Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Mondoweiss:
"Despite the global coronavirus pandemic, Israel has stepped up its arrest of Palestinian children in the occupied territories, a new report from Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP) says. 

According to the report, released on Tuesday, 194 Palestinian children detained in Israeli prisons and detention centers, marking a six percent increase from January. 

Using data released by the Israeli Prison Service (IPS), DCIP found that as of March 31 only 28 percent of Palestinian child detainees were actually serving out sentences, while the rest, over 60 percent of them (117 out of 194) were being held in pretrial custodial detention."

-->No major media in the US covered this story. The apartheid crimes of Israel are always off the table when it comes to our mainstream press.

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Common Dreams:
"Progressives on Monday criticized Whole Foods, the grocery chain owned by Amazon, for using a heat map to track potential union activity at its stores across the U.S.—relying on data around racial diversity, 'loyalty,' and  labor complaints as indicators that affect how the corporation scores the sites.

'This is infuriating but it's also a testament to the urgency and importance of essential workers unionizing,' tweeted The Atlantic's Adam Serwer. ..

As Common Dreams reported on April 15, Whole Foods and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, has already made $24 billion in 2020 as the pandemic rages around the country and the world."

-->The obscene disparity between the billionaires and working people never gets covered in the corporate controlled media. You have to read about it in FantasyLand Media.

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J Street:
"It is clear that those pushing annexation intend to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. It is also clear they have no intention of extending citizenship to the millions of Palestinians living inside and between the enclaves annexed by Israel.

The annexationists, therefore, offer a future in which Israel rules over millions of Palestinians without equal rights or protections. That is not democracy. That is not what Israel’s founders envisioned when they drafted a declaration of independence that promised equal rights to all.

Annexation is opposed by a plurality of Israelis and a majority of Palestinians, who understand that it would have disastrous consequences for regional stability, human rights and prospects for a just and sustainable peace."

-->Even J Street, a middle of the road Jewish lobbying group is appalled at what Israel and the US are planning to do: create an apartheid state in the Holy Land. Where have them been for the last 49 years? Where has our media been too?

Wednesday, April 22, 2020

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR):
"Cuba Under Media Attack for Sending Doctors, Not Bombs, to Help Covid-19 Victims. 

As coronavirus ravages the world, Cuba has exhibited disproportionate heroism, deploying medical personnel to at least 14 countries thus far to battle the pandemic—including to Italy, which has been particularly devastated. The response is in keeping with Cuba’s decades-long tradition of 'doctors, not bombs,' which has seen the tiny island nation dispatch tens of thousands of medics across the globe to combat everything from Ebola to more mundane diseases like malaria and tuberculosis. The Cuban approach stands in marked contrast to the modus operandi of the global superpower and Cuba’s primary antagonist, the United States, a country with an established predilection for bombing rather than saving people.

Cuba’s coronavirus performance is a welcome bit of uplifting news in an otherwise mostly dismal international panorama. Lest anyone start feeling too inspired by the idea of humanity, however, sectors of the US corporate media are dutifully standing by to burst the bubble."

-->Our mainstream media is having a field day attacking Cuba for sending doctors abroad to fight the epidemic. But the US media doesn't have much to say about this country's embargo of medical supplies to countries on the Pentagon's hit list, like Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran.

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Common Dreams:
"Analysis Reveals 'Rotten, Un-American Giveaway' GOP Buried in COVID-19 Relief Package to Overwhelmingly Benefit Millionaires. Democratic lawmakers and progressive critics expressed outrage Tuesday after a nonpartisan congressional body found that nearly 82% of benefits from a Republican tax provision in the most recent coronavirus relief package will go to the nation's millionaires and billionaires and cost taxpayers an estimated $90 billion this year alone.

'This analysis shows that while Democrats fought for unemployment insurance and small business relief, a top priority of President Trump and his allies in Congress was another massive tax cut for the wealthy,' [Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse] said in a statement. 'Congress should repeal this rotten, un-American giveaway and use the revenue to help workers battling through this crisis.' "

-->Trillions of dollars going to the richest of Americans never bothers the NYT very much. It didn't report this analysis. 

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Huffington Post:
"WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump’s campaign is secretly paying one Trump son’s wife and another one’s girlfriend $180,000 a year each through the campaign manager’s private company, according to top Republicans with knowledge of the payments.

Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of eldest son Donald Trump Jr., and Lara Trump, wife of middle son Eric Trump, are each receiving $15,000 a month, according to two GOP sources who are informal White House advisers and who spoke on condition of anonymity.

They were unsure when the payments began but say they are being made by campaign manager Bradley Parscale through his company rather than directly by either the campaign or the party in order to avoid public reporting requirements."

-->This is just routine corruption at the base of our political system. Mainstream media, including the NYT, isn't interested. 

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

The New York Times:
"Childbirth in Venezuela, Where Women's Deaths Are a State Secret. We spent weeks following women inside the country's health care system, which has been crippled by a broken economy overseen by an increasingly authoritarian government."

-->Another long propaganda piece on Venezuela by The NYT. Only once in the entire article does it even mention the crippling blockade and sanctions imposed by the US. Maternity deaths are all supposedly the fault of "a broken economy overseen by an increasingly authoritarian government."

But let's compare Venezuela's maternity deaths to Haiti's, a country whose elected president has been overthrown twice by the CIA. A country completely in the grip of the US corporate interests, like Disney, Polo, J.C.Penney and Walmart. Venezuela had 125 deaths per 100,000 live births, but Haiti had 480. Why doesn't the NYT do a story on maternity deaths there?

Or a story about maternity deaths in the US, where Black women are "six times as likely to die of pregnancy related conditions as white women (ABC Eyewitness News story on Illinois Jan 30, 2020)? Why, that would put the number of Black maternity deaths in the US at much higher than the death rate in Venezuela. The deceit of our state run propaganda machine, our neoliberal NYT! 

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Code Pink:
"On Wednesday, April 7, 2020, the Jerusalem Post broke the story: "US Department of Defense gives 1 million [surgical] masks to IDF for coronavirus use." The shipment, which had arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport the night before, was also described on Twitter by Israeli army radio journalist Tsahi Dabush: 'Credit to US Department of Defense procurement delegates,' he wrote. 

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has described over and over the shortage of medical equipment facing his state and the entire country. Nurses at many U.S. hospitals must stretch one disposable N95 respirator mask throughout an entire work shift — up to 12 hours — because there are simply not enough." 

-->Our mainstream media didn't cover this story. And Cuomo is not likely to object, having shown himself a greater friend to Israel than to his own NY State constituents even as thousands of New Yorkers die of COVID 19.

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Common Dreams:
"Climate advocates are slamming banking interests after a report Thursday revealed that JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Citigroup are planning to take over distressed oil and gas companies assets in the wake of an industry collapse, likely by using new access to federal bailout money included in the coronavirus relief package passed by Congress.

'It's never been more obvious that fossil fuels are a bad investment, and yet rather than following their supposed commitments to climate action, these big banks are doubling down on their toxic investments and getting directly into the fossil fuel business,' Sierra Club campaign representative Ben Cushing said in a statement. 

-->This bailout is going to be worse than in 2008, when the corporations and the very rich showered themselves with taxpayer dollars. 

Wednesday, April 08, 2020

The Intercept:
"While much of the world moved swiftly to lock down crucial medical supplies used to treat the coronavirus, the U.S. dithered, maintaining business as normal and allowing large shipments of American-made respirators and ventilators to be sold to foreign buyers.

The foreign shipments, detailed in dozens of government records, show exports to other hot spots where the pandemic has spread, including East Asia and Europe.

American hospitals around the country are now running low on all forms of personal protective gear, such as N95 masks or purified air personal respirators, for medical staff, as well as life-saving ventilators, which pump oxygenated air into the lungs, for patients.

-->The neoliberal thing to do when the pandemic is on the way: sell medical equipment to foreign countries to make profit. No mention of this in our neoliberal newspaper of record, the NYT.

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Common Dreams:
" 'How can it be that we spend 18% of our GDP on healthcare but still lack the beds, masks, ventilators, gowns, gloves, and test kits we need to adequately respond to this crisis?' asked Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Support for Medicare for All among U.S. voters has reached a nine-month high in a Morning Consult/Politico tracking poll as the deadly and ongoing coronavirus pandemic lays bare the horrors and systemic inefficiencies of America's profit-driven healthcare system.

The survey (pdf), released Wednesday, found that 55 percent of U.S. voters support Medicare for All, a nine-point jump since February. While support for Medicare for All is highest among Democratic voters at 75%, a majority of Independents—52%—also support the policy, along with 31% of Republicans."

-->The NYT is so busy with articles explaining how Bernie can't win, that it didn't cover this story. Has the NYT ever promoted universal healthcare? If not now when millions are at risk from a broken healthcare system, then when?

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B'Tselem:
"This morning, Thursday, 26 March 2020, at around 7:30 am, officials from Israel’s Civil Administration in the West Bank arrived with a military jeep escort, a bulldozer and two flatbed trucks with cranes at the Palestinian community of Khirbet Ibziq in the northern Jordan Valley. They confiscated poles and sheeting that were meant to form eight tents, two for a field clinic, and four for emergency housing for residents evacuated from their homes, and two as makeshift mosques. ..."

As the whole world battles an unprecedented and paralyzing healthcare crisis, Israel’s military is devoting time and resources to harassing the most vulnerable Palestinian communities in the West Bank, that Israel has attempted to drive out of the area for decades. Shutting down a first-aid community initiative during a health crisis is an especially cruel example of the regular abuse inflicted on these communities, and it goes against basic human and humanitarian principles during an emergency."

-->Did you really think that the NYT would cover this story? You haven't been reading https://FantasyLandMedia.org. 

Wednesday, April 01, 2020

Intercept:
"As the Coronavirus pandemic grips the United States, prosecutors, sheriffs, and public officials have raced to reduce the populations held in local jails, where it is next to impossible to protect elderly and otherwise vulnerable incarcerated people.

In New York, however, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is bucking this trend, pushing for a new law that would roll back newborn bail reforms that went into effect in January and instead expand judges’ power to put defendants in jail. Cuomo has backed this agenda for years, but his evident insistence on including it in the state’s budget negotiations amid a public health crisis is nonetheless remarkable. ...

For the advocates and legislators who helped pass New York’s landmark bail reforms last year, Cuomo’s drive to reverse those gains by slipping language into an under-scrutinized, must-pass disaster budget is the height of antidemocratic shock-doctrine misgovernment."

-->Although the NYT did an opinion piece about Cuomo rolling back bail reform, there was no news story. Our "newspaper of record" tends to side with prosecutors and police officers rather than victims of our criminal justice system.

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Common Dreams:

"The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday announced charges of international drug trafficking against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a move that was immediately denounced by progressives as a cynical Washington attempt to overthrow the Latin American leader as the coronavirus outbreak spreads around the world. 

In the midst of #COVID2019, the U.S. indicts VZ's Maduro & 14 other Venezuelan military & political leaders on 'narco-terrorism' charges and offers rewards for their capture. US sanctions continue causing misery and death in VZ. This is just another attempted coup against Maduro. ...

'I am old enough to have seen this one before,' said veteran media critic Peter Hart, making a likely reference to former Panamanian ruler and CIA asset Manuel Noriega, the last Latin American leader charged with drug trafficking, who the U.S overthrew in 1989."

-->There is no better example of how the NYT serves up Pentagon propaganda than its stories about Venezuela. Pages of undocumented charges, and a complete failure to fact check US government claims. Yes, it is just like the overthrow of so many Latin American democracies, all in the interest of US corporate profits. 

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Common Dreams:
"Oligarchs Are Running the White House: Trump Called Wall Street, Hedge Fund Titans Just Before 'Back to Work' Remarks. Trump and Pence are talking to private equity titans and hedge fund moguls instead of figuring out how to help healthcare workers get masks or workers to get wages or borrowers get debt relief.

President Donald Trump hosted a private conference call Tuesday morning with several billionaire Wall Street and hedge fund titans just hours before the president said he hopes to 'have the country opened up' and 'get people back to work' by Easter—even as the coronavirus pandemic worsens."

-->This is a good story about where Trump is getting his harebrained  ideas about handling the US pandemic. He may be watching Fox News, but his inner circle is made up of the very rich, and their agenda is to squeeze the last dollar from the working class. The NYT wants to demonize Trump, but protects the nation's oligarchs at every turn.