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:
"What an official of the rightwing government of Honduras is calling the 'most important project in half a century,' critics of the neoliberal plan to build private cities in the Central American nation are calling a 'catastrophe' and argue that so-called 'chartered cities' would violate the rights of all Hondurans, with particularly negative impacts for the nation's indigenous population.
President Porfirio Lobo—who came to power in a military coup in 2009—has fully endorsed the proposals to create privately-funded 'charter cities' as a way to attract foreign investment to his nation. Details remain elusive, but the experimental cities would be modeled on independently-governed and profit-driven business center cities, so-called 'free trade zones' like Dubai or Hong Kong, but would be built virtually from scratch on lands to be determined by the government.
Inspired by US economist advisers—namely US economist Paul Romer, a graduate of the University of Chicago school of economics and currently a professor at the Stern School of Business at NYU—the cities would operate outside the control of the regular Honduran government and have 'their own police, laws, government and tax systems.' " http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/09/06-6
-- >In US supported Latin American dictators, we see the Neoliberal future of America. The NY Times rarely prints criticism of Honduras, and certainly would not want to call attention to the plans multilateral corporations have of overthrowing the last traces of democracy.
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Common Dreams:
"Trade negotiators from the US and eight other Pacific Rim countries met outside of Washington, DC Wednesday, commencing a new round of the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement negotiations, also known as 'Nafta on steroids.'
The TPP negotiations began in 2007 and have been carried through by the Obama administration and several Pacific nations under conditions of 'extreme secrecy' without press, public or policymaker oversight. Although most of the content involved in the discussions have been kept in secret, document leaks have revealed that negotiators are working out deals which could hamper free speech on the Internet, reduce access to affordable medicines, deregulate environmental laws, and harm labor rights around the world. Earlier this year Public Citizen posted a leaked document from a past TPP meeting on their website revealing that the pact will give multinational corporations radical new political powers in global trade, including the allotment of vast legal powers to multinational corporations over governments." http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/09/06-11
-- >This story appeared in The NY Times "Green Blog," although not in print. The on-line article extolls the wonders of sharing "green growth" between nations. Only the last sentence states that one group considers the talks "overly secretive."
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Common Dreams:
"The rate of Arctic Sea ice melt has caught scientists by surprise, leaving them to describe the current record low levels as 'amazing,' 'a Goliath' and 'unprecedented.' While a record low was recorded on Aug. 26, the ice level continues to fall, and the National Snow and Ice Data Center reports that there is still a week left in the melting season.
The speed of the Arctic ice melt is astounding, scientists say. 'It is a greater change than we could even imagine 20 years ago, even 10 years ago,' Dr. Kim Holmen, international director of the Norwegian Polar Institute told the BBC. 'And it has taken us by surprise and we must adjust our understanding of the system and we must adjust our science and we must adjust our feelings for the nature around us.'
'This year's melting season is a Goliath,' also notes geophysicist Marco Tedesco, director of the Cryospheric Processes Laboratory at City University of New York, the Wall Street Journal reports. 'The ice is being lost at a very strong pace.' " http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/09/07-3
-- >This news about the Goliath ice melt wasn't important enough for The NY Times to print. More important stories took the front page that day, like what a Muslim woman was told in a premarital counseling class in Egypt.
