Censorship
TWO years ago today, three journalists and I worked nervously in a Hong Kong hotel room, waiting to see how the world would react to the revelation that the National Security Agency had been making records of nearly every phone call in the United States. In the days that followed, those journalists and others published documents revealing that democratic governments had been monitoring the private activities of ordinary citizens who had done nothing wrong.
In a very creative and off-beat campaign, one organization is trying to bring home how violative, of our privacy and peace of mind, is the unbridled and more and more “legal” right of our government to spy on us. 14 years of the Patriot Act has not made us safer as it was shown last year that it has not given us actionable information, yet it is still around. It is slated to expire in June of this year. The CISA Bill threatens to put another piece of legislation, worse than the Patriot Act in place.
The corporate media’s coverage of Putin and the Ukraine is part of a larger pattern of bias identified by Cohen. He has described the positive US press coverage enjoyed by President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s, at a time when “the US media adopted Washington’s narrative that almost everything President Boris Yeltsin did was a ‘transition from communism to democracy’ and thus in America’s best interests.” Whereas the US media presented Yeltsin as pursuing legitimate politics and national interests, the frame that US media now use to portray Putin and Russia is that Putin’s Russia has no legitimate politics and national interests, even on its own borders, as in Ukraine.
Don’t feel bad if trade talk – treaties, exports & imports – makes your eyes glaze over. It’s understandable. Most likely, you’ve heard about this Trans Pacific Partnership, or TTP at least once a week. But you’re busy & probably haven’t really looked beneath the headlines. Even if you have, some of the authors don’t always do a great job breaking the nuts & bolts down for you. So, you leave frustrated that they don’t get to the point. This article seeks to tell this story in more plain language. Make no mistake this TPP story is big, full of intrigue, and needs heroes and heroines to stand up to the bad guys. You can be one of the many that are standing up. But time is short because the congress is being asked to shut down debate on this sucker and say yea or nay to it under a limited time crunch to read & understand what’ll probably be over a 1000 pages & then figure out if it is right for America.
In contradiction with its own mandate, the World Health Organization (WHO) continues to suppress evidence uncovered in Iraq that US military use of depleted uranium (DU) and other weapons have not only killed many civilians but are also the cause of an epidemic of birth defects and other public health issues. By refusing to release the report publicly, the WHO effectively protects the US military and its government from accountability for the resulting public health catastrophe.
Halliday’s report drew comparisons between the Iraqi case and the legacy of health issues arising from US use of Agent Orange in Vietnam.
Julian Assange…Chelsea (a/k/a Bradley) Manning…Edward Snowden…Dr. William H. Thompson…and the list goes on. These brave individuals left their comfortable mundane lives and took a leap into uncertainty where they knew they could be allowed to fall flat and hard to the lowest depths they could imagine or into the supportive arms of people who would call them heroes. These individuals, we call “whistleblowers”, mined the shadowy depths of black budget operations and brought tremendous secrets to light. The aggregation of their revelations no doubt overjoyed those activists who have long been asserting that nefarious things were being perpetrated by our government, in our name, and with our tax monies…But not all secrets are hidden in the dark. Some are right out in the open if you know where to look.
Wireless phones emit radio-frequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMFs) when in use. In May 2011, after the consideration of laboratory studies, studies of long-term use of wireless phones, and data on the incidence of brain tumors, the World Health Organization (WHO) determined RF-EMFs to be a “possible” human carcinogen. Other studies have shown an association between long-term mobile and cordless phone use with glioma and acoustic neuroma. In October 2013, Powerwatch, a United Kingdom–based watchdog focused on the health risks posed by electromagnetic fields, reported that two new research articles provide further evidence of mobile phone use as a cause of increased brain tumors.
The French Interior Ministry on Monday ordered that five websites be blocked on the grounds that they promote or advocate terrorism. “I do not want to see sites that could lead people to take up arms on the Internet,” proclaimed Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve. No judge reviews the Interior Ministry’s decisions. When the block functions properly, visitors to those banned sites, rather than accessing the content of the sites they chose to visit, will be automatically redirected to the Interior Ministry website. There, they will be greeted by a graphic of a large red hand, and text informing them that they were attempting to access a site that causes or promotes terrorism: “you are being redirected to this official website since your computer was about to connect with a page that provokes terrorist acts or condones terrorism publicly.”
Human experimentation was a core feature of the CIA’s torture program. The experimental nature of the interrogation and detention techniques is clearly evident in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s executive summary of its investigative report, despite redactions (insisted upon by the CIA) to obfuscate the locations of these laboratories of cruel science and the identities of perpetrators…because the concept of torture has been so muddled and disputed, [the author] suggest(s) that accountability would be more publicly palatable if we reframed the CIA’s program as one of human experimentation.
Do not pretend that patriotism is turning a blind eye and a passive mind to the changing world around us,’ student organizer says
A summary of the chilling new anti-terrorism/freedom of speech laws introduced by the Abbott Government in Australia this week. George Orwell must be rolling in his grave… again. “Under the National Security Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2014, anyone including, “journalists, whistle-blowers and bloggers” – who “recklessly” disclose “information” … [that] relates to a special intelligence operation” will now face up to 10 years in jail for doing so.
In 2004, scientists at the CDC carried out a study intended to settle all the questions surrounding the MMR vaccine and a possible link to autism. A newly published re-analysis clearly shows that the African American boys in the study given the MMR vaccine before 24 months of age were more likely to develop autism.
WikiLeaks has just released an unprecedented Australian censorship order concerning a multi-million dollar corruption case explicitly naming the current and past heads of state of Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam, their relatives and other senior officials.
Many have accused Jon Stewart of being pro-Hamas for expressing sympathy for the residents of Gaza, where more than 500 people have been killed — including at least 100 children — in recent fighting with Israel. A comedic view of a common American reaction to questioning Israel’s military tactics.
WikiLeaks has grown stronger over the last two years by building its database of leaked documents and entering into agreements with 130 media outlets, despite attempts by the US government to build a legal case against the organization and founder, Julian Assange.
