Fake News vs Junk Food News

Project Censored the Movie: Ending the Reign of Junk Food News

Directed by Chris Oscar and Doug Hecker (2013)

Film Review

This documentary explores the history of Project Censored, as well as its importance in the current political climate. Started in 1976, the project is run by Sonoma State University faculty and students. The atrocious mainstream media coverage of Watergate was the original impetus for the project. Media collusion in failing to cover the break-in to Democratic headquarters allowed Nixon to win a landslide victory despite a scandal that ultimately forced him to resign.

Each year Sonoma State students research censored news stories, and faculty, community advisors, and prominent journalists and commentators vote on the 25 most important stories. The best 25 are published in an annual compendium. In 2000, Project Censored was opened to affiliate university programs across the US.

The film features a number of prominent media critics, including the late Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, Noam Chomsky, Kevin Danaher, Greg Palast, Oliver Stone, John Perkins (author Confessions of an Economic Hitman), and Milos Foreman (directed One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest).

The filmmakers emphasize the disastrous effects of handing the mainstream media over to monopoly corporations. Because the latter use it chiefly to promote their other financial interests (eg defense contractor GE owns NBC), most of what passes for news is either titillating entertainment or pure government or Wall Street propaganda. A Project Censored faculty member cites a recent study revealing only 24 seconds of an average 30-minute news broadcast covers real issues affecting viewers.

Most media critics agree that the de facto repeal of the Bill of Rights (especially the right to habeas corpus) and the most important censored story of the last decade.*

The most important censored story of 2012 was the high suicide rate (higher than combatant deaths) of returning Iraqi veterans. The most important censored story of 2007 was the massive genocide in Congo, where 80% of the coltan used in cellphones, computers, and missiles originates.

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*Bond the virtual appeal of the 1st, 4th, 5th, and 6th amendments, the filmmakers detail additional evidence the US government (as of 2013) was already preparing to declare martial law: by placing US troops on standby to enter US cities, increasing the size and number of large detention centers, and enacting laws enabling asset seizure of antiwar protestors, banning pro bono legal representation, etc.

The film can be viewed free at https://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/project-censored-the-movie/

A British View of American History

The American Future: A History from the Founding Fathers to Barack Obama.

Simon Schama

Random House (2008)

Book Review

Written for a British audience, The American Future attempts to define the quintessential American national character by tracing historical movements that have shaped US society. The five political movements Schama considers most important are 1) the gradual rise of a professional military officer class, 2) the role of evangelical religion in the movement to abolish slavery, 3) the brutal imperialist war against Mexico and the Philippines, 4) the forced displacement of the Cherokee and four other Native American nations under Andrew Jackson, and 5) the development of large scale irrigation in to open the Southwest desert area to agriculture.

For me the primary value of this book is all the historical gems Schama includes that you never learn about in high school. For example:

• The founding of West Point military academy with its Jeffersonian emphasis on philosophy and civil engineering, as opposed to military tactics. Jefferson believed a sound liberal education for US military officers would help ensure the US never went to war except to defend liberty. Congress consistently refused to fund a US military or naval academy until an undeclared war with France broke out in 1796.* Over a period of ten months, the French seized 300 US merchant vessels. When Congress eventually authorized funding for West Point, its primary purpose was to train the Army Corps of Engineers, who built the levees, bridges, damns, dykes and forts that enabled westward expansion. They also drained the swamp in Washington DC and built the Capitol and other important federal buildings.

• President Lyndon Johnson’s role, in 1964, in blocking the credentialing of Mississippi’s Freedom Democratic Party, led by Fannie Lou Hamer, after the Mississippi Democratic Party declared their support for the Republican candidate Barry Goldwater. This blatant white cronyism would provide major impetus to the growing black power movement.

• The profound religious intolerance that persisted in the US even after the 1780 adoption of the Bill of Rights guaranteeing separation of church and state. ** In Massachusetts, Sunday church attendance was compulsory until 1833 – until 1840, blasphemy could be punished by one year in prison, public whipping or the pillory. In Maryland Jews weren’t allowed to vote or hold office until the state passed the Jew Bill in 1820.

• Anti-immigrant feelings, especially against Germans, Irish, Mexicans and Chinese were so intense during the 19th century that there were frequent riots in which immigrants were lynched or had their homes set on fire. An 1855 riot in Louisville would have affected my great grandfather, whose family arrived in the area after immigrating from Germany in 1840.

• President Teddy Roosevelt’s 1902 National Reclamation Act, which led to the construction of 600 dams (including Grand Coulee and Hoover Dam) in thirty years. These would provide irrigation to millions of acres of desert in California and the Southwest. This project would include the diversion of the Colorado River to supply Southern California’s Imperial Valley, which supplies nearly half the fresh fruit and vegetables consumed by Americans, as well as Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix and parts of Mexico.

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*Prior to reading this book, I had no idea the US and France had been at war (with each other).

**The early view of the Bill of Rights was that it only pertained to the federal government and didn’t apply to state law.

Blowing the Whistle on Homeland Security

Another Whistleblower Fights Back

Despite all the public support the Edward Snowden case has generated, the majority of whistleblowers suffer in silence. Below is an mind blowing interview with former US Customs inspector Julia Davis, who was declared a domestic terrorist by the Department of Homeland Security for following established protocol in reporting a potential security threat. In this case, the threat concerned border crossings of 25 individuals with known links to terrorist groups. As Davis indicates, she never dreamed of becoming a whistleblower – she was merely doing her job.

When she inadvertently exposed corrupt practices in the intelligence community, DHS retaliated by charging her with domestic terrorism. Although she was imprisoned twice, though she was ultimately exonerated of all charges.

DHS later justified the domestic terrorism charge on the basis she supposedly made derogatory statements about DHS. Davis tells a different story. She asserts the label of “domestic terrorist” is a ploy used against prospective whistleblowers because the Patriot Act denies terrorists important Constitutional protections.

She has come to the conclusion that the main function of DHS isn’t to protect Americans from terrorism but to harass dissidents and whistleblowers.

Davis has helped produce a documentary about her ordeal called Top Priority

Among other projects, she is undertaking an independent investigation of the systematic harassment against her husband and one of her supporters – both have died under mysterious circumstances.

photo credit: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Los Angeles District via photopin cc