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Poison is Treatment:

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The Campaign to Fluoridate America

1984eyeThe wide scale US acceptance of fluoride-related compounds in drinking water and a wide variety of consumer products over the past half century is a textbook case of social engineering orchestrated by Sigmund Freud’s nephew and the “father of public relations” Edward L. Bernays. The episode is instructive, for it suggests the tremendous capacity of powerful interests to reshape the social environment, thereby prompting individuals to unwarily think and act in ways that are often harmful to themselves and their loved ones. The example is especially pertinent today as Western governments withhold data and utilize propaganda techniques to suppress knowledge of new technologies and life-threatening disasters such as the still-unfolding nuclear breakdown in Fukushima.

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Sleepwalking to Fallujah

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Editors Note: First Published by Joe Bageant, R.I.P., April 28, 2004.

Liberty_shamedEach workday I commute toward Washington, D.C. along Route 7, where patriotic war slogans are spray painted on the overpasses, and homemade signs jut from the median in support of our "boys in Iraq." Mud-splattered construction trucks rip by with frayed flags popping in the wind, loaded with burly bearded men and looking very much like the footage of Afghanistan or Angola, minus the 50 caliber gun mounts. Yesterday I saw my first stretch Hummer, painted in desert tan and carrying half a dozen soccer mom types, which rather sums up the point I am trying to make here. There is a distinct martial ethos, the tang of steel and the smell of gun oil in the air around Washington these days, I swear it.

Only a blind microcephalic could fail to notice this systemic militarization of the American culture, and the media's hyper-escalation of warrior worship.

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Rigged Presidential “Debates” Amidst the Supine Media

Debate_2The three upcoming so-called presidential debates (actually parallel interviews) between Obama and Romney show the pathetic mainstream campaign press for what it is – a mass of dittoheads desperately awaiting gaffes or some visual irregularity by any of the candidates. The press certainly does not demand elementary material from the candidates such as the secret debate contract negotiated by the Obama and Romney campaigns that controls the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), the campaigns’ corporate offspring.

A similar secret contract between George W. Bush and John Kerry in 2004, obtained by George Farah, executive director of Open Debates (www.opendebates.org) showed just how the two Parties rig the debate process. Both Parties agreed that they would: (1) not request any additional debates, (2) not appear at any other debate or adversarial forum with any other presidential or vice presidential candidate, and (3) not accept any television or radio air time offers that involve a debate format. Were this deal to be between two corporations, they could be prosecuted for criminal violation of the antitrust laws.

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THE 9/11 MYTH:

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State Propaganda, Historical Revisionism, and the Perpetuation of the 9/11 Myth

gotsecurityIn the immediate wake of President Obama’s May 1, 2011 announcement of the alleged extrajudicial killing of Osama bin Laden by US military forces, a struggle reemerged over the official 9/11 myth that major journalistic outlets have been complicit in perpetuating over the past decade. The corporate media’s reaction to the robust skepticism over bin Laden’s assumed execution suggested a great deal about the extent to which they are locked in to upholding the broader 9/11 parable and serving the Anglo-American political-economic establishment and status quo.

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Analysis of Project Censored:

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Are We a Left-Leaning, Conspiracy-Oriented Organization? 

“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” –Frederick Douglass

One continuing criticism of Project Censored is that we are a left leaning organization. Which is an interesting claim in that over 200 faculty and students from multiple disciplines and political orientations work with Project Censored each year. Over 1,500 students have been trained in media research techniques since we began in 1976, and it would be hard to find a more mainstream, mostly Californian college student body. (continued below 2012 list)

Top Censored Stories of 2012

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Selling War:

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"You Furnish the Pictures, and I'll Furnish the War."

F-35A_FightersThroughout its history, America glorified wars in the name of peace. From inception, they're perpetuated against one or more domestic or foreign adversaries.

They include mass killing, assaults and abuse. Pacifism's called sissy or unpatriotic. Propaganda insists America's peace-loving. In fact, more than ever today, it's addicted to permanent war and violence.

Nonetheless, initiating them requires public support. Famed US journalist Walter Lippmann coined the phrase "manufacture of consent." It's a euphemism for mind control.

In 1917, George Creel first used it successfully to turn pacifist Americans into raging German-haters. It works the same way now. In 1916, Woodrow Wilson was reelected on a pledge of: "He Kept Us Out of War." Straightaway, he began planning US involvement.

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Another Blow To Media Freedom:

British Regulators Pull Press TV

PressTV_logoThe British media regulator OFCOM has pulled Press TV’s license to be seen in the United Kingdom.

The regulator that has done so little to regulate the methods of Rupert. Murdoch’s media practices, or BBC’s tilted coverage of the war in Iraq, has suddenly decided that the Iran’s global English language channel must be sanctioned by being removed and silenced. (Ironically, it was Murdoch’s BSKYB channel that carried Press TV in the UK)

It is not carried here. In fact, AlJazeera which has won global recognition for its news programming can only be seen in a few cities in the United States. Last week, its documentary on Haiti won a prestigious Peabody Award.

According to the Guardian, this decision that should be labeled an OFCOM Fatwa--- involved what regulators considered a “breech” of their Communications Act.

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Orwell Rolls In His Grave

D
irector Robert Kane Pappas' "Orwell Rolls Over In His Grave" is the consummate critical examination of the Fourth Estate, once the bastion of American democracy. Asking whether America has entered an Orwellian world of doublespeak where outright lies can pass for the truth, Pappas explores what the media doesn't like to talk about: itself.
Meticulously tracing the process by which media has distorted and often dismissed actual news events, Pappas presents a riveting and eloquent mix of media professionals and leading intellectual voices on the media.
Among the cast of characters in "Orwell Rolls Over In His Grave" are Charles Lewis, director of the Center for Public Integrity, Vincent Bugliosi, former L.A. prosecutor and legal scholar, film director and author Michael Moore, Rep. Bernie Sanders, Danny Schecter, author and former producer for ABC and CNN, and Tony Benn, former member of the British Parliament.
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Some Big Lies of Science

“[T]he majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies,fingerscrossed
upon which we feed.”– Harold Pinter, Nobel Lecture (Literature), 2005

 

The maintenance of the hierarchical structures that control our lives depends on Pinter’s “vast tapestry of lies upon which we feed.” Therefore the main institutions that embed us into the hierarchy, such as schools, universities, and mass media and entertainment corporations, have a primary function to create and maintain this tapestry. This includes establishment scientists and all service intellectuals in charge of “interpreting” reality.

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The Rising Tide of Internet Censorship

Will recent successes in fighting internet controls be enough to stave off tyranny?

CensoredThe focus is back on Internet censorship this week as a pair of articles from Time Magazine and The New York Times came out almost simultaneously advocating for licences to operate web sites. These articles were skillfully skewered by Paul Joseph Watson as lame attempts to shore up a disintegrating establishment media in the face of a blogosphere that is increasingly replacing them.

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How The News Media Fails Us

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Video:Robert F. Kennedy Jr. On Media Reform

 

Democrats Letting Net Neutrality Die

New Bosses Same As the Old Bosses

Web Pro News

JasonLeeMillerHere was what was supposed to happen: With telco-friendly Republican Congress members swept out of the way, Democrats would usher in legislation enshrining Network Neutrality principles and give the FCC the power to enforce them.

Here’s what happened (is happening) instead: The most powerful Net Neutrality supporters (Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton) are kicked upstairs while cable-and-Hollywood-friendly Democrats are killing Network Neutrality legislation in committees.

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Deconstructing Deceit:

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9/11, the Media, and Myth Information

9-11_thermite1They say goldfish have no memory
I guess their lives are much like mine
and the little plastic castle
is a surprise every time
and it’s hard to say if they’re happy
but they don’t seem much to mind.
Ani DiFranco, Little Plastic Castles

Project Censored

For the past eight years, American culture has seen an outburst of media-driven mythmaking. Corporate mainstream media organizations, the pundits they sponsor, and politicians from both major parties have formed a new contextual chorus singing the same refrain: “On September 11th, 2001, everything changed.”

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The Resistance Gap:

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On Media, Time, and the Curious Absence of Riots

paulstreetLike many left and liberal writers and activists, I often cite polling data showing that majority U.S. public opinion on numerous key policy issues is well to the left of actual (not-so public) U.S. policy and the nation's two dominant business parties.  I use this data to argue that the U.S. is not a conservative and imperialist country when it comes to the actual populace, a very different category than the nation's political class.  The survey findings show that that most Americans hold egalitarian social beliefs and back a large number of progressive policies.  The popular U.S. majority supports universal government-mandates health care, a reduction of corporate power, and the rollback of imperial militarism.  It supports a peace dividend: the cutting of the Pentagon budget in favor of policies and expenditures to reduce poverty, mitigate socioeconomic disparity, and otherwise address pressing social needs (Adams and Derber 2008, pp. 67-75; Chicago Council on Foreign Relations 2004; Street 2008B; Bartels 2008; Chomsky 2006, 205-250; Hacker and Pierson 2005).

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Lights, Camera… Covert Action:

hollywoodThe Deep Politics of Hollywood

Here we build a prima facae case supporting the idea that Hollywood continues to be a target for infiltration and subversion by a variety of state agencies, in particular the CIA. Academic debates on cinematic propaganda are almost entirely retrospective, and whilst a number of commentators have drawn attention to Hollywood’s longstanding and open relationship with the Pentagon, little of substance has been written about the more clandestine influences working through Hollywood in the post-9/11 world. As such, our work delves into the field of what Peter Dale Scott calls "deep politics"; namely, activities which cannot currently be fully understood due to the covert influence of shadowy power players.

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9/11 Everybody look what's goin down...

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worldtradecenterExcerpts from the book... Crossing the Rubicon by Michael C. Ruppert

p236
Somebody knew

Throughout the world the independent media organizations have done an outstanding job of picking up and reporting on independently published stories that the major media overlooked. One of the most outstanding examples of this was a July 16, 2002, piece posted at the website of Portland Indymedia (<www.portland.indymedia.org>) that reproduced the following short article originally found at The Memory Hole.

NPR interview on 9/11 confirmed attack was 'not entirely unexpected.

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Move to End "Internet Neutrality":

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@ symbolBlow to Bloggers. "Ten Pin Strike against Political Freedom"

If the cable and phone companies that transmit Internet data are allowed to charge higher rates to some producers for faster service the result will be “a ten pin strike against political freedom,” a prominent legal authority warns.

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