Monday, November 11, 2013

Fantasyland Media: 10/24/13

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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Aljazeera America:
"On Oct. 11, 1985, Alex Odeh opened his office door at the Santa Ana, Calif. Branch of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) – a civil-rights organization where he worked as regional director – when a pipe bomb exploded, killing him and injuring several others. ...

The ADC has joined forces and phone lists with the NAACP, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and several other civil-rights groups to pressure the Department of Justice (DOJ) for a more robust, renewed investigation. ...

In 1990, Robert Friedman at the Village Voice uncovered the names of three JDL members implicated in the Odeh assassination and cast a new light on the killing. ... Friedman also said Israeli officials had not cooperated with the FBI's investigation of the suspects, all believed to be residing in Israel. He quoted a confidential FBI memorandum he had obtained that said Israel's response to FBI requests had been 'untimely, incomplete and in certain cases no response was rendered.'

'Israel's apparent lack of cooperation with the FBI in the JDL investigation calls into question its sincerity in prosecuting the war against terrorism when the terrorism emanates from Israel itself,' Friedman wrote."

-->The terrorist killing of a Palestinian/American human rights leader didn't get much coverage beyond 1985 in the mainstream media. And The NY Times has ignored recent attempts to trace the murder to Israel. 

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The NY Times:
"U.S. Army Hones Antiterror Strategy for Africa, in Kansas. FORT RILEY, Kan. — Here on the Kansas plains, thousands of soldiers once bound for Iraq or Afghanistan are now gearing up for missions in Africa as part of a new Pentagon strategy to train and advise indigenous forces to tackle emerging terrorist threats and other security risks so that American forces do not have to."

-->This story in The NY Times is well worth reading, since it elaborates important themes in the empire's new wars in Africa. There are the endless quotes from Pentagon officials indicating how important this "antiterror strategy" is to America. And there is simply no voice questioning the empire's decision to wage war in a whole new part of the world. Pentagon propaganda at its best.

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Common Dreams:
"A new report by Christof Heyns, the UN's Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, challenges the lack of transparency in the growing use of drones, and their threats to civilian life and international law. ...

In his report, Heyns blasts drone strikes known as "double-tap" strikes, ones where a second strike follows a first to target rescuers, a tactic TBIJ documented the U.S. has used in its drone war. Heyns states that this is a war crime. He writes:

"Where one drone attack is followed up by another in order to target those who are wounded and hors de combat or medical personnel, it constitutes a war crime in armed conflict and a violation of the right to life, whether or not in armed conflict." "


-->The NY Times covered criticisms of drone killings by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Why leave out the very damming report by the UN's Special Rapporteur? Perhaps it was too specific about the "double-tap" strikes. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the term "war crime" was mentioned, something the Pentagon does not want to see in the US media.