The New York Times:
"The claim that his mother willingly gave him up hurt, Mr. Graf said, until he learned this year that he is one of hundreds — possibly thousands — of Chilean adoptees taken from their parents without their consent during the country’s military dictatorship.
Ms. Quezada, it turned out, had not surrendered her son; she was told the baby, born three months premature, had died. 'Two weeks after the birth, they told me he had died,' Ms. Quezada said. 'I asked for the body and they refused, saying it was too small.'
Investigators looking into coercive adoptions in Chile since the first cases came to light in 2014 have come to a stunning conclusion: The practice was widespread during the rule of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who actively encouraged overseas adoptions to reduce poverty in the 1970s and 1980s. The process was abetted by a vast network of officials — including judges, social workers, health professionals and adoption brokers — who forged documents and are widely assumed to have taken bribes."
-->The NYT did some great investigative reporting for this story, an amazing one really of children stolen from their parents and sold abroad. But in the page long article, one important fact is completely left out. There is plenty of condemnation for the brutal dictatorship of General Pinochet in Chili, but no mention of the US coup that had overthrown the democratically elected leader before him. So the story is all about the US and Chile, but the critical piece about the workings of the US empire is gone. That's how the empire's newspaper works. [Sometimes the NYT does make us proud, like the recent story of US drone strikes in the Middle East.]
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Counterpunch:
"Education is central to Cuba’s brand of socialism. The revolutionary government’s dedication to scientific knowledge and healthcare for all shows up now as Cubans cope with the Covid-19 pandemic. The United States is not so lucky.
Cubans have wholeheartedly carried out masking, social-distancing, testing and quarantining. Cuba’ s bio-medical research and production facilities created five anti-Covid vaccines. As of December 3, 90.1 percent of Cubans had received their first dose; 82.3 percent of them were fully vaccinated. Only seven other countries have higher rates. (1) Trials showed that Cuba’s workhorse Abdala and Soberana 02 vaccines were protective for over 90 percent of vaccine recipients.
Cuba’s Covid vaccines don’t need extremely low-temperature refrigeration as is the case for major U.S. vaccines. In that regard they are particularly useful in poorly resourced countries. Cuba has sent, or is preparing to send, vaccines to Vietnam, Venezuela, Iran, and Nicaragua. Cuban scientists are elaborating a version of their Soberana Plus vaccine that will protect against the Omicron variant.
Cuba’s achievement in producing anti-Covid-19 vaccines is remarkable in the face of shortages of equipment, reagents, and supplies due to the U.S. economic blockade.
U.S. and Cuban assumptions regarding vaccination programs and other public health measures are different. Vaccine production in Cuba is a matter of the common good, pure and simple. In United States, government-subsidized manufacturers will be making huge profits – $18 billion for Moderna in 2021. U.S. government scientists and their pharmaceutical company counterparts collaborated in developing vaccines, but the companies now are claiming intellectual-property and patent rights for themselves."
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/12/16/cuba-defeats-covid-19-with-learning-science-and-unity/
-->Would the NYT ever print such an article about Cuba? If you have been reading FantasylandMedia for very long, you will be able to answer that question. The US Empire is hell bent on preserving the worst forms of capitalist exploitation, and one example is certainly the nation's healthcare system. The Cubans do it so much better, but our "newspaper of record" would never admit that.
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MintPressNews:
"Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – Amid a bloody civil conflict and increasing great-power competition between the United States and China, there are a number of alarming signs that Ethiopia will become the next Libya – an African nation where the U.S. intervenes militarily under the pretext of stopping an impending genocide.
A considerable military buildup is now underway. Last week, the U.S. military announced it was sending over 1,000 National Guard members to nearby Djibouti. This is on top of the special operations forces already sent in November. Perhaps most notably, a government official told CNN that the aircraft carrier USS Essex – along with two other large amphibious vehicles – was steaming towards the Horn of Africa and standing by for further orders.
For weeks, the drums of war have been growing louder in our nation’s media. 'Ethiopia’s civil war is a problem U.S. troops can help solve,' Admiral James Stavridis, former supreme allied commander of NATO, wrote in Bloomberg and The Washington Post.
->The Empire on the move in Africa? Our major media is playing its usual role, that of cheerleading our next military invasion.
