Thursday, February 16, 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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Guardian UK:
"Leak exposes how Heartland Institute works to undermine climate science. The inner workings of a libertarian thinktank working to discredit the established science on climate change have been exposed by a leak of confidential documents detailing its strategy and fundraising networks...
The scheme includes spending $100,000 on commissioning an alternative curriculum for schoolchildren that will cast doubt on global warming...
The papers indicate that discrediting established climate science remains a core mission of the organization, which has received support from a network of wealthy individuals – including the Koch oil billionaires as well as corporations such as Microsoft and RJR Tobacco."
-->A quick review of The NY Times reveals remarkably positive coverage of the Heartland Institute over the past year. This story, a negative look at how big corporations and the Heartland Institute are accelerating the destruction of our climate, was not printed. 
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The NY Times:
The NY Times Book Review had an article about Tony Judt's last book, "Thinking and the Twentieth Century." The review, however, revealed much more about our newspaper of record than about Judt's writing.
The review starts by straightforwardly presenting Judt's criticism of Israel and the Israeli lobby. Then comes the surprising commentary: "This public persona is unfortunate because it obscures a much more interesting figure." No explanation of why his criticism of Israel makes Judt somehow less "interesting."  
Further on we get another odd judgement. "The prolonged discussion of public intellectuals toward the end of the book shows off Judt's least pleasant side." The reviewer soon makes clear just what he finds so unpleasant. 
"All of these characteristics come out in the above-mentioned critique of Israel...(Judt) seems to think that his own Jewishness and fact that he lived in Israel a one point give him the authority to be as morally obtuse in return." 
So Judt's analysis of Israel, according to the reviewer, makes him less interesting, unpleasant, and morally obtuse. No doubt the reviewer, Francis Fukuyama, felt personally insulted by some of Judt's comments about NY Times intellectuals being among the "ignorant at best, and willing dupes of power at the worst." But the review is about more than Fukuyama's grudge. It is about The NY Times as purveyor of Zionist propaganda. Judt must be discredited because of his views on Israel.
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Guardian UK:
"A French court has declared the US biotech giant Monsanto guilty of chemical poisoning of a French farmer, a judgment that could lend weight to other health claims against pesticides.
In the first such case heard in court in France, the grain grower Paul Francois, 47, said he suffered neurological problems including memory loss, headaches and stammering after inhaling Monsanto's Lasso weedkiller in 2004. He blames Monsanto for not providing adequate warnings on the product label.
The ruling was given by a court in Lyon, south-east France, which ordered an expert opinion of Francois's losses to establish the amount of damages.
'It is a historic decision in so far as it is the first time that a pesticide maker is found guilty of such a poisoning,' Francois Lafforgue, Francois's lawyer, told Reuters."
-->Another favorite of The NY Times is Monsanto, probably the worst corporation on the planet. True to form, The NY Times did not print this story, although it is a historic first in making pesticide makers responsible for their deadly poisons.