Thursday, December 19, 2013

Fantasyland Media:

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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The NY Times:
"Gaza, Vexed by Floods, Gets Fuel and Power, By FARES AKRAM and ISABEL KERSHNER"

-->The NY Times does its best to avoid printing what has really "vexed" Gaza. First it is the storms and floods. Then Hamas and its wrangling with the Palestinian Authority. Finally, The NY Times cites the Egyptian Army. But never the Israeli blockade. Wouldn't it be refreshing if our newspaper of record told it like the American Friends Service Committee: "One of the strongest winter storms in decades hit the occupied Palestinian territory on December 11th bringing with it strong winds, heavy rains, and low temperatures. The storm also brought new hardship to an already exhausted population in the Gaza Strip and exacerbated the existing humanitarian crisis caused by the 7 year long Israeli blockade of Gaza."

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Common Dreams:
"Surveillance Is Theft: World's Leading Authors Protest NSA. Calling it 'a stand for democracy in the digital age,' 560 of the world's most renowned writers, including five Nobel prize winners, have signed a petition condemning state surveillance and urging the U.N. to create an international bill of digital rights. The statement by authors from 81 countries, which is being published globally in over 30 newspapers and can be signed by the public, says the surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden violates privacy, compromises freedom of thought and undermines the fundamental right of all humans to remain 'unobserved and unmolested.'

'A person under surveillance is no longer free; a society under surveillance is no longer a democracy. To maintain any validity, our democratic rights must apply in virtual as in real space.' "

-->The NY Times somehow missed this story. Human rights stories are only covered if they are about countries on the empire's hit list like Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and China. 

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Guardian, UK:
"The National Security Agency is telling its story like never before. Never mind whether that story is, well, true.

On Sunday night, CBS’s 60 Minutes ran a remarkable piece that provided NSA officials, from director Keith Alexander to junior analysts, with a long, televised forum to push back against criticism of the powerful spy agency. It’s an opening salvo in an unprecedented push from the agency to win public confidence at a time when both White House reviews and pending legislation would restrict the NSA’s powers.

But mixed in among the dramatic footage of Alexander receiving threat briefings and junior analysts solving Rubik’s cubes in 90 seconds were a number of dubious claims: from the extent of surveillance to collecting on Google and Yahoo data centers to an online 'kill-switch' for the global financial system developed by China.

Reporter John Miller, a former official with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and an ex-FBI spokesman, allowed these claims to go unchallenged. The Guardian, not so much. Here’s our take ...'

-->Why is it that an English newspaper can expose and even ridicule the 60 Minutes piece as obvious propaganda, and The NY Times can't? When it comes to criticizing the national security state, America's foremost newspaper is almost always missing in action.