Project Censored releases "Censored 2011: The Top Censored Stories of 2009-2010"

[JohnyCanuck]

Censored 2011- New Book Release on 9/15

Project Censored’s “Censored 2011: The Top Censored Stories of 2009-2010″ is now available for pre-order here! This year’s volume is truly Media Democracy in Action. Not only does it cover the most under-reported stories the corporate media ignore, but this year’s Censored Deja Vu, Junk Food News and News Abuse, Signs of Health, and FAIR’s 10th anniversary of Fear and Favor in the News Room. A full Truth Emergency section debuts this year for “Censored 2011″ to address State Crimes Against Democracy as well as analysis of the corporate media spin that led to the Iraq War and continues to hide US allied atrocities in the Middle East. Project Censored now has over 30 college and university affiliates contributing on our expanding websites and we introduce this year the Project Censored International section of the book, reviewing global trends in media control and censorship.

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/censored-2011-new-book-release-on-915/

[JohnyCanuck]

1. A snip from the Preface of the newly released Censored 2011.

Over the past decade, security and liberty have not prospered together in America. As a society, we have become more insecure and have seen our liberties disappear. Further, the income gap has widened more than at any time in our history, the economy has imploded, our ecosystems are under siege, and we are fighting two endless wars of occupation under the nebulous guise of a “war on terror.” The US now spends more on its military-related programs than does the entire world combined, and has spent further trillions bailing out corrupt banks that destroyed the financial system leading to soaring foreclosures and unemployment. All this, and America still boasts among the most passive and controlled populations in the world in the midst of the country’s longest war and worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. What populist angst there is seems to have been co-opted by the corporate media and elite political interests so that the causes of national frustration are blurred when not outright manufactured.

snip

In America, unsubstantiated opinions, rumors, and gossip surrounding important issues masquerade as real news. This is what captivates the masses in the subjects of major press conferences with America’s leaders, and this is in large part what the corporate news itself entails: the creation of what philosopher Jean Baudrillard called a hyper- reality, and similar to what historian Daniel J. Boorstin called “pseudo-events” (a troubling phenomenon on the horizon of America’s media landscape noted in his 1962 work,The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America). We live in a propaganda culture where factual information is routinely censored by degree. This is the basis of our current Truth Emergency—a lack of purity in news.

Simply put, what threatens us most is our ignorance about what is going on in the world around us. In large part, it is the corporate media, especially in the news departments, that continues to distract, misinform, disinform, and propagandize the public into misguided rages against the wrong enemies, compounding the state of our decaying republic, furthering public ignorance and apathy about things that should matter the most: the true state of the union, the causes for said state, and what we can do about it.

Project Censored has made the first 20 pages of their new book available for reading online at: http://www.scribd.com/doc/37158573/Censored-2011-Excerpt

[JohnyCanuck]

2. One of this year's top 25: #3. Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates

Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates
Top 25 of 2010
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Sources:
Al Jazeera English, October 11, 2008
Title: “Toxic waste behind Somali piracy”
Author: Najad Abdullahi

Huffington Post, January 4, 2009
Title: “You are being lied to about pirates”
Author: Johann Hari

WardheerNews, January 8, 2009
Title: “The Two Piracies in Somalia: Why the World Ignores the Other”
Author: Mohamed Abshir Waldo

Student Researcher: Christine Wilson
Faculty Evaluator: Andre Bailey, EOP Advisor
Sonoma State University

snip

According to the High Seas Task Force (HSTF), there were over 800 IUU fishing vessels in Somali waters at one time in 2005, taking advantage of Somalia’s inability to police and control its own waters and fishing grounds. The IUUs poach an estimated $450 million in seafood from Somali waters annually. In so doing, they steal an invaluable protein source from some of the world’s poorest people and ruin the livelihoods of legitimate fishermen.

Allegations of the dumping of toxic waste, as well as illegal fishing, have circulated since the early 1990s, but hard evidence emerged when the tsunami of 2004 hit the country. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) reported that the tsunami washed rusting containers of toxic waste onto the shores of Puntland, northern Somalia.

Nick Nuttall, a UNEP spokesman, told Al Jazeera that when the barrels were smashed open by the force of the waves, the containers exposed a “frightening activity” that had been going on for more than a decade. “Somalia has been used as a dumping ground for hazardous waste starting in the early 1990s, and continuing through the civil war there,” he said. “The waste is many different kinds. There is uranium radioactive waste. There is lead, and heavy metals like cadmium and mercury. There is also industrial waste, and there are hospital wastes, chemical wastes—you name it.”

Nuttall also said that since the containers came ashore, hundreds of residents have fallen ill, suffering from mouth and abdominal bleeding, skin infections and other ailments. “What is most alarming here is that nuclear waste is being dumped. Radioactive uranium waste that is potentially killing Somalis and completely destroying the ocean,” he said.

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/3-toxic-waste-behind-somali-pirates/