Common Dreams:
"US Sold Weapons to Roughly 60% of World's Authoritarian Nations in 2022: Analysis of these findings fly in the face of Biden's preferred framing of international politics as a 'battle between democracies and autocracies,' says the author of a new report. ... But his administration approved weapons sales to nearly three-fifths of the world's authoritarian countries in 2022.
That's according to a new analysis conducted by Security Policy Reform Institute co-founder Stephen Semler and published Thursday in The Intercept. The U.S. has been the world's largest arms dealer since the end of the Cold War. Data released in March showed that the U.S. accounted for 40% of global weapons exports from 2018 to 2022."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/us-sells-weapons-to-majority-of-authoritarian-countries
-->The story is striking, since it shows the hypocrisy of the US weapons industry when it comes to supporting dictatorships. But readers of the NYT won't be bothered too much; our newspaper of record left this story out.
=====
Common Dreams:
"Drawings by Guantánamo 'Forever Prisoner' Abu Zubaydah Expose Details of US Torture. ... 'Despite the efforts of the federal government, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency, to conceal evidence of the actual operation of the 'enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) deployed on detainees in dark sites and at Guantánamo, a steady drumbeat of disclosures has provided an unparalleled view into this disgraceful episode in the nation's history,' the report states. ...
'Everybody agrees, they tortured the wrong guy; they went ahead anyway so they could get permission to torture other people,' Denbeaux told The Guardian, which on Thursday posted the report along with an article by Ed Pilkington on Zubaydah's experience. ...
Zubaydah was subjected to the interrupted drowning technique known as 'waterboarding' 83 times; rape under the pretext of 'rectal feeding'; shackling in excruciating 'stress positions'; sleep, sensory, and food deprivation; confinement in small boxes; exposure to extreme temperatures and loud music; death threats; beatings and being slammed into walls; sexual and religious humiliation; and other abuses,"
https://www.commondreams.org/news/abu-zubaydah-drawings
-->Few US newspapers covered this story. The NYT did, but distorted the reasons why he was being tortured, and omitted the anal rape. Hey, it's "all the news that's fit to print" at America's premier newspaper.
=====
Jacobin:
"Florida governor Ron DeSantis has been putting huge sums of state retirement money into underperforming private equity firms that have donated to his campaign efforts.
Florida governor and Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis has been crusading against 'woke' investments for allegedly threatening his state employees’ retirement funds. But the most imminent threat to Florida public employees’ retirement dollars appears to be the massive state pension investments that have gone to some of the Republican Party’s Wall Street donors under DeSantis’s watch.
Despite a federal anti-corruption rule designed to prevent donors from receiving pension investments, private equity executives have donated millions to political groups supporting DeSantis, all while the governor oversaw the transfer of more than $1 billion of Florida public employees’ retirement dollars into these donors’ high-fee, high-risk 'alternative investments.' Our review found that had the state pension fund instead been invested in a simple, low-cost index fund, compared to its present mix of holdings, teachers, police officers, and other state employees would have about $10 billion more in their retirement funds."
https://jacobin.com/2023/05/ron-desantis-private-equity-donors-state-pension-funds-retirement
-->We all know that DeSantis is a complete scum. So why not run this story in the NYT? Is it because there are more issues being discussed than how corrupt DeSantis is. Yes, the NYT may have overlooked this story because it threatens to expose how Wall Street cheats retirement investors. Now that's the story that our newspaper of record may have hesitated to print.
"US Sold Weapons to Roughly 60% of World's Authoritarian Nations in 2022: Analysis of these findings fly in the face of Biden's preferred framing of international politics as a 'battle between democracies and autocracies,' says the author of a new report. ... But his administration approved weapons sales to nearly three-fifths of the world's authoritarian countries in 2022.
That's according to a new analysis conducted by Security Policy Reform Institute co-founder Stephen Semler and published Thursday in The Intercept. The U.S. has been the world's largest arms dealer since the end of the Cold War. Data released in March showed that the U.S. accounted for 40% of global weapons exports from 2018 to 2022."
https://www.commondreams.org/news/us-sells-weapons-to-majority-of-authoritarian-countries
-->The story is striking, since it shows the hypocrisy of the US weapons industry when it comes to supporting dictatorships. But readers of the NYT won't be bothered too much; our newspaper of record left this story out.
=====
Common Dreams:
"Drawings by Guantánamo 'Forever Prisoner' Abu Zubaydah Expose Details of US Torture. ... 'Despite the efforts of the federal government, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency, to conceal evidence of the actual operation of the 'enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) deployed on detainees in dark sites and at Guantánamo, a steady drumbeat of disclosures has provided an unparalleled view into this disgraceful episode in the nation's history,' the report states. ...
'Everybody agrees, they tortured the wrong guy; they went ahead anyway so they could get permission to torture other people,' Denbeaux told The Guardian, which on Thursday posted the report along with an article by Ed Pilkington on Zubaydah's experience. ...
Zubaydah was subjected to the interrupted drowning technique known as 'waterboarding' 83 times; rape under the pretext of 'rectal feeding'; shackling in excruciating 'stress positions'; sleep, sensory, and food deprivation; confinement in small boxes; exposure to extreme temperatures and loud music; death threats; beatings and being slammed into walls; sexual and religious humiliation; and other abuses,"
https://www.commondreams.org/news/abu-zubaydah-drawings
-->Few US newspapers covered this story. The NYT did, but distorted the reasons why he was being tortured, and omitted the anal rape. Hey, it's "all the news that's fit to print" at America's premier newspaper.
=====
Jacobin:
"Florida governor Ron DeSantis has been putting huge sums of state retirement money into underperforming private equity firms that have donated to his campaign efforts.
Florida governor and Republican presidential hopeful Ron DeSantis has been crusading against 'woke' investments for allegedly threatening his state employees’ retirement funds. But the most imminent threat to Florida public employees’ retirement dollars appears to be the massive state pension investments that have gone to some of the Republican Party’s Wall Street donors under DeSantis’s watch.
Despite a federal anti-corruption rule designed to prevent donors from receiving pension investments, private equity executives have donated millions to political groups supporting DeSantis, all while the governor oversaw the transfer of more than $1 billion of Florida public employees’ retirement dollars into these donors’ high-fee, high-risk 'alternative investments.' Our review found that had the state pension fund instead been invested in a simple, low-cost index fund, compared to its present mix of holdings, teachers, police officers, and other state employees would have about $10 billion more in their retirement funds."
https://jacobin.com/2023/05/ron-desantis-private-equity-donors-state-pension-funds-retirement
-->We all know that DeSantis is a complete scum. So why not run this story in the NYT? Is it because there are more issues being discussed than how corrupt DeSantis is. Yes, the NYT may have overlooked this story because it threatens to expose how Wall Street cheats retirement investors. Now that's the story that our newspaper of record may have hesitated to print.
