Thursday, October 09, 2008

Fantasyland Media:

http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

News fashioned by the people in charge, the corporations and your government. Each week, we cover the stories that are just left out of the US propaganda machine.

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WASHINGTON - October 3 - Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) issued the following statement after voting against the Wall Street bail out plan, H.R. 1424, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008:

"The public is being led to believe that Congress has reconsidered its position because we have before us a better bill than we had a few days ago. It is the same bill plus hundreds of new pages for hundreds of millions of tax breaks. What does this have to do with the troubles of Wall Street?

...Now the government will have to borrow $700 billion from banks, with interest, to give banks a $700 billion bailout, and in return the taxpayers get $700 billion in toxic debt...

Across our Nation, foreclosures continue to devastate our communities, people are losing their jobs, and the prices of necessities are skyrocketing. This legislation, just like the one we defeated last week, will do nothing to solve the problems plaguing American families or help them to get out from underneath the oppressive debt they have been forced to take on."
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2008/10/03-3

-->The NY Times didn't cover Kucinich's statement. Simply not newsworthy when the purpose of the news is to support Wall Street.

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"In 1998, five Cuban men were arrested for infiltrating groups in the US that were plotting attacks on Cuba. They have not received a fair trial and two have not seen their families since...

The five were arrested and effectively accused of espionage. The US government argued that they were acting as foreign agents and should be treated as spies. The five argued that they had been trying to prevent terrorist attacks. A trial was held in Miami in 2001, despite legal objections that they would be unable to get a fair hearing there because anti-Castro sentiment was so rife...

They do, however, enjoy support from a variety of writers, artists and public figures in the US and around the world, including Harry Belafonte, Desmond Tutu, Harold Pinter, Nadine Gordimer, Danny Glover and José Saramago. Amnesty International has called on the US to review the decision to refuse the women visas to visit their husbands."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/06/usa.cuba

-->The NY Times did a report on the Cuban Five in August of 2007. Other than that, the story just doesn't get covered in the US.

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"A new United Nations report on the human rights situation in Palestinian territories blasts the Israeli government for its heavy-handed treatment of journalists reporting on the military occupation.

The 20-page report, which will go before the 63rd sessions of the General Assembly currently underway, singles out the mistreatment of award-winning Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer who was stripped, interrogated, kicked and beaten up when he returned from Europe to his home town in the occupied territory of Gaza last June.

A stringer for Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, Omer, 24, was awarded the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism for "displaying courage and ability in covering war zones"...

The security agents 'were fully aware that he had received the Gellhorn Prize while abroad, and were attempting to confiscate the award money, but were frustrated because it has been deposited in a bank account and was unavailable.'"
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/10/04-3

-->The New York Times rarely covers stories critical of Israel. Even though this is an official UN human rights report, it is simply kept from the American Public.