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.
------
School of the America's Watch:
"Honduras: The Struggle for Democracy, Independence and Self-Determination Continues.
The coup organized by SOA graduates that toppled President Manuel Zelaya in 2009 not only brought an end to a democratic government, but it has also turned Honduras into a nightmare, with the highest homicide rate in the world.
Political repression is among the worst in the hemisphere: journalists, opposition activists, and LGBT activists have been murdered with impunity. Graduates of the SOA, who head state security forces under the illegitimate post-coup regime of Porfirio Lobo, work in complicity with private security forces to repress small farmers and cooperatives from defending the lands that provide their sustenance."
-->The NY Times prints stories about drug crime in Honduras, completely omitting the overthrow of Zelaya and the resulting political repression. To the mainstream media, US troops are there to fight drugs and not to secure another American supported dictatorship. All the news that the Pentagon sees fit to allow.
------
Guardian UK:
"Here’s an odd question: Is it possible that the U.S. military is present in more countries and more places now than at the height of the Cold War? It’s true that the U.S. is reducing its forces and giant bases in Europe and that its troops are out of Iraq (except for that huge, militarized embassy in Baghdad). On the other hand, there’s that massive ground, air, and naval build-up in the Persian Gulf, the Obama administration’s widely publicized “pivot” to Asia (including troops and ships), those new drone bases in the eastern Indian Ocean region, some movement back into Latin America (including a new base in Chile), and don’t forget Africa, where less than a decade ago, the U.S. had almost no military presence at all. Now, as Nick Turse writes in 'Obama’s Scramble for Africa,' U.S. special operations forces, regular troops, private contractors, and drones are spreading across the continent with remarkable (if little noticed) rapidity...
So here’s another question: Who decided in 2007 that a U.S. Africa Command should be set up to begin a process of turning that continent into a web of U.S. bases and other operations? Who decided that every Islamist rebel group in Africa, no matter how local or locally focused, was a threat to the U.S., calling for a military response? Certainly not the American people, who know nothing about this, who were never asked if expanding the U.S. global military mission to Africa was something they favored, who never heard the slightest debate, or even a single peep from Washington on the subject."
-->The NY Times does little to enlighten the American people about our empire's expansion into Africa. Times readers get the usual double talk about Africom's mission as "training and assisting" democratic forces, "improving HIV awareness," and "removing land mines."
------
The Telegraph UK:
"Concerns are growing about the reliability of oil prices, after a report for the G20 found the market is wide open to 'manipulation or distortion'.
Traders from banks, oil companies or hedge funds have an 'incentive' to distort the market and are likely to try to report false prices, it said.
Politicians and fuel campaigners last night urged the Government to expand its inquiry into the Libor scandal to see whether oil prices have also been falsely pushed up.
They warned any efforts to rig the oil price would affect how much drivers pay at the pump, which soared to a record high of 137p per litre of unleaded earlier this year.
Robert Halfon, who led a group of 100 MPs calling for lower fuel prices, said the matter 'needs to be looked at by the Bank of England urgently'."
-->The NY Times didn't print this potential scandal about oil price rigging by banks, oil companies and hedge funds. Why worry people with more bad news about corporate corruption?
------
Guardian UK:
"How the NYPD overstated its counter-terrorism record.
The NYPD has repeatedly claimed it has thwarted 14 terrorist plots against New York since 9/11. Is it true? In a word, no...
A review of the list shows a much more complicated reality — that the 14 figure overstates both the number of serious, developed terrorist plots against New York and exaggerates the NYPD's role in stopping attacks."
-->Why can't our newspaper of record do this type of investigative reporting about the NYPD overstating its counter-terrorism arrests? Because The NY Times rarely questions official governmental pronouncements when it comes to the so called "war on terror."
