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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Inter Press Service:
"NEW YORK - Two of the nation's most influential human rights organizations have filed a lawsuit challenging the government's authority to carry out 'targeted killings' of U.S. citizens located far from any armed conflict zone.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) charge that the authority contemplated by the Obama administration is far broader than what the Constitution and international law allow.
The organizations claim that, 'outside of armed conflict, both the Constitution and international law prohibit targeted killing except as a last resort to protect against concrete, specific, and imminent threats of death or serious physical injury. An extrajudicial killing policy under which names are added to CIA and military kill lists through a secret executive process and stay there for months at a time is plainly not limited to imminent threats.' "
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/08/31-6
-->The NY Times discussed these issues in an Aug. 3 article, but has yet to report this lawsuit. The assassination of US citizens without trial should be the biggest story of the year. But most Americans seem unaware that their Constitutional rights are slipping away under President Obama. It is not something they see on TV or read about in the press.
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Guardian/UK:
"Dozens of Israeli actors, playwrights and directors have signed a letter refusing to take part in productions by leading theatre companies at a new cultural centre in a West Bank settlement, prompting renewed debate over the legitimacy of artistic boycott.
More than 60 have joined the protest over plans by Israel's national theatre, the Habima, and other leading companies to stage performances in Ariel, a settlement 12 miles inside the West Bank. The letter, to Israel's culture minister, Limor Livnat, says the new centre for performing arts in Ariel, which is due to open in November after 20 years in construction, would 'strengthen the settlement enterprise'.
'We want to express our dismay with the intention of the theatres' managements to perform in the new auditorium in Ariel and hereby declare that we will refuse to perform in the city, as in any other settlement.' Israel's theatre companies should 'pursue their prolific activity inside the sovereign territory of the state of Israel within the boundaries of the Green Line.' "
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/29/actors-boycott-west-bank-theatre
-->Israeli actors boycotting the West Bank because of illegal settlements? The story appeared in some readers' letters, but not as an actual story in our newspaper of record.
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In These Times:
"Like other workers around the country, employees say they're getting squeezed. They're expected to do more with less: fewer supplies, fewer breaks, and less money. Like the vast majority of American workers, they're not unionized. Company-wide profits, however, seem to be doing okay.
But in a move rarely seen since the Great Depression, Embassy Suites workers went on strike early this month over alleged lost wages. Although as nonunion workers they had few legal rights to protect their actions, they were united and angry. On August 9, workers walked off the job and formed a picket line at the hotel's entrance.
It was the latest in a series of bold actions by workers affiliated with UNITE HERE, the hotel workers union, this summer. In May, organizers at the Hyatt Regency Chicago were denied access to hotels to speak with workers; in response, the workers staged a brief wildcat walkout.
Last month, almost a thousand UNITE HERE workers and community supporters were arrested in civil disobedience actions around the country—many in cities where such actions had not occurred for decades—against the Hyatt corporation. And now the Embassy workers in Irvine walked off the job despite a lack of union recognition."
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/08/26-2
-->Unions beginning to fight back when American workers are being screwed? Just like they did during the last Great Depression? Readers of the NY Times will never be made aware of corporations cheating workers in the US, or of union and nonunion employees fighting back. It didn't cover this story.
