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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"No less than in Vietnam several decades ago, the prospects for a military victory in Afghanistan are extremely slim. Far more likely is a protracted version of what CBS anchor Walter Cronkite famously called 'a bloody stalemate' in February 1968. But, in 2008, more important than whether the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan can bring 'victory' is the question of whether it should continue.

Right now, the basic ingredients of further Afghan disasters are in place -- including, pivotally, a dire lack of wide-ranging debate over Washington's options. In an atmosphere reminiscent of 1965, when almost all of the esteemed public voices concurred with the decision by newly elected President Lyndon Johnson to deploy more troops to Vietnam, the tenet that the United States must send additional troops to Afghanistan is axiomatic in U.S. news media, on Capitol Hill and -- as far as can be discerned -- at the top of the incoming administration.

But the problem with such a foreign-policy 'no brainer' is that the parameters of thinking have already been put in the rough equivalent of a lockbox. Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara and Lyndon Johnson approached Vietnam policy options no more rigidly than Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates and Barack Obama appear poised to pursue Afghanistan policy options. Such destructive group-think, including wonkish faith in the efficacy of massive violence, caused Martin Luther King Jr. to denounce what he called 'the madness of militarism'."
Norman Solomon
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2008/12/05-4

-->The lack of debate in the US media about Afghanistan is deafening. We are told about military problems, but there is hardly a voice questioning why we continue to occupy a country that does not want us there.

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"Israel's leading civil rights organization yesterday broke a taboo by describing Israeli policies in the occupied West Bank as being “reminiscent of apartheid” in South Africa.

Alleging an intensification of human rights abuses against Palestinians, the respected Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) made the comparison in an annual report that described the existence of separate legal, planning and transportation systems for Jewish settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank..."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/civil-rights-group-claim-israeli-occupation-is-reminiscent-of-apartheid-1056546.html

-->The NY Times recently printed a story about the West Bank and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. The word "apartheid" was nowhere to be found.

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"Why didn't Jimmy Carter speak from the podium at the Democratic National Convention? Alan Dershowitz said he had something to do with it.

In an interview with Shalom TV, the Harvard Law School professor says he "pushed" Barack Obama "very hard to make that decision," Dershowitz said in an interview with Shalom TV. "Barack Obama had to make a choice between his Jewish supporters and his anti-Israel supporters like Jimmy Carter, and he did not choose Jimmy Carter. And that was an embarrassment for Jimmy Carter and a show of disrespect."
JTA, Jewish Telegraphic Agency
http://blogs.jta.org/politics/article/2008/11/13/1000960/ders

-->No news service in the US besides Democracy Now has ever covered the story behind former President Jimmy Carter being taken off the speakers' list for the Democratic National Convention. The story is still very newsworthy, of course. But letting the American people know about the power of the Zionist lobby would just raise too many questions. Meanwhile the starving of 1.5 million in Gaza is routinely hidden from US citizens.

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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UNGA President calls for sanctions against Israeli apartheid...Miguel díEscoto Brockmann, President of the United Nations General Assembly had the following to say about Palestine:

"...I believe that the failure to create a Palestinian State as promised is the single greatest failure in the history of the United Nations. It has been 60 years since some 800,000 Palestinians were driven out of their homes and property, becoming refugees and an uprooted and marginalized people

...As I speak here today, almost 1.5 millions Palestinians are enduring an unprecedented blockade of the Gaza Strip. All border crossings into Gaza are closed, blocking even the delivery of emergency humanitarian relief supplied by the United Nations. Lack of fuel is plunging the population into darkness and cold; basic medicines are running out; malnutrition is chronic and peoples' coping mechanisms are being exhausted."
http://stopthewall.org/worldwideactivism/1787.shtml

-->The NY Times doesn't cover such talk about Israel, even when it is a speech given by the President of the United Nations General Assembly. Censoring news about Israel has long been a priority of our American "newspaper of record."

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Global warming is for ever, some of the world's top climate scientists have concluded. Their research shows that carbon dioxide emitted from today's homes, cars and factories will continue to heat up the planet for hundreds of thousands of years...

The new research will add to the pressure on ministers at home and abroad to take radical steps. And it will add urgency to attempts to find ways of removing excess carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere, as well as trying to prevent further emissions.

It comes as a shock because most governments, and even many scientists, have assumed that carbon dioxide emissions would work their way out of the atmosphere in about a century, enabling it to clean itself fairly rapidly once the world switched to clean sources of energy...

Tomorrow's report by the Climate Change Committee – chaired by Lord Turner, who also heads the Financial Services Authority – is expected to discourage the construction of new coal-fired stations
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/greenhouse-gases-will-heat-up-planet-for-ever-1041642.html

-->Luckily, if you read The NY Times, you don't have to worry about these dire consequences of carbon dioxide. Global warming forever didn't make it into "all the news that's fit to print." Are there corporate links between the NY Times and the coal burning industry in the US? Links like the ones that distort reporting about nuclear energy?

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"JERUSALEM - International journalists based in Israel appealed to the country's Supreme Court on Monday to overturn a government decision barring foreign correspondents from entering the Gaza Strip.

The Foreign Press Association filed the court petition against the military's Gaza commander, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit after the government failed to heed a letter signed by heads of the world's largest news organizations calling for the ban to be lifted.

The court petition charged the media ban constitutes "a grave and mortal blow against freedom of the press and other basic rights and gives the unpleasant feeling that the state of Israel has something to hide." It requested an urgent hearing."
http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2008/11/24/foreign_press_in_israel_fight_gaza_entry_ban/

-->At least one foreign newspaper, however, wasn't much interested in being kept out of Gaza. The NY Times didn't even report about the petition filed by the Foreign Press Association.

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Adam Sargant, John Sargent
WorthBroadcasting Administrators