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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The Guardian UK:
"The battered credibility of the Guantánamo trials has been further dented by revelations of hidden microphones, intelligence service interference with court proceedings and protests from lawyers who say the US military is preventing a proper defence of the alleged organisers of the 9/11 attacks.
The increasingly chaotic pre-trial hearings for the alleged mastermind of the attacks on the World Trade Center, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and four co-accused have slowed progress toward the full trial, to the point where it will now not start until at least 2014. But the latest developments also further undermine confidence in a military court whose legitimacy has long been questioned.
In recent days, the commander of the Guantánamo prison, Colonel John Bogdan, was forced to admit on the witness stand that secret listening devices disguised as smoke detectors were installed in the cell where lawyers met their clients, and that he knew nothing about them.
The eavesdropping was revealed in court by one of the defence lawyers, Cheryl Bormann, who said she became suspicious about the supposed smoke detectors during a meeting with her client, Walid bin Atash, who is accused of training some of the 9/11 hijackers."
->Must we go to the Guardian in the UK to understand the farce of the Guantánamo trials? The NY Times prints "all the news that fits the empire," and left this story out.
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Worldnews, NBC:
"GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- While the prisoners accused of plotting the September 11 attacks were in the Guantanamo courtroom this week, guards seized confidential legal documents, books, photos and even toilet paper from their cells, according to a prison camp lawyer.
Most of the seized items will be returned, the camp lawyer testified in a hearing Thursday marked by angry outbursts, eye-rolling and lengthy diversions from the docket in the war crimes court at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in Cuba.
Defense lawyers said some defendants returned to their cells after court sessions earlier in the week to find that bins containing their legal documents had been ransacked and confidential papers relating to their defense were missing. The seizures happened while the camp's top legal adviser was on the witness stand giving assurances that no one was reading those private legal documents, said Cheryl Bormann, an attorney for defendant Walid Bin Attash."
-->The NY Times published an article entitled, "Legal Clashes at Hearing for Defendants in 9/11 Case" and basically repeated government denials that there was anything wrong in the criminal proceedings.
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Reuters:
"Corporate school reformers promote privately operated but publicly funded 'charter schools' as one of the key components of their profit-friendly approach to solving what they call the failure of traditional public schooling, but a new investigative report from Reuters shows that many such institutions disregard their own promises of inclusion and equal opportunity by creating barriers to needier students while targeting for enrollment those most likely to pad test scores or otherwise enhance their own promises of 'success'.
As Reuters notes, there are many regulations that guide the admission behavior of charter schools, but because most of these rules are written by states there can be a wide divergence of how school districts operate nationwide. The investigation found that larger charter school operations—like KIPP, Yes Prep, Green Dot and Success Academy—have more equitable admission and enrollment structures, but that smaller, independently-run charters—whose numbers are growing exponentially nationwide as the corporate education reform movement helps remove barriers through state legislation—are inundated with practices that make a mockery of 'equal access' to all students.
As Reuters reports, many charter schools across the US, despite their assurances to the contrary, 'aggressively screen student applicants, assessing their academic records, parental support, disciplinary history, motivation, special needs and even their citizenship, sometimes in violation of state and federal law.' "
-->The NY Times is out to lunch when it comes to reporting on charter schools. The one article The NY Times ran recently, entitled "Teachers and Policy Makers: Troubling Disconnect" only made it to the "Opinionator" blog.
