Friday, January 13, 2012

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 New York Times:
"Thanks to a $5 million donation from a wealthy casino owner, a group supporting Newt Gingrich plans to place advertisements in South Carolina this week attacking Mitt Romney as a predatory capitalist..."
-->But just who would that casino owner be, and why did he give millions to Gingrich? The NY Times furnishes his name, Sheldon Adelson, nine paragraphs later, and in paragraph 26, gives a hint about his motivation. Adelson, according to The NY Times, is a "supporter of conservative causes, including the Republican Jewish Coalition." 
The NY Times corrected this omission the following day with a long article about Adelson's right wing Zionist connections and Gingrich's statements about   Palestinians being an “invented" people. We are left wondering about the political pressures behind these two very different "news" stories. 
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Guardian, UK:
"Palestinian Sesame Street falls victim to US Congress. With its colourful band of Muppets preaching tolerance and neighbourly love, the Palestinian version of the children's television programme Sesame Street had become a beacon of hope for children in a region ravaged by decades of unrest.
But the cast of peace-loving characters have now found themselves in the crossfire of a political dispute between Palestinian leaders and the US Congress, and episodes have been axed for 2012.
Sesame Street – known as Shara'a Simsim in Arabic – is one of many US-funded Palestinian shows suffering after Congress froze the transfer of nearly £130m to the US Agency for International Development in October. The suspension aimed to punish the Palestinians for appealing to the United Nations for membership."
-->Not a word of this story in The NY Times, although a few newspapers in the US did report it. Our newspaper of record does not like to highlight Congress' slavish support of apartheid Israel. 
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The New York Times:
"Iraq Turns Justice Into a Show, and Terror Confessions a Script...But to many Westerners, the rituals are inflammatory and even illegal, symptoms of a politically tainted justice system that still relies on confessions, many coerced, as much as physical evidence despite millions in American aid and legal training programs."
-->Despite all that American aid and legal training, Iraq is still relying on coerced confessions as opposed to physical evidence? Outrageous and barbaric! Of course, the US has kept prisoners for ten years without trial, and tortured them into making confessions. Those confessions are to be used if these prisoners ever come to trial, along with secret evidence and restricted access to legal counsel. None of this stops The NY Times from making pompous statements about the superiority of the US justice system.