Thursday, April 18, 2013

Fantasyland Media:


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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ProPublica:
"The long-troubled military trials at Guantanamo Bay were hit by revelations earlier this year that a secret censor had the ability to cut off courtroom proceedings, and that there were listening devices disguised as smoke detectors in attorney-client meeting rooms.

Now, another potential instance of compromised confidentiality at the military commissions has emerged: Defense attorneys say somebody has accessed their email and servers.

'Defense emails have ended up being provided to the prosecution, material has disappeared off the defense server, and sometimes reappeared, in different formats, or with different names,' said Rick Kammen, a lawyer for Abd Al Rahim Al Nashiri, who is accused of plotting the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole."

-->The NY Times doesn't worry too much about these sham trials at Guantanamo Bay. Listening in on attorney/client conversations, stealing defense information. What does it matter? Our newspaper of record didn't print this story.

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Guardian UK:
"In order for the US to permit citizens of a foreign country to enter the US without a visa, that country must agree to certain conditions. Chief among them is reciprocity: that country must allow Americans to enter without a visa as well. There are 37 countries which have been permitted entrance into America's "visa waiver" program, and all of them - all 37 - reciprocate by allowing American citizens to enter their country without a visa.

The American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) is now pushing legislation that would allow Israel to enter this program, so that Israelis can enter the US without a visa. But as JTA's Ron Kampeas reports, there is one serious impediment: Israel has a practice of routinely refusing to allow Americans of Arab ethnicity or Muslim backgrounds to enter their country or the occupied territories it controls; it also bars those who are critical of Israeli actions or supportive of Palestinian rights. Israel refuses to relinquish this discriminatory practice of exclusion toward Americans, even as it seeks to enter the US's visa-free program for the benefit of Israeli citizens.

As a result, at the behest of Aipac, Democrat Barbara Boxer, joined by Republican Roy Blunt, has introduced a bill that would provide for Israel's membership in the program while vesting it with a right that no other country in this program has: namely, the right to exclude selected Americans from this visa-free right of entrance."

-->The NY Times doesn't cover stories like this about Israel violating American rights. All the news that Israel considers fit to print.

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Common Dreams:
"While President Obama's new budget proposal has drawn widespread criticism for its cuts to Medicare and Social Security, another lesser known provision within the austerity heavy plan has caused great alarm from food safety advocates—a cutback on food inspection, most notably in the meat and poultry industries.

In Obama's budget, far less money would be allocated for federal food safety regulators, leaving room for a scheme promoted by Obama earlier this year in which industry employees are assigned to regulate themselves.
'The Obama Administration’s proposed cuts to the FY 2014 budget for USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) pave the way for an ill-conceived proposal to remove government inspectors from slaughter facilities and turn over their responsibilities to company-paid employees,' Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch stated Thursday."

-->Obama talks food safety, but does the exact opposite. Our newspaper of record doesn't care about Obama's pro-corporate lies and didn't cover this story.



Thursday, April 11, 2013

Fantasyland Media:


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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DeSmog Blog:
"The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has had a 'no fly zone' in place in Mayflower, Arkansas since April 1 at 2:12 PM and will be in place "until further notice," according to the FAA website and it's being overseen by ExxonMobil itself. In other words, any media or independent observers who want to witness the tar sands spill disaster have to ask Exxon's permission.

Mayflower is the site of the recent major March 29 ExxonMobil Pegagus tar sands pipeline spill, which belched out an estimated 5,000 barrels of tar sands diluted bitumen into the small town's neighborhoods, causing the evacuation of 22 homes.

The rules of engagement for the no fly zone dictate that no aircraft can fly within 1,000 feet of the ground in the five-mile radius surrounding the ExxonMobil Pegasus tar sands pipeline spill. The area located within this radius includes the nearby Pine Village Airport.

-->The NY Times didn't cover the story of this government/corporate news blackout. No pictures from the sky of the massive oil spill. Sort of like not printing pictures of the war dead coming home. Why get the public outraged over US wars overseas or US corporate destruction of the environment? 

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JusticeOnLine:
"Government documents obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) through its FOIA records requests reveal that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), an agency created after the September 11 attacks under the rubric of combating terrorism, conducts daily monitoring of peaceful, lawful protests as a matter of policy.

Functioning as a secret political police force against people participating in lawful, peaceful free speech activity, the heavily redacted documents show that the DHS 'Threat Management Division' directed Regional Intelligence Analysts to provide a 'Daily Intelligence Briefing' that includes a category of reporting on 'Peaceful Activist Demonstrations' along with 'Domestic Terrorist Activity.' (p. 68) ...

In preparation for planned protests in New York City on October 15, 2011, the DHS documents show coordination between federal and local authorities to use New York City’s permitting scheme to frustrate, obstruct or stop free speech activities. ...

The documents show a Department of Homeland Security that appears obsessed with the question of whether any and all protests that are being surveilled receive media attention and coverage. ... 'Taken together, the two sets of documents paint a disturbing picture of federal law enforcement agencies using their vast power in a systematic effort to surveil and disrupt peaceful demonstrations. The federal agencies’ actions were not because Occupy represented a 'terrorist threat' or a 'criminal threat' but rather because it posed a significant grassroots political challenge to the status quo,' stated Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the PCJF."

-->The NY Times, itself guilty of suppressing coverage of most peaceful demonstrations, didn't print this story.

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NYT Book Review:
"... In their conclusion, the authors rightly note the squeamishness of America's modern presidents in dealing with genocide. Woodrow Wilson, a true idealist, virtually ignored Turkey's slaughter of a million or more Armenians. ...

More recently, Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama employed little more than words to condemn the atrocities in Darfur. Historically speaking, Roosevelt comes off rather well. ..."

-->Dr. David Oshinsky, writing for the The NY Times, doesn't come off nearly as well. Woodrow Wilson the idealist? That's what was always taught in tenth grade history. But Wilson was a virulent racist, a defender of child labor abuses, and an avowed enemy of women's right to vote. He won the presidency by promising to keep America out of World War I, only to enter it when US banking interests were put at risk. He signed the worst laws the country has ever seen suppressing freedom of speech, and was instrumental in sending Eugene Debs, Socialist candidate for president, to prison. 

Bush and Obama should be ashamed of what went on in Darfur? Can't the good professor come up with anything better? The Guantanamo prison, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, the targeted killing of American citizens by drones? What kind of history is Dr. Oshinsky teaching at NYU? The same type of lobotomized history that readers of the NY Times are often subjected to. 

Friday, April 05, 2013

Fantasyland Media:


Common Dreams:
"A majority of Americans believe that banks have gotten far too big, according to a new Huffington Post/YouGov poll.

According to the poll, sixty-one percent said that financial institutions 'have become too large and powerful,' while 17 percent disagreed. 43% said that current federal regulations on banks and other financial institutions don't go far enough to regulate the big banks, while 15% thought they did enough. 38% were in favor of a law 'that would cap the size of banks in the US and force the largest banks to break into smaller units,' while 22% were opposed.

Last week Senator Bernie Sanders (I. Vt.) introduced a bill to do just that, stating, 'If an institution is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.' "

->The NY Times, predictably, didn't cover this poll showing an overwhelming majority of Americans want to cut the big banks down to size. Why spread anti-business ideas?

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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:
"Tensions remain elevated on the Korean peninsula Monday as worries grow among some that continued US provocations are making chances of a violent outbreak more likely as its military continues a series of training exercises with their South Korean allies.

As leaders in Seoul and Pyongyang exchange barbs and issue threats, foreign policy expert Eric Margolis argues the situation demands the deployment of more 'diplomats' and less 'air force generals' so that tensions can be eased before what he called a 'largely manufactured crisis' spirals out of control.

As Agence France-Presse reports: 'By publicly highlighting its recent deployment of nuclear-capable B-52 and stealth bombers over South Korea, Washington has, at times, almost appeared to be purposefully goading an already apoplectic Pyongyang.' "

-->The NY Times wasn't interested in this analysis of the US empire goading North Korea into war. Our newspaper of record almost always prints Pentagon friendly stories.

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Guardian UK:
"Camp Nama: British personnel reveal horrors of secret US base in Baghdad. ...

The abuses they say they saw include: Iraqi prisoners being held for prolonged periods in cells the size of large dog kennels, prisoners being subjected to electric shocks, inmates being taken into a sound-proofed shipping container for interrogation, and emerging in a state of physical distress. ...

One person who has been widely reported to have been seen there frequently was General Stanley McChrystal, then commander of US Joint Special Operations forces in Iraq. ...

Some of the scenes at Nama were so disturbing that personnel serving there would literally look the other way, rather than witness the abuse. 'I remember being on sentry duty at a post overlooking the dog kennels, and the guy I was with wouldn't even look at them,' one British eyewitness recalls. 'I was saying: 'Hey turn around and look at them.' And he wouldn't. He just wouldn't turn around, because he knew they were there.' "

-->The NY Times has yet to report this story involving McChrystal, commander of US Joint Special Operations, and the routine use of brutal torture on a secret base in Iraq. All our premier newspaper has on its website is an advertisement by Amazon for the book: "My Share of the Task: A Memoir by General Stanley McChrystal." How perfect.