Ten Things to Not Ignore (and Two Dates)
You know it’s hard out here for a hermit (you ain’t known)…*
So, I’ve been married a little over one wonderful year, right? Guess what I did tonight? I went out on my second real date with him. No, we didn’t get married extraordinarily quickly; more like, after the first date, we started staying home together, barring needing to go out for something…we’re just stay-homey people…but today was nice. I kicked everyone’s ass in go-karts. ;)
Then he showed me a website that I’ve forgotten to visit for many moons, and reminded me why it’s one of my favoritest websites in All The L4nd.
In tribute to what I think is probably one of the most positive uses of the Internet ever implemented, something which really has a chance to change the way the whole world works for the better, here is a rundown of the top ten of Project Censored’s Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007. I encourage you to read the whole page, but if you can’t/won’t, then at least look at the media you, personally, pay attention to and consider how many of these rather earth-shattering stories they’re telling you about…
#1 - Future of Internet Debate Ignored by Media. Cable companies move to be able to censor and filter the ‘Net at will. Gee, why would the media bury that story?
#2 - Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran. Talk about a WTF?! With as much as "Iran" and "nuclear technology" are in the news these days, they leave this part out?
#3 - Oceans of the World in Extreme Danger. Shouldn’t there be a rule that anything which has a good chance of extincting the human race stay in the news??
#4 - Hunger and Homelessness Increasing in the U.S. An important component of any political / economic / social strategy is to ask yourself periodically, Is this working? In the case of America’s pro-corporation ostrich maneuver…it isn’t working!
#5 - High-Tech Genocide in Congo. Ever heard of a mineral called "coltan"? Me neither, till now. The tech boom of the ’90s made coltan extremely valuable, and wars and invasions in the coltan-rich Congo, sponsored by Western countries and corporations, have killed over six million people there so far. …We’re not only killing people in the Middle East for our oil, hey. We’re killing people in Africa for our cell phones, too. >,<
#6 - Federal Whistleblower Protection in Jeopardy. A Bush appointee is ravaging the Office of Special Council, which oversees whistleblower cases. They’re down to investigating only 1.5 percent of the claims made. Who watches the watchdogs, right?
#7 - US Operatives Torture Detainees to Death in Afghanistan and Iraq. So far the ACLU has confirmed and released evidence of twenty-one deaths ruled as homicides due to interrogations by the U.S. I wonder how the argument over "how to define ‘torture’" would change if this were openly known?
#8 - Pentagon Exempt from Freedom of Information Act. As someone who hopes to be a lawyer one day, I can honestly say that this makes me want to beat people with a folding chair.
#9 - World Bank Funds Israeli-Palestine Wall. Lest you thought that we were in any way neutral here…"Despite the 2004 International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision that called for tearing down the Wall and compensating affected communities, construction of the Wall has accelerated. The route of the barrier runs deep into Palestinian territory…"
#10 - Expanded Air War in Iraq Kills More Civilians. You didn’t think the Stars & Stripes would give up on all that oil just because the war’s becoming critically unpopular, did you? The plans to start "drawing down troops" that you’ve been hearing about is actually a plan to replace more ground-troops with air troops…who by their nature kill vastly more civilians and, obviously, aren’t there to "help with reconstruction". Yikes.
(#11, Danger of GMO food confirmed. #14, Halliburton to build detention centers in the US. #18, Physicist shows that the Official explanation for how 9/11 happened is impossible. #20, Bottled Water is a global environmental problem. #24, Cheney’s Halliburton stock up over 3,000 percent last year. This is great stuff, and it’s very well-sourced.)
Sleep stuff later. Have a nice Memorial Weekend, and don’t forget to think about the costs of war occasionally as you enjoy it. Private shout-outs to Craig, killed protecting a Red Cross convoy as part of those costs…
pd
* the reference, if you get it, is for humor and contextual connotation and not out of fandom. Yes, there’s a lot of rap in southeast Michigan, and I like some of it, but you can keep that gangsta shit. There are a lot of gangs too, and they sure as hell don’t merit glorification.
3 comments
See, this is what I love about blogs. Aside from being semi-personal which is always interesting (to me at least), and displaying the blogger’s thoughts, it also informs readers about news stories! Which I think is spectacular because I don’t read news websites so without blogs, I wouldn’t hear of about 40% of the stuff I probably should be aware of.
*nod*. I’m heading back to Guelph in under an hour, back to my computerless existence, so here’s my last comment for awhile.
The future of the internet, and the tortures in iraq have been all over credible news sites and even mentioned on tv. And have you listened to Al Gore recently? He won’t shut up about melting ice caps. (although you should be careful here as well, considering that historically, ice-ages have _preceded_ increases in co2, and not the other way around.) Anyway, the point is that most of these things aren’t censored if one actually pays attention to politics.
Interesting site btw. Stopped by from wikipedia while on my second foray into the ideal of polyphasic sleep. Wish me luck :)
Thanks for the comment and good luck!
I would argue, though, that these things are NOT in the news, and I do pay attention to politics (though most days I wish I didn’t).
Net Neutrality was a buzzword for a short while, but very rarely was it ever discussed in terms of censorship, which it should have been. And now that the fight over it is REALLY heating up, it’s nowhere to be seen (unless, like me, you read stuff like Lawrence Lessig’s blog. Cool as he is, though, I don’t count him as a news outlet). The story was dropped–or maybe buried–right when the public’s awareness of it started to become critical.
Sure, we heard about the tortures in Iraq — had YOU heard that there were over twenty confirmed deaths as a direct result of that torture? Do a Google News search for the headline if you like…it isn’t there. Anywhere.
Third of all, equating “global warming” with “the oceans are in extreme danger” is disingenuous — though I *did* hear a piece on NPR about the oceans, which was a little heartening. Nor can one equate “Al Gore” with “News media” — the fact that a very large public figure is willing to turn activist in order to get this news out is nice, but it doesn’t relieve the actual media of the responsibility they had/have to report on it, either.
I first realized that there WAS censorship in the U.S. media when Pope John Paul II gave a big speech somewhere, and someone I know went to see it, and brought me back copies of the written speech that they were selling at the scene. I read it, and I was very impressed — over half of it was dedicated to very solid points about why pure capitalism and consumierism are anathema to Christianity, since they abandon the poor and reward the rich above everyone else. Then I looked the speech up online, and every American publication I found reference to it in — Including the Christian Science Monitor — had NO mention of the bits about capitalism. They picked a few minor bullet-points out of the speech and reported it as though they had been the main topic.
Something tells me that by perpetuating the idea that America is better than everywhere else, our leaders buy themselves a lot of don’t-worry-the-people-will-never-suspect-it….
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