Tuesday, May 23, 2017

The Guardian UK:
"Had Assange not sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, he would have been on his way to the kind of American torture pit Chelsea Manning had to endure. This prospect was obscured by the grim farce played out in Sweden. 'It's a laughing stock,' said James Catlin, one of Assange's Australian lawyers. 'It is as if they make it up as they go along'.

It may have seemed that way, but there was always serious purpose. In 2008, a secret Pentagon document prepared by the 'Cyber Counterintelligence Assessments Branch' foretold a detailed plan to discredit WikiLeaks and smear Assange personally.

The 'mission' was to destroy the 'trust' that was WikiLeaks' 'centre of gravity'. This would be achieved with threats of 'exposure [and] criminal prosecution'. Silencing and criminalising such an unpredictable source of truth-telling was the aim."

-->The NYT coverage of Assange has always been a perfect example of "fake news" orchestrated by the CIA. Read JohnPilger.com if you want the real story about why the Swedish charges against Assange were dropped.

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Common Dreams:
"Americans are dying at a shockingly high rate from preventable causes, found a first-of-its-kind global health study published late Thursday.

The new research demonstrates that despite the fact that the U.S. has the largest economy in the world, healthcare for many of its residents is woefully inadequate. The U.S. was tied with Estonia and Montenegro, far below other wealthy nations such as Norway, Canada, and Australia, in the study's ranking of 195 countries.

'America's ranking is an embarrassment, especially considering the U.S. spends more than $9,000 per person on healthcare annually, more than any other country,' said Dr. Christopher Murray, senior author of the study and director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. 'Anyone with a stake in the current healthcare debate, including elected officials at the federal, state, and local levels, should take a look at where the U.S. is falling short.' "

-->The NYT didn't cover this story. Our newspaper of record almost always comes out in favor of the big insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Take a peek at the current NYT Board of Directors to see what conflicts of interest they represent. http://www.nytco.com/board-of-directors/

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The Guardian UK:
"Facebook has censored a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist for publishing a series of posts alleging corruption by the prime minister of Malta and his associates.

Matthew Caruana Galizia, a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ award-winning Panama Papers team, was temporarily locked out of his Facebook account over four posts, which were deleted for violating the social network’s community standards. 'For me, this process was enlightening because I realised how crippling and punitive this block is for a journalist,' Caruana Galizia told the Guardian by email.

The posts, which were written in Maltese, contained allegations of wrongdoing by prime minister Joseph Muscat, his chief of staff Keith Schembri, and minister of energy Konrad Mizzi. Each post included images of documents from the Panama Papers leak."


-->No coverage of this by our NYT. A story about Facebook censoring investigative reporters should be big news. Check out the Board of Directors again to see why this story never made it into print. 

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

The Guardian UK:
"Apparent National Security Agency (NSA) malware has been used in a global cyber-attack, including on British hospitals, in what whistleblower Edward Snowden described as the repercussion of the NSA's reckless decision to build the tools. 'Despite warnings, @NSAGov built dangerous attack tools that could target Western software. Today we see the cost,' Snowden tweeted Friday.

At least two hospitals in London were forced to shut down and stop admitting patients after being attacked by the malware, which operates by locking out the user, encrypting data, and demanding a ransom to release it. The attacks hit dozens of other hospitals, ambulance operators, and doctors' offices as well."

-->The NYT covered this story, but left out the most important part. No mention of the NSA's malware role in all this hacking.

UPDATE: The NYT finally reported the NSA's role in an article entitled, "Malware Case Is Major Blow for the NSA." The story asks us to feel sorry for the NSA because of the "trials" the agency has endured.

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Black Alliance for Peace:
"The United States has been conducting a brutal, 20-year-long campaign of destabilization against Venezuela in an attempt to cause 'regime change' in that country.  This has taken the form of economic sabotage and financial manipulation as well as support for the mobilization of right-wing forces in increasingly violent demonstrations.

This is not a recent policy but one that has also been carried out under the Obama and Bush administrations as well as the present Trump administration.  In 2002, right-wing forces inside Venezuela attempted a coup against then-President Hugo Chavez. Many sources have confirmed that the U.S. gave the go-ahead to the opposition to orchestrate the coup and promised support.  Soon after the coup, the people of Venezuela turned out in the streets in massive numbers and restored Chavez to the presidency.

Barack Obama continued the assault on the Venezuelan revolution by imposing crippling sanctions and asserting that Venezuela was a 'security threat' to the United States. These attacks from the U.S. exemplify attempts to realize full-spectrum dominance, the epitome of imperialist intervention which has brought so much suffering to the world."

-->Do you think that US media would ever even whisper these words about the CIA's long term assault on Venezuela? The current media coverage of Venezuela shows the extent to which newspapers like the NYT print propaganda rather than news.  

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The Guardian UK
"Contrary to what nearly every US mediator has asserted, it is not that Israel greatly desires a peace agreement but has a pretty good fallback option. It is that Israel greatly prefers the fallback option to a peace agreement. No tactical brilliance in negotiations, no amount of expert preparation, no perfect alignment of the stars can overcome that obstacle. Only two things can: a more attractive agreement, or a less attractive fallback. The first of these options has been tried extensively, from offering Israel full normalisation with most Arab and Islamic states to promising upgraded relations with Europe, US security guarantees, and increased financial and military assistance. ...

The second option is to make the fallback worse. This is what President Eisenhower did following the 1956 Suez crisis when he threatened economic sanctions to get Israel to withdraw from Sinai and Gaza. This is what President Ford did in 1975 when he reassessed US relations with Israel, refusing to provide it with new arms deals until it agreed to a second Sinai withdrawal. This is what President Carter did when he raised the spectre of terminating US military assistance if Israel did not immediately evacuate Lebanon in September 1977. And this is what Carter did when he made clear to both sides at Camp David that the United States would withhold aid and downgrade relations if they did not sign an agreement. This, likewise, is what the US secretary of state James Baker did in 1991, when he forced a reluctant Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to attend negotiations in Madrid by withholding a $10bn loan guarantee that Israel needed to absorb the immigration of Soviet Jews. That was the last time the United States applied pressure of this sort."

-->Would our US media ever really give the American people this short history lesson about what has worked in the Middle East? All of it goes down the NYT memory hole.

Tuesday, May 09, 2017

The Guardian UK:
"Israeli ministers have approved the wording of a new law that would downgrade Arabic as an official language and which states that the right to self-determination in Israel 'is unique to the Jewish people', despite the country’s sizeable non-Jewish minority.

The go-ahead for the nation state bill by the ministerial committee for legislation means it will now move forward to a vote by the country’s parliament. The bill has to pass several stages in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, for it to become law and could also be challenged in the courts.

Critics say the law is discriminatory and could undermine Israel’s balance of being both a Jewish and democratic state by harming the rights of minorities.
Hebrew and Arabic are both Israel’s national languages, but the bill states that Hebrew would be the lone national language, downgrading Arabic to 'a special status in the state' whose 'speakers have the right to language-accessible state services'."

-->Yes, apartheid gallops ahead in Israel. But the NYT, ever protective of Israel's image in the US, didn't cover the story.

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The Guardian UK:
"More than 20 states have proposed bills that would crack down on protests and demonstrations since Donald Trump was elected, in a move that UN experts have branded 'incompatible with US obligations under international human rights law'.

The proposed laws would variously increase the penalties for protesting in large groups, ban protesters from wearing masks during demonstrations and, in some states, protect drivers from liability if they strike someone taking part in a protest.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said more than 30 separate anti-protest bills have been introduced since 8 November in 'an unprecedented level of hostility towards protesters in the 21st century'. Their introduction comes amid a huge increase in activism and engagement, much of it inspired by Trump’s election to the presidency."

-->The NYT didn't cover this dangerous turn in US politics, making laws against political demonstrations. Our newspaper of record has always been against political activism in the streets, and this is just another example. This same week, the NYT enthusiastically reported on street demonstrations in Venezuela, Poland, and Russia. CIA run street demonstrations always get prime coverage. 

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Common Dreams:
"The city of Flint, where the pipes have still not been fixed and the water crisis is ongoing, is threatening to place tax liens on people's homes for non-payment of water bills, according to a local news source.

NBC affiliate 25News reported Tuesday that more than 8,000 people have received notice from the city that they are 'at risk of losing their homes to foreclosure if they don't pay up on their water bills' by May 19. ... 

Melissa Mays, a Flint mother and water activist, told the station of the notice: 'I got scared, for probably the first time since this all started this actually scared me.' Mays plans to 'go against what she believes' and pay the $900 she owes in order to ensure she doesn't lose her home ..."

-->Paying for poisoned water in Flint? The NYT wasn't interested in this story.

Wednesday, May 03, 2017

Common Dreams:
"Underscoring previous assessments that the Democratic establishment, including the party's 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, has 'a Wall Street problem,' new polling and focus group data shows that Democrats are perceived as woefully out of touch when it comes to the economy.

The pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA surveyed 801 voters who backed former President Barack Obama in 2012 but who then voted for Donald Trump in 2016, as well as hundreds of drop-off voters who opted to stay home on election day. Priorities USA also conducted a series of focus groups with voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida—swing states that had voted for Obama but switched to Trump, handing him the presidency. 

Reporting on the survey, the Washington Post's Greg Sargent wrote Monday: 'One finding from the polling stands out: A shockingly large percentage of these Obama-Trump voters said Democrats' economic policies will favor the wealthy—twice the percentage that said the same about Trump.' "

-->More Hillary bashing, or the simple truth that the Democrats favor the wealthy as much as the Republicans? Readers of the NYT, however, were spared this view of our corporatized Democratic Party. It didn't cover this story.

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The Guardian UK:
"Elizabeth Warren, one of the most prominent Democrats in the Senate, has broken ranks to criticise Barack Obama for misreading the economy and a swath of Democrats for selling out to wealthy elites.

In an interview with the Guardian, the Massachusetts senator, tipped as a potential presidential candidate in 2020, also spoke of her optimism about grassroots resistance to Donald Trump and how it has changed American democracy. ..

The senator went on take a swipe at members of her own party while describing the collapse of old distinctions between left and right. 'I think there are real differences between the Republicans and the Democrats here in the United States,' she said. 'The Republicans have clearly thrown their lot in with the rich and the powerful, but so have a lot of Democrats.' ”

-->Top Democrat criticizes former president and calls her party out of touch on wealth issues? No mention of the story in the NYT, which almost always comes down on the side of that same wealthy elite.  

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Common Dreams:
"As President Donald Trump and the GOP attempt once again to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with a much crueler bill, House Democrats are pushing in the total opposite direction: as of Thursday, a record 104 have signed on to co-sponsor a Medicare-for-All bill.

The bill, H.R. 676, known as the 'Expanded & Improved Medicare for All Act,' has been introduced into Congress repeatedly by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). It has now received support from more than half of the Democratic caucus, a record for the party. ...

'Americans are fed up with an inhumane, profit-driven health system that leaves millions without care,' said Dr. Carol Paris, president of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), in a statement. 'Quality health care is not a luxury, nor is it a commodity that can be bought and sold in a marketplace. It is a social good that can be best delivered through a single-payer national health program.' "

-->Another story not covered by the NYT, which obviously favors our current profit driven system over universal healthcare.