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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"On April 24th, an Air France flight from Paris to Mexico had to make an unscheduled stop in Martinique when US air traffic controllers notified the jet that it would not be receiving permission to fly over US airspace. The plane was not en route to the US, just passing over some of it. On board the plane was Colombian Journalist Hernando Calvo Ospina, who works for the French left-wing journal Le Monde Diplomatique and wrote about US involvement in Latin America. Ospina and his publisher said they will sue for compensation.
What makes the whole incident even more interesting is that Air France had only sent its passenger manifest to the Mexicans, but now it is clear that Mexico shares this information with the United States.
Hernando Calvo Ospina has written articles about the United States involvement in Latin America, and is currently writing a book about he CIA. The exact reason for him being on the terrorist watch list is unknown, and we'll probably never know what criteria are used for adding people to it. Air France is considering asking the United States for compensation."
http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=922&Itemid=1
--->The NY Times would never reveal the hubris of the US empire by printing a story like this. How many countries do US planes fly over every day? And what if those countries didn't like what some US passengers were writing in American newspapers? But this is how the rest of the world sees us, in all our imperial ugliness.
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"BigAg Ticked at Michelle Obama's Organic Garden...
Michelle Obama's decision to make her new White House vegetable garden entirely organic has angered America's powerful agribusiness lobby who are urging the First Lady to consider the use of appropriate 'crop protection products.'
Mrs Obama started work on the kitchen garden with a gang of schoolchildren last month. Media coverage of the first White House food plot since Eleanor Roosevelt 'dug for victory' in the Second World War garnered media coverage across the world.
But to the consternation of Big Ag, Mrs Obama has said the project will not use chemical products to tackle pests or give her plants a boost, the Times reports.
Shortly after the digging began, Mrs Obama received a letter from the Mid-America CropLife Association (MACA), which represents the companies producing the pesticides and fertilizers underpinning 'conventional' American agriculture, the paper said."
--->Imagine the presumption of power that corporations have in the US, telling the First Lady to use chemicals in her organic garden! But most Americans don't have to think too much about that, since stories like this are only carried in the foreign press. This one was in the Telegraph in UK.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/04/23-1
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"Clark University canceled a campus talk scheduled for later this month by controversial Holocaust scholar Norman Finkelstein, saying his presence 'would invite controversy and not dialogue or understanding,' and would conflict with a similar event scheduled around the same time.
The Clark University Students for Palestinian Rights, a student-run group on the Worcester campus, had arranged for Finkelstein to speak...
The dispute came to the attention of college administrators after Hillel, a Jewish campus group, objected to Finkelstein's scheduled appearance...
Finkelstein asserted in his book 'Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History' that Israel uses accusations of anti-Semitism to deflect criticism, a response to Dershowitz's book 'The Case for Israel.'"
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2009/04/10/clark_drops_holocaust_scholar/
--->CounterPunch Magazine calls it the "new campus McCarthyism." In a recent article, this magazine identifies several faculty members who have been targeted as "anti-Israel" and simply blacklisted from speaking or denied tenure. These are smear campaigns orchestrated by the right wing Israeli lobby, a clear threat to academic freedom on today's college campuses. No mention of the new campus McCarthyism, however, in the NY Times. UPDATE: Clark University relented and Dr. Finkelstein was allowed to speak.
