Wednesday, June 27, 2018

Common Dreams:
"Democracies worldwide are experiencing a 'crisis of trust,' according to the Democracy Perception Index released Thursday, which found that among citizens of democratic nations, the majority does not believe that their voices matter in politics or that governments are acting in the public interest.

Earlier this month, Dalia Research, Alliance of Democracies, and Rasmussen Global polled some 125,000 people across 50 countries, and found that those living in nations deemed 'democractic'—based on Freedom House's latest index—have even less faith in government than those living in 'non-democratic' states.

More than half of respondents in democratic countries said their voices 'rarely' or 'never' matter in politics, and 64 percent said they believe their government 'rarely' or 'never' acts in the interest of the public."

-->This crisis in confidence story didn't make it into the pages of the NYT, the newspaper of neoliberal good news. 

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Common Dreams:
" 'The most important surveillance story you will see for years just went online, revealing how AT&T became the internet's biggest enemy, secretly collaborating against its customers and partners to destroy your privacy.'

That was how whistleblower and privacy advocate Edward Snowden reacted to the publication of an explosive story by The Intercept on Monday, which reveals for the first time how 'fortress-like' AT&T buildings located in eight major American cities have played a central role in a massive National Security Agency (NSA) spying program 'that has for years monitored billions of emails, phone calls, and online chats passing across U.S. territory.'

'It's eye-opening and ominous the extent to which this is happening right here on American soil,' Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told The Intercept in an interview. 'It puts a face on surveillance that we could never think of before in terms of actual buildings and actual facilities in our own cities, in our own backyards.' "
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/06/25/most-important-surveillance-story-you-will-see-years-report-reveals-how-att

-->Massive spying by AT&T for the NSA? Didn't interest the NYT, which cares more about keeping in the good graces of huge corporations and the NSA than it does about reporting the news.

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Roots Action:
"We have four simple demands for U.S. mainstream media outlets to help fix their broken coverage of Palestine. ...

1. Include the voices of Palestinian rights activists and peace activists, both from Palestine and from the United States.

2. Include the stories of Palestinian victims and their friends and loved ones. 

3. Use the active voice. If the Israeli military kills someone, say so. Don't say that Palestinians died, or 'died in clashes,' and leave the cause of death a mystery to be discovered through careful reading of later paragraphs. 

4. Provide appropriate context so that those you are informing of the latest violence know that Israel forcibly removed Palestinians from their homes in 1948 and through the 1967 war, that Israel today illegally occupies and blockades Palestinians, that Israel holds many Palestinian political prisoners, that Israel receives billions of dollars in free high-tech weaponry from the United States every year, and that none of these things is true for the other 'side' of the 'conflict.' " 
https://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=13391

-->Keep this list handy as you read or listen to major media reporting on Palestine. It is a key to Zionist propaganda in the US.

Wednesday, June 20, 2018

The Guardian UK:
"A pro-Trump demonstrator who admitted hitting protesters at a far-right rally received help and support from California police, who worked with him to prosecute leftwing activists, records show.

Documents and testimony in a trial surrounding a rightwing demonstration in Berkeley reveal that police and prosecutors pursued charges on behalf of Daniel Quillinan, a conservative activist who has posted fascist memes and came to the event with Kyle Chapman, now a celebrated figure amongst the 'alt-right'. The authorities consistently treated Quillinan as a victim even though he was visibly armed with a knife, a wooden 'shield' and a 'flagpole' – and had told law enforcement that he 'hit someone in the head', according to court files.

The resulting criminal trial against five anti-fascist protesters – who are accused of assaulting Quillinan during a roughly 15-second altercation – is, according to activists, the latest example of US law enforcement aggressively targeting leftwing demonstrators and favoring members of the far-right after violent clashes."

-->Wouldn't readers want our newspaper of record to report on police collusion with alt-right thugs? The NYT didn't touch this story. 

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The Guardian UK:
"While outraged Americans across the country are calling their elected representatives and taking to the streets to protest the Trump administration's forcible separation of parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border, intelligence and defense contractors are raking in millions thanks to the cruel practice.

According to reporting by the Daily Beast, the intelligence contractor MVM, Inc. won an $8 million five-year contract to 'provide assistance' in detention centers for unaccompanied children, and has made $42.9 million in less than a year, transporting minors to centers in Texas.

Such facilities have become crowded with children in recent months, especially following the administration's unveiling of its new 'zero tolerance' policy for undocumented immigrants who cross the southern border seeking asylum—under which adults are imprisoned while they await immigration trials and any children traveling with them are sent off to detention centers, sometimes thousands of miles away."

-->The NYT had several reports about children being ripped from parents' arms. But the articles omitted the part about defense contractors making millions.

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The Guardian UK:
"Coalition Ignores Famine Warnings and Continues Assault on Yemen as Critics Question US Complicity. While senators demand answers from the Pentagon, anti-war advocates are calling the attack on Hodeida a failure by the U.S. to stop it and demanding an end to American military support for the coalition

Ignoring international aid groups' warnings that an attack on the Yemeni city of Hodeida, which is held by Houthi rebels, could exacerbate hunger in an impoverished and war-torn nation already on the brink of famine, Saudi-led U.S.-backed coalition forces continued a sweeping assault on the Red Sea port city Saturday, reportedly seizing control of an airport

Since the fighting started earlier this week, thousands of Hodeida's 600,000 civilians have evacuated and hundreds of people have been killed. The port city is the main conduit through which about 70 percent of international aid reaches Yemenis, many of whom are battling starvation and outbreaks of infectious diseases such as cholera."

-->Surprisingly, the NYT has printed very little about the US role in this ongoing genocide. News that makes the empire look like it is committing war crimes is almost always left out of what the NYT reports.

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

FAIR:
"With Literal Nazis Running for Office, NYT Suggests Candidate’s Israel Criticism Is Antisemitic. Eight overt white nationalists are running for office in 2018—a new record, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Overt fascists, inspired by the rise of President Donald Trump, have found a place both within and just outside the margins of the official Republican Party. ...

With the increase on the US right in overt Nazi activity, one might be surprised to see the paper of record (New York Times, 5/29/18) turn its sights not on this disturbing trend, but on progressive candidate Leslie Cockburn, whose criticism of Israel is being cynically exploited by her opponents in the Republican Party—the same party increasingly finding common cause with a host of white nationalists, alt-right and 'alt-light' elements. ...

The very existence of this piece makes little sense. The only people in the 1,100-word report who think Cockburn is an antisemite are operatives for the Virginia Republican Party, who have an obvious political agenda. Times reporters Thomas Kaplan and Michael Tackett can’t find a single independent or third-party talking head to accuse Cockburn of antisemitism."

-->Is it because Cockburn is progressive, or because she has criticized Israel that the NYT is spreading these false rumors? I am afraid that it may be both reasons. 

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Democracy Now:
"In Yemen, the U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition bombed a new Doctors Without Borders cholera clinic in Yemen’s northwestern Abs region. Doctors Without Borders said that before the strike the group had provided the coordinates of the clinic to the Saudi-led coalition and that the roof of the building clearly identified it as a medical site. The ongoing U.S.-backed, Saudi-led war in Yemen has sparked the world’s worst cholera epidemic, with more than 1 million people affected.

This comes as the United Nations is warning an impending Saudi-led offensive on the Yemeni port city of Hudaydah could have catastrophic humanitarian consequences. This is Mark Lowcock, the U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs.

"Seven million people are completely reliant every month on food, and more than 7 million on other assistance, from humanitarian organizations. So, Hudaydah is absolutely central to the preserving of life. And if, for any period, Hudaydah were not to operate effectively, the consequences in humanitarian terms would be catastrophic.' ”

-->This American led genocide in Yemen is only possible when the citizens of this country are kept ignorant. The NYT does its part; it didn't cover the bombing of the cholera clinic. 

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Common Dreams:
"Elizabeth Warren: Democrats Will Keep Losing Until the Entire Party Is 'Willing to Take on the Billionaire Class. ... 'Money is going to drown our democracy, and if we don't start fighting back, and fighting back more aggressively, then we are part of the problem as well.'

Several Senate Democrats were deeply offended when their colleague Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) publicly called them out by name for backing a bank deregulation bill that will heighten the chances of yet another devastating financial crisis, but that hasn't deterred the Massachusetts senator from continuing to denounce members of her own party for cozying up to corporate power.

In a new interview on Mehdi Hasan's 'Deconstructed' podcast, Warren said she agrees with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that too many Democrats lack the 'guts' to take on Wall Street and argued that her party's struggles will continue until all of its members are 'willing to take on the billionaire class.' "

-->The media of the billionaire class didn't report this story. The NYT didn't consider Warren's statements fit to print.

Wednesday, June 06, 2018

The Guardian UK:
"Donald Trump is deliberately forcing millions of Americans into financial ruin, cruelly depriving them of food and other basic protections while lavishing vast riches on the super-wealthy, the United Nations monitor on poverty has warned.

Philip Alston, the UN special rapporteur who acts as a watchdog on extreme poverty around the world, has issued a withering critique of the state of America today. Trump is steering the country towards a “dramatic change of direction” that is rewarding the rich and punishing the poor by blocking access even to the most meager necessities.

'This is a systematic attack on America’s welfare program that is undermining the social safety net for those who can’t cope on their own. Once you start removing any sense of government commitment, you quickly move into cruelty,' Alston told the Guardian."

-->No story in the NYT. It makes the empire look bad, and that goes against the type of corporate propaganda that our newspaper of record specializes in.

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Common Dreams:
"Dozens of racial justice and civil liberties groups on Wednesday demanded the Department of Homeland Security release an unredacted version of their so-called 'Race Paper,' an internal memo which the department has leaned on to justify surveillance of racial justice activists.

'We are concerned that biases and inaccuracies reflected in the 'Race Paper' could result in unconstitutional law enforcement activities throughout the country that disproportionately impact activists, protesters, and communities of color,' wrote the groups, which included Free Press, the Brennan Center for Justice, Color of Change, and the NAACP.

The memo and the efforts it covers, the groups and other critics say, are part of the government's attempts to portray anti-racist groups like Black Lives Matter as dangerous, surveil black communities, and suppress dissent."

-->No news about political repression is good news, according to the NYT. It didn't print this story. Not good for business.

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The Guardian UK:
"Avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet, according to the scientists behind the most comprehensive analysis to date of the damage farming does to the planet.

The new research shows that without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75% – an area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined – and still feed the world. Loss of wild areas to agriculture is the leading cause of the current mass extinction of wildlife.

The new analysis shows that while meat and dairy provide just 18% of calories and 37% of protein, it uses the vast majority – 83% – of farmland and produces 60% of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions. Other recent research shows 86% of all land mammals are now livestock or humans. The scientists also found that even the very lowest impact meat and dairy products still cause much more environmental harm than the least sustainable vegetable and cereal growing."

-->Shame on the NYT for avoiding this story. It printed a story called "The Case for a Carbon Tax on Beef" in March. But why not carry a story that proves how destructive an animal based diet really is to the planet?

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