Thursday, May 31, 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 to keep from the public eye.

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Salon.com:
"Virtually every time the U.S. fires a missile from a drone and ends the lives of Muslims, American media outlets dutifully trumpet in headlines that the dead were 'militants' – even though those media outlets literally do not have the slightest idea of who was actually killed. They simply cite always-unnamed 'officials' claiming that the dead were 'militants.' It’s the most obvious and inexcusable form of rank propaganda: media outlets continuously propagating a vital claim without having the slightest idea if it’s true.
This practice continues even though key Obama officials have been caught lying, a term used advisedly, about how many civilians they’re killing. I’ve written and said many times before that in American media discourse, the definition of 'militant' is any human being whose life is extinguished when an American missile or bomb detonates (that term was even used when Anwar Awlaki’s 16-year-old American son, Abdulrahman, was killed by a U.S. drone in Yemen two weeks after a drone killed his father, even though nobody claims the teenager was anything but completely innocent: 'Another U.S. Drone Strike Kills Militants in Yemen')."
-->Glenn Greenwald also takes the media to task for absurd logic. Since every person killed by a drone attack is a militant by definition, there are no civilian casualties. 
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Haaretz:
"The sudden economic crash in several southern European countries: Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain as well as Ireland (sometime called the PIIGS, a rather dubious and perjorative name); is commonly blamed on lazy workers, a bloated social security system and unwise borrowings by greedy governments. This is why lenders like the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are now asking these governments to cut social spending (austerity measures) and pay ever higher interest rates, despite the fact that only serves to make the situation worse...
In reality, a large chunk of the bailouts are for debts created by private banks in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain borrowing abroad – for speculative real estate schemes and such like - not by shopkeepers, small entrepreneurs and ordinary citizens. And a surprisingly big chunk of the rash loans were handed out by private (and some public) banks in just four countries: France, Germany, the UK and Belgium (in that order).
Peter Böfinger, an economic advisor to the German government, put his finger on it when he told Der Spiegel last year: '[The bailouts] are first and foremost not about the problem countries but about our own banks, which hold high amounts of credit there.' "
-->Why can't our mainstream media present this simple analysis of the Euro crisis? Because it doesn't support the deficit reduction fever gripping our politicians in Washington. Turns out that the banks in Europe were too big to fail too, and the workers ended up paying the price for rampant speculation by the 1%.
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Common Dreams:
"The Obama campaign is under fire for not actively supporting the recall election of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
Walker's Democratic opponent in the election, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, has been hugely outspent by right wing out of state donors.  Brendan Fischer of PR Watch reported on Thursday that 'Walker has raised 120 times as much money from outside the state as his opponent -- approximately $14.4 million for Walker versus only $120,000 for Barrett.'
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has yet to provide significant financial support for the Barrett campaign, The Nation's John Nichols notes.  Nichols writes that the 'primary source of money for campaigning on behalf of Barrett has been unions and their allies, not the DNC.'
-->This story simply undermines the differences between the two major parties when it comes to supporting the rights of working people. Obama's agenda is Scott Walker's agenda, for all the president's populist rhetoric. The NY Times didn't cover this sellout by Obama and the DNC.

Friday, May 25, 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 to keep from the public eye.

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WBEZ News in Chicago:
"A spokesman for Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart says three anti-NATO protesters accused of planning terrorist actions have been held around-the-clock since Saturday in white-walled 'observation' cells, where they are isolated from each other and the rest of the inmate population and kept from writing materials, books and all other media.
'It’s for their own safety and the safety of the [jail] staff and other inmates,' the spokesman, Frank Bilecki, said Tuesday afternoon. 'Obviously we’re concerned about their mental status and well-being.'
...But a lawyer for one of the alleged terrorists says the conditions amount to 'sensory deprivation' intended to hamper their defense. 'This is a way to break someone’s spirit and break their ability to cooperate with their attorneys,' said the lawyer, Michael Deutsch, who represents Brian Church, 20, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
-->Sensory depravation goes mainstream to intimidate those opposing the rule of the 1%. No one knows yet if the charges have been trumped up, but their treatment in an American jail reflects our country's gradual abandonment of the presumption of innocence. The NY Times wasn't interested in their Guantanamo like treatment and didn't run the story.
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Guardian UK:
"A group of independent journalists who were detained at gunpoint while covering the Nato summit believe they may have been intentionally targeted by police...Late Saturday night Tim Pool, Luke Rudkowski, Geoff Shively and two friends were driving to an apartment where they had been staying in Chicago. The group had spent the day live streaming and documenting anti-Nato protests.
As they approached a stop sign, roughly a dozen police vehicles – marked and unmarked – reportedly surrounded their car with lights flashing. Using their cellphones Pool and Rudkowski activated their live stream feeds...Police bent Shively over the vehicle and handcuffed the remaining four. Officers rifled through the vehicle and reportedly smashed batteries and external hard drives belonging to the journalists. Rudkowksi's phone was taken from him and much of his footage from the incident was deleted.
According to Shively, a senior officer said their car matched 'the exact description of another vehicle' police were looking for. Shively says that when they were initially stopped he heard an officer say: 'We found them.' All five were released without charge."
-->The story of Chicago police targeting journalists didn't make it into The NY Times, which preferred running articles about protesters attacking law enforcement officers. 
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Common Dreams:
"US officials with firsthand knowledge of how the government determines who gets put on the CIA and Pentagon's lists for 'targeted killing' have confessed concern over the implications and nature of the process.  In conversations with the Associated Press, one official involved -- who spoke with assurances of anonymity -- said that some of those carrying out the policy have become leery of "how easy it has become to kill someone," under the rules established under the Obama administration and orchestrated by Obama's top counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan...
'Under the new plan, Brennan's staff compiles the potential target list and runs the names past agencies such as the State Department at a weekly White House meeting,' the report cites officials as describing...
Human rights and civil liberties groups have called for the White House to disclose to the public the legal process by which names end up on the targeting lists, but this report will likely give them little comfort.
'The targeted killing program goes beyond the law by claiming unprecedented authority for the executive branch,' wrote the ACLU's Josh Bell after learning the White House had again delayed filing requirements in response to a FOIA request for records regarding the program."
-->Sounds like some future dystopia. The President and select agencies deciding on what American citizen is next for assassination without charges or trail. The NY Times wasn't interested in writing about this White House killing machine. Why upset its readers?


Thursday, May 17, 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 to keep from the public eye.

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Wired:
"The U.S. military taught its future leaders that a 'total war' against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect America from Islamic terrorists, according to documents obtained by Danger Room. Among the options considered for that conflict: using the lessons of 'Hiroshima' to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the 'civilian population wherever necessary.'
The course, first reported by Danger Room last month and held at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College, has since been canceled by the Pentagon brass. It’s only now, however, that the details of the class have come to light...
That makes the two-star general culpable for rather shocking material. In the same presentation, Dooley lays out a possible four-phase war plan to carry out a forced transformation of the Islam religion. Phase three includes possible outcomes like 'Islam reduced to a cult status' and 'Saudi Arabia threatened with starvation.'
International laws protecting civilians in wartime are 'no longer relevant,' Dooley continues. And that opens the possibility of applying 'the historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki' to Islam’s holiest cities, and bringing about 'Mecca and Medina['s] destruction.' "
-->Although the Pentagon is busy disclaiming this "training" as an aberration in military doctrine, the details are important for US citizens to know, if only to get a true reading of the war crimes being contemplated in our names. The NY Times, ever protective of the military-industrial complex, did not cover these revelations.
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USA Today:
"WASHINGTON – A member of the House Armed Services Committee threatened an amendment to block funding for Pentagon propaganda efforts Wednesday, citing USA TODAY reports questioning their efficacy and management.
Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., called the information operations program a 'fiasco' and said contracts with the largest propaganda contractor, Los Angeles-based Leonie Industries, should be immediately suspended. Johnson also called for an investigation into reprisals against the USA TODAY journalists who have reported on the program, whom he said were 'targeted in a possibly criminal disinformation and reputation attack.'
'...it raises the deeply disturbing possibility that a federal defense contractor that specializes in information operations may have targeted American journalists.' "
-->American journalists reporting on Pentagon propaganda efforts being targeted by defense contractors? The story of this assault on freedom of the press was not newsworthy to editors of The NY Times.
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This Can't Be Happening:
"A new trove of heavily redacted documents provided by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) on behalf of filmmaker Michael Moore and the National Lawyers Guild makes it increasingly evident that there was and is a nationally coordinated campaign to disrupt and crush the Occupy Movement.
The new documents...only 'scratch the surface of a mass intelligence network including Fusion Centers, saturated with anti-terrorism funding, that mobilizes thousands of local and federal officers and agents to investigate and monitor the social justice movement.'
...Tellingly, the documents also include a Dec. 5 copy of the 'Weekly Informant,' an intelligence report published by the DHS’s Office for State and Local Law Enforcement...(The report) led immediately to the wave of violent crackdowns. It was at those meetings that police were advised among other things to act at night, to use aggressive tactics and weapons like tasers and pepper spray, and to take steps to remove journalists and cameras from the scene of crackdowns.
The overall sense from these latest documents is that Washington and the DHS, along with the FBI, was the nexus of the crackdown, orchestrating it, encouraging it, and attempting to cover its tracks.
The documents among other things expose the massive hypocrisy of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party, which this election year have tried to co-opt and claim as their own the anti-fat-cat theme of the 'We are the 99%'-chanting Occupiers, while actually acting in the interest of Bank of America and its fellow financial sector mega-firms in trying to crush the movement itself."
-->Obama and the Department of Homeland Security in on crushing the Occupy movement? The NY Times would never cover a story like this. It's too revealing of the actual collusion between both parties, the corporations, and the massive national security state.

Thursday, May 10, 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 to keep from the public eye.

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Guardian UK: 
"A United Nations investigator probing discrimination against Native Americans has called on the US government to return some of the land stolen from Indian tribes as a step toward combating continuing and systemic racial discrimination.
James Anaya, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, said no member of the US Congress would meet him as he investigated the part played by the government in the considerable difficulties faced by Indian tribes.
Anaya said that in nearly two weeks of visiting Indian reservations, indigenous communities in Alaska and Hawaii, and Native Americans now living in cities, he encountered people who suffered a history of dispossession of their lands and resources, the breakdown of their societies and 'numerous instances of outright brutality, all grounded on racial discrimination'."
-->Why The NY Times didn't cover this story goes back to the role our flagship newspaper plays in promoting America's image to the public. Imagine if this had occurred in North Korea or Iran? Much of the US media has lost the distinction between honest reporting and propaganda. 
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The NY Times:
"The government does a poor job of estimating what it will cost to tear down a nuclear reactor, Congressional auditors say, and it may not be overseeing plant owners well enough to assure that they set aside enough money to do the job. 
For a study it plans to issue on Monday, the Government Accountability Office scrutinized 12 of the nation’s 104 power reactors and found that for 5 of them, the decommissioning cost calculated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was 76 percent or less of what the reactor’s owner thought would be needed.
 The most striking example was Indian Point 3 in Buchanan, N.Y., which could be forced to close by 2015 because of a licensing dispute. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimated the cost of decommissioning the reactor at $474.2 million, just 57 percent of the 'site-specific' estimate made by Entergy, the owner, which put the figure at $836.45 million.
-->The NY Times covered this story on its Green Blog, but not in print. Why not publish this story about collusion between the nuclear energy business and federal regulators? And why not explain the use of these low estimates in the selling of nuclear power to the American people?
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Guardian UK:
"The former chief US prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay has denounced the military trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks due to appear in court at Guantanamo on Saturday, as intended primarily to prevent the defendants from presenting evidence of torture. 
Morris Davis, a former colonel who was chief prosecutor when Mohammed was brought to Guantanamo in 2006, said the military commissions will be badly discredited by the use of testimony obtained from waterboarding and other 'enhanced interrogation' techniques used on the accused men...
Davis, who resigned over the issue, wanted to see Barack Obama follow through on a commitment to move the trials to more open civilian courts but said that advocates of military tribunals prevailed in large part because the rules of evidence prevent the defendants from giving detailed descriptions of how they were tortured as well as other sensitive information such as details of the CIA's secret detention programme and the co-operation of foreign countries, such as Britain, in their capture and interrogations. 
'The truth is the reason the apologists want a second-rate military commission option is because of what we did to the detainees, not because of what the detainees did to us,' he told the Guardian."
-->Why wouldn't this statement made by the former US prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay make it into the US media? Ever protective of America's image, The NY Times did not cover this story at all. Too bad, because it explains the reasoning behind the military tribunals in about three paragraphs. 

Thursday, May 03, 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 to keep from the public eye.

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Truth Out:
"Why is the New York Times peddling Iranophobia?
At long last, the United States and Iran are engaged in serious talks about Iran's nuclear program. But instead of celebrating the fact that President Obama is keeping his campaign promise of diplomatic engagement with Iran, the New York Times has told its readers that Iran's Supreme Leader can't be trusted when he says Iran will never pursue a nuclear weapon.
The reason? Because Iran's leaders are Shiites, and Shiites have a religious doctrine called "taqiyya," which allows them to lie. No scholar or analyst was cited by the New York Times in support of this argument, which should have been a red flag for Times editors in an article on the leadership of a country against which the United States has threatened war.
Last Saturday - the same day the United States and Iran were having 'constructive and useful' discussions on Iran's nuclear program in Istanbul, according to EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton - The New York Times published a piece titled, 'Seeking Nuclear Insight in Fog of the Ayatollah's Utterances,' over the byline of James Risen."
http://truth-out.org/news/item/8628-the-us-and-iran-are-talking-why-is-the-new-york-times-peddling-iran-islamophobia
-->The NY Times is repeating the type of pro-war propaganda we read before the US invasion of Iraq. The Israeli Lobby certainly has the ear of our newspaper of record, which uses its reporting to poison the minds of US citizenss.

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Salon:
In the wake of Osama bin Laden’s summary execution one year ago, many predicted that the War on Terror would finally begin to recede. Here’s what has happened since then:
* With large bipartisan majorities, Congress renewed the once-controversial Patriot Act without a single reform, and it was signed into law by President Obama; Harry Reid accused those urging reforms of putting the country at risk of a Terrorist attack.
* For the first time, perhaps ever, a U.S. citizen was assassinated by the CIA, on orders from the President, without a shred of due process and far from any battlefield; two weeks later, his 16-year-old American son was also killed by his own government...
* With large bipartisan majorities, Congress enacted, and the President signed, a new law codifying presidential powers of worldwide indefinite detention and an expanded statutory definition of the War on Terror.
* Construction neared completion for a sprawling new site in Utah for the National Security Agency to enable massive domestic surveillance and to achieve 'the realization of the total information awareness program created during the first term of the Bush administration.'
* President Obama authorized the use of 'signature' drone strikes in Yemen, whereby the CIA can target people for death 'even when the identity of those who could be killed is not known.' "
-->Where is our national media as America descends into a totalitarian state? We are becoming an empire ruled by big business, and of course, big business already owns all the media.
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Common Dreams:
"The Social Security trust fund is in strong financial standing and the overall program could be further strengthened, say experts and lawmakers, with a simple increase of the current payroll tax cap which is currently set at $110,000. The trustee's annual financial report was released on Monday.
Most mainstream news and media outlets reported the trustee's report as a 'doomsday' scenario for the benefit program, which was created in 1935 and today supports 55 million Americans, including 38 million retired workers, 6 million widows, widowers and orphans, and 11 million disabled workers. But those reports belie a simple solution to improve the longevity and solvency of the program, and speak to a trend of poor-quality reporting when it comes to the issue of Social Security.
'The most effective way to strengthen Social Security for the next 75 years is to eliminate the cap on the payroll tax on income above $250,000. Right now, someone who earns $110,100 pays the same amount of money into Social Security as a billionaire. That makes no sense,' said Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the chairman of the Defending Social Security Caucus. He also chairs the Senate aging subcommittee."
-->There is no more dishonest reporting in the US than the stories written about Social Security. Of course, Wall Street wants to control the billions going to retired Americans, and take its cut for setting up individual retirement accounts. Again the richest of our citizens will end up impoverishing the working people of our country.

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