Project Censored’s “Censored 2011: The Top Censored Stories of 2009-2010

[Panaconda]

Project Censored’s “Censored 2011: The Top Censored Stories of 2009-2010″

Here are the top 25:

1. Global Plans to Replace the Dollar
2. US Department of Defense is the Worst Polluter on the Planet
3. Internet Privacy and Personal Access at Risk
4. ICE Operates Secret Detention and Courts
5. Blackwater (Xe): The Secret US War in Pakistan
6. Health Care Restrictions Cost Thousands of Lives in US
7. External Capitalist Forces Wreak Havoc in Africa
8. Massacre in Peruvian Amazon over US Free Trade Agreement
9. Human Rights Abuses Continue in Palestine
10. US Funds and Supports the Taliban
11. The H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic: Manipulating Data to Enrich Drug Companies
12. Cuba Provided the Greatest Medical Aid to Haiti after the Earthquake
13. Obama Cuts Domestic Spending and Increases Military Corporate Welfare
14. Increased Tensions with Unresolved 9/11 Issues
15. Bhopal Water Still Toxic Twenty-five Years After Deadly Gas Leak
16. US Presidents Charged with Crimes Against Humanity as Universal Jurisdiction Dies in Spain
17. Nanotech Particles Pose Serious DNA Risks to Humans and the Environment
18. The True Cost of Chevron
19. Obama Administration Assures World Bank and International Monetary Fund a Free Reign of Abuse
20. Obama’s Charter School Policies Spread Segregation and Undermine Unions
21. Western Lifestyle Continues Environmental Footprint
22. 1.2 Billion People in India to be Given Biometric ID Cards
23. Afghan War: Largest Military Coalition in History
24. War Crimes of General Stanley McChrystal
25. Prisoners Still Brutalized at Gitmo

http://dailycensored.com/2010/10/10/top-25-censored-stories-released/



1. Global Plans to Replace the Dollar

Nations have reached their limit in subsidizing the United States’ military adventures. During meetings in June 2009 in Yekaterinburg, Russia, world leaders such as China’s President Hu Jintao, Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev, and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organisation took the first formal step to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The United States was denied admission to the meetings. If the world leaders succeed, the dollar will dramatically plummet in value; the cost of imports, including oil, will skyrocket; and interest rates will climb.

Foreigners see the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) as Washington surrogates in a financial system backed by US military bases and aircraft carriers encircling the globe. But this military domination is a vestige of an American empire no longer able to rule by economic strength. US military power is muscle-bound, based more on atomic weaponry and long-distance air strikes than on ground operations, which have become too politically unpopular to mount on any large scale.

As Chris Hedges wrote in June 2009, “The architects of this new global exchange realize that if they break the dollar they also break America’s military domination. US military spending cannot be sustained without this cycle of heavy borrowing. The official US defense budget for fiscal year 2008 was $623 billion. The next closest national military budget was China’s, at $65 billion, according to the Central Intelligence Agency.”

To fund the permanent war economy, the US has been flooding the world with dollars. The foreign recipients turn the dollars over to their central banks for local currency. The central banks then have a problem. If a central bank does not spend the money in the United States, then the exchange rate against the dollar increases, penalizing exporters. This has allowed the US to print money without restraint, to buy imports and foreign companies, to fund military expansion, and to ensure that foreign nations like China continue to buy American treasury bonds.

...

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/1-global-plans-to-replace-the-dollar/

2. US Department of Defense is the Worst Polluter on the Planet


The US military is responsible for the most egregious and widespread pollution of the planet, yet this information and accompanying documentation goes almost entirely unreported. In spite of the evidence, the environmental impact of the US military goes largely unaddressed by environmental organizations and was not the focus of any discussions or proposed restrictions at the recent UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. This impact includes uninhibited use of fossil fuels, massive creation of greenhouse gases, and extensive release of radioactive and chemical contaminants into the air, water, and soil.

The extensive global operations of the US military (wars, interventions, and secret operations on over one thousand bases around the world and six thousand facilities in the United States) are not counted against US greenhouse gas limits. Sara Flounders writes, “By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy in general. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements.”

While official accounts put US military usage at 320,000 barrels of oil a day, that does not include fuel consumed by contractors, in leased or private facilities, or in the production of weapons. The US military is a major contributor of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that most scientists believe is to blame for climate change. Steve Kretzmann, director of Oil Change International, reports, “The Iraq war was responsible for at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) from March 2003 through December 2007. . . . That war emits more than 60 percent that of all countries. . . . This information is not readily available . . . because military emissions abroad are exempt from national reporting requirements under US law and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.”

...

As it stands, the Department of Defense is the largest polluter in the world, producing more hazardous waste than the five largest US chemical companies combined. Depleted uranium, petroleum, oil, pesticides, defoliant agents such as Agent Orange, and lead, along with vast amounts of radiation from weaponry produced, tested, and used, are just some of the pollutants with which the US military is contaminating the environment.

...

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/2-us-department-of-defense-is-the-worst-polluter-on-the-planet/

[maryf]

1. this one was sad news to me...

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/8-massacre-in-peruvian-amazon-over-us-free-trade-agreement/

People really need to know about so many things they miss, this list is a huge service, and perennially has information I missed...K&R big time...

thanks for posting.

[Panaconda]

4. #4

4. ICE Operates Secret Detention and Courts
Top 25 of 2011

Agents of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are holding thousands of US residents in unlisted and unmarked subfield offices and deporting tens of thousands in secret court hearings.

“If you don’t have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he’s illegal, we can make him disappear.” Those chilling words were spoken by James Pendergraph, then executive director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of State and Local Coordination, at a conference of police and sheriffs in August 2008.

People are held in a vast network of more than three hundred detention facilities, located in nearly every state in the country. Only a few of these facilities are under the full operational control of ICE—the majority are jails under the control of state and local governments that subcontract with ICE to provide detention bed space. However, ICE has created a network of secret jails designed for confining individuals in transit. These 186 unlisted and unmarked subfield offices are not subject to ICE detention standards, lacking showers, beds, drinking water, soap, toothbrushes, sanitary napkins, mail, attorneys, or legal information. Many of these subfield offices are in suburban office parks or commercial spaces revealing no information about their ICE tenants—nary a sign, a marked car, or even a US flag.

In addition there is a complete lack of a real-time database tracking people in ICE custody, meaning that ICE has created a network of secret jails designed for confining individuals in transit that literally make people disappear. Immigrant detainees can be transferred away from their attorneys at any point in their immigration proceedings, and often are. Detainees can be literally “lost” by their attorneys and family members for days or even weeks after being transferred.

...

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/4-ice-operates-secret-detention-and-courts/

[maryf]

6. Surreal

I think this may have occurred across the river from where I live,so scary and sad...May have to resubscribe to the Nation...some articles are important there...

The journalists who cover these issues are true heroes (not unlike the wiki leakers) evidenced by the author of this article :

"I am presently conducting research on unlawful actions taken by immigration judges. This research has proven difficult because of retaliation against me by top ICE public affairs officers Kelly Nantel and Brian Hale—they unlawfully ordered agents to block my access to ICE facilities around the country. In April, a DHS-contracted guard in Atlanta assaulted me pursuant to an order from William Cassidy, the immigration judge who deported a US citizen. (While I was in a waiting area, Mr. Cassidy told a guard to remove me from the federal building.) I have filed a misconduct complaint; in response Mr. Cassidy’s cronies at the EOIR are not answering questions—documents I have received indicate a cover-up campaign is underway.

[proud2BlibKansan]

9. Some of the parents of kids I have taught have been picked up

and taken to a facility here.

This is definitely an untold story.

[maryf]

2. kick, everybody here is talking about the media censorship message,

this should be K&R'd by everybody...

[Starry Messenger]

3. k & r

[SpiralHawk]

5. #14 Unresoved 9/11 issues.

Shawn Hamilton, “Over 1,000 Architects and Engineers Have Signed Petition to Reinvestigate 9-11 Destruction,” Examiner.com, February 23, 2010, http://www.examiner.com/x-36199-Conspiracy-Examiner.

The whole 9/11-Republicon mess totally stinks to high heaven.

[Subdivisions]

13. Big Brother has already resolved what happened on 9/11. It's called

The 9/11 Commission Report and you can read it here: http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report.pdf

The story of 9/11 is complete and is no longer up for discussion. Anyone who thinks or says anything other than what is described in this report is a completely batshit insane UFO alien abductee whose mind was fucked by the experience.

[maryf]

7. #3 Internet privacy

http://dailycensored.com/2010/10/10/top-25-censored-stories-released/

so many articles in this one, this list is a goldmine of information...

[Panaconda]

8. #6

6. Health Care Restrictions Cost Thousands of Lives in US


Despite national legislative health reform, health care in the US will remain dismal for many Americans, resulting in continuing deaths and personal tragedies. A recent Harvard research team estimates that 2,266 US military veterans died in 2008 due to lack of health insurance. The figure is more than fourteen times the number of deaths suffered by US troops in Afghanistan in 2008, and more than twice as many as have died since the war began in 2001. Harvard researchers concluded that 1.46 million working-age vets lacked health coverage, increasing their death rate. The American Journal of Public Health published findings demonstrating that being uninsured raises an individual’s odds of dying by 40 percent.

Dr. David Himmelstein, coauthor of the analysis and associate professor of medicine at Harvard, commented, “These unnecessary deaths will continue under the new health care reform legislation. The bill would do virtually nothing for the uninsured until 2013, and leave at least 17 million uninsured over the long run.”

In a related story on health care inequalities, Stacie Ritter’s twin daughters were diagnosed with cancer at the age of four. They both needed stem cell transplants and other cancer treatments. The twins survived, but the glands controlling their growth were damaged beyond repair from the treatment. To continue growing, they needed doctor-recommended growth hormone injections regularly. Stacie’s husband’s company switched to CIGNA health insurance, and CIGNA refused to cover the hormone shots. Each time Stacie takes her daughters to the doctor for the shots, it costs her $440. The incident marked just the latest chapter in the family’s ongoing troubles with the health insurance industry. Between the cancer treatment and the denied care, Stacie and her husband had to file for bankruptcy due to their high medical expenses. Ed Hanway, CEO of CIGNA, made $12.2 million last year—$5,883 an hour.

Health insurance laws are often complicated by individual states, where health insurance is legally controlled. There are eight states, plus the District of Columbia, where insurance companies can claim that getting beaten up by your spouse is a preexisting condition for which you can be denied health insurance coverage. Victims of domestic violence are legally denied health insurance by companies that say this condition is preexisting and cannot be covered. The companies involved—Nationwide, Allstate, State Farm, Aetna, Metropolitan Life, Equitable Companies, First Colony Life, Prudential, and Principal Financial Group—were all found in 1995 to have denied or canceled coverage to women who were beaten. The states that still allow this practice are Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, and Wyoming.

While the new national health care plan will remediate some of the above problems, thousands of people will continue to suffer in the US for many years to come.

...

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/6-health-care-restrictions-cost-thousands-of-lives-in-us/

[Ted_White]

10. Always good stuff from PC. I am glad to see them going strong.

[Panaconda]

11. #7

7. External Capitalist Forces Wreak Havoc in Africa


The African land grab

In the midst of a severe food and economic crisis, the “land grabbing” trend has grown to an international phenomenon. The term refers to the purchase or lease of vast tracts of land by wealthier, food-insecure nations and private investors from mostly poor, developing countries in order to produce crops for export. Approximately 180 instances of such land transactions have been reported since mid-2008, as nations attempt to extend their control over food-producing lands and investors attempt to turn a profit in biofuels and soft commodities markets.

Why Africa? Because an estimated 90 percent of the world’s arable land is already in use, the search for more has led to the countries least touched by development, those in Africa. The accelerating land rush has been triggered by the worldwide food shortages that followed the sharp oil price rises in 2008, growing water shortages, and the European Union’s insistence that 10 percent of all transport fuel must come from plant-based biofuels by 2015. Devlin Kuyek, a Montreal-based researcher, said investing in Africa is now seen as a new food supply strategy by many governments. “Rich countries are eyeing Africa not just for a healthy return on capital, but also as an insurance policy. Food shortages and riots in twenty-eight countries in 2008, declining water supplies, climate change and huge population growth have together made land attractive. Africa has the most land and, compared with other continents, is cheap,” he said.

An Observer investigation estimates that up to 50 million hectares of land have been acquired in the last few years or is in the process of being negotiated by governments and wealthy investors working with state subsidies. For example, Ethiopia is one of the hungriest countries in the world, with more than 13 million people needing food aid, but paradoxically the government is offering at least three million hectares of its most fertile land to rich countries and some of the world’s most wealthy individuals to export food for their own populations.

The Africa-wide trend is being characterized by many as the new twenty-first-century colonization. Oromia in Ethiopia is one of the centers of the African land rush. Haile Hirpa, president of the Oromia Studies Association, said in a letter of protest to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that India had acquired one million hectares; Djibouti, 10,000 hectares; Saudi Arabia, 100,000 hectares; and that Egyptian, South Korean, Chinese, Nigerian, and other Arab investors were all active in the state. “The Saudis are enjoying the rice harvest, while the Oromos are dying from man-made famine as we speak,” he said.

...

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/7-external-capitalist-forces-wreak-havoc-in-africa/

[Subdivisions]

12. 1. Global Plans to Replace the Dollar

Why isn't this post in the tinfoil forum?

If there was a global plan to replace the Dollar, we would be discussing it.

[Bullet1987]

14. The plans to replace to dollar have been talked about in the news for a few years now

and it's a known fact that foreign elites want to be rid of it. But my perception has always been that it won't go anywhere until a viable alternative is created.