Many think media too hard on Palin

Gee, you think?: ["Many Say Press Has Been Too Tough on Palin"].
Sometimes, the American people are so smart. Sometimes, they are not too smart. Clearly anyone who has watched the Sarah Palin coverage with an open mind realizes that she has been hammered harder than anyone else in this race. Especially when compared to the cakewalk Barack Obama has received. You know I may have to change my mind on whether or not the media was too hard on Hillary Clinton. Maybe they were. Maybe they just really don't want a woman at any level of power.

Censored News Stories Highlighted by Academic Research Group

Guest Perspective by Peter Phillips

Media Accountability Day, Oct. 1, is the annual release of the news stories that were not covered by the corporate-mainstream media in the U.S. The list, just announced by Project Censored at Sonoma State University in California, includes the 25 most important uncovered news stories of the year selected by over 200 academics.

Stories about the Iraq occupation lead the list. Unreported in the U.S. corporate media is how over one million Iraqis have met violent deaths resulting from the 2003 US led invasion. According to a study conducted by the British polling group Opinion Research Business the human toll exceeded 900,000 as of August 2007. In addition, a United Nations Refugee Agency study found that five million Iraqis had been displaced by violence in their country.

Also ignored by mainstream media was the report of how three hundred Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans came forward in March 2008 to recount the brutal impact of the ongoing occupations. The Winter Soldier hearings in Silver Spring, Maryland, organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, presented multiple testimonies by veterans who witnessed or participated in atrocities against Iraqis or Afghans. Independent media reported that the United States Federal Reserve shipped $12 billion in US currency to Iraq at the beginning of the war of which at least $9 billion went missing, but this story never saw the light of day in the US mainstream.

Additionally, many anti-war activists will be surprised to learn that President Bush has signed two executive orders that would allow the US Treasury Department to seize the property of any person perceived to, directly or indirectly, pose a threat to US operations in the Middle East.

Also not reported in the U.S. news is how the leaders of Canada, the U.S., and Mexico have been secretly meeting to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to form a militarized tri-national Homeland Security force and how more than 23,000 representatives of US private industry are working with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to collect information on fellow Americans.

Coverage of how massive new US-backed military funding threatens peace and democracy in Latin America and that NATO officials are considering a first strike nuclear option was also missing from the corporate press. Unreported news also includes the stories that the Justice Department believes it is legal for the president to secretly ignore previous executive orders anytime he wants, and the FDA is complicit in allowing drug companies to make false, unsubstantiated, and misleading advertising claims.

Censored news stories also included why the No Child Left Behind program is a huge success for corporate profits, but have had little positive impact on public education. Children in juvenile detention centers in the US face conditions that involve sexual and physical abuse, and even death. And radioactive materials from nuclear weapons production sites are being dumped into public landfills, and being used as recycled metals.

Untold news includes CARE announcing last year that it was turning down $45 million in food aid from the United States government because the procedures the U.S. demands for handling the food actually increases starvation instead of relieving it.

Rounding out the Project Censored list is the news that the guest worker program in the United States victimizes immigrant workers and creates a new form of indentured servitude and that 27 million slaves exist in the world today.

Censorship is a harsh term, but the shocking fact is that the corporate-mainstream media in the U.S. was so busy entertaining us that these and many other important news stories became lost in a news system run amuck.

Peter Phillips is a professor of sociology at Sonoma State University and director of Project Censored. Censored 2009 was released Oct. 1, 2008 by Seven Stories Press. Daily independent news (http://mediafreedom.pnn.com/5174-independent-news-sources) and a full on- line review of the most censored stories are available at: www.projectcensored.org.

Rolling the Dice on Derivatives

Guest Perspective by Ralph Nader

The derivatives markets of today have become a high stakes casino of unimaginable magnitude. Wall Street's bets have gone bad, and now the whole financial system is in peril. In a best-case scenario, it appears, the taxpayers will be required to rescue the system from itself. This is why Warren Buffet labeled derivatives "weapons of financial mass destruction."

Amazingly, there seems to be some lingering sense that current-day derivatives properly perform an insurance function.

Case in point: Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve Chairman. Greenspan says the world is facing “the type of wrenching financial crisis that comes along only once in a century,” but, reports the New York Times, "his faith in derivatives remains unshaken." Greenspan believes that the problem is not with derivatives, but that the people using them got greedy, according to the Times.

This is quite a view. Is it a surprise to Alan Greenspan that the people on Wall Street -- said to be ruled only by the opposing instincts of greed and fear -- "got greedy?"

This might be taken as just a bizarre comment, except that, of course, Alan Greenspan had some considerable influence in driving us to the current financial meltdown through his opposition to regulation of derivatives.

A series of deregulatory moves, blessed by Alan Greenspan, helped immunize Wall Street derivatives traders from proper oversight.

In 1995, Congress enacted the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (PSLRA) of 1995, which imposed onerous restrictions on plaintiffs suing wrongdoers in the stock market. The law was enacted in the wake of Orange County, California's government bankruptcy caused by abuses in derivatives trading. An amendment offered by Rep. Ed Markey would have exempted derivatives trading abuse lawsuits from the PSLRA restrictions. In defeating the amendment, then-Representative and now-SEC Chairman Chris Cox quoted Alan Greenspan, saying “it would be a grave error to demonize derivatives;” and, “It would be a serious mistake to respond to these developments [in Orange County, California] by singling out derivative instruments for special regulatory treatment.”

The New York Times reports how the Commodity Futures Trading Commission aimed for some modest regulatory authority over derivatives in the late 1990s. Strident opposition from Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan spelled doom for that effort.

Senator Phil Gramm helped drive the process along with the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which deregulated the derivatives market.

Defenders of deregulation argued that sophisticated players were involved in the derivatives markets, and they could handle themselves.

It's now apparent that not only could these sophisticated players not handle themselves, but that their reckless gambling has placed the entire world's financial system at risk.

It seems to be then a remarkably modest proposal for derivatives to be brought under regulatory control.

Warren Buffet cut to the heart of the problem in 2003: "Another problem about derivatives is that they can exacerbate trouble that a corporation has run into for completely unrelated reasons," he wrote in his annual letter to shareholders. "This pile-on effect occurs because many derivatives contracts require that a company suffering a credit downgrade immediately supply collateral to counterparties. Imagine, then, that a company is downgraded because of general adversity and that its derivatives instantly kick in with their requirement, imposing an unexpected and enormous demand for cash collateral on the company. The need to meet this demand can then throw the company into a liquidity crisis that may, in some cases, trigger still more downgrades. It all becomes a spiral that can lead to a corporate meltdown."

That is to say, our current problems were foreseeable, and foreseen. There is no excuse for those who suggest that present circumstances -- what many are calling a once-in-a-hundred-years event -- were unimaginable during earlier debates about regulation.

Some ideologues continue to defend derivatives from very strict government control. As Congress moves to adopt new financial regulations next year, hopefully the proponents of casino capitalism will be given no more credence than those insisting that the sun revolves around the earth.

Something to think about ...

While we are thinking about bailouts, the mortgage crisis, Wall Street and Main Street, and everything else, let's not forget about what President Dwight Eisenhower warned us all about many years ago:

If you listen to those words now, they have a chilling affect, especially when you consider how truly uneducated the American public is. Again, everyday commonsense.

Bye-bye ...

DJIA, say goodbye to 9,000: ["Dow Closes Below 9,000"].

SNL video censored

Of course, the Web is a blaze about SNL censoring a very funny skit critical of the Dems. Here is some of the video. It's truly hilarious:

Are there any Dandy Warhol fans out there? I've been listening to "Earth to the Dandy Warhols," the new collection of songs [I can't really say "CD" or "album" since I downloaded the mp3s from emusic.com] and it is really, really great. As usual. The Dandys put out great stuff.
One critique though: "Talk Radio" sounds like a direct rip off of "No New Tale to Tell" by Love & Rockets. I will have strum it some time just to make sure but it sounds just like it.

Woody Woodland back on the air

Woody Woodland, a fixture on New Hampshire radio for the better part of the last two decades, will be back on the air next week ... in Massachusetts.
Woodland's new show will air every Tuesday afternoon from 1 to 3 p.m. on WCAP 980 AM in Lowell. According to a posting on the Boston Radio Archives LISTSERV, Woodland will focus on the happenings, political and otherwise, in Southern New Hampshire.
WCAP has other shows during the time slot including former Boston Herald TV critic [and aquaintance of mine] Monica Collins, who hosts a show about dogs on Wednesday. Collectibles and antique experts Gary Summers airs on Thursday.

Some things to read and think about ...

Alright, I haven't had a link dump in quite a while. So here you go:

First, there is this from our local television news station noting that, no, there is no credit problem: ["Loans Still Available During Credit Crunch"]. So, why again was there this bailout? There have been a couple of other articles too, noting that local banks seem to be pretty strong.

This guy has economic winners and losers [eBay and prisons up, retail and restaurants down] and also how to have a "green" retirement: ["Economic Collapse Winners and Losers"].

Every since the days I lived in NYC and the "gay cancer" emerged and many activists claimed it was a plot by a pharm company doing tests in Haiti to get rid of them, I have always wondered about AIDS and HIV. How could such a devastating disease only be a few decades old? Where did it come front? Certainly not because you are gay, a Haitian, or a hemophiliac? Well, now scientists may have found a strain of the virus that is more than a century old: ["HIV Outbreak Began Decades Earlier Than Thought"].

This group wants to open the debates: ["ThirdPartyTicket.com"].



They haven't been successful so far.

File this in the "I really want one" category: ["Pilot completes jetpack challenge"].

Rethinking Sarah Palin and everyday commonsense

While watching the vice presidential debate on Thursday, I was struck by a few things.
The fact that Sarah Palin seems like a completely "normal" red-blooded American who will be a heartbeat away from the presidency if McCain wins is refreshing to me. I found her nervousness and lack of specifics about things she knows nothing about to be a fresh perspective to the know-it-alls like Joe Biden who are constantly doing one thing, saying another, and then lecturing the rest of us about what is best [McCain is guilty of this too, note the pork-filled bailout bill he just voted for ...].
Everyday commonsense is everyday commonsense, for lack of a better term and I think we need a bit more of this. We need, at least on the economic level, more localism, more Bailey Building & Loan banks, etc., and less of what both parties have been giving us. Neither political party will deliver what we need now more than ever. Look at what they are doing with the bailout? Sweetheart deals for the affluent, a bunch of pork and tax breaks to get the votes, no real proof this will fix one single thing. It's crazy.
Can McCain-Palin deliver that compared to Obama-Biden? No. But the Palins are middle class. According to the Wall Street Journal today, Sarah's husband earned about $46,000 last year. She earned more than $100k as governor. But if she weren't governor, they would be back down to middle class. Hence that is why she considers herself middle class. The Bidens earned about $250,000, the next lowest on the chart, and many of those people consider themselves middle class.
Admittedly, despite Palin's seemingly ordinariness, I won't vote for the ticket because I don't agree with them on much. I'm unlikely to vote for Obama-Biden at this point either. Biden is part of the problem. In addition, Obama has surrounded himself with some of the Clintonistas who helped to start this economic mess.
But it would truly be really nice if regular folks - Joe Six Pack, lunch bucket Dems, whatever you want to call them [us?] - got some access to power so we can bring some everyday commonsense back into the equation of how our government runs, how our economy functions, etc.
We have all seen what the educated and investor classes - the supposed "smart" people - have done to the nation, with the help of both political parties and their insatiable lust for power and greed at our expense and our children's expense. Again, look around you. Would anyone trust a word an Ivy League-educated economist, business major, etc., says at this point when you consider that hell they have put us "regular" folks through? Nope, sorry.
Those smart people at the fed caused the subprime debacle. Most folks were doing just fine paying off their ARM mortgages in a shaky economy until the fed started raising rates in late 2004 to 2005. The rate went from 1 percent to 5.25 percent in a little more than a year in a effort to "curb" nonexistent inflation. In reaction, the banks jacked up the rate of the ARMs and put a ton of folks into foreclosure. Those people could afford 5 or 6 percent; they couldn't afford 9 or 12 percent. We were all reading about it in the Wall Street Journal as far back as the first quarter of 2006 when the housing started slowing down and the gas prices started rising. Many of these people were conned, sure. But many people would have been just fine had the fed not intervened and allowed the economy to grow instead of tinkering. Their tinkering collapsed the economy.
Republicans did try to rein Freddie and Fannie but not for the right reasons it would seem. Democrats saw them as a way of expanding affordable housing. But both parties raved about how great home ownership was and what the statistics seemed to say at the time. In addition, it was Clinton's Robert Rubin who was the one who regulated most of these banks. Note: He's at Citibank now and Obama is in his pocket.
Everyone though can thank Ralph Nader who has been complaining about all of this stuff for years and years. He is growing in the polls, because people are clearly frustrated. But it probably won't be enough for victory, unfortunately.
Despite what some people think, the subprime mortgage mess is only a small symptom to the current economic disaster. The larger problem of free trade ... brought to us by all those smart economists who somehow don't know how to subtract ... dwarfs the loan problem.
Clinton, and the Democrats and Republicans in Congress, brought on the free trade pacts which have put millions of people out of work and sent trillions of dollars in wealth overseas based on a fraudulent economic concept. Our country's economy was put in direct competition with people who make pennies on the dollar.
As a subset, the services sector never grew to compensate the lost manufacturing. For every manufacturing job, another seven jobs are created around that job. In the services sector, it is two for every one. So, you can see, by simple addition and subtraction, how those things happened.
Every time Toyota opens a plant in the U.S. and hires 5,000 people, another 35,000 people are hired around those jobs: The insurance people, HR, food and restaurants, etc. So, when those 5,000 jobs are lost, the other jobs connected to those jobs are also lost.
Since 2001, the annual trade deficit has increased more than $300 billion annually and 3.8 million manufacturing jobs have been lost, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. That's not the total deficit, that's just the last seven years!
How much is $300 billion? Well, just 12 million modestly-priced $250,000 homes. And that's just the deficit - the negative difference between imports and exports. Never mind the actual imports, things that could be made here or at the very least, taxed with a tariff to raise revenue instead of nailing us with income taxes all the time.
Record trade deficits have made the overall U.S. economy about $1.5 trillion smaller than it should be right now, according to some of the experts. Using their own figures, the potential net job loss since 2001? 27 million. Since 1993 when NAFTA was passed? Who knows.
It is estimated by one of the elite think tanks, I forget which one, that 30 percent of the country is either unemployed, underemployed, or fallen off the rolls. The 6 percent figure is a fallacy and everyone knows it. This would back up the other figures.
Lastly, most everything that I have discussed, beyond some people being conned and wanting a piece of the American dream, was brought on by the educated and investor classes. They have clearly shown themselves to be clueless and lacking commonsense. Again, it is a good time to start taking a different approach.

Barlett & Steele Awards announced

From the inbox:

BusinessWeek magazine and The Seattle Times have been awarded first place and runner-up respectively in the second annual Barlett & Steele Awards for Investigative Business Journalism.

"Prisoners of Debt," a series by BusinessWeek's Brian Grow, Robert Berner, Keith Epstein and Geri Smith, received the $5,000 first-place award. "The Favor Factory" by The Seattle Times' David Heath and Hal Bernton was awarded the $2,000 second-place prize.

These awards sponsored by the Reynolds Center are named for the celebrated investigative business journalism team of Don Barlett and Jim Steele, which has received two Pulitzer Prizes and numerous other national honors. Judging of the awards is based on that duo's admonition to break new ground and "tell me something I don't know."

"In a traumatic year for the news industry and economy, this year's winning entries prove the importance and relevance of solid investigations by dedicated journalists into excesses of both business and government," said Andrew Leckey, Director of the Reynolds Center. "All entrants in this year's competition should be commended for remaining true to their professional responsibility to dig deeply into financial issues."

Honorable mentions (in alphabetical order) in the 2008 awards went to:
--Bloomberg Markets, "Toxic Debt" (part 1, part 2, part 3) by David Evans and Richard Tomlinson.
--Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "Chemical Fallout" by Susanne Rust, Meg Kissinger and Cary Spivak.
--The New York Times, "Golden Opportunities" by Charles Duhigg.
--The Wall Street Journal, "U.S. Investors Face an Age of Murky Pricing" by Susan Pulliam, Randall Smith and Michael Siconolfi.

The first-place "Prisoners of Debt," a three-part BusinessWeek series (part 1, part 2, part 3 ), revealed how large financial firms regularly collaborate with doctors and hospitals to turn unpaid medical bills into high-interest consumer debt. It explained how banks and credit card firms badger unsophisticated consumers to pay off debts even after they have been extinguished by the bankruptcy courts and also examined so-called "micro-lending" that ties up the indigent in high-interest debt.

Runner-up "The Favor Factory," a four-part series by The Seattle Times, through exhaustive research uncovered thousands of purchases that the U.S. Congress has forced the military to make in recent years, including a $4.5 million Navy vessel that sits unused by a Seattle pier. The investigation of secretive Congressional earmarks included the scanning of hundreds of documents and a year spent building a database that directly linked this waste to political contributions.

The first-place and runner-up recipients will receive their publications' trophies and individual certificates at a Nov. 19 ceremony at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University in Phoenix, where the Reynolds Center is located.

'Sweeteners' to benefit the affluent help move bailout through Senate

Some quick things about the Senate passing the bailout bill:
First, the sweeteners seem almost all geared towards the most affluent in our society. Raising the limit of FDIC from $100k to $250k. Guess who benefits from that? Certainly not the majority of Americans who don't have anywhere near $100k in the passbook savings accounts, never mind $250k.
The reevaluation of balance sheets? Oh yeah, that helps Main Street.
The extension of several business tax breaks. Umm, when are we going to get to the folks losing their homes again?
Revision of the AMT. OK, that will help some folks.
Mental health parity changes? What does that have to do with the housing crisis?
And, the worst part? No buy-in from Wall Street. No 0.25 percent transaction tax to get investors to pay for the mess they created or to stop flipping things around as frequently, which would create stability in the market and long-term investing, which is what Wall Street should be about. No wealth or windfall profits tax to take back some of the money these people reaped [or raped] from us. No millionaire's surcharge tax. Nothing to get them to pay for their mess.
Second, look at some of the No votes: Populist Democrats like Byron Dorgan and Russ Feingold, and Socialist Bernie Sanders, voting with Republicans Sam Brownback, Elizabeth Dole, and Richard Shelby. Just like the House. A very good sign that some coalitions are being built.
So, again, this is a total ripoff, made worse in some ways by these changes. Without a transaction tax - at the bare minimum - to get Wall Street to repay us for bailing them out, nothing should be done. Let it all fall. It isn't enough to say the economy is on the brink. For more folks, the economy has been on the brink for a very long time. All allowing the stock market to fall will do is put the investor class at parity with the working class. It's a small price to pay to go through a bit of pain.

Nader to visit N.H., Maine

Open the debate tour comes through our state. From the inbox:

We need your help to promote the Nader/Gonzalez "Open the Debates" October 6th tour in New Hampshire and Maine (see schedule below)!

Since 1988, the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) has sponsored every presidential debate and the CPD is headed by two former chairs of the Democratic and Republican parties. In 1987, the League of Women Voters refused to sponsor any more presidential debates, "because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter."

The Nader/Gonzalez Campaign stands with the people on the issues, including the proposed corporate bailout of Wall Street. Obama and McCain stand with Wall Street Speculators. Nader/Gonzalez is on a mission to shift the power to the people and open the debates for third party candidates -- bringing democracy back to the American Voter!

If you cannot make it to these rallies, please help us spread the word by forwarding these events:

October 6th, Noon - Hanover, New Hampshire

Nader for President 2008 Rally
Alumni Hall, Hopkins Center for the Arts
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755
Suggested Contribution: $10/$5 students
For more information: (202) 471-5833 or events@votenader.org

October 6th, 7:30 pm - Portland, Maine

Nader for President 2008 Rally
First Parish in Portland Maine, Unitarian Universalist
425 Congress St. Portland, ME 04101
Suggested Contribution: $10/$5 students
For more information: (202) 471-5833 or events@votenader.org

In other Nader related news, there will be a showing of "An Unreasonable Man," the documentary about Ralph Nader, at the Red River Theatres on Saturday, Oct. 4, at 3 p.m., with a discussion afterward. The showing is free but donations will be appreciated. The Red River Theatres are located on S. Main Street in Concord. The listing is not on the Red River Web site but they often rent out the theatre for people to use. So, I think the listing is legit.

Behind The Deregulatory Curtain

Guest Perspective by Ralph Nader

The current finger pointing by the deregulation crowd in Congress and their ideological soul mates in the media reminds me of the 1939 film classic The Wizard of Oz. It is as though these spin masters want us to pay no attention to the government officials behind the deregulation curtain.

Indeed, the right-wing pundits and the revisionists in Congress are spending an inordinate amount of time falsely claiming that our nation’s current financial disaster stems from the Community Reinvestment Act, a law passed by Congress and signed into law by President Jimmy Carter in 1977. The primary purpose of this modest law is to require banks to report on where and to whom they are making loans. Community organizations have used the data produced as a result of this law to determine if banks were meeting their lending obligations in the minority and lower-income communities in which they do business. Congress passed this law because too many lenders were discriminating against minority borrowers. “Redlining” was the name given to the practice by banks of literally drawing a red line around minority areas and then proceeding to deny people within the red border home loans – even if they were otherwise qualified. The law has been in place for 30 years, but the right-wing fringe claims it somehow is responsible for predatory lending practices that date back just to the beginning of this decade.

Notice what these revisionists are not mentioning.

No “thank you” to former Senator Phil Gramm for pushing the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act.. This law was passed in the wake of the stock market crash of 1929 - and designed to separate banking from securities activities. In 1999, when Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and in so doing repealed Glass-Steagall the banks strayed into rough waters by looking for fast money from risky investments in securities and derivatives.

As predatory lending mushroomed out of control, the regulators -- key among them, the Federal Reserve and the Office of Comptroller of Currency -- sat on their hands. The Federal Reserve took exactly three formal actions against subprime lenders from 2002 to 2007. Bloomberg news service found that the Office of Comptroller of the Currency, which has authority over almost 1,800 banks, took three consumer-protection enforcement actions from 2004 to 2006.

No “tip of the hat” to the Bush Administration for preempting state regulators and Attorneys General from using state consumer laws to crack down on predatory and sub-prime lending by national banks.

And, let us not forget the folks at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Imagine allowing these two government sponsored enterprises--that were weakly regulated by HUD--to claim they were meeting the national housing goals by counting the purchase of subprime loans. Back in May of 2000, our associate Jonathan Brown warned that it would be inappropriate and counterproductive to encourage Fannie and Freddie to meet the housing goals by purchasing subprime loans. Too bad our members of Congress and the regulators at HUD were infected with deregulatory zeal. Former Texas Senator and current UBS executive Phil Gramm -- would-be President John McCain's Treasury Secretary-in-waiting -- pushed through the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000, which deregulated the derivatives market. With help from his wife, Wendy, the former head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission who went on to a post on the Enron board of directors, Gramm removed the controls on Wall Street so it could innovate all sorts of exotic financial instruments. Instruments far riskier than advertised, and now at the core of the financial meltdown.

The SEC, through its "consolidated supervised entities" program, decided that voluntary regulation would work for the investment banking sector. Not surprisingly, this was a scheme cooked up by Wall Street itself. The investment banks were permitted to double, triple and go 20 times (and more) down on their bets by using lots of borrowed money. They made minimal disclosures to the SEC about what they were doing, and the SEC didn't bother to review those disclosures adequately. Too bad for the investment banks -- and the rest of us -- they made lots of bad bets. The SEC has now closed the voluntary program, though now there aren't any major investment banks left (the two remaining ones have converted themselves into conventional banks).

It is time to start paying very close attention to government officials behind the deregulation curtain. Let your Members of Congress know you are not willing to bailout the gamblers on Wall Street with a no-strings attached pile of taxpayer dollars. The time for regulation is upon us.

Sometimes, I just love Tom Tomorrow ...

Project Censored Releases Top Censored Stories for 2007-08

Sonoma State University, California: Project Censored announces the release of the annual yearbook Censored 2009 from Seven Stories Press featuring the top 25 most important news stories not covered by the corporate main-stream media in the United States.

This is the 32nd annual release for the most censored news stories for the year by Project Censored at Sonoma State University (SSU). Project Censored was founded by sociologist Carl Jensen in 1976 and has been under the directorship of professor Peter Phillips for the past 12 years. More than 200 faculty, students and community experts participated in selecting the most important censored news stories each year.

“In modern society censorship is any interference with the free flow of information,” said Peter Phillips. “We are faced with a Truth Emergency in the United States that will require a renaissance of independent media to correct,” said Phillips.

“Censored 2009 is a comprehensive review of how corporate media fail to keep the American people informed of the most important issues facing our democracy,” said Mickey Huff, Associate Director of Project Censored.

A full on-line review of the most censored stories is available at: www.projectcensored.org.

TOP 25 MOST CENSORED NEWS STORIES

#1. Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation

After Downing Street, July 6, 2007
Title: “Is the United States Killing 10,000 Iraqis Every Month? Or Is It More?”
Author: Michael Schwartz

AlterNet, September 17, 2007
Title: “Iraq death toll rivals Rwanda genocide, Cambodian killing fields”
Author: Joshua Holland

AlterNet, January 7, 2008
Title: “Iraq conflict has killed a million, says survey”
Author: Luke Baker

Inter Press Service, March 3, 2008
Title: “Iraq: Not our country to Return to”
Authors: Maki al-Nazzal and Dahr Jamail

Over one million Iraqis have met violent deaths as a result of the 2003 invasion by the United States. According to a study conducted by the polling group, Opinion Research Business (ORB) the human toll exceeded one millions as of August 2007. In addition, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency and the International Organization for Migration, in 2007 almost 5 million Iraqis had been displaced by violence in their country, the vast majority of which had fled since 2003.

# 2 Security and Prosperity Partnership: Militarized NAFTA

Center for International Policy, May 30, 2007
Title: “‘Deep Integration’—the Anti-Democratic Expansion of NAFTA”
Author: Laura Carlsen

Global Research, July 19, 2007
Title: “The Militarization and Annexation of North America”
Author: Stephen Lendman

Global Research, August 2, 2007
Title: “North American Union: The SPP is a ‘hostile takeover’ of democratic government and an end to the Rule of Law”
Author: Constance Fogal

Leaders of Canada, the US, and Mexico have been meeting to secretly expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to form militarized tri-national Homeland Security force.

# 3 InfraGard: The FBI Deputizes Business

The Progressive, February 7, 2008
Title: “Exclusive! The FBI Deputizes Business”

More than 23,000 representatives of US private industry are working with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to collect information on fellow Americans.

# 4 US International Law Enforcement Academy is Restarting Dirty Wars in Latin America

Upside Down World, June 14, 2007
Title: “Exporting US ‘Criminal Justice’ to Latin America”
Author: Community in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador

NACLA Report on the Americas, March/April 2008
Title: “Another SOA?: A Police Academy in El Salvador Worries Critics”
Author: Wes Enzinna

CISPES, March 15, 2007
Title: “ILEA Funding Approved by Salvadoran Right Wing Legislators”
Author: Community in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador

AlterNet, August 31, 2007
Title: “Is George Bush Restarting Latin America’s ‘Dirty Wars’?”
Author: Benjamin Dangl

A resurgence of US-backed militarism threatens peace and democracy in Latin America. In 2005, US military aid to Latin America had increased by thirty-four times the amount spent in 2000.

# 5 War Protesters’ Assets can be Seized by the Treasury Department

Sources:
Global Research, July 2007
Title: “Bush Executive Order: Criminalizing the Antiwar Movement”
Author: Michel Chossudovsky

The Progressive, August 2007
Title: “Bush’s Executive Order Even Worse Than the One on Iraq”
Author: Matthew Rothschild
President Bush has signed two executive orders that would allow the US Treasury Department to seize the property of any person perceived to, directly or indirectly, pose a threat to US operations in the Middle East.

# 6 The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act

Indypendent, November 16, 2007
Title: “Bringing the War on Terrorism Home”
Author: Jessica Lee

In These Times, November 2007
Title: “Examining the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act”
Author: Lindsay Beyerstein

Truthout, November 29, 2007
Title: “The Violent Radicalization Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007”
Author: Matt Renner
The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act (H.R. 1955) passed the House on October 23, 2007, by a vote of 404–6. Author of the bill Jane Harman (D-CA) explains, “We’re studying the phenomenon of people with radical beliefs who turn into people who would use violence.”
Civil liberty and religious freedom groups and grassroots activists with helped to stall passage of the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act in the Senate bit some members of Congress continue to push for Internet censorship and racial profiling as necessary to prevent “homegrown terrorism.”

# 7 Guest Workers Inc.: Fraud and Human Trafficking

Southern Poverty Law Center, March 2007
Title: “Close to Slavery: Guestworker Programs in the United States”
Authors: Mary Bauer and Sarah Reynolds

The Nation, June 25, 2007
Title: “Coming to America”
Author: Felicia Mello

Times of India, March 10, 2008
Title: “Trafficking racket: Indian workers file case against US employer”
Author: Chidanand Rajghatta

Human rights advocates warn that the guest worker program in the United States victimizes immigrant workers. Labor organizers, lawyers, and policy makers say that the H-2 visa program has locked thousands into a modern-day form of indentured servitude.

# 8 Executive Orders Can Be Changed Secretly

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse website, December 7, 2007
Title: “In FISA Speech, Whitehouse Sharply Criticizes Bush Administration’s Assertion of Executive Power”
Author: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse

The Guardian, December 26, 2007
Title: “The Rabbit Hole”
Author: Marcy Wheeler

On December 7, 2007, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, disclosed on the floor of the US Senate that he had declassified documents that state, “An executive order cannot limit a president. There is no constitutional requirement for a president to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the president can instead modified or waived it… And the Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.”

#9 Iraq and Afghanistan Vets Testify

Iraq Vets Against the War, March 13–16, 2008
Title: “Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations”

War Comes Home, Pacifica Radio, March 14–16, 2008
Title: “Winter Soldier 2008 Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations”
Co-hosts: Aaron Glantz, Aimee Allison, and Esther Manilla

One World, March 19, 2008
Title: “US Soldiers ‘Testify’ About War Crimes”
Author: Aaron Glantz

The Nation, July 30, 2007
Title: “The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness”
Authors: Chris Hedges and Laila Al-Arian
Over 300 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans have come forward recount the brutal impact of the ongoing occupations. The Winter Soldier hearings in Silver Spring, Maryland, in March 2008, organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, Soldiers’ presented multiple testimony of atrocities they witnessed or participated in directly.

# 10 American Psychology Association Complicit in CIA Torture

Salon, June 21, 2007
Title: “The CIA’s torture teachers”
Author: Mark Benjamin

Vanity Fair, July 17, 2007
Title: “Rorschach and Awe”
Author: Katherine Eban

Democracy Now!, August 20, 2007
Titles: “American Psychological Association Rejects Blanket Ban on Participation in Interrogation of US Detainees,” “APA Interrogation Task Force Member Dr. Jean Maria Arrigo Exposes Group’s Ties to Military,” “Dissident Voices: Ex-Task Force Member Dr. Michael Wessells Speaks Out on Psychologists and Torture,” and “APA Members Hold Fiery Town Hall Meeting on Interrogation, Torture”

In 2005 news reports exposed the fact that psychologists were working with the US military and the CIA to develop brutal interrogation methods.

# 11 El Salvador’s Water Privatization and the Global War on Terror

NACLA–Upside Down World, August 24, 2007
Title: “El Salvador: Water Inc. and the Criminalization of Protest”
Author: Jason Wallach

The Nation, December 31, 2007
Title: “GWOT: El Salvador”
Author: Wes Enzinna

Peacework, September 2007
Title: “Salvadoran Activists Targeted with US-Style Repression”
Author: Chris Damon

In These Times, November 13, 2007
Title: “El Salvador’s Patriot Act”
Author: Jacob Wheeler

Inter Press Service, August 19, 2007
Title: “El Salvador: Spectre of War Looms After 15 Years of Peace”
Author: Raul Gutierrez

El Salvador’s new “Anti-terrorism Law —based on the USA PATRIOT Act— criminalizes political expression and social protest.

# 12 Bush Profiteers Collect Billions From No Child Left Behind

Diatribune and Daily Kos, March, 30, 2007
Title: “Bush Profiteers Collect Billions From NCLB”
Author: Mandevilla

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is huge success in the realm of corporate profiteering, bit has had little positive impact on public education.

# 13 Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq

Vanity Fair, October 2007
Title: “Billions over Baghdad”
Authors: Donald Barlett and James Steele

Rolling Stone, August 23, 2007
Title: “The Great American Swindle”
Author: Matt Taibbi

The United States Federal Reserve shipped $12 billion in US currency to Iraq at the beginning of the war. At least $9 billion is unaccounted for due to a complete lack of oversight.

# 14 Mainstreaming Nuclear Waste

Nuclear Information and Resource Service, May 14, 2007
Title: “Nuclear Waste in Landfills”
Author: Diane D’Arrigo

Environment News Service, May 14, 2007
Title: “US Allows Radioactive Materials in Ordinary Landfills”
Author: Sunny Lewis

Environment News Service, February 4, 2008
Title: “US Company Seeks Permit to Import Nuclear Waste”
Author: Sunny Lewis

Radioactive materials from nuclear weapons production sites are being dumped into regular public landfills, and being used as recycled metals.

# 15 Worldwide Slavery Spreads

Sojourners, March 15, 2007
Title: “From Sex Workers to Restaurant Workers, the Global Slave Trade Is Growing”
Author: David Batstone

Foreign Policy, March/April 2008
Title: “A World Enslaved”
Author: E. Benjamin Skinner

Twenty-seven million slaves exist in the world today, more than at any time in human history.

# 16 Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights

International Trade Union Confederation website, September 2007
Title: “2007 Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights”

The first Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights documents enormous challenges to workers rights around the world.

# 17 UN’s Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights

One World, September 14, 2007
Title: “UN Adopts Historic Statement on Native Rights”
Author: Haider Rizvi

BSNorrell.blogspot.com, December 11, 2007
Title: “Indigenous Peoples Protest World Bank Carbon Scam in Bali”
Author: Brenda Norrell

Common Dreams, December 12, 2007
Title: “Indigenous Peoples Shut Out of Climate Talks, Plans”
Author: Haider Rizvi

Forest Peoples Programme, November 30, 2007
Title: “NGO Statement on the World Bank’s Proposed Forest Carbon Partnership Facility”
Author: Tom Griffiths

In September 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The resolution called for recognition of the world’s 370 million indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination and control over their lands and resources.

# 18 Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers

Associated Press, March 2, 2008
Title: “13,000 Abuse Claims in Juvie Centers”
Author: Holbrook Mohr

In states across the country, child advocates have harshly condemned the conditions under which young offenders are housed—conditions that involve sexual abuse, physical abuse, and even death.

# 19 Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction

Trade BioRes, September 21, 2007
Title: “Conference Agrees Steps to Safeguard Farm Animal Diversity”
Author: The International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development

La Via Campesina, September 11, 2007
Title: “Wilderswil Declaration on Livestock Diversity”
Authors: Representatives of pastoralists, indigenous peoples, and smallholder farmers

Industrialized livestock production is causing the worldwide destruction of animal diversity.

# 20 Marijuana Arrests Set New Record

Marijuana Policy Project, September 27, 2007
Title: “Marijuana Arrests Set New Record for Fourth Year in a Row”
Author: Bruce Mirken

National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws, September 24, 2007
Title: “Marijuana Arrests for Year 2006—829,625 Tops Record High”
Author: Paul Armentano

Marijuana arrests in 2006 totaled 829,627, an increase from 786,545 in 2005.

# 21 NATO Considers “First Strike” Nuclear Option

The Guardian, January 22, 2008
Title: “Pre-emptive nuclear strike a key option, NATO told”
Author: Ian Traynor

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) officials are considering a first strike nuclear option to be used anywhere in the world.

# 22 CARE Rejects US Food Aid

Inter Press Service, July 23, 2007
Title: “Mutiny Shakes US Food Aid Industry”
Author: Ellen Massey

Revolution Magazine, October 1, 2007
Title: “Starvation, Aid Agencies and the Benevolence of the Imperialists”
Author: Revolution Cooperative

In August 2007, CARE, announced that it was turning down $45 million a year in food aid from the United States government.

# 23 FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs

NewStandard, April 20, 2007
Title: “FDA Complicit in Pushing Prescription Drugs, Ad Critics Say”
Author: Shreema Mehta

Drug companies are making false, unsubstantiated, and misleading claims in their advertising, often withholding mandated disclosure of dangerous side effects.

# 24 Japan’s Parliament Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror

Rense.com and Rock Creek Free Press, January 14, 2008
Title: “Transcript Of Japanese Parliament’s 911 Testimony”
Author: Benjamin Fulford

Testimony in the Japanese parliament, broadcast live on Japanese television in January 2008, challenged the premise and validity of the Global War on Terror. Parliament member Yukihisa Fujita insisted that an investigation be conducted into the war’s origin: the events of 9/11.

# 25 Bush’s Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer

Truthout, February 2008
Title: “Predatory Lenders’ Partner in Crime”

Global Research, March 17, 2008
Title: “Why the Bush Administration ‘Watergated’ Eliot Spitzer”
Author: F. William Engdahl

The exposure of New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer’s tryst with a luxury call girl was the result of his being a target of a White House and Wall Street operation to silence him.