Buscaino uses viral homeless singer as draw to ‘historic’ Little Italy opening p. 2 Operation Ajax: An uneven but engaging primer on tragic U.S. meddling in Iran p. 9 Taxco Bonito ― Thirty-six years and now a new location p. 10
Walter Lippmann in Wonderland:
Project Censored’s Top 5 Stories By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor
E
very year, Project Censored scours the landscape for the most important stories that the mainstream corporate media somehow missed, and every year the task seems to get a bit stranger. Or “curiouser and curiouser” as suggested in the subtitle of this year’s volume of their work, Censored 2020: Through The Looking Glass, which includes their full list of the top 25 censored stories and much, much more about the never-ending struggle to bring vitally important hidden truths to light. In the forward, “Down the Rabbit Hole of ‘Media Literacy’ by Decree,” Sharyl Attkisson, an Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist, highlights the absurdity of “so many well-organized, well-funded efforts to root out so-called ‘fake news,’ which—as we’ll see below—have significantly impacted the kinds of journalists and outlets who have historically produced the stories that make Project Censored’s list in the first place. “The self-appointed curators, often wielding proprietary algorithms, summarily dispense with facts and ideas that they determine to be false — or maybe just dangerous to their agendas,” Attkisson notes. “Thanks to them, we will hardly have to do any of our own thinking. They’ll take care of it for us.” Does that seem hyperbolic? Well, read on, dear reader, read on. In Project Censored’s #2 censored story this year, you’ll discover Facebook partnering with a NATO-sponsored think tank to “monitor for misinformation and foreign interference”— a think tank whose funders include the U.S. military, the United Arab Emirates, weapons contractors and oil companies. Its board includes Henry Kissinger, the world’s most famous war criminal. Who better to tell you who to believe? Or better yet, decide who you’ll never even hear from? “Through The Looking Glass.” Yes, indeed. In the beginning, Project Censored’s founder, Carl Jensen, was partly motivated by the way that the early reporting on the Watergate scandal never crossed over from being a crime story to a political story until after the 1972 election coverage. [See Project Censored, p. 14]
The Unholy Trinity Behind Trump’s Religious War on Family Planning By Leslie Belt, Contributer
Real News, Real People, Really Effective
Bad Faith, Bad Care and Bad Data:
With the exception of “all men are created equal,” few of America’s founding principles have been more manipulated or exploited than religious liberty. Part moral mood ring, part judge, jury and executioner, religious freedom has long served as the national patron saint of slippery slopes. Throughout American history, however, no president has slipped further or faster down from the majestic peak of protection for and from religion codified by the first amendment than Donald J. Trump. Since his “election” in 2016, Trump and the submissive cabal of old, white congressmen in his thrall have been ruthless in their attacks on sexual and reproductive health and rights in service to their conservative agenda. To date, 2019 has been a blessed year for these con men for Christ as they legislated themselves a giant lockstep closer to fulfilling their God-given desire to rip a hole in our nation’s family planning safety net.
October 10 - 23. 2019
Illustration by Anson Stevens-Bollen, Santa Fe Reporter
[See Unholy, p. 8]
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