Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Common Dreams:
"Amid Grassroots Push, Medicare for All Winning Big in Democratic Primaries. With Medicare for All reaching record levels of support among both members of Congress and the American public—where support for single-payer is spreading 'like wildfire'—policy platforms demanding that the U.S. ditch its wasteful and deeply immoral for-profit system in favor of guaranteed healthcare for every American are also proving to be winners in Democratic primary fights across the country.

In red and blue states alike, candidates backing Medicare for All have emerged victorious in Democratic primary battles where, in some cases, their opponents had the backing of the party establishment."

-->There is a battle going on between the corrupt Democratic Party establishment and reform minded candidates. Our mainstream media, including the NYT, is on the side of the party's corporate wing. This story isn't being reported.

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The Guardian UK:
"Rudy Giuliani won deal for OxyContin maker to continue sales of drug behind opioid deaths. The US government secured a criminal conviction against Purdue Pharma in the mid-2000s but failed to curb sales of the drug after Giuliani reached a deal to avoid a bar on Purdue doing business.

... Giuliani won an important concession for Purdue. Corporations with criminal convictions are mostly barred from doing business with the federal government. If Purdue Pharma’s name was on the conviction it would probably have forced OxyContin from public health programs such as Medicaid and Medicare and the Veterans Administration health system. That in turn was likely to diminish its prescribing in the private health system.

[The federal prosecutor] said he did not want to be responsible for taking OxyContin off the market and so agreed with Giuliani to target the prosecution at the parent company, Purdue Frederick. That left Purdue Pharma, cleaved out as a separate painkiller manufacturer in 1991, to continue selling the painkiller without restriction even though opioid deaths were escalating."

-->Big Pharma pushing drug addiction with the help of Rudy Giuliani. Why must readers learn abut this from a foreign newspaper? Maybe our major media is addicted to corporate influence.

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Popular Resistance:
"Nicolás Maduro was successfully re-elected president of Venezuela on Sunday, receiving 5.8 million of the 8.6 million ballots cast, on a turnout of 46 percent. His nearest challenger, Henri Falcon, received 1.8 million votes. The process was watched over by 150 international observers from over 30 countries, among them former Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, who said 'I do not have any doubt about the voting process. It is an advanced automatic voting system.' ...

However, Western media have taken an entirely different outlook to the proceedings, unanimously presenting them as seriously flawed, at best, and at worst a complete sham presided over by a dictator. The New York Times presented the election as 'a contest that critics said was heavily rigged in his favor,' Huffington Post christened it 'a vote denounced as a farce cementing autocracy in the crisis-stricken OPEC nation,' while NPR reported that the vote was fraudulent, 'a view shared by the United States and many independent observers.'

-->Reporting on Venezuela clearly shows how subservient our media is to corporate interests. Big Oil clearly wants Venezuela's oilfields back, and mainstream media is as always sickenly ready to oblige.

Wednesday, May 09, 2018

Common Dreams:
"After what critics called 'a hollow charade of a trial' and 'theater of the absurd,' an Israeli court Thursday convicted Palestinian poet and photographer Dareen Tatour, 36, of 'incitement to violence' and 'support of a terror organization' for publishing her poetry on social media."

Let us read the poem that is sending her to prison, in the Middle East's "only democracy."

Resist, my people, resist them.
In Jerusalem, I dressed my wounds and breathed my sorrows
And carried the soul in my palm
For an Arab Palestine.
I will not succumb to the “peaceful solution,”
Never lower my flags
Until I evict them from my land.
I cast them aside for a coming time.
Resist, my people, resist them.
Resist the settler’s robbery
And follow the caravan of martyrs.
Shred the disgraceful constitution
Which imposed degradation and humiliation
And deterred us from restoring justice.
They burned blameless children;
As for Hadil, they sniped her in public,
Killed her in broad daylight.
Resist, my people, resist them.
Resist the colonialist’s onslaught.
Pay no mind to his agents among us
Who chain us with the peaceful illusion.
Do not fear doubtful tongues;
The truth in your heart is stronger,
As long as you resist in a land
That has lived through raids and victory.
So Ali called from his grave:
Resist, my rebellious people.
Write me as prose on the agarwood;
My remains have you as a response.
Resist, my people, resist them.
Resist, my people, resist them.

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Common Dreams:
"The public comment period is now open on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's just unveiled proposal for food labeling of products using GMOs—a plan that would have labels without the words 'genetically modified' or 'genetically engineered,' but instead adorned with cheerful images.

According to Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, the proposal represents 'a gift to industry from our now Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who authored the legislation to squash the Vermont GMO labeling law and mandatory labels.'

The proposal follows President Barack Obama's 2016 signature on an industry-approved bill—dubbed the DARK Act—that required national labeling standard rules, and which critics blasted for having loopholes and lacking a mandate for adequate GMO labels."

-->Yes, both parties have sold out to Monsanto and GMO's. The NYT completes the betrayal; it didn't cover this story.

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Common Dreams:
"After Amazon stocks soared last week—making founder Jeff Bezos, the world's richest man, $12 billion richer—Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted that the company paid no federal income tax last year, which was confirmed by independent analysis on Thursday, and comes as Amazon is trying to kill a proposed tax that aims to end Seattle's homelessness crisis. ...

'He's right,' PolitiFact declared. 'We've taken a look at a series of exaggerated claims about Amazon in the past. But in this case, Sanders is on the money.'

With no public tax return and no cooperation from Amazon, fact-checkers dug into the company's annual filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). They found, based on a February 2018 filing, 'that not only would the company not be paying anything in 2017 federal income taxes, but it would be getting a $137 million tax refund.' "


-->The NYT reported Amazon's despicable attempts to kill a local tax for the homeless in Seattle, but left out one little detail. Yes, the fact that Amazon paid no taxes last year, and would be getting a $137 million from the IRS. When it comes to corporate robbery, the NYT always sticks to the little details.

Wednesday, May 02, 2018

Common Dreams:
"Amid the handwringing of many in the corporate media over comedian Michelle Wolf's monologue at the White House Correspondents' Association over the weekend, few took notice of reports that the Justice Department took a step away from protecting journalists on Sunday, deleting language in its policy manual regarding press freedom ...

In the new update, a section titled 'Need for Free Press and Public Trial' was removed. The deleted passage had stressed the need to maintain 'the constitutional requirements of a free press and public trials as well as the right of the people in a constitutional democracy to have access to information about the conduct of law enforcement officers, prosecutors and courts, consistent with the individual rights of the accused.' "

-->The loss of press freedom didn't interest our "newspaper of record." The NYT didn't print this story.

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Common Dreams:
"After a video of the arrest of two African-American men sitting in Starbucks without buying anything went viral, Starbucks scheduled anti-racism training. But their inclusion of the Anti-Defamation League in the training provoked another outcry and Starbucks capitulated. ...

Cat Brooks, co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project, said ... 'You can’t be a piece of an anti-bias training when you openly support a racist, oppressive, and brutal colonization of Palestine.'

Linda Sarsour, also co-chair of the Women’s March, wrote on Facebook that ADL is 'an anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian organization that peddles Islamophobia and attacks America’s prominent Muslim orgs and activists and supports/sponsors US law enforcement agents to travel and get trained by Israeli military.' "

-->The major media, led by the NYT, avoided this story of how the racist ADL was thrown out of the Starbucks retraining plan. Always protecting the Zionist lobby and its Islamophobia campaigns. 

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Common Dreams:
"Faced with mounting scientific evidence that bee-poisoning neonicotinoids, or neonics, could cause an 'ecological armageddon,' European regulators on Friday approved a 'groundbreaking" and "historic' ban on the widely-used class of pesticides—an announcement met with immediate applause by campaigners.

'The E.U.'s groundbreaking ban on bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides is a huge win for pollinators, people, and the planet,' responded Tiffany Finck-Haynes, senior food futures campaigner for Friends of the Earth (FOE). ...

'The E.U.'s wisdom highlights the Trump EPA's folly,' noted [Lori Ann Burd, director of the Center for Biological Diversity]. 'Although U.S. beekeepers reported catastrophic losses again this winter, and just this past week the EPA closed a comment period on another suite of damning neonicotinoid risk assessments, rather than banning these dangerous pesticides, the agency is actually considering increasing the use of neonics across another 165 million acres.' "

-->Always eager to take Monsanto's side, the NYT didn't cover this story.