Photo: tanakawho

Project Censored gives you the news that is fit to print, but usually doesn't get printed. Here are items 11-15 from their list of censored news stories from this year.

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

Salvadoran police violently captured community leaders and residents at a July 2007 demonstration against the privatization of El Salvador’s water supply and distribution systems. Close range shooting of rubber bullets and tear gas was used against community members for protesting the rising cost, and diminishing access and quality, of local water under privatization. Fourteen were arrested and charged with terrorism, a charge that can hold a sixty-year prison sentence, under El Salvador’s new “Anti-terrorism Law,” which is based on the USA PATRIOT Act. While criminalization of political expression and social protest signals an alarming danger to the peace and human rights secured by Salvadorans since its brutal twelve-year civil war, the US government publicly supports the Salvadoran government and the passage of the draconian anti-terrorism law that took effect October 2006.
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12: Bush Profiteers Collect Billions From No Child Left Behind

The architect of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), President Bush’s first senior education advisor, Sandy Kress, has turned the program, which has consistently proven disastrous in the realm of education, into a huge success in the realm of corporate profiteering. After ushering NCLB through the US House of Representatives in 2001 with no public hearings, Kress went from lawmaker—turning on spigots of federal funds—to lobbyist, tapping into those billions of dollars in federal funds for private investors well connected to the Bush administration.
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13: Tracking Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq

Beginning in April 2003, one month after the invasion of Iraq, and continuing for little more than a year, the United States Federal Reserve shipped $12 billion in US currency to Iraq. The US military delivered the bank notes to the Coalition Provisional Authority, to be dispensed for Iraqi reconstruction. At least $9 billion is unaccounted for due to a complete lack of oversight.

The initial $20 million came exclusively from Iraqi assets that had been frozen in US banks since the first Gulf War in 1990. Subsequent airlifts of cash included billions from Iraqi oil revenues formerly controlled by the United Nations. After the creation of the Development Fund for Iraq—a kind of holding pit of money to be spent for “purposes benefiting the people of Iraq”—the UN turned over control of Iraq’s billions of dollars from oil revenue to the United States.
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14: Mainstreaming Nuclear Waste

Radioactive materials from nuclear weapons production sites are being dumped into regular landfills, and are available for recycling and resale. The Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) has tracked the Department of Energy’s (DOE) release of radioactive scrap, concrete, equipment, asphalt, chemicals, soil, and more, to unaware and unprepared recipients such as landfills, commercial businesses, and recreation areas. Under the current system, the DOE releases contaminated materials directly, sells them at auctions or through exchanges, or sends the materials to processors who can release them from radioactive controls. The recycling of these materials—for reuse in the production of everyday household and personal items such as zippers, toys, furniture, and automobiles, or to build roads, schools, and playgrounds—is increasingly common.
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15: Worldwide Slavery

Twenty-seven million slaves exist in the world today, more than at any time in human history. Globalization, poverty, violence, and greed facilitate the growth of slavery, not only in the Third World, but in the most developed countries as well. Behind the façade in any major town or city in the world today, one is likely to find a thriving commerce in human beings.
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Commentary:

11 and 12
These items both illustrate the anti democratic and corrupting influence of privatization. Until the stock market started having troubles, rightists were still chirping about privatizing Social Security. Anytime a pundit or politician supports privatizing anything, look for the catch.

13:
I can't help but mention that the over $9 billion of US government funds missing in Iraq could have helped get a lot of poor and working class homeowners out of foreclosures. The economic priorities these days are just plain nuts.
14:
I had thought that depleted Uranium in Iraq was something we don't have to worry about if we are here in the states. However, this radioactive materials problem could be quite dangerous too. The corruption of rightist politicians endangers us all.

Previous Censored News Stories:

16-20

21-25