Friday, July 27, 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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MSNBC:
"The National Rifle Association (NRA) might not like it, but the majority of Americans believe in tougher gun control...a Pew poll found a minority of Americans interested in stricter gun laws—just 45%. But when other pollsters asked specific questions about restrictions, they found a different picture:

-86 percent believe in further background checks, regardless of where a gun is purchased (January 2011 American ViewPoint/Momentum Analysis poll) -63 percent want a ban on high capacity clips (January 2011 CBS News poll) -69 percent want to limit the number of guns a citizen can buy in a period of time (April 2012 Ipsos/Reuters poll) -66 percent want a National gun registry (January 2011 American ViewPoint/Momentum Analysis poll) -88 percent want to prohibit those on the terror watch list from buying guns (January 2011 American ViewPoint/Momentum Analysis poll)
And yet, Congress has been unable to pass stricter gun laws and a spokesman for President Obama said he would not be pursuing such laws in the wake of Friday's mass shooting in Aurora, Colo."
-->Mainstream media, including The NY Times, doesn't blame the NRA for the lack of gun control legislation in the US. According to a number of The NY Times stories printed after the latest massacre, it's the people's fault because they just don't want the government limiting their access to firearms. Reporting like this just another way to protect another corporate interests at the expense of the people's right to know.
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Examiner UK:
"A United Nations independent human rights representative on Friday accused Israel of placing Palestinian children in solitary confinement.
'According to testimony received, Israel uses solitary confinement against 12 per cent of Palestinian child detainees,' Ambassador Palitha T.B. Kohona of Sri Lanka said in a news release emailed to journalists. 'This is especially troubling when one considers that Israel arrests about 500 to 700 Palestinian children every year.'
'Israel’s use of solitary confinement against children flagrantly violates international human rights standards,' said Richard Falk, another UN representative.
'Witnesses informed the Committee that mistreatment of Palestinian children starts from the moment of detention,' Kohona said. 'Large numbers are routinely detained. Children’s homes are surrounded by Israeli soldiers late at night, sound grenades are fired into the houses, doors are broken down, live shots are often fired; no warrant is presented. Children are tightly bound, blindfolded and forced into the backs of military vehicles.'
Parents are not allowed to accompany the detainees, the UN representatives claimed, and that family members are insulted, intimidated and at times physically assaulted."
-->The NY Times routinely omits stories deemed critical of Israel. If this had happened in China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, etc., it would have made the front page. More than any other major newspaper in the world, The NY Times  covers up Israeli Apartheid, a record that will forever call into question its commitment to both honest reporting and basic human rights. 
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Guardian UK:
"Two-thirds of food for the billion-dollar US food aid programme last year was bought from just three US-based multinationals. The main beneficiaries of the programme, billed as aid to the world's poorest countries, were the highly profitable and politically powerful companies that dominate the global grain trade: ADM, Cargill and Bunge.
The Guardian has analysed and collated for the first time details of hundreds of food aid contracts awarded by the US department of agriculture (USDA) in 2010-11 to show where the money goes.
ADM, incorporated in the tax haven state of Delaware, won nearly half by volume of all the contracts to supply food for aid and was paid nearly $300m (£190m) by the US government for it. Cargill, in most years the world's largest private company and still majority owned by the Cargill family, was paid $96m for food aid and was the second-largest supplier, with 16% of the contracted volume. Bunge, the US-headquartered global grain trader incorporated in the tax haven of Bermuda, comes third in the list by volume, and was paid $75m to supply food aid.
Together, these three agribusinesses sold the US government 1.2m tonnes of food, or almost 70% of the total bought. Critics of the US system of food aid have complained for years that the programme is as much about corporate welfare for American companies as helping the hungry overseas."
-->Leave it to a foreign newspaper to expose the huge corporate welfare scam that is the US food aid program. The NY Times shows itself again incapable of investigating US corporate dominance over almost every aspect of the US government.