I'm going to truncate the individual aspects of this article some to fit all ten stories into whats seeded. To read all of each of the 10 most censored stories go to the seed link. 

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

Project Censored’s top 10 stories show troubling old patterns are alive and well

Several stories this year deal with topics that have gotten widespread attention — but with aspects that have been virtually, or entirely ignored. The number one story, for example, deals with prescription drug costs, a widely covered story, but with a significant difference in focus: how much those costs translate to in lost lives. The number nine story deals with police violence against people of color, but with a new focus that's actually quite old: vicious police dog attacks. The number four story deals with climate change, again with a different focus: how heavily-industrialized nations like the U.S. "have effectively colonized the global atmospheric commons for the sake of their own industrial growth."

1. Prescription Drug Costs Set to Become a Leading Cause of Death for Elderly Americans

"Soaring prescription drug costs have been widely reported by corporate news outlets," Project Censored notes, but they've utterly ignored the staggering resulting cost in human lives. More than 1.1 million seniors enrolled in Medicare programs could die prematurely in the next decade due to unaffordable prescription drugs, according to a November 2020 study reported on by Kenny Stancil for Common Dreams. "As medicines become increasingly expensive, patients skip doses, ration prescriptions, or quit treatment altogether," Project Censored explained, a phenomenon known as "cost-related nonadherence," which will become "a leading cause of death in the U.S., ahead of diabetes, influenza, pneumonia, and kidney disease" by 2030, according to the study by the nonprofit West Health Policy Center and Xcenda, the research arm of Amerisource-Bergen, a drug distributor.

2. Journalists Investigating Financial Crimes Threatened by Global Elites

Financial crimes of global elites, involving the flow of dirty money through some of the world's most powerful banks, have made major headlines in recent years, most notably with the Panama Papers in 2016 and the FinSen Files in 2020. But we'd know a great deal more if not for the flood of threats faced by journalists doing this work — a major story that hasn't been told in America's corporate media, despite a detailed report from Foreign Policy Centre (FPC), "Unsafe for Scrutiny," released in November 2020.

The report was based on a survey of 63 investigative journalists from 41 countries, which found that 71% had experienced threats and/or harassment while doing their investigations, with a large portion of those (73%) experiencing legal threats as well. Its findings were described by Spencer Woodman in an article for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

"The report found that legal threats are chief among the types of harassment facing journalists conducting financial investigations, and often seek to exploit a skewed balance of power between often-underfunded reporting enterprises and the legal might of attorneys hired by the world's wealthiest people and corporations," Woodman wrote. "Focusing on frivolous cases known as 'strategic lawsuits against public participation,' or SLAPPs, the report asserts that such actions 'can create a similar chilling effect on media freedom to more overt violence or attack.'" Legal threats are often communicated via private letters, "and, if successful in achieving their aim, the public will never know," the report said.

3. Historic Wave of Wildcat Strikes for Workers' Rights

After millions of people were designated 'essential workers' when the U.S. went into lockdown in March 2020, thousands of wildcat strikes erupted to challenge dangerous working conditions and chronic low wages, exacerbated by refusal to protect against COVID-19 and cutting or sharply increasing the cost of medical insurance, for those who had it. A further strike surge was driven by "Black and Brown workers using digital technologies to organize collective actions as a way to press some of the demands for racial justice raised by Black Lives Matter and George Floyd protestors," Project Censored noted. The nation's fourth busiest port, Charleston, S.C., shut down during George Floyd's funeral on June 9, for example.

At the labor news website Payday Report, Mike Elk created a continuously updated COVID-19 Strike Wave Interactive Map, which had identified "1,100 wildcat strikes as of March 24, 2021, many of which the corporate media have chosen to ignore," according to Project Censored, including "more than 600 strikes or work stoppages by workers in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement," in June 2020 alone, according to Elk.

"While local and regional newspapers and broadcast news outlets have reported on particular local actions, corporate news coverage has failed to report the strike wave as a wave, at no time connecting the dots of all the individual, seemingly isolated work stoppages and walkouts to create a picture of the overarching trend," Project Censored reported.

4. "Climate Debtor" Nations Have "Colonized" the Atmosphere

The United States and other developed countries in the global north are responsible for 92% of all the excess carbon dioxide emissions driving global warming, according to a study in the September issue of The Lancet Planetary Health. The U.S. alone was responsible for 40%, followed by Russia and Germany (8% each), the United Kingdom (7%), and Japan (5%).

The study's author, economic anthropologist Jason Hickel, told Sarah Lazare, of   In These Times , that his research began from the premises that "the atmosphere is a common resource" and that "all people should have equal access" to a fair share of it. He calculated each nation's fair share of a sustainable global carbon budget, based on population, along with an analysis of "territorial emissions from 1850 to 1969, and consumption-based emissions from 1970 to 2015." In turn, this was used to calculate "the extent to which each country has overshot or undershot its fair share," according to the study. Thus the above list of the largest climate debtors.

The results, he told   In These Times , show that "the countries of the Global North have 'stolen' a big chunk of the atmospheric fair-shares of poorer countries, and on top of that are responsible for the vast majority of excess emissions… [T]hey have effectively colonized the global atmospheric commons for the sake of their own industrial growth."

5. Microplastics and Toxic Chemicals Increasingly Prevalent in World's Oceans

According to a pair of scientific studies published in the summer of 2020, microplastic particles and a family of toxic chemicals known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS have become more widespread in the world's oceans than previously realized and have begun to contaminate the global seafood supply. The two problems are related because PFAS — a family of highly stable "forever chemicals" with more than 4,700 known members — can occur as microplastics, they can stick to microplastic particles in water, and are involved in the production of plastics.

In July 2020, a German-American study published in the scholarly journal   Environmental Science & Technology   revealed that PFAS — which are used in a range of products including carpets, furniture, clothing, food packaging and nonstick coatings — have now been found in the Arctic Ocean.

"This discovery worries scientists," Project Censored explains, "because it means that PFAS can reach any body of water anywhere in the world and that such chemicals are likely present in our water supply." This is concerning because, as Daniel Ross reported for Truthout, there are "Known human health impacts … include certain cancers, liver damage, thyroid problems and increased risk of asthma. As endocrine disruptors, these chemicals have been linked to increased risk of severe COVID-19."

6. Canary Mission Blacklists Pro Palestinian Activists, Chilling Free Speech Rights

Before the "critical race theory" moral panic fueled a nationwide uprising to censor discussions of race in education, there was an opposite moral panic decrying "cancel culture" stifling certain people — especially in education. But even at the peak of the "cancel culture" panic, perhaps the most canceled people anywhere in America — pro-Palestinian activists and sympathizers — got virtually no attention. Even though a well-funded, secretly run blacklist website, known as Canary Mission, explicitly targeted thousands of individuals — overwhelmingly students — with dossiers expressly intended to ruin their careers before they even began, and which "have been used in interrogations by Israeli security officials," according to the Forward, a Jewish publication. They've also been used by the FBI, as reported by   The Intercept .

The website, established in 2015, "seeks to publicly discredit critics of Israel as 'terrorists' and 'anti-Semites,' Project Censored noted, but its careless style of accusation has caused a backlash, even among pro-Israeli Jews. "While some of those listed on the site are prominent activists, others are students who attended a single event, or even student government representatives suspected of voting for resolutions that are critical of Israel," the Forward reported. More than that, it reported three examples when Canary Mission was apparently retaliating against critics, including Jews.

But by far, its main targets are Palestinians, particularly activists involved with the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions or BDS movement that works to peacefully pressure Israel — similarly to South Africa in the 1980s — to obey international law and respect Palestinians' human rights. As the Intercept reported in 2018, "While Canary Mission promotes itself as a group working against anti-Semitism, the blacklist's effective goal is to clamp down on growing support for Palestine in the United States by intimidating and tarnishing Palestinian rights advocates with the brush of bigotry."

7. Google's Union-Busting Methods Revealed

In 2018, Google dropped its long-time slogan, "Don't be evil" from its code of conduct. In 2019, Google hired IRI Consultants, a union avoidance firm, "amid a wave of unprecedented worker organizing at the company," as Vice's Motherboard put it in January 2021, while reporting on leaked files from IRI that provided a disturbing picture of how far Google may have strayed in its willingness sabotage its workers' rights. The 1935 National Labor Relations Act makes it illegal for companies to spy on employees and guarantees workers the right to organize and engage in collective bargaining. "Nevertheless," Project Censored noted, "companies like Google attempt to circumvent the law by hiring union avoidance firms like IRI Consultants as independent contractors to engage in surveillance and intimidation on their behalf."

"[E]mployers in the United States spend roughly $340 million on union avoidance consultants each year," Lauren Kaori Gurley reported for Motherboard, but their practices are apparently so disreputable that IRI doesn't identify its clients on its website "beyond saying the firm has been hired by universities, renewable energy companies, auto-makers, 'the nation's largest food manufacturers,' and 'several top ten worldwide retailers,' she reported.

"Consultants specialize in operating in the grey areas of the law," John Logan, a Professor of Labor and Employment Studies at San Francisco State told Gurley. "They're not quite illegal but they're sort of bending the law if they're not breaking it."

"The [leaked] documents show that the firm collected incredibly detailed information on 83 Seattle hospital employees, including their 'personality, temperament, motivations, ethnicity, family background, spouses' employment, finances, health issues, work ethic, job performance, disciplinary history, and involvement in union activity in the lead-up to a union election,'" Project Censored noted, "including descriptions of workers as 'lazy,' 'impressionable,' 'money oriented,' and 'a single mother.'"

8. Pfizer Bullies South American Governments over COVID-19 Vaccine

"Pfizer has essentially held Latin American governments to ransom for access to its lifesaving COVID-19 vaccine," Project Censored reports, the latest example of how it's exerted undue influence to enrich itself at the expense of low- and middle-income nations going back to the 1980s, when it helped shape the intellectual property rules it's now taking advantage of.

"Pfizer has been accused of 'bullying' Latin American governments in Covid vaccine negotiations and has asked some countries to put up sovereign assets, such as embassy buildings and military bases, as a guarantee against the cost of any future legal cases," according to reporters at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

In one case it resulted in a three-month delay in reaching a deal. "For Argentina and Brazil, no national deals were agreed at all," BIJ reported. "Any hold-up in countries receiving vaccines means more people contracting Covid-19 and potentially dying."

It's normal for governments to provide some indemnity. But, "Pfizer asked for additional indemnity from civil cases, meaning that the company would not be held liable for rare adverse effects or for its own acts of negligence, fraud or malice," BIJ reported. "This includes those linked to company practices – say if Pfizer sent the wrong vaccine or made errors during manufacturing."

"Some liability protection is warranted, but certainly not for fraud, gross negligence, mismanagement, failure to follow good manufacturing practices," the World Health Organization's director of the Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law, Lawrence Gostin, told BIJ. "Companies have no right to ask for indemnity for these things."

9. Police Use Dogs as Instruments of Violence, Targeting People of Color

The use of vicious dogs to control Black people dates back to slavery, but it's not ancient history according to an investigative series of 13 linked reports, titled "Mauled: When Police Dogs are Weapons," coordinated by the Marshall Project in partnership with AL.com,   IndyStar , and the Invisible Institute. They found evidence that the pattern continues to this day, with disproportionate use of police dogs against people of color, often resulting in serious injury, with little or no justification. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, a majority-Black city of 220,000, is the dog-bite capital of America, with a bite rate more than double the next-ranked city, Indianapolis. According to Bryn Stole and Grace Toohey's February 2021 report:

Between 2017 and 2019, Baton Rouge police dogs bit at least 146 people, records show. Of those, 53 were 17 years old or younger; the youngest were just 13. Almost all of the people bitten were Black, and most were unarmed and suspected by police of nonviolent crimes like driving a stolen vehicle or burglary.

But Baton Rouge is hardly alone. Approximately 3,600 Americans annually are sent to the emergency room for severe bite injuries resulting from police dog attacks. These dog bites "can be more like shark attacks than nips from a family pet, according to experts and medical researchers," a team of five reporters wrote in October 2020, as part of a summary of the main finding of their research. Other highlights from the series included:

"Though our data shows dog bites in nearly every state, some cities use biting dogs far more often than others." This ranged from just one incident in Chicago from 2017 to 2019 to more than 200 in Los Angeles and more than 220 in Indianapolis.

"Most bite victims are men, and studies suggest that in some places, they have been disproportionately Black." This includes the Ferguson, Missouri police department and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, where it's been found that "dogs bit non-White people almost exclusively."

10. Activists Call Out Legacy of Racism and Sexism in Forced Sterilization

Forced sterilization was deemed constitutional in a 1927 Supreme Court decision,   Buck v. Bell,   after which forced sterilizations increased dramatically, to at least 60,000 forced sterilizations in some 32 states during the 20th Century, predominantly targeting women of color. And while state laws have been changed, it's still constitutional,   and   still going on today — with at least five cases of women in ICE custody in Georgia in 2019 — while thousands of victims await restitution, as reports from the Conversation and   YES! Magazine   has documented.

"Organizations such as Project South, California Latinas for Reproductive Justice, and the Sterilization and Social Justice Lab are actively working to document the extent of this underreported problem — and to bring an end to it." Project Censored noted. But their work is even more underreported than the problem itself.

"During the height of this wave of eugenics by means of sterilization in the U.S., forced hysterectomies were so common in the Deep South that activist Fannie Lou Hamer coined the term 'Mississippi Appendectomy' to describe them," Ray Levy Uyeda wrote in a   YES! Magazine   article, "How Organizers are Fighting an American Legacy of Forced Sterilization," which begins with the story of Kelli Dillon. Dillon was a California prison inmate in 2001 when she underwent a procedure to remove a potentially cancerous growth — and the surgeon simultaneously performed an unauthorized hysterectomy, one of 148 forced sterilizations that year in California prisons, and one of 1,400 carried out between 1997 and 2010.