Taboo News and Corporate Media By Peter Phillips 8/1/09

Taboo News and Corporate Media

By Peter Phillips
8/1/09

The corporate media in the United States are ignoring valid news stories, based on university quality research. It appears that certain topics are simply forbidden inside the mainstream corporate media today. To openly cover these news stories would stir up questions regarding "inconvenient truths" that many in the US power structure want to avoid.

For example, current research indicates that public schools in the United States are more segregated today than they have been in more than four decades. According to a new Civil Rights report, published at the University of California, Los Angeles, schools in the US are 44 percent non-white, and minorities are rapidly emerging as the majority of public school students in the US. Latinos and blacks, the two largest minority groups, attend schools more segregated today than during the civil rights movement forty years ago. Millions of non-white students are locked into "dropout factory" high schools, where huge percentages do not graduate. The most severe segregation in public schools occurs in the Western states, including California; not in the South, as many people believe. Most non-white schools are segregated by poverty as well as race. Schools in low-income communities remain highly unequal in terms of funding, qualified teachers, and curriculum.

Other taboo stories include civilian death rates in Iraq and questions on 9/11. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and a professional survey company in Great Britain, Opinion Research Business (ORB) report that the United States is directly responsible for over one million Iraqi deaths since our invasion six and half years ago. In a January 2008 report, ORB reported that, "survey work confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003. We now estimate that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been of the order of 1,033,000." A 2006 Johns Hopkins study confirmed that US aerial bombing in civilian neighborhoods caused over a third of these deaths and that over half the deaths are directly attributable to US forces. Iraqi civilian death levels in the summer of 2009 likely now exceed 1.2 million.

Former Brigham Young University physics professor Dr. Steven E. Jones and some 700 scientific professionals in the fields of architecture, engineering, and physics have now concluded that the official explanation for the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings is implausible according to laws of physics. Especially troubling is the collapse of WTC 7, a forty-seven-story building that was not hit by planes, yet dropped in its own "footprint" in 6.6 seconds in the same manner as a controlled demolition. To support this theory, Jones and eight other scientists conducted chemical research on the dust from the World Trade centers. Their research results were published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal Open Chemical Physics Journal, Volume 2, 2009. The authors write, "We have discovered distinctive red/ gray chips in all the samples. The properties of these chips were analyzed using optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The red portion of these chips is found to be an unreacted thermitic material and highly energetic." Thermite is a pyrotechnic composition of a metal powder and a metal oxide, which produces an aluminothermic reaction known as a thermite reaction and is used in controlled demolitions of buildings.

Each of these taboo news stories is based on solid scholarly research. These stories represent the failure of the corporate media in the US to keep the American people democratically informed on important issues. This lack of coverage of critical and potentially political news stories is what many thousands of people in the US are now calling a Truth Emergency. Political activists at all levels must support full news transparency as an important component of building a
non-exploitative world based on democracy, truthfulness, and human rights.

Peter Phillips is Professor Sociology at Sonoma State University,
President of Media Freedom Foundation http://www.mediafreedominternational.org/
and the former director of Project Censored http://www.projectcensored.org/
Daily non-corporate independent news is now on-line at: http://mediafreedom.pnn.com/13160-validated-independent-news

Democracy NOT

I don't get it: Either 'Democracy Now!' doesn't care about democracy or 'Democracy Now!' doesn't consider a ballot initiative to be a democratic endeavor. Amy Goodman should hang her head in shame for not covering NYC CAN.

And how is it that 9/11 Families and First Responders who are taking the City of New York to Court about a New York City referendum is NOT a news story in New York City??? The New York Times should be reporting this! But even Air America and Village Voice are too timid to mention it.

The alternative media at least reports the lies about Iraq, but they inexplicably turn a blind eye to the lies of 9/11. It's shameful. Scientific studies are ignored and the FBI spokesperson saying "no proof linking bin Laden to 9/11" is not newsworthy. In a real democracy, Richard Gage would be on "60 Minutes" and NYC CAN would make the nightly news.

Great Interview...

Breakfast with Peter Phillips- Propaganda & the US Media

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTxOMWqrCJ4

Really, really, really good

As I always say when I see something this good: it should have its own blog entry....

Cheers.

It does have it's own blog

It does have it's own blog entry. =) It's too bad it didn't make front page when it should have.

http://911blogger.com/node/20327

Project Censored

In my opinion, Project Censored is one of the few remaining organizations supporting and producing investigative journalism. Their analysis of the US's Infotainment Society is spot on. It's amazing to learn what has been happening in our country, let alone the world, while the American people are fretting over the deaths of Anna Nicole Smith and Michael Jackson, or Michael Phelps smoking a bong. The MSM is basically good for two things these days - distractions and profits.

Truth-telling in dangerous times

Bear with me - this is NOT off-topic. I attended the world premiere of a play at the renowned Ashland Oregon Shakespearean Theaters this past weekend and was stunned by the story line. The playbill describes the play as "Truth-telling in Dangerous Times," and goes on to say:

http://www.osfashland.org/browse/production.aspx?prod=143

"What if the government commissioned you to write the definitive history (make that a self-serving lie) of a national crisis? What story would you tell? Welcome to London, 1605, and the world of King James, the Gunpowder Plot, and the Tower dungeons, as William Shakespeare and his theatre company struggle to create a play to please the king and not lose their hearts, souls, or heads in the process. In a world premiere, Bill Rauch directs Bill Cain’s high-stakes political thriller with ties to both Macbeth and Henry VIII. A must-see for Shakespeare lovers."

The discovery of the Gunpowder Plot (remember, remember the 5th of November) by the King's enforcers and the drawing and quartering of the "plotters" is what is "celebrated" on Guy Fawkes Day in the UK - a false flag operation of the King's "Chief of Staff," Robert Cecil. "Shagspeare" says he can't write a play that makes no sense and asks the King how it would have been possible for Catholic academics to have done the hard labor of digging a long tunnel under parliament? What did they do with the dirt? How did they obtain 38 barrels of gunpowder when Cecil knows where every seed is in the kingdom? How could confessions obtained by torture be relied upon?[The King responds: "We don't torture.]. Later the King presents Shagspeare with the "definitive report" answering all his questions. Can Shagspeare write the King's propaganda or must he write the truth?

I have seen a lot of plays in my life. This is number ONE. Unbelievably socially important!

Hmmm

Cool.