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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Aljazeera:
"The cold war ended two decades ago, but dreams of an impenetrable missile shield from Ronald Reagan - who once called the Soviet Union an "evil empire" - are firmly back on the US national security agenda.
Late on Wednesday, the US tested its newest round of interceptors, spending $100m to blast a missile from the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean towards California.
The anti-ballistic missile system failed, as the kill vehicle designed to blow the projectile out of the sky missed its target, adding to a long-list of unsuccessful tests for the expensive weaponisation scheme.
Since the end of the cold war the US has spent 'approximately $100bn' on missile defence systems, Richard Lehner, a spokesman for the Missile Defence Agency, told Al Jazeera.
Wednesday’s failed long-range test was important because it involved an attempt to intercept a dummy warhead, rather than the usual testing scheme of just maneuvering the missile to a particular point in space, said Ian Anthony, the research coordinator for the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, a think-tank in Sweden."
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2010/12/20101217172028248218.html
-->The NY Times gave a brief history of US missile defense efforts in November. The story didn't mention the complete failure of such systems to intercept incoming missiles, and the huge cost borne by the American people. And our newspaper of record made no mention of this latest failure.
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The Guardian, UK
"The United Nations is investigating a complaint on behalf of Bradley Manning that he is being mistreated while held since May in US Marine Corps custody pending trial. The army private is charged with the unauthorised use and disclosure of classified information, material related to the WikiLeaks, and faces a court martial sometime in 2011.
The office of Manfred Nowak, special rapporteur on torture based in Geneva, received the complaint from a Manning supporter; his office confirmed that it was being looked into. Manning's supporters say that he is in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day; this could be construed as a form of torture. This month visitors reported that his mental and physical health was deteriorating...
In an interview with MSNBC, Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, described Manning as a political prisoner and called on human rights organisations to investigate."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/23/un-treatment-leaks-bradley-manning
-->No mention by The New York Times of the UN investigation of Bradley Manning's mistreatment. The victims of the US police state are off limits when it comes to all the news that's fit to print.
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Miami Herald:
"It was three months into Barack Obama's presidency, and the administration -- under pressure to do something about alleged abuses in Bush-era interrogation policies -- turned to a Florida senator to deliver a sensitive message to Spain:
Don't indict former President George W. Bush's legal brain trust for alleged torture in the treatment of war on terror detainees, warned Mel Martinez on one of his frequent trips to Madrid. Doing so would chill U.S.-Spanish relations.
Rather than a resolution, though, a senior Spanish diplomat gave the former GOP chairman and housing secretary a lesson in Spain's separation of powers. 'The independence of the judiciary and the process must be respected,' then-acting Foreign Minister Angel Lossada replied on April 15, 2009."
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/25/v-fullstory/1988286/wikileaks-how-us-tried-to-stop.html#ixzz19YeC4vgg
-->The NT Times didn't cover this Wikileaks story. Maybe it put Barak Obama in too bad a light. Maybe it showed the US empire doesn't give a damn about human rights.
