1999 Top Stories Chosen by Project Censored

Project Censored students and staff screened several thousand stories from 1999, and selected some 500 to be evaluated by faculty and community experts. The top ranked 200 stories were then researched for national mainstream coverage by the Media Censorship class in the Fall. A final collective vote of all students, staff and faculty occurred in early November, and finally, the top 25 stories were ranked by our national judges.

Major international energy corporations such as Mobil, Exxon, Enron, and UNOCAL have engaged in major business ventures in countries known as major human rights violators. Major U.S. governmental grants, as well as corporate capitol investment, have funded the suppression of media, political opposition, and personal rights in Turkmenistan, India and Burma.

The myth of "constructive engagement" has failed to improve human rights, and yet has been endorsed both by international corporations and the U.S. government. Since the release of this information, BP Amoco and Statoil have taken positive steps toward addressing human rights issues. Programs are being developed in the U.S. and abroad to deal with the conduct of energy companies globally.

Research into Third World tropical diseases is not being extensively considered or produced. A recent and effective medicine for African sleeping sickness was pulled from production, while older remedies are no longer available because they are not needed in the U.S.. AIDS continues to receive the most attention in the Third World, mainly because the disease also remains a threat to the First World.

Since the release of this story, Doctors Without Borders won the Nobel Prize and announced an international campaign to increase access to key drugs.

Conflicts of interest affect ACS's approach to cancer prevention. With a philosophy that emphasizes faulty lifestyles rather than environmental hazards, the ACS has refused to provide scientific testimony needed for the regulation of occupational and environmental carcinogens. The Board of Trustees includes corporate executives from pharmaceutical industries with a vested interest in the manufacture of both environmental carcinogens and anti-cancer drugs.

According to records obtained by Mother Jones, through a Freedom of Information request, OSHA cited Lion Apparel 32 times for safety and health violations in the past 12 years. Employees in a Kentucky plant are subjected to formaldehyde fumes that cause shortness of breath, headaches, and skin rashes. Efforts to unionize workers have failed because, union leaders claim, the company managed to evade a federal law prohibiting the threat of plant closures. The military continues to refuse to sign the garment industry's anti-sweatshop code of conduct.

Despite the coverage provided by this article, the author estimates that there are still 10,000 American women sewing government uniforms, often in unsanitary, unsafe conditions.

In fact, Turkey has forcibly evacuated, leveled and burned more than 3,000 Kurdish villages in the past decade. Most of the atrocities, which have cost over 40,000 lives, took place during Clinton's first term in office.

As an ally of the U.S. through NATO, Turkey receives U.S. weapons, from dozens of companies, including Hughes, Boeing, Raytheon, and General Dynamics. Despite a horrifying report of violent abuse by Amnesty International, the State Department passed arms deals with Turkey. The war in Turkey represents the greatest use of U.S. weapons in combat anywhere in the world today.

Proposed pipeline routes will divert oil and gas from the oil-rich Caspian sea to either Mediterranean or east European terminals for export to the Western nations, thus avoiding competing interests of either Russia or Iran.

Successful reestablishment of NATO's military presence in the Balkans has made real the goal of a leaked 1992 document of a Pentagon plan to preserve NATO as the primary instrument for Western security interests as well as the channel for U.S. influence and participation in European affairs.

Pollsters reveal that most Americans rely on TV for national and international news. Unfortunately, major network coverage of foreign news is currently 7-12 percent, and dropping -- a sharp contrast to the at least 40 percent during heyday of Cronkite, Chancellor, and Reynolds.

Coverage in print media is also down in large metro-area news markets. An example is the drop in coverage by the Indianapolis Stars from 5,100 column inches within a 30-day period in November 1977 to 1,170 column inches in 1997 -- a 23 percent drop over those two decades.

Despite a critical examination by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, and the continued campaign of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, major market editors seem to continue to focus on the production of a media diet of crime news, celebrity gossip and soft features in an effort to gain more market share and an increase in profit margins.

This sudden shift of viewpoint coincides with the complete absence of any foreign government competition, and with the increase in the ability of the U.S. to effectively use satellite surveillance in military campaigns. The proposed system is designed to extend control of space far beyond the outer boundaries of the Earth's atmosphere.

To prevent deployment of any adversarial country's satellites, the Pentagon is well along in its research and development of an anti-satellite weapons program. The reemergence of a "Star Wars" weapon system is echoed in the words of General Joseph Ashly, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Space Command: "It's politically sensitive but it's going to happen...we are going to fight from space and we are going to fight into space."

Concerned with the possibility of nuclear contamination of the atmosphere from satellite breakup, the European Space Agency has urged the U.S. to utilize solar power to fuel space-military command modules.

Promted by an increase in the public awareness, President Clinton signed an executive order in 1993 to open an investigation into the impact of the petrochemical industry's practices in these communities of color.

Despite the rhetoric, little has changed among the targeted communities. On the contrary, the State of Louisiana has run full page promotional ads in the Wall Street Journal promising significant incentives for large corporate industries to relocate in the State and touting the State's passage of tort reform legislation that limits the liability of companies who lose negligence suits and restricts the ability of citizens to file claims against "these protected companies."

Unreported in the mainstream media was the fact that, when Serbia rejected the treaty, they also passed a resolution declaring their willingness to negotiate Kosovo's self management. For months, the Serbian government offered to negotiate. High level government teams made many trips to Pristina to hold talks with Ibrahim Rugova and other non-violent ethnic Albanians. The Albanians refused to negotiate, for fear of going against the rising rebel movement, the Kosovo Libertarian Army (KLA), which was hostile to any compromise and ready to assassinate "traitors" who dealt with Serbs.

The day before the "massacre," Serb police had a firefight with KLA rebels that was covered by an AP film crew. At the end of day, the village was deserted. William Walker arrived at noon with additional journalists, and expressed his outrage at a "genocidal massacre" to the world press. Walker's story remains shrouded with doubt. "What is disturbing," remarks war correspondent Renaud Girard, "is that the pictures filmed by the AP journalists radically contradict Walker's accusations."

Belarussian and Finnish forensic experts were later unable to verify that a massacre had actually occurred at Racak.

On the list of potential sub-contractors is Halter Marine in Gulfport Mississippi, a company to which U.S. Senator Trent Lott has close links. Yevgeny Adamov, the head of MinAtom, estimates that the operation could produce $150 billion in revenue, making it the most lucrative operation in Russia. MinAtom is also alleged to have links to corrupt government officials and the Russian Mob.

Nowhere is there an out-cry like the one developed by media worldwide for Ethiopia. The German Red Cross estimates two million deaths in 1997 due to starvation, the South Korean Buddhists Sharing Movement reported an estimated three million deaths, and the New York Council of Foreign Affairs reported an estimate of one million North Korean deaths due to famine.

In 1995, headlines, visuals, highlighted quotes, and story-line emphasis demonstrated unavoidable conflict of interest between Whites and Blacks. The media portrayed African Americans purportedly gaining at the direct expense of Whites. The continued use of the buzzword "preferences" in conjunction with affirmative action intensified the emotional context of the issue. The news reinforced racial antagonism, while perpetuating the idea that the White majority are fed up with affirmative action. This false perception may have discouraged White politicians who might otherwise have defended the policy. Since the media has made affirmative action an issue concerning only Blacks and Whites, Latinos and Asians have been left in peripheral positions, and women and Native Americans barely register on the radar screen.

One of the biggest concerns aroused by the authors of the OED report is the Bank's inability to restore the incomes of those resetteled. The report recommends that the Bank move away from its policy of offering replacement land for lands lost to a project. "In reality, resettlers lose the best land in the area, river valley land, and it's replaced with the most awful land around, because that is what is left."

In 1994 two state assembly members "courting-tough-on-crime votes revamped section 707 of the penal code, making it easier to try teens accused of serious offenses in the adult system." Paul S.D. Berg, Ph.D., a forensic pathologist who has testified in three or four dozen fitness hearings states, "The only cases that end up in these hearings are serious cases, so the criterion is met by definition."

This disease has already infected between 500,000 and 1 million people in the U.S. alone and approximately 55 Americans are newly diagnosed each day. At least half of these victims will have an inflamed intestine surgically removed.

Both medical and veterinary researchers agree that there is cause for concern and great need for further investigations, yet neither the government nor the dairy industry are willing to touch the issue. Forty-five percent of dairy producers are either unaware of the disease or know very little about it despite the fact that the dairy industry is losing 1.5 billion dollars a year in lethally infected animals.

In the early 1980s, the World Bank and IMF provided loans to the former Yugoslavia to supposedly "fix" the economic hardship of the region. The loans from these two organizations included mandated macroeconomics restructuring that rather than helping, in fact, destroyed the industrial sector and dismantled the welfare state.

In 1990, the IMF and the World Bank delivered a new "financial aid package" that required new extensive expenditure cuts by the federal government. The IMF and World Bank involvement led to the impoverishment of the population, which in turn led to hatred, confusion, and divisiveness.

The See Change Campaign was launched to challenge the Vatican's power. Frances Kissling, president of Catholics for a Free Choice asks, "Why should an entity that is in essence 100 square acres of office space and tourist attractions in the middle of Rome, with a citizenry that excludes women and children, have a place at the table where governments set policies? If the Vatican is a state, then EuroDisney deserves a place on the Security Council."

This spring, the Churches opposition prevented UN peacekeepers from distributing RU 486 to rape victims in Kosovo.

Undercover support of Kosovo's rebel army was established as a joint endeavor between the CIA and Germany's Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND).

Since the mid-1990s there has been a small handful of Pentagon contractors, or private military companies providing support to the KLA. One of these contractors is the Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI). The MPRI employs more than 400 personnel and can access the resumes of thousands of former U.S. military specialists.

There has also been a blurring of law enforcement and military activities of companies like Dyncorp and Science Application International Corporation (SAIC). One of Dyncorp's UN police monitors was wounded by pro-Indonesian East Timorese militiamen in the post-referendum violence that swept the territory. Others, providing police services in NATO-occupied Kosovo, were attacked by both Serb and Albanian militia groups.

One campaign launched at the conference was the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA), which will encourage tracking, protesting, and publicizing the sales and shipments of weapons. Referring to the fact that the U.S. sold $119 billion in arms, (some 45 percent of the world's total) from 1989 to 1996, Pierre Sane of Amnesty International stated at the conference that the U.S. is "becoming the arsenal of the world."

The Hague Global Agenda calls for recognition and enforcement of World Court rulings that over one hundred and fifty countries have endorsed. The United States has been unwilling to submit to the international jurisdiction of the World Court.

A long-term project put in motion at the conference is the Global Action to Prevent War. Its purpose is to establish a coalition of organizations that will build a permanent body of NGOs, individuals and eventually governments to support world peace.

PRP is a two step process consisting of an initial screening and post-approval monitoring. Screening includes a cursory medical evaluation, review of the candidate's personnel file, and a background check of professional, educational, and personal histories. However, no routine psychological testing is done, and an expelled PRP Marine claimed that heavy drinking and depression are overlooked. In certain cases, individuals still had their PRP clearance while in prison for a felony conviction.

In several cases, PRP-certified people have gone on to commit murder or suicide, assault, rape, and other serious crimes, exposing unstable mental conditions in their past and present.

Two Air Force bases alone used more than l,500 rabbits each year at a cost of more than $l0,000, and according to a l997 Department of Defense (DOD) report, the Air Force kills more rabbits in survival skills courses than does the DOD in all its intramural research facilities combined.