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:

"The Obama administration finalized new fuel economy rules Tuesday, boasting new requirements that are slated to double fuel efficiency of new cars and trucks sold in the US over the next 13 years; however, environmental scientists at the Center for Biological Diversity warned Tuesday that the new numbers are misleading in the complex regulations. Due to loopholes in the plan, total greenhouse gas emissions from cars and light trucks will actually increase from 2017 through 2025 and over the long term...

According to CBD, several loopholes in the rules will actually allow an increase in total greenhouse gas emissions. The rules titled, 'Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE,' allows automakers to produce cars with poorer mileage by using credits acquired by selling natural gas and electric vehicles, changing air conditioning fluid to one that pollutes less, and placing louvers on car grilles to improve aerodynamics."

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/08/28-8

-->The NY Times omitted this bad news in its story on the new fuel economy rules. Our newspaper of record called the new standards: "a victory for environmentalists and advocates of fuel conservation" and "one of President Obama’s proudest accomplishments." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/29/business/energy-environment/obama-unveils-tighter-fuel-efficiency-standards.html?_r=1

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Guardian UK:

 "Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel laureate and icon of the anti-apartheid struggle, has withdrawn from a seminar in South Africa in protest at the presence of Tony Blair and the former prime minister's support for the 2003 Iraq war.

'The archbishop is of the view that Mr Blair's decision to support the United States' military invasion of Iraq, on the basis of unproven allegations of the existence in Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, was morally indefensible,' said Roger Friedman, a spokesman for the cleric, who won the Nobel peace prize in 1984.

'Morality and leadership are indivisible. In this context, it would be inappropriate and untenable for the archbishop to share a platform with Mr Blair,' he added.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/28/desmond-tutu-protests-over-tony-blair

-->The NY Times doesn't like to admit how unpopular the US invasions of the Middle East are in the rest of the world. Desmond Tutu is making the Empire look bad, so the story never got printed in our newspaper of record.

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Common Dreams:

"Testimony by ex-Israeli Defense Force soldiers reveals a devastating portrayal of ill-treatment and abuse of Palestinian youth by members of Israel's occupying army in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The testimony by more than 30 soldiers, and fashioned into a booklet by Breaking the Silence, an organisation of former IDF soldiers dedicated to speaking out against Israeli policy in the occupied territories, contains descriptions of beatings, intimidation and humiliation of Palestinian children.

'It is crucial that people in Israel are confronted about what it means for Palestinian children to live under military occupation,' says Yehuda Shaul, one of the founders of Breaking the Silence.

'This is what [Israeli] society is made of, you cannot ignore it, you cannot just run away from it — this is who we are as people and I think this is something we should face.' "

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/08/27-3

-->Our premier newspaper, The NY Times, just doesn't print articles like this about Israel. It chooses to both ignore and run away from presenting the truth to its readers.

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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Reuters:

"CIA agents have written books about it. Former President George W. Bush has explained why he thought it was necessary and legal. Yet the al Qaeda suspects who were subjected to so-called harsh interrogation techniques, and the lawyers charged with defending them at the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals, are not allowed to talk about the treatment they consider torture.

Defense attorneys say that and other Kafkaesque legal restrictions on what they can discuss with their clients and raise in the courtroom undermine their ability to mount a proper defense on charges that could lead to the death penalty.

Those restrictions will be the focus of a pretrial hearing that convenes this week.

Prosecutors say every utterance of the alleged al Qaeda murderers, and what their lawyers in turn pass on to the court, must be strictly monitored precisely because of the defendants' intimate personal knowledge of highly classified CIA interrogation methods they endured in the agency's clandestine overseas prisons."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/20/us-guantanamo-tribunals-idUSBRE87J03U20120820

-->The NY Times printed a short editorial calling the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals a "regrettable step in undermining the rule of law." Why not include more specifics and make it a news story on page one if is so regrettable?

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World Socialist Website:

"The secrecy surrounding the U.S. use of drone attacks must end, and each drone strike carried out by the U.S. should be independently investigated, London barrister and UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism Ben Emmerson said Sunday. 

Emmerson is preparing a report for the next session of the Human Rights Council in March covering the use of drone attacks, which have spiked since Obama's presidency. 

He questioned the legality of the drone strikes and noted the growing global outrage over their use.

'We can't make a decision on whether it is lawful or unlawful if we do not have the data. The recommendation I have made is that users of targeted killing technology should be required to subject themselves, in the case of each and every death, to impartial investigation. If they do not establish a mechanism to do so, it will be my recommendation that the UN should put the mechanisms in place through the Human Rights Council, the General Assembly and the Office of the High Commissioner.' "

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/08/20

-->The NY Times doesn't print many official statements that criticize the empire. Our newspaper of record is too busy hiding America's violations of international law.

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Guardian UK:

"Violence by Jewish settlers has been cited for the first time in a US state department list of "terrorist incidents", as Israeli political leaders condemned a string of recent attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The inclusion of assaults on Palestinian targets in the annual report on terrorism reflects growing concern in Israel and internationally that violence by a minority of Jewish extremists could trigger a new cycle of conflict and further damage the prospects of a peace agreement between the two sides.

"Attacks by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinian residents, property and places of worship in the West Bank continued,' said the Country Reports on Terrorism 2011. It referred to 'price tag" operations, meaning violence committed by radical settlers against Palestinians in retribution for actions by the Israeli government or army deemed to be 'anti-settler'.

US and European officials have become more vocal in criticising settler violence amid fears that the actions of a minority of Jewish extremists could provoke a militant response from Palestinians. According to the UN, violent attacks by settlers on Palestinians and their property, mosques and farmland has increased by almost 150% since 2009."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/19/jewish-settler-attack-terrorist-us-palestinian

-->The NY Times doesn't just doesn't print articles like this about Israel, even when the story involves the US State Department. Instead, it runs stories like "A Settler Leader, Worldly and Pragmatic," a very favorable profile of the settlement leader, Dani Dayan. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/18/world/middleeast/dani-dayan-worldly-and-pragmatic-leader-of-israels-settler-movement.html?pagewanted=all

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:

"US wind production soars, but politics threaten federal subsidies that have helped elevate industry. As the US wind energy industry hit a new milestone recently by reaching 50GW of power production, the industry trade group warns that 'the best of times' could become the 'worst of times' if a looming deadline to extend federal subsidies for clean energy investment is not met.

The American Wind Energy Association, the lobbying arm of the wind industry, announced recently that the wind sector's 50GW (gigawatts) of capacity is enough to power nearly 13 million American homes, or as many as in Nevada, Colorado, Wisconsin, Virginia, Alabama, and Connecticut combined.

In addition, the number of new operational wind projects across the US is enough to supplant '44 coal-fired power stations or 11 nuclear power plants', and will result in emission reductions that would equate to taking 14 million cars off the road, and -- because wind energy demands almost no water use -- conserves 30 billion gallons of water a year compared to thermal electric power generation."

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/08/13-0

-->The NY Times referred to this danger of defunding wind energy on its Green Blog. But why not in print? It is a clear threat to the clean energy movement that is so desperately needed if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change.

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World Socialist Website:

"Over the last month, heavily armed 'domestic terrorism' units of the FBI used battering rams and stun grenades to conduct early-morning raids on the homes of political protesters in Seattle and Olympia, Washington and Portland, Oregon. On July 25, three homes were raided in Portland alone and, since July 10, as many as six homes have been raided.

These raids are only the latest in an emerging pattern of similar raids conducted by the Obama administration in order to terrorize, suppress and chill political dissent, in flagrant violation of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights...

At 6:00 a.m. on July 25, Dennison Williams was asleep in his Portland home when FBI agents smashed down his door without warning with a battering ram and threw flash or stun grenades into the building. FBI agents armed with assault rifles then stormed into Williams’ bedroom, pointed their rifles at him while they handcuffed him, and forced him to sit in a chair for a half an hour without pants on while they searched his apartment.

Williams, a 33-year-old self-described anarchist who helped run an information booth at recent protests and events, reported that FBI agents boxed up and removed his laptop computer, political literature, his cell phone, thumb drives, and various pieces of clothing bearing political slogans."

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/aug2012/fbir-a13.shtml

-->The NY Times didn't cover this story. Our newspaper of record decided that the current FBI suppression of dissent under President Obama is not a fit subject to print. 

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Guardian UK:

"The British ambassador to Israel has said international support for the Jewish state among those in the political mainstream is eroding, driven by settlement expansion in the West Bank and continued restrictions on Gaza.

There is 'growing concern' in the UK over lack of progress towards peace with the Palestinians, and Israel was now being seen as Goliath against the Palestinians as David, said Matthew Gould, in reference to the biblical story.

In an unusually forthright interview for Israel's Channel 10 news, Gould said he detected a shift among the middle ground of British members of parliament towards a more critical view of Israel...

'Support for Israel is starting to erode and that's not about these people on the fringe who are shouting loudly and calling for boycotts and all the rest of it. The interesting category are those members of parliament in the middle, and in that group I see a shift.' "

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/03/israel-losing-international-support-british-ambassador

-->The NY Times doesn't print articles critical of Israel unless it absolutely has to. This story about eroding support for Israel in Britain was never covered.

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:
"UNITED NATIONS - As U.N.-led talks on disarmament resume in Geneva Monday, calls are growing for nuclear-armed nations to cut spending on their stockpiles and instead divert resources to development.

'The amount still being spent on nuclear arms makes no sense, just as continued reliance on the weapons themselves makes no sense,' David Kreiger, president of the U.S.-based Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, told IPS.
His remarks alluded to the fact that nine out of 193 U.N. member states continue to increase budgetary allocations for the maintenance and modernization of nuclear weapons, despite promises to reduce their stockpiles.

Last year, the nuclear states spent around 105 billion dollars on their arsenals, according to independent estimates. The share of the United States alone was 61 billion dollars."
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/07/28-0

-->The NY Times didn't bother its readers with this news about tens of billions being spent on nuclear arms. It's the Olympics, for God's sake; there are better things to write stories about.

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Reuters:
"A New York man agreed on Tuesday to pay a $6,500 fine to settle a long-running dispute with the U.S. Treasury Department over a trip he made to Cuba as an unauthorized tourist 14 years ago.

Zachary Sanders, now 38, said he was 23 and had been living and teaching English in Mexico when he decided to go to Cuba for a couple of weeks in 1998.

'I wanted to learn about how a socialist country worked in practice,' Sanders said in an interview. 'I had no illusions. ... I'm not like some diehard supporter of the (Cuban) government or anything like that.'

The United States has long restricted U.S. travel to Cuba as part of a 50-year-old trade embargo aimed at punishing Cuba's communist government. The actual restrictions and the degree of enforcement have varied with different U.S. administrations and with the evolving state of U.S.-Cuba relations."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/24/us-usa-cuba-travel-idUSBRE86N1MC20120724

-->The NY Times didn't cover this story. Fining someone for visiting a foreign country just doesn't look good for the United States, that supposed bastion of freedom and democracy.

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Common Dreams:
"A recent University of Texas study, which claims to prove that the natural gas extraction process known as fracking does not cause environmental damage or water contamination, was led by a gas industry insider who currently holds up to $1.6 million in stock at a large fracking company. The information was revealed in a new exposé released by the Public Accountability Initiative (PAI).

The 400-page pro-fracking review in question was led by author Charles Groat of the University of Texas. Neither Groat nor the University openly reported that Groat himself is on the board of a fracking company, Plains Exploration and Production Company.

As a board member, Groat receives 10,000 shares of restricted stock a year. His holdings as of July 19th were worth $1.6 million. He also receives an annual fee, which was $58,500 in 2011, according to filings.

Groat did not reveal his position with the company when the report was released and told reporters that the university had turned down all industry funds for the study."
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/07/27-7

-->This article should have been printed in the NY Times because it reveals the  depth of the corporate fracking scam. Putting it on the NY Times' "Dot Earth" blog minimizes the damage to corporate and college reputations.