Project Censored presents the 10 biggest stories the mainstream media ignored ov

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090805S.shtml

 

Censored!

By Camille T. Taiara

The San Francisco Bay Guardian

 

7-13 September 2005 Issue

 

Project Censored presents the 10 biggest stories the mainstream

media ignored over the past year.

 

Just four days before the 2004 presidential election, a

prestigious British medical journal published the results of a

rigorous study by Dr. Les Roberts, a widely respected researcher.

Roberts concluded that close to 100,000 people had died in the

invasion and occupation of Iraq. Most were noncombatant civilians.

Many were children.

 

But that news didn't make the front pages of the major newspapers.

It wasn't on the network news. So most voters knew little or nothing

about the brutal civilian impact of President George W. Bush's war

when they went to the polls.

 

That's just one of the big stories the mainstream news media

ignored, blacked out, or underreported over the past year, according

to Project Censored, a media watchdog group based at California's

Sonoma State University.

 

Every year project researchers scour the media looking for news

that never really made the news, publishing the results in a book,

this year titled Censored 2006. Of course, as Project Censored

staffers painstakingly explain every year, their " censored " stories

aren't literally censored, per se. Most can be found on the Internet,

if you know where to look. And some have even received some ink in the

mainstream press. " Censorship, " explains project director Peter

Phillips, " is any interference with the free flow of information in

society. " The stories highlighted by Project Censored simply haven't

received the kind of attention they warrant, and therefore haven't

made it into the greater public consciousness.

 

" If there were a real democratic press, these are the kind of

stories they would do, " says Sut Jhally, professor of communications

at the University of Massachusetts and executive director of the Media

Education Foundation.

 

The stories the researchers identify involve corporate misdeeds

and governmental abuses that have been underreported if not altogether

ignored, says Jhally, who helped judge Project Censored's top picks.

For the most part, he adds, " stories that affect the powerful don't

get reported by the corporate media. "

 

Can a story really be " censored " in the Internet age, when

information from millions of sources whips around the world in a

matter of seconds? When a single obscure journal article can be

distributed and discussed on hundreds of blogs and Web sites? When

partisans from all sides dissect the mainstream media on the Web every

day? Absolutely, Jhally says.

 

" The Internet is a great place to go if you already know that the

mainstream media is heavily biased " and you actively search out sites

on the outer limits of the Web, he notes. " Otherwise, it's just

another place where they try to sell you stuff. The challenge for a

democratic society is how to get vital information not only at the

margins but at the center of our culture. "

 

Not every article or source Project Censored has cited over the

years is completely credible; at least one this year is pretty shaky.

 

But most of the stories that made the project's top 10 were

published by more reliable sources and included only verifiable

information. And Project Censored's overall findings provide valuable

insights into the kinds of issues the mainstream media should be

paying closer attention to.

 

1. Bush Administration Moves to Eliminate Open Government

 

While the Bush administration has expanded its ability to keep

tabs on civilians, it's been working to make sure the public - and

even Congress - can't find out what the government is doing.

 

One year ago, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) released an 81-page

analysis of how the administration has administered the country's

major open government laws. His report found that the feds

consistently " narrowed the scope and application " of the Freedom of

Information Act, the Presidential Records Act, and other key public

information legislation, while expanding laws blocking access to

certain records - even creating new categories of " protected "

information and exempting entire departments from public scrutiny.

 

When those methods haven't been enough, the Bush administration

has simply refused to release records - even when the requester was a

Congressional subcommittee or the Government Accountability Office,

the study found. A few of the potentially incriminating documents Bush

and Co. have refused to hand over to their colleagues on Capitol Hill

include records of contacts between large energy companies and Vice

President Dick Cheney's energy task force; White House memos

pertaining to Saddam Hussein's, shall we say, " elusive " weapons of

mass destruction; and reports describing torture at Abu Ghraib.

 

The report's findings were so dramatic as to indicate " an

unprecedented assault on the laws that make our government open and

accountable, " Waxman said at a Sept. 14, 2004, press conference

announcing the report's release.

 

Given the news media's intrinsic interest in safeguarding open

government laws, one would think it would be plenty motivated to

publicize such findings far and wide. However, most Americans remain

oblivious to just how much more secretive - and autocratic - our

leaders in the White House have become.

 

Source: " New Report Details Bush Administration Secrecy " press

release, Karen Lightfoot, Government Reform Minority Office, posted on

www.commondreams.org, Sept. 14, 2004.

 

2. Media Coverage Fails on Iraq: Fallujah and the Civilian Death Toll

 

Decades from now, the civilized world may well look back on the

assaults on Fallujah in April and November 2004 and point to them as

examples of the United States' and Britain's utter disregard for the

most basic wartime rules of engagement.

 

Not long after the " coalition " had embarked on its second

offensive, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour called

for an investigation into whether the Americans and their allies had

engaged in " the deliberate targeting of civilians, indiscriminate and

disproportionate attacks, the killing of injured persons, and the use

of human shields, " among other possible " grave breaches of the Geneva

Conventions ... considered war crimes " under federal law.

 

More than 83 percent of Fallujah's 300,000 residents fled the

city, Mary Trotochaud and Rick McDowell, staffers with the American

Friends Service Committee, reported in AFSC's Peacework magazine. Men

between the ages of 15 and 45 were refused safe passage, and all who

remained - about 50,000 - were treated as enemy combatants, according

to the article.

 

Numerous sources reported that coalition forces cut off water and

electricity, seized the main hospital, shot at anyone who ventured out

into the open, executed families waving white flags while trying to

swim across the Euphrates or otherwise flee the city, shot at

ambulances, raided homes and killed people who didn't understand

English, rolled over injured people with tanks, and allowed corpses to

rot in the streets and be eaten by dogs.

 

Medical staff and others reported seeing people, dead and alive,

with melted faces and limbs, injuries consistent with the use of

phosphorous bombs.

 

But you wouldn't know any of this unless you'd come across a rare

report by one of an even rarer number of independent journalists - or

known which obscure Web site to log onto for real information.

 

Of course, the media blackout extends far beyond Fallujah.

 

The US military's refusal to keep an Iraqi death count has been

mirrored by the mainstream media, which systematically dodges the

question of how many Iraqi civilians have been killed.

 

Les Roberts, an investigator with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg

School of Public Health, conducted a rigorous inquiry into pre- and

post-invasion mortality in Iraq, sneaking into Iraq by lying flat on

the bed of an SUV and training observers on the scene. The results

were published in the Lancet, a prestigious peer-reviewed British

medical journal, on Oct. 29, 2004 - just four days prior to the US

presidential elections. Roberts and his team (including researchers

from Columbia University and from al-Mustansiriya University, in

Baghdad) concluded that " the death toll associated with the invasion

and occupation of Iraq is probably about 100,000 people, and may be

much higher. "

 

The vast majority of those deaths resulted from violence -

particularly aerial bombardments - and more than half of the

fatalities were women or children, they found.

 

The State Department had relied heavily on studies by Roberts in

the past. And when Roberts, using similar techniques, calculated in

2000 that about 1.7 million had died in the Congo as the result of

almost two years of armed conflict, the news media picked up the

story, the United Nations more than doubled its request for aid to the

Congo, and the United States pledged an additional $10 million.

 

This time, silence - interrupted only by the occasional critique

dismissing Roberts's report. The major television news shows, Project

Censored found, never mentioned it.

 

Sources: " The Invasion of Fallujah: A Study in the Subversion of

Truth, " Mary Trotochaud and Rick McDowell, Peacework, Dec. 2004-Jan.

2005; " US Media Applauds Destruction of Fallujah, " David Walsh,

www.wsws.org (World Socialist Web site), Nov. 17, 2004; " Fallujah

Refugees Tell of Life and Death in the Kill Zone, " Dahr Jamail, New

Standard, Dec. 3, 2004; " Mortality before and after the 2003 Invasion

of Iraq, " Les Roberts, Riyadh Lafta, Richard Garfield, Jamal

Khudhairi, and Gilbert Burnham, Lancet, Oct. 29, 2004; " The War in

Iraq: Civilian Casualties, Political Responsibilities, " Richard

Horton, Lancet, Oct. 29, 2004; " Lost Count, " Lila Guterman, Chronicle

of Higher Education, Feb. 4, 2005; " CNN to Al Jazeera: Why Report

Civilian Deaths? " Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, April 15, 2004,

and Asheville Global Report, April 22-28, 2004.

 

3. Another Year of Distorted Election Coverage

 

Last year Project Censored foretold the potential for electoral

wrongdoing in the 2004 presidential campaign: The " sale of electoral

politics " made number six in the list of 2003-04's most underreported

stories. The mainstream media had largely ignored the evidence that

electronic voting machines were susceptible to tampering, as well as

political alliances between the machines' manufacturers and the

Republican Party.

 

Then came Nov. 2, 2004.

 

Bush prevailed by 3 million votes - despite exit polls that

clearly projected Kerry winning by a margin of 5 million.

 

" Exit polls are highly accurate, " Steve Freeman, professor at the

University of Pennsylvania's Center for Organizational Dynamics, and

Temple University statistician Josh Mitteldorf wrote in In These

Times. " They remove most of the sources of potential polling error by

identifying actual voters and asking them immediately afterward who

they had voted for. "

 

The eight-million-vote discrepancy was well beyond the poll's

recognized, less-than-1-percent margin of error. And when Freeman and

Mitteldorf analyzed the data collected by the two companies that

conducted the polls, they found concrete evidence of potential fraud

in the official count.

 

" Only in precincts that used old-fashioned, hand-counted paper

ballots did the official count and the exit polls fall within the

normal sampling margin of error, " they wrote. And " the discrepancy

between the exit polls and the official count was considerably greater

in the critical swing states. "

 

Inconsistencies were so much more marked in African American

communities as to renew calls for racial equity in our voting system.

" It is now time to make counting that vote a right, not just casting

it, before Jim Crow rides again in the next election, " wrote Rev.

Jesse Jackson and Greg Palast in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

 

Sources: " A Corrupt Election, " Steve Freeman and Josh Mitteldorf,

In These Times, Feb. 15, 2005; " Jim Crow Returns to the Voting Booth, "

Greg Palast and Rev. Jesse Jackson, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Jan.

26, 2005; " How a Republican Election Supervisor Manipulated the 2004

Central Ohio Vote, " Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman,

www.freepress.org, Nov. 23, 2004.

 

4. Surveillance Society Quietly Moves In

 

It's a well-known dirty trick in the halls of government: If you

want to pass unpopular legislation that you know won't stand up to

scrutiny, just wait until the public isn't looking. That's precisely

what the Bush administration did Dec. 13, 2003, the day American

troops captured Saddam Hussein.

 

Bush celebrated the occasion by privately signing into law the

Intelligence Authorization Act - a controversial expansion of the

PATRIOT Act that included items culled from the " Domestic Security

Enhancement Act of 2003, " a draft proposal that had been shelved due

to public outcry after being leaked.

 

Specifically, the IAA allows the government to obtain an

individual's financial records without a court order. The law also

makes it illegal for institutions to inform anyone that the government

has requested those records, or that information has been shared with

the authorities.

 

" The law also broadens the definition of 'financial institution'

to include insurance companies, travel and real-estate agencies,

stockbrokers, the US Postal Service, jewelry stores, casinos,

airlines, car dealerships, and any other business 'whose cash

transactions have a high degree of usefulness in criminal, tax, or

regulatory matters' " warned Nikki Swartz in the Information

Management Journal. According to Swartz, the definition is now so

broad that it could plausibly be used to access even school

transcripts or medical records.

 

" In one fell swoop, this act has decimated our rights to privacy,

due process, and freedom of speech, " Anna Samson Miranda wrote in an

article for LiP magazine titled " Grave New World " that documented the

ways in which the government already employs high-tech, private

industry, and everyday citizens as part of a vast web of surveillance.

 

Miranda warned, " If we are too busy, distracted, or apathetic to

fight government and corporate surveillance and data collection, we

will find ourselves unable to go anywhere - whether down the street

for a cup of coffee or across the country for a protest - without

being watched. "

 

Sources: " PATRIOT Act's Reach Expanded Despite Part Being Struck

Down, " Nikki Swartz, Information Management Journal, March/April 2004;

" Grave New World, " Anna Samson Miranda, LiP, Winter 2004; " Where Big

Brother Snoops on Americans 24/7, " Teresa Hampton and Doug Thompson,

www.capitolhillblue.com, June 7, 2004.

 

5. US Uses Tsunami to Military Advantage in Southeast Asia

 

The American people reacted to the tsunami that hit the Indian

Ocean last December with an outpouring of compassion and private

donations. Across the nation, neighbors got together to collect food,

clothing, medicine, and financial contributions. Schoolchildren

completed class projects to help the cause.

 

Unfortunately, the US government didn't reflect the same level of

altruism.

 

President Bush initially offered an embarrassingly low $15 million

in aid. More important, Project Censored found that the US government

exploited the catastrophe to its own strategic advantage.

 

Establishing a stronger military presence in the area could help

the United States keep closer tabs on China - which, thanks to its

burgeoning economic and military muscle, has emerged as one of this

country's greatest potential rivals.

 

It could also fortify an important military launching ground and

help consolidate control over potentially lucrative trade routes. The

United States currently operates a base out of Diego Garcia - a former

British mandate in the Chagos Archipelago (about halfway between

Africa and Indonesia), but the lease runs out in 2016. The isle is

also " remote and Washington is desperate for an alternative, " veteran

Indian journalist Rahul Bedi wrote.

 

" Consequently, in the name of relief, the US revived the Utapao

military base in Thailand it had used during the Vietnam War [and]

reactivated its military cooperation agreements with Thailand and the

Visiting Forces Agreement with the Philippines, " Bedi reported.

 

Last February the State Department mended broken ties with the

notoriously vicious and corrupt Indonesian military - although human

rights observers charged the military with withholding " food and other

relief from civilians suspected of supporting the secessionist

insurgency, the Free Aceh Movement, " Jim Lobe reported for the Inter

Press Service.

 

Sources: " US Turns Tsunami into Military Strategy, " Jane's Foreign

Report, Feb. 15, 2005; " US Has Used Tsunami to Boost Aims in Stricken

Area, " Rahul Bedi, Irish Times, Feb. 8, 2005; " Bush Uses Tsunami Aid

to Regain Foothold in Indonesia, " Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service, Jan.

18, 2005.

 

6. The Real Oil-for-Food Scam

 

Last year, right-wingers in Congress began kicking up a fuss about

how the United Nations had allegedly allowed Saddam Hussein to rake in

$10 billion in illegal cash through the Oil for Food program.

Headlines screamed scandal. New York Times columnist William Safire

referred to the alleged UN con game as " the richest rip-off in world

history. "

 

But those who knew how the program had been set up and run - and

under whose watch - were not swayed.

 

The initial accusations were based on a General Accounting Office

report released in April 2004 and were later bolstered by a more

detailed report commissioned by the CIA.

 

According to the GAO, Hussein smuggled $6 billion worth of oil out

of Iraq - most of it through the Persian Gulf. Yet the UN fleet

charged with intercepting any such smugglers was under direct command

of American officers, and consisted overwhelmingly of US Navy ships.

In 2001, for example, 90 of its vessels belonged to the United States,

while Britain contributed only 4, Joy Gordon wrote in a December 2004

article for Harper's magazine.

 

Most of the oil that left Iraq by land did so through Jordan and

Turkey - with the approval of the United States. The first Bush

administration informally exempted Jordan from the ban on purchasing

Iraqi oil - an arrangement that provided Hussein with $4.4 billion

over 10 years, according to the CIA's own findings. The United States

later allowed Iraq to leak another $710 million worth of oil through

Turkey - " all while US planes enforcing no-fly zones flew overhead, "

Gordon wrote.

 

Scott Ritter, a UN weapons inspector in Iraq during the first six

years of economic sanctions against the country, unearthed yet another

scam: The United States allegedly allowed an oil company run by

Russian foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov's sister to purchase cheap

oil from Iraq and resell it to US companies at market value -

purportedly earning Hussein " hundreds of millions " more.

 

" It has been estimated that 80 percent of the oil illegally

smuggled out of Iraq under 'oil for food' ended up in the United

States, " Ritter wrote in the UK Independent.

 

Sources: " The UN Is Us: Exposing Saddam Hussein's Silent Partner, "

Joy Gordon, Harper's, December 2004; " The Oil for Food 'Scandal' Is a

Cynical Smokescreen, " Scott Ritter, UK Independent, Dec. 12, 2004.

 

7. Journalists Face Unprecedented Dangers to Life and Livelihood

 

Last year was the deadliest year for reporters since the

International Federation of Journalists began keeping tabs in 1984. A

total of 129 media workers lost their lives, and 49 of them - more

than a third - were killed in Iraq.

 

In short, nonembedded journalists have now become familiar victims

of US military actions abroad.

 

" As far as anyone has yet proved, no commanding officer ever

ordered a subordinate to fire on journalists as such, " Weissman wrote

in an update for Censored 2006. But what can be shown is a pattern of

tacit complicity, side by side with a heavy-handed campaign to curb

journalists' right to roam freely.

 

The Pentagon has refused to implement basic safeguards to protect

journalists who aren't embedded with coalition forces, despite

repeated requests by Reuters and media advocacy organizations.

 

The US military exonerated the army of any wrongdoing in its

now-infamous attack on the Palestine Hotel - which, as the Pentagon

knew, functioned as headquarters for about 100 media workers - when

coalition forces rolled into Baghdad on April 8, 2003.

 

To date, US authorities have not disciplined a single officer or

soldier involved in the killing of a journalist, according to Project

Censored.

 

Meanwhile, the interim government the United States installed in

Iraq raided and closed down al-Jazeera's Baghdad offices almost as

soon as it took power and banned the network from doing any reporting

in the country. In November the interim government ordered news

organizations to " stick to the government line on the US-led offensive

in Fallujah or face legal action, " in an official command sent out on

interim prime minister Eyad Allawi's letterhead and quoted in a

November report by independent reporter Dahr Jamail.

 

And both American and interim government forces detained numerous

journalists in and around Fallujah that month, holding them for days.

 

Sources: " Dead Messengers: How the US Military Threatens

Journalists, " Steve Weissman, www.truthout.org, Feb. 28, 2005; " Media

Repression in 'Liberated' Land, " Dahr Jamail, Inter Press Service,

Nov. 18, 2004.

 

8. Iraqi Farmers Threatened by Bremer's Mandates

 

Historians believe it was in the " fertile crescent " of

Mesopotamia, where Iraq now lies, that humans first learned to farm.

" It is here, in around 8500 or 8000 B.C., that mankind first

domesticated wheat, here that agriculture was born, " Jeremy Smith

wrote in the Ecologist. This entire time, " Iraqi farmers have been

naturally selecting wheat varieties that work best with their climate

.... and cross-pollinated them with others with different strengths.

 

" The US, however, has decided that, despite 10,000 years practice,

Iraqis don't know what wheat works best in their own conditions. "

 

Smith was referring to Order 81, one of 100 directives penned by

L. Paul Bremer III, the US administrator in Iraq, and left as a legacy

by the American government when it transferred operations to interim

Iraqi authorities. The regulation sets criteria for the patenting of

seeds that can only be met by multinational companies like Monsanto or

Syngenta, and it grants the patent holder exclusive rights over every

aspect of all plant products yielded by those seeds. Because of

naturally occurring cross-pollination, the new scheme effectively

launches a process whereby Iraqi farmers will soon have to purchase

their seeds rather than using seeds saved from their own crops or

bought at the local market.

 

Native varieties will be replaced by foreign - and genetically

engineered - seeds, and Iraqi agriculture will become more vulnerable

to disease as biological diversity is lost.

 

Texas A & M University, which brags that its agriculture program is

a " world leader " in the use of biotechnology, has already embarked on

a $107 million project to " reeducate " Iraqi farmers to grow

industrial-sized harvests, for export, using American seeds. And

anyone who's ever paid attention to how this has worked elsewhere in

the global South knows what comes next: Farmers will lose their lands,

and the country will lose its ability to feed itself, engendering

poverty and dependency.

 

On TomPaine.com, Greg Palast identified Order 81 as one of several

authored by Bremer that fit nicely into the outlines of a US " Economy

Plan, " a 101-page blueprint for the economic makeover of Iraq,

formulated with ample help from corporate lobbyists. Palast reported

that someone inside the State Department leaked the plan to him a

month prior to the invasion.

 

Smith put it simply: " The people whose forefathers first mastered

the domestication of wheat will now have to pay for the privilege of

growing it for someone else. And with that the world's oldest farming

heritage will become just another subsidiary link in the vast American

supply chain. "

 

Sources: " Iraq's New Patent Law: A Declaration of War Against

Farmers, " Focus on the Global South and Grain, Grain, October 2004;

" Adventure Capitalism, " Greg Palast, www.tompaine.com, Oct. 26, 2004;

" US Seeking to Totally Re-engineer Iraqi Traditional Farming System

into a US Style Corporate Agribusiness, " Jeremy Smith, Ecologist, Feb.

4, 2005.

 

9. Iran's New Oil Trade System Challenges US Currency

 

The Bush administration has been paying a lot more attention to

Iran recently. Part of that interest is clearly Iran's nuclear program

- but there may be more to the story. One bit of news that hasn't

received the public vetting it merits is Iran's declared intent to

open an international oil exchange market, or " bourse. "

 

Not only would the new entity compete against the New York

Mercantile Exchange and London's International Petroleum Exchange

(both owned by American corporations), but it would also ignite

international oil trading in euros.

 

" A shift away from US dollars to euros in the oil market would

cause the demand for petrodollars to drop, perhaps causing the value

of the dollar to plummet, " Brian Miller and Celeste Vogler of Project

Censored wrote in Censored 2006.

 

" Russia, Venezuela, and some members of OPEC have expressed

interest in moving towards a petroeuro system, " he said. And it isn't

entirely implausible that China, which is " the world's second largest

holder of US currency reserves, " might eventually follow suit.

 

Although China, as a major exporter of goods to the United States,

has a vested interest in helping shore up the American economy and has

even linked its own currency, the yuan, to the dollar, it has also

become increasingly dependent on Iranian oil and gas.

 

" Barring a US attack, it appears imminent that Iran's

euro-dominated oil bourse will open in March, 2006, " Miller and Vogler

continued. " Logically, the most appropriate US strategy is compromise

with the EU and OPEC towards a dual-currency system for international

oil trades. "

 

But you won't hear any discussion of that alternative on the six

o'clock news.

 

Source: " Iran Next US Target, " William Clark,

www.globalresearch.ca, Oct. 27, 2004.

 

10. Mountaintop Removal Threatens Ecosystem and Economy

 

On Aug. 15 environmental activists created a human blockade by

locking themselves to drilling equipment, obstructing the National

Coal Corp.'s access to a strip mine in the Appalachian mountains 40

miles north of Knoxville. It was just the latest in a protracted

campaign that environmentalists say has national implications but

that's been ignored by the media outside the immediate area.

 

Under contention is a technique wherein entire mountaintops are

removed using explosives to access the coal underneath - a practice

that is nothing short of devastating for the local ecosystem, but

which could become much more widespread.

 

As it stands, 93 new coal plants are in the works nationwide,

according to Project Censored's findings. " Areas incredibly rich in

biodiversity are being turned into the biological equivalent of

parking lots, " wrote John Conner of the Katúah branch of Earth First!

- which has been throwing all its energies into direct action

campaigns to block the project - in Censored 2006. " It is the final

solution for 200-million-year-old mountains. "

 

Source: " See You in the Mountains: Katúah Earth First! Confronts

Mountaintop Removal, " John Conner, Earth First!, November-December, 2004.

 

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