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THE TOP 10 CENSORED STORIES OF 2009-2010
1. Buh-bye US Dollar as the Global Reserve Currency?
Since the financial meltdown of 2008 sent a jarring ripple effect throughout the global economy, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has been talking up the idea of an international market that doesn't use the US dollar as a global reserve currency. The dollar now holds the status of the predominant anchor currency held in foreign exchange reserves, securing the US's strategic economic position.
In July 2009 at the Group of Eight Summit in Italy, Medvedev underscored his call for a newly conceived "united future world currency" when he pulled a sample coin from his pocket and showed it off to heads of state, the Bloomberg news service reported. At a conference in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in June 2009, world leaders from Brazil, India, and China listened as Medvedev made his case for a new global currency system anchored on something other than the dollar, according to an article in the Christian Science Monitor.
Additionally, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) suggested in a report that the present system of using the dollar as the world's reserve currency should be subject to a wholesale reconsideration, according to an article in the Telegraph, a British newspaper.
Michael Hudson, an author and professor of economics at the University of Missouri, links discussions about an alternative global reserve currency with US military spending.
Referencing Medvedev's calls for a "multipolar world order," Hudson offers this translation: "What this means in plain English is, we have reached our limit in subsidizing the United States' military encirclement of Eurasia while also allowing the US to appropriate our exports, companies, stocks, and real estate in exchange for paper money of questionable worth."
2. Environmental Enemy No. 1: US Department of Defense
The US military burns through 320,000 barrels of oil a day, Sara Flounders of the International Action Center reports, but that tally doesn't factor in fuel consumed by contractors or the energy and resources used to produce bombs, grenades, missiles, or other weapons employed by the Department of Defense.
By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products -- yet it has a blanket exemption in commitments made by the US to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Despite its status as top polluter, the Department of Defense received little attention in December of 2009 during talks at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.
Meanwhile, human health is threatened by the long-term environmental impacts of military operations throughout the globe. Depleted uranium contamination from the Iraq conflict has been linked to widespread health problems, Jalal Ghazi reports for New America Media. The Chamoru people of Guam, meanwhile, experience an alarmingly high rate of cancer, which is suspected to be linked to a nearby 1950s US nuclear weapons testing site that left a legacy of radioactive contamination.
"The greatest single assault on the environment comes from one agency: the Armed Forces of the United States," author Barry Sanders writes in The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism.
3. Internet Privacy and Personal Access at Risk
Project Censored cites 13 sources, including articles published in Wired and Mother Jones, for this story, and a Google search for the phrase "Internet kill switch" yields 539,000 results generated by more recent reporting.
The Cybersecurity Act was proposed in June 2009, giving the president the power to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" and do whatever is necessary to diffuse a cyber attack. The Senate Homeland Security Committee approved a comprehensive cybersecurity bill this past June, which has drawn sharp criticism for including a provision that would allow the president to shut down networks in the event of an emergency.
Reporting in Wired, Noah Schachtman broke the story that the CIA was investing in Visible Technologies, a software firm that can collect, rank, and analyze millions of posts on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, and other social media sites.
Wired also reported that the Obama administration had followed the lead of George W. Bush by urging a federal judge to set aside a ruling in a spy case weighing whether a US president can bypass Congress and establish a program of eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.
4. ICE's Secret Detention Centers
The federal office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is confining people in 186 unlisted and unmarked subfield offices, many in suburban office parks or commercial spaces that reveal no information about their ICE tenants. Reporting in The Nation, Jaqueline Stevens describes ICE's jail network and the agency's penchant for secrecy when it comes to withholding public information about the facilities.
"The absence of a real-time database tracking people in ICE custody means ICE has created a network of secret jails," Stevens writes. "Subfield offices enter the time and date of custody after the fact, a situation ripe for errors ... as well as cover-ups." As a result, detainees can literally be "lost" by attorneys or family members for days or weeks at a time after being transferred.
5. Blackwater in Pakistan
The notorious private military contractor Blackwater has changed its name to Xe Services, but it hasn't escaped scrutiny. According to a story that ran in The Nation in December 2009, the contractor is at the center of a covert program in Pakistan run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in Karachi.
Xe is involved in planning targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, and helps direct a US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus who spoke with the Nation.
The Pentagon has disputed the claim, stating: "There are no US military strike operations being conducted in Pakistan." More recently, The New York Times reported that Xe had created a web of more than 30 shell companies to win defense contracts, and specifically mentioned that the company employees had loaded bombs and missiles onto predator drones in Pakistan.
1. Buh-bye US Dollar as the Global Reserve Currency?
Since the financial meltdown of 2008 sent a jarring ripple effect throughout the global economy, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has been talking up the idea of an international market that doesn't use the US dollar as a global reserve currency. The dollar now holds the status of the predominant anchor currency held in foreign exchange reserves, securing the US's strategic economic position.
In July 2009 at the Group of Eight Summit in Italy, Medvedev underscored his call for a newly conceived "united future world currency" when he pulled a sample coin from his pocket and showed it off to heads of state, the Bloomberg news service reported. At a conference in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in June 2009, world leaders from Brazil, India, and China listened as Medvedev made his case for a new global currency system anchored on something other than the dollar, according to an article in the Christian Science Monitor.
Additionally, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) suggested in a report that the present system of using the dollar as the world's reserve currency should be subject to a wholesale reconsideration, according to an article in the Telegraph, a British newspaper.
Michael Hudson, an author and professor of economics at the University of Missouri, links discussions about an alternative global reserve currency with US military spending.
Referencing Medvedev's calls for a "multipolar world order," Hudson offers this translation: "What this means in plain English is, we have reached our limit in subsidizing the United States' military encirclement of Eurasia while also allowing the US to appropriate our exports, companies, stocks, and real estate in exchange for paper money of questionable worth."
2. Environmental Enemy No. 1: US Department of Defense
The US military burns through 320,000 barrels of oil a day, Sara Flounders of the International Action Center reports, but that tally doesn't factor in fuel consumed by contractors or the energy and resources used to produce bombs, grenades, missiles, or other weapons employed by the Department of Defense.
By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products -- yet it has a blanket exemption in commitments made by the US to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Despite its status as top polluter, the Department of Defense received little attention in December of 2009 during talks at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.
Meanwhile, human health is threatened by the long-term environmental impacts of military operations throughout the globe. Depleted uranium contamination from the Iraq conflict has been linked to widespread health problems, Jalal Ghazi reports for New America Media. The Chamoru people of Guam, meanwhile, experience an alarmingly high rate of cancer, which is suspected to be linked to a nearby 1950s US nuclear weapons testing site that left a legacy of radioactive contamination.
"The greatest single assault on the environment comes from one agency: the Armed Forces of the United States," author Barry Sanders writes in The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism.
3. Internet Privacy and Personal Access at Risk
Project Censored cites 13 sources, including articles published in Wired and Mother Jones, for this story, and a Google search for the phrase "Internet kill switch" yields 539,000 results generated by more recent reporting.
The Cybersecurity Act was proposed in June 2009, giving the president the power to "declare a cybersecurity emergency" and do whatever is necessary to diffuse a cyber attack. The Senate Homeland Security Committee approved a comprehensive cybersecurity bill this past June, which has drawn sharp criticism for including a provision that would allow the president to shut down networks in the event of an emergency.
Reporting in Wired, Noah Schachtman broke the story that the CIA was investing in Visible Technologies, a software firm that can collect, rank, and analyze millions of posts on blogs, online forums, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, and other social media sites.
Wired also reported that the Obama administration had followed the lead of George W. Bush by urging a federal judge to set aside a ruling in a spy case weighing whether a US president can bypass Congress and establish a program of eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.
4. ICE's Secret Detention Centers
The federal office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is confining people in 186 unlisted and unmarked subfield offices, many in suburban office parks or commercial spaces that reveal no information about their ICE tenants. Reporting in The Nation, Jaqueline Stevens describes ICE's jail network and the agency's penchant for secrecy when it comes to withholding public information about the facilities.
"The absence of a real-time database tracking people in ICE custody means ICE has created a network of secret jails," Stevens writes. "Subfield offices enter the time and date of custody after the fact, a situation ripe for errors ... as well as cover-ups." As a result, detainees can literally be "lost" by attorneys or family members for days or weeks at a time after being transferred.
5. Blackwater in Pakistan
The notorious private military contractor Blackwater has changed its name to Xe Services, but it hasn't escaped scrutiny. According to a story that ran in The Nation in December 2009, the contractor is at the center of a covert program in Pakistan run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in Karachi.
Xe is involved in planning targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, and helps direct a US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus who spoke with the Nation.
The Pentagon has disputed the claim, stating: "There are no US military strike operations being conducted in Pakistan." More recently, The New York Times reported that Xe had created a web of more than 30 shell companies to win defense contracts, and specifically mentioned that the company employees had loaded bombs and missiles onto predator drones in Pakistan.