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 to keep from the public eye.
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Agence France-Presse (AFP):
"US authorities' treatment of WikiLeaks suspect Private Bradley Manning was 'cruel and degrading,' the UN special rapporteur on torture Juan Ernesto Mendez said Monday.
'I believe Bradley Manning was subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in the excessive and prolonged isolation he was put in during the eight months he was in Quantico,' he told AFP, referring to the US military prison near Washington.
Mendez said that 'fortunately' the alleged mistreatment ended when Manning was transferred from Quantico to another prison in Kansas.
'But the explanation I was given for those eight months was not convincing for me,' he said, speaking on the sidelines of a UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva."
-->No coverage of this in print by The NY Times. It is not easy covering up US human rights violations, but our newspaper of record does what it can by simply not reporting the worst of our government's treatment of political prisoners.
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Common Dreams:
"In the wake of the financial crisis of 2008 and the recession that followed, huge numbers of US workers lost their jobs, homes were lost to foreclosure, and most found themselves in the most precarious economic shape of their lives. Now, in a new report, evidence shows that as an economic recovery (slight as it was) appeared on the scene, nearly all of it went, not to those struggling, but to the very wealthiest of Americans, many of whom helped lead the economy off the cliff in the first place.
According to a new report, nearly 93% of the economic gains made from 2009 to 2010 went to the wealthiest 1% of Americans. 'Top 1% incomes grew by 11.6% while bottom 99% incomes grew only by 0.2%. Hence, the top 1% captured 93% of the income gains in the first year of recovery,' reads the report by Emmanuel Saez titled Striking It Richer: The Evolution of Top Incomes in the United States."
-->A version of this story appeared in the The International Herald Tribune, published by The NY Times. Strange that this story about US income inequality would only be published for readers in the rest of the world.
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Common Dreams:
"The Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) has confirmed that a series of earthquakes in the state were caused by injecting leftover fracking fluids, 'brine,' deep into wells.
The ODNR report notes that in 2011, the Youngstown, Ohio area experienced 12 'low-level seismic events,' and that the 2011 earthquakes were unique because of their proximity to a deep disposal well, known as Northstar 1, used to inject fracking fluids.
The report adds that 'before 2011, [Ohio Seismic Network] had not recorded earthquake activity with epicenters located in the Youngstown area.'
...With more than 144,000 Class II wells injecting more than 2 billion gallons of leftover fracking fluids every day in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Ohio’s Class II disposal well regulations meeting or exceeding EPA regulations, questions linger about the potential for fracking-induced earthquakes elsewhere."
-->Questions may indeed linger about the safety of fracking, but they don't concern The NY Times, which didn't cover this story. The big money is on bringing fracking to NY State, and big money dictates what gets printed.
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Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter:
"...It is bad enough when the party known as 'labor's friend' ignores past injustices, or even refuses to act on a labor priority (such as the Employee Free Choice Act). It's another matter when Democratic votes make it possible to perpetrate new anti-labor injuries, as took place Feb. 6 when the Senate passed the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization bill over union objections.
The worst part of the new legislation weakened bargaining rights for workers in the aviation and rail industries by increasing from 35% to 50% the number of worker signatures required to allow an election for union recognition. It was strongly backed by the airline industry.
Senate Democrats called the final version of the bill the best 'compromise' possible with the reactionary House measure. 'That’s a step back, not a compromise,' commented International Association of Machinists president Tom Buffenbarger, a sentiment shared by many unions..."
-->The NY Times doesn't do stories about the Democrats attacking labor rights.
