Wednesday, March 15, 2017

Mint Press News:
"On Thursday, China’s State Council Information Office released a human rights report on the U.S., noting that while that country continues to act as 'the judge of human rights it continues to ignore its own terrible problems.' ...

On the domestic front, the report highlighted the prison industrial complex which has led to the U.S. having the second highest incarceration rate in the world, with almost 1 in 3 adults having a criminal record. ... The report also noted that in 2016 'The colonial history, enslavement, racial subordination and segregation, racial terrorism and racial inequality in the United States remained a serious challenge,' where 'Police killings were reminiscent of the past racial terror of lynching.' ...

The report noted that the U.S. air campaigns in Syria and Iraq had killed between 4,568 and 6,127 civilians and that since 2009, its illegal drone program had left 800 dead in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia."

->The truth hurts! But the readers of the NYT can avoid the anguish because the paper didn't print this story. Always protective of the empire's good name.

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The Guardian:
"Just before his torturers pushed him out of the van, barely conscious, on to the Nairobi pavement, Abdi was told he was one of the lucky ones: 'You were supposed to die tonight.' The security operatives who picked him up were Kenyan, but new research from the Angaza Foundation for African Reporting suggests they are part of a US-funded counter-terrorism strategy across Africa that is leaving a trail of destruction in its wake.

Since Kenya invaded Somalia in 2011 in an effort to dislodge the Islamist militant group al-Shabaab, thousands of ethnic Somalis like Abdi living in Kenya have been detained, many on dubious grounds.

The security forces, in particular the Kenyan Defence Force, which continues to receive significant US funding, and the anti-terrorism police unit, have been accused of torture and summary executions."

-->More bad news about US human rights violations. The NYT, of course, didn't report the story. 

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The Age:
"Half a century after United States B-52 bombers dropped more than 500,000 tonnes of explosives on Cambodia's countryside Washington wants the country to repay a $US500 million ($662 million) war debt. The demand has prompted expressions of indignation and outrage from Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh. ...

Over 200 nights in 1973 alone, 257,456 tons of explosives fell in secret carpet-bombing sweeps – half as many as were dropped on Japan during the Second World War. According to one genocide researcher, up to 500,000 Cambodians were killed, many of them children.

The bombings drove hundreds of thousands of ordinary Cambodians into the arms of the Khmer Rouge, an ultra-Marxist organisation which seized power in 1975 and over the next four years presided over the deaths of more than almost two million people through starvation disease and execution."

-->No news of this reached NYT readers either. No wonder US citizens view the empire as so benevolent. It is just ignorance, aided and abetted by the US media.