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Project Censored top censored news stories of 2016
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The presentation of the Top 25 stories of 2015-2016 extends the tradition originated by Professor Carl Jensen and his Sonoma State University students in 1976, while reflecting how the expansion of the Project to include affiliate faculty and students from campuses across North America has made the Project even more diverse and robust. During this year’s cycle, Project Censored reviewed 235 Validated Independent News stories (VINs) representing the collective efforts of 221 college students and 33 professors from 18 college and university campuses that participate in our affiliate program.
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October 4, 2016
How do we at Project Censored identify and evaluate independent news stories, and how do we know that the Top 25 stories that we bring forward each year are not only relevant and significant, but also trustworthy? The answer is that each candidate news story undergoes rigorous review, which takes place in multiple stages during each annual cycle. Although adapted to take advantage of both the Project’s expanding affiliates program and current technologies, the vetting process is quite similar to the one Project Censored founder Carl Jensen established forty years ago.
Candidate stories are initially identified by Project Censored professors and students, or are nominated by members of the general public, who bring them to the Project’s attention through our website. (Follow this link for information on how to nominate a story.) Together, faculty and students vet each candidate story in terms of its importance, timeliness, quality of sources, and corporate news coverage. If it fails on any one of these criteria, the story is not included.
Once Project Censored receives the candidate story, we undertake a second round of judgment, using the same criteria and updating the review to include any subsequent, competing corporate coverage. Stories that pass this round of review get posted on our website as Validated Independent News stories (VINs).
In early spring, we present all VINs in the current cycle to the faculty and students at all of our affiliate campuses, and to our national and international panel of judges, who cast votes to winnow the candidate stories from several hundred to twenty-five.
Once the Top 25 list has been determined, Project Censored student interns begin another intensive review of each story using LexisNexis and ProQuest databases. Additional faculty and students contribute to this final stage of review.
The Top 25 finalists are then sent to our panel of judges, who vote to rank them in numerical order. At the same time, these experts—including media studies professors, professional journalists, and a former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, among others—offer their insights on the stories’ strengths and weaknesses.
Thus, by the time a story appears in the pages of Censored, it has undergone at least five distinct rounds of review and evaluation.
Although the stories that Project Censored brings forward may be socially and politically controversial—and sometimes even psychologically challenging—we are confident that each is the result of serious journalistic effort, and therefore deserves greater public attention.
How do we at Project Censored identify and evaluate independent news stories, and how do we know that the Top 25 stories that we bring forward each year are not only relevant and significant, but also trustworthy? The answer is that each candidate news story undergoes rigorous review, which takes place in multiple stages during each annual cycle. Although adapted to take advantage of both the Project’s expanding affiliates program and current technologies, the vetting process is quite similar to the one Project Censored founder Carl Jensen established forty years ago.
Candidate stories are initially identified by Project Censored professors and students, or are nominated by members of the general public, who bring them to the Project’s attention through our website. (Follow this link for information on how to nominate a story.) Together, faculty and students vet each candidate story in terms of its importance, timeliness, quality of sources, and corporate news coverage. If it fails on any one of these criteria, the story is not included.
Once Project Censored receives the candidate story, we undertake a second round of judgment, using the same criteria and updating the review to include any subsequent, competing corporate coverage. Stories that pass this round of review get posted on our website as Validated Independent News stories (VINs).
In early spring, we present all VINs in the current cycle to the faculty and students at all of our affiliate campuses, and to our national and international panel of judges, who cast votes to winnow the candidate stories from several hundred to twenty-five.
Once the Top 25 list has been determined, Project Censored student interns begin another intensive review of each story using LexisNexis and ProQuest databases. Additional faculty and students contribute to this final stage of review.
The Top 25 finalists are then sent to our panel of judges, who vote to rank them in numerical order. At the same time, these experts—including media studies professors, professional journalists, and a former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, among others—offer their insights on the stories’ strengths and weaknesses.
Thus, by the time a story appears in the pages of Censored, it has undergone at least five distinct rounds of review and evaluation.
Although the stories that Project Censored brings forward may be socially and politically controversial—and sometimes even psychologically challenging—we are confident that each is the result of serious journalistic effort, and therefore deserves greater public attention.
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11. CIA Warned Bush Administration of Terrorist Attack Prior to 9/11
October 4, 2016
Based on new interviews with Cofer Black, the former director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, and George Tenet, the former director of the CIA, Chris Whipple reported in Politico that the George W. Bush administration ignored CIA warnings in the months before 9/11. Noting that neither Black nor Tenet has spoken about the warnings “in such detail until now—or have been so emphatic about how specific and pressing their warnings were,” Whipple wrote that, starting in spring 2001, the CIA “repeatedly and urgently” warned the White House that an attack was imminent. (Whipple distinguished Tenet’s detailed interview remarks from the “general terms” in which Tenet had described these events in his 2007 memoir, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA.)
In Spring 2001, Tenet and Black proposed to Bush administration officials a plan aimed at ending the threat of al-Qaeda. Known as the “Blue Sky paper,” the plan called for covert CIA and military operations against al-Qaeda, “getting into the Afghan sanctuary, launching a paramilitary operation, creating a bridge with Uzbekistan.” Tenet told Whipple that the White House responded, “We’re not quite ready to consider this. We don’t want to start the clock ticking.” Whipple interpreted Tenet’s account to imply that, in Whipple’s words, the White House “did not want a paper trail, to show that they’d been warned.” According to Black, Bush’s staff was “mentally stuck” in an outdated conception of terrorism. “They were used to terrorists being Euro-lefties,” Black told Whipple, making it “very difficult” to communicate the urgency of the CIA’s warnings regarding al-Qaeda.
Black recounted for Whipple how, on the morning of July 10, 2001, Richard Blee, who led the CIA’s al-Qaeda unit, told Black, “Chief, this is it. Roof’s fallen in.” According to Black the information was “absolutely compelling,” “multiple-sourced,” and “the last straw.” Black and Blee briefed Tenet, who then called Bush’s National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice. According to Tenet he told Rice, “I have to come see you.”
Whipple reported that Tenet “vividly recalls” the meeting with Rice and her team. (At the time President Bush was on a trip in Boston.) Tenet told Whipple that Blee began by reporting, “There will be significant terrorist attacks against the United States in the coming weeks or months. The attacks will be spectacular. They may be multiple.” According to Tenet, Rice asked what should be done, and Black, slamming his fist on the table, told her, “We need to go on wartime footing now!”
In her 2011 book, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington, Rice wrote that her recollection of the meeting was “not very crisp because we were discussing the threat everyday … I thought we were doing what needed to be done.” Whipple wrote that, in response to an inquiry about her response to the claims by Black and Tenet, Rice’s chief of staff told Whipple that she stands by the account in her memoir. Tenet told Whipple he testified about the July 10 meeting with Rice and her team before the 9/11 Commission, but this was not included in the Commission’s final report. Black told Whipple that the White House’s inaction “remains incomprehensible.”
At the end of July, Tenet told Whipple, he and his deputies gathered in his conference room at CIA headquarters. According to Tenet, Blee told them, “They’re coming here.” Tenet described the ensuing silence as “deafening.” “You could feel the oxygen come out of the room.”
Whipple conducted interviews with George Tenet and Cofer Black for a documentary, The Spymasters, about Tenet and the eleven other living former CIA directors. Showtime broadcast the program in November 2015.
http://projectcensored.org/11-cia-warned-bush-administration-terrorist-attack-prior-911/
October 4, 2016
Based on new interviews with Cofer Black, the former director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, and George Tenet, the former director of the CIA, Chris Whipple reported in Politico that the George W. Bush administration ignored CIA warnings in the months before 9/11. Noting that neither Black nor Tenet has spoken about the warnings “in such detail until now—or have been so emphatic about how specific and pressing their warnings were,” Whipple wrote that, starting in spring 2001, the CIA “repeatedly and urgently” warned the White House that an attack was imminent. (Whipple distinguished Tenet’s detailed interview remarks from the “general terms” in which Tenet had described these events in his 2007 memoir, At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA.)
In Spring 2001, Tenet and Black proposed to Bush administration officials a plan aimed at ending the threat of al-Qaeda. Known as the “Blue Sky paper,” the plan called for covert CIA and military operations against al-Qaeda, “getting into the Afghan sanctuary, launching a paramilitary operation, creating a bridge with Uzbekistan.” Tenet told Whipple that the White House responded, “We’re not quite ready to consider this. We don’t want to start the clock ticking.” Whipple interpreted Tenet’s account to imply that, in Whipple’s words, the White House “did not want a paper trail, to show that they’d been warned.” According to Black, Bush’s staff was “mentally stuck” in an outdated conception of terrorism. “They were used to terrorists being Euro-lefties,” Black told Whipple, making it “very difficult” to communicate the urgency of the CIA’s warnings regarding al-Qaeda.
Black recounted for Whipple how, on the morning of July 10, 2001, Richard Blee, who led the CIA’s al-Qaeda unit, told Black, “Chief, this is it. Roof’s fallen in.” According to Black the information was “absolutely compelling,” “multiple-sourced,” and “the last straw.” Black and Blee briefed Tenet, who then called Bush’s National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice. According to Tenet he told Rice, “I have to come see you.”
Whipple reported that Tenet “vividly recalls” the meeting with Rice and her team. (At the time President Bush was on a trip in Boston.) Tenet told Whipple that Blee began by reporting, “There will be significant terrorist attacks against the United States in the coming weeks or months. The attacks will be spectacular. They may be multiple.” According to Tenet, Rice asked what should be done, and Black, slamming his fist on the table, told her, “We need to go on wartime footing now!”
In her 2011 book, No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington, Rice wrote that her recollection of the meeting was “not very crisp because we were discussing the threat everyday … I thought we were doing what needed to be done.” Whipple wrote that, in response to an inquiry about her response to the claims by Black and Tenet, Rice’s chief of staff told Whipple that she stands by the account in her memoir. Tenet told Whipple he testified about the July 10 meeting with Rice and her team before the 9/11 Commission, but this was not included in the Commission’s final report. Black told Whipple that the White House’s inaction “remains incomprehensible.”
At the end of July, Tenet told Whipple, he and his deputies gathered in his conference room at CIA headquarters. According to Tenet, Blee told them, “They’re coming here.” Tenet described the ensuing silence as “deafening.” “You could feel the oxygen come out of the room.”
Whipple conducted interviews with George Tenet and Cofer Black for a documentary, The Spymasters, about Tenet and the eleven other living former CIA directors. Showtime broadcast the program in November 2015.
http://projectcensored.org/11-cia-warned-bush-administration-terrorist-attack-prior-911/
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10. CISA: The Internet Surveillance Act No One is Discussing
October 4, 2016
On December 18, 2015, President Obama signed the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) into law as part of a 2,000 page omnibus spending bill. As drafted, CISA was intended to “improve cybersecurity in the United States through enhanced sharing of information about cybersecurity threats, and for other purposes.” The act authorized the creation of a system for corporate informants to provide customers’ data to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which, in turn, would share this information with other federal agencies, including the Departments of Commerce, Defense (which includes the NSA), Energy, Justice (which includes the FBI), the Treasury (which oversees the IRS), and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
As Sam Thielman of the Guardian reported, civil liberties experts had been “dismayed” when Congress used the omnibus spending bill to advance some of the legislation’s “most invasive” components. Anthony Romero of the American Civil Liberties Union criticized Congress for using the spending bill “to pursue their extremist agendas.” “Sneaking damaging and discriminatory riders into a must-pass bill usurps the democratic process,” he told the Guardian. Lauren Weinstein, who cofounded People For Internet Responsibility, also spoke critically of the legislation: “There is not a culture of security and privacy established in the government yet. You have to have that before you even consider sharing the amounts of data [CISA] would cover.” Evan Greer of Fight for the Future called CISA “a disingenuous attempt to quietly expand the US government’s surveillance programs.”
In July 2015, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had attempted to attach the bill as an amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act, but the Senate blocked this by a vote of 56-40.
As Andy Greenberg reported for Wired,the final Senate version of the bill removed personal information protections that privacy advocates had fought successfully to have included in a previous version. Greenberg reported that CISA had “alarmed the privacy community” by providing a loophole in privacy laws that would enable intelligence and law enforcement officials to engage in surveillance without warrants. The version of CISA approved in the Senate by a vote of 74 to 21 in October 2015, Greenberg reported, “creates the ability for the president to set up ‘portals’ for agencies like the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, so that companies hand information directly to law enforcement and intelligence agencies instead of to the Department of Homeland Security.” Commenting on this aspect of the legislation, Jadzia Butler and Greg Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology wrote, “Information shared for cybersecurity reasons should be used for cybersecurity purposes, but this legislation does not impose this simple requirement.”
Greenberg’s Wired article noted that tech firms—including Apple, Twitter, and Reddit—as well as fifty-five civil liberties groups had opposed the bill, and that, in July 2015, DHS itself warned that the bill would “sweep away privacy protections” while inundating the agency with data of “dubious” value.
In April 2016, Jason R. Edgecombe reported for TechCrunch on the release by DHS and the Department of Justice of additional “Privacy and Civil Liberties Interim Guidelines” to supplement CISA. The interim guidelines aimed to address continued concerns over inadequate privacy safeguards. In particular, the language of CISA required that private entities sharing information with the government only had to protect “information that the entity knows at the time of sharing to be personal information or information that identifies a specific person” (emphasis added). As Edgecombe observed, “This is a low bar: If the entity doing the sharing isn’t aware ‘at the time of sharing’ that a CTI [cyber threat indicator] identifies a specific person, it is not required to de-identify that information.”
The interim guidelines required DHS and other government agencies receiving private information under CISA to review cyber threat indicators for personally identifiable information and to remove it before sharing the data further. As Edgecombe reported, however, the interim guidelines only protect personal information “not directly linked to a cybersecurity threat.” And they do not require destruction of personal information unless it is “known not to be directly related to uses authorized under CISA.” As he reported, this wording created a “potentially vast loophole,” because CISA authorized “a number of law enforcement activities unrelated to cybersecurity.” “The best way to prevent personal information from falling into the hands of the feds,” Edgecombe concluded, “is for non-governmental entities to decline to share it in the first place.” As Censored 2017 went to press, the DHS/DOJ final guidelines had not yet been made public.
Assessing where presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump stand on cybersecurity issues, Violet Blue of Engadget reported that, while most people felt that CISA did not go far enough in protecting citizens’ privacy, “Clinton felt the law didn’t go far enough in facilitating the sharing of data between companies and the government.” Sanders voted against CISA. (“Our civil liberties and right to privacy shouldn’t be the price we pay for security. #CISA”, he tweeted on October 22, 2015.) Though Trump had not taken a specific position on CISA, Blue noted, “Trump is an outspoken supporter of government surveillance.” The NSA, he has said, “should be given as much leeway as possible.”
In November 2015, NBC News asked, “Why aren’t Presidential Candidates Talking about Cybersecurity?” The story noted that Sanders was the only candidate (other than Republican Rand Paul) to oppose CISA, and it included a “quick primer” on CISA that consisted of two sentences. On December 22, 2015, CNBC’s Everett Rosenfeld reported on President Obama having signed the “controversial ‘surveillance’ act,” but this report was derivative of Andy Greenberg’s previous report for Wired.
http://projectcensored.org/10-cisa-internet-surveillance-act-no-one-discussing/
October 4, 2016
On December 18, 2015, President Obama signed the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) into law as part of a 2,000 page omnibus spending bill. As drafted, CISA was intended to “improve cybersecurity in the United States through enhanced sharing of information about cybersecurity threats, and for other purposes.” The act authorized the creation of a system for corporate informants to provide customers’ data to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which, in turn, would share this information with other federal agencies, including the Departments of Commerce, Defense (which includes the NSA), Energy, Justice (which includes the FBI), the Treasury (which oversees the IRS), and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
As Sam Thielman of the Guardian reported, civil liberties experts had been “dismayed” when Congress used the omnibus spending bill to advance some of the legislation’s “most invasive” components. Anthony Romero of the American Civil Liberties Union criticized Congress for using the spending bill “to pursue their extremist agendas.” “Sneaking damaging and discriminatory riders into a must-pass bill usurps the democratic process,” he told the Guardian. Lauren Weinstein, who cofounded People For Internet Responsibility, also spoke critically of the legislation: “There is not a culture of security and privacy established in the government yet. You have to have that before you even consider sharing the amounts of data [CISA] would cover.” Evan Greer of Fight for the Future called CISA “a disingenuous attempt to quietly expand the US government’s surveillance programs.”
In July 2015, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had attempted to attach the bill as an amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act, but the Senate blocked this by a vote of 56-40.
As Andy Greenberg reported for Wired,the final Senate version of the bill removed personal information protections that privacy advocates had fought successfully to have included in a previous version. Greenberg reported that CISA had “alarmed the privacy community” by providing a loophole in privacy laws that would enable intelligence and law enforcement officials to engage in surveillance without warrants. The version of CISA approved in the Senate by a vote of 74 to 21 in October 2015, Greenberg reported, “creates the ability for the president to set up ‘portals’ for agencies like the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, so that companies hand information directly to law enforcement and intelligence agencies instead of to the Department of Homeland Security.” Commenting on this aspect of the legislation, Jadzia Butler and Greg Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology wrote, “Information shared for cybersecurity reasons should be used for cybersecurity purposes, but this legislation does not impose this simple requirement.”
Greenberg’s Wired article noted that tech firms—including Apple, Twitter, and Reddit—as well as fifty-five civil liberties groups had opposed the bill, and that, in July 2015, DHS itself warned that the bill would “sweep away privacy protections” while inundating the agency with data of “dubious” value.
In April 2016, Jason R. Edgecombe reported for TechCrunch on the release by DHS and the Department of Justice of additional “Privacy and Civil Liberties Interim Guidelines” to supplement CISA. The interim guidelines aimed to address continued concerns over inadequate privacy safeguards. In particular, the language of CISA required that private entities sharing information with the government only had to protect “information that the entity knows at the time of sharing to be personal information or information that identifies a specific person” (emphasis added). As Edgecombe observed, “This is a low bar: If the entity doing the sharing isn’t aware ‘at the time of sharing’ that a CTI [cyber threat indicator] identifies a specific person, it is not required to de-identify that information.”
The interim guidelines required DHS and other government agencies receiving private information under CISA to review cyber threat indicators for personally identifiable information and to remove it before sharing the data further. As Edgecombe reported, however, the interim guidelines only protect personal information “not directly linked to a cybersecurity threat.” And they do not require destruction of personal information unless it is “known not to be directly related to uses authorized under CISA.” As he reported, this wording created a “potentially vast loophole,” because CISA authorized “a number of law enforcement activities unrelated to cybersecurity.” “The best way to prevent personal information from falling into the hands of the feds,” Edgecombe concluded, “is for non-governmental entities to decline to share it in the first place.” As Censored 2017 went to press, the DHS/DOJ final guidelines had not yet been made public.
Assessing where presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump stand on cybersecurity issues, Violet Blue of Engadget reported that, while most people felt that CISA did not go far enough in protecting citizens’ privacy, “Clinton felt the law didn’t go far enough in facilitating the sharing of data between companies and the government.” Sanders voted against CISA. (“Our civil liberties and right to privacy shouldn’t be the price we pay for security. #CISA”, he tweeted on October 22, 2015.) Though Trump had not taken a specific position on CISA, Blue noted, “Trump is an outspoken supporter of government surveillance.” The NSA, he has said, “should be given as much leeway as possible.”
In November 2015, NBC News asked, “Why aren’t Presidential Candidates Talking about Cybersecurity?” The story noted that Sanders was the only candidate (other than Republican Rand Paul) to oppose CISA, and it included a “quick primer” on CISA that consisted of two sentences. On December 22, 2015, CNBC’s Everett Rosenfeld reported on President Obama having signed the “controversial ‘surveillance’ act,” but this report was derivative of Andy Greenberg’s previous report for Wired.
http://projectcensored.org/10-cisa-internet-surveillance-act-no-one-discussing/
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8. Syria’s War Spurred by Contest for Gas Delivery to Europe, Not Muslim Sectarianism
October 4, 2016
At least four years into the crisis in Syria, “most people have no idea how this war even got started,” Mnar Muhawesh reported for MintPress News in September 2015.
In 2011–12, after Syrian president Bashar al-Assad refused to cooperate with Turkey’s proposal to create a natural gas pipeline between Qatar and Turkey through Syria, Turkey and its allies became “the major architects of Syria’s ‘civil war.’” The proposed pipeline would have bypassed Russia to reach European markets currently dominated by Russian gas giant Gazprom. As a result, Muhawesh wrote, “The Middle East is being torn to shreds by manipulative plans to gain oil and gas access by pitting people against one another based on religion. The ensuing chaos provides ample cover to install a new regime that’s more amenable to opening up oil pipelines and ensuring favorable routes for the highest bidders.”
In 2012, the US, UK, France, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, along with Turkey, began to organize, arm, and finance rebels to form the Free Syrian Army, consistent with long-standing US plans to destabilize Syria. These nations formed a pact, “The Group of Friends of the Syrian People,” that implemented a sectarian divide and conquer strategy to overthrow President Assad. “It’s important to note the timing,” Muhawesh wrote. “This coalition and meddling in Syria came about immediately on the heels of discussions of an Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline that was to be built between 2014 and 2016 from Iran’s giant South Pars field through Iraq and Syria. With a possible extension to Lebanon, it would eventually reach Europe, the target export market.” As MintPress News reported, access to oil and gas—not sectarian differences—is the underlying cause of the violent conflict and humanitarian disaster in Syria. “The war is being sold to the public as a Sunni-Shiite conflict” by the Friends of Syria because, if the public understood the economic interests at stake, “most people would not support any covert funding and arming of rebels or direct intervention.”
Based on secret US cables revealed by WikiLeaks, Muhawesh reported that “foreign meddling in Syria began several years before the Syrian revolt erupted.” US State Department cables from 2006 documented plans to instigate civil strife that would lead to the overthrow of Assad’s government. The leaks revealed the United States partnering with nations including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt to fuel Sunni-Shiite sectarianism to divide Syria.
Although there is plenty of coverage in US corporate media about the violence in Syria and the refugee crisis that is sweeping Europe and reaching North America, this coverage has failed to address the economic interests, including control of potentially lucrative gas pipelines, that motivate the US and its allies. (US corporate news coverage of the Ukraine crisis was comparable in that it too downplayed geopolitical oil interests as a source of tension among Russia, the US, and their respective allies, as Nafeez Ahmed has reported. See “US Media Hypocrisy in Covering Ukraine Crisis,” Censored story #9 from Censored 2015.) Instead, corporate news coverage has characterized the conflict in Syria as a battle for democracy that has been hijacked by Sunni-Shiite interests. For example, Oren Dorell of USA Today identified “a mind-boggling and dangerous stew of shifting and competing alliances” involved in the Syrian conflict—including groups categorized as progovernment, antigovernment, anti-Islamic State, and “other fighters”—but he did not address the gas interests that, according to Muhawesh’s reporting, ultimately underpin the conflict. Instead, much of what passes for news coverage in the corporate press adheres to a pattern that Muhawesh identified and critiqued as simplistic and “Orientalist,” framing conflict in the Middle East and especially Syria as sectarian in order “to paint the region and its people as barbaric.”
http://projectcensored.org/8-syrias-war-spurred-contest-gas-delivery-europe-not-muslim-sectarianism/
October 4, 2016
At least four years into the crisis in Syria, “most people have no idea how this war even got started,” Mnar Muhawesh reported for MintPress News in September 2015.
In 2011–12, after Syrian president Bashar al-Assad refused to cooperate with Turkey’s proposal to create a natural gas pipeline between Qatar and Turkey through Syria, Turkey and its allies became “the major architects of Syria’s ‘civil war.’” The proposed pipeline would have bypassed Russia to reach European markets currently dominated by Russian gas giant Gazprom. As a result, Muhawesh wrote, “The Middle East is being torn to shreds by manipulative plans to gain oil and gas access by pitting people against one another based on religion. The ensuing chaos provides ample cover to install a new regime that’s more amenable to opening up oil pipelines and ensuring favorable routes for the highest bidders.”
In 2012, the US, UK, France, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, along with Turkey, began to organize, arm, and finance rebels to form the Free Syrian Army, consistent with long-standing US plans to destabilize Syria. These nations formed a pact, “The Group of Friends of the Syrian People,” that implemented a sectarian divide and conquer strategy to overthrow President Assad. “It’s important to note the timing,” Muhawesh wrote. “This coalition and meddling in Syria came about immediately on the heels of discussions of an Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline that was to be built between 2014 and 2016 from Iran’s giant South Pars field through Iraq and Syria. With a possible extension to Lebanon, it would eventually reach Europe, the target export market.” As MintPress News reported, access to oil and gas—not sectarian differences—is the underlying cause of the violent conflict and humanitarian disaster in Syria. “The war is being sold to the public as a Sunni-Shiite conflict” by the Friends of Syria because, if the public understood the economic interests at stake, “most people would not support any covert funding and arming of rebels or direct intervention.”
Based on secret US cables revealed by WikiLeaks, Muhawesh reported that “foreign meddling in Syria began several years before the Syrian revolt erupted.” US State Department cables from 2006 documented plans to instigate civil strife that would lead to the overthrow of Assad’s government. The leaks revealed the United States partnering with nations including Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt to fuel Sunni-Shiite sectarianism to divide Syria.
Although there is plenty of coverage in US corporate media about the violence in Syria and the refugee crisis that is sweeping Europe and reaching North America, this coverage has failed to address the economic interests, including control of potentially lucrative gas pipelines, that motivate the US and its allies. (US corporate news coverage of the Ukraine crisis was comparable in that it too downplayed geopolitical oil interests as a source of tension among Russia, the US, and their respective allies, as Nafeez Ahmed has reported. See “US Media Hypocrisy in Covering Ukraine Crisis,” Censored story #9 from Censored 2015.) Instead, corporate news coverage has characterized the conflict in Syria as a battle for democracy that has been hijacked by Sunni-Shiite interests. For example, Oren Dorell of USA Today identified “a mind-boggling and dangerous stew of shifting and competing alliances” involved in the Syrian conflict—including groups categorized as progovernment, antigovernment, anti-Islamic State, and “other fighters”—but he did not address the gas interests that, according to Muhawesh’s reporting, ultimately underpin the conflict. Instead, much of what passes for news coverage in the corporate press adheres to a pattern that Muhawesh identified and critiqued as simplistic and “Orientalist,” framing conflict in the Middle East and especially Syria as sectarian in order “to paint the region and its people as barbaric.”
http://projectcensored.org/8-syrias-war-spurred-contest-gas-delivery-europe-not-muslim-sectarianism/
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“Project Censored is one of the organizations that we should listen to, to be assured that our newspapers and our broadcasting outlets are practicing thorough and ethical journalism.”
—Walter Cronkite
“A distant early warning system for society’s problems.”
—American Journalism Review
—Walter Cronkite
“A distant early warning system for society’s problems.”
—American Journalism Review
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2. Crisis in Evidence-Based Medicine
October 4, 2016
In April 2015, the Lancet’s editor, Richard Horton, wrote, “Something has gone fundamentally wrong with one of our greatest human creations.” Describing the upshot of a UK symposium held that month on the reproducibility and reliability of biomedical research, Horton summarized the “case against science”: “Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness…. The apparent endemicity of bad research behaviour is alarming.”
Horton is not the first editor of a prominent medical journal to raise these concerns. In 2009, Marcia Angell, a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, made comparable claims in an article for the New York Review of Books: “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.”
Countering the pharmaceutical industry’s undue influence on the medical profession, Angell concluded, would require “a sharp break from an extremely lucrative pattern of behavior.” Horton’s Lancet editorial echoed Angell’s assessment: “Can bad scientific practices be fixed? Part of the problem is that no-one is incentivized to be right. Instead, scientists are incentivised to be productive and innovative.”
No biomedical study better epitomizes the corruption and conflicts of interest noted by insider critics like Angell and Horton than Study 329, a now notorious clinical trial published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in 2001. Study 329 reported that paroxetine—marketed by SmithKline Beecham (now GlaxoSmithKline, or GSK) as Paxil in the US and as Seroxat in the UK—was safe and effective for treating depressed children and adolescents. A GSK marketing campaign built on the published study, touting the drug’s “remarkable efficacy and safety,” led to doctors prescribing Paxil to more than two million US children and adolescents by the end of 2002.
However, within a year of the original report, the US Food and Drug Administration declared Study 329 a “failed trial” because further evidence indicated that adolescents prescribed the drug to treat depression fared no better than those on a placebo. In 2003, UK drug regulators instructed doctors not to prescribe Seroxat to adolescents. In 2012, in what the US Department of Justice described as the “largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history,” GSK paid a three billion dollar fine to resolve its liability over fraud allegations and failure to report safety data.
In 2015 the BMJ published a major reanalysis of GSK’s Study 329. Charlie Cooper of the Independent reported that the reanalysis—conducted by an international team of researchers from Australia, Canada, the US, and the UK, and based on thousands of pages of newly available GSK data—“starkly” contradicted the original report’s claims. Furthermore, Cooper noted, the reassessment of Study 329 marked “a milestone in the medical community’s campaign to open up clinical trial data held by pharmaceutical companies to independent scientific scrutiny.”
As Sarah Boseley reported for the Guardian, the reanalysis of Study 329 found that paroxetine’s beneficial effects were far less, and its harmful effects far greater, than the original study reported. In particular, by examining the full set of clinical trials data, the researchers who conducted the reassessment found that eleven of the 275 children and adolescents on the drug developed suicidal or self-harming behavior. The original study had acknowledged only five of these cases. David Healy, a psychiatry professor and one of the reassessment’s coauthors, observed, “This is a very high rate of kids going on to become suicidal. It doesn’t take expertise to find this. It takes extraordinary expertise to avoid finding it.” Boseley’s report also documented renewed calls for the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry to retract the original GSK study, whose lead author was Martin Keller of Brown University. Peter Doshi, the BMJ’s associate editor, observed, “It is often said that science self-corrects. But for those who have been calling for a retraction of the Keller paper for many years, the system has failed.” Neither the journal’s editors, nor any of the paper’s twenty-two listed authors have intervened to correct the record, and none of the authors have been disciplined, Doshi noted.
Nevertheless, as documented by Charlie Cooper for the Independent and Sarah Boseley of the Guardian, the reanalysis of the complete set of original clinical trials data for Study 329 is the first major success of a new open data initiative known as Restoring Invisible and Abandoned Trials (RIAT), which has been promoted by the BMJ. As Cooper reported, “The BMJ’s final judgment on the infamous ‘Study 329’ represents a symbolic victory for the burgeoning ‘open data’ movement in health.” RIAT is part of a broader movement to force pharmaceutical companies to make all of their data available for independent scientific scrutiny. The AllTrials campaign, which calls for open publication of all clinical trials results, now has the backing of over 600 medical and research organizations, Cooper reported. Boseley’s Guardian article quoted BMJ editor in chief Fiona Godlee, who said that the reanalysis of Study 329 showed “the extent to which drug regulation is failing us.” Godlee called for independent rather than industry funded and managed clinical trials, as well as legislation “to ensure that the results of all clinical trials are made fully available” to third-party scrutiny. Both news stories noted the cooperation of GlaxoSmithKline in making the original data available for reanalysis. GSK posted 77,000 pages of de-identified case reports from the trial on a website—though, it should be noted, the company was obliged to do so under the terms of their settlement.
Richard Horton’s Lancet editorial received no coverage in the US corporate press. The Washington Post featured one story on the reanalysis of the original paroxetine study. The article provided a great deal of information about the misrepresentation of the original study—including, for instance, that the discrepancy between the original report and the BMJ reanalysis was partly due to “the miscoding of a serious suicide attempt as ‘emotional lability,’ a temporary condition that involves uncontrollable episodes of crying.” However, the Washington Post report made only passing mention of the open data movement and did not identify any of the specific initiatives (such as RIAT or AllTrials) by name. Otherwise, the corporate press ignored the reassessment of the paroxetine study.
http://projectcensored.org/2-crisis-evidence-based-medicine/
October 4, 2016
In April 2015, the Lancet’s editor, Richard Horton, wrote, “Something has gone fundamentally wrong with one of our greatest human creations.” Describing the upshot of a UK symposium held that month on the reproducibility and reliability of biomedical research, Horton summarized the “case against science”: “Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness…. The apparent endemicity of bad research behaviour is alarming.”
Horton is not the first editor of a prominent medical journal to raise these concerns. In 2009, Marcia Angell, a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, made comparable claims in an article for the New York Review of Books: “It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.”
Countering the pharmaceutical industry’s undue influence on the medical profession, Angell concluded, would require “a sharp break from an extremely lucrative pattern of behavior.” Horton’s Lancet editorial echoed Angell’s assessment: “Can bad scientific practices be fixed? Part of the problem is that no-one is incentivized to be right. Instead, scientists are incentivised to be productive and innovative.”
No biomedical study better epitomizes the corruption and conflicts of interest noted by insider critics like Angell and Horton than Study 329, a now notorious clinical trial published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in 2001. Study 329 reported that paroxetine—marketed by SmithKline Beecham (now GlaxoSmithKline, or GSK) as Paxil in the US and as Seroxat in the UK—was safe and effective for treating depressed children and adolescents. A GSK marketing campaign built on the published study, touting the drug’s “remarkable efficacy and safety,” led to doctors prescribing Paxil to more than two million US children and adolescents by the end of 2002.
However, within a year of the original report, the US Food and Drug Administration declared Study 329 a “failed trial” because further evidence indicated that adolescents prescribed the drug to treat depression fared no better than those on a placebo. In 2003, UK drug regulators instructed doctors not to prescribe Seroxat to adolescents. In 2012, in what the US Department of Justice described as the “largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history,” GSK paid a three billion dollar fine to resolve its liability over fraud allegations and failure to report safety data.
In 2015 the BMJ published a major reanalysis of GSK’s Study 329. Charlie Cooper of the Independent reported that the reanalysis—conducted by an international team of researchers from Australia, Canada, the US, and the UK, and based on thousands of pages of newly available GSK data—“starkly” contradicted the original report’s claims. Furthermore, Cooper noted, the reassessment of Study 329 marked “a milestone in the medical community’s campaign to open up clinical trial data held by pharmaceutical companies to independent scientific scrutiny.”
As Sarah Boseley reported for the Guardian, the reanalysis of Study 329 found that paroxetine’s beneficial effects were far less, and its harmful effects far greater, than the original study reported. In particular, by examining the full set of clinical trials data, the researchers who conducted the reassessment found that eleven of the 275 children and adolescents on the drug developed suicidal or self-harming behavior. The original study had acknowledged only five of these cases. David Healy, a psychiatry professor and one of the reassessment’s coauthors, observed, “This is a very high rate of kids going on to become suicidal. It doesn’t take expertise to find this. It takes extraordinary expertise to avoid finding it.” Boseley’s report also documented renewed calls for the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry to retract the original GSK study, whose lead author was Martin Keller of Brown University. Peter Doshi, the BMJ’s associate editor, observed, “It is often said that science self-corrects. But for those who have been calling for a retraction of the Keller paper for many years, the system has failed.” Neither the journal’s editors, nor any of the paper’s twenty-two listed authors have intervened to correct the record, and none of the authors have been disciplined, Doshi noted.
Nevertheless, as documented by Charlie Cooper for the Independent and Sarah Boseley of the Guardian, the reanalysis of the complete set of original clinical trials data for Study 329 is the first major success of a new open data initiative known as Restoring Invisible and Abandoned Trials (RIAT), which has been promoted by the BMJ. As Cooper reported, “The BMJ’s final judgment on the infamous ‘Study 329’ represents a symbolic victory for the burgeoning ‘open data’ movement in health.” RIAT is part of a broader movement to force pharmaceutical companies to make all of their data available for independent scientific scrutiny. The AllTrials campaign, which calls for open publication of all clinical trials results, now has the backing of over 600 medical and research organizations, Cooper reported. Boseley’s Guardian article quoted BMJ editor in chief Fiona Godlee, who said that the reanalysis of Study 329 showed “the extent to which drug regulation is failing us.” Godlee called for independent rather than industry funded and managed clinical trials, as well as legislation “to ensure that the results of all clinical trials are made fully available” to third-party scrutiny. Both news stories noted the cooperation of GlaxoSmithKline in making the original data available for reanalysis. GSK posted 77,000 pages of de-identified case reports from the trial on a website—though, it should be noted, the company was obliged to do so under the terms of their settlement.
Richard Horton’s Lancet editorial received no coverage in the US corporate press. The Washington Post featured one story on the reanalysis of the original paroxetine study. The article provided a great deal of information about the misrepresentation of the original study—including, for instance, that the discrepancy between the original report and the BMJ reanalysis was partly due to “the miscoding of a serious suicide attempt as ‘emotional lability,’ a temporary condition that involves uncontrollable episodes of crying.” However, the Washington Post report made only passing mention of the open data movement and did not identify any of the specific initiatives (such as RIAT or AllTrials) by name. Otherwise, the corporate press ignored the reassessment of the paroxetine study.
http://projectcensored.org/2-crisis-evidence-based-medicine/
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Hey, this article has "based" in the title, that's one of the slang words that Trump fans use.
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I posted Horton's NEJM editorial in OT months ago.
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Great! So you see that there is some legitimacy to Project Censored. Did you read any of the other articles? Thoughts?
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I read the articles. Interesting site. None of it is exactly wrong, but some things are definitely left out.
W was warned about Al Qaeda. And probably a thousand other things. Distinguishing the one terrorist attack that did happen from the noise seemed to have been what went on. And maybe some hubris that he wanted no part of war with the Middle East and maybe that would get them to leave us alone.
W was warned about Al Qaeda. And probably a thousand other things. Distinguishing the one terrorist attack that did happen from the noise seemed to have been what went on. And maybe some hubris that he wanted no part of war with the Middle East and maybe that would get them to leave us alone.