Thursday, August 25, 2016

FAIR:
"NYT Touts Honduras as Ad for ‘American Power’–Leaving Out Support for Murderous Coup Regime. 'How the Most Dangerous Place on Earth Got Safer' was the headline over the lead article in the New York Times‘ 'Week in Review,' with the teaser reading, 'Programs funded by the United States are helping transform Honduras. Who says American power is dead?'

But [the author] failed to explain how American power paved the way for the shocking rise in violence in Honduras. ... in June 2009, Honduras’ left-leaning President Manuel Zelaya was overthrown in a military coup, kidnapped and flown out of the country via the joint US/Honduran military base at Palmerola. ...

With a corrupt, drug-linked regime in place, thanks in large part to US intervention, murder in Honduras soared, rising to 70.7 per 100,000 in 2009, 81.8 in 2010 and 91.4 in 2011—fully 50 percent above the pre-coup level. While many of the murders involved criminal gangs, much of the post-coup violence was political, with resuscitated death squads targeting journalists, opposition figures, labor activists and environmentalists—of whom indigenous leader Berta Cáceres was only the most famous."

-->Ever the cheerleader for US interventionist policies, the NYT tries to brag about what this country has done for Honduras. Death squads and repressive policies, of course, are never mentioned.

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Common Dreams:
"As Resistance Mounts, TPP Becoming 2016 Election's Third Rail. As the White House prepares for its final 'all-out push' to pass the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) during the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress, lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle are being made vulnerable due to growing opposition to the controversial, corporate-friendly trade deal. 

'In 2016,' the Guardian reported on Saturday, 'America's faltering faith in free trade has become the most sensitive controversy in D.C.'

Yet President Barack Obama 'has refused to give up,' wrote Guardian journalists Dan Roberts and Ryan Felton, despite the fact that the 12-nation TPP 'suddenly faces a wall of political opposition among lawmakers who had, not long ago, nearly set the giant deal in stone.'

-->The NYT is still pushing this horrendous trade deal, mostly by not running stories about how unpopular it is with voters. Big business wants the deal, so what does it matter that the vast majority of voters oppose it?

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The Guardian UK:
"It was the first time that the world has seen Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Husayn, also known as Abu Zubaydah, since his capture in Pakistan 14 years ago. He is one of three men that the CIA admits it waterboarded at an unknown prison in Thailand. ...

Abu Zubaydah was a human guinea pig for the CIA torture regimen drawn up by contractor psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, now facing a federal lawsuit brought by later victims. Initially thought to possess vital information on al-Qaida and its plots, Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times, kept awake, held naked and forced into a wooden box little bigger than a coffin.
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He now describes himself as a 'broken man', [one of his lawyers] added. 'I once had hopes that the US would have a thoughtful, fair examination of Abu Zubaydah’s torture but no longer because of the lengths this administration has gone to protect the CIA.' "


-->The NYT carried this sordid story of mindless torture and endless detention without charges. What was missing? Any mention of the lengths that the Obama administration has gone to protect the CIA from criminal charges.