June, 2005

Stories the Corporate media won't cover nor investigate (a very short list):
(a brief mention does not qualify as "covering" the story)

Below you see one long list of topics (just phrases mostly, with a few sentences), visually broken into 7 paragraphs to make them easier to read.

The corruption scandals of the century: The Downing Street Memos (7 memos now), The Project for a New American Century (PNAC: NewAmericanCentury.org), contrast this with The Project for the Old American Century (POAC: OldAmericanCentury.org), Bush administration's war crimes & violation of the Geneva Convention, violation of International law, the US Constitution and the US Bill of Rights, how Bush's bounty caused innocent Iraqis to be sold to the US as "terrorists" and locked up in Guantanamo, children in Guantanamo, the CIA's global network of torture Gulags, George Galloway's testimony to congress, Pentagon loses 1 trillion dollars, Robert McNamara admits to being the architect of the killing of over 3.2 million Vietnamese during the Vietnam War and regrets it, sort of (see his film "Fog of War"), whatever happened to the anthrax that was traced to a US weapons lab in Maryland, opening US military bases over there, opening US factories over there, no labor section in newspaper-only business section, the illegal fiction of "corporate personhood rights", Global Warming, the "sinking" island nation of Tuvalu due to global warming, Peak Oil, becoming a non-oil-based society, Bush's attack on our civil liberties, COINTELPRO activities that congress declared illegal by Church Committee is now standard procedure in Bush administration, Operation Tips (not since the East German Stasi have so many people been asked to spy on their fellow citizens), the Pentagon Futures Market where investors bet on terror attacks & assassinations in the Middle East.

Bush can take away anyone's citizenship, the elimination of "due process", Bush regime is above the law, Bush's support for the military slaughter of civilians in Uzbekhistan, US ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people from the paradise that used to be Diego Garcia (island nation in Indian Ocean), now just a massive airbase for delivering death from the air by US B-52 and B-2 bombers, the US-backed Coup in Haiti, the failed US-backed Coup in Venezuela, CIA & Pentagon kidnappings, torture & assassinations, Pentagon Preemptive Operations Group, Operation Northwoods, the Pentagon's new "Combat Zones That See" system installed in the US, US military outsources psychological warfare, the facts of Gary Webb's reporting on CIA drug running remain unchallenged-he got it right, which is why the corporate media ended his career, CIA drug running over there and over here, Bush's so-called "Clear Skies" and "Healthy Forests" initiatives which pollute the air and destroy forests, Bush's blatant double-speak propaganda and introduction of US gov't propaganda into news channels as if it was news.

Bush Sr.'s support for Saddam Hussein during his worst repression of Iraqis, how Bush Sr. killed over 500,000 Iraqi children through brutal sanctions, over 100,000 Iraqi civilians killed so far by US bombing, how Bill Gates practically invented the computer virus with Microsoft Word's macro feature, why computer systems cannot be made secure-the social context is everything, "The Art of Deception" by Kevin Mitnick, how Social Security really works & works well, Bush ramps up the US deficit to record levels severely threatening the US economy, the history of the Federal Reserve (not a bank, not federal, has no reserves, owned for profit by private investors), how money is created in the US (fractional banking, fiat currency), elimination of citizen bankruptcy, 25% credit card interest rates, half of all bankruptcy caused by medical bills, the race to the bottom, data for 40 million credit cards stolen placing 40 million people at risk for identity theft, Wells Fargo offers identity theft insurance for $12.99/month, 46 million Americans have no health insurance, why didn't the US ever stop the lynching of black people and what good is an apology by congress now.

Bush's attempt to raise retirement age until you die, radiological weapons, depleted uranium & genocide in Iraq, depleted uranium contamination in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq is permanent, the half-life of "depleted uranium" is 4.5 billion years which just happens to be the age of the Earth (half-life means that 4.5 billion years from now, depleted uranium will only be 1/2 as radioactive as it is today), the US has destroyed the cradle of civilization in Iraq, over 1/3 of all Gulf War I vets are classified as disabled, "terrorism" is a tactic-you can't declare war on a tactic, outsourcing not just jobs, but careers, Capitalism and massive inequality, how class warfare and racism keep people divided, fighting each other and powerless, what happens to a society (and to the entire planet) when the pursuit of profit is the highest value, ruling class incomes left out of most income distribution reports, including the US census, expanding prisons but closing schools, the Bush-Saudi connection, the Saudi dictatorship, Karl Rove, 6 Corporations control most of the media, real election fraud and the theft of the 2000 and 2004 US Presidential Selections.

Lawrence Britt's 14 characteristics of Fascism, America and Israel now satisfy all 14 characteristics of fascism, the militarization of space, why does the US refuse to give up using plutonium to power its spacecraft (Europe doesn't use it), Doomsday Clock: 3 minutes to midnight: the cold war is over, the threat of nuclear war is not, BioTech: the privatization of life itself, Genetically Modified plants that generate toxic pesticides are spreading across the planet contaminating food supplies, nanotechnology and the "gray goo" problem, CIA spy satellites are now used to spy within the US, how the Mossad (Israeli Intelligence Agency) infiltrated the US National Security Agency (NSA), the NSA is now outsourcing their work, the militarization of the US police force, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 outlaws use of military as a police force, Barbara Boxer publicly proves Condaleeza Rice lied about US plans to invade Iraq, Project Censored, the 2004 Ohio vote recount was not random invalidating the whole recount of the 2004 Presidential Selection.

Bev Harris of BlackBoxVoting.org has demonstrated and proven over and over how easy it is to hack any electronic voting system (In 2000, Canadians voted on paper ballots and counted them all manually in 4 hours), the blatant contradictions & omissions in the official 911 Report, Bush's whitewash of Abu Ghraib torture, Bush gives Corporate polluters the green light, hydrogen is not an energy source, EPA testing of poisons on people, Lockheed testing of rocket fuel (perchlorate) on people, perchlorate found in ground water and in lettuce, everything is now made in China, judge orders Pentagon to release 100 new Abu Ghraib torture photos, toxins in our environment, in our foods, in our bodies, illegal practice of torture by rendition, torture in US prisons, the no-fly list, Total Information Awareness, US tax dollars supporting the Israeli occupation of Palestine & repression of the Palestinian people, US support for the newest Israeli Prison-"The Wall", Gaza Strip-also known as a massive open air prison, "non-lethal" tasers kill people, Airlines new motto: would you like coffee or tea with your deep body cavity search? electronic surveillance systems are being installed everywhere.

The US violation of every treaty ever made with Native Americans, the theft of billions of dollars belonging to Native Americans by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, why Americans have been terrorising, poisoning, enslaving, killing and committing genocide against indigenous peoples and taking their land, starting on this continent, then all over the planet for the last 500 years without a break, the United States started out as a society of colonizers, then expanded into imperialism, neo-colonialism and globalization, Inuits sue Bush saying they face extinction due to global warming, 20% of world's coral reefs killed in last 20 years, 1/2 of all plant life faces extinction, 1/3 of all amphibians, 1/4 of all mammals, 1/8 of all birds, massive dead-zones are spreading over the world's oceans, 90% of all large ocean fish are gone, 80% of the antarctic Krill are gone, glaciers are melting worldwide drying up watersheds making fresh water scarce-permanently, the world-famous snows of Kilimanjaro are almost gone, Glacier National Park in Montana will become No-Glacier National Park by 2030, global warming is pushing wildlife northward, global warming to kill off arctic animals such as the Polar Bear, slowdown of the Gulf Stream already observed which threatens England and Europe with much colder winters, deserts are growing worldwide, proof found that global warming is man-made, we're now in the 6th largest mass extinction in history of the Earth... and much more.

The Corporate media doesn't cover the history or context of anything.
Everything is covered in isolation, compartmentalized.

Dissenting ideas, new or old, that challenge the system in any
significant way are either forbidden or immediately marginalized
by the Corporate media.

We are now in the 6th largest mass extinction in Earth's history.
Regardless of your ideology, extinction is forever.
Extinction is a bad story to be part of.
Human Beings are creators and a much better world is still possible.

This is just a very short sampling of stories that
the Corporate media won't really cover nor investigate.
The most they will do is briefly mention the topic, then drop it.

Ask yourself why you haven't seen these stories
really covered in your paper or on the evening news?
Do you want to see them covered?

Which of these stories is more likely to have
an impact on your own life - the stories listed above, or
"garbage" politics and the skewering of Michael Jackson
(as was described above)?

Come to the 6/25/05 Media Workshop and
find out how to get your story into the media!

Learn from two officers of the General Union of Oil Workers in Basrah about what the occupation has meant for working people and the labor movement. Both of these officers will speak and answer questions.

Hassan Juma'a Awad Al Asada - union president and father of three daughters and three sons.

Faleh Abbood Umara - union general secretary and father of two sons and two daughters.

When the U.S. denounces the Islamic Republic of Iran’s reactionary regime, why don’t progressive movements within Iran support U.S. intervention?

Who is in favor of intervention, and why? What will happen if the U.S. tries to expand its program of “democratic” occupation across the Middle East?

Dr. Parsa Benab will discuss the geo-strategic importance and future of Iran and how the characteristics and nature of the resistance there compares to the resistance in Iraq and Palestine.

From her unique vantage point as a journalist working for a year in Special Period Cuba, Margot Pepper has written a smart and politically sophisticated memoir. Interweaving her past as the Mexico city-born daughter of a blacklisted Hollywood producer with the travails of her daily life in Cuba and the larger context of Cuban society in general, her work is imbued with her own political analysis and convictions and captures the feelings as well as the heart beat of struggling Cuba during such a crucial time. Bravo, Margot Pepper, for writing such an honest and important work. Punto!
-- Piri Thomas, author of Down These Mean Streets.

Margot Pepper's memoir propels us through the blockade to post-cold war Cuba. It's a surreal world where high-ranking officials are required to pick up hitch-hikers. Root canals, cosmetic surgery and graduate school are free, but toilet paper is exorbitant. There's no income tax nor homelessness, yet no house-paint either. As the story unfolds, Margot pursues a passionate love affair with a penniless Mexican poet who shakes up her views about Cuba.

For more information, visit this web site:
http://www.freedomvoices.org/pepper/