Censored 2012 (27 page)

While this has been occurring for decades, many that have been infringed upon in the queer community have come to the forefront to speak out about the Palestinian plight. A sense of universal identification has become visibly apparent as many can connect with this sense of alienation and the urgency of knowing that this subjugation need not continue. Muslims throughout the world are seeing this as a struggle not localized by region, but identifiable based on both cultural and human connections. Not only has this become a struggle for one group of people, but cross-culturally people are able to identify
with this sense that universal representation and a sense of equality is necessary to recognize Palestinian autonomy as a whole.

As we continue to see a growing trend of harassment, Palestinian women continually face harassment by the Israeli soldiers as they are subjected to rape and are tormented by these grueling acts to demonstrate power and authority. The prisoner rights organization “Women for Support of Women Political Prisoners” has published numerous testimonies illustrating the harassment and detention of women in the “Moscobiya,” a detention center in Jerusalem known as the Russian Compound.

Alleged rape and abuse continues to occur as we see a distinctive inequality in treatment toward women as opposed to men, illustrating a whole new range of mistreatment on the part of the Israelis who have demonstrated an attitude of degradation toward objectifying the female form. The plight of Palestinian women is one where there is a necessity for more information on their treatment as well as greater global involvement to promote awareness on the abject treatment of women in this region.

The suffering that has been dealt to Palestinians is one where people have not only heard their calling and their cries, but have risen to the occasion to say that the people have had enough and greater involvement through transnational, global, and humanitarian means is essentially imperative in order to regain a sense of empowerment.

Sources:
Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement,
www.bdsmovement.net
; C. Hanley, “Students Campaign to Boycott Israeli Aggression,”
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
30, no. 1 (2011): 58; Laura Pulido Lloyd, “In the Long Shadow of the Settler: On Israeli and US Colonialisms,”
American Quarterly
62, no. 4 (2010): 795–812;
New Statesman 1
39 (November 29, 2010): 40; Tim McCaskell, “Queers Against Apartheid,”
Canadian Dimension
44, no. 4 (2010): 14–20; June Edmunds, “Elite’ Young Muslims in Britain: From Transnational to Global Politics,”
Contemporary Islam
4, no. 2 (2010): 215; Mia Bloom, “Death Becomes Her: Women, Occupation, and Terrorist Mobilization,”
PS, Political Science & Politics
43, no. 3 (2010): 445–51.

Update by Salma Habib

In a continuous flow of money, American tax dollars end up paying members of the Taliban and funding a volatile environment in
Afghanistan. Private contractors pay insurgents with the hope of attaining the very safety they are contracted to provide. Concurrently, US soldiers pay at checkpoints run by suspected insurgents in order to get safe passage. In some cases, Afghan companies run by former Taliban members, like President Hamid Karzai’s cousin, are protecting the passage of American soldiers. The funding of the insurgents, along with rumors of American helicopters ferrying Taliban members in Afghanistan, has led to widespread distrust of American forces. In the meantime, the US taxpayer’s dollar continues to fund insurgents to protect American troops so they can fight insurgents.

Original Corporate Source:
Andrew Rice, “Is There Such a Thing as Agro-Imperialism?”
New York Times
, November 16, 2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/magazine/22land-t.html
.

Original Sources:
Aram Roston, “How the US Funds the Taliban,”
Nation
, November 20, 2009,
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091130/roston
; Ahmad Kawoosh, “Is the US Aiding the Taliban?”
Taiwan News
, October 31, 2009,
http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_content.php?id=1095689&lang=eng_news&cate_img=140.jpg&cate_rss=news_Opinion
; Ahmad Kawoosh, “Helicopter Rumor Refuses to Die,” Institute for War and Peace Reporting, November 2, 2009,
http://www.iwpr.net/?p=arr&s=f&o=356886
.

Update:
The Taliban have made a name for themselves as a resistant group fighting to preserve their control over sovereign territories in Afghanistan The group has been known to subject citizens and others to heinous forms of torture and to perpetrate great forms of brutality onto citizens of the region. Namely, their treatment of women as second-class citizens through the practice of their imposed authority has placed the Taliban on the global map as an oppressive entity in the public sphere. A concerted effort has been made on the part of the American government to extricate this authority, yet many of the promises made to eliminate their presence have gone unfulfilled. During the period of 2001 to 2009, the US situation in Afghanistan had been growing progressively worse; the Taliban has made a comeback and challenged both the central Karzai government and tribal leaders throughout the region to gain control.

President Obama himself has argued to eliminate the presence of the Taliban, yet what’s become most challenging is that most military leaders have failed to present clear and detailed strategies of how they
intend on tackling the issue of the Taliban. In the midst of an economy that’s recently shelled out roughly $1.5 trillion to save failing companies, it seems questionable why the Obama administration would want to spend billions on financing a war in Afghanistan that could create not only potential casualties, but lead to continued economic fiascos, including funding the Taliban while fighting them at the same time.

This story was reported in alternative media like
The Nation
, but was also picked up, at least marginally, by the corporate media, specifically ABC News and CNN. That said, the story has not been followed up upon, nor has there been any real effort in corporate media to make this a wider issue in the public, especially in matters surrounding the ongoing war in Afghanistan.

Sources:
Nick Schifrin, “Report: U.S. Bribes to Protect Convoys Are Funding Taliban Insurgents,”
ABC World News with Diane Sawyer
, June 22, 2010,
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/Afghanistan/united-states-military-funding-taliban-afghanistan/story?id=10980527
; Ed Hornick, “U.S. set to pay Taliban members to switch sides,” CNN, October 28, 2009,
http://articles.cnn.com/2009-1028/politics/afghanistan.taliban.pay_1_taliban-fighters-taliban-members-afghanistan?_s=PM:POLITICS
; James P. Pfiffner, “Decision Making in the Obama White House,”
Presidential Studies Quarterly
41, no. 2 (2011): 244–62; Gary C. Jacobson, “Legislative Success and Political Failure: The Public’s Reaction to Barack Obama’s Early Presidency,”
Presidential Studies Quarterly
41, no. 2 (2011): 220–43; Richard M. Pious, “Prerogative Power in the Obama Administration: Continuity and Change in the War on Terrorism,”
Presidential Studies Quarterly
41, no. 2 (2011): 263–90; Stephen J. Wayne, “Presidential Character and Judgment: Obama’s Afghanistan and Health Care Decisions,”
Presidential Studies Quarterly
41, no. 2 (2011): 291–306.

Update by Alexandre Silva

Several contentious issues still plague the US government and their version of the events of September 11, 2001. Those in political power along with corporate media elites would like to see the ongoing grassroots debates surrounding unanswered 9/11 questions and discrepancies disappear, despite the mountains of evidence that suggest that American citizens were told little about the truth of the biggest single-day attack on their homeland in history. Nearly ten years after the events, many unanswered questions still exist: How did
Building 7 fall? What caused the destruction of the twin towers? Who, exactly, was responsible for the attacks and security failures of that day? Where was Osama bin Laden for so long and why are there numerous reports of his death prior to the US declaration of such on May 2, 2011? Are people that question the official story of 9/11 dangerous conspiracy theorists?

Original Sources:
PR News Wire, “1,000 Architects & Engineers Call for New 9/11 Investigation: Cite Evidence of Explosive Demolition at Three World Trade Center Towers,” February 19, 2009,
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/1000-architects—engineers-call-for-new-911-investigation-84768402.html
; Shawn Hamilton, “Over 1,000 Architects and Engineers Have Signed Petition to Reinvestigate 9-11 Destruction,”
Examiner
, February 23, 2010,
http://www.examiner.com/x-36199-Conspiracy-Examiner
; Architects & Engineers for 911 Truth, “1,000+ Architects & Engineers Officially Demand New 9/11 Investigation,”
Infowars.com
, January 18, 2010,
http://www.infowars.com/1000-architects-engineers-officially-demand-new-911-investigation
; “1,000 Architects & Engineers Call for a Real 9/11 Investigation,” Global Research, January 25, 2010,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17507
; Sue Reid, “Has Osama bin Laden Been Dead for Seven Years—And Are the US and Britain Covering It Up to Continue War on Terror?”
Daily Mail
, September 1, 2009,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1212851/Has-Osama-Bin-Laden-dead-seven-years—U-S-Britain-covering-continue-war-terror.html
; Daniel Tencer, “Obama Staffer Wants ‘Cognitive Infiltration’ of 9/11 Conspiracy Groups,”
RawStory
, January 13, 2010,
http://rawstory.com/2010/01/obama-staffer-infiltration-911-groups
.

Update:
Unable to get much recognition from the corporate media regarding the many unresolved 9/11 issues since their launch in 2007, Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth assisted in the “Building What?” ad campaign calling for a new investigation regarding the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 (the forty-seven-story skyscraper that collapsed on 9/11/01, for sometime at freefall speed, into its own footprint, even though it was not hit by a plane). In the ad, which aired in New York City last fall, the families of those who lost loved ones brought attention to the fact that over 1,500 architects and engineers disagree with the official narrative of what occurred to Building 7. Shortly after the launch of the ad campaign, some in the major corporate media took note for the first time.

Geraldo Rivera, who hosts
At Large with Geraldo Rivera
on the Fox News channel, interviewed one of the family members who were present in the ad as well as one of the mechanical engineers calling for a new investigation. In the interview, Rivera was genuinely persuaded
that explosives could have been involved in the destruction of Building 7 and went on to state that “… if explosives were involved, that would mean that the most obnoxious protestors in recent years are right.” Rivera was later a guest on Andrew Napolitano’s show (also on Fox) where the two discussed the issue. Both were subsequently attacked by several groups, including the liberal
Media Matters for America
for giving a platform to “Truthers” while never addressing the claims of their reports.

Although the corporate media has not reported on these issues much at all except for a few local and regional cases, this is a breakthrough in covering 9/11 related issues where the message does not conform to the official accounts given by the US government. Further, it demonstrates a more professional journalistic approach to the topic by asking probing questions rather than attacking, labeling, and distorting unfavorable or unpopular views.

Furthermore, prior to May 2, 2011, the location of Osama bin Laden was the focus of several contradictory reports, placing bin Laden in a number of countries since 2001. Since the previous
Censored
yearbook, bin Laden was reported to be in Yemen, Pakistan, Iran, and Sudan, to name a few. The Pakistani Prime Minister had since denied the reports that bin Laden was in Pakistan and others claimed he was in another country (illustrating there were numerous reports, some contradictory).

On May 2, 2011, President Barack Obama declared Osama bin Laden was officially dead. Yet according to international news agencies and foreign dignitaries, it was perhaps the fourth time he has died since 2001. The first was when he allegedly succumbed to a serious kidney complication. The second occurred in 2007, when former Pakistani premier Benazir Bhutto proclaimed he had been assassinated. The third time was in 2009, according to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari. The most recent, and now most widely known, was when bin Laden was found in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he was shot by US Navy SEALs as they invaded his home. However, the true story of what actually happened during this most recent death account will not likely be known, as the body was disposed of into the ocean, the narrative behind what happened has changed multiple times, and no physical evidence of the death has been verified and provided. Although the corporate media have focused extensively on this most recent death,
little to no coverage has been allowed for the others in context of the recent declarations of bin Laden’s demise. In terms of the corporate media in the US, this was largely celebrated, even though it was likely against international law and if the Navy SEALs did find him in Pakistan, it was reported he was unarmed, which means they could have detained him and tried him for the crimes of 9/11 (which bin Laden claimed he did not plan, nor did the FBI hold him as wanted for that crime due to lack of evidence—all of these were precious Project Censored stories). Regardless, the death of bin Laden has not marked an end to the 9/11 wars which rage on despite this finale, even though the original goal of the War on Terror has now been achieved.