Thursday, June 28, 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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Common Dreams:
"Pension fund giant TIAA-CREF has removed Caterpillar, Inc. from its Social Choice Funds portfolio. As of May 1, 2012, financial data posted on TIAA-CREF’s website valued Social Choice Funds shares in Caterpillar at $72,943,861. Today it is zero.
'We applaud this decision,' said Rabbi Alissa Wise, Director of Campaigns at Jewish Voice for Peace and National Coordinator of the We Divest Campaign. 'It’s long past time that TIAA-CREF began living up to its motto of ‘Financial Services for the Greater Good’ when it comes to the people of Israel and Palestine.'
Since 2010, We Divest has been urging TIAA-CREF to drop Caterpillar and other companies profiting from and facilitating Israel’s 45-year-old military occupation and colonization of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip.
'By selling weaponized bulldozers to Israel, Caterpillar is complicit in Israel’s systematic violations of Palestinian human rights,' said Rabbi Wise. 'We’re glad to see that the socially responsible investment community appears to be recognizing this and is starting to take appropriate action.' "
-->The NY Times seldom reports any news that is unfavorable to Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories. Fealty to Israel trumps American readers' right to know.
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Reuters:
"Scores of demonstrators clashed with police, smashed bank windows and blocked roads in Israel's commercial capital Tel Aviv overnight during a protest against the arrest of an activist...Police said they detained 85 people at the rally, the latest sign of a nationwide protest movement demanding social reforms and affordable housing...
Hundreds of people gathered in the city late on Saturday and parts of the crowd clashed with police into the early hours of Sunday morning, live television footage showed.
'Over 1,500 people demonstrated at various places in Tel Aviv until a point where the protests turned violent and there were disturbances. They blocked roads and smashed windows at five banks and until 3 a.m. (00:00 GMT), 85 people were arrested,' police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
Last summer, hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets and tent cities mushroomed across the country in an unprecedented campaign for economic and social reform that caught the government by surprise."
-->Of course, The NY Times did not cover this story. Even Reuters doesn't connect the lack of affordable housing in Israel with the hundreds of millions spent by the government on illegal settlement housing in the West Bank.
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Guardian UK:
"The US policy of using aerial drones to carry out targeted killings presents a major challenge to the system of international law that has endured since the second world war, a United Nations investigator has said.
Christof Heyns, the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, summary or arbitrary executions, told a conference in Geneva that President Obama's attacks in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere, carried out by the CIA, would encourage other states to flout long-established human rights standards.
In his strongest critique so far of drone strikes, Heyns suggested some may even constitute 'war crimes'. His comments come amid rising international unease over the surge in killings by remotely piloted unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)."
-->The NY Times rarely challenges Obama's drone wars, and didn't even cover this story. All the news that the Pentagon sees fit to print.