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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Democracy Now:
The debates are little more than corporate controlled charades. Since they are funded and manipulated by corporate America, there is little chance that the two major candidates will be offered any questions that deviate from a very scripted interpretation of the issues facing our country.
On its Oct. 16th program, Democracy Now offered two examples in the Vice Presidential debate moderated by Martha Raddatz. The first was a question that assumed that Iran was a grave military threat to the United Sates. The second example was an assumption by Ms. Raddatz that Social Security and Medicare are going broke and taking the national budget down with them.
These assumptions are the familiar lies pitched to the American people by both major parties and by our media, so it is not surprising that they would take center stage in debates sponsored by corporate America.
-->No major media, including The NY Times, makes any attempt to reveal the hypocrisy of our presidential and vice presidential debates. The fact that these assumptions are contrary to a great deal of military and economic evidence means nothing. From the scripted questions to elimination of other presidential candidates, it is all show and no substance, very much like the supposed "democracy" we enjoy in these United States. It's much closer to a Disney World theme park than any real government by the people.
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Common Dreams and The Independent UK:
"A new study links the U.S. bombardment of Iraq to a toxic legacy of birth defects in two of the country's heavily hit cities.
The study published in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology looked at the southern city of Basra and the central city of Fallujah and found a staggering rise in miscarriages and birth defects including Anencephaly and Spina Bifida in the years following heavy bombardment of 2003 and 2004.
The authors of the study found elevated levels of mercury and lead -- 'an integral part of war ammunition and are extensively used in the making of bullets and bombs,' according to U.S. forces -- in the children.
The Independent UK adds:
Dr. [Mozhgan Savabieasfahani, one of the lead authors of the report and an environmental toxicologist at the University of Michigan's School of Public Health] said that for the first time, there is a 'footprint of metal in the population' and that there is 'compelling evidence linking the staggering increases in Iraqi birth defects to neuro-toxic metal contamination following the repeated bombardments of Iraqi cities'. She called the 'epidemic' a 'public health crisis". "
-->The NY Times doesn't do war crimes committed by the empire. It didn't cover this story.
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Common Dreams:
"On Monday, a judge will oversee pretrial hearings for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo prisoners who are accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks. One of the key issues Army Col. James Pohl will decide on is whether or not there will be any public testimony by the prisoners regarding their torture and detention in CIA custody.
The defense lawyers are asking to abolish a 'presumptive classification' process that treats any discussion of what happened to the defendants during their time in secret CIA detention as a top national security secret. Mohammed’s defense attorney, David Nevin, called the war court system a 'rigged game,' reports the Miami Herald. According to Nevin, attorneys and defendants 'are forbidden to discuss between themselves anything from what Mohammed says the CIA did to him to his historical perspective on jihad.'
The ACLU is at the hearings this week and will give a statement arguing that the censorship of torture is a constitutional challenge. In a press release, the ACLU cites the government's most recent filing (PDF):
'The government has effectively claimed that it owns and controls the defendants’ memories, thoughts and experiences of government torture. These chillingly Orwellian claims are legally untenable and morally abhorrent.' "
-->The NY Times gave one sentence to the ACLU's objections, preferring to concentrate its story on the "atmosphere" in court and what the defendants were wearing. Orwellian coverage considering the absence of defendants' rights.
