Censored 2012 (25 page)

Update:
Corporate media in the US have not picked up this story, but alternative media continue to report on the widespread and overwhelming pollution created by the US Department of Defense, including oil spills, pesticide contamination, and leftover waste and
ammunition, causing illnesses such as leukemia, cancer, respiratory problems, and skin diseases which have affected the victims exposed—many of whom have died without redress or compensation.

The Department of Defense (DoD), the largest oil consumer in the world, uses 360,000 barrels of oil each day. Twenty-nine million Americans—that’s about one in every ten—live within ten miles of a toxic military site, that is, a site that has already been labeled under the Superfund Program as being a top priority for toxic-waste cleanup. There are many, many, more sites that haven’t yet been certified. In San Diego alone, the Navy is responsible for creating a hundred toxic sites, and jet fuel has been dumped around the Naval Air Station in Fallon, Nevada, leading to cancer cases as the toxic materials seeped into the ground water. In Denver, tons of asbestos-laced soil left over from the Lowry Air Force Base had to be dug out of the ground before a new housing development could be built. The Air Force refused to pay the $15 million bill for the removal, claiming the risks from asbestos weren’t high enough to warrant cleanup.

Agent Orange, rocket fuel, lead, mercury, petroleum, asbestos, and countless other carcinogenic solvents settle into the soil which is used for farming, seep down into the drinking water, and float unseen in the air causing illnesses such as birth defects, cancer, miscarriages, and kidney and thyroid diseases, in many cases, leading to death.

Depleted uranium is only one of a number of aggressive chemicals which may be a cause of “Gulf War Syndrome.” About 20 percent of military personnel were affected by chronic tissue damage and a whole array of problems including muscle pains, respiratory problems, memory loss, impaired vision, and motor problems, just to name a few. Likely causes include solvents, insecticides, smoke and other combustion products as well as large doses of immunizations given all at the same time. There is also a suspicion that they may have been exposed to chemical warfare products such as sarin.

Sources:
“War Pollution Can Last for Generations,” Green Footsteps,
http://www.greenfootsteps.com/war-pollution.html
; Elizabeth Fiend, “Battlefield Earth, The War on Pollution or Pollution from War” Big Tea Party,
http://bigteaparty.com/battlefield-earth-pollution-from-war-by-elizabeth-fiend/
; “Military Pollution,” Clearwater Revival Company,
http://www.toxicspot.com/military/
.

Update by Ryan Shehee

Following in the steps of its predecessor, the Obama administration is expanding mass government surveillance of personal electronic communications. This surveillance, which includes the monitoring of the internet as well as private (nongovernmental) computers, is proceeding with the proposal or passage of new laws granting government agencies increasingly wider latitude in their monitoring activities. At the same time, private companies and even some schools are engaging in surveillance activities that further diminish personal privacy.

Original Corporate Source:
Rob Pegoraro, “Copyright Overreach Goes on World Tour,”
Washington Post
, November 5, 2009, G01.

Original Sources:
Josh Silver, “Deep Packet Inspection: Telecoms Aided Iran Government to Censor Internet, Technology Widely Used in US,”
Democracy Now!
, June 23, 2009,
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/6/23/deep_packet_inspection_telecoms_aided_iran
; David Karvets, “Obama Sides With Bush in Spy Case,”
Wired
, January 22, 2009,
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/01/obama-sides-wit/
; Kim Zetter, “Deep-Packet Inspection in U.S. Scrutinized Following Iran Surveillance,”
Wired
, June 29, 2009,
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/deep-packet-inspection
; Declan McCullagh, “Bill Would Give President Emergency Control of Internet,” CNET News, August 28, 2009,
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10320096-38.html?tag=mncol
; Kevin Bankston, “From EFF’s Secret Files: Anatomy of a Bogus Subpoena,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, November 9, 2009,
http://www.eff.org/wp/anatomy-bogus-subpoena-indymedia
; Gwen Hinze, “Leaked ACTA Internet Provisions: Three Strikes and Global DMCA,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, November 3, 2009,
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/11/leaked-acta-internet-provisions-three-strikes-and-
; Michael Geist, “The ACTA Internet Chapter: Putting the Pieces Together,” Michael Geist Blog, November 3, 2009,
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4510/125
; Tim Jones, “In Warrantless Wiretapping Case, Obama DOJ’s New Arguments Are Worse Than Bush’s,” Electronic Frontier Foundation, April 7, 2009,
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/obama-doj-worse-than-bush
; Steve Aquino, “Should Obama Control the Internet,”
Mother Jones
, April 2, 2009,
http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/04/should_obama_control_internet
; Noah Shachtman, “U.S. Spies Buy Stake in Firm that Monitors Blogs, Twitter,”
Wired
, October 19, 2009,
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/10/exclusive-us-spies-buy-stake-in-twitter-blog-monitoring-firm
; Noah Shachtman, “CIA Invests in Software Firm Monitoring Blogs, Twitter,”
Democracy Now!
, October 22, 2009,
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/22/cia_invests_in_software_frm_monitoring
; Lewis Maltby, “Your Boss Can Secretly Film You in the Bathroom—The Countless Ways You Are Losing Privacy at Work,” AlterNet, March 17, 2010,
http://www.alternet.org/rights/146047/your_boss_can_secretly_film_you_in_the_bathroom_—_the_countless_ways_you_are_losing_privacy_at_work
;
Elliot D. Cohen,
Mass Surveillance and State Control: The Total Information Awareness Project
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

Update:
Despite significant, newsworthy events regarding internet privacy, especially Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) and its consequences, the corporate media has failed to recognize the impact of this story. They are not alone; even independent media ignores the extent in which this topic should be covered.

How dire is this situation? In April 2011, the
Journal of Democracy
published a paper by Evgeny Morozov which examines the implication of controlling the internet. Morozov, a Bernard L. Schwartz Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation and a contributing editor of
Foreign Policy
, argues that if we lose our freedoms on the internet, our freedom of expression will also be forfeit, because we will have lost the technologies that enable such liberation. Furthermore, Morozov speculates, internet censorship may be the least of our worries; imprisonment for the freedom of expression afforded by the First Amendment may not be too far behind.

This issue is not something we have the luxury of reflecting on while we wait for it to manifest. The ramifications of these technologies can be seen now. In February 2011, Mediacom, a broadband provider in the United States, apparently implemented DPI technology that facilitates the interception and redirection of certain internet browser requests to its own targeted advertising. Likewise, Canada has found that nearly every one of its major ISPs has admitted to using DPI to throttle traffic, with a focus on peer-to-peer (P2P) protocols used by music and file sharing programs. Now Canada faces three new bills; one that will require customer information disclosure; another requiring mandated, real-time surveillance technologies; and a third that expands police powers grant access to any acquired data. In the past year, the Middle East and other areas of the world have seen revolutions that have been affected both positively and negatively by what Morozov calls “liberation technologies.” Although proposed as a benefit for concerned parents, schools, and workplaces, technologies that filter liberation can be used by entire countries, censoring and blocking content while unrest unfolds.

Every day new patents are being secured to make DPI a commonplace
reality. To frame this story as one that is interested in “net neutrality” would be shortsighted. The understanding of DPI and the use of biased routing is a topic that should be on the forefront of everyone’s minds because they have a direct influence on our lives and are becoming a significant obstruction in establishing and maintaining a true and free democracy.

Sources:
Evgeny Morozov, “Whither Internet Control?”
Journal of Democracy
22, no. 2 (2011
):
62–74; Karl Bode, “Mediacom Injecting Their Ads Into Other Websites Among Other Annoying New DPI Ad Endeavors,”
dslreports.com
,
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Mediacom-Injecting-Their-Ads-Into-Other-Websites-112918
; Lanham, “How Western Companies Help Middle Eastern Governments Censor The Web,” Radio Free Europe Documents and Publications, March 29, 2011; Michael Geist, “Lawful Access Bills Would Reshape Internet in Canada,” Michael Geist Blog, November 3, 2009,
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5451/135/
; “US Patent Issued to Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation on June 14 for ‘Extended Finite State Automata and Systems and Methods for Recognizing Patterns in a Data Stream Using Extended Finite State Automata’ (Wisconsin Inventors),” US Fed News Service, Washington, DC, June 17, 2011.

Update by Kira McDonough

While the United States is not at war in Pakistan and officially is not supposed to have any active military operations in that country, the US private contracting company Blackwater (Xe) is heavily involved in secret operations including planning targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda operatives, the gathering of intelligence, and helping to direct secret US military drone bombing campaigns. This information is backed by statements made by Blackwater’s founder Erik Prince in a
Vanity Fair
interview.

Original Sources:
Jeremy Scahill, “The Secret US War in Pakistan,”
Nation
, November 23, 2009,
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091207/scahill
; Jeremy Scahill, “Blackwater Wants to Surge Its Armed Force in Afghanistan,” Antiwar, January 20, 2010,
http://original.antiwar.com/scahill/2010/01/19/blackwater-wants-to-surge
; David Edwards and Muriel Kane, “Ex-employees Claim Blackwater Pimped Out Young Iraqi Girls,”
Raw Story
, August 7, 2009.

Update:
After shooting two men at a crowded traffic stop in Pakistan,
in what American officials have described as a botched robbery attempt, American contactor Raymond A. Davis, a retired Special Forces soldier carrying out scouting and other reconnaissance missions as a security officer for a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) task force of case officers and technical surveillance experts, was arrested and detained in the eastern city of Lahore. The event and subsequent arrest exposed what had previously been a secret war in Pakistan run by the CIA and carried out by contractors of the organization Xe (formerly known as Blackwater). US Ambassador Anne Patterson insisted that “Blackwater is not operating in Pakistan” and claimed that Pakistani journalists were “wildly incorrect,” blaming them for compromising the security of US personnel in Pakistan. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also dodged questions on the subject.

In a speech at the University of Michigan, Blackwater head Erik Prince was recorded by
The Nation
, acknowledging that his organization does work in Pakistan. In response to the debate on whether armed individuals working for Blackwater could be classified as ‘unlawful combatants’ ineligible for protection under the Geneva Conventions, Prince said, “You know, people ask me that all the time, ‘Aren’t you concerned that you folks aren’t covered under the Geneva Convention in [operating] in the likes of Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan? And I say, ‘Absolutely not,’ because these people don’t know where Geneva is, let alone that there was a convention there.”

With the assassination of Osama Bin Laden by the US Navy SEALs, information has resurfaced as to Blackwater’s (Xe) presence and role in Pakistan. According to Jeremy Scahill, the Navy SEAL’s operate in Pakistan under the Joint Special Operations Command; the same killing team that Blackwater (Xe) operates under in Pakistan that is known for operating with virtually no legal oversight. This story has received quite a bit of coverage, but corporate media outlets still have yet to make it more of a headline story.

Sources:
Shahid R. Siddiqi, “How Active is Blackwater in Pakistan?”
Foreign Policy Journal
, August 30, 2010,
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/08/30/how-active-is-blackwater-in-pakistan/
; Mark Mazzetti et al., “American Held in Pakistan Shootings Worked with the CIA,”
Ledger
, February 21, 2011,
http://www.theledger.com/article/20110221/NEWS/102215039
; Jeremy Scahill, “Secret Erik Prince Tape Exposed,”
Nation
, May 3, 2010,
http://www.thenation.com/blog/secret-erik-prince-tape-exposed
.