By Brenda Norrell of Censored News

During the first 20 years that I was a news reporter in Indian
country, I was rarely censored. It was not until Indian Country Today
was sold to the Oneida Nation in New York, and local non-Indians with
little experience became the managing editors, that I was routinely
censored.

I was never censored when Tim Giago, Lakota, owned the newspapers that
I worked for, Lakota Times, Lakota Journal and Indian Country Today.
My longtime editor at Navajo Times, Duane Beyal, Navajo, did not
censor me. Today, my articles appear uncensored at the UN OBSERVER &
International Report, Sri Lanka Guardian, CounterPunch and Narco News.
Of course when I worked as a stringer for the leading wire service, it
required that all the news about Navajos be of a negative nature:
court trials, crimes, disasters, etc., which is generally the nature
of news. But I doubt if that wire service would publish any of the
articles I write today.

In fact, I've recently written the authors of many wire articles to
give them the facts about the planned power plant, Desert Rock, which
is being protested by Navajos. Reporters who do not live on the Navajo
Nation are spoon-fed press releases from energy companies and lap
those up, falsely believing that Navajos must have power plants, coal
mines and oil and gas wells.

The part of the picture that few write about is the disease and
pollution produced. In the 1980s I asked IHS for statistics on the
diseases of Navajos who live around power plants, oil wells, coal
mines and more than 1,000 radioactive uranium tailings. At IHS in
Window Rock, IHS said no statistics existed. I couldn't believe it.
Fresh out of graduate school with a masters degree in health, I asked
IHS in Navajoland how it could function without knowing what diseases
are produced by all the destruction.

When the hantavirus mysteriously appeared on Navajoland, IHS did share
with me some unpublished data. The data revealed that the initial
deaths of Navajos from the hantavirus surrounded, in a circle, Fort
Wingate (NM), near Gallup, which was being decommissioned at the time.
Of course the US blamed the hantavirus on the field mice, which were
always there. But a number of wise council delegates on the Navajo
Nation Council, including Genevieve Jackson, believed that the
hantavirus was intentionally or accidentally released during the
decommissioning. Jackson halted a drug company from profiteering from
the hantavirus medication ribavirin.

That same type of profiteering resurfaced when Sec. of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld was profiteering from the sale of Tamiflu for the bird flu.
In the US, states were stockpiling Tamiflu and Rumsfeld was making a
fortune. This fact was censored by Indian Country Today. My article
about this was distorted and published with my name on it by editors
at ICT. I was terminated the same year, 2006, as a staff reporter.
Recently, while talking with a 12-year-old, he kept asking, "Why
doesn't anyone know these things?"

He had been watching television and was duped by the military
recruitment ads brainwashing young people to believe that the wars of
politicians have something to do with honor. Those ads make it appear
that their parents will love them more if they risk death for the wars
of corrupt politicians.

The young man said it made him want to join the military. I explained
to him how the Iraq war was based on lies, and how politicians keep
wars going to benefit war manufacturers, who contribute money to
politicians for their campaigns. I told him about the innocent people
-- women and children -- tortured and murdered by the US in Vietnam,
Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan and countries around the world. He asked
me about the Taliban and black ops.

He kept saying, "Why doesn't anyone talk about this?"
On the television, a CNN reporter was obsessing over some detail of a
Hollywood celebrity.
It was a wakeup call.

--
Brenda Norrell, Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com
Censored Blog Talk Radio
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Brenda-Norrell
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