Times Warp:
"The United States sends at least $3.1 billion in military aid grants to Israel every year, more than the amount given to all the rest of the world combined, and although Americans oppose this excess, their opinion has had no effect: Officials are now in talks to raise the yearly amount by as much as 50 percent.
If you missed that news in The New York Times, there is no reason for surprise. The issue has essentially remained out of sight, glossed over in a smattering of news stories, where readers find murky references to US aid and no enlightening details. ...
Times readers have to look elsewhere for a fuller story. Other sources tell us that Israel has been asking for up to $4.5 billion a year in military aid and that talks have been going on 'away from the spotlight.' Observers expect announcement of an aid agreement in November, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington."
-->Yes, The NYT hides military aid to Israel, and in much the same way as it covers up Israeli war crimes. Coverage of Israel, in fact, is about the most egregious example of a national newspaper distorting the news for a particular monied interest, this time for the ultra rich Zionists in the US who are closely allied with extremists in Israel.
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Common Dreams:
"The mammoth Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) under secret negotiation between the United States and European Union is poised to slash the power of local governments to regulate toxins—from pesticides to fracking chemicals—the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) warned in a report released Tuesday.
Preempting the Public Interest: How TTIP Will Limit US States’ Public Health and Environmental Protections (pdf) is based on an analysis of the European Commission's proposed chapter on regulatory cooperation from the April 20 round of negotiations. The report follows other analyses of the text which conclude that the TTIP poses a threat to human rights, environmental protections, and democracy on both sides of the Atlantic.
Beyond the regulatory cooperation chapter, little else is known about the content of the closed-door negotiations over what is set to be the largest bilateral 'trade' deal in history."
-->Our major media does not want to let this deeply troubling information out to citizens of this country. The NYT did not report this story, and has avoided linking upcoming trade deals with a vast increase in corporate power.
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FAIR:
"FAIR has noted before how America’s well-documented clandestine activities in Syria have been routinely ignored when the corporate media discuss the Obama administration’s 'hands-off' approach to the four-and-a-half-year-long conflict. This past week, two pieces—one in the New York Times detailing the 'finger pointing' over Obama’s 'failed' Syria policy, and a Vox 'explainer' of the Syrian civil war—did one better: They didn’t just omit the fact that the CIA has been arming, training and funding rebels since 2012, they heavily implied they had never done so.
First, let’s establish what we do know. Based on multiple reports over the past three-and-a-half years, we know that the Central Intelligence Agency set up a secret program of arming, funding and training anti-Assad forces. This has been reported by major outlets, including the New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel and, most recently, the Washington Post, which—partly thanks to the Snowden revelations—detailed a program that trained approximately 10,000 rebel fighters at a cost of $1 billion a year, or roughly 1/15th of the CIA’s official annual budget. ...
As the US’s strategy in Syria is publicly debated, the CIA’s years-long program has vanished from many popular accounts, giving the average reader the impression the US has sat idly by while foreign actors, Iranian and Russian, have interfered in the internal matters of Syria."
-->Pentagon propaganda pretending to be news again. In many foreign countries, the public has learned to be skeptical of the ties between media and government. The USSR's "Pravda" was read by many citizens as an insight into what lies their own government was telling. But not in the US, where most people consider The NYT as unbiased and free from government distortions. The empire does not foster critical thinking.
