Top 25 censored stories for 2009

That is number one on my list. Georgia was unbelievably wrong in that situation. I did a lot of research when the conflict broke. And the funny thing is that it was so blatantly censored in the west compared to everywhere else in the world especially when you look at Al-Jazeera or Swedish and Danish sites. Only the US and Britain said it was Russia...everything else pointed to Georgia.

http://www.ossetia-war.com/

.. but odd that such interesting and important stories are so lacking from the major corporate sponsored media?
i for one would love to see much more about these stories

Censored in the way that kyackr is talking about...not so much the internet

you mean the official US major media count is 100'000
you can find conflicting estimates .. such as here
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html
you can then of course decide that's BS and choose
to believe the US major media estimate if you wish

IMMININT - Snap out of it.

I'm not snapped into anything Pericles. I'm merely not taking this article at face value.

As for the varied counts. I'm well aware. But with the benefit of the doubt and facts on the table, I'm going with the lowest number.

I need more than he/she said we're at a million.

Business as usual !

In the USA, the prison system is owned by private corporations (i), meaning that companies make money from putting people in jail.

This explains why America has the largest absolute prison population in the world (ii). Not just relative to its 300m population, but relative to the world. Even communist China, with 1.3 billion people, has less people in prison than America. US police officers are fired or given demotions if they do not meet a certain quota of people put in jail (iii). It’s called the prison-industrial complex (iv), and is just one example of how capitalism is yielding negative effects in America.

So how are so many people being put in prison? Welcome to the drug war. The CIA ships in cocaine to the United States in mass (v), and then uses the corrupt police force to deal these illegal drugs to the American public (vi). Naturally, having dealt the drugs, the police then know who is in possession of cocaine, so later bust them for it. Not only is the drug-industrial complex served, but so is the prison-industrial complex. Classic corporatism all made possible through the corrupt police force of bully-mentality.

And if by now you’re saying, “well, just because people are selling drugs, doesn’t mean the kids are forced to buy them”, consider the glorification of drugs in movies and television. Young kids love listening to Amy Winehouse and others (vii) (viii), but there is no age limit on how old you have to be to watch her on the news, boxed into the classic drug nightmare of so many poor victims of the entertainment industry. The average lifespan in the United States is currently 78 (ix) and expected to be commonly as high as 100 in the coming generations (x), yet in the entertainment industry was just over 60 in 1999 and was as low as 48 in 1950 (xi). Also consider the abomination that is America’s education system (xii), and its up-to and in some cases above 50% high school dropout rates (xiii).
Footnotes

i http://www.correctionsproject.com/corrections/pris_priv.htm
ii http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/2925973.stm
iii http://www.emissourian.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19506987&BRD=1409&PAG=46...
iv http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199812/prisons
v http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1998_cr/980507-l.htm
vi http://www.serendipity.li/cia/fifty.html vii http://danasdirt.com/2007/11/27/amy-winehouse-meets-a-young-fan/
viii http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_black#Charts
ix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
x http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1977733.stm
xi http://www.ancestry.com/facts/HOLLYWOOD-life-expectancy.ashx
xii http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx4pN-aiofw
xiii http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,344190,00.html

PS : Back then pot prohibition was but an excuse to wipe out the hemp industry … http://piratebook.com/chapter_17.htm

Drugs sell themselves, which is why the anti-drug propaganda is so dangerous.

Rather than show the truth about what drugs do (which, granted, can be highly destructive and devastating), the current policies leave a night/day gap between logic and the law.

If someone does DARE (get it? DARE...like it says on all the police car bumper stickers) cross the line because of the POSITIVE influence of friends or circumstance, they don't know what they are getting themselves into, all they realize is they have been lied to.

This leads to nightmare-type scenarios like prohibition on steroids, and suddenly there are all sorts of hidden monsters and lies permeating our society, friends, and family from the inside out.

Don't get me wrong, drugs are dangerous, but people are the problem.

It could be argued blind enforcers are doing as much harm as good to society because of completely uninformed military-type indoctrination. Granted, you don't want people that are going to harm other people allowed to roam freely, but the current system is obviously beyond-flawed in protecting the "good" from the "bad" as it theoretically supposed to.

One day a future advanced society is going to look back on this present world as beyond ignorant in our policies.

yeah white noise, i was with you right up until the amy winehouse reference. poor victims of the entertainment industry? i think not.

and if that chubby girl with the beehive ends up on coke she has no one but herself and her parents to blame.