Thursday, February 26, 2009

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.

---------

"Binyam Mohamed will return to Britain suffering from a huge range of injuries after being beaten by US guards right up to the point of his departure from Guantánamo Bay, according to the first detailed accounts of his treatment inside the camp.

Mohamed will arrive back tomorrow in the UK, where he was a British resident between 1984 and 2002. During medical examinations last week, doctors discovered injuries and ailments resulting from apparently brutal treatment in detention.

Mohamed was found to be suffering from bruising, organ damage, stomach complaints, malnutrition, sores to feet and hands, severe damage to ligaments as well as profound emotional and psychological problems..."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/22/binyam-mohamed-injuries

--->The NY Times doesn't like to talk about prisoners being beaten in Guantanamo. Makes America look bad. So in its role as chief propaganda agent of the US, the story of Binyam Mohamed injuries did not get printed. Instead there was this: "A Pentagon report requested by President Obama on the conditions at the Guantánamo Bay detention center concluded that the prison complies with the humane-treatment requirements of the Geneva Conventions." How reassuring.

---------

"Obama is maintaining a hostile policy towards Hugo Chávez – which will cost the US friendships elsewhere in Latin America...

Obama started off with an unprovoked verbal assault on Venezuela. In an interview broadcast by the Spanish-language television station Univision on the Sunday before his inauguration, he accused Hugo Chávez of having 'impeded progress in the region' and 'exporting terrorist activities'.

These remarks were unusually hostile and threatening even by the previous administration's standards. They are also untrue and diametrically opposed to the way the rest of the region sees Venezuela. The charge that Venezuela is 'exporting terrorism' would not pass the laugh test among almost any government in Latin America.

José Miguel Insulza, the Chilean president of the Organisation of American States, was speaking for almost all the countries in the hemisphere when he told the US Congress last year that 'there is no evidence' and that no member country, including the US, had offered 'any such proof' that Venezuela supported terrorist groups.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/02/19-13

--->Hostile remarks towards Venezuela? In the never-never land of the NY Times, Obama's remarks didn't happen. According the NY Times, "The Obama administration so far has toned down its approach to dealing with Venezuela," despite the fact that Chavez's recent victory "creates a new foreign policy challenge for the Obama administration, strengthening a leader who has made a career of taunting and deriding the United States."

---------

"CARACAS, Venezuela — This country’s small Jewish community was already on edge when vandals painted anti-Semitic epithets on the walls of Jewish institutions and businesses last month after President Hugo Chávez cut ties with Israel and called on Jews here to support his description of Israel’s leaders as a 'government of assassins.'

But another episode, the break-in and desecration of a Sephardic synagogue on Jan. 31, intensified the uncertainty among Jews here. Officials are also putting pressure on Jewish leaders to retract criticism of Mr. Chávez regarding the attack and to accept the government’s explanation of it as a simple robbery by corrupt members of the intelligence and municipal police forces.

'The atmosphere of intimidation is terrifying,' said Rabbi Pynchas Brener, 77, a prominent Ashkenazi leader and an outspoken critic of Mr. Chávez’s government. 'We do not know when this pressure will start to ease up.'"

--->But this NY Times story about anti-Semitism raises more questions than answers. For example, it never covered this interesting bit of information carried by the Israel National News:

"Rabbi's Personal Bodyguard behind Caracas Synagogue Attack...A former security guard who was responsible for protecting a Caracas rabbi has been charged with using his knowledge to help stage the January 31 attack on the house of worship where the rabbi officiated.

Venezuelan minister Tareck el Aissami said that the man and one other guard cut electricity cables to the synagogue's electronic fence, allowing more than a dozen others, including eight policemen, to attack the synagogue without touching off the alarm system...

Aissami said it was clear that the attack was an inside job because there was no evidence of a break-in. He added that the vandals were trying to implicate the Chavez government several weeks after he broke off diplomatic relations with Israel to protest Operation 'Cast Lead' against Gaza terrorists."
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/SendMail.aspx?print=print&type=0&item=129876