<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:12pt"><div>Given our current level of knowledge about the intricacies of how the climate works, I'd say that trying to manipulate the weather right now would be a text-book example of "a disaster waiting to happen".</div><div><br></div><div>Also, until James Hansen can tell us exactly what set of conditions or events set off the last ice age with a high degree of confidence, I really don't think he should be telling us how confident he is that the next one will not happen. That just seems like common sense to me.<br></div><div><br></div><div>Paul<br></div><div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><div style="font-family: times new roman, new york, times, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><font face="Arial" size="2"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight:bold;">From:</span></b> Ted Moffett
<starbliss@gmail.com><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> Moscow Vision 2020 <vision2020@moscow.com><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sent:</span></b> Saturday, October 1, 2011 12:05 PM<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> [Vision2020] Top Ten 2010 Censored Stories: # 1: More 2010 U.S. Soldier Suicides Than Combat Deaths<br></font><br>
The article below is in the most recent edition of the Pacific<br>Northwest Inlander that is distributed free around Moscow etc.<br><br>I found the # 9 censored story, "The government is manipulating the<br>weather," to be ironically amusing, insofar as the behavior of our<br>entire society, including government policies as they influence this<br>behavior, is at this moment geo-engineering the Earth's climate and<br>weather, increasing the magnitude of flooding, drought, heat waves,<br>cryosphere ice loss, sea level rise, etc. via massive CO2 emissions<br>and other human behavior.<br><br>We have no rational sane choice at this point in time--the genie is<br>out of the bottle--but to deliberately geo-engineer the Earth's<br>climate to lessen catastrophic impacts of anthropogenic global<br>warming, which the article does address mentioning deliberate<br>injection of aerosals to reflect solar energy to counter climate<br>change. Therefore indeed we
need a deliberate government program to<br>maniplate the weather, in one way or another. For example,<br>deliberately planting trees to sequester CO2 is geo-engineering of<br>climate and weather.<br><br>Humanity now has the unavoidable responsibility of a God, to engineer<br>the Earth's climate. I recall NASA climate scientist James Hansen's<br>comment that future major ice ages won't happen, unless humanity goes<br>extinct, from his book "Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About<br>the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity:"<br><br>"The size of continental-scale ice sheets is mind-boggling. Although<br>thinner toward the edges, ice over New York towered several times<br>higher than the Empire State building--thick enough to crush<br>everything in today's New York City to smithereens. But not to<br>worry--even though we sometimes hear geoscientists talk as if ice ages<br>will occur again, it won't happen--unless
humans go extinct. Forces<br>instigating ice ages, as we shall see, are so small and slow that a<br>single chlorofluorocarbon factory would be more than sufficient to<br>overcome any natural tendency toward an ice age. Ice sheets will not<br>descend over North America and Europe as long as we are around to stop<br>them."<br>---------------------------<br>But contrail generated cirrus clouds as secret government military<br>weather control, even if there is substance to this claim, seems a bit<br>overblown for a top ten censored story.<br><br>http://www.inlander.com/spokane/article-17011-downplayed.html<br><br>Project Censored<br>Downplayed<br>Ten stories the mainstream media ignored in the past year, according<br>to Project Censored.<br>Rebecca Bowe<br><br>In an age of blogs, tweets, hacks and piles of beans spilled by<br>WikiLeaks, the notion of media censorship may seem dated.<br><br>But the rundown of stories Project Censored calls attention to
this<br>year serves as a reminder that mainstream media outlets favoring the<br>superficial over the substantive don’t give us all the information we<br>need.<br><br>Since 1976, Project Censored has endeavored to spotlight important<br>news articles that didn’t find their way into mainstream headlines.<br>Originating with a classroom assignment at Sonoma State University,<br>the perennial project has evolved into a book, a radio show, and the<br>Project Censored and Media Freedom International websites, which<br>aggregate underreported independent news stories from around the<br>globe.<br><br>Students and professors engaged in unearthing oft-ignored stories,<br>part of a nationwide network of affiliates working under the direction<br>of history professor Mickey Huff, bring a harsh critique to standard<br>mainstream media fare.<br><br>“Corporate media is the information control wing of the global power<br>structure,” former Project Censored
director Peter Phillips writes in<br>the introduction to Censored 2012: Sourcebook for the Media<br>Revolution. “The corporate media systematically censors the news<br>stories that challenge the propaganda of empire.”<br><br>In Huff’s words, “We try to highlight the things that are highly<br>relevant, that seem to be conspicuously absent.”<br><br>Huff says the selection process for the top censored stories begins<br>with nominations of independent articles that readers feel warrant<br>greater attention than they’ve received. From there, students comb<br>through LexisNexis or other databases to see whether the stories have<br>been adequately covered. If not, they fact-check the stories with<br>professors or other experts in the field.<br><br>Once they’ve been “validated” in this way, they’re posted to Project<br>Censored’s sister site, Media Freedom International. The Top 25<br>Censored Stories list is the result of a ranked-choice
voting process,<br>in which judges and affiliates select from the entire pool of<br>validated news articles posted from April to April.<br>The end product — an annual book featuring a compilation of the<br>censored stories as well as sociological essays on media censorship<br>and scathing critiques of “junk food news” churned out by the likes of<br>Fox News — can be considered a kind of historical almanac, Huff says.<br><br>“Journalism is the rough draft of history,” he notes, “and if you have<br>these mainstream corporate news outlets getting so much of it wrong or<br>missing it, how does that impact historical construction?”<br><br>For the most part, Project Censored’s story list offers a sampling of<br>smart, investigative journalism produced by the independent press.<br>They include deep investigative pieces such as “Diet Hard With A<br>Vengeance,” by David Moberg of In These Times, and a heartrending<br>portrayal by Chris
Hedges of a marine stationed in a mortuary unit in<br>Iraq.<br><br>Yet there are instances when Project Censored seems to wander too far<br>afield. Their claims of “censorship” seem dubious at times, as with<br>the charge that the mainstream media has ignored the real unemployment<br>rate because it hasn’t turned an eye toward the analysis of economist<br>John Williams, who maintains a website called Shadow Government<br>Statistics.<br><br>Huff and Phillips regularly discuss questions surrounding the Sept.<br>11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center on their KPFA radio show,<br>and their emphasis on this particular issue, along with a recent<br>tendency to give weight to fringe theories concerning things like<br>suspicious contrails issuing from airplanes, have caused allies of the<br>organization to defect in the past.<br><br>The organization’s definition of censorship has evolved, too, to the<br>point where the authors cast it as a form of
propaganda that is<br>“intentional by nature ... In essence, this is a conspiracy.”<br><br>Nevertheless, the Project Censored team delivers yet another rundown<br>of surprising, alarming, and thought-provoking stories that are worth<br>noting — more so, perhaps, because they received so little attention<br>to begin with. Without further ado, here are the Top 10.<br><br>1. More U.S. soldiers committed suicide than died in combat in 2010<br><br>Six more, to be exact. That’s the figure reported by Good magazine and<br>spotlighted by Project Censored in an article highlighting the fact<br>that 462 American soldiers were killed in combat in 2010, while 468<br>soldiers, counting enlisted men and women as well as veterans, took<br>their own lives.<br><br>This was the second consecutive year that more soldiers died by their<br>own hands than in combat — in 2009, the 381 suicides of active-duty<br>soldiers recorded by the military also exceeded the
number of deaths<br>in battle. The Good report, which references Congressional Quarterly<br>as a source, was published in January 2011, just weeks after military<br>authorities announced that a psychological screening program seemed to<br>be stemming the suicide rate among active-duty soldiers.<br><br>“This new data, that American soldiers are now more dangerous to<br>themselves than the insurgents, flies right in the face of any<br>suggestion that things are ‘working,’” Good Senior Editor Cord<br>Jefferson wrote.<br><br>Project Censored also spotlighted Chris Hedges’ sobering portrayal of<br>Jess Goodell, a marine who was stationed in the Mortuary Affairs unit<br>in Iraq. Goodell published a memoir titled “Death and After in Iraq,”<br>which is also the name of Hedges’ column.<br><br>2. U.S. military’s “friend” fake-out<br><br>Anyone suspicious of “sock puppets,” those online commenters<br>pretending to be someone they’re
not, would be unnerved by the U.S.<br>military’s “online persona management service,” a little-known program<br>described in the Guardian U.K., Raw Story and Computerworld stories<br>unearthed and highlighted by Project Censored.<br><br>The U.S. Central Command (Centcom) secured a contract with a Los<br>Angeles-based tech company to develop the program, which enables U.S.<br>service workers to use fake online personas on social media sites to<br>influence online chatter. Using up to 10 false identities, they can<br>counter charged political dialogue with pro-military propaganda.<br><br>“These ‘personas’ were to have detailed, fictionalized backgrounds, to<br>make them believable to outside observers, and a sophisticated<br>identity protection service was to back them up, preventing suspicious<br>readers from uncovering the real person behind the account,” according<br>to a Raw Story account.<br><br>A Centcom spokesperson told the Guardian
that the program would only<br>intervene in online conversations in Arabic, Farsi, Urdu or Pashto,<br>and that it wouldn’t initially target Twitter or Facebook. However,<br>critics likened this U.S. endeavor to manipulate social media to<br>China’s attempts to control and restrict free speech on the Internet.<br><br>3. Obama’s hit list<br><br>The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the U.S. military have the<br>authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad, outside war zones, if strong<br>evidence exists that they’re involved in terrorist activity, the<br>Washington Post reported in a front page story in January of 2010.<br><br>Despite this prominent press treatment of targeted assassinations<br>under the Obama administration, Project Censored deems this an<br>underreported news story, because “a moral, ethical, and legal<br>analysis of the assassinations seems to be significantly lacking<br>inside the corporate media.”<br><br>The authors instead
point us to coverage in Salon, the Inter Press<br>Service, Common Dreams and several other sources that sharply question<br>the president’s authority to license extrajudicial executions of<br>individuals. In December of 2010, Human Rights Watch asked for<br>clarification of the legal rationale behind this practice after a<br>judge dismissed a lawsuit challenging the notion.<br><br>Columnist Glenn Greenwald blasts the practice in Salon: “Bush merely<br>imprisoned [Jose Padilla] for years without a trial. If that’s a<br>vicious, tyrannical assault on the Constitution — and it was — what<br>should they be saying about the Nobel Peace Prize winner’s<br>assassination of American citizens without any due process?”<br><br>4. Manmade food crisis<br><br>David Moberg offers an in-depth breakdown of the global food crisis<br>for In These Times in an article highlighted by Project Censored,<br>touching on the environmental context of worsening
droughts and<br>flooding, as well as the economic ramifications of a system in which<br>free-market speculators stand to profit from volatile food prices.<br><br>Beyond crop reductions resulting from irregular weather patterns,<br>Moberg places the blame for rising food prices and increasing<br>malnutrition on flawed economic policies. “Hunger is currently a<br>result of poverty and inequality, not lack of food,” he concludes.<br><br>The food price index rose to its highest level since 1990 in February<br>2011, according to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization<br>of the United Nations. “Since 2010 began, roughly another 44 million<br>people have quietly crossed the threshold into malnutrition, joining<br>925 million already suffering from lack of food,” Moberg writes. “If<br>prices continue to rise, this food crisis will push the ranks of the<br>hungry toward a billion people.”<br><br>5. Prison companies fund anti-immigrant
legislation<br><br>When Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer ran for re-election in 2010, her greatest<br>out-of-state campaign contributions came from high-ranking executives<br>of Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), one of the nation’s<br>largest prison companies. Brewer gained notoriety among<br>immigrant-rights advocates after championing Senate Bill 1070, strict<br>anti-illegal-immigration legislation that drew criticism for<br>legitimizing racial profiling.<br><br>The bill established new crimes and corresponding prison sentences<br>relating to illegal immigration. CCA profits directly from building<br>and operating prisons and detention centers.<br><br>Bringing it closer to home, CCA previously employed two of Brewer’s<br>legislative aides as lobbyists.<br><br>In a Counterpunch article titled “Wall Street and the Criminalization<br>of Immigrants” (spotlighted by Project Censored), Peter<br>Cervantes-Gautschi explores Brewer’s links to CCA and
goes deeper<br>still, offering an historic account of how investors in CCA and prison<br>giant Geo Group have, for years, actively pushed for legislation that<br>would result in the widespread incarceration of undocumented<br>immigrants.<br><br>6. Google spies?<br><br>A flurry of stories aired in the spring of 2010 when it became<br>apparent that Google Street View vehicles, in the process of<br>collecting data for its mapping service, also picked up consumer<br>“payload” data on Wi-Fi networks, including email messages, website<br>data, user names and passwords.<br><br>The tech giant publicly apologized for what it characterized as a<br>mistake, saying it had “failed badly.” The Federal Trade Commission<br>(FTC) admonished Google in a letter but declined to pursue it further.<br>From there, Project Censored authors make the leap that the FTC<br>abandoned its inquiry because, a week earlier, President Obama<br>attended a Democratic Party
fundraiser at the Palo Alto home of Google<br>executive Marissa Mayer, citing a San Francisco Chronicle article<br>about the $30,000-per-person affair.<br><br>Project Censored authors also point to an article by Eric Sommer<br>titled “Google’s Deep CIA Connections,” which appeared on <a target="_blank" href="http://Pravda.ru">Pravda.ru</a> (a<br>website whose most-read article was “Bermuda Triangle: New Anomalous<br>Phenomenon Discovered”). Sommer claims that “Google is, in fact, a key<br>participant in U.S. military and CIA intelligence operations,” basing<br>his argument on a perplexing set of links between investors in Google<br>and CIA technologies.<br><br>7. Stay positive — at all costs<br><br>A military training program that Project Censored has deemed “U.S.<br>Army and psychology’s largest experiment — ever” was profiled in a<br>detailed American Psychologist series in early 2011. Comprehensive<br>Soldier Fitness (CSF) is
described as a “holistic approach to warrior<br>training,” emphasizing positive psychology as a means to counter<br>mental health problems arising from horrific combat situations.<br><br>While the American Psychologist series reads like a puff piece<br>finessed by the professionals who developed CSF, Project Censored<br>spotlighted articles in Truthout and The Psychology of Wellbeing that<br>raised questions about the wisdom of launching a required, untested<br>psychology program for more than 1 million soldiers — one that<br>encourages soldiers to think positive even in the face of traumatizing<br>events.<br><br>In an article appearing on <a target="_blank" href="http://OpEdNews.com">OpEdNews.com</a>, authors Roy Eidelson, Marc<br>Pilisuk, and Stephen Soldz write that the CSF “training” program would<br>better be described as a research project. They point out that a<br>hypothesis of the program’s success lies at the very core of CSF,
“yet<br>it is merely a hypothesis — a tentative explanation or prediction that<br>can only be confirmed through further research.”<br><br>8. The myth of clean nuclear power<br><br>The terrifying meltdowns of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear reactors<br>reignited a worldwide debate about the wisdom of relying on nuclear<br>energy as an electricity source. While Germany opted to phase out its<br>nuclear facilities by 2022 in the wake of the tragedy, the U.S.<br>Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) came under scrutiny after a Union<br>of Concerned Scientists report analyzed 14 “near misses” at nuclear<br>power plants in 2010, revealing the shortcomings in NRC inspections.<br><br>Project Censored’s critique of mainstream media’s treatment of nuclear<br>power is that the media is too willing to endorse the idea that<br>nuclear power is safe so long as proper safety measures are in place,<br>and that major news publications readily go along with the
nuclear<br>industry’s branding of the power source as “clean” and “carbon-free”<br>when it’s really not.<br><br>Claiming that “the refrain of the corporate media” is that nuclear<br>power is “perfectly harmless,” the authors spotlight a number of<br>articles and literature from anti-nuclear nonprofit organizations<br>explaining the health hazards of radiation, plus Jeff Goodell’s<br>“America’s Nuclear Nightmare,” an in-depth Rolling Stone article<br>investigating ties between the NRC and the nuclear industry.<br><br>9. The government is manipulating the weather<br><br>This one stretches credulity, and it’s probably the best example of<br>why Project Censored has gained detractors even on the left in recent<br>years. The authors point us to a Centre for Research on Globalization<br>article titled, “Atmospheric Geoengineering: Weather Manipulation,<br>Contrails and Chemtrails,” by Rady Ananda, who begins by
informing<br>readers, “The military-industrial complex stands poised to capitalize<br>on controlling the world’s weather.”<br><br>It describes an “international symposium” held in Belgium in May of<br>2010, during which “scientists asserted that manipulation of climate<br>through modification of cirrus clouds is neither a hoax nor a<br>conspiracy theory,” and is “fully operational.”<br><br>That sounds rather serious, but a web video of that symposium easily<br>located online offers a closer look. One speaker begins by showing<br>slides of old paintings to demonstrate “what the sky is supposed to<br>look like,” then offers evidence of a chemtrail cover-up by quoting an<br>unnamed pilot who tells someone in an online comment that he could<br>reveal the truth about chemtrails but is bound by contract to shoot<br>anyone he tells.<br><br>Scientific American and other publications have reported that<br>geoengineering — spreading tiny
atmospheric particles to reflect<br>sunlight as a method to counter climate change — has actually come<br>under serious consideration in recent years. Yet Project Censored<br>seems to conflate this with a fringe obsession with supposedly<br>suspicious airplane contrails.<br><br>10. The “real” unemployment rate<br><br>The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) calculates the “official<br>unemployment rate” by counting everyone who had no job, was available<br>for work, and had actively sought work in the last four weeks,<br>according to the BLS website. But alternative BLS statistics<br>incorporate so-called “discouraged workers,” unemployed individuals<br>who’ve given up on the job hunt.<br><br>In the first four months of 2011, the national unemployment rate<br>officially stood at around 9 percent, while a BLS statistic<br>incorporating discouraged workers and the marginally employed bumped<br>that figure up to 15.9
percent.<br><br>However, Project Censored highlights an article by Greg Hunter,<br>published on Information Clearinghouse, claiming that the “real”<br>unemployment rate is actually 22.1 percent, or one out of five U.S.<br>residents. Hunter’s claim is based on his interview with San<br>Francisco-based economist John Williams, who maintains a website<br>called Shadow Government Statistics.<br><br>By ignoring the claims of this economist, Project Censored argues, the<br>mainstream media is engaging in censorship.<br>As with several claims in this year’s list, that may be stretching<br>things a bit.<br><br>Comments? Write <a ymailto="mailto:totheeditor@inlander.com" href="mailto:totheeditor@inlander.com">totheeditor@inlander.com</a>. This article first appeared<br>in the San Francisco Bay Guardian.<br>------------------------------------------<br>Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett<br><br>=======================================================<br> List
services made available by First Step Internet,<br> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.<br> http://www.fsr.net<br> mailto:<a ymailto="mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com" href="mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com">Vision2020@moscow.com</a><br>=======================================================<br><br><br></div></div></div></body></html>