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:
"As the world's most vulnerable populations succumb to surging global food prices—driven in part by drought, climate change, and a global food system increasingly vulnerable to the whims of commodity speculation, Goldman Sachs has managed to turn the poverty and suffering of others into profits for itself.
Pulling in more than $400 million in profits last year through risky and damaging food speculation practices, the Wall Street financial titan has once again profited from others' misfortune, The Independent reports Tuesday.
According to an analysis conducted for The Independent by the World Development Movement (WDM), 2012 investment practices in the 'soft commodities' trade (e.g. wheat and maize) by financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, drove prices to unprecedented highs while bank profits increased and banker bonuses were handed out readily.
Goldman's food speculation contributed to a roughly 68 per cent jump in profits for 2012, The Independent reports, while it increased the average pay and bonus package of its bankers to nearly $396,500.
Christine Haigh of the WDM stated: 'While nearly a billion people go hungry, Goldman Sachs bankers are feeding their own bonuses by betting on the price of food. Financial speculation is fueling food price spikes and Goldman Sachs is the No. 1 culprit.' "
->There were dozens of NY Times stories over the last week about Goldman Sachs. Non of them mention the $400 million in profits from food speculation. All the news that Wall Street sees fit to print.
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Common Dreams:
"Three US drone attacks in Yemen in as many days—which have left as many as fifteen people dead— gives further proof that the CIA, according to recent comments made to the Washington Post by a former government official familiar with Obama's assassination program, has 'put the pedal to the metal' when it comes to administering the controversial tactic.
And, as Obama was sworn in to his second term in Washington Monday, critics of the 'kill list' took the opportunity to once again warn against the insidious consequences of his ongoing program.
On Saturday, two separate attacks saw US missiles destroy a house and its occupants in the province of al-Bayda and later a car and those it carried was targeted in the city of Maarib...
As Agence France-Presse reports, 'Monday's raid brings to at least 25 the number of people killed in US drone strikes since such assaults were intensified on December 24.' "
-->The NY Times didn't print this story. For the details, we have to go to a French or English newspaper.
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Common Dreams:
"...Western governments and media have done the public a major disservice by trumpeting warnings of an 'Islamist threat' in Mali. It’s as if Osama bin Laden has popped up on the Niger River. Our newest crisis in Africa is not driven primarily by religion but by a spreading uprising against profoundly corrupt, western-backed oligarchic governments and endemic poverty.
Mali’s troubles began last year when it shaky government was overthrown. Meanwhile, heavily-armed nomadic Tuareg tribesmen, who had served Libya’s late Col. Gadaffi as mercenaries until he was overthrown by French and US intervention, poured back into their homeland in Mali’s north. A major unexpected consequence, fierce Tuareg warriors, who battled French colonial rule for over a century, were fighting for an independent homeland, known as Azawad...
France, the colonial ruler of most of West Africa until 1960, has overthrown and imposed client regimes there ever since. French political, financial and military advisors and intelligence services ran West Africa from behind a façade of supposedly independent governments. Disobedient regimes were quickly booted out by elite French troops and Foreign Legionnaires based in West Africa that guarded France’s mining and oil interests in what was known as 'FrancAfrique.' "
-->How refreshing this is after reading about Mali's Islamic terrorists in The NY Times. How simplistic US coverage really is when it comes to US military interventions in the Middle East or Africa. It's like the news is being pitched to idiots.
