Mickey Huff - Censored 2011: The Top 25 Censored Stories of 2009#10

Copyright 2010 by Mickey Huff and Peter Phillips
Introduction 2010 by Kristina Borjesson

A Seven Stories Press First Edition

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v3.1

In Dedication to a Great Truth Teller

Howard Zinn, PhD
19222010

Historian, Activist, Scholar, Playwright, Humanitarian,

and

Project Censored National Judge

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

UNITED STATES PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER ,

Farewell Address, January 17, 1961

We approach the half-century mark since Eisenhower spoke those fateful words, warning of the supremacy of the military-industrial complex. This has most assuredly come to pass with the usurpation of the mass media and all other institutions required for the expansion and maintenance of empire. If only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can safeguard security and liberty, then the population of the United States is in deep trouble. And indeed, we are.

Over the past decade, security and liberty have not prospered together in America. As a society, we have become more insecure and have seen our liberties disappear. Further, the income gap has widened more than at any time in our history, the economy has imploded, our ecosystems are under siege, and we are fighting two endless wars of occupation under the nebulous guise of a war on terror. The US now spends more on its military-related programs than does the entire world combined, and has spent further trillions bailing out corrupt banks that destroyed the financial system leading to soaring foreclosures and unemployment. All this, and America still boasts among the most passive and controlled populations in the world in the midst of the countrys longest war and worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. What populist angst there is seems to have been co-opted by the corporate media and elite political interests so that the causes of national frustration are blurred when not outright manufactured.

Somehow, in the US, we are still threatened by the specter of terrorism all the while not seeing things that are really destroying the republic right here at home, right in front of our eyes. Somehow, in the midst of all these crises, the corporate media has us ensconced in the non-issues and faux debates over presidential citizenship, border wars, and grandma-killing government death panels. We are immersed in dubious claims that global warming is a hoax and that government, not an unregulated private sector, is the root of all our problems (despite evidence that government is actually heavily influenced if not controlled by private sector elitessee stories #1 and #6 in Censored 2010).

In America, unsubstantiated opinions, rumors, and gossip surrounding important issues masquerade as real news. This is what captivates the masses in the subjects of major press conferences with Americas leaders, and this is in large part what the corporate news itself entails: the creation of what philosopher Jean Baudrillard called a hyperreality, and similar to what historian Daniel J. Boorstin called pseudo-events (a troubling phenomenon on the horizon of Americas media landscape noted in his 1962 work, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America). We live in a propaganda culture where factual information is routinely censored by degree. This is the basis of our current Truth Emergencya lack of purity in news.