Top 25 CENSORED stories of the year

ProjectCensored.org; Wisdom Quarterly

Project Censored 2013 is now available

  

Project Censored director Mickey Huff was recently interviewed for "Inside Story."  He discussed the ongoing problems of censorship and under-reporting in the US. Moreover, he highlighted some of 2012's most significant stories -- like the emerging police state, Fukushima, Occupy -- published in Censored 2013: Dispatches From the Media Revolution.

Censored 2013 focuses on the importance of independent journalism for democratic self-government. And it holds to account the corporate-owned ("mainstream") media for their failure to provide responsible and relevant news coverage.
  
The book has additional chapters of original analysis covering drones and targeted killing, “GuatánamoSpeak,” the democracy movement in Kashmir, corporate education “reform,” Iraq... 

Top 25 Censored Stories

1. Signs of an emerging Police State
2. Oceans in peril
3. Fukushima Nuclear disaster worse than anticipated
4. FBI agents responsible for majority of terrorist plots in US
5. First Federal Reserve audit reveals trillions loaned to banks
6. Small network of corporations run global economy
7. 2012: The International Year of Cooperatives
8. NATO War Crimes in Libya
9. Prison slavery in today’s USA
10. HR 347 would make many forms of non-violent protest illegal
11. Members of Congress grow wealthier despite recession
12. US joins forces with al-Qaeda in Syria
13. Education “reform” a Trojan Horse for privatization
14. Who are the Top 1 Percent and how do they earn a living?
15. Dangers of everyday technology
16. Sexual violence against soldiers on rise, under wraps
17. Students crushed by One Trillion dollars in student loans
18. Palestinian women prisoners shackled during childbirth
19. NY police PLANT drugs on innocents to meet arrest quotas
20. Stealing from public ed. to feed prison-industrial complex
21. Conservatives attack Post Office to break Union and privatize
22. Wachovia Bank laundered money for Latin drug cartels
23. US covers up [another] Afghan massacre
24. Alabama farmers look to replace migrants with prisoners
25. Evidence points to Guantánamo dry boarding

(Marc Pilisuk) The unjust foundations favoring the 1% over the 99% are everywhere. The Occupy Movement has found many targets among the corporate elite. The financial and extraction sectors have been clearly located (Phillips and Soeiro, 2012).  But one hard to find target is the behind-the-scenes force propelling us toward nuclear war...

• REPORT: Media Freedom Foundation Project Censored
• Project Censored Book Release Celebration Party
• VIDEO: California "Censored 2013" book release
• Occupying the Merchants of Death

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Occupy? "#ReGeneration" (film)

ReGENERATIONtheMovie

Produced by Anonymous Content's Matt DeRoss and Engine 7 Films' Joel and Jeremy Goulder. Directed by Phillip Montgomery.

 

(ReGENERATION-themovie.com) This is the award-winning documentary film that explores the galvanizing forces behind the Occupy Movement and the state of social activism among today's youth. 

  

Narrated by Ryan Gosling, the film features leading social movement experts including Noam Chomsky, Adbusters' Kalle Lasn, the late "people's historian" Howard Zinn, Amy Goodman, as well as influential cultural activists including Talib Kweli with an original score by Sound Tribe Sector 9 (STS9). #ReGENERATION #ThisisanUPRISING.

This is an Uprising! Get involved at ReGENERATION-themovie.com for exclusive content and info about theatrical screenings in your area this spring. #ReGENERATION. Host a screening @ tugg.com/regeneration. Join the conversation on Facebook: ReGENERATIONthemovie.

• WATCH THE FILM

Distraction Media

• NAKED Justin Bieber photos hit the Internet!
• Bieber's Beeb on display after laptop stolen
• New episodes of "Underemployed" (MTV)

How We Are Controlled

• NPR: How to Manipulate People Into Saying Yes (LISTEN)
• Learn more at Pacifica's Uprising Radio

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Jailed Pussy Rioter ordered released (video)

TheWorld.org; Wisdom Quarterly

(LINK)

  

German supporters (Marcus Brandt/AFP/DPA)

The punk collective of female freedom-fighters, "Pussy Riot," went too far insulting Russian dictator Putin, performing in a Russian Orthodox church to shine light on the lack of separation of church and state.

  

They performed their anti-Putin song in Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral and got arrested, not for playing so much as for posting an inflammatory video about playing. Two of the members remain in jail.

  

TheWorld.org wants to share the MUSIC of the band over the din of the movement the collective inspires around the world. Their first notable tune was “Loosen up the Paving Stones” about the Arab Spring: “Egyptian air is good for the lungs,” they sing. Like the Occupy Movement they are calling for a “Tahrir Square on Red Square.” LISTEN

• PHOTOS: Artifacts of life on Mars

• Russia remains divided on the Pussy Riot case
• Pussy Riot jailed members get a two-year jail sentence
• Mixed feelings in Russia over Pussy Riot trial
• CARTOON SLIDESHOW: Pussy Riot sentenced

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Occupy Wall St: "American Autumn" (video)

Wisdom Quarterly; American Autumn: an OccuDoc from Dennis Trainor Jr.

  

RATM's Tom Morello as new Woody Guthrie

Pacifica Radio's Michael Slate Show delves into the new Occu Doc and the senselessness of our one party system with two wings, a moderate and a hard right. Choosing the lesser of two evils means we always end up with evil. If an incumbent is re-elected because the alternative is worse, it's no surprise s/he does nothing new the next time. Obama does not deserve to be re-elected, but Romney would be a disaster, a vulture capitalist in the hen house. Oh, what to do!? Listen as Slate breaks it down. The Occupy Movement is just one expression of a larger American discontent: PLAY NOW (download)

• Top 10 Protest Songs of all time

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US Economy: "We're Not Broke" (film)

Wisdom Quarterly; OnshoreDocumentary; OccupyTogether.org

(SFF) While covering the story of American corporations dodging taxes, documentary filmmakers Karin Hayes and Victoria Bruce reveal how they ended up documenting the modern  rise in anti-corporation protests that helped spawn the Occupy Movement. It is gathering acclaim on the film festival circuit for its portrayal of what is going on in America today as multinational corporations (like Romney's Bain Capital) purposely transfer wealth out of the nation.

• Analysis: "We're Not Broke" (uprisingradio.org)

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KPFK FM benefit with Amy Goodman

 

During the 2012 election season, Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan are on a national speaking tour to mark the 16th anniversary of the daily, independent, global TV/Radio news hour and to launch their new book, The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope. 

  

Tickets are available through KPFK during its Fall Fund Drive with a limited number of tickets available at the door. Reception (tickets required) begins at 6:30 pm. Event Page

• Friday, Oct. 19, 2012, 8:00 pm
• Immanuel Presbyterian Church
• 3300 Wilshire Bl., LA, CA (see map)

In Los Angeles Democracy Now! is broadcast on KPFK 90.7 FM at 6:00 am and 9:00 am M-F and KCLS-TV at 12:00 am M, T, Th, Fri on Channel 58, and at 11:00 am and 11:00 pm on Channel 58.4 M-F.

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Pepper sprayed students to get $1 million+

ABC News via Yahoo!; Wisdom Quarterly

The University of California regents will pay about $1 million to 21 UC Davis current and former students who were pepper-sprayed during a peaceful campus protest last November.
  

A video of the incident that went viral shows an officer casually walking up to and aiming a thick stream of the [carcinogenic] spray directly into the faces of [peacefully] seated [demonstrating] students at close range during an Occupy rally. The incident triggered outrage and an investigation by the university.
  

In the settlement, each student who filed suit will each receive $30,000 and a handwritten apology from UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi.

  
Student Ian Lee was a freshman when he was pepper sprayed.

"The reason we were protesting was that the university has proposed unfair and unreasonable tuition hikes," Lee said.
  

In addition, the university system has agreed to $250,000 for the students' legal fees. Lee said he plans to use all of the money to pay future tuition. More

What's to happen to criminal cop John Pike?
The UC will lose $1.25 million, but all of this was caused by one man -- Lt. John Pike. What will happen to him? Will it be deducted from his pay, future earnings, will he pay his "debt to society" in a cell? He brutalized students. He inspired a meme. He brought disrepute on the UC. And he walks away unscathed? The Huffington Post reports he "no longer works" as a UC cop, but no one is saying if he was fired or quit.

• US general charged with sex crimes
• PHOTOS: Killer whales of Mexico 
• New way to do online dating 
• Fiona Apple caught in pot bust
• Building a Better Brain
• Could new super earth host life? (Yes) 
• Amsterdam fights for its right to party
• Evil Netanyahu thirsty for war on Iran
• Mayan prophesy in the mainstream news
• Where did mammoth US deficit come from?  
  

  • Buddhist statue found by Nazis made from meteorite
    
  • Skydiver aims for supersonic space plunge on Oct. 8
  • Is the Gospel of Jesus' Wife a forgery? (LiveScience)
    Secondhand smoke kills 42K nonsmokers a year in US

    Asteroid dust could fight climate change on Earth
    Tiny sea plant swims from predators
  • Mayans prophesied, but not "end of the world"

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Occupy Wall Street rises like a phoenix

Liz Goodwin and Dylan Stableford (The Lookout blog, Sept. 17, 2012)

More than 100 protesters were arrested in lower Manhattan on Monday during demonstrations marking the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, the amorphous, anti-corporate greed movement that began in New York and spread to dozens of cities last year. Activists vowed to "shut down" Wall Street, with plans to create a human wall and block the entrance to the New York Stock Exchange.
  

And remember not to vote.

Hundreds of New York police officers were assembled early Monday in anticipation of the protests. Dozens of officers, some on horseback, blocked off the entrance to Wall Street to prevent protesters from carrying out their stated mission. At 10:00 am, the NYPD carted off a bus full of protesters, all of them arrested earlier Monday morning. A double-decker bus of sightseers followed closely behind. More

• To meditate or not - demons decide (John3000)
• Occupy Los Angeles: "It's not over. It's just our 1st year."

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RAVE: An Anthem for War (video)

[Mystic Wisdom] Quarterly

(GowlerMusic) Electroacoustic piece of music set to the poem "Anthem for Doomed Youth" by the late British poet-soldier Wilfred Salter Owen.

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
  
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
  
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Owen died on the battlefield in WW I after writing "Dulce Et Decorum Est" (ironically "It is Sweet and Fitting [to Die for Patriotism]"). He was a great loss to humanity in light of what Europe might have produced if the youth of that generation had not been sacrificed.

HardFest HARD Day Of The Dead, Nov. 3rd, 2012, LA State Historic Park. Tickets (harddayofthedead.com)

Day of the Dead

Dev and Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

Candy Eye (lilminx16/deviantart.net)

While the world is at war, promoted and prosecuted by the US military-industrial complex like MLK Jr. recognized, all I can do is dance to EDM. And the Mexican "Day of the Dead" (the Latin American Halloween) is being celebrated with a rave.

  

Next to the old Occupy Wall Street encampment under the occupied Los Angeles skyline, next to China Town, we will gather as in years before. I'm still in search of a peak experience worthy of a Buddhist monastic or the Buddha himself. When the lights are going off and the DJ is dropping a big fat beat, I'm almost there. Almost.

  

Back in the day

If I leave my body, will I see the larger Spirit World, the realm of devas.? If I dance so hard I can no longer feel my feet, will I elevate into spatial dimensions beyond our limiting atmosphere? In meditation, I close my eyes and see subtle light. I feel the unseen and touch emptiness. Sometimes Buddhism is the only thing that make sense, you know?

  

The Day of the Dead, when ancestors are honored and there is time to reassess and appreciate current relations, we will be with all our brothers and sisters under the Moon. But somewhere I know war is being fought for corporations and nothing else, no national security, no higher ideals. They're monsters, my brother among them. What can I do but dance, celebrating the Five Precepts while others are negligent, holding my head under a twice-colored cloud and focusing my mind.

The Buddha said, "Not having been, they come to be; once having been, they cease." What was he talking about? Everything, all conditioned-things. There is that Farther Shore beyond the beyond. We wish the killing would stop and the loving start so we could all arrive there. "Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, O, what an awakening, yes!"

"Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate bodhi swaha!" is the epitome of the Heart Sutra.

• Spirituality: Compassion can't be lost in translation

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The Most Dangerous Man in America (videos)

Wisdom Quarterly

   

Bradley Manning protesters call out Pres. B.S. Obama (again)

(RTAmerica) The Occupy Movement in Oakland has a new target now: Obama. One hundred protesters occupied his campaign office calling for the release of US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning. They invaded the offices of the Obama re-election campaign in California and stayed inside for hours before being forced out by police. RT Correspondent Ramon Galindo brings the latest from LA.

The Most Dangerous Man in America

(Dogwoof) In 1971 a top military strategist working for the RAND Corporation named Daniel Ellsberg leaked a 7,000-page document known as the "Pentagon Papers" to the New York Times, which committed high crimes and misdemeanors that would get WikiLeak's Julian Assange torture and life imprisonment in America by leaking the classified information the public. Disenchanted with the nation's conduct in Vietnam (Cambodia, and Laos), Ellsberg believed the release of the top secret paper -- which outlined the "secret history" of its illegal war of aggression -- was crucial to educating the public about the government's lies and atrocities. This documentary chronicles the media and political frenzy that Ellsberg unleashed and traces the effect of the leak on public perception of both the US war on Vietnam and the White House (as well as revealing the existence of a "military-industrial complex" independent of the government).

The Organization of American States convened on Friday to discuss the case of Julian Assange, while the UK and Ecuador remain locked in a diplomatic battle. Ecuador's Pres. Correa has granted the founder of WikiLeaks asylum. But the problem for Assange is how to get safe passage from the Ecuadorian embassy in London to the airport. UK law endorsement officials are threatening the whistleblower. Eva Golinger, attorney and author, joins RT's Liz Wahl to discuss.

• Naked Prince Harry having sex - not in British media
• VIDEO: Royals gone wild, Prince Harry's sex romp
• "Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same"
• Molestation-by-teacher on the increase in LA 
• Apple Computer's secrets revealed during trial
• VIDEO: Cop beats white female motorist, goes to jail
• Black skateboarder brutalized in Venice, taken to jail
• VIDEO: Police injure 9 to murder Empire State suspect
• US mermaid (naiad), Diana Nyad, foiled by jellyfish
• Tips for slugs, deer from the "sport" of gardening
• Coming food crisis: Play for rain, plant more crops
• Female-man banned from breastfeeding in Canada
• FOX outs Osama bin Laden killer, an Army SEAL

Read More

Social strife in US, UK, and MX (video)

Wisdom Quarterly; Plan B; Mexican Institute of Sound; LifeAfterHate.org; Occupy LA

Plan B's "Ill Manors" (translation: "bad ghetto housing projects") illustrates that England's problems are rooted in class warfare. Socioeconomic status trumps race as a cause of social strife. The US masks our class warfare as a correlated racial issue.

Sikh vigil, Madison, WI (LAH)

The post-racist organization and magazine "Life After Hate: A Journal of Basic Human Goodness" shares the pain of the Sikh Community after the tragic violence in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. LAH outreach Kindness Not Weakness is honored to bring Wisconsin Wars B-Boy/Breakdance Battle, a statewide tournament celebrating B-Boys and B-Girls and the healthy challenge they engage with. Support this magnificent example of diversity, inclusion, and fearless creative expression! More

SkidRowFilms Police attack Occupy Movement for chalking

 

Police state to crack down on Occupy Art Walk

(OccupyTogether.org)

Art Walk chalk protests, using the concrete jungle that is downtown Los Angeles, are being given a chance to usse a wall with LAPD provided chalk. This is in marked contrast to last month's Art Walk that was met with arrests and beatings. What is the crime? Chalk is messy and requires precious water to rinse off, so naturally Special Weapons And Tactical (SWAT) forces have to be deployed to tamp it down. Otherwise, who knows, Occupy activists might get carried away and start playing unauthorized games of hopscotch. Public order and what Shephard Fairy calls "obedience" must be maintained at all costs even if civil liberties are exchanged for the veneer of "security."

• Occupy LA's Art Walk protest

Mexican Institute of Sound's Mexico illustrates that its problems are rooted in the false US "war on drugs," a hypocritical campaign aimed at arresting and imprisoning racial minorities while simultaneously militarizing civilian police agencies and destroying neighboring Mexico from the inside out by increasing demand while pretending to exhaust all avenues to reduce it.

• AUDIO: From Mexico with Love and Beats (NPR)

NPR "Alt Latino" (Latin alternative) music blog 

Ranchera accordions. Romantic boleros. Maybe some sweet cumbias. Those sounds spring immediately to mind when discussing Mexican music. But Mexico is a playground for musicians of all genres and backgrounds. Dig a little deeper and you'll find sensual son jarocho stylings alongside astounding rock 'n roll and heart-accelerating electronica. Every week on the Alt.Latino podcast, co-hosts Jasmine Garsd and Felix Contreras explore the sounds of Latin America.

The Alyona Show (July 13, 2012) Occupy Movement LA Chalk Walk 1

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Debt, Sin, Guilt, and the Way Out (video)

Sonali Kolhatkar, Martina Steiner, Uprising.com; David Graeber; Wisdom Quarterly 

(Uprising Radio) David Graeber is an American anthropologist, who teaches at Goldsmiths University of London. He is the author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years and a founding activist in the Occupy Movement.

David Graeber shows how debt (in many languages a word translated into "sin" or "guilt") and debt-forgiveness have been at the center of political debates across the world.

  

They have given rise to innumerable uprisings. He explores the history of money and credit and how societies have been divided into creditors and debtors.
      

Debt: The First 5000 Years

Most Americans know all too well the unjust difference between how homeowners facing foreclosure are treated versus how massive indebted banks responsible for the economic crisis have been treated. 

  

That unequal application of justice has angered so many Americans that it gave rise to Occupy, a worldwide movement under the banner of disrupting capitalism-as-usual by occupying Wall Street. He is considered one of the first activists credited with getting #OWS off the ground.

  

His earlier books include Towards and Anthropological Theory of Value, Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology, and more. He also writes for Harper’s, The Nation, and The New Left Review.

  

Thought for the Day

“As it turns out, we don’t 'all' have to pay our debts. Only some of us do. Nothing would be more important than to wipe the slate clean for everyone, mark a break with our accustomed morality, and start again” - David Graeber.

• David Dayen on the foreclosure settlement (FireDogLake.com)
  
• "Men's Rights Movement" Symbolizes Growing Nationwide Misogyny
• Why We Get Fat And What To Do About It
• Among Truthers: Journey Through America's Growing Conspiracist Underground
• Fight Against Genetically Modified Organisms Gains Steam Nationwide 
• Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It 
• Imagine No Religion: From Central America to the Middle East, the Life Story of a Leader in the Movement for Social Justice and Peace
• "Dirty Thirty" Corporations Spend More On Lobbying Than Taxes 

Read More

"Topless Warriors" of FEMEN (video)

PripyatPripyat; FEMEN.livejournal.com; Wisdom Quarterly

WARNING: Nudity! FEMEN is a Kiev, Ukraine-based group of activists and topless protesters.

This is a documentary from Finnish TV about the Ukrainian female rights organization FEMEN (WARNING: nudity). English subtitles added: click the CC-button (located on the bottom of the video screen, above the number of video views). The Finnish subtitles are hard coded and could not be removed. The English subtitles are present simply by clicking the CC.

• PHOTOS: Topless protests in Europe (allvoices.com)

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Nepal, My Nepal

Arun Shrivastava, South Asia Correspondent (Salem-News.com)

(Hscindia) The Mahabodhi International Meditation Centre (MIMC) is a great example of one person's vision: Ven. Sanghasena established the MIMC in 1986 to offer both spiritual instructions as well as desperately needed humanitarian services to impoverished people in the remote Buddhist land of Ladakh, India, which neighbors Nepal in the Himalayas. A dedicated team of social workers, teachers, doctors, monks, nuns, community leaders, and care-providers have created an integrated community at Devachan, Ladakh. More

Nepal Privatized and Sororized

...The Communists, led by two closet-Christians, Prachanda and Bhattrai, perhaps supported by the Catholic Queen in Delhi, declared that Nepal is a "secular state." The Vatican declared its secular credentials too, long ago, so long as one was Christian and paid rent to the Pope.

  

The Mafia is slightly different: they guarantee respectable jobs; modern day Marxists and the Vatican do not, not even to their diehard slaves. Nepal’s so called NGO brigade should learn this unpalatable truth.

During the ten year long armed rebellion against the monarchy (1996-2006), the majority of the rural population and many in urban areas supported the Maoists. However, when the Maoists captured nearly 40% of the 602-member Constituent Assembly, they wanted democratic centralism akin to the former Soviet Union. 

  

The other 60% opposed it for all sorts of reasons. The State Restructuring Commission came up with two options. But they seem to be unacceptable to various ethnic groups for various reasons... 

  

The Maoists received foreign support, funds as well as arms such as M56 assault rifles and Heckler and Koch G3. Rebels were caught by the army and released again. The legitimate government’s forces received M249 light machine-guns, widely used by US armed forces. The death toll from the peaceniks’ arms was 4,500 [government side] and 8,200 [rebel side]. This was much less than the relatively young Madeleine Albright’s “price-worth-it” 500,000 Iraqi infants, and later 1.5 million Iraqi dead, and over 100,000 Libyans killed.

Nepalese civil society

Who cares that civil society is out there to defend people’s rights when the price is always worth it? Dead folks do not complain. NGOs, modern-day vultures, complain only when their folks are dead or done in, in every sense -- culturally, socially, economically, politically.

During classical imperialist forays mercenaries went in to kill. But after WW II, empire was built by economic hit men (EHM). Post-1990 has been the golden period of sociocultural hit men (SHM) spearheaded by cash-rich INGOs and floor-sweeper local NGOs and Christian fundamentalists.

  

These are ably supported by the insidious, drug peddling, racist, “indoctrination centers [of] the Chabad cult that teaches children that the Chabad Rebbe is the Moshiach and that they have to do what the Rebbe tells them to do.” [4] Young Israelis are as much ensnared into cocaine snorting as the young Nepalese. That’s modern-day civil society. Hard drugs, sex, cult following, music, and democratic free-thinking are the opiates of the masses.

  

Behind this façade lies the globalist-corporatist agenda of enslavement and that is beyond the comprehension of the civil society morons. Nepal’s youth is done in. More

• Are Jewish "Chabad" schools funded by drug money?

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