Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Pentagon Papers Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg Says that the Government Has ORDERED the Media Not to Cover 9/11

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Pentagon Papers Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg Says that the Government Has ORDERED the Media Not to Cover 9/11

Click here to access article Washington's Blog.

Although I am not convinced that the government of the ruling class has so much more to be revealed in the latest unexpurgated release of the Pentagon Papers, the article does provide a lot of interesting material about mainstream media censorship in the US.

In contrast to such places as Pakistan where journalists are almost routinely shot, in the US the governing class usually takes the livelihood away from their journalists if they don't conform. In 1996 Gary Webb, a journalist with the San Jose Mercury, who wrote an outstanding series on government collusion with the drug cartels, was fired and blacklisted from further employment as a journalist. He died in 2008 in rather mysterious circumstances, but his death was ruled a suicide.