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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Guardian UK:
"The facts speak for themselves: the percentage of households in poverty fell from 55% in 1995 to 26.4% in 2009. When Chávez was sworn into office unemployment was 15%, in June 2009 it was 7.8%. Compare that to current unemployment figures in Europe. In that period Chávez won 56% of the vote in 1998, 60% in 2000, survived a coup d'état in 2002, got over 7m votes in 2006 and secured 54.4% of the vote last October.
He was a rare thing, almost incomprehensible to those in the US and Europe who continue to see the world through the Manichean prism of the cold war: an avowed Marxist who was also an avowed democrat. To those who think the expression of the masses should have limited or no place in the serious business of politics all the talking and goings on in Chávez's meetings were anathema, proof that he was both fake and a populist. But to the people who tuned in and participated en masse, it was politics and true democracy not only for the sophisticated, the propertied or the lettered."
->Nothing you will read in the US media will come close to stating these basic facts about Chavez and his 'Bolivarian Revolution." As you read the hateful and dismissive descriptions of Chavez, think about whose opinions they really are, the elite leaders of the US Empire. By giving the Venezuelan people a true democracy, Chavez challenged the neoliberal, corporate controlled leadership of much of the industrialized world. In the end, his ideas will prove most dangerous to our billionaire rulers.
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Common Dreams:
"The Israeli government will on Monday begin operating a 'Palestinians-only' bus service to ferry Palestinian workers from the West Bank to Israel, encouraging them to use it instead of travelling with Israeli settlers on a similar route.
Officially anyone can use them, but the ministry of transport said that the new lines are meant to improve services for Palestinians. ...
In a statement to the Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, the ministry said: 'The new lines are not separate lines for Palestinians but rather two designated lines meant to improve the services offered to Palestinian workers who enter Israel through Eyal Crossing.' ...
The Israeli civil rights group, Checkpoint Watch, which monitors the army's treatment of Palestinians at West Bank checkpoints has reported recent incidents of Palestinians being ejected from buses and told they were not allowed to board them. In 2011 Palestinian activists were arrested after they boarded Israeli buses in the West Bank to protest against segregation."
-->The NY Times did an interesting thing on this story. Rather than discuss this creation of an apartheid bus line, our newspaper of record included a picture without an article.
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Common Dreams:
"The Daily Beast reports in 'Senators Press Resolution To Green-Light Israeli Attack On Iran,' that a resolution 'by Sens. Lindsey Graham (SC) and Robert Menendez (NJ), a Republican and Democrat, respectively, declares U.S. support for an Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear program.
The resolution, which expresses the sense of the Congress, will be supported by the thousands of delegates to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee annual conference that will stream through the Capitol this weekend.
With prominent liberal Democrats already signing on, AIPAC’s lobbying heft will likely propel a bill that, in Congressional sentiment at least, commits the U.S. to active support of a potential Israeli attack that experts think could have consequences as grave as further destabilization in the region, adverse global economic consequences, and even a hardening of Iranian resolve to get a weapon. …"
-->Nothing printed in the NY Times on this resolution to pull the US into war with Iran. Our newspaper of record is very protective of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, especially during their annual, grand conference in DC.
