Ten big news stories which govts tried to hide from you

Have you ever read a news story on the internet and wondered why it wasn't being broadcasted on any of the numerous news stations, magazines, newspapers, or journals in your area of the world? A story that has cultural and international impact might go unnoticed, meanwhile Paris Hilton being released from prison is the lead story of the evening. It is no secret that governments have control over what gets broadcasted on television in all areas of the world. Here is a list of 10 news stories that were overlooked by the mainstream media. 10. Ecuador Challenges Legitimacy of Foreign Debt In November of 2008, Ecuador became the first country to undertake an examination of the legitimacy and structure of its foreign debt. In the 1970s Ecuador fell victim to unscrupulous international lending, which encouraged borrowing at low interest rates. From 1970 to 2006 the country's debt grew from $1.174 billion to over $14.250 billion, a twelve fold increase. US banks and Federal Reserve raised the interest rate on their loan from 6% in 1979 to 21% in 1981. An independent debt audit commissioned by the government of Ecuador documented hundreds of allegations of irregularity, illegality, and illegitimacy in contracts of debt to predatory international lenders. The loans, according to the report, violated Ecuador's domestic laws, US Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, and general principles of international law. Over the years, Ecuador has made debt payments that far exceed the principal it borrowed. Sources: Alternet, November 26, 2008 Title: “As Crisis Mounts, Ecuador Declares Foreign Debt Illegitimate and Illegal” Author: Daniel Denvir Utube, Fall 2008 Title: “Invalid Loans to Ecuador: Who Owes Who” Producer: Committee for the Integral Audit of Public Credit 9. Hurricane Katrina Aftermath In 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck the area of New Orleans and the storm surge led to 53 levee breaches in the federally built levee system protecting metro New Orleans and the failure of the 40 Arpent Canal levee flooding 80% of the city. Chaos ensued and over 300,000 residents attempted to evacuate the area. During the disaster the National Guard designated the Algiers Point ferry landing as an official evacuation site, where flood victims were to be loaded onto buses headed for safety in Texas. Algiers Point is a predominantly white area of the city, while the rest of Algiers is predominantly black citizens.In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, looting, violence and other criminal activity became a serious problems. The looters included gangs of armed gunmen, and gunfire was heard all over the city. One report of violence involved police killing six people on the Danziger Bridge. In the Algiers Point area people began to target individuals of the other race. White vigilante groups were formed, which patrolled the streets of New Orleans. They are estimated to have killed a total of 11 African American victims. White individuals were also murdered during the days following the flooding of New Orleans. The local police have never conducted investigations into these crimes. Sources: The Nation, December 17, 2008 Title: “Katrina's Hidden Race War” Author: A.C. Thompson The Nation, December 18, 2008 Title: “Body of Evidence” Author: A.C. Thompson 8. The Death of Mike Connell One of the most mysterious and under reported deaths in recent history is that of Mike Connell. Mike Connell was Karl Rove's chief IT consultant who died in a private plane crash in 2008. At the time of his death Connell was facing a subpoena in connection with 2004 Presidential election fraud in Ohio. Connell was allegedly the central figure in a longstanding plot to electronically flip votes to Republicans in the 2004 U.S. election. In July 2008, Connell was named as a key witness in the case, which was filed against Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth J. Blackwell on August 31, 2006. It charged Blackwell with racially discriminatory practices, including the selective purging of voters from the election rolls and the unequal allocation of voting machines to various districts. Blackwell also faced charges of depriving the plaintiffs of their voting rights, including the right to have their votes successfully cast without intimidation, dilution, cancellation or reversal by voting machine or ballot tampering. The ultimate accusation was that the Bush campaign electronically stole the Ohio 2004 election. Connell was an experienced pilot. His plane had been recently serviced. He had been in the nation's capital on still-unknown business before his single engine plane crashed December 22, 2008 on the way home, just three miles short of the runway in Akron, Ohio. The cause of the crash remains unknown. At the time of his death, the only mainstream news outlet in the U.S. to even mention Connell's death and the controversies surrounding his involvement in electronic voting was a single CBS/AP story. Sources: The Raw Story, September 29, 2008 Title: “Republican IT consultant subpoenaed in case alleging tampering with 2004 election” Authors: Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane The Brad Blog, December 22, 2008 Title: “OH Election Fraud Attorney Reacts to the Death of Mike Connell“ Author: Brad Friedman 7. U.S. Companies Have Overseas Tax Havens A 2008 study done by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that 83 of the top publicly held US companies have operations in tax havens like the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and the Virgin Islands. This means that these companies put billions of dollars in overseas banking organizations in order to avoid U.S. tax. Fourteen of these companies, including AIG, Bank of America, and Citigroup, received money from the government bailout. According to the Department of Justice, Swiss banking giant UBS has enabled wealthy Americans to use tax schemes, some of which are illegal, to cheat the IRS out of billions of dollars. The major international locations for hiding funds include Austria, Luxembourg, the Channel Islands, Singapore, Hong Kong, Andorra, Monaco, and Gibraltar. n the Caribbean, the established havens are the Bahamas, Bermuda, and the Cayman Islands. In December 2008, the bank holding company Goldman Sachs reported its first quarterly loss. On the heels of this announcement, Goldman Sachs issued a statement confirming that its tax rate was dropping from 34.1% to 1%, reportedly due to “changes in the geographic earnings mix.” This means that the company moved almost all of its money shares out of the U.S. in order to gain a better tax rate in a different country. Goldman Sachs, which got $10 billion and debt guarantees from the US government in October 2008, expects to pay only $14 million in taxes worldwide for 2008, compared with $6 billion in 2007. The problem is much larger than Goldman Sachs. The issue is being investigated and thousands of US taxpayers with Swiss bank accounts face the prospect of IRS examination of their bank documents. These individuals could face prosecution and/or civil litigation.Sources: Bloomberg, December 16, 2008 Title: “Goldman Sachs's Tax Rate Drops to 1% or $14 Million” Author: Christine Harper The Huffington Post, February 23, 2009 Title “Gimme Shelter: Tax Evasion and the Obama Administration” Author: Thomas B. Edsall 6. Oil and Gas Companies Move Into the Amazon Rainforest The Amazon Rainforest is the largest, species-rich, biodiverse rainforest on earth. Recently, vast areas of the Amazon Rainforest have been opened for oil and gas exploration, putting some of the planet's most pristine land at risk. Many areas of the Amazon could someday be filled with oilrigs and pipelines. Multi-international oil and gas companies use zoned areas for exploration and development. These zones now cover the Amazon in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and western Brazil. The western Amazon is also home to many indigenous ethnic groups, including some of the world's last uncontacted people living in voluntary isolation. The last true examples of biological and cultural diversity could be disturbed by oil companies. The real concern is when exploration is successful and a zone moves into the development phase, because that's when the roads, drilling, and pipelines come in. Oil and gas blocks now cover more than 700,000 square kilometers in the western Amazon. 5. European Environmental and Consumer Safety Bill In recent years a European model has been proposed that insists upon environmental and consumer safety laws for all produced sellable goods. It requires that thousands of chemicals finally be assessed for their potentially toxic effects on human beings. It would put an end to the American industry's ability to withhold critical data from the public. US deregulation of toxic substances, such as lead in lipsticks, mercury in electronics, and phthalates (endocrine disruptors) in baby toys, may not only pose disastrous consequences to America's health, but also to its economic and political status in the world. Europe has launched stringent new regulations that require companies seeking access to their lucrative markets to eliminate toxic substances and manufacture safer electronics, automobiles, toys and cosmetics. Numerous dangerous chemicals have been identified via the European Union's 2007 Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals law. Hundreds of companies located in the US produce or import hundreds of chemicals designated as dangerous by the European Union. Large amounts of these chemicals are being produced in 37 U.S. states. According to the Environmental Protection Agency only 5% of all chemicals in the US have undergone even minimal testing for their toxicity or environmental impact. It is a true worldwide problem that needs to be addressed and adapted to. Sources: Scientific American, September 30, 2008 Title: “European Chemical Clampdown Reaches Across Atlantic” Author: David Biello Environmental Defense Fund, September 30, 2008 Title: “How Europe's New Chemical Rules Affect US” 4. The Shearon Harris Nuclear Generating Station The Shearon Harris Nuclear Generating Station is one of the largest nuclear power plant's in the United States. It is located in New Hill, North Carolina about 20 miles southwest of Raleigh. The plant contains the largest radioactive waste storage pools in the country. It is not just a nuclear-power-generating station, but also a repository for highly radioactive spent fuel rods from two other nuclear plants. The spent fuel rods are transported by rail and stored in four densely packed pools filled with circulating cold water from Harris Lake to keep the waste from heating. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has marked Shearon Harris as one of the most vulnerable terrorist targets in the nation. However, a threat exists without a terrorist attack. Should the cooling system malfunction, the resulting fire would be virtually unquenchable and could trigger a nuclear meltdown, putting thousands of residents of this rapidly growing section of North Carolina in extreme peril. Labs have conducted studies that estimate that a pool fire could cause 140,000 cancers, contaminate thousands of square miles of land, and cause over $500 billion in off-site property damages. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has estimated that there is a 1:100 chance of pool fire happening under the best of scenarios. In 1999, the plant experienced four emergency shutdowns. A few months later, in April 2000, the plant's safety monitoring system, designed to provide early warning of a serious emergency failed. In the spring of 2003 there were four emergency shutdowns of the plant, including three over a four day period. One of the incidents occurred when the reactor core failed to cool down during a refueling operation, the reactor dome was off of the plant. Source: CounterPunch, August 9, 2008 Title: “Pools of Fire” Author: Jeffrey St. ClairStudent Researchers: Krisden Kidd and Karene Schelert Faculty Evaluator: Heidi LaMoreaux, PhD Sonoma State University 3. U.S. Schools Are Segregated According to a new Civil Rights report published at the University of California, Los Angeles, schools in the U.S. are more segregated today then in the 1950's. 44% of all children in the U.S. education program are non-white. Minority groups are rapidly emerging as the majority in the American public school system. Latinos and blacks, the two largest minority groups, attend schools more segregated today than during the civil rights movement forty years ago, two of every five students attend intensely segregated schools. The Civil Rights Study showed that the most severe segregation in public schools is in the western states, including California, not in the south, as many people believe. Most non-Caucasian schools are segregated by poverty as well as race. They are highly unequal in terms of funding, qualified teachers, and curriculum. Sources:The Civil Rights Project, UCLA, January 2009 Title: “Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge” Author: Gary Orfield Student Researchers: Melissa Robinson and Rena Hawkins Faculty Evaluator: Sangeeta Sinha, PhD Southwest Minnesota State University 2. U.S. Government Greatly Influenced by Finance Industry Information has come to light that suggests that the Unites States Government is being heavily influenced by a small sector of the finance industry. In 2008, at the height of the mortgage crisis the U.S. Government created a bailout program titled the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). It allowed the United States Department of the Treasury to purchase or insure up to $700 billion of "troubled" assets. The money was to be given to the struggling Wall Street and the financial sector. It created much debate and criticism in congress and among the American people. One might question why the U.S. government was being so generous to the financial institutions. It could have something to do with the fact that lawmakers and high-ranking officials of the U.S. Government receive millions of dollars in campaign contributions from these investment-banking firms annually. Some of the top recipients of contributions from companies receiving Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) money are the same members of congress who chair committees charged with regulating the financial sector and overseeing the effectiveness of this unprecedented government program. Sources:Truthout, October 2, 2008 Title: “Lax Oversight? Maybe $64 Million to DC Pols Explains It” Author: Greg GordonCapitol Eye, February 10, 2009 Title: “Congressmen Hear from TARP Recipients Who Funded Their Campaigns” Author: Lindsay Renick Mayer 1. Nuclear Waste is being Dumped in the Waters of Somalia In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Foreign nations seized the opportunity to begin looting the country's food supply and using the country's unguarded waters as a dumping ground for nuclear and other toxic waste. Yes dumping nuclear waste directly into the ocean. According to the High Seas Task Force (HSTF), there were over 800 IUU fishing vessels in Somali waters at one time in 2005, taking advantage of Somalia's inability to police and control its own waters and fishing grounds. Poaching in these waters has become a serious problem. Unidentified vessels poach an estimated $450 million in seafood from Somali waters annually. In so doing, they steal an invaluable protein source from some of the world's poorest people and ruin the livelihoods of legitimate fishermen. Unfortunately, the UN and the region's maritime authorities are ignoring the violations. One of the biggest mainstream media stories of the year in the U.S. was the kidnapping of American captain Richard Phillips by the “Somali Pirates.” Nothing is mentioned of the current poaching and nuclear waste problems in the waters. Sources: Al Jazeera English, October 11, 2008 Title: “Toxic waste behind Somali piracy” Author: Najad AbdullahiHuffington Post, January 4, 2009 Title: “You are being lied to about pirates” Author: Johann Hari