Top Censored Stories of 2009/2010

http://current.com/items/90676353_censorship.htm

I haven't forgotten what CURRENT'S top censored story was...

MY 3 MEDALS OF SHAME

■ 12. Mysterious Death of Mike Connell—Karl Rove’s Election Thief
■ 13. Katrina’s Hidden Race War
■ 22. Obama’s Trilateral Commission Team

TOP DOG OR BITCH ;)

CORPORATIONS WITH MORE RIGHTS THAN PEOPLE ?
http://current.com/items/91661478_corporations-with-more-rights-than-people.htm

"A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself": Joseph Pulitzer

MEANWHILE...

'We are watching a poorly staged rendition of Wag the Dog, interpreted for the morbidly stupid and performed by the criminally insane." - Jules Carlysle

1. US Congress Sells Out to Wall Street (For full story, click here)

Americans get the best democracy money can buy, money coming more than ever today from Wall Street. Since 2001, eight of the most troubled financial firms have donated $64.2 million to congressional candidates, presidential candidates and the Republican and Democratic parties. Is it surprising how much they control them? Influential House and Senate finance and banking committee members got $5.2 million from bailout recipients like Goldman Sachs, Citibank, AIG, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and others. In the last election cycle, Obama received at least $4.3 million from the same institutions. From 1998 - 2007, financial and banking companies spent $1.7 billion on federal campaign contributions and another $3.4 billion on lobbyists. In 1999, the Glass-Steagall Act was gutted – the landmark 1933 law that prevented banks from getting into the insurance business. In January 2000, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act legitimized swap agreements and other hybrid instruments, at the core of today's problems, by preventing regulatory oversight of derivatives and leveraging, thus letting Wall Street legally pillage and speculate. The result was a financial coup d'etat cementing the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders who choose candidates, control elections, weaken financial regulations, and basically run the country for their own self-interest. As a result, Washington today has become largely a subsidiary of the Wall Street financial giants.

Sources: Truthout/McClatchy, Oct. 2, 2008, “Lax Oversight? Maybe $64 Million to DC Pols Explains It,” by Greg Gordon. Rolling Stone, Mar. 19, 2009, “The Big Takeover,” by Matt Taibbi. OpenSecrets.org, Feb. 10, 2009, “Congressmen Hear from TARP Recipients Who Funded Their Ca...,” by Lindsay Renick Mayer.

2. US Schools Are More Segregated Today than in the 1950s (For full story, click here)

According to a UCLA Civil Rights report, "schools in the US are 44 percent non-white, and ... Latinos and blacks, the two largest minority groups, attend schools more segregated today than during the civil rights movement forty years ago." The result is: unequal education which denies disadvantaged youths access to college and better jobs; growing numbers of these youths becoming "virtually unemployable" for anything more than menial labor or the military; greater vulnerability to future poverty, poor health, gangs, crime, and prolonged incarceration in America's vast prison/industrial complex. The report stresses the need for "leaders who recognize that we have a common destiny in an America where our children grow up together, knowing and respecting each other, and are all given the educational tools that prepare them for success in our society." The UCLA Civil Rights Study shows that most severe segregation in public schools is in the Western states, including California – not in the South, as many people believe. Eighty-five percent of the nation’s teachers are white, and little progress is being made toward diversifying the nation’s teaching force.

Source : The Civil Rights Project, UCLA, January 2009, “Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Centur...,” by Gary Orfield.

3. Toxic Waste Behind Somali Pirates (For full story, click here)

The international community has come out in force to condemn and declare war on the Somali fishermen pirates, while discreetly protecting the illegal, unreported and unregulated fleets from around the world that have been poaching and dumping toxic waste in Somali waters since the fall of the Somali government eighteen years ago. Foreign interests have been using hundreds of vessels to loot the country's food supply, according to the High Seas Task Force (HSTF), stealing "an estimated $450 million in seafood from Somali waters annually" and ruining the livelihoods of Somali fishermen. Somalia has also been used as a dumping ground for hazardous waste starting in the early 1990s, and continuing through the civil war there. Instead of rectifying the problem, the UN passed "aggressive resolutions that entitle and encourage transgressors to wage war on Somali pirates." NATO, the EU, and other countries issued similar orders. Some say that the acts of piracy may actually be born of desperation. What is one man’s pirate may be another man’s Coast Guard.

Sources: UK's Independent, January 5, 2009, “You are being lied to about pirates,” by Johann Hari. Al Jazeera English, October 11, 2008, “Toxic waste behind Somali piracy,” by Najad Abdullahi. WardheerNews, January 8, 2009, “The Two Piracies in Somalia: Why the World Ignores the Other,” by Mohamed Abshir Waldo.

4. Nuclear Waste Pools in North Carolina (For full story, click here)

North Carolina's Shearon Harris nuclear plant contains the largest radioactive waste storage pools in the country. If the cooling system malfunctions, the resulting fire would be virtually unquenchable and could trigger a nuclear meltdown. Between 1999 and 2003, there were twelve major problems requiring the shutdown of the plant. In 2002, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) put the plant on notice for nine unresolved safety issues detected. When the NRC returned to the plant a few months later, it determined that the corrective actions were “not acceptable.” Between January and July of 2002, Harris plant managers were forced to manually shut down the reactors four times. Problems at Shearon Harris continue with chilling regularity. Yet the NRC ignores the potential risks. A recent study by Brookhaven Labs estimates that a pool fire could cause 140,000 cancers, contaminate thousands of square miles of land, and cause over $500 billion in off-site property damage. The plant is a nuclear time bomb, and millions in the region are at risk.

Source: CounterPunch, August 9, 2008, “Pools of Fire,” by Jeffrey St. Clair.

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