Friday, October 28, 2011

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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NPR:
"Villagers in Afghanistan say they were forced to walk ahead of Afghan and U.S. Soldiers along roads in areas believed to be mined by the Taliban.

National Public Radio reports villagers said the Afghan and U.S. troops pulled them from their homes one evening in early September and forced them to walk in front of the troops for more than a mile in the Panjwai district, southwest of Kandahar city.
No one was injured, but if the incident happened, it would appear to violate the Geneva Conventions governing treatment of civilians, NPR said."
http://www.military.com/news/article/report-us-afghan-troops-forced-locals-to-walk-mined-road.html

-->The only recent mention of the Panjwai district in The NY Times is an op-ed article written by an Army Special Forces major and a visiting fellow at the Center for a New American Security. The title of his piece is "This War Can Still Be Won."

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Minnesota Independent:
"President Obama’s 2012 campaign has a new senior adviser — a former lobbyist for the company pushing the Keystone XL pipeline, who also lobbied for Comcast throughout the period that the media conglomerate was seeking approval for its merger with NBC-Universal.

The campaign hired Broderick Johnson of the lobbying firm Bryan Cave LLP this week. According to U.S. House of Representatives records, Johnson lobbied to 'support submission of a presidential permit for Keystone XL pipeline' in the final quarter of 2010.

Environmentalists are upset with the pipeline and with Pres. Barack Obama’s unwillingness to reconsider the project."
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/25-5

-->The NY Time's coverage of this appointment was all about Mr. Johnson's wife temporarily leaving NPR. Mr. Johnson was described as an "ear to the ground for the campaign’s political and constituency operations.” What pipeline lobbying?

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Globe and Mail:
"WINTERTHUR, Switzerland - Here’s a gift to Occupy Wall Street protesters around the world: you now have scholarly proof that banks control the world.

Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, also known as ETH, have published a paper that argues just 147 companies account for a large chunk of the total economic value of all the transnational companies around the world. No exact dollar figures, but it’s obviously a vast sum.

Among the top 50 corporations, 45 operate within the financial industry. Barclays PLC is the most powerful, according to the ETH study, followed by such well-known names as JPMorgan Chase & Co., UBS AG, and Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. The United States takes home first prize with 24 companies cracking the researchers’ top 50 list"
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/25-2

-->The NY Times, a staunch supporter of the rich as well as the international banking system that serves them, would never print a story like this.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

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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Citizens for Legitimate Government:
"The United States has deployed hundreds of troops along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan's tribal region, Press TV reported. Reinforced with gunships and heavy weaponry, some 500 of the forces had been stationed near Afghanistan's border with Pakistan's North Waziristan region, a senior Pakistani government official told our correspondent on condition of anonymity on Sunday. The official went on to explain that the motive behind the move was yet unknown, but that the deployment could be part of a military drill to later launch a ground assault against the Taliban-allied Haqqani network of militants."
http://www.legitgov.org/US-mobilizes-forces-along-Pakistan-border

-->Another country about to get invaded by US forces. Obama has spread his "War on Terror" into so many countries that counting them becomes a chore. And the job of The NY Times has been, as always, to hide these attacks before they happen, and then to create public support once US troops go in. The NY Times did not cover this story.

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Guardian UK:
"Israel plans new settlement of 2,600 that will isolate Arab East Jerusalem. Britain, the EU and the UN condemn Israel's decision as provocative and a further threat to the peace process"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/16/israel-settlement-isolate-arab-jerusalem

-->Isabel Kershner's article in The NY Times, described these settlement plans as "awkwardly timed," and went on to describe Netanyahu's reasoning for building in Arab East Jerusalem. Then came a paragraph by the spokeswoman for Israel’s Interior Ministry. No mention of Britain, the EU, or the UN condemning the new settlements.

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The NY Times:
"President Obama said Friday that he had ordered the deployment of 100 armed military advisers to central Africa to help regional forces combat the Lord’s Resistance Army, a notorious renegade group that has terrorized villagers in at least four countries with marauding bands that kill, rape, maim and kidnap with impunity.

The deployment represents a muscular escalation of American military efforts to help fight the Lord’s Resistance Army, which originated as a Ugandan rebel force in the 1980s and morphed into a fearsome cultlike group of fighters. It is led by Joseph Kony, a self-proclaimed prophet known for ordering village massacres, recruiting prepubescent soldiers, keeping harems of child brides and mutilating opponents."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/15/world/africa/barack-obama-sending-100-armed-advisers-to-africa-to-help-fight-lords-resistance-army.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=us%20troops%20uganda&st=cse

-->The NY Times has identified another Hitler like monster in Central Africa. Send in the US Troops! Turns out there has been a lot of oil discovered in Uganda, but why include that in any NY Times analysis? The empire only wages war for the most idealistic of reasons, at least according to our newspaper of record.

Friday, October 14, 2011

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 NY Times:
"A man named Hero was here. So was Germ. There was the waitress from the dim sum restaurant in Evanston, Ill. And the liquor store worker. The Google consultant. The circus performer. The Brooklyn nanny.

The hodgepodge Lower Manhattan encampment known as Occupy Wall Street has no appointed leaders, no expiration date for its rabble-rousing stay and still-evolving goals and demands. Yet its two weeks of noisy occupation has lured a sturdily faithful and fervent constituency willing to express discontentment with what they feel is an inequitable financial system until, well, whenever.

They arrived by design and desire. Or by sheer serendipity."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/nyregion/wall-street-occupiers-protesting-till-whenever.html?_r=1&scp=7&sq=wall%20street%20protest&st=cse

-->Nothing like The NY Times for smug condescension. Our newspaper of record has refined it to a fine art when reporting on any social movement that questions the dominance of the filthy rich and Wall Street. This story is not news; it is propaganda for the ruling class.

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Guardian UK:
"Occupy Wall Street protest: NYPD accused of heavy-handed tactics Force criticised by protesters, who claim they were deliberately led on to road before being penned in and arrested

The New York police department has come under criticism for heavy-handed tactics during the Occupy Wall Street march over Brooklyn bridge, after more than 700 protesters were held for several hours.

Activists, as well as commentators following the protest against inequality and corporate excess, claim the response of the city's police force to the peaceful event was vastly out of proportion. Almost 1,000 people have been arrested in two weeks – substantially more than the number of financiers who led the world into the 2008 economic meltdown.

As Salman Rushdie put it in a tweet: 'The world's economy has been wrecked by these rapacious traders. Yet it is the protesters who are jailed.' "
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/02/occupy-wall-street-nypd-tactics

-->Newspapers in other countries often do not serve the elites. And how much more news their readers actually get. First The NY Times avoided any stories of the Wall Street movement. Then came the ridicule. Readers of The NY Times should know what comes next: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” -Mahatma Gandhi

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River Keeper
"New York Dept. of Environmental Conservation's Rush to Fracking Continues with Release of Draft Regulations. DEC retracts previous commitment to allow fracking environmental review to inform draft regulations.

This week, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (“DEC”) released draft regulations for industrial gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale by means of high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”  These come on the heels of DEC’s Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (“SGEIS”) on fracking released earlier this month.

A core principle of the state’s environmental review statute is for environmental reviews to inform draft regulations...By issuing regulations at the same time as the SGEIS, DEC is depriving the public of the right to have their input on the mitigation measures suggested in the SGEIS fully considered before the agency proposes the regulations that would implement them.
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2011/09/30

-->The NY Times didn't cover this story which involves the DEC's capitulation to the fracking industry.