Date: Tue Nov 6, 2007 11:34 am ((PST)
This story is my favorite example of the NY Times and state propaganda:
UNITED NATIONS - The United Nations General Assembly Tuesday snubbed the United States for its hostility towards Cuba, amid fresh calls for an end to the 45-year economic and financial embargo imposed on the socialist island.
On Tuesday, as many as 184 countries voted in favor of a General Assembly resolution demanding the U.S. lift 45-year-old restrictions on international trade with Cuba. The vote broke last year's record, when 183 countries endorsed the resolution against the U.S. embargo. The 192-member General Assembly has adopted 16 similar resolutions since 1992. Like last year, in addition to the United States itself, the negative votes were cast by just three countries: Israel, the Marshall Islands and Palau.
Fit to print in America's the "newspaper of record"? We only get stories of Bush lecturing Cuba about democracy. We have to look closely at the role of the NY Times in hiding truths from the American people in return for government favors and access. Our media is often involved in spreading propaganda, and certainly considers this more important than providing "all the news that's fit to print." http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/31/4917/
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Another great example is today's half page story about General Suharto, former dictator of the Indonesia. What was missing in the NY Times coverage? Why the political purges and the deaths of millions of Indonesian leftists and Chinese-Indonesians.
Reading the NY Times article we get a view of a kindly old man who has outlived his era. No mention of attempts to try him on charges of genocide that have failed due to his poor health. Nor is there mention of the role of the US and England in the coup and subsequent butchery. Even the CIA (in declassified documents) called it: "one of the worst mass murders in the twentieth century."
But none of this sees the light of day in NY Times reporting. Contrast this propaganda with articles by the BBC that fully expose British involvement in the slaughter.
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UNITED NATIONS - A U.N. human rights expert is calling on the United States to prosecute or release suspects detained as "unlawful enemy combatants" and to move quickly to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
Martin Scheinin, the U.N.'s independent investigator on human rights in the fight against terrorism, said in a report released Monday that he's concerned about U.S. detention practices, military courts and interrogation techniques.
He urged the U.S. government to end the CIA practice of extraordinary rendition, in which terrorism suspects are taken to foreign countries for interrogation. Scheinin said he was also concerned about what he termed "enhanced interrogation techniques reportedly used by the CIA," saying that under international law "there are no circumstances in which cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment may be justified."
For the NY Times, this was another story not fit to print. http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/30/4893/
