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:
"Ríos Montt was the dictator of Guatemala during 1982, '83. He seized power in a military coup. He was trained in the U.S. He had served in Washington as head of the Inter-American Defense College. And while he was president, he was embraced by Ronald Reagan as a man of great integrity, someone totally devoted to democracy. And he killed many tens of thousands of civilians, particularly in the Mayan northwest highlands. In this particular trial, he is being charged with 1,771 specific murders in the area of the Ixil Mayans. These charges are being brought because the prosecutors have the names of each of these victims. They've been able to dig up the bones of most of them. ..
A forensic witness testified in the trial that 80 percent of the remains they’ve recovered had gunshot wounds to the head. Witnesses have—witnesses and survivors have described Ríos Montt’s troops beheading people. One talked about an old woman who was beheaded, and then they kicked her head around the floor. They ripped the hearts out of children as their bodies were still warm, and they piled them on a table for their parents to see. ...
And most importantly, the U.S., beginning under the Carter administration but continuing under Reagan and after, asked the Israelis to come in and fill the gap that was caused by congressional restrictions. So Israel was doing massive shipments of Galil automatic rifles and other weapons. And Pérez Molina, as you saw in the video, actually had one of his subordinates come over and show me an Israeli-made mortar."
-->The NY Times' version of the genocide trial in Guatemala, leaves out all of the above information, from the US and Israeli support of the massacres, to the involvement of the current, US supported Guatemalan president. Sanitized news so American readers can't really understand who was guilty of this heinous genocide.
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Guardian UK:
"Shaker Aamer is the forgotten detainee in the 'war on terror'. After nearly 70 days on hunger strike, he fears he might never return to his family in London. But why is he still being held, despite having been cleared for release six years ago? ...
Aamer's continuing incarceration is all the more mysterious, given that the Americans ruled almost six years ago that he could be freed from Guantánamo. In June 2007, he was officially cleared for release. A security assessment by the US government acknowledged it had no concrete evidence against him. Two years later, the Obama administration reiterated the lack of a case against him, underlining the fact that he could be released. ...
Why might powerful interests desire the silencing of Shaker Aamer? Stafford Smith points out that his case has an incendiary element: he is allegedly able to describe in detail how a UK intelligence agent was present while he was beaten. A British operative, he claims, was present as a US interrogator repeatedly smashed his head against a wall shortly before he was sent to Guantánamo. Described as articulate and highly intelligent, Aamer's allegations of British complicity in his torture and detention would undoubtedly reopen the vexed and fraught debate over British complicity in the darker side of America's 'war on terror'."
-->Hold an innocent man prisoner for years just so he can't make the US and British governments look bad? The NY Times was disinterested in this story of our government's flagrant violation of human rights.
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Common Dreams:
"Evading any fanfare, President Obama followed Congress's lead and quietly signed legislation Monday that gutted provisions of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act (STOCK) which provided important oversight of government employees, including the President and members of Congress, by requiring disclosure of their finances to the public.
'Without the provisions, the STOCK act is made toothless,' writes Dan Auble with the Center for Responsive Politics. 'Insider trading by members of Congress and federal employees is still prohibited, but the ability of watchdog groups to verify that Congress is following its own rules is severely limited because these records could still be filed on paper—an unacceptably outdated practice that limits the public's access. This is not true disclosure.'
Signed in to law last April, Obama originally hailed the measure as a step towards eliminating the 'deficit of trust' between US citizens and their government."
-->Obama's lies about Wall Street are almost always covered up by our newspaper of record. The NY Times didn't print this story. How about a "deficit of trust" in reporting?
