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PROJECT CENSORED’S Top 25 NEWS STORIES CENSORED’S PROJECT STORIES Top News The Project Censored team has undergone the exhaustive process of selecting and evaluating the most important American and global news stories of 2010-2011 that received little or no attention by the mainstream media. ach year, the Project Censored team, based at Sonoma State University, California, selects and evaluates thousands of news stories published in the national and international mainstream media as well as in the alternative press. The team ultimately decides on the top 25 most underreported but important stories. Following is an edited summary of Project Censored's 2010-11 selection. To see the full report with sources and references, visit http://tinyurl.com/3ou5huq. The book Censored 2012, edited by Mickey Huff and Project Censored, is now available. — Editor 1. More US Soldiers Committed Suicide than Died in Combat In 2010, for the second year in a row, more US soldiers killed themselves (468) than died in combat (462). "If you think you know the one thing that causes people to commit suicide, please let us know," General Peter Chiarelli told the Army Times, "because we don't know what it is." Suicide is a tragic but predictable human reaction to being asked to kill—and watch your friends be killed—for a war based on lies. Perhaps being forced to bag the mangled flesh of fellow soldiers could be another reason why some are committing suicide. Body-bagging: ever heard the term? Soldiers in the Marine Corps’ Mortuary Affairs unit at Camp Al-Taqaddum, Iraq, are given this job of collecting and cataloguing the bodies of dead Marines. They sift through the soldiers’ remains and put them in body bags which they then place in metal boxes and, in turn, into refrigerated units. They sort through personal effects, from lists and prom photos to suicide notes and love letters, parcel them up and send them back to the Marines’ families. One soldier, Jess Goodell, recounts the case of a Marine brought in to the unit still breathing. She frantically called to her superiors, to which they simply replied, "Wait". She watched while he died. When she returned to the US, Goodell like many others, was diagnosed with deep depression, substance abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety. 2. US Military Manipulates the Social Media The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence Internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda. A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with US Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop an "online persona management service" that will allow one US serviceman or servicewoman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world. The CENTCOM contract stipulates that each fake online persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 US-based controllers could operate false identities from their workstations. The multiple-persona contract is thought to have been awarded as part of a Compiled by Project Censored © 2011 Sonoma State University 1801 East Cotati Avenue Rohnert Park, CA 94928, USA Email: censored@sonoma.edu Website: http://www.projectcensored.org Compiled by Project Censored © 2011 Sonoma State University 1801 East Cotati Avenue Rohnert Park, CA 94928, USA Email: censored@sonoma.edu Website: http://www.projectcensored.org NEXUS ¢ 23 DECEMBER 2011 - JANUARY 2012 www.nexusmagazine.com