteen were killed. According to the World Health Organization, more than half of Gaza’s 27 hospitals and 44 clinics were damaged by Israeli bombs.

The Geneva convention makes it clear medical staff and hospitals are not legitimate targets and forbids involuntary human shields.

*Two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, according to a new report from Congress. According to the Government Accounting Organization more than 38,000 foreign corporations doing business in the U.S. had no tax liability in 2005 and 1.2 million U.S. companies paid no income tax as well. Combined, the companies had $2.5 trillion in sales. About 25 percent of the U.S. corporations not paying corporate taxes were considered large corporations, meaning they had at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in receipts.

Source: Most Companies In US Avoid Federal Income Taxes GAO, Common Dreams, 8/12/08

*The US Navy reactivated the Fourth Fleet after fifty-eight years so that it could begin patrolling Latin American waters in what the Department of Defense said was an effort to combat terrorism, drug trafficking and other activities. The presidents of both Bolivia and Venezuela have stated that they see the reestablishment of the fleet as a new sign of aggression toward their governments and the region.

In 2009, the Ecuadorian government will not renew Washington’s permit to operate in Manta, which is the US’s only permanent military base in South America. The fleet provides a floating base for US interventions throughout the continent.

*Chinese citizens will be watched around the clock through networked CCTV cameras and remote monitoring of computers which are provided by American corporations. This high tech surveillance and censorship program is known in China as “Golden Shield”. American giants like IBM, Honeywell and General Electric supply the technology. Their end goal is to use the latest in people tracking technology to create an airtight consumer cocoon – a place where consumerism can be enjoyed without the threat of democracy breaking out.

*In 1989, Congress passed legislation barring U.S. companies from selling any products in China that have to do with “crime control or detection instruments or equipment.” However, while fingerprinting technology appears on the Commerce Department’s list of banned products, there is no explicit mention of “face prints”,

*A study by Center for Responsive Politics has found that special interests paid Washington lobbyists $3.2 billion in 2008, more than any other year on record. This was a 13.7 percent increase over 2007. The Center calculated that interest groups spent $17.4 million a day lobbying Congress in 2008. 


For the third straight year, pharmaceutical/health interests spent more on federal lobbying than any other economic sector–$478.5 million. The second-biggest spender among industries in 2008 was electric utilities, which spent $156.7 million on lobbying. Third was insurance interests at $153.2 million, and oil and gas companies paid lobbyists $133.2 million. Pro-Israel groups, food processing companies and the oil and gas industry increased their lobbying expenditures the most (as a percentage) between 2007 and 2008.

*A highly controversial report pushing for the building of a peripheral canal on the California Delta was funded in part by Bechtel Corporation. Bechtel is one of the world’s largest engineering and construction firms and is a leading advocate of the privatization of water systems. The Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) report recommends the construction of a peripheral canal.

*Central Valley chinook salmon and Delta fish populations are in a state of collapse, largely due to massive increases in water exports from the Delta in recent years. A broad coalition of recreational anglers, commercial fishermen, Delta farmers, Indian Tribes and environmentalists are opposed to the peripheral canal because it would result in the diversion of more water from the Delta and further exacerbate the current fishery collapses.

*Matthew Rothschild with the Progressive magazine writes that President Obama needs to tell Attorney General Eric Holder to indict Dick Cheney, right now, for war crimes.

Title 18 of the U.S. Criminal Code, Section 2441 makes it illegial for a person to commit, or conspire to commit, an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering . . . upon another person within his custody or physical control for the purpose of obtaining information or a confession, punishment, intimidation, coercion, or any reason…”

Cheney was clearly in on, as when he repeatedly defended waterboarding and talked about the need to go to the “dark side” Cheney was supervising such treatment in the White House, which would qualify as committing this crime.

For each of these offenses, Cheney could receive life in prison, according to the statute.

“There is no longer any doubt as to whether the Bush administration has committed war crimes,” said Major General Antonio Taguba, USA (Ret.), “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

More Sources for above stories:

Washington Lobbying Grew to $3.2 Billion Last Year, Despite Economy Center for Responsive Politics, Open Secrets.org, January 29, 2009

Source: The Guardian (U.K.) March 23, 2009 – updated March 24, 2009

Source: China’s All-Seeing Eye Naomi Klein, Rolling Stone, May 29, 2008

Bechtel and the Big Dig Dan Bacher, CounterPunch , 7/22/2008

Source: Fourth Fleet Threatens Peace, Democracy in Latin America Jose A. Cruz, People’s Weekly World Newspaper, 6/6/2008

The Return of the Fourth Fleet BBC 5/10/2008

Source: US Accused of Holding Terror Suspects on Prison Ships Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor, Guardian/UK, June 2, 2008

5,000 Doctors Challenge Private-Insurance System Staff Writers, Kansas City InfoZine, October 8, 2008

Text of Letter to President Obama for single payer national health insurance.

Iraq by the numbers…

Overview

More Specifics

One million dead Iraqis, four million refugees, almost 5,000 US soldiers dead and another 35,000 wounded Americans with hundreds of thousands applying for VA benefits…a bankrupt economy and a $3.2 trillion war. Blame the new guy. Mission Accomplished.

Juan Cole, Professor of History at the University of Michigan, recently remarked upon former Vice President Dick Cheney’s glowing assessment of the Bush administration’s accomplishments in Iraq. See his analysis from Informed Comment published here (and see below). It’s amazing how history can be rewritten in real time by political actors and validated by a compliant, corporate, lap dog press. Cheney’s stuff happens approach to history is stunningly self serving and naive at best, rank propaganda and blatant lies at worst. All the more reason we should listen more to Prof. Cole’s commentary and others like him. America has seen enough of this kind of deception and Orwellian revisionism in the 21st century already. Winston Smith would blush…

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Cheney’s Mission Accomplished
by Juan Cole

Dick Cheney: “I guess my general sense of where we are with respect to Iraq and at the end of now, what, nearly six years, is that we’ve accomplished nearly everything we set out to do….”

What has Dick Cheney really accomplished in Iraq?

An estimated 4 million Iraqis, out of 27 million, have been displaced from their homes, that is, made homeless. Some 2.7 million are internally displaced inside Iraq. A couple hundred thousand are cooling their heels in Jordan. And perhaps a million are quickly running out of money and often living in squalid conditions in Syria. Cheney’s war has left about 15% of Iraqis homeless inside the country or abroad. That would be like 45 million American thrown out of their homes.

It is controversial how many Iraqis died as a result of the 2003 invasion and its aftermath. But it seems to me that a million extra dead, beyond what you would have expected from a year 2000 baseline, is entirely plausible. The toll is certainly in the hundreds of thousands. Cheney did not kill them all. The Lancet study suggested that the US was directly responsible for a third of all violent deaths since 2003. That would be as much as 300,000 that we killed. The rest, we only set in train their deaths by our invasion.

Baghdad has been turned from a mixed city, about half of its population Shiite and the other half Sunni in 2003, into a Shiite city where the Sunni population may be as little as ten to fifteen percent. From a Sunni point of view, Cheney’s war has resulted in a Shiite (and Iranian) take-over of the Iraqi capital, long a symbol of pan-Arabism and anti-imperialism.

In the Iraqi elections, Shiite fundamentalist parties closely allied with Iran came to power. The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, the leading party in parliament, was formed by Iraqi expatriates at the behest of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1982 in Tehran. The Islamic Mission (Da’wa) Party is the oldest ideological Shiite party working for an Islamic state. It helped form Hizbullah in Beirut in the early 1980s. It has supplied both prime ministers elected since 2005. Fundamentalist Shiites shaped the constitution, which forbids the civil legislature to pass legislation that contravenes Islamic law. Dissidents have accused the new Iraqi government of being an Iranian puppet.

Arab-Kurdish violence is spiking in the north, endangering the Obama withdrawal plan and, indeed, the whole of Iraq, not to mention Syria, Turkey and Iran.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women have been widowed by the war and its effects, leaving most without a means of support. Iraqi widows often lack access to clean water and electricity. Aljazeera English has video.

$32 billion were wasted on Iraq reconstruction, and most of it cannot even be traced. I repeat, Cheney gave away $32 bn. to anonymous cronies in such a way that we can’t even be sure who stole it, exactly. And you are angry at AIG about $400 mn. in bonuses! We are talking about $32 billion given out in brown paper bags.

Political power is being fragmented in Iraq with big spikes in the murder rate in some provinces that may reflect faction-fighting and vendettas in which the Iraqi military is loathe to get involved.

The Iraqi economy is devastated, and the new government’s bureaucracy and infighting have made it difficult to attract investors.

The Bush-Cheney invasion helped further destabilize the Eastern Mediterranean, setting in play Kurdish nationalism and terrifying Turkey. Cheney avoids mentioning all the human suffering he has caused, on a cosmic scale, and focuses on procedural matters like elections (which he confuses with democracy– given 2000 in this country, you can understand why). Or he lies, as when he says that Iran’s influence in Iraq has been blocked. Another lie is that there was that the US was fighting “al-Qaeda” in Iraq as opposed to just Iraqis. He and Bush even claim that they made Iraqi womens’ lives better.

The real question is whether anyone will have the gumption to put Cheney on trial for treason and crimes against humanity.

© 2009 Juan Cole
Juan Cole teaches Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan. His most recent book Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) has just been published. He has appeared widely on television, radio and on op-ed pages as a commentator on Middle East affairs, and has a regular column at Salon.com. He has written, edited, or translated 14 books and has authored 60 journal articles. His weblog on the contemporary Middle East is Informed Comment.

Much has been afoot these few months of 2009. We are now not only promoting Censored 2009, but writing Censored 2010.

For starters, and why I am not writing here as often, you can see the Project Censored blog at Daily Censored news. The Director of Project Censored, Dr. Peter Phillips, and I have been giving several talks about the future of Project Censored International and the Media Freedom Foundation across the US.

We have also posted more investigative research at the Project Censored website, including the study I did with Dr. Paul Rea on 9/11 media myth making titled Deconstructing Deceit. It can also be seen here. We need to generate a healthy climate of debate in the US, and here is a fine topic to begin such a quest.

Stay tuned for more…we’re getting ready to choose the top censored stories at Project Censored, the top Junk Food News and News Abuse stories, and finish more investigative research about media censorship issues.

Cheers

P.S. Just in case, yesterday, March 15th, you were supposed to Beware the Ides of March. Hope all is well…

Barack Obama Administration Continues US Military Global Dominance

By Dr. Peter Phillips, Professor of Sociology and Director of Project Censored

The Barack Obama administration is continuing the neo-conservative agenda of US military domination of the world— albeit with perhaps a kinder-gentler face. While overt torture is now forbidden for the CIA and Pentagon, and symbolic gestures like the closing of the Guantanamo prison are in evidence, a unilateral military dominance policy, expanding military budget, and wars of occupation and aggression will likely continue unabated.

The military expansionists from within the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, G. W. Bush administrations put into place solid support for increased military spending. Clinton’s model of supporting the US military industrial complex held steady defense spending and increased foreign weapons sales from 16% of global orders to over 63% by the end of his administration.

The neo-conservatives, who dominated the most recent Bush administration, amplified this trend of increased military spending. The neo-cons laid out their agenda for military global dominance in the 2000 Project for a New American Century (PNAC) report Rebuilding America’s Defenses. The report called for the protection of the American Homeland, the ability to wage simultaneous theater wars, to perform global constabulary roles, and to control space and cyberspace. The report claimed that in order to maintain a Pax Americana, potential rivals — such as China, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea — needed to be held in check. This military global dominance agenda required forward deployment of US forces worldwide and increasing defense/war spending well into the 21st century. The result was a doubling of the US military budget to over $700 billion in the last eight years. The US now spends as much on war/defense as the rest of the world combined, making Americans the highest war-tax payers in the world.

Barack Obama’s election brought a moment of hope for many. However, the Obama administration is not calling for decreased military spending, or a reversal of US military global dominance. Instead, Obama retained Robert Gates, thus making Obama the first president from an opposing party, in US history, to keep in place the outgoing administrations’ Secretary of Defense/War. Additionally, Obama is calling for an expanded war in Afghanistan and only minimal long-range reductions in Iraq.

The US military industrial complex is deeply embedded inside the Washington beltway. According to the most recent reports from OpenSecrets.org, 151 members of Congress in 2006 had up to $195.5 million of their personal assets invested in defense companies.

Major defense contractors were seriously involved in the 2008 elections. Lockheed Martin gave $2,612,219 in total political campaign donations, with 49% to Democrats ($1,285,493) and 51% to Republicans ($1,325,159). Boeing gave $2,225,947 in 2008 with 58% going to Democrats, and General Dynamics provided $1,682,595 to both parties. Northrop Grumman spent over $20 million in 2008, hiring lobbyists to influence Congress, and Raytheon spent $6 million on lobbyists in the same period. In a revolving door appointment, Obama nominated Raytheon’s senior vice president for government operations and strategy, William Lynn, for the number two position in the Pentagon. Lynn was formally the Defense Department’s comptroller during the Clinton administration.

The International Monetary Fund’s prediction for global economic growth in 2009 is 0.5 percent—the worst since World War II. The United Nations’ International Labor Organization estimates that some 50 million workers will lose their jobs worldwide this year. There are an estimated 62,000 U.S. companies expected to close in 2009, and while official unemployment is at 7 percent in the US, when you add people no longer looking for jobs and part-time workers, joblessness is closer to 14 percent. The military-industrial-political elite are worried about the potential of increasing global insecurity. The answer inside the Obama Administration is to continue high defense/war spending to insure military control of both domestic and foreign instabilities.

The military, industrial, congressional, and administrative elite profit from defense spending, both financially and ideologically. Insider profit taking from pentagon spending is widespread in Washington. But perhaps more important is the belief that this global military machine is seen as necessary for the protection of US corporate interests and the American upper classes in an increasingly destabilized world. Given that belief, the Obama administration is unlikely to change the defense spending policies of the previous US administrations without significant disruptive pressure from anti-war activists and global empire resisters.

Peter Phillips is a Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and Director of Project Censored a media research organization. His 2006 study on the Global Dominance Group in the US is available online here.

Another Year of Fear has come and gone. See my latest bit at the new Project Censored blog The Daily Censored for more info you don’t hear on the nightly corporate news. Also, feel free to give the gift of a tax deductible donation to Project Censored if you are so inclined.

I’ll have many updates of the past semester of activities as I was so busy I didn’t have a lot of tome to post…but there’s always next year…cheers!

Post election waves of hope and exhilaration are hard to deny in the progressive circles of America. An end to eight years of the Worst rule the country has arguably ever seen is certainly cause for celebration. But how much? Friend and colleague, Professor Robert Abele, cautions on Obama: The Great Disappointment that may yet unfold. As we’re reminded, Cornell West, the philosopher from Princeton, said it best: “I will vote for Obama on November 4, and then be his harshest critic on November 5.” Let us all pay close attention to the real struggles that lie ahead. Let us be hopeful and vigilant. See more from Abele, including his radio commentaries, at his Modern Day Patriot website, Spotlight on Freedom.

Progressives, Beware of Premature Euphoria
By Dr. Robert Abele

Cornell West, the philosopher from Princeton, said it best: “I will vote for Obama on November 4, and then be his harshest critic on November 5.” I follow that line of reasoning. One should never give a pass to the President or President-elect, especially when they are poised to spurn half of the voters who voted for him. This is the case with the Obama presidency, for the following reasons.

First, these commentaries have previously made references to Obama’s deep corporate connections. His votes on the bailout, opposition to single-payer health care, increase of the military budget, and opposition to significant minimum wage increase are all in line with his corporate sponsors, from whom he has taken millions of dollars in campaign contributions. If that is not enough, consider his main economic advisors, Penny Pritzker and Robert Rubin. Pritzker was deeply involved in the fraudulent lending schemes that led to the home foreclosure crisis we now face. The bank she owned and operated, Superior Bank, engaged in deceptive and faulty lending practices, contributing to the crisis. When federal regulators closed the bank in 2002, Pritzker and her husband had already made millions from it. After threats to take them to court, the Pritzkers agreed to pay the government $460 million. Robert Rubin was Treasure Secretary under President Clinton, and was a fervent supporter of banking and market deregulation, including Clinton’s ultimate repealing of the Glass-Steagall Act, which paved the way for the crisis we are now experiencing.

Next, let us briefly examine his appointment of Rahm Israel Emanuel as his Chief of Staff. Emanuel is a right-wing Democrat, a former Clinton official, who was and is a rabid militaristic supporter of Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians. He is also quite adept at raising special interest money. Add to this Obama’s voting record on Israel. For example, while Israel was engaged in an all-out assault of the civilian population in Lebanon during the summer of 2006, Obama voted in favor of a Senate resolution expressing “steadfast support for the State of Israel.” When coupled with his fawning speech earlier this year to AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, one can see that not only will there be no change from the Bush Mideast policy, but Obama may well be to the right of Bush on the Palestinian question. This leads to the next issue.

Third, don’t expect a withdrawal of American forces from Iraq under an Obama administration. Obama’s call for a “residual force” to remain in Iraq leaves him the wiggle room necessary to keep troops there indefinitely. Obama himself said that we have to keep “logistical and intelligence support” in Iraq, in addition to “providing training for the Iraqi military,” in addition to keeping a “counter-terrorism strike force” there, in addition to “protecting our diplomatic forces,” our civilians, and our embassy there. These are all direct quotes from Obama himself, so don’t expect us to suddenly back out of Iraq. [The quotes come from an interview with Stars & Stripes, taken from Frank J. Menetrez, “Now What?” Counterpunch, November 6, 2008]

Fourth, out of Obama’s own mouth has come the following ideas: bombing or invading Pakistan to go after Al Qaeda; expanding the war in Afghanistan; condemning Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as an enemy of the U.S.; keeping Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense; opposing Bush’s impeachment. This list could be expanded far beyond what I’ve just mentioned, if time permitted.

Let’s be clear about this, before becoming too disappointed: Obama is no liberal, and definitely not a revolutionary. While in some areas he might be better than Bush and McCain, it is dubious that his presidency is going to differ that much from the Bush policies, at least when it comes to economic and foreign policy. We might expect more of him in other areas, but given the people with whom he has already surrounded himself, progressives should be prepared for further disappointments to come.
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Time will tell. We should celebrate the end of an era, but the public voice should now have more of a say about where we are going as a people domestically as well as in a global context. We owe it to the world and the next generation of Americans to right our many past wrongs. Let’s hope Obama meant some of what he said, though early signs of what he’ll do tell another tale.

Project Censored, the media research group at Sonoma State University (SSU), has just released it’s annual report on the top stories that didn’t make the corporate mainstream news from the past year. The book is published by Seven Stories Press. Censored 2009, edited by director Dr. Peter Phillips with Dr. Andrew Roth, exposes the major stories Americans should know and care about that the “free press” just doesn’t deliver. The top stories for this year can be viewed at the PC website and the piece in the North Bay Bohemian can be read here.

Project Censored award winning journalist and researcher Stephen Lendman has just written about the Project in a piece titled Project Censored’s Media Democracy Advocacy which looks at the history of the Project as well as details in this year’s volume. A lecture series hosting authors of this years top censored stories is presently underway at SSU for those in the Bay Area wishing to attend. The series is being broadcast at Free Speech TV this fall as well.

As acting Associate Director of Project Censored, I invite everyone to explore this year’s book and help support media democracy in action. Our currently calamitous and critical condition as a fragile free society depends upon a well informed citizenry and I strongly believe that Project Censored is a major force in the direction of strengthening our society’s democratic institutions and principles. Help spread the word if you can and read more about the Project and its history below in a reprinting of Stephen Lendman’s recent article.

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Project Censored’s Media Democracy Advocacy – by Stephen Lendman

For 32 years, Sonoma State University’s (SSU) Project Censored has pioneered US media democracy, research, and First Amendment issues. Founded by Carl Jensen in 1976, it’s now headed by Professor Peter Phillips, currently on sabbatical leave, with Professor Mickey Huff in charge as Interim Associate Director of the program until his return.

PC works cooperatively with numerous independent media groups, primarily to train SSU students “in media research, First Amendment issues and the advocacy for, and protection of, free press rights in the United States.” Since its founding, it’s trained over 1500 students in investigative research and the importance of our most fundamental right without which all others are at risk and now currently hang by a thread.

PC is a “partnership of faculty, students, and the community” to conduct 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 2009: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007 – 2008″ may now be purchased at bookstores or online at http://www.projectcensored.org/store/.

The current edition is larger than ever. It includes the year’s honorable mention choices and additional chapters covering these topics:

– Updates on previous PC stories;

– Junk Food News and News Abuse;

– The News is Good!: Stories of Hope and Change from 2007 and 2008;

– Oiling the Dangerous Engine of Arbitrary Government: Newspaper Coverage of the Military Commissions Act (aka the torture authorization and habeas rights revocation act);

– Universal Healthcare, Media, and the 2008 Presidential Campaign;

– US Media Bias, Human Rights, and the Hamas Government in Gaza;

– The Gardasil Sell Job – on the controversial human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine thought to be unsafe for adolescent girls, yet Merck dishonestly markets it in collusion with the FDA;

– Fear & Favor 2007: How Power Still Shapes the News;

– Index on Censorship 2007 – 2008;

– Truth Emergency Meets Media Reform;

– Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan — Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations;

– The Pentagon’s Child Recruiting Strategy;

– Deconstructing Deceit: 9/11, the Media, and Myth Information; and

– Thirty-Three Years of US Military Domination and Economic Deception.

In all, over 400 power-packed pages of vital information in the current PC Censored 2009 edition. Must reading for everyone. Even those familiar with the issues for more information than they now know.

Project Censored’s Definition of “Modern Censorship”

It’s the dominant media’s “subtle yet constant and sophisticated manipulation of reality” in their role as “guardians of power” and to serve their single-minded pursuit of profit. It includes ignoring vital news stories. Parts of them. The whys that explain them, and systematically withholding vital truths from the public. It’s done through and because of political, economic and legal pressures in fundamental violation of a free and open press. Run by CEOs, not journalists. Serving their interests and advertisers, not ours.

PC believes in a “healthy and functioning democracy.” Supports independent media and the right of free people to be informed. It also holds the dominant media accountable and serves as an antidote to their practices.

Why Project Censored and Why Now?

Democracy requires a free, open, vibrant and diverse media. Elements very much absent under our corporate-dominated system. As a result, the media system today is in crisis. Fiction substitutes for fact. News is carefully filtered. Dissent marginalized, and supporting the powerful substitutes for full and accurate reporting. Aggressive wars are thus called liberating ones. Civil liberties are suppressed for our own good. Anything government does, we’re told, business does better, so let it, and patriotism means supporting lawless imperial regimes.

Media scholar and activist Robert McChesney asks whether “the media system….promote(s) or undermine(s) democratic institutions and practices. Are media a force for social justice or oligarchy?” Given their concentrated state, profits as a be all and end all, and partnership with an imperial state, their current condition is corrupted, broken, and in violation of the public trust they disdain. “Rich media, poor democracy” for McChesney. A powerful antidemocratic force. More dominant than ever. Hyper-commercially driven. Unresponsive to public needs, and serving only the interests of wealth and power the way Alex Carey brilliantly explained in his classic work, “Taking the Risk Out of Democracy:”

He wrote: “The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.” Journalist Walter Lippmann called it the “manufacture of consent” in a democratic society where it can’t be done by force, and Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman titled their landmark 1988 book “Manufacturing Consent” to describe the dominant media’s “propaganda model” to program the public mind.

It “filter(s) out the news to print, marginalize(s) dissent, (and assures) government and dominant private interests” control all information dissemination. It’s done through a set of “filters” to remove what’s unacceptable and “leav(es) only the cleansed residue fit to print” or broadcast.

It raises the dilemma James Madison posed that “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.”

Today it’s from the media, and therein lies the problem. An opportunity as well from alternative sources and organizations like Project Censored promoting the best they have to offer. Publishing it in annual volumes. Spreading it by word of mouth through lectures, on-air discussions, and in classroom instruction on journalism as it was meant to be in a free and open society. Understanding Thomas Jefferson’s warning that emerging “banking institutions and moneyed incorporations” would destroy our democratic freedoms and replace them with a “single and splendid government of an aristocracy” if given a free hand.

What Lincoln also feared by “see(ing) in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country….corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” Made easier today given the dominant media’s power and ability to use it against the public interest the way Alex Carey explained:

Through a “propaganda-managed democracy….to identify the free-enterprise system in popular consciousness with every cherished value, and to identify interventionist governments and strong unions with tyranny, oppression and even subversion.” Carey called propaganda “communications where the form and content is selected with the single-minded purpose of bringing some target audience (the public or a company’s employees, etc.) to adopt attitudes and beliefs chosen in advance by the sponsors.” It’s as important in democratic societies as in authoritarian ones. In addition, “the success of business (or government) propaganda persuading us that we are free from (this type influence) is one of the most significant propaganda achievements of the twentieth century.”

Even truer today with round-the-clock news. Hundreds of cable channels, and a more dominant media than in Carey’s day. All the greater need for organizations like Project Censored to dispel official propaganda with real news and information that refutes it. All the more reason also to support its vital work. Countering the giants with what a free society needs to survive.

Stories the Dominant Media Censor

Hundreds of them have been covered since 1976 when PC’s top story was “Jimmy Carter and the Trilateral Commission.” Carter was a charter member of David Rockefeller’s organization to counter the threat of democracy – too much of it. To assure that political power rests with the few. That public interests go unaddressed. That governments serve multinational banks and giant corporations. That people and resources are exploited for their benefit, and that popular democratic movements are suppressed. David Rockefeller chose Jimmy Carter to be president for that agenda. To be an interregnum executive after the turbulent Nixon years, then hand back the office to Republicans in 1980.

The same year, PC covered:

– the “Corporate Control of DNA;”

– selling banned pesticides and drugs to third world countries;

– unsafe workplaces causing “untold numbers of injuries, disease and deaths….;” and

– the sale of worthless and harmful non-prescription drugs to the public along with 20 other censored stories.

The top two 1977 stories covered the myth of black progress and “Cancer, Inc.” About billions spent for cures, yet the US rate was 50% above the world average. It’s still epidemic. Kills millions. Is a huge health care industry money-maker and too profitable for providers to want a cure.

In 1978, nuclear power plant dangers won top honors, and long before the proliferation of GMO foods and their hazards, the feasibility of organic farming ranked second.

Dumping illegal/dangerous production on third world countries was called “The Corporate Crime of the Century” and PC’s top 1979 story. Number two was that “The (Iranian embassy) Seizure Should Not Have Been A Surprise” even though as late as summer 1978 the US media portrayed the Shah “as a modernizing, reform-oriented leader (with) a broad base of popular support.”

In 1980, the distorted coverage of El Salvador’s civil war won top honors followed by “Big Brother Is Listening to You” – the National Security Agency (NSA) that can do it today with much improved technology and legally with institutionalized spying legislation in place. Most recently The Protect America Act of 2007 and FISA Amendments Act of 2008. They assail civil liberties. Legalize warrantless wiretapping. Remove judicial oversight, and grant telecom companies retroactive immunity post-9/11 to violate our privacy.

“The Real Story Behind Our Economic Crisis” and the flagrant miscarriage of justice in Greensboro, NC ranked one and two in 1981.

Back then, a lack of “a competitive economy, monopoly, militarism, and multi-nationalization” (were) at the root of our economic crisis.” Those factors still apply but much more as well. The current situation far exceeds any crisis since the 1930s. Is in most respects unparalled. No one fully understands it. How much harm if may cause. Its effect on world economies. How bad things may get or what alleviating measures may work best, if any.

Industrial capitalism is eroding. Replaced by a kleptocracy. Grand theft America. Rewarding criminals for their crimes. Backed by the full faith and credit of the government with taxpayer money. An unimaginable wealth transfer to the rich. When this ends, things won’t ever be the same again in our lifetimes. The old system didn’t work. The new one will be worse, and along the way the human fallout will be catastrophic. Talk about a big story. Short of armageddon or world war, it doesn’t get any bigger than this. Factors responsible include:

– the ruinous effects of militarization; a permanent war economy for profit and dominance; unsustainable spending for it; the accumulation of mountains of unrepayable debt; the drain on a weakened economy; the implications are chilling – a future default, hyperinflation, potential bankruptcy, and demise of the republic;

– a speculative finance-created crisis; called financialization or Frankenstein finance;

– a totally deregulated, anything goes, environment permitting the most extreme, outrageous practices; free from government oversight that created the real under and unreported dilemma of: multiple imploding bubbles affecting housing, mortgage finance, and an alphabet soup menu of levered-up, high-risk securitized assets amounting to financial alchemy and largely outright fraud; the most dangerous being a “quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble” (a thousand trillion) crucial to contain to avoid the implosion of the entire global banking system and world economies with it; in a word, potential financial armageddon touching everyone; in 2003, Warren Buffett called derivatives a “time bomb” that pose a “mega-catastrophic risk;” said they’re “financial weapons of mass destruction” capable of wrecking the whole economic system;

– at the root of today’s crisis is a corrupted, broken system; Chicago School fundamentalism; unfettered capitalism; unbridled greed, and the human wreckage it causes; driving it is a government-business partnership for global dominance and the single-minded pursuit of profit;

– no freedom in our “free markets;” they’re manipulated (up and down) for profit in either direction; in a crisis like today, small, expendable, and less favored enterprises are destroyed to benefit powerful ones like Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and the Rockefeller family JP Morgan Chase Bank; the scheme is for greater consolidation among fewer giant players; the losers – the vast majority of people unaware that what’s going on was planned; although this time the best and brightest were too smart by half; they may have set off a chain reaction global financial market meltdown; world governments are frantically scrambling to contain it with no idea if they can because the current crisis is unprecedented; no one’s sure what can work, and the sums needed are unimaginable; in the trillions, with a fraction of it proposed for starters; a down payment; perhaps international help to raise more; and

– fraud on a massive scale involving many trillions of dollars; placing world economies at risk; a Ponzi scheme writ large; a calculated crime; the greatest one ever with media complicity through silence as things progressively worsened and now approach the abyss; the story is still unfolding; it won’t be easily or soon resolved; and its outcome is far from clear; one thing that is: this affects the entire world community of nations and everyone in them; there’s no place to hide anywhere.

In 1982, fraudulent toxicity and cancer testing was PC’s top story followed by “Americans ‘Bugged’ by Super-Secret (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance) Court.” Institutionalized, illegal spying goes way back.

In 1983, “Israel: Merchant of Death in Central America” as the region’s largest arms supplier and Ronald Reagan’s massive peacetime military buildup ranked one and two.

In 1984, the myth of the “well-publicized Soviet military buildup” (to incite fear), and the Reagan administration’s use of “international terrorism” as a pretext to assail civil liberties were the year’s top two stories.

In 1985, intense saturation El Salvador bombing and unregulated military toxic waste were PC’s picks for numbers one and two.

In 1986, spying on US Central American policy critics took top honors, followed by the Reagan administration’s official policy of suppressing information from the public – with near-silence from the dominant media.

In 1987, PC’s top story was on “The Information Monopoly” – what journalist/author Ben Bagdikian wrote about in his book, “The Media Monopoly,” now titled “The New Media Monopoly” in its seventh edition. Ranked second was the “Contra-drug connection in America.”

In 1988, George HW Bush’s 25 years of “Dirty Big Secrets” was PC’s top story followed by “How the EPA Pollutes the News and the Dioxin Cover-Up.”

In 1989, media dominance again took top honors in an story titled “Global Media Lords Threaten Open Marketplace of Ideas.” Second ranked was “Africa Turning into the World’s Garbage Can.”

In 1990, PC’s top story was on the Cheerleader Press’ Gulf War coverage. Second ranked was “The S & L Crisis: The Solution Is Worse Than the Crime” – about Reagan era criminal bankers and the $500 billion taxpayer bailout it cost. Appropriate to look back on given today’s financial crisis. The unease about how bad it may get, and the realization that this time things are far more potentially disastrous than anything experienced in the past. See above comments under 1981′s top story.

In 1991, “CBS and NBC Spiking Iraq Bombing Carnage Footage” ranked first. Number two was “Operation Censored War” about the secretive GHW Bush administration and an obliging cheerleading media.

In 1993 (the next PC-listed year), “The Great Media Sell-Out to Reaganism” won top honors followed by corporate crime dwarfing what occurs on streets. The US prison gulag system (by far the world’s largest and adding 1000 new inmates weekly, mostly poor blacks and Latinos) holds 2.3 million inmates. People not rich enough to buy justice. Seldom are corporate criminals prosecuted, and when they are, punishment is inconsequential by comparison.

In 1994, the US killing its young (through violence, poverty and indifference to human needs) ranked first. Second was “Why Are We Really in Somalia?” Humanitarian intervention is never the reason. Strategic resources (especially oil and gas) always are primary along with advancing our imperial agenda and making the world safe for capital.

In 1995, PC’s top story was “The Deadly Secrets of the (US) Occupational Safety Agency” – keeping 170,000 toxically-exposed workers uninformed about the risks. Second-ranked was about a “Powerful Group of Ultra-Conservatives (including influential Christian fascists) Secret Plans for Your Future.” They haven’t changed and are now more dangerous than ever.

In 1996, “Telecommunications Deregulation: Closing Up America’s Marketplace of Ideas” ranked first after passage of the (grand theft media) Telecommunications Act of 1996 allowing greater than ever consolidation. Number two was a story on cutting social services by balancing the budget on the backs of the poor. Now affecting everyone to advance a global militarist agenda.

In 1997, PC’s top story was “Risking the World: Nuclear Proliferation in Space.” One part of an agenda for “full spectrum dominance” over all land, surface and sub-surface sea, air, space, electromagnetic spectrum and information systems with enough overwhelming power to fight and win global wars against any potential challengers using all weapons in our arsenal. “Shell’s Oil, Africa’s Blood” was number two for the year.

In 1998, the Clinton administration’s aggressive global arms sales ranked first followed by personal care and cosmetic products being potentially carcinogenic.

In 1999, PC’s top story was on the secret Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). Designed to undermine national sovereignty by creating an open field for capital. Next was the story of chemical corporations profiting from breast cancer.

In 2000, multinational corporations profiting from international brutality ranked first followed by Big Pharma putting profits ahead of human need. By developing products like Viagra instead of cures for diseases killing millions in developing countries.

In 2001, World Bank and multinational corporate collusion to privatize water took top honors followed by OSHA failing to protect US workers.

In 2003 (the next listed year), PC’s top story was on FCC efforts to privatize the airwaves followed by a story on the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) to privatize social services and make them available only to those who can pay.

In 2004, top ranked was “The Neoconservative Plan for Global Dominance” followed by how “Homeland Security Threatens Civil Liberty” with plenty of ammunition from pre-and-mostly-post-9/11 repressive laws.

In 2005, PC’s top story was on the unprecedented 21st century wealth inequality threatening the economy and democracy followed by a story about Attorney General John Ashcroft’s attempt to strike down Alien Torts Claim Act (ATCA) protections against corporate human rights abuses in foreign countries.

In 2006, the Bush administration’s obsession with secrecy ranked first followed by the media’s failure to cover the Fallujah and overall Iraqi civilian death toll.

In 2007, PC’s top story was on the “Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media” followed by “Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran.”

In 2008, the Military Commissions Act (MCA) denial of habeas rights for everyone (including US citizens designated “unlawful enemy combatants”) won top honors followed by the Bush administration moving toward martial law by inserting an obscure provision in the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 annulling the 1807 Insurrection Act and 1878 Posse Comitatus Act.

Project Censored’s current top 25 2009 stories are just out and available for purchase as explained above. Top ranked was about “Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation” as documented by Johns Hopkins researchers earlier and British polling group, Opinion Research Business (ORB). Other selected stories included:

– the North American Union (NAU) Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) or militarized NAFTA;

– InfraGard on the FBI deputizing business;

– the US International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) training Latin American security forces in counterterrorism techniques; a possible scheme to restart the region’s dirty wars;

– two George Bush executive orders (EOs) criminalizing the anti-war movement and allowing the Treasury Department to seize property from anyone opposing the administration’s Middle East wars;

– The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act (HR 1955) – called “the thought crime prevention bill;” passed by the House and introduced in the Senate in August 2007 (S. 1959) but not acted on;

– Guest Workers Inc.: Fraud and Human Trafficking – or near-slavery in America;

– executive orders (EOs) can be changed secretly even though the Constitution has no provision giving presidents the right to make new law through one-man decrees;

– Iraq and Afghanistan Vets Testify;

– the American Psychological Association’s (APA) complicity in CIA torture;

– El Salvador’s Water Privatization and the Global War on Terror;

– Bush profiteers collecting billions from the No Child Left Behind Act scheme to destroy public education in America by privatizing it;

– Tracking Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq through fraud, waste and other war profiteering schemes;

– Mainstreaming Nuclear Waste;

– Worldwide Slavery at a time most people don’t know it exists, let alone in America;

– the Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights;

– the UN’s Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights;

– Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers;

– Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction;

– Marijuana Arrests Set New Record;

– NATO Considers “First Strike” Option while the US 2001 Nuclear Policy Review, 2002 and updated 2006 National Security Strategy, and other US documents assert the right to wage preventive or proactive wars with “first strike” nuclear or any other weapons of mass destruction;

– CARE Rejects US Food Aid – because it causes more hunger than it prevents;

– FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs;

– Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror; and

– Bush’s Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer – to stop his exposure of subprime predatory lending fraud responsible for much of the current world financial crisis.

Project Censored annually present awards for the corporate media’s most important suppressed stories. For its work, its Director, dedicated staff, and student interns deserve our award for being one of our national treasures. Holding the dominant media accountable.

Follow their work. Support their activities. Know what’s at stake. A free and open society. The type media vital in it. The risk of losing it, and need for assertive, decisive action to assure that won’t happen. Nor will it if Project Censored can help it.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM – 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions on world and national topics with distinguished guests. All programs are archived for easy listening at Global Research.

Seven years ago the New Pearl Harbor of the Twenty First Century took place. President Bush anointed it as such in his journal the very night of September 11th, 2001, and even suggested Osama bin Laden was to blame without a shred of evidence (that still has yet to be produced). What followed was a government and corporate media induced frenzy of nationalism, jingoism, and fear that paved the way to the disaster that is the present. Politicians of many stripes propounded mythological ideals of exceptionalism while an unpopular, unelected president took to the National Cathedral to essentially declare a war on anyone opposing Pax Americana. He set a with-us-or-against-us binary framework from which Americans and the rest of the world would operate and be judged. Anyone questioning the increasingly unilateral authoritative executive branch would be seen as traitors and terrorists. The Bush administration and cowed Democratic “opposition” drove America off the cliff of reason while common sense, decency, civil rights and constitutional principles whithered on the vine…extant, but not accessible as viable options as neocon, would-be despots lodged themselves in an increasingly tyrannical and imperialist U.S. government. At the root, the pivotal and yet to be openly investigated events of September the 11th. Yes, America was attacked that fateful day, but perhaps in ways that differ strikingly from what many were lead to believe.

Scholar and author Peter Dale Scott recently remarked about the significance of 9/11 and all that followed, “In short, we are living in an on-going state of emergency whose exact limits are unknown, on the basis of a controversial deep event – 9/11 — that is still largely a mystery.” Many activists and journalists have argued that the post-9/11, post-fact, corporate media driven mirage many perceive as reality constitutes an actual Truth Emergency in America. This seems to be the case, and the still unexplained events of 9/11 are at the heart of the plethora of deceptions and onslaught to liberties that have relentlessly ensued including attacks on the core of our democratic principles- the suspension of habeas corpus, endorsement of torture, unchecked wanton surveillance, embedded reporting, voter intimidation and ballot tampering. They continue to this day, a war on the public, most recently surrounding the hypocritical events taking place outside the corporate sponsored political party conventions, one-time vehicles for exercising our participatory rights in the election selection process.

Prof. David Ray Griffin, 9/11 scholar, eloquently pointed out the myths versus realities in interpretations of 9/11 events, yet most Americans, even progressives, refuse to even consider or research the many problems factually known about 9/11 and the following government studies. Griffin attributes this to what he calls the true dominant belief in America, the nationalist faith (seen in series here). Dr. Paul Rea and I recently argued a similar notion in a chapter of the newly published Censored 2009 book titled “Deconstructing Deceit: 9/11, the Media, and Myth Information.” JFK once said, “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie: deliberate, continued, and dishonest; but the myth: persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.” This very phenomenon is what we suggest surrounds 9/11 itself (the chapter will be linked here shortly, but some of these issues were also recently discussed here on Bonnie Faulker’s “Guns and Butter” radio show at KPFA in Berkeley, CA).

In the chapter, Rea and I argued that media and government myth making, not actual investigative journalism or independent commission reports, are what Americans were treated to post 9/11. Media driven historical myths about American exceptionalism and triumphalism were consistently relied upon to explain and understand present events a priori. Accordingly, one would never actually have to look at the facts on the ground about 9/11 to believe the official view- it would simply be The Word, like sacred scripture, heretical to challenge. Further, cognitive dissonance should be avoided by the masses, so, believing and perpetuating the myth yields rewards for obedient and loyal lapdogs in the press and public alike. This mythic memo to the nation reads, “We need to stick together in times of crisis.” In fact, it was argued by many in government that citizens should not question authority but rather follow orders in these now dangerous times. Slavery is the new freedom. Many are now being arrested before they do anything illegal, for thought crimes against the dominant nationalist mythological narrative. Others watch in silent approval, doing nothing to come to the defense of liberty under attack.

But, there is hope. And it is not the cynical public relations pablum of the political season. Not everyone is going along and not everyone buys the official views about 9/11 put forward by the U.S. government and its affiliated corporate propaganda bureaus. A new poll by World Public Opinion finds no global consensus, no majority on who was behind 9/11 and an increasing number of people believe in alternative theories which place the U.S. government at the center of 9/11 crimes. Time will tell, but time may be short. The war on activists, journalists, and citizenship itself are increasing at an alarming rate from the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act and Military Commissions Act to the very real and rampant beatings in the streets, preemptive arrests and extended detentions. We must all act now to save a dying republic. Obama/McCain are not going to do it for us.

There are many paths of action given the travails in arenas of environment, health care, infrastructure, social programs, education, the economy, and foreign policy. But one path should be considered and remain evident: demanding the truth about 9/11 in an open and transparent, actually independent investigation. The events of 9/11 are a grand cloak used to distract and dissuade Americans away from duties of citizenship. They also have been used as justification of a blackout on freedom of information and a crackdown on a free press. Given 9/11 is the centerpiece of propaganda and deception, it is a psy-op, shock and awe moment that cannot be ignored, rather, it must be understood for what it is in its entirety. A cataclysmic event, a staging exercise in audacity, a usurpation of the role and rights of the public, a staggering abuse of the good will of the people, a sham excuse for the privatization and militarization of most every facet of our society, and a tipping point toward tyranny in our fragile democracy. Institutional means to deal with this crisis have been taken off the public table by the establishment itself, those of impeachment, grand jury investigations, public protest, free open inquiry, and fair elections. We must act beyond the means offered by a corrupted system and transcend our current state of unimaginative despair. We have not been able to bring justice to a lawless regime in Washington, regardless of their crimes and the supporting evidence. This is due in large part to the aforementioned nationalist myth laden mindset injected into the America psyche via the Trojan Horse of 9/11. This must be widely exposed so the vision of who we really are as a people can be corrected and our path righted toward more equal and just society.

Historian Howard Zinn recently prescribed revolution. Thomas Jefferson would agree as he stated, “Every generation needs a new revolution.” We the People are past due. Not through violence will this be achieved, but through the process of seeking and speaking the truth. The price of liberty IS eternal vigilance. The only way to fight the phantoms of nationalist mythology is to critically think and examine the facts in the real world, no matter where they may lead. And we should demand no less of our “leaders” present or future.

Let’s pull of the blinders, America. Let the chorus of truth sing. Let’s wake up from the nightmare of the last seven years and let freedom ring.

After some time on a couple writing projects, teaching “History of US Media” in Berkeley and a few online history courses this summer, and settling in to some new gigs, I am now trying to get back to the “blogosphere” on a more regular basis. So, an update and a few personal remarks seem in order.

We’re now getting into the Fall Semester for 2008, an election year, so, there will be much to report that goes unmentioned in the corporate mainstream press. Also, I have the distinct pleasure and honor of filling in for Dr. Peter Phillips at Sonoma State University as Interim Associate Director of Project Censored and Adjunct Lecturer in Sociology. I’ll be teaching Sociology of Media, working with Project Censored research and PR teams for the new book, Censored 2009, which is coming out October 1st. I feel incredibly fortunate to have such an opportunity.

This year’s book is a great collection of censored stories from the past year and I had the good fortune of working with the Project Censored team co-authoring two chapters in book as well as continuing as a Community Evaluator. “Truth Emergency Meets Media Reform” addresses issues within the growing media reform movement with reports from the Santa Cruz and Minneapolis conferences. And with friend and co-author Dr. Paul Rea, “Deconstructing Deceit: 9/11, the Media, and Myth Information” deals with the ongoing role media play in obscuring fact based analysis of the events of 9/11. For interested parties, the Left Coast book release party is on October 23rd at Sonoma State University. See the Project Censored website for details.

Also, I’m hosting the Modern Media Censorship Lecture Series, with the help of Kate Sims, which begin this Thursday, August 28th at Sonoma State University, where we are proud to have scholar Michael Parenti speak on “Orthodoxy and Diversity in the News Media.” The full schedule of lectures by award winning journalists featured in this year’s Censored volume is online at the above link to the series itself. Hope to see some of you there! If not, all lectures should be streaming online and available at Free Speech TV.

Of course, that’s not all that’s happening. I am also settling in to the Assistant Professor of History gig at Diablo Valley College where I’ve taught a variety of classes over the past eight years. While this means my time elsewhere is a thing of the past, it’s very nice to be on board there at long last! I’ll still be at Berkeley City College now and again doing History of U.S. Media, but DVC is my new home. I hope to be designing more courses there in the near future.

I’m also back at my fifth year teaching a course on the events of September the 11th. This is timely for a number of reasons. Not only is it coming up on the 7th anniversary of the tragedy, but the government, via NIST, has finally come out with what they say is the definitive reason for the failing of WTC7 in New York. Rebuttals abound. Architects and engineers have responded, gaining more attention even in the NY Times, but NIST continues to ignore. At any rate, this provides more fodder for discussion and more evidence in a pattern of official obfuscation that’s become commonplace on 9/11 issues. This will be further addressed once again at this year’s 9/11 Film Festival at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, CA. I’ll be giving a talk on media myth making after a new film with Dr. David Ray Griffin (by Ken Jenkins) called “9/11 and Nationalist Faith” before running up to Sonoma to host a lecture with researcher Stephen Lendman, an associate of the Centre for Research on Gloalization. Lendman has written a fabulously readable review of media scholar Bob McChesney’s The Political Economy of Media here– part one and part two. Coupled with Bruce Dixon’s “Hidden History of US Broadcasting,” one has a fine introduction with what’s wrong with global corporate media systems.

If that’s not enough, I’ll be continuing the media lecture series in Sonoma through December and speaking again at the Fremont, CA library late fall for the film series run by Dr. Paul Rea (co-author of mine in the new Project Censored book) talking about the latest Errol Morris film, Standard Operating Procedure. Also hoping to work more with Ramsey and the folks at PM Press and arrange some civil liberties events on campus with new colleague, Dr. Bob Abele, who runs Spotlight On Freedom. Much to do! And, I’m also not forgetting the most important thing- spending time with the fam!

Stay tuned for more blog commentary on history and the present, media myth making, and other sundry affairs.

Cheers! MSH

Thomas Jefferson once said that dissent was highest form of patriotism. In recognition of the chief editor of the Declaration of Independence, let’s take some of Tom’s advice in this regard.

Well, my friends at AK Press do. They always have a party for America in July. But, it’s not the kind of party most Americans have. The San Francisco Bay Area is special that way. That’s why the Left Coast is called home for so many.

Past Blog entries here on the July Fourth celebration address other views, reminders of how some Americans see this national dearth day. In celebration of the Fourth, (and the First Amendment!), these views should be part of our discourse, common debates about the direction of our Republic in trying times. But in corporate media and out of the mouths of Democrats and Republicans alike we hear only one, monolithic, heroified, mythological tale of Brand America: The Benevolent Superpower.

Here’s another Ode to Patriotism in America on the Fourth, post 9/11 War on Terror style. Remember, it’s always good to stir up a little commotion for the holidays.

Published on Friday, July 4, 2008 by The Progressive

Why I’m Not Patriotic
by Matthew Rothschild

(In memory of George Carlin.)

It’s July 4th again, a day of near-compulsory flag-waving and nation-worshipping. Count me out.

Spare me the puerile parades.

Don’t play that martial music, white boy.

And don’t befoul nature’s sky with your F-16s.

You see, I don’t believe in patriotism.

It’s not that I’m anti-American, but I am anti-patriotic.

Love of country isn’t natural. It’s not something you’re born with. It’s an inculcated kind of love, something that is foisted upon you in the home, in the school, on TV, at church, during the football game.

Yet most people accept it without inspection.

Why?

For when you stop to think about it, patriotism (especially in its malignant morph, nationalism) has done more to stack the corpses millions high in the last 300 years than any other factor, including the prodigious slayer, religion.

The victims of colonialism, from the Congo to the Philippines, fell at nationalism’s bayonet point.

World War I filled the graves with the most foolish nationalism. And Hitler and Mussolini and Imperial Japan brought nationalism to new nadirs. The flags next to the tombstones are but signed confessions-notes left by the killer after the fact.

The millions of victims of Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot have on their death certificates a dual diagnosis: yes communism, but also that other ism, nationalism.

The whole world almost got destroyed because of nationalism during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The bloody battles in Serbia and Bosnia and Croatia in the 1990s fed off the injured pride of competing patriotisms and all their nourished grievances.

In the last five years in Iraq, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died because the United States, the patriarch of patriotism, saw fit to impose itself, without just cause, on another country. But the excuse was patriotism, wrapped in Bush’s brand of messianic militarism: that we, the great Americans, have a duty to deliver “God’s gift of freedom” to every corner of the world.

And the Congress swallowed it, and much of the American public swallowed it, because they’ve been fed a steady diet of this swill.

What is patriotism but “the narcissism of petty differences”? That’s Freud’s term, describing the disorder that compels one group to feel superior to another.

Then there’s a little multiplication problem: Can every country be the greatest country in the world?

This belief system magically transforms an accident of birth into some kind of blue ribbon.

“It’s a great country,” said the old Quaker essayist Milton Mayer. “They’re all great countries.”

At times, the appeal to patriotism may be necessary, as when harnessing the group to protect against a larger threat (Hitler) or to overthrow an oppressor (as in the anti-colonial struggles in the Third World).

But it is always a dangerous toxin to play with, and it ought to be shelved with cross and bones on the label except in these most extreme circumstances.

In an article called “Patriot Games” in the current issue of Time magazine (July 7), Peter Beinart, late of The New Republic, inspects his navel for seven pages and then throws the lint all around.

“Conservatives are right,” he says. “To some degree, patriotism must mean loving your country for the same reason you love your family: simply because it is yours.”

And then he criticizes, incoherently, the conservative love-it-or-leave-it types.

The moral folly of his argument he himself exposes: “If liberals love America purely because it embodies ideals like liberty, justice, and equality, why shouldn’t they love Canada-which from a liberal perspective often goes further toward realizing those principles-even more? And what do liberals do,” he asks, “when those universal ideals collide with America’s self-interest? Giving away the federal budget to Africa would probably increase the net sum of justice and equality on the planet, after all. But it would harm Americans and thus be unpatriotic.”

This is a straw man if I ever I saw one, but if the United States gave a lot more of its budget to eradicating poverty and disease in Africa and other parts of the developing world, it might actually make us all safer.

At bottom, note how readily Beinart disposes of “liberty, justice, and equality.”

He has stripped patriotism to its vacuous essence: Love your country because it’s yours.

If we stopped that arm from reflexively saluting and concerned ourselves more with “universal ideals” than with parochial ones, we’d be a lot better off.

We wouldn’t be in Iraq, we wouldn’t have besmirched ourselves at Guantanamo, we wouldn’t be acting like some Argentinean junta that wages illegal wars and tortures people and disappears them into secret dungeons.

Love of country is a form of idolatry.

Listen, if you would, to the wisdom of Milton Mayer, writing back in 1962 a rebuke to JFK for his much-celebrated line: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

Mayer would have none of it. “When Mr. Kennedy spoke those words at his inaugural, I knew that I was at odds with a society which did not immediately rebel against them,” he wrote. “They are the words of totalitarianism pure; no Jefferson could have spoken them, and no Khrushchev could have spoken them better. Could a man say what Mr. Kennedy said and also say that the difference between us and them is that they believe that man exists for the State and we believe that the State exists for man? He couldn’t, but he did. And in doing so, he read me out of society.”

When Americans retort that this is still the greatest country in the world, I have to ask why.

Are we the greatest country because we have 10,000 nuclear weapons?

No, that just makes us enormously powerful, with the capacity to destroy the Earth itself.

Are we the greatest country because we have soldiers stationed in more than 120 countries?

No, that just makes us an empire, like the empires of old, only more so.

Are we the greatest country because we are one-twentieth of the world’s population but we consume one-quarter of its resources?

No, that just must makes us a greedy and wasteful nation.

Are we the greatest country because the top 1 percent of Americans hoards 34 percent of the nation’s wealth, more than everyone in the bottom 90 percent combined?

No, that just makes us a vastly unequal nation.

Are we the greatest country because corporations are treated as real, live human beings with rights?

No, that just enshrines a plutocracy in this country.

Are we the greatest country because we take the best care of our people’s basic needs?

No, actually we don’t. We’re far down the list on health care and infant mortality and parental leave and sick leave and quality of life.

So what exactly are we talking about here?

To the extent that we’re a great (not the greatest, mind you: that’s a fool’s game) country, we’re less of a great country today.

Because those things that truly made us great-the system of checks and balances, the enshrinement of our individual rights and liberties-have all been systematically assaulted by Bush and Cheney.

From the Patriot Act to the Military Commissions Act to the new FISA Act, and all the signing statements in between, we are less great today.

From Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air Force Base and Guantanamo, we are less great today.

From National Security Presidential Directive 51 (giving the Executive responsibility for ensuring constitutional government in an emergency) to National Security Presidential Directive 59 (expanding the collection of our biometric data), we are less great today.

From the Joint Terrorism Task Forces to InfraGard and the Terrorist Liaison Officers, we are less great today.

Admit it. We don’t have a lot to brag about today.

It is time, it is long past time, to get over the American superiority complex.

It is time, it is long past time, to put patriotism back on the shelf-out of the reach of children and madmen.

(Matthew Rothschild is the editor of The Progressive magazine © 2008 The Progressive)
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Which Fourth will we celebrate? Professor Juan Cole suggests:

Your Fourth of July and My Fourth of July

Your Fourth of July is blood for oil.

My Fourth of July is the pure sunbeam of peace.

Yours is the imperial presidency and “so what?” to public opinion.

Mine is “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”

Yours is profiling and discrimination.

Mine is “all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.”

Yours is “My country right or wrong.”

Mine is avoiding “Offences against the Law of Nations”

Yours is the veto of child health care and rejection of Kyoto,

Mine is an America that cares about the wellbeing of our children.

Yours is a monarchical presidency above the law.

Mine is, with Tom Paine, “in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”

Yours is aggressive invasions of countries that did not attack us first.

Mine is “and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.”

Yours is water-boarding and electrocution.

Mine is the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

Yours is the stench of a million moldering corpses, military rule over 27 million, and the creation of oceans of misery.

Mine is “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Yours is off-shore drilling, coddling polluters, ‘heckuva job Brownie.’

Mine is a stewardship of America the beautiful for succeeding generations.

Yours is the privatization of war and the deployment of whole divisions of “contractors. . .”

Mine is an America where privates do not risk their lives for a tenth of what a mercenary is paid by the Pentagon.

Yours is the erection of protest zones as zoos for citizens.

Mine is, “or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Yours is the swagger of the flight jacket and the bombs raining down.

Mine is the schooling of the next global generation.

Mine is America, the pure sunbeam of peace.

(With apologies to Kahlil Gibran.)
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How ever we celebrate America on the Fourth, let’s remember why we are celebrating: The Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the ideals ensconced in the Declaration, and the blessings of Liberty and Justice FOR ALL humankind. And remember, Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.