FAIR:
"Media Continue to Push Misinformation About Venezuela and Drug Trafficking. In recent years, Western corporate journalists have turned to systematically citing unnamed sources and secret documents from the US national security state. ...
'The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world,' Gore Vidal remarked. 'No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity—much less dissent.'
The goal is never to prove anything or present substantive debate, but to further poison the well of US public opinion against Venezuela, legitimating regime change as US state policy. Rather than victims of murderous US sanctions, Venezuelans are depicted as the purveyors of an anti-American drug war. In fact, the most egregious dealers of death and deceit in the hemisphere are, as always, US policymakers and their stenographers in the corporate media."
-->NYT reporting on Venezuela is on of the best proofs we have when it comes to how the US media has failed to provide the truth to its readers. Countries on the Pentagon hit list just never get a break; it's fake news 24/7 when the empire is on the move.
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The Guardian:
"A federally sponsored anti-terrorism fusion center in Oregon assisted a task force monitoring protest groups organizing against a fossil fuel infrastructure project in the state, according to documents obtained by the Guardian. ...
In the wake of the 2016-17 Dakota Access pipeline movement, the Department of Homeland Security and seven state fusion centers produced a nationally circulated bulletin that had similarly claimed the NoDAPL [Dakota Access Pipeline] movement has been associated with a rise in 'environmental rights extremism'.
Lauren Regan, the executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center, said labeling of activists as 'extremists' is part of a strategy for marginalizing them from potential supporters. 'The use of the term ‘extremism’ is a government calling card when it intends to use repressive criminalization against a social movement,' Regan added.
-->Scary Big Brother stuff. But the NYT wasn't interested in printing this story. Our "newspaper of record" has a long history of being on the side of that security state.
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Common Dreams:
"Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Sunday that the only way to move toward lasting peace in the Middle East is for the United States and other Western powers to immediately leave the Persian Gulf, a call that comes days after the Trump administration announced the deployment of more troops to Saudi Arabia.
'Your presence has always been a calamity for this region, and the farther you go from our region and our nations, the more security would come for our region,' Rouhani said in a speech during a rally on Sunday. ...
'If they are truthful and really seek security in the region, they must not send weapons, fighter jets, bombs, and dangerous arms to the region.'
-->If the US really had freedom of the press, why Rouhani's speech would be in every newspaper. AP carried the story, as did Newsweek. But the NYT is too committed to war in the region to post these words of truth.
