• I am a homo. That is a good thing. I am a liberal. That is a good thing.
    Everyone is godless. I belong to the minority that has figured this out.

Partial Listing of Bush Regime Policies Obama Has Continued Or Expanded

Get the Facts on Obama's Wealthcare Plan for the HMOs and Health Insurers

About Me, Me, Me!

I am the epitome of evil to the Religious Right....OK, so is at least 60% of the U.S. population.

Followers!

"Google Bombs"

Blog Archive!

Labels!

Censored News Stories 1-5

Posted by libhom Saturday, December 27, 2008

Big Circular yellow mouth about to eat little yellow eyes
Image: ozma

Here are last year's top five censored news stories, according to Project Censored. You might also be interested in their Top 25 Censored Archive.

These lists of censored news stories should be cautionary to liberal bloggers. It is far too easy to let the subject matter of political blogs be driven too much by the corporate media, who themselves have a rightist bias.

1: Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation

Over one million Iraqis have met violent deaths as a result of the 2003 invasion, according to a study conducted by the prestigious British polling group, Opinion Research Business (ORB). These numbers suggest that the invasion and occupation of Iraq rivals the mass killings of the last century—the human toll exceeds the 800,000 to 900,000 believed killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and is approaching the number (1.7 million) who died in Cambodia’s infamous “Killing Fields” during the Khmer Rouge era of the 1970s.
Read More

2: Security and Prosperity Partnership: Militarized NAFTA
Leaders of Canada, the US, and Mexico have been meeting to secretly expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with “deep integration” of a more militarized tri-national Homeland Security force. Taking shape under the radar of the respective governments and without public knowledge or consideration, the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP)—headquartered in Washington—aims to integrate the three nations into a single political, economic, and security bloc.

The SPP was launched at a meeting of Presidents George W. Bush and Vicente Fox, and Prime Minister Paul Martin, in Waco, Texas, on March 31, 2005. The official US web page describes the SPP as “. . . a White House-led initiative among the United States and Canada and Mexico to increase security and to enhance prosperity . . .” The SPP is not a law, or a treaty, or even a signed agreement. All these would require public debate and participation of Congress.

Read More

3: InfraGard: The FBI Deputizes Business
More than 23,000 representatives of private industry are working quietly with the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to collect and provide information on fellow Americans. In return, members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public, and at times before elected officials. “There is evidence that InfraGard may be closer to a corporate Total Information Awareness program (TIPS), turning private-sector corporations—some of which may be in a position to observe the activities of millions of individual customers—into surrogate eyes and ears for the FBI,” according to an ACLU report titled “The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: How the American Government Is Conscripting Businesses and Individuals in the Construction of a Surveillance Society.”
Read More

4: ILEA: Is the US Restarting Dirty Wars in Latin America?
A resurgence of US-backed militarism threatens peace and democracy in Latin America. By 2005, US military aid to Latin America had increased by thirty-four times the amount spent in 2000. In a marked shift in US military strategy, secretive training of Latin American military and police personnel that used to just take place at the notorious School of the Americas, in Fort Benning, Georgia—including torture and execution techniques—is now decentralized. The 2008 US federal budget includes $16.5 million to fund an International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) in El Salvador, with satellite operations in Peru. With provision of immunity from charges of crimes against humanity, each academy will train an average of 1,500 police officers, judges, prosecutors, and other law enforcement officials throughout Latin America per year in “counterterrorism techniques.”
Read More

5 Seizing War Protesters’ Assets
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.

The first of these executive orders, titled “Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq,” signed by Bush on July 17, 2007, authorizes the Secretary of Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, to confiscate the assets of US citizens and organizations who “directly or indirectly” pose a risk to US operations in Iraq. Bush’s order states:
I have issued an Executive Order blocking property of persons determined 1) to have committed, or pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq or undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq . . . or 2) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order . . .
Read More

Commentary

Item 2
Lou Dobbs has gone on and on about a NAFTA highway. In the process, he has botched the real story here. That clown screws up everything he touches.

Item 3
The fact that the same corporations that own the government are supplying it with information on the private lives of Americans doesn't surprise me. However, that doesn't make it even slightly less dangerous.

Item 5
The policy of a possible seizure of assets of people who disagree with the Bush regime shows the growing totalitarianism in this country. No wonder the corporate media largely ignored this story.


Previous Censored News Stories:

6-10

11-15

16-20

21-25

 

3 comments

  1. Interesting post. I detest Lou Dobbs... I wish CNN would dump him and send him over to that FOX pit where he belongs...

     
  2. Lew Scannon Says:
  3. America is heading down a frightening road. When one million deaths can be covered up, and the mere mention of such deaths can get you branded as an enemy, our assets seized, then our constitution has become nothing more than a"goddamned piece of paper", to quote the lame duck shoe ducker.

     
  4. Anonymous Says:
  5. Thanks for bringing this list to my attention. A great read, although a scary one.

     

Search!



Facebook Fan Box!


More Links!





blogarama - the blog directory