Thursday, May 17, 2012

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 to keep from the public eye.

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Wired:
"The U.S. military taught its future leaders that a 'total war' against the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims would be necessary to protect America from Islamic terrorists, according to documents obtained by Danger Room. Among the options considered for that conflict: using the lessons of 'Hiroshima' to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the 'civilian population wherever necessary.'
The course, first reported by Danger Room last month and held at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College, has since been canceled by the Pentagon brass. It’s only now, however, that the details of the class have come to light...
That makes the two-star general culpable for rather shocking material. In the same presentation, Dooley lays out a possible four-phase war plan to carry out a forced transformation of the Islam religion. Phase three includes possible outcomes like 'Islam reduced to a cult status' and 'Saudi Arabia threatened with starvation.'
International laws protecting civilians in wartime are 'no longer relevant,' Dooley continues. And that opens the possibility of applying 'the historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki' to Islam’s holiest cities, and bringing about 'Mecca and Medina['s] destruction.' "
-->Although the Pentagon is busy disclaiming this "training" as an aberration in military doctrine, the details are important for US citizens to know, if only to get a true reading of the war crimes being contemplated in our names. The NY Times, ever protective of the military-industrial complex, did not cover these revelations.
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USA Today:
"WASHINGTON – A member of the House Armed Services Committee threatened an amendment to block funding for Pentagon propaganda efforts Wednesday, citing USA TODAY reports questioning their efficacy and management.
Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., called the information operations program a 'fiasco' and said contracts with the largest propaganda contractor, Los Angeles-based Leonie Industries, should be immediately suspended. Johnson also called for an investigation into reprisals against the USA TODAY journalists who have reported on the program, whom he said were 'targeted in a possibly criminal disinformation and reputation attack.'
'...it raises the deeply disturbing possibility that a federal defense contractor that specializes in information operations may have targeted American journalists.' "
-->American journalists reporting on Pentagon propaganda efforts being targeted by defense contractors? The story of this assault on freedom of the press was not newsworthy to editors of The NY Times.
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This Can't Be Happening:
"A new trove of heavily redacted documents provided by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) on behalf of filmmaker Michael Moore and the National Lawyers Guild makes it increasingly evident that there was and is a nationally coordinated campaign to disrupt and crush the Occupy Movement.
The new documents...only 'scratch the surface of a mass intelligence network including Fusion Centers, saturated with anti-terrorism funding, that mobilizes thousands of local and federal officers and agents to investigate and monitor the social justice movement.'
...Tellingly, the documents also include a Dec. 5 copy of the 'Weekly Informant,' an intelligence report published by the DHS’s Office for State and Local Law Enforcement...(The report) led immediately to the wave of violent crackdowns. It was at those meetings that police were advised among other things to act at night, to use aggressive tactics and weapons like tasers and pepper spray, and to take steps to remove journalists and cameras from the scene of crackdowns.
The overall sense from these latest documents is that Washington and the DHS, along with the FBI, was the nexus of the crackdown, orchestrating it, encouraging it, and attempting to cover its tracks.
The documents among other things expose the massive hypocrisy of the Obama administration and the Democratic Party, which this election year have tried to co-opt and claim as their own the anti-fat-cat theme of the 'We are the 99%'-chanting Occupiers, while actually acting in the interest of Bank of America and its fellow financial sector mega-firms in trying to crush the movement itself."
-->Obama and the Department of Homeland Security in on crushing the Occupy movement? The NY Times would never cover a story like this. It's too revealing of the actual collusion between both parties, the corporations, and the massive national security state.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

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 to keep from the public eye.

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Guardian UK: 
"A United Nations investigator probing discrimination against Native Americans has called on the US government to return some of the land stolen from Indian tribes as a step toward combating continuing and systemic racial discrimination.
James Anaya, the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, said no member of the US Congress would meet him as he investigated the part played by the government in the considerable difficulties faced by Indian tribes.
Anaya said that in nearly two weeks of visiting Indian reservations, indigenous communities in Alaska and Hawaii, and Native Americans now living in cities, he encountered people who suffered a history of dispossession of their lands and resources, the breakdown of their societies and 'numerous instances of outright brutality, all grounded on racial discrimination'."
-->Why The NY Times didn't cover this story goes back to the role our flagship newspaper plays in promoting America's image to the public. Imagine if this had occurred in North Korea or Iran? Much of the US media has lost the distinction between honest reporting and propaganda. 
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The NY Times:
"The government does a poor job of estimating what it will cost to tear down a nuclear reactor, Congressional auditors say, and it may not be overseeing plant owners well enough to assure that they set aside enough money to do the job. 
For a study it plans to issue on Monday, the Government Accountability Office scrutinized 12 of the nation’s 104 power reactors and found that for 5 of them, the decommissioning cost calculated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was 76 percent or less of what the reactor’s owner thought would be needed.
 The most striking example was Indian Point 3 in Buchanan, N.Y., which could be forced to close by 2015 because of a licensing dispute. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimated the cost of decommissioning the reactor at $474.2 million, just 57 percent of the 'site-specific' estimate made by Entergy, the owner, which put the figure at $836.45 million.
-->The NY Times covered this story on its Green Blog, but not in print. Why not publish this story about collusion between the nuclear energy business and federal regulators? And why not explain the use of these low estimates in the selling of nuclear power to the American people?
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Guardian UK:
"The former chief US prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay has denounced the military trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks due to appear in court at Guantanamo on Saturday, as intended primarily to prevent the defendants from presenting evidence of torture. 
Morris Davis, a former colonel who was chief prosecutor when Mohammed was brought to Guantanamo in 2006, said the military commissions will be badly discredited by the use of testimony obtained from waterboarding and other 'enhanced interrogation' techniques used on the accused men...
Davis, who resigned over the issue, wanted to see Barack Obama follow through on a commitment to move the trials to more open civilian courts but said that advocates of military tribunals prevailed in large part because the rules of evidence prevent the defendants from giving detailed descriptions of how they were tortured as well as other sensitive information such as details of the CIA's secret detention programme and the co-operation of foreign countries, such as Britain, in their capture and interrogations. 
'The truth is the reason the apologists want a second-rate military commission option is because of what we did to the detainees, not because of what the detainees did to us,' he told the Guardian."
-->Why wouldn't this statement made by the former US prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay make it into the US media? Ever protective of America's image, The NY Times did not cover this story at all. Too bad, because it explains the reasoning behind the military tribunals in about three paragraphs. 

Thursday, May 03, 2012

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 to keep from the public eye.

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Truth Out:
"Why is the New York Times peddling Iranophobia?
At long last, the United States and Iran are engaged in serious talks about Iran's nuclear program. But instead of celebrating the fact that President Obama is keeping his campaign promise of diplomatic engagement with Iran, the New York Times has told its readers that Iran's Supreme Leader can't be trusted when he says Iran will never pursue a nuclear weapon.
The reason? Because Iran's leaders are Shiites, and Shiites have a religious doctrine called "taqiyya," which allows them to lie. No scholar or analyst was cited by the New York Times in support of this argument, which should have been a red flag for Times editors in an article on the leadership of a country against which the United States has threatened war.
Last Saturday - the same day the United States and Iran were having 'constructive and useful' discussions on Iran's nuclear program in Istanbul, according to EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton - The New York Times published a piece titled, 'Seeking Nuclear Insight in Fog of the Ayatollah's Utterances,' over the byline of James Risen."
http://truth-out.org/news/item/8628-the-us-and-iran-are-talking-why-is-the-new-york-times-peddling-iran-islamophobia
-->The NY Times is repeating the type of pro-war propaganda we read before the US invasion of Iraq. The Israeli Lobby certainly has the ear of our newspaper of record, which uses its reporting to poison the minds of US citizenss.

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Salon:
In the wake of Osama bin Laden’s summary execution one year ago, many predicted that the War on Terror would finally begin to recede. Here’s what has happened since then:
* With large bipartisan majorities, Congress renewed the once-controversial Patriot Act without a single reform, and it was signed into law by President Obama; Harry Reid accused those urging reforms of putting the country at risk of a Terrorist attack.
* For the first time, perhaps ever, a U.S. citizen was assassinated by the CIA, on orders from the President, without a shred of due process and far from any battlefield; two weeks later, his 16-year-old American son was also killed by his own government...
* With large bipartisan majorities, Congress enacted, and the President signed, a new law codifying presidential powers of worldwide indefinite detention and an expanded statutory definition of the War on Terror.
* Construction neared completion for a sprawling new site in Utah for the National Security Agency to enable massive domestic surveillance and to achieve 'the realization of the total information awareness program created during the first term of the Bush administration.'
* President Obama authorized the use of 'signature' drone strikes in Yemen, whereby the CIA can target people for death 'even when the identity of those who could be killed is not known.' "
-->Where is our national media as America descends into a totalitarian state? We are becoming an empire ruled by big business, and of course, big business already owns all the media.
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Common Dreams:
"The Social Security trust fund is in strong financial standing and the overall program could be further strengthened, say experts and lawmakers, with a simple increase of the current payroll tax cap which is currently set at $110,000. The trustee's annual financial report was released on Monday.
Most mainstream news and media outlets reported the trustee's report as a 'doomsday' scenario for the benefit program, which was created in 1935 and today supports 55 million Americans, including 38 million retired workers, 6 million widows, widowers and orphans, and 11 million disabled workers. But those reports belie a simple solution to improve the longevity and solvency of the program, and speak to a trend of poor-quality reporting when it comes to the issue of Social Security.
'The most effective way to strengthen Social Security for the next 75 years is to eliminate the cap on the payroll tax on income above $250,000. Right now, someone who earns $110,100 pays the same amount of money into Social Security as a billionaire. That makes no sense,' said Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, the chairman of the Defending Social Security Caucus. He also chairs the Senate aging subcommittee."
-->There is no more dishonest reporting in the US than the stories written about Social Security. Of course, Wall Street wants to control the billions going to retired Americans, and take its cut for setting up individual retirement accounts. Again the richest of our citizens will end up impoverishing the working people of our country.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

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 to keep from the public eye.

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Common Dreams:
"Marine life in the gulf and the communities which dot its coast are rife with problems. As Phil Radford, Executive Director of Greenpeace USA and Aaron Viles, Deputy Director of Gulf Restoration Network write today: 'Throughout the food chain, warning signs are accumulating. Dolphins are sick and dying. Important forage fish are plagued with gill and developmental damage. Deepwater species like snapper have been stricken with lesions, and their reefs are losing biodiversity. Coastal communities are struggling with changes to the fisheries they rely upon. Hard-hit oyster reefs aren't coming back and sport fish like speckled trout have disappeared from some of their traditional haunts. BP's oily fingerprints continue to mar the landscape and destroy habitats."

'People should be aware that the oil is still there,' Wilma Subra, a chemist who travels widely across the Gulf meeting with fishers and testing seafood and sediment samples for contamination, told freelance journalist Jordan Flaherty. Subra thinks this what is now being seen in the gulf is just the 'beginning of this disaster.' In every community she visits, writes Flaherty, 'fishers show her shrimp born without eyes, fish with lesions, and crabs with holes in their shells.' According to Subra, tarballs are still washing up on beaches across the region."

-->NPR presented a different story on Marketplace April 19. According to Public Radio, the damage has gone away, and most of the oil has been dispersed naturally. There is no need to worry about spills like this in the future. Oil company propaganda on National Public Radio. 
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FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting:
"The four-part series America Revealed, airing on PBS stations this month, looks at big-picture economic issues, from agriculture to transportation to manufacturing. The series underwriter? The Dow Chemical Company, whose commercial interests closely track the subjects covered in the PBS series.
The first episode, entitled Food Machine (4/11/12), focused on large-scale agriculture, which is one of the industries in which Dow is a major player. The program featured an extended look at the corn industry, including efforts to control pests. As the program explained, the food industry 'needed a game changer' in that fight. And it got one: The 'genetically modified organism, better known as a GMO.'
This positively portrayed 'game changer' just happens to be the very type of product Dow sells. Indeed, Dow is among a handful of companies that dominate the genetic seed market. The company has recently been trying to win approval for a new genetically modified corn that has been nicknamed 'Agent Orange' for its resistance to a highly toxic herbicide."
-->Both PBS and NPR have suffered greatly from their growing dependence on industry sponsorships. Major corporations now control much of their reporting, a direct result of less money from the federal government.
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Guardian UK:
"News organizations cultivate a reputation for demanding transparency, whether by suing for access to government documents, dispatching camera crews to the doorsteps of recalcitrant politicians, or editorializing in favor of open government.
But now many of the country's biggest media companies - which own dozens of newspapers and TV news operations - are flexing their muscle in Washington in a fight against a government initiative to increase transparency of political spending.
The corporate owners or sister companies of some of the biggest names in journalism - NBC News, ABC News, Fox News, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Politico, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and dozens of local TV news outlets - are lobbying are against a Federal Communications Commission measure to require broadcasters to post political ad data on the internet."
-->To its credit, The NY Times did report this story of big media trying to hide the source of political ad spending.

Friday, April 20, 2012

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 to keep from the public eye.

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Common Dreams:
"Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is promising more controversy in his highly anticipated television series "The World Tomorrow". The show premiers this coming Tuesday on RT.
The show will feature Assange in conversation with 'iconoclasts, visionaries and power insiders.'
'First of all, being under house arrest for so long, it’s nice to have an occasional visitor and to learn more about the world. And given that the conversations we were having are quite interesting, why not film them and show other people what was going on,' Assange stated. The show, 'revealed sides of very interesting and important people that are not normally [heard] because they are not dealing with a standard interviewer, they are dealing with someone who is under house arrest, who has gone through political problems that they can sympathize with.'
The first-episode will feature a 'particularly controversial guest' who's identity is yet to be revealed and premieres on the 500th day of the financial blockade on Wikileaks.”
-->The NY Times doesn't report on Julian Assange unless the story is negative. Wouldn't it be something if a man like Assange ran The NY Times newsroom, instead of the usual pro-corporate, pro-Pentagon hack. We wouldn't be reading misleading stories about Iran's supposed nuclear weapons program. We would be getting the facts, straight from WikiLeaks!
UPDATE: The NY Times finally reported on Assange's TV show, although the story was full of disparaging remarks, calling it an "improbable platform for a man who poses as a radical left-wing whistleblower and free-speech frondeur battling the superpowers that be." 
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Wired Magazine:
"War's cruel legacy continues to unleash itself on the children of Iraq as weapons used by the U.S. have left Iraqi children with horrific birth defects, and the problem shows no signs of abating, Inter Press Service is reporting today.
'In 2004 the Americans tested all kinds of chemicals and explosive devices on us: thermobaric weapons, white phosphorous, depleted uranium...we have all been laboratory mice for them,' hospital spokesman Nadim al-Hadidi told Inter Press Service (IPS).
IPS notes that the Iraqi Health Ministry, in close collaboration with the WHO, is set to embark on its first ever study on congenital malformations in the governorates of Baghdad, Anbar, Thi Qar, Suleimania, Diala and Basra this month.
Iraqi children being born with birth defects has been devastating families for years. A July 2010 study showed that increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukemia in the heavily bombarded city of Fallujah surpass those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945."
-->Such depressing news about the empire never makes it to our newspaper of record, The NY Times.
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Common Dreams:
"Drastic changes are 'important climate change signals,' researchers conclude.
A rapid rise in sea levels in Southwest Pacific Ocean has occurred, according to a new study, and researchers say human-made climate change is likely the cause for significant rises in the 20th century. Scientists from the University of Queensland in Australia, partnered with other British universities, measured sea levels going back 6,000 years and spotted significant increases in the 19th and 20th centuries. Of note is that a major spike in the late 20th century, starting around 1990, is likely linked to human-created climate change, researchers said.
'The 1990s peak is most likely indicative of human-induced climate change,' said Patrick Moss, a scientist from the University of Queensland. 'Any drastic changes from the norm, which persist for several decades and over a wide area, represent important climate signals.' "
-->The NY Times doesn't like to discourage its readers with stories about man made climate change. Or has the Gray Lady been in bed with the oil producers for the last several decades? It didn't print this story.
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The Examiner:
"The big food factories are at it again. Monsanto and Dow are really worried about controlling the weeds on the farms that produce a huge percentage of the fresh produce in the United States, so they have come up with a scheme to take care of the problem. Unfortunately, the consequences will be detrimental to everyone’s health. Oh, well . . . What’s the proposal? Let’s use this genetically engineered 2,4-D and Roundup to dust down the crops...
What is 2,4-D? It sounds like an equation, and in a way it is. Except this one adds up to three times the Nebraska farmworkers developing non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, along with high rates of miscarriage and increased birth defects in the families who work in those areas.  This extremely potent herbicide contains half of the chemical mixture of Agent Orange used during the Vietnam War to clear the jungles. The military men and civilians that were exposed suffered from reproductive problems, cancer, and Parkinson’s disease. The problem was so wide spread that now the VA offers special benefits to those who have become disabled and are dying from this chemical exposure over a short period of time."
-->The NY Times never goes against corporate interests like Monsanto and Dow. It isn't covering this story.



Thursday, April 12, 2012

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 to keep from the public eye.

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Electronic Intifada:

"The European Commission has released a document that lists projects it funded that were destroyed or damaged by the Israeli military between May 2001 and October 2011.
The list documents 82 such instances, amounting to a monetary loss of ($65.6 million), ($40 million) of which came directly from European aid.
The list was made available to Chris Davies, a British member of the European Parliament, following his inquiry to the European Commission. Davies subsequently published the findings on his webpage where he stated that the list was 'the most detailed response I have ever received from the European Commission.' ”
-->The NY Times doesn't bother reporting most of Israel's human rights abuses against Palestinians. Its reporters are hopelessly biased because of their close ties to the Israeli state.
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Wired Magazine:
"A top adviser to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned the Bush administration that its use of 'cruel, inhuman or degrading” interrogation techniques like waterboarding were 'a felony war crime.'
What’s more, newly obtained documents reveal that State Department counselor Philip Zelikow told the Bush team in 2006 that using the controversial interrogation techniques were 'prohibited' under U.S. law —  'even if there is a compelling state interest asserted to justify them.'
Zelikow argued that the Geneva conventions applied to al-Qaida — a position neither the Justice Department nor the White House shared at the time. That made waterboarding and the like a violation of the War Crimes statute and a  felony, Zelikow tells Danger Room. Asked explicitly if he believed the use of those interrogation techniques were a war crime, Zelikow replied, 'Yes.' "
-->The NY Times is distinctly disinterested in war crimes being committed by the empire. It hasn't printed the story.
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Guardian UK
"A report released today shows that worldwide opposition to the biotechnology giant Monsanto and 'the agro-industrial model that it represents' is growing.
La Via Campesina, Friends of the Earth International, and Combat Monsanto, the groups who issued the report, show that small farmers, groups and communities in every continent are rising up to resist Monsanto's products and environmental harm. While Monsanto's -- and other giant agribusinesses' -- approach, including genetically modified crops, has been shown to hurt biodiversity, local food knowledge and the environment, the report shows that 'food sovereignty is a real and feasible alternative.'
'This new report documents the intense opposition to this powerful transnational company, which peddles its genetically modified products seemingly without regard for the associated social, economic and environmental costs,' said Martin Drago, Friends of the Earth International's Food Sovereignty programme coordinator."
-->The NY Times has long been in bed with Monsanto. Even The NY Times Science Section usually sings praises for genetically modified food. Our newspaper of record would never print a report like this.

Thursday, April 05, 2012

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 to keep from the public eye.

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Common Dreams:

"According to the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), the pharmaceutical, medical device, and biotechnology industries spent over $700 million in lobbying between 2009 and 2011, surpassing other special interest spending such as big oil and insurance industries.
The extreme spending comes as this year's 'industry-friendly proposals' face the House and Senate, such as legislation limiting the FDA’s drug and medical device scrutiny.
'Congress is also considering legislation that would relax conflict-of-interest standards for federal advisory members at the FDA, allowing scientists with a financial stake in the outcome to vote on panels that approve or reject drugs and medical devices,' states UCS."
-->The NY Times doesn't do a very good job reporting on corporate influences on governmental regulators. Or newspaper of record often omits such damning reports like this one from the Union of Concerned Scientists.
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Guardian UK:
"US acted to conceal evidence of intelligence failure before 9/11. Operation Foxden, delayed by turf war between the FBI and the CIA, given green light three days before the al-Qaida attacks...
The US government shut down a series of court cases arising from a multimillion pound business dispute in order to conceal evidence of a damning intelligence failure shortly before the 9/11 attacks, MPs were told.
Moreover, the UK government is now seeking similar powers that could be used to prevent evidence of illegal acts and embarrassing failures from emerging in court, David Davis, the former shadow home secretary, told the Commons."
-->The NY Times did not cover Operation Foxden or the attempts by the US government to conceal intelligence failures prior to 9/11. Readers must go to an British publication for "all the news that's fit to print."

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Guardian UK
"A group political activists and journalists has launched a legal challenge to stop an American law they say allows the US military to arrest civilians anywhere in the world and detain them without trial as accused supporters of terrorism.
The seven figures, who include ex-New York Times reporter Chris Hedges, professor Noam Chomsky and Icelandic politician and WikiLeaks campaigner Birgitta Jonsdottir, testified to a Manhattan judge that the law – dubbed the NDAA or Homeland Battlefield Bill – would cripple free speech around the world.
They said that various provisions written into the National Defense Authorization Bill, which was signed by President Barack Obama at the end of 2011, effectively broadened the definition of 'supporter of terrorism' to include peaceful activists, authors, academics and even journalists interviewing members of radical groups."
-->The Bill of Rights being defended by America's leading intellectuals. Not of interest to The NY Times, which didn't print this story.
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Common Dreams:
"A heartbreaking report from Save the Children and East Jerusalem YMCA Rehabilitation Program on the more than 8,000 Palestinian children living under Israeli occupation who have been arrested, handcuffed, blindfolded, detained and often brutalized in Israeli prisons, usually for throwing stones - and that doesn't include those caught in the assaults on Gaza. An estimated 90% suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Unsurprisingly, there is little help for them."
-->No sign of this report in The NY Times, which routinely leaves out stories of Palestinian suffering in the West Bank and Gaza. 


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