Thursday, August 26, 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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Guardian/UK:
"Jerusalem rail firm planning to segregate carriages along gender lines.
Pressure from city's ultra-orthodox Jews has already led to some bus lines confining women to the rear of vehicles...

Under pressure from the influential and growing ultra-orthodox community, some bus lines in Jerusalem have introduced segregation, with women confined to the rear of the vehicle.

The segregation proposal is the second point of tension between the CityPass consortium and the council within a week. The company earlier distributed a consumer survey asking Jerusalem residents if they were 'bothered' that the light railway is to include stops in Arab neighbourhoods en route to connecting to Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/23/jerusalem-segregated-train-carriages

-->Women's rights under attack in Jerusalem's city center? The NY Times didn't cover this story because it is about Israeli policy, not about Taliban mistreatment. After all, The NY Times has a war to promote, and an imperialist ally to protect. Notice also that stops in Arab neighborhoods were being questioned. Like whites only buses in the deep south during Jim Crow.

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Inter Press Service:
"BOGOTA, Colombia - An unknown number of agribusiness owners and public employees at all levels, as well as far-right paramilitaries, have a common link with rural people who have been forced off their farms or killed in Colombia: the land stolen from the latter group in the armed conflict.

'It was a conspiracy. There were the ones doing the killing, others who would follow behind, buying up the land, and the third wave, who would legalize the new ownership of the land,' said former paramilitary chief Jairo Castillo or 'Pitirri,' who has lived in exile for 10 years and is serving as a key protected witness in the trials of legislators and other political leaders implicated in the 'parapolitics' scandal for their ties to the paramilitary groups."
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/08/22-0


-->Our media rarely covers stories about corruption and death squad murders under governments that the US government supports with billions of military aid. Columbia has received the most such aid in South America, and its human rights record is by for the worst. Yet, most US citizens are never told about this. The Pentagon has dictated that Chavez is the enemy, and publications like The NY Times are all to willing to provide the propaganda.

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Huffinton Post:
"Hamid Karzai: U.S. Taxpayer-Funded Private Contractors Engaging In Terrorist, Mafia-Like Activity...

Afghanistan's embattled president Hamid Karzai said on Sunday that U.S. taxpayers were indirectly funding "mafia-like groups" and terrorist activities with the American government's support of private contractors inside his country.

In a rare U.S. media appearance, Karzai continued to press for the removal of the vast majority of U.S. private contractors by the end of this year. He argued that their continued presence inside Afghanistan was 'an obstruction and impediment' to the country's growth, a massive waste of money, and a catalyst for corruption among Afghan officials."
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/08/22-2

-->The NY Times covered this story, but omitted references to "mafia-like groups" and terrorist activities being conducted by US contractors. In one story, Karzai favors a "four-month phaseout of all private security companies in Afghanistan." No mention of why at all. Another story suggests that Karzai is simply covering up his own corrupt regime by a reference to an "economic Mafia" of private contractors.

Thursday, August 19, 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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"The Israeli human rights group Breaking the Silence has posted more photos of IDF soldiers abusing or humiliating Palestinian prisoners to prove what many of us suspected - that similar pictures posted earlier on Facebook are the norm, not the exception. Israeli activists say such pictures reflect the inevitable dehumanization wrought by the Occupation. More 'trophy' pictures here. Graphic.
'It encapsulates precisely the feeling among soldiers serving in the territories. At some point, they stop seeing these handcuffed people as human beings.' said Yehuda Shaul of Breaking the Silence."
-->The NY Times didn't cover this story of IDF abuse of Palestinian detainees. Stories critical of Israel are often just left out.
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Guardian/UK
"NATO and the United Nations are cautiously considering a Taliban proposal to set up a joint commission to investigate allegations of civilians being killed and wounded in the conflict in Afghanistan, diplomats in Kabul have told the Guardian.
The Taliban overture, which came in a statement posted on its website, will revive a divisive debate about whether to conduct any formal talks with insurgents who are responsible for the majority of civilian casualties in Afghanistan, and whose assassination campaign now kills one person a day on average.
The Taliban statement called for the establishment of a body including members from the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, UN human rights investigators, Nato and the Taliban."
-->The Taliban trying to cooperate with NATO to limit the killing of civilians? That is not something The NY Times would consider helpful to the US war effort.  Instead, we get a front page article on the Taliban stoning a couple to death for infidelity. 
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Haaretz:
"Israel is to deploy three submarines equipped with nuclear cruise missiles in the Persian Gulf, the Sunday Times reported on Sunday.
According to the Times report, one submarine had been sent over Israeli fears that ballistic missiles developed by Iran, and in the possession of Syria and Hezbollah, could be used to hit strategic sites within Israel, such as air bases and missile launchers.
Dolphin, Tekuma, and Leviathan, all German-made Dolphin class submarines of the 7th navy Flotilla, have been reported as frequenting the Gulf in the past, however, according to the Sunday Times report, this new deployment is meant to ensure a permanent naval presence near the Iranian coastline."
-->A nuclear confrontation in the Persian Gulf, brought on by nuclear missiles in Israeli submarines. This is the stuff of nightmares, and thankfully, The NY Times didn't trouble their readers with the story.

Thursday, August 12, 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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Al Jazeera:
"Arab opinion of the United States and its president Barack Obama has dimmed in the past year, while the popularity of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, has skyrocketed, according to an annual survey released by the US-based Brookings Institution on Thursday.
The survey found that a majority of Arabs continue to believe that peace between Israel and the Palestinians will never happen and that - unlike in past years - a larger number are identifying as Muslims, rather than as Arabs or citizens of a particular country.
The poll of nearly 4,000 people, done in conjunction with Zogby International, was conducted between June 29 and July 20 in six Middle Eastern countries...
Of those surveyed, 62 per cent said they had a negative view of Obama, compared with 23 per cent a year ago."
-->Obama very unpopular in the Middle East after his first year as president? A Middle East policy devoted to war and support of Israel already a failure? You wouldn't know it if you depended on The New York Times, which didn't cover the story.
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Guardian/UK:
"The White House was accused today of spinning a government scientific report into the amount of oil left in the Gulf of Mexico from the BP spill which had officials declaring that the vast majority of the oil had been removed.
As BP workers finished pouring cement into the well as a first step to permanently sealing it today, environmental groups and scientists - including those working with government agencies to calculate the scale and effects of the spill - said White House officials had painted far too optimistic a picture of a report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) into the fate of the oil.
'Recent reports seem to say that about 75% of the oil is taken care of and that is just not true,' said John Kessler, of Texas A&M University, who led a National Science Foundation on-site study of the spill. 'The fact is that 50% to 75% of the material that came out of the well is still in the water...' "
-->Obama spinning tales of oil disappearing from the Gulf? Of course he is. He wants a return to offshore drilling to please one of his largest campaign contributors, British Petroleum. The New York Times helped with the coverup by not reporting this story.
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The Independent/UK:
"Dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which was bombarded by US Marines in 2004, exceed those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, according to a new study.
Iraqi doctors in Fallujah have complained since 2005 of being overwhelmed by the number of babies with serious birth defects, ranging from a girl born with two heads to paralysis of the lower limbs. They said they were also seeing far more cancers than they did before the battle for Fallujah between US troops and insurgents.
Their claims have been supported by a survey showing a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait."
-->The New York Times would never carry a story like this. US war crimes are rarely judged to be "fit to print."
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The NY Times:
"There’s a class war coming to the world of government pensions."
  
-->The NY Times printed this story about "class wars" on Aug. 6. Only the classes described in the article were state pensioners versus holders of 401K retirement accounts. No mention was made, of course, of the billionaires and their "tax cuts" so favored by the Republicans and Democrats. A continuation of tax cuts for billionaires would drain the treasury of 700 billion over the next 10 years. Now that is class war, waged by the very rich on everyone else. A war that The NY Times can't bring itself to cover.

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