Fantasyland Media:

http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

Each week, we cover the stories that are just left out of the US propaganda machine. News that the people in charge, the corporations and your government want keep from the public eye.

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Common Dreams:

"President Obama's plan to freeze 'non-security' discretionary spending could spell disaster for a broad range of federal programs. ... The proposed 'freeze' is actually a cut. The proposal caps non-security spending at $447 billion for each of the next three fiscal years. During that time, inflation will erode the purchasing power of that total, requiring additional cuts in services in each successive year. While meaningless in reducing the deficit, these cuts could be devastating to non-security discretionary programs such as nutrition, education, energy and transportation.

These types of programs account for only 17 percent of total federal spending, yet they will absorb all of the proposed cuts. ... Military spending, which in the current fiscal year represents roughly 55 percent of discretionary spending, will be spared the budget knife. And all indications are that military spending will go up next year. In fact, based on the Office of Management and Budget's projections as part of the FY 2010 budget request released last year, we will spend an additional $522 billion on the military over the next decade."

-Jo Comerford, Executive director of the National Priorities Project

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/01/26-14

-->Forget it if you are looking for this type of budget analysis in the NY Times. We don't talk about Military Empire in America's newspaper of record.

-------------------

Guardian UK:

"The health of 1.4 million people is being put at risk by the ongoing Israeli and Egyptian blockade of Gaza, a report by more than 80 humanitarian organisations warned today.

The aid groups, including the World Health Organisation and UN agencies, said more than one-fifth of sick Palestinians who needed to leave the territory for treatment in Israel had either been refused or had their applications delayed. The groups called on Israel and Egypt to open the border crossings with Gaza.

Max Gaylard, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for the Palestinian territories, said the blockade undermined the local healthcare system and put lives at risk."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/20/gaza-blockade-health-risk-report

-->1.4 million people's lives being put at risk? Not newsworthy when it comes to the NY Times coverage of Palestine. Stories that cover US or Israeli human rights violations rarely make it into print.

-------------------

Common Dreams:

"The Obama administration may soon guarantee as much as $18.5 billion in loans to build nuclear reactors to generate electricity, and Congress is considering whether to add billions more to support an expansion of nuclear power.

These actions come after an extensive, decade-long campaign in which companies and unions related to the industry have spent more than $600 million on lobbying and nearly $63 million on campaign contributions, according to an analysis by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University.

Nuclear power generates about 20 percent of America's electricity, but many existing reactors are aging. No new plant has been authorized since the 1979 incident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, when small amounts of radiation were released and authorities feared for days that a huge surge might escape."

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/01/24-4

-->The NY Times has long had a soft spot for nuclear energy, and the billions in profits it brings to corporate interests. It didn't cover Obama's loan guarantees. Nuclear energy you can believe in.

Fantasyland Media:

http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

Each week, we cover the stories that are just left out of the US propaganda machine. News that the people in charge, the corporations and your government want keep from the public eye.
---------

Guardian UK:
"The US military's takeover of emergency operations in Haiti has triggered a diplomatic row with countries and aid agencies furious at having flights redirected.

Brazil and France lodged an official ­protest with Washington after US military aircraft were given priority at Port-au-Prince's congested airport, forcing many non-US flights to divert to the Dominican Republic.

Brasilia warned it would not ­relinquish command of UN forces in Haiti, and Paris complained the airport had become a US "annexe", exposing a brewing power struggle amid the global relief effort. The Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières also complained about diverted flights. http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/01/18-10

-- >US troop flights clogging up Haiti's airport and delaying food and medicine to thousands of desperate quake survivors? Would you ever read about such deplorable US policy in the NY Times? No, you wouldn't. All you get is propaganda about our wonderful relief efforts.
-------------------

The NY Times:
According to the "Political Memo" published this Sunday on the front page of the NY Times, the Senate race in Massachusetts is close because Obama has tried to accomplish too much in terms of social reform during his first year.

Not one mention of the fact that large segments of the left are disgusted by Brand Obama for not doing enough. In fact, for not doing anything different from the Bush/Cheney war crime era.

No indication that voters might be furious with Brand Obama's healthcare reform, his gross sellout to the big insurance and pharmaceutical companies. No hint that Brand Obama's troop serge in the Middle East betrayed his peace promises. No voter anger because as he has continued the Bush policies of indefinite detention, government eavesdropping, military commissions, extreme secrecy, and immunity for government lawbreaking. Nope. No mention of this is the NY Times analysis.

Such analysis is for the politically lobotomized. Urging Obama to move to the right will leave him with no base at all, expect for the large corporations that pay for both parties and run the nation's media. And Brand Obama will go the way of "New Coke."

-- >One has to go to a newspaper outside the US for some less brainwashed analysis. The Guardian in UK said it so simply: "Prominent voices on the left of the Democratic party have grown increasingly concerned at what they see as too little change people can believe in, particularly on issues liberal activists are passionate about, such as healthcare legislation and America's wars." Now why couldn't the NY Times have thought of that?
-------------------

BBC in UK:
"A Spanish politician has said he was shocked to find out the FBI had used his photo for a digitally-altered image showing how Osama Bin Laden might look.

Gaspar Llamazares said he would no longer feel safe traveling to the US after his hair and parts of his face appeared on a most-wanted poster. He said the use of a real person for the mocked-up image was "shameless".

The FBI admitted a forensic artist had obtained certain facial features 'from a photograph he found on the internet.' The digitally-altered photos of the al-Qaeda leader, showing how he might look now, aged 52, were published on the state department's Rewards for Justice website on Friday." http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/01/17-5

-- >The NY Times put this story on its website, but didn't print it. Such stupidity from the FBI is seldom deemed "fit to print."
-------------------

New America Media:
"Forget about oil, occupation, terrorism or even Al Qaeda. The real hazard for Iraqis these days is cancer. Cancer is spreading like wildfire in Iraq. Thousands of infants are being born with deformities. Doctors say they are struggling to cope with the rise of cancer and birth defects, especially in cities subjected to heavy American and British bombardment.

Here are a few examples. In Falluja, which was heavily bombarded by the US in 2004, as many as 25% of new- born infants have serious abnormalities, including congenital anomalies, brain tumors, and neural tube defects in the spinal cord.

The cancer rate in the province of Babil, south of Baghdad has risen from 500 diagnosed cases in 2004 to 9,082 in 2009 according to Al Jazeera English...

Dr Ahmad Hardan, who served as a special scientific adviser to the World Health Organization, the United Nations and the Iraqi Ministry of Health, says that there is scientific evidence linking depleted uranium to cancer and birth defects." http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/01/09-6

-- >The NY Times doesn't do American war crimes. Our newspaper of record spends its time covering up stories about the effects of depleted uranium in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Fantasyland Media:

http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

Each week, we cover the stories that are just left out of the US propaganda machine. News that the people in charge, the corporations and your government want keep from the public eye.

-------------------

Daily Record UK:
"I've never, however, been in a more dangerous situation than last week in the tiny Sinai port of Al Arish to which the Egyptian dictatorship had insisted we bring our convoy.

Five hundred foreigners from 17 different nationalities with 200 vehicles were crammed into a compound without water, food or toilet facilities. They included 10 Turkish MPs one of whom was the chairman of Turkey's foreign relations committee.

We captured on film from a third floor office the thugs of the Mukhabarat (Intelligence) piling stones and sharpening their sticks behind the backs of several ranks of riot police with helmets, batons and shields. Then mayhem.

We may have complaints about our police, but I tell you, when you see policemen hurling half-bricks into a crowd of women and men who'd come to deliver medicine to desperate people under siege, you thank your lucky stars we don't live in such a state. Fifty five of our 500 were wounded and, but for the shocking effect on Arab public opinion (our own media didn't give a damn) of the live footage (all on Youtube now), we might still be there yet."
http://blogs.dailyrecord.co.uk/georgegalloway/george_galloway/

-->The NY Times reports things a little differently: "Overnight, Egyptian security forces and members of the convoy, which is led by left-wing British politician George Galloway, threw stones at each other when tempers frayed over the route the trucks were to take." But even this Reuters story is only on the NY Times website and never made it into print.

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National Priorities Project:
"NORTHHAMPTON, Mass - January 11 - Congress has appropriated an additional $136.8 billion for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for the 2010 fiscal year.  National Priorities Project estimates that for this fiscal year, $64.5 billion is directed to Iraq and $72.3 billion to Afghanistan.  Bills that included war-related funding were the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act (H.R. 2892) passed on October 28, 2009; the Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 3288) passed on December 16, 2009; and the Department of Defense Appropriations Act (H.R. 3326) passed on December 19, 2009.

These new appropriations bring total war-related spending for Iraq to $747.3 billion and for Afghanistan to $299 billion, with total war costs of $1.05 trillion.  National Priorities Project (NPP) updated its Cost of War counters to reflect the new totals and to show the local costs of these wars to states and many cities (http://costofwar.com/)."
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/01/11-12

-->The NY Times gives this information one line in a story published on the web. The story was never printed. In effect, the biggest news of the last decade was ignored: how US wars in the Middle East have bankrupted America.

-------------------

The Nation:
"German prosecutors have launched a preliminary investigation into allegations that the CIA deployed a team of Blackwater operatives on a clandestine operation in Hamburg, Germany, after 9/11 ultimately aimed at assassinating a German citizen with suspected ties to Al Qaeda. The alleged assassination operation was revealed last month in a Vanity Fair profile of Blackwater's owner Erik Prince.

According to Vanity Fair, one of the team's targets was Mamoun Darkazanli, a naturalized German citizen originally from Syria. Darkazanli has been accused by Spain of being an Al Qaeda supporter with close ties to the alleged 9/11 plotters who lived in Hamburg. The Blackwater/CIA team 'supposedly went in dark, meaning they did not notify their own station--much less the German government--of their presence,' according to Vanity Fair.

This week, a senior lawmaker in Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right Christian Democratic Union called on Washington to provide an explanation. 'If this commando really existed and the U.S. government knew about it but didn't notify our government then this would be a very grave incident,' said the lawmaker, Wolfgang Bosbach."
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/01/09-6

-->The NY Times has this story on its webpage, but did not see fit to print the possibility of US assassination teams working in Western European countries.

Fantasyland Media:

http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

Each week, we cover the stories that are just left out of the US propaganda machine. News that the people in charge, the corporations and your government want keep from the public eye.
---------

Rachel Maddow, the outspoken "leftist" on MSNBC, is distinctly quiet when it comes to human rights abuses by the US empire. Sure, she covers abuses when it comes to US supposed enemies like Iran and Syria. But did she do a story on the Goldstone Report? On the Gaza Freedom March in Cairo? The ongoing resistance to the military coup in Honduras?

Selective coverage of human rights issues is no coverage at all; it is government propaganda. Until the US media is willing to report the news, rather than the spin of the military industrial complex, we may as well look elsewhere.
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Jerusalem Post:
"A spokeswoman for international activists bringing aid to Gaza says some 50 members of the convoy were injured in a scuffle with Egyptian security overnight Tuesday.

Alice Howard said some 2,000 riot police used water cannons and beat up activists demonstrating at the port building late on Tuesday.

Scuffles erupted after negotiations allow the aid materials into Gaza through Egypt failed.

More than 500 activists in British-based group Viva Palestina are accompanying hundreds of tons of humanitarian supplies to Gaza."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1262339407809&pagename=JPost%2FJPArt\ icle%2FShowFull

-- >For the most part, The NY Times has not covered this convoy to break the siege of Gaza. After all, the siege of 1.5 million Palestinians is the direct result of US foreign policy.
-------------------

Guardian UK:
"A spate of abductions and murders has prompted concern that the political crisis in Honduras is still claiming victims despite the election of a new government.

Gunmen have killed two young activists in recent separate attacks amid a continued crackdown against supporters of the ousted president, Manuel Zelaya.

Human rights groups said he had been repeatedly harassed by police and soldiers and was briefly kidnapped and beaten on 4 December by four masked men.

The National Resistance Front, a group opposed to the coup which toppled Zelaya, accused security forces of the murder. Police denied responsibility and said they would investigate."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/16/honduras-crisis-claims-lives

-- >The NY Times does not report human rights abuses by US sponsored dictatorships. Too busy supporting those demonstrations in Iran. As usual, selective human rights reporting by our newspaper of record.

Fantasyland Media:

http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

Each week, we cover the stories that are just left out of the US propaganda machine. News that the people in charge, the corporations and your government want keep from the public eye.
---------

Salon:

"In May, 2008, Dick Cheney caused an uproar when he told ABC News' Martha Raddatz that public opposition to the war in Iraq was, in essence, irrelevant:

RADDATZ: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.

CHENEY: So?

RADDATZ:  So? You don’t care what the American people think?

CHENEY: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

Today, New York Times Editorial Page -- which has become one of the most vehement supporters of the war in Afghanistan (and Pakistan) -- echoed Cheney's sentiment when demanding that European leaders escalate their commitments to the war despite overwhelming and growing opposition among their citizenry:

'Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, and France’s president, Nicolas Sarkozy, have repeatedly stated that their countries have a stake in the future of Afghanistan and the future of NATO.  But both are wary of pushing their voters too far, too fast. (Both have essentially postponed their decisions on further troop contributions until late next month.) Democratically elected leaders cannot ignore public skepticism, but they should not surrender to it when they know better.""

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/14-0

-->The NY Times stressing the Pentagon point of view over the opinions of Americans? At any escalation of war, the Grey Lady always takes off her gloves and leads the cheer for more US military aggression.

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OpEdNews.com

"In what passes for corporate journalism in American, this concept has taken the form of, 'If we don't report on it, it didn't happen.'

That certainly was the case for the emergency protest organized by a coalition of anti-war organizations under the banner EndUSWars.org, which saw over 1000 people gather on short notice in the bitter cold on Lafayette Park opposite the White House to protest President Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan on Saturday, Dec. 12.

Not a word about this impromptu protest, which included many people who had supported the election of President Obama only a year ago, appeared in the New York Times. Nor did the Washington Post bother to mention the protest in its own back yard, not even in its Metro section pages. The other arguably national newspaper, USA Today, likewise blacked out news of the protest."

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Protest-What-Protest-Ame-by-Dave-Lindorff-091214-754.html

-->The NY Times, not given to cover protest rallies (unless they occur in Iran), is playing another of its usual wartime roles, that of omitting any mention of the US peace movement. News fashioned by the Pentagon.

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Salon.com

"The more difficult question to answer is why...so many liberals found the speech (in Oslow) so inspiring and agreeable?  Is that what liberals were hoping for when they elected Obama:  someone who would march right into Oslo and proudly announce to the world that we have a unilateral right to wage war when we want and to sing the virtues of war as a key instrument for peace?...

Yesterday's speech and the odd, extremely bipartisan reaction to it underscored one of the real dangers of the Obama presidency:  taking what had been ideas previously discredited as Republican or right-wing dogma and transforming them into bipartisan consensus.  It's not just Republicans but Democrats that are now vested in -- and eager to justify -- the virtues of war, claims of Grave Danger posed by Islamic radicals and the need to use massive military force to combat them, indefinite detention, military commissions, extreme secrecy, full-scale immunity for government lawbreaking, and so many other doctrines once purportedly despised by Democrats but now defended by them because their leader has embraced them.

That's exactly the process that led former Bush DOJ official Jack Goldsmith to giddily explain that Obama has actually done more to legitimize Bush/Cheney 'counter-terrorism' policies than Bush and Cheney themselves -- because he made them bipartisan..."

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/11-9

-->The NY Times always assumes there is a basic difference between Democrats and Republicans when it comes to committing war crimes. Our newspaper of record would never explore the similarities between the Bush and Obama doctrines on preemptive war.

Fantasyland Media:

http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

Each week, we cover the stories that are just left out of the US propaganda machine. News that the people in charge, the corporations and your government want keep from the public eye.
---------

The San Francisco Chronicle:

"White House Wants Torture Suit against Yoo Dismissed. The Obama administration has asked an appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing former Bush administration attorney John Yoo of authorizing the torture of a terrorism suspect, saying federal law does not allow damage claims against lawyers who advise the president on national security issues.

Such lawsuits ask courts to second-guess presidential decisions and pose 'the risk of deterring full and frank advice regarding the military's detention and treatment of those determined to be enemies during an armed conflict,' Justice Department lawyers said Thursday in arguments to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco."

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/12/08-4

-->Is our current President covering up war crimes of the past, or is he making sure he can get away with them himself. The NY Times doesn't pose this interesting question because it didn't cover the story.

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Common Dreams:

President Barack Obama recently called Rep. John Conyers Jr. to express his frustrations with the Judiciary Committee chairman's criticism.

In an interview with The Hill, Conyers said his opinions of Obama's policies on healthcare reform and the war in Afghanistan have not sat well with the president. According to the lawmaker, the president picked up the phone several weeks ago to find out why Conyers was 'demeaning" him.'

Obama's decision to challenge Conyers highlights a sensitivity to criticism the president has taken on the left. Conyers's critical remarks, many of which have been reported on the liberal-leaning Huffington Post, appear to have irritated the president, known for his calm demeanor."

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/12/08-0

-->The NY Times does not like to run stories of Obama selling out to corporate interests on the war and on healthcare. It didn't report this story. Nor has it devoted much coverage to Obama's loss of progressive support. Our newspaper of record only does stories that support the myth of two opposing parties.

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Common Dreams:

"Over 1,000 delegates from 42 countries have signed up to participate in the December 31 Gaza Freedom March that will mark the one-year anniversary of the Israeli invasion and call for an end to the siege that has brought 1.5 million people to the edge of disaster.

Organizers cut off registration on November 30 to give the Egyptian officials enough time to clear the group for entry into Gaza, but also because the numbers were becoming unwieldy. 'No one has ever taken a group this size into Gaza,' said coordinator Ann Wright, whose skills as a retired U.S. army colonel are coming in handy organizing the logistics for such a massive group.

Since the registration closed on November 30, organizers have been besieged every day with people begging to be added to the list. 'I have to turn down 15-20 people every day,' said Emily Siegel. 'It has been an insane few weeks, with emails pouring in from people all over the world who want to join. I feel terrible turning them away but we started out thinking we would take 300 people and now we have over 1,000.'"

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/06-7

-->So far, the NY Times has not touched this story of 1,000 Americans going to Gaza to break the Israeli siege. The NY Times does its best to protect Israel when it commits war crimes in the Middle East.

Fantasyland Media:

http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

News fashioned by the people in charge, the corporations and your government. Each week, we cover the stories that are just left out of the US propaganda machine.

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Antiwar.com:

"The fiscal year 2010 Federal government budget included $130 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or somewhat more than $10 billion per month. The White House estimates that it will cost one billion dollars per year to deploy an additional 1,000 troops to Afghanistan...

It also does not address the six hundred pound gorilla in the room, which is the legacy issue that comes from fighting a war with borrowed money.  As the Obama White House is so deep in the red that even George W. Bush appears in hindsight to have been a model of frugality, it should be assumed that Obama’s 'war of necessity' will not be fully funded by Congress.  That means either borrowing from the Asians or just printing the money while watching the dollar slide down the toilet. It has to be assumed that the US Treasury will do a bit of both."

-Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is a contributing editor to The American Conservative and a fellow at the American Conservative Defense Alliance.

http://original.antiwar.com/giraldi/2009/11/25/the-cost-of-war/

-->Stark financial warnings about the cost of American empire are rarely covered by the NY Times. 

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Commondreams:

"WASHINGTON - The National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI), organizations that receive funding from the U.S. State Department, are planning on sending delegations to observe the November 29 elections in Honduras, according to a statement issued by Republican Senator Richard Lugar.

The IRI is a group that has supported the ouster of democratically elected presidents in Haiti and Venezuela in recent years. Both groups are apparently planning to assist with observation of the elections, despite the fact that the electoral process will be effectively controlled by thousands of military troops and police officers - the same forces who have committed innumerable human rights violations, including killings, rapes, beatings and thousands of detentions, since the June 28 coup d'etat.

'I am surprised to see NDI joining the International Republican Institute in its efforts to legitimize another coup,' Center for Economic and Policy Research Co-Director Mark Weisbrot said. 'NDI has generally been less willing to support coups and anti-democratic regimes than has its Republican counterpart.'"

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/11/23-11

-->The NY Times does not like to report on the National Endowment for Democracy, a state funded NGO that has often been used as a CIA front. Moreover, the NY Times coverage of the Honduran military coup doesn't even attempt to separate Pentagon propaganda from actual news. All the news that's fit for empire.

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Common Dreams:

"NEW YORK - With the health care debate preoccupying the mainstream media, it has gone virtually unreported that the Barack Obama administration is quietly supporting renewal of provisions of the George W. Bush-era USA Patriot Act that civil libertarians say infringe on basic freedoms. And it is reportedly doing so over the objections of some prominent Democrats.

When a panicky Congress passed the act 45 days after the terrorist attacks of Sep. 11, 2001, three contentious parts of the law were scheduled to expire at the end of next month, and opponents of these sections have been pushing Congress to substitute new provisions with substantially strengthened civil liberties protections.

But with the apparent approval of the Obama White House and a number of Republicans – and over the objections of liberal Senate Democrats including Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Dick Durbin of Illinois – the Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to extend the three provisions with only minor changes.

Those provisions would leave unaltered the power of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to seize records and to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail in the course of counterterrorism investigations."

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/23-6

-->Maybe there are so many sellouts by the Obama administration that the further erosion of civil liberties is not worth reporting on. The NY Times thought so anyway; it didn't cover this story.