Thursday, July 30, 2020

Common Dreams:

"In yet another display of the heightened tension between Iran and the United States under President Donald Trump, several passengers on an Iranian commercial plane were reportedly injured Thursday when the aircraft swiftly dropped altitude after being approached by at least one U.S. military fighter jet over Syrian airspace.


Iranian media reported Thursday that two fighter jets flew near the Mahan Air passenger plane, forcing the pilot to quickly descend. Video footage from Iranian state broadcasting network IRIB showed one passenger with blood on his face and another lying on the floor of the aircraft.


Although initial reports out of Iran suggested Israel could be responsible, security sources told an Israeli public broadcaster that the country 'had nothing to do with the incident,' and a spokesperson for U.S. Central Command confirmed late Thursday that an American military aircraft was involved."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/07/24/lawlessness-upon-lawlessness-iran-foreign-minister-condemns-us-dangerous-mid-air


-->No story about US warmongering from the NYT, the empire's prime mouthpiece. 


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Common Dreams:

"Big business and banks are just as corrupt and eager to shovel profits to senior executives 10 years after the landmark banking reform legislation known as Dodd-Frank as they were during the 2008 crisis, a new report warns, because the bill's regulations on executive pay remain unimplemented.


'White collar crime pays, and until Congress enacts the rules to change it, we'll continue to see top executives raking in off catastrophes of their own making,' report author Bartlett Naylor, financial policy advocate at Public Citizen, said in a statement.


The report lists billions in bonus cash paid out to executives over the past decade despite Dodd-Frank's regulatory framework banning such cash-outs.

'It's 2008 all over again,' said Naylor. 'Congress is bailing out Big Business and enriching CEOs while workers scrape by as the economy lurches downward in a pandemic.' "

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/07/21/white-collar-crime-pays-decade-after-dodd-frank-executives-still-lining-their


-->The NYT wasn't interested in this Public Citizen report. Our newspaper of record likes pro Wall Street articles, like the ones that reflect favorably on the makeup of its board of directors. 


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Common Dreams:

"GOP Coronavirus Relief Package to Include Romney Bill That Would 'Fast-Track Social Security and Medicare Cuts' ...


Shortly after publicly ditching one attack on Social Security—the payroll tax cut—Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell confirmed Thursday that the Republican coronavirus relief package will include legislation sponsored by Sen. Mitt Romney that one advocacy group described as an 'equally menacing' threat to the New Deal program.


In a speech on the Senate floor, McConnell touted Romney's TRUST ACT as 'a bipartisan bill, co-sponsored by Senate Democrats, to help a future Congress evaluate bipartisan proposals for protecting and strengthening the programs that Americans count on.' "

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/07/24/gop-coronavirus-relief-package-include-romney-bill-would-fast-track-social-security


-->Billionaire Romney is eager to reduce those Social Security and Medicare payments. Nice how billionaires care so much for retirees that they want to make them even poorer. Of course, the NYT didn't print this story. 


Thursday, July 23, 2020

The NYT:
"Colin Powell Still Wants Answers. In 2003, he made the case for invading Iraq to halt its weapons programs. The analysts who provided the intelligence now say it was doubted inside the C.I.A. at the time."

-->This story is a perfect example of NYT reporting. As the disastrous war on Iraq was being sold to the American people in 1993, Colin Powell was caught lying to the UN. Not caught by the NYT, of course, which couldn't stop hyping the invasion at the time. 

By 1994, the NYT is printing stories about how Powell was misled by the CIA. Missing from all these accounts, however, was Powell's role in covering up the My Lai massacre, the murder of over 500 civilians in what was another US war of aggression against a Third World country.

As an Army major and deputy operations officer of the Americal Division that was fighting in the district, Powell was the "go to person" for investigating whether this war crime had actually happened. There was plenty of evidence. Not only were men, women, children and infants killed, but some of the women were gang-raped and their bodies mutilated.

Not surprisingly, Major Powell, found nothing. He only interviewed a few officers and reported to superiors that nothing had happened. In fact a military review panel after the massacre had become national news found that "senior officers of the Americal Division had destroyed evidence to protect their comrades."

So Powell's lies to the UN about Iraq were no "blight" on his otherwise admirable military record. He was the go-to African American man when it came to selling US war crimes to the rest of the world. And the NYT is the go-to newspaper in covering up how these war crimes are committed by the American Empire. 

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The Intercept:
As protests against police violence spread to every state in the U.S. and dramatic images flooded in from cities across the country, President Donald Trump and his attorney general spun an ominous story of opportunistic leftists exploiting a national trauma to sow chaos and disorder. They were the anti-fascists known as 'antifa,' and according to the administration they were domestic terrorists who would be policed accordingly.

But while the White House beat the drum for a crackdown on a leaderless movement on the left, law enforcement offices across the country were sharing detailed reports of far-right extremists seeking to attack the protesters and police during the country’s historic demonstrations, a trove of newly leaked documents reveals.

Among the steady stream of threats from the far-right were repeated encounters between law enforcement and heavily armed adherents of the so-called boogaloo movement, which welcomes armed confrontation with cops as means to trigger civil war. With much of the U.S. policing apparatus on the hunt for antifa instigators, those violent aspirations appear to have materialized in a string of targeted attacks in California that left a federal protective services officer and a sheriff’s deputy dead and several other law enforcement officials wounded."

-->The NYT does stories about how Germany is threatened by far right extremists. But our "newspaper of record" does many more stories about antifa in the US than far right armed groups. It didn't cover these leaked documents. 

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The Guardian:
"An Israeli company whose spyware has been used to target journalists in India, politicians in Spain, and human rights activists in Morocco may soon be forced to divulge information about its government clients and practices after a judge in California ruled that a lawsuit against the company could proceed.

NSO Group was sued by WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, last year, after the popular messaging app accused the company of sending malware to 1,400 of its users over a two-week period and targeting their mobile phones. ...

WhatsApp and research collaborators at Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, alerted the 1,400 users who they say were targeted in the attack last year, prompting many of the individuals to come forward. They included more than a dozen journalists in India, prominent journalists and human rights campaigners in Morocco, exiled Rwandan activists living in Europe, and, as the Guardian reported this week, key figures in the Catalan pro-independence movement in Spain.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/17/us-judge-whatsapp-lawsuit-against-israeli-spyware-firm-nso-can-proceed

-->Always eager to whitewash Israel, the NYT did not report this story about the NSO spying company.

Thursday, July 16, 2020

Common Dreams:
" 'Privatize the Profit, Socialize the Mess': Abandoned Fracking Wells Left Spewing Climate-Killing Methane Nationwide. A devastating new report from the New York Times details how as fracking companies are going out of business they are leaving behind unsecured wells spewing methane and other gases into the atmosphere and paying out the same executives that drove them into bankruptcy huge bonuses—drawing condemnation from activists and climate advocates. 

-->Kudos to the NYT for reporting on the mess that we are now left with. The timing could have been better, however. For years the NYT has protected the oil companies, and the politicians like Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama who championed drilling and pipelines. The NYT is also missing in action when it comes to new fracked gas plants that are springing up nationwide.  

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Common Dreams:
"As Schumer Endorses Sanders Proposal to Slash Pentagon Budget by 10%, Other Senate Democrats Urged to Follow Suit.

A proposal by Sen. Bernie Sanders to slash the Pentagon budget by $74 billion gained a boost last Friday after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced his support for the amendment, potentially giving the measure needed momentum in the Democratic caucus a week before it is scheduled to receive a floor vote.

'Proud I fought alongside Sen. Sanders to ensure we vote in July on his amendment to cut $740 billion defense budget by 10% and put money into priorities like healthcare, housing, childcare in communities with 25%+ poverty—including many communities of color,' tweeted Schumer, who voted for every Pentagon budget increase proposed during the first three years of the Trump administration.

-->Amazing story, signaling a shift away from funding the Pentagon's endless wars. The  NYT didn't cover it yet. MIA again?

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The Guardian UK:
"Like many major non-profits, Planned Parenthood seems more concerned with hobnobbing with the powerful, paying the CEOs of its regional chapters salaries in the mid-six figures, making symbolic gestures and coming up with a catchy slogan to sell on T-shirts than with providing care for the people who need their services. ...

For large parts of the nation, abortion is simply not accessible – logistically, financially or politically. Six states each have only one remaining clinic, meaning women there must travel extreme distances to access services. Then there are waiting limits, invasive medical tests, 'counseling' and other wastes of time they must undergo. These facts are well known in the feminist community, but they are often recited as a head-shaking 'what are you going to do?' commentary on how the pro-life movement has us on our heels."

-->Another supposedly liberal non profit that sits around and does little. The organization hasn't even endorsed Medicaid for All. Are its leaders rich, white, and disinterested in supporting services for poor women? Not a question that the NYT will tackle, being mostly comprised of rich, white, liberal reporters.

Thursday, July 09, 2020

The Guardian UK:
"Belgian prosecutors are investigating whether they can bring charges against people suspected of taking part in the killing of Congo’s first democratically elected leader, Patrice Lumumba, almost 60 years after his assassination.

Belgium’s federal prosecutor Frédéric Van Leeuw said on Wednesday: “We are in the process of taking stock of the prosecutions that could be launched. The facts have been qualified as a war crime, which has been confirmed by the Brussels court of appeal. This means there is no statute of limitations.

Lumumba was assassinated by firing squad in January 1961 in Katanga by Congolese rebels with Belgian officers present. He was 35. The Belgium government of the time, the CIA and MI6 have also been implicated.”

-->The US media is still covering up the CIA involvement in Lumumba's murder. No wonder most Americans have a pollyanna view of US foreign policy. The NYT did not run this story.

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Common Dreams:
"A U.S. federal appeals court judge ruled Monday that California cannot require companies like agrochemical giant Bayer to include a cancer warning on their glyphosate-based products, despite the World Health Organization's 2015 classification of the weed-killer as a probable human carcinogen.

U.S. District Judge William Shubb of the Eastern District of California wrote in his opinion (pdf) that mandating a cancer warning label on glyphosate products would violate companies' First Amendment rights by compelling them to echo a finding that Shubb characterized as "not purely factual and uncontroversial. ...

The ruling stems from California's 2017 decision to add glyphosate to its Proposition 65 list of chemicals 'known to cause cancer.' Approved by voters in 1986, Prop 65 requires businesses to 'provide warnings to Californians about significant exposures to chemicals that cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.' "

-->The NYT has a soft spot in its little corporate heart for Monsanto. It didn't print this story.

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Common Dreams:
"A Chinese state-controlled newspaper has blamed the Trump administration's mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic to cause the spread of the virus to go 'completely out of control.'

Describing the disease as a 'U.S. epidemic', the paper warned that the administration's failure poses a threat to the rest of the world. 'Lies are dominating US society's recognition of the epidemic,' the Global Times wrote. ...

'In the coming fall and winter, the US epidemic will likely run rampant, and more countries and regions will be forced to suffer because of the US.' "

-->How very true it is that the US inaction on COVID threatens the rest of the world. So true, in fact, that most US media, including the NYT avoided this story.

Wednesday, July 01, 2020

Common Dreams:
"Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday evening delivered an impassioned speech defending a longstanding civil rights law which combats the racist practice of redlining that is under attack by the White House. 

'Over the last several weeks, our nation has been gripped by the uprising against anti-black racism and systemic racial injustice across the United States,' Ocasio-Cortez said. 'But there is a difference between saying that we believe in the inherent dignity, equality and value of our black brothers and sisters and actually committing to it. And the Community Reinvestment Act is one such commitment.'

Ocasio-Cortez was speaking in favor of a resolution brought to the floor by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) condemning attacks on the CRA. The law, enacted in 1977, requires banks to do business with homeowners in lower-income neighborhoods, thereby reducing the frequency of redlining. Long a thorn in the side of banking interests in the country, the law has been quietly under attack by President Donald Trump's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which has weakened regulations set by the act. 

-->The NYT runs stories about Black Lives. But these attacks on civil rights laws comes from the major banks, so the NYT is much less interested. It didn't print this story.

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Morning Star UK:
"Officers from the US police force responsible for the killing of George Floyd received training in restraint techniques and anti-terror tactics from Israeli law-enforcement officers.

Mr Floyd’s death in custody last Monday, the latest in a succession of police killings of African Americans, has sparked continuing protests and rioting in US cities.

At least 100 Minnesota police officers attended a 2012 conference hosted by the Israeli consulate in Chicago, the second time such an event had been held.
There they learned the violent techniques used by Israeli forces as they terrorize the occupied Palestinian territories under the guise of security operations. The so-called counterterrorism training conference in Minneapolis was jointly hosted by the FBI.

-->The NYT has resisted reporting these links. But violent state racism has similarities; why not report them? Our "newspaper of record" always puts Israel's interests above those of its readers. 

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Common Dreams:
"An extensive new report released Tuesday morning by human rights group Amnesty International finds that between May 26 and June 5, local, state, and federal law enforcement officials in 40 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. committed more than 125 separate acts of violence against demonstrators who gathered in the streets en masse to protest the police killing of George Floyd.

Law enforcement officials 'consistently violated human rights out on the streets instead of fulfilling their obligations to respect and facilitate the right of people to peacefully protest,' said Amnesty ...

'The analysis is clear: when activists and supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement took to the streets in cities and towns across the country to peacefully demand an end to systemic racism and police violence, they were overwhelmingly met with a militarized response and more police violence,' Brian Castner, senior crisis adviser on arms and military operations at Amnesty International, said in a statement."

-->No such statement appeared in print from the NYT. The police are really part of Wall Street and the neoliberal world order. So is the NYT.
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