Common Dreams:
“NY State Official Raises Alarm on Charter Schools — And Gets Ignored. A top official in the New York State Comptroller’s Office has urged regulators to require more transparency on charter-school finances. The response has been, well, nonexistent.
Add another voice to those warning about the lack of financial oversight for charter schools. One of New York state's top fiscal monitors told ProPublica that audits by his office have found ‘practices that are questionable at best, illegal at worst’ at some charter schools. …
The charter-school debate in New York, as elsewhere, is politically fraught. De Blasio's cautious stance on charters has put him at odds with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose financial backers include some big-dollar charter-school supporters.”
—>Big money is pushing charter schools, that often escape government scrutiny for how they spend taxpayer money. The NYT is in bed with the billionaires who are privatizing public education. Our newspaper of record left this story out.
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McClatchy DC:
“CIA health professionals may have committed war crimes by collecting and analyzing data on brutally interrogated detainees in potential violation of U.S. and international bans on research on human subjects without their consent, a human rights organization said Tuesday.
Physicians for Human Rights called on President Barack Obama and Congress to establish a commission of inquiry to examine the participation of CIA and private medical personnel in the interrogation program, including possible breaches of domestic and international laws.
‘The CIA relied upon health professionals at every step to commit and conceal the brutal and systematic torture of national security detainees,’ the organization said in an analysis of a four-year study of the agency’s interrogation program released last week by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
‘While most of the acts detailed . . . violate international human rights and domestic laws prohibiting torture, several of these alleged violations can also constitute war crimes.’ “
—>The NYT doesn’t cover war crimes potentially committed by the US government. In that way, the newspaper is as fully censored as the media in Russia or China.
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Guardian UK:
“North Korea was NOT behind the Sony hack according to multiple security experts who discredit FBI findings and reveal that a studio insider named 'Lena' may be responsible
• The FBI last week announced that they had discovered conclusive evidence proving the North Korean government was behind the Sony hack
• President Obama then attacked the country for their behavior during a news conference, and informed them that the United States would retaliate
• Now, the findings of the FBI are being called into question by many of the cybersecurity industry's leading experts
• What's more, after an independent investigation, Norse has determined that they believe a woman named 'Lena' is responsible for the hack
• Almost every expert stated that they believe the hack had to have been an inside job”
—>The NYT let the original story stand for a week, and then buried questions about whether North Korea was responsible for the hacking on the back pages of the Business Day section. Contrast this to The NYT’s front page story on Dec. 18: “U.S. Is Said to Find North Korea Behind Cyberattack on Sony." Or its recent editorial criticizing North Korea for a cyberattack it most likely didn’t do.
