Project Censored 2008 review

The book covers the most important news stories not covered by the MSM last year. Here are a few of them:

1. October 17, 2006 President Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act that does away with habeas corpus for any person(s) that are deemed by the President of the United States to be enemy combatants.
2. The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 allows the president to station troops anywhere in the US without the consent of the governors or local law enforcement. This law effectively negates the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 that prevented military operations against the US people, and according to the report, paves the way for martial law.
3. The US is moving its defense activities in Africa from the longstanding jurisdiction of Centcom (Europe) to its own jurisdiction, Africom. This is linked to the massive natural resources contained by the continent. Attacks on pipelines, etc. are characterized as "terror" without evidence of involvement by international terror groups, but in a way to justify American military involvement in the continent. Human rights issues , eg. Sudan, are also used in this regard.
4. Destructive free trade agreements with developing countries close our markets but open theirs; intellectual property laws allow Western interests to patent indigenous seeds and make them unavailable to farmers who always have used them. Foreign investors can even sue for "lost profits." See oxfam report.
5. The new US embassy in Iraq is being built by Asian slaves, smuggled through Kuwait. The State Department whitewashed the evidence and exonerated the contractors. See corpwatch.
6. Operation Falcon (federal and local cops organized nationally) mass arrests of fugitives and so called sex offenders occurred throughout the US in 2005 and 2006. However, contrary to the publicity, less then ten percent were actually sex offenders and less than 2000 had firearms. The names and crimes of the others are not known. The authors speculate the real person is to have a dry run with a chain of command stemming from the federal government. This is the first time in history that all local police were under the control of the federal government. See sourcewatch and artificial intelligence.
7. Blackwater has 20,000 soldiers and is led by Erik Prince, a right wing Christian supremacist and former SEAL. There are currently 48,000 private soldiers in Iraq and Blackwater protects US diplomats with almost no oversight. Their lawyer is Ken Starr the Whitewater idependent counsel.
8. KIA (Indo-US Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture) opens India to Archer Daniel Midland, Cargill and Walmart. Monsanto gets access to seed banks and favorable intellectual property laws, and India gets favorable US treatment for its nuclear program. The seed patents will in effect deliver India's seed banks into US hands. See gmwatch.org and mindully.org
9. We are in the process of secretly privatizing our interstates and other infrastructure to foreign private concerns. Part of this will involve building a NAFTA ten lane superhighway next to Interstate 35.
10. Vulture funds such as Donegan International (based in England) aka as distressed debt funds, are going beyond buying up distressed companies and going after distressed countries such as Zambia with the full support of Gordon Brown and George W Bush.
11. The reconstruction of Afghanistan includes much "phantom aid" that lines the pockets of US corporations (5 in particular). These corporations build lousy roads, charge tolls that give them recurring revenue and do a "worse job than the Taliban."
12. UN "peacekeeper" backed masacres of 8,000 have occurred since elected President Aristide was ousted in 2004. Indiscriminate shootings in city de soleil and other places were wholly political. See IJDH, BAI, haitiinformationproject.net, haitianalysis.com for starters.
13. Immigrant roundups of undocumented are really an effort to prevent them from unionizing and allowing their employers who have structural need for poor workers to survive. se nnirrr.org.
14. The Military Commission Act 2006 exempts torturers and their bosses from being prosecuted in accordance with the Geneva Convention. It was agreed to by John Warner, Lindsey Graham and JOHN MCCAIN. The law evolved in response to a Supreme Court Declaration that US war tribunals are unconstitutional.
15. Epigenetics is a field that is partly about how toxins can change the genetic expression in offspring of the exposed. The REACH act is a European initiative designed to force chemical companies to test products before not after they come to market, and is opposed by the United States.
16. The FBI does not list Osama Bin Laden as most wanted because of a "lack of evidence." The FBI has not provided evidence authenticating OBL's "confession tape" of 2001 that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan.
17. Ethanol production leads to atrazine in our streams at higher concentrations than are known to be safe. The Defense department has sought waivers for limitations on its right to dump toxins such as trichloroethylene into public aquifers. TCE is a known carcinogen. In 2001 the Supreme Court ruled that non-navigable isolated intrastate waters do not fall under the jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act. The Clean Water Restoration Act of 2007 which has not passed replaced the term "navigable waters" with "waters of the United States" to fill the loophole. See USPIRG.org
18. In contravention of the law, US political firms including Dick Morris and others, and in contravention of Mexican law, the outgoing Mexican President Vicente Fox, intervened on bhelaf of the campaign of Felipe Calderon to be the next president of Mexico. Calderon supported opening the Mexican oil company property, PEMEX to US exploitation. The election was beset by massive fraud.
19. Leaders of Venezuala (Hugo Chaves), Cuba (Fidel Castro), Ecuador (Rafel Correa), Nicaragua (Daniel Ortega), Bolivia (Evo Morales), and Argentina (Nestor Kirchner) are setting up economic growth engines apart from US/IMF demands for privatization.
20. The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA) of 2006 describes as "terror" acts that interfere with or promote interference with "animal enterprises." Teh ACLU pointed out that lawful and peaceful protests or calls for boycotts of inhumane companies would "disrupt" animal businesses and "chill and deter Americans" from exercising their First Amendment rights. The Shac 7 were animal rights activists that organized to expose illegal and inhumane activities of Huntingdon Life Sciences. Three were charged with interstate stalking and conspiracy to comit interstate stalking and for running a website publishing the names of vivisectionists. They were fined 1,000,001 dollars adn sentenced collectively to 21 years in prison-- and that was BEFORE AETA! It was passed by voice vote with 6 comgressmen present, and only one (Dennis Kucinich) voting against. See noaeta.org. The FBI has declared the Animal Liberation Front as the number one domestic terrorism organization.
21. US seeks wto immunity for illegal farm subsidies that drive foreign farmers into the ground.
22. From 2001-2005, Dianne Feinstein voted for billions in subsidies for her husband's firms, Perrini and URS Corp. Perrini went from 7 million in US contracts to 2000 to 1.7 billion in 2005. Feinstein's husband Richard Blum also got former Cal governor Gray Davis to appoint him a regent at University of California, where he steered millions in construction contracts to his 2 firms. It was rejected by a series of national magazines but published the North Bay Bohemian and probably killed Feinstein's hopes of being on a national ticket.
23. Native American land holds lots of natural resources. The 2005 Energy Policy Acts gives the US the right of way through Indian lands without permission of the tribes if in the strategic interests of an energy related project. It exempted the US government complying with regulations, or oversight.