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.
------
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.
------
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.
------
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?
