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.