from Liberty Underground

TOMORROW NIGHT ON NOW: RAPING AMERICANS IN IRAQ

Our military can no longer function without women. But with roughly one in seven of America's active-duty military soldiers female, a NOW investigation found that sexual assault and rape are widespread. A study of National Guard and Reserve forces found that almost one in four women had been assaulted or raped. Last year alone, almost 3,000 soldiers reported sexual assault and rape by other soldiers.





Tomorrow night, Friday, September 7, the PBS program NOW features women who speak out for the first time about what happened to them. One woman recounts her ordeal of rape by her superior officer. Many more don't report the incidents for fear of how it will affect their careers. The shocking phenomenon has a label: military sexual trauma, or MST. NOW meets women courageously battling to overcome their MST, bringing light to an issue that's putting the Army to shame.





No wonder there has been so much effort on the part of those who run PBS to get NOW cancelled. They did manage to reduce it from an hour long to half an hour despite its popularity, making it difficult for producers to report in depth. It's the only program on PBS to wander much beyond the corporate media parameters. A NOW exclusive investigation tomorrow night on your local PBS station.





CORPORATE MEDIA BLACKOUT: KUCINICH





Margaret Kimberley has a magnificent piece at Black Agenda Report this morning discussing the shameful corporate media censorship of the Kucinich campaign. Those in power fear nothing more than an outbreak of democracy, and that would be more likely if voters knew there was a candidate who represented their interests.





If we are to follow opinion polls, Dennis Kucinich is the most mainstream of candidates. Corporate media, in the rare times his name is mentioned, often lie that he is "out of the mainstream" in an attempt to turn potential voters against him. They condemn his candidacy by censoring his words and pictures and then in a self-fulfilling prophecy say he has no chance.







In the recent ABC News Democratic candidate's debate Kucinich was given almost no chance to speak by moderator George Stephanopoulos, followed by ABC's publishing a picture of the event with the other eight candidates shown and Kucinch cropped out. They then ran a poll question on their web site "Who won the debate" and when the public responded by saying Kucinich won, they shut down the poll to hide the results.





Kucinich is feared by those in power more than any other candidate because he represents the interests of average citizens, interests largely ignored by corporate media and corporate government.





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More media coverage has been given to the non-campaign of Fred Thompson, who only announced last night, and is given a massive blitzkrieg of coverage by corporate media this morning because he represents corporate greed at any cost to the public interest. Nothing could illustrate this more than a visit to Thompson's web site, which hides almost everything he stands for from the public.