U.S. Freedom on Foreign Soil

Throughout the 1940‘s, U.S. government medical researchers purposefully and secretly infected more than 2,500 Guatemalans with various STD’s.

Purposefully, because the researchers could not perform such illegal experimentation on Americans, and therefore chose to do so on foreign peoples.

Secretly, because the U.S. government did not want Americans, nor anyone in the international community, to learn about the immoral experimentations.

As reported by Rob Stein for The Washington Post, at the helm of the Gutemala experiments was the infamous Dr. Taliaferro Clark who, in the 1930’s conducted similar illegal and immoral syphilis experimentation on African-American males for the notorious Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.

Says Stein, the tests in Guatemala were carried out using many methods, including direct injection of syphilis into open wounds, and “putting infectious material on the cervixes of uninfected prostitutes” who were then brought to men in order to infect the men, as well, through intercourse.

Transforming Violence

 

Can you see guns as works of art?

Their sleek, iron beauty glinting in the light…

…invoking feelings of hope rather than fear?

No?

Well, read on. You may just change your mind.

 

As reported by Al Jazeera, thousands of weapons are seized by L.A. Police every year. In a joint effort between local businesses and the LAPD, these weapons are destroyed, melted down for more productive, less dangerous use in roads, buildings and bridges.

It’s called Project Isaiah, named for the biblical passage which instructs men to “beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks.”

However, one industrious Mexican artist, Victor Hugo Zayas, has found a new use for confiscated weapons.

Art.

American Muslims Under Fire

“F*ck u rag head.”

“Mohamad is a liar & a fagit.”

This graffiti is scrawled across the tomb of a Palestinian-American’s father’s grave in Chicago’s Evergreen Park cemetery.

It’s one of many such Islamophobic acts being carried out by groups of Americans – including attacks on seven mosques across the U.S. in the past two weeks alone.

 

As reported by CNN, Muslims are being forced to celebrate their holiest month, the month of Ramadan, away from their places of worship.

“I think there are a few people who don’t like anybody,” says Iftikhar Ali, president of a Joplin, Missouri mosque which was attacked and burned to the ground last week. “They don’t like a different color than their color, or different religions.”

Ali, along with countless American Muslims, are being pushed by violent hate crimes to steer clear of mosques, worshipping instead in convention centers guarded by law enforcement officers.

“So, what?” a portion of Americans may think. “Small price to pay, compared to 9-11!”

Coca-Cola: Not “The Real Thing” in India

Ah, Coca-Cola.

Refreshing, thirst-quenching, delicious.

As American as baseball and apple pie.

Right?

Not in India.

Although Western mainstream media headlined Coca-Cola’s plans to increase its market share in India by $5 billion, what it failed to mention is that communities located near the beverage giant’s India bottling plants are not exactly rolling out the red carpet.

According to the India Resource Center (IRC), “Communities across India living around Coca-Cola’s bottling plants are experiencing severe water shortages, directly as a result of Coca-Cola’s massive extraction of water from the common groundwater resource. The wells have run dry and the hand water pumps do not work any more.”

As detailed by the IRC, further impingements upon Indian communities by Coca-Cola include:

• polluting groundwater & soil with waste from its plants, rendering the community’s drinking water “unfit for human consumption“
• selling toxic waste to Indian farmers as “fertilizer“
• selling its product in unregulated form (as outlined by the IRC, the Coca-Cola sold in India  contains arsenic and “high levels of pesticides…that could never be sold in the US or the EU”)  

Arizona Immigration Law: Damning Pearce Emails Uncovered

The American Civil Liberties Union has uncovered a sheath of damning emails to and from former Arizona state senator Russell Pearce - author of the state’s controversial immigration law.

As reported in The Arizona Republic, the exposed emails – dating as far back as 2006 – contain overtly racist language and references to the state’s Latino population, prompting the ACLU to conclude that Arizona’s SB 1070 immigration law was “racially motivated.”

The uncovered emails contain such statements as: “Last week, Denver’s illegal aliens sang our national anthem in Spanish and bastardized the words of OUR country’s most sacred song.”

Arizona: Ethnic Studies a Threat to U.S. Government

Is non-White history the new WMD?

Is learning to take pride in brown history a deadly bomb aimed at the White House?

According to the state of Arizona, both these acts are potential threats to the U.S.  government.

As reported by Indian Country Today Media Network, the state’s new ethnic studies ban equates the teaching of ethnic studies with “promoting the overthrow of the U.S. government.“

The ban also describes the further “dangers” of any studies which may cause “resentment toward a race or class of people, along with those designed for students of a specific ethnic group or to advocate ethnic solidarity.”

However, Eric Liu, in a recent report for Time Ideas, points out that “The ban also implicitly assumes that whites are not even a race or ethnic group subject to the terms of the ban, that whiteness, as the invisible norm, just is.”

Occupying Israeli Settlement Profits

“Danger: Israeli products help fund the oppression and murder of Palestinians.”

A major European supermarket chain has decided to boycott any companies exporting produce from illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

As reported in The Guardian, British Cooperative Group (BCG), one of the largest food retailers in the United Kingdom with a policy already in place against importing produce from illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank, is now extending that policy by ending trade with companies who still export such products.

Says Hilary Smith, a BCG Co-op member and agricultural trade coordinator, the company is making the move in order to “take the lead internationally by this historic decision to hold corporations accountable for complicity  in Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights. We strongly urge other retailers to take similar action.”

Playing a Master Card to Thwart a Visa

What do cruise ships, pirates, and PayPal have in common?

More than we would guess.

According to PopSci, one hundred-plus technology companies from countries such as India and Australia are looking to make a move onto a floating city located in international waters outside of Silicon Valley. Dubbed the “Blueseed” project, one of its co-founders Peter Thiel, is also co-founder of PayPal.

The project endeavors to convert cruise ships and redesigned barges into a pirate island on which tech companies would be headquartered. These companies would be able to provide housing, working space, and entertainment facilities for nearly 1,000 paying customers and employees at a rate of $1,200 to $3,000 monthly.

Why would international tech companies want to operate from a pirate island in the U.S.?

Society 101: Human Gorilla Games

The next time you want to show respect for your boss, should you grab his genitals?

Maybe not.

But according to “Games Primates Play: An Undercover Investigation of the Evolution and Economics of Human Relationships” - a book based on studies of “dominance games” acted out by non-human primates – this is exactly what a gorilla might do to his boss, or the alpha male of his group.

As reported in Salon, author, and University of Chicago professor Dario Maestripieri contends that “our social relationships have analogs in nature, especially within groups of primates. “While we may not go up and grab our supervisor’s genitals as a sign of respect,” Maestripieri contends, “We engage in similar acts that help us figure out where we fit in groups.”

Okay, so genitals aside, what social interactions do you engage in to solidify your place in society?

Think about it. Chances are, they are all “primal instincts.”

Our News Media: Weapons of Mass Distraction

North Korea attempted to launch a missile, dangerously defying a nuclear weapons agreement with the U.S.

The jobs report showed a disturbing economic slowdown, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released an announcement concerning the re-vamping of rules in an effort to help homeowners manage their mortgages.

Mitt Romney lied and fearmongered in a speech he gave at the National Rifle Association (NRA) national convention.

Our student debt crisis is an open keg of gunpowder with live wires dancing around it.

These are just a few immediately concerning newsworthy events which took place in one week’s time, each with great potential impact on U.S. citizens.

Which issue saturated U.S. news media that week?

Hillary Rosen’s remarks about Ann Romney.

An important social issue, for sure. But far from the immediate potentially life-threatening issues of nuclear-capable North Korean defiance, demonstrated and unreported economic slowdown, new CFPB rules that could help us hang on to our homes, the threat of an impending explosion to our already-suffering economy…and the list on goes on – for just that week alone.

If not to inform us about vital information we absolutely need to know in order to maintain democracy, plan our lives accordingly, make intelligent decisions, and simply be well and correctly informed…what exactly is American news media really about?

Many American news journalists have and are coming forward in past and recent years to answer this question, and to speak openly about the dangerous slide into government and corporate-controlled censorship of U.S. news media.