Censorship
“They” say, “What you don’t know won’t hurt you.” Want to bet? Check out all the ways the government has been hiding the truth from you.
Fourteen years ago, after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, the United States government initiated its “war on terror,” with the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001, which expanded into Pakistan, and of Iraq in 2003. While the corporate media has occasionally acknowledged the 6,800 American soldiers, and the 7,000 contractors who died in Iraq and Afghanistan, they consistently ignore Iraqi and Afghani deaths, which exceed one million, giving the western public no context to understand the attacks lead by the Islamic State in Syria and Levant (ISIL).
Since President Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009, an estimated 2,464 people have been killed by drone strikes targeted outside of the United States’ declared war zones; this figure was posted in February 2015 by Jack Serle and the team at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, who maintain a database of all known strikes—based on fieldwork, media reports, and leaked documents—which provides a clearer picture of the scale and impact of the US drone program than the episodic reporting provided by corporate media.
The Department of Defense have involved themselves with the production of Hollywood films since shortly after World War Two. The Pentagon keeps secret the changes it makes, leaving it open to accusations that it’s waging a pernicious PR campaign to recruit TV-addict kids and rewrite history.
Mass surveillance has “badly shaken writers’ faith that democratic governments will respect their rights to privacy and freedom of expression,” according to a January 2015 PEN America report based on the responses of 772 writers from fifty countries. Reporting for Common Dreams, Lauren McCauley covered not only the PEN America report, but also a July 2014 report by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch indicating that US journalists and lawyers increasingly avoid work on potentially controversial topics due to fear of government spying.
Russell Brand looks at the new powers brought in by David Cameron to supposedly aid in counter terrorism, but instead, turns us all into terror suspects.
According to an 800-page report commissioned by the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), US military personnel raped at least 54 children in Colombia between 2003 and 2007. Adriaan Alsema, writing for Colombia Reports, was first to report the story in the English-language press on March 23, 2015.
Although the corporate and progressive press alike focused public attention on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s December 2014 report on the CIA’s secret program of abductions, “brutal” interrogations, and torture of terrorism suspects, Nafeez Ahmed reported that this coverage has “whitewashed the extent to which torture has always been an integral and systematic intelligence practice since the second World War.” Despite President Barack Obama’s claims that he officially banned torture in 2009, these practices continue today, “under the careful recalibration of Obama and his senior military intelligence officials,” serving to legitimize the existence and expansion of the national security apparatus, Ahmed wrote.
Based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden, Ryan Gallagher reported for the Intercept that the National Security Agency (NSA) has developed a “Google-like” search engine called ICREACH, which has the capacity to gather personal information. This search engine can access over 850 million personal records, including private e-mails, chats, and some phone locations.
Do you believe there is a shadow government running the country? The author explains his views on what is called the deep state.
A report that got little mainstream media attention indicates that although the testing of rape kits—forensic exams that collect evidence of rape or sexual assault, including the perpetrator’s DNA—can be “vital for the prosecution of cases,” a backlog of untested rape kits may factor into low rape prosecution rates.
“Nuclear fires” erupt at radioactive facility near Las Vegas — Footage shows underground explosions, massive smoke plumes — AP: “Unknown amount of radioactive waste burned” — EPA sends emergency radiological team — Residents: “We were flat out lied to… Why didn’t they evacuate the town?”
Europe and North America are currently negotiating two trade deals that could turn out to be the biggest corporate power grabs in history — TTIP and CETA. The treaties read like a corporate wish-list: secret courts that can sue our governments, the removal of environmental and health regulation and the degradation of working standards.
The National Security Agency’s ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T. While it has been long known that American telecommunications companies worked closely with the spy agency, newly disclosed N.S.A. documents show that the relationship with AT&T has been considered unique and especially productive. One document described it as “highly collaborative,” while another lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help.”
Nothing would prevent the Congress from voting the TPP down, especially and because the contents of the Treaty are secret. The public isn’t informed of the details. Any US legislator with a trace of courage would do just that—vote it down.
The legislators themselves have been allowed to enter a sealed room and read some of the content. But there is no guarantee that what they’re reading is in the final draft of the Treaty. The legislators may takes notes in the sealed room, but they can’t keep their notes. They can’t make copies. They can’t discuss what they’ve read with the press or the public.
Again, on that basis alone, any legislator with a shred of honor would vote no on the Treaty. And no on secrecy.
If a member of Congress did break omertà and reveal to the public what he read in the sealed room, he would be violating Executive Branch regulations on classified data (“national security”), and he could be arrested.
Well, that is exactly what a Senator or Representative who, with courage and honor, opposes the TPP, should welcome. An arrest? He should celebrate it.
