Thursday, June 24, 2010

Fantasyland Media:

http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

Each week, we cover the stories that are just left out of the US propaganda machine. News that the people in charge, the corporations and your government want keep from the public eye.

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Huffington Post (Sean Miller):
"ACORN Vindicated of Wrongdoing by the Congressional Watchdog Office.
A preliminary probe by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) of ACORN has found no evidence the association or related organizations mishandled the $40 million in federal money they received in recent years. A review of grants by nine federal agencies found no problems with ACORN's grants. In my book Seeds of Change I document how ACORN, the largest most successful national anti poverty organization in America, was forced to close its door.
The GAO interviewed and obtained documentation from grant program managers and staff from nine agencies...
The GAO, an independent, nonpartisan agency that works for Congress, is often called the 'congressional watchdog.' It investigates how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars." 
-->How many stories did The NY Times do about right wing charges against Acorn? Enough stories to think that our newspaper of record would have printed at least one article about how all the charges were proven to be false by the GAO.
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On June 22, Fresh Air did a segment on Gaza featuring Lawrence Wright (author of "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11). The interview with Wright, while it showed a new direction in Pentagon thinking about Gaza, also showed the extent of manipulation and misrepresentation that remains in US foreign policy.
Wright acknowledges the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, and that's the breakthrough. What's left is the basic assumption that the entire problem comes from the hatred and distrust between two ethnic identities. Time and time again, the role of the US is completely left out. According to Wright, Hamas overthrew Fatah in Gaza; there was no mention of the Fatah coup that was backed by the US and Israel. Egypt keeps the blockade of Gaza in force because it fears Islamic fundamentalism. US aid to Egypt is simply not brought up.  
Wright frames the suffering as equal on both sides. And the responsibility for all this suffering? Here is the most intractable part. The occupation, the ethnic cleansing, the racist dehumanizing that is at the core of apartheid Israel simply doesn't exist. Peace will be hard to achieve because the two sides hate each other. Not because one side, backed by the world's only superpower, has all the weaponry, and little if any respect for human rights or international law.
The fact that Hamas asked for a thousand prisoners in exchange for one IDF soldier held captive in Gaza was turned into a questioning of why Palestinians value their lives so much less than Israelis value theirs. Why bring up the over 10,000 Palestinians languishing in Israeli jails? This is just Fresh Air/NPR reporting with the same old pro-Israeli blinders on.
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UN News Center:
A three-member United Nations body has called for an end to human rights violations by Israel in the occupied territories of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the Syrian Golan Heights, after hearing from dozens of witnesses during a recent visit to the region.
'The testimonies that we have heard attest to a failure to address the long-standing pattern of serious violations of human rights,' said Ambassador Palitha Kohona of Sri Lanka, who serves as Chairman of the UN Special Committee on Israeli Practices in the Occupied Territories.
'Victims of the systematic and often arbitrary restrictions on human rights and basic freedoms have the right to see justice prevail,' he added. 'Violations must cease.' "
-->Imagine if a UN commission made the same statements about Iran? The NY Times would have put them on the front page to build support for the pending US attack. But since the commission is about Israeli war crimes, the story didn't get printed.