There was a smattering of news coverage when the SPLC
released its report, but not much since.
6. BILLIONAIRES’ RISING
WEALTH INTENSIFIES POVERTY
AND INEQUALITY
The world’s billionaires added $241 billion to their
collective net worth in 2012. That’s an economic recovery,
right?
That gain, coupled with the world’s richest peoples’
new total worth of $1.9 trillion (more than the GDP of
Canada), wasn’t reported by some kooky socialist group,
but by Bloomberg News. But few journalists are asking the
important question: Why?
Project Censored points to journalist George Monbiot,
who highlights a reduction of taxes and tax enforcement,
the privatization of public assets and the weakening of
labor unions.
His conclusions are backed up by the United Nations’
Trade and Development Report from 2012, which noted
how the trend hurts everyone: “Recent empirical and
analytical work reviewed here mostly shows a negative
correlation between inequality and growth.”
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
economist of the global management fi rm McKinsey &
Company.
The International Consortium of Investigative
Journalists obtained a leak in April 2013, revealing how
widespread the buy-in was to these tax havens. The fi ndings
were damning: Government offi cials in Canada, Russia
and other countries have embraced offshore accounts, the
world’s top banks (including Deutsche Bank) have worked
to maintain them and the tax havens are used in Ponzi
schemes.
Moving money offshore has implications that ripped
through the world economy. Part of Greece’s economic
collapse was due to these tax havens, ICIJ reporter Gerard
Ryle told Gladstone on her radio show. “It’s because
people don’t want to pay taxes,” he said. “You avoid taxes
by going offshore and playing by different rules.”
U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, introduced
legislation to combat the practice, SB 1533, The Stop Tax
Haven Abuse Act, but so far the bill has had little play in
the media.
Researcher James Henry said the hidden wealth was a
“huge black hole” in the world economy that has never
been measured, which could generate income tax revenues
between $190 billion to $280 billion a year.
3. TRANS-PACIFIC
PARTNERSHIP
Take 600 corporate advisors, mix in offi cials from 11
international governments, let it bake for about two years
and out pops international partnerships that threaten to
cripple progressive movements worldwide.
The Trans-Pacifi c Partnership (TPP) is a trade
agreement, but leaked texts show it may allow foreign
investors to use “investor-state” tribunals to extract
extravagant extra damages for “expected future profi ts,”
according to the Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.
The trade watch group investigated the TPP and is the
main advocate in opposition of its policies. The AFL-CIO,
Sierra Club and other organizations have also had growing
concerns about the level of access granted to corporations
in these agreements.
With extra powers granted to foreign fi rms, the
possibility that companies would continue moving offshore
could grow. But even with the risks of outsized corporate
infl uence, the U.S. has a strong interest in the TPP in order
to maintain trade agreements with Asia.
The balancing act between corporate and public interests
is at stake, but until the U.S. releases more documents from
negotiations, the American people will remain in the dark.
14
November 21, 2013 • eugeneweekly.com
4. OBAMA’S WAR ON
WHISTLEBLOWERS
President Obama has invoked the Espionage Act of 1917
more than every other president combined. Seven times,
Obama has pursued leakers with the act, against Thomas
Drake, Shamai Leibowitz, Bradley Manning, Stephen
Kim, Jeffrey Sterling, John Kiriakou and most recently,
Edward Snowden. All had ties to the State Department,
FBI, CIA or NSA, and all of them leaked to journalists.
“Neither party is raising hell over this. This is the sort
of story that sort of slips through the cracks,” McChesney
said. And when the politicians don’t raise a fuss, neither
does the media.
ProPublica covered the issue, constructing timelines
and mapping out the various arrests and indictments. But
where Project Censored points out the lack of coverage is
in Obama’s hypocrisy — only a year before, he signed The
Whistleblower Protection Act.
Later on, he said he wouldn’t follow every letter of the
law in the bill he had only just signed.
“Certain provisions in the act threaten to interfere with
my constitutional duty to supervise the executive branch,”
Obama said. “As my administration previously informed
the Congress, I will interpret those sections consistent with
my authority.”
5. HATE GROUPS AND
ANTIGOVERNMENT GROUPS
ON RISE ACROSS US
Hate groups in the U.S. are on the rise, according to a
report by the Southern Poverty Law Center. There are 1,007
known hate groups operating across the country, it wrote,
including neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klan, white nationalists,
neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, black separatists,
border vigilantes and others.
Since 2000, those groups have grown by over half,
and there was a “powerful resurgence” of patriot groups,
the likes of which were involved in the Oklahoma City
bombing in 1995. Worst of all, the huge growth in armed
militias seems to have conspicuous timing with Obama’s
election.
“The number of Patriot groups, including armed
militias, has grown 813 percent since Obama was elected
— from 149 in 2008 to 1,360 in 2012,” the SPLC reported.
Though traditionally those groups were race motivated,
the report noted that now they are gunning for government.
7. MERCHANT OF DEATH AND
NUCLEAR WEAPONS
The report highlighted by Project Censored on the threat
of nuclear war is an example not of censorship, strictly, but
a desire for media reform.
Project Censored highlighted a study from the
Physicians for Social Responsibility that said one billion
people could starve in the decade after a nuclear detonation.
Corn production in the U.S. would decline by an average
of 10 percent for an entire decade and food prices would
make food inaccessible to hundreds of millions of the
world’s poorest.
This is not journalism in the classic sense, Gladstone
said. In traditional journalism, as it’s played out since the
early 20th century, news requires an element of something
new in order to garner reporting — not a looming threat
or danger.
So in this case, what Project Censored identifi ed was the
need for a new kind of journalism, what it calls “solutions
journalism.”
“Solutions journalism,” Sarah van Gelder wrote in the
foreword to Censored 2014, “must investigate not only
the individual innovations, but also the larger pattern of
change — the emerging ethics, institutions and ways of life
that are coming into existence.”
8. BANK INTERESTS INFLATE
GLOBAL PRICES BY 35
TO 40 PERCENT
Does 35 percent of everything bought in the United
States go to interest? Professor Margrit Kennedy of the
University of Hanover thinks so, and she says it’s a major
funnel of money from the 99 percent to the rich.
In her 2012 book, Occupy Money, Kennedy wrote that
tradespeople, suppliers, wholesalers and retailers along the
chain of production rely on credit. Her fi gures were initially
drawn from the German economy, but Ellen Brown of the
Web of Debt and Global Research said she found similar
patterns in the U.S.
This “hidden interest” has sapped the growth of other
industries, she said, lining the pockets of the fi nancial
sector.
So if interest is stagnating so many industries, why
would journalists avoid the topic?
Few economists have echoed her views, and few
experts emerged to back up her assertions. Notably, she’s
a professor in an architectural school, with no formal
credentials in economics.