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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"Financial workers at Wall Street's top banks are to receive pay deals worth more than $70bn (£40bn), a substantial proportion of which is expected to be paid in discretionary bonuses, for their work so far this year - despite plunging the global financial system into its worst crisis since the 1929 stock market crash, the Guardian has learned.
Staff at six banks including Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are in line to pick up the payouts despite being the beneficiaries of a $700bn bail-out from the US government that has already prompted criticism. The government's cash has been poured in on the condition that excessive executive pay would be curbed.
Pay plans for bankers have been disclosed in recent corporate statements. Pressure on the US firms to review preparations for annual bonuses increased yesterday when Germany's Deutsche Bank said many of its leading traders would join Josef Ackermann, its chief executive, in waiving millions of euros in annual payouts."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/oct/17/executivesalaries-banking
-->Bailout going to corporate cronies at Wall Street's top banks? Enormous bonuses for those who created the economic collapse? The NY Times didn't think this story was newsworthy. It was covered in the Guardian, UK.
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Last Wednesday night Americans waited for presidential candidates, Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, to take the stage at Hofstra University for the final debate before the elections. Outside the debate "15 protesters" were arrested, and "one person may have received a minor injury." That, according to the Associated Press.
The truth was considerably different. All those arrested were US veterans, most of whom served at least one tour in Iraq. Anyone looking at pictures of the event can see the bleeding veterans on the ground after being charged and trampled by police horses. At least one veteran had broken bones in his face.
And what if the public had really known about the veterans?
"I have faith in the American people. I believe that a lot of those people sitting at their kitchen table would have reached for the phone to ask their members of Congress why they were looking at an image of a wounded soldier bleeding on a sidewalk in Hempstead, New York in a picture that looks like it came from the streets of Baghdad, Iraq.
The politicians and pundits love to praise our veterans for protecting our way of life and ensuring our liberties. This week Nick and his fellow Iraq veterans sought to exercise those rights. They paid the price. As usual, the mainstream media looked the other way."
Cheryl Biren Wright, of wordpress.com
http://www.ervetsforpeace.blogspot.com/
-->Veterans defending the Constitution and demanding an end to the Iraq occupation? The NY Times doesn't cover such things.
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"In an election year that promises record numbers of young voters, a new report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) documents a large wage and benefit advantage for young workers in unions relative to their non-union counterparts...
'Even though they've done everything right -finished high school and college at higher rates than in the past, young workers have been the hardest hit by stagnant and declining wages over the last 30 years' said John Schmitt, a Senior Economist at CEPR and the author of the study.
The report, 'Unions and Upward mobility for Young Workers,' found that young unionized workers -those age 18 to 29-- earned, on average, 12.4 percent more than their non-union peers. In addition, young workers in unions were much more likely to have health insurance benefits and a pension plan."
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2008/10/16-3
-->The NY Times covered this story, but in the NY Region Section, not in the national news. Much of the NY Times story was not about the benefit of unions. And when the information was finally presented, it was characterized not as fact but as a finding that "groups argue" in favor of (the Center for Economic and Policy Research and the Fiscal Policy Institute).
