Thursday, September 11, 2014

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR):
"A New York Times piece (8/24/14)  about Michael Brown, the unarmed teenager shot dead in Ferguson this month by police officer Darren Wilson, has been the subject of harsh criticism because of its declaration that Brown was ‘no angel.’ In the version that ran in today's print edition, the Times' John Eligon writes:

‘Michael Brown, 18, due to be buried on Monday, was no angel, with public records and interviews with friends and family revealing both problems and promise in his young life.’ …

As Jack Mirkinson noted at the Huffington Post (8/25/14), the Times (8/24/14) also presents a profile of Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who killed Brown, in today's paper. His standing in relation to the angels is not discussed, nor do we know what kind of music he liked or whether he smoked pot. All we can piece together is that, according to some, he is a ‘well-mannered, relatively soft-spoken, even bland person…a reaction to a turbulent youth.’

->The NY Times coverage of Michael Brown’s murder fails in other ways as well. Suggestions that Brown moved toward and menaced officer Wilson before the shooting were printed without revealing that law enforcement officers were the source. 

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USA Today:
"Freedom of the press is under siege in Ferguson, Mo. Two reporters, one from The Washington Post and one from The Huffington Post, told of being roughed up and apprehended briefly for nothing more than literally recharging their batteries at a McDonald's. They weren't at a crime scene. They weren't in the way of the police. They identified themselves as reporters. But police saw fit to order them out of the McDonald's, and when they didn't move quickly enough for the officers' taste, they were arrested.

That's not all. Police fired tear gas at journalists from the cable news channel Al Jazeera America. Al Jazeera said its staffers were easily identifiable as working journalists, and that police continued to fire even after they shouted ‘press.’ After the journalists fled, officers took down their television lights.

A photojournalist with St. Louis television station KSDK, filming an altercation in which the police were involved, had his camera hit by a ‘bean bag round’ fired from a rifle. KSDK journalists say they were never told to leave the area."

-->The NY Times didn't print this story. Our nation’s premier newspaper was too busy reporting the police account of what happened on the streets of Ferguson.

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Ebony:
"The St. Louis County Police Department that killed Michael Brown and initially placed Ferguson on siege has trained with the Israeli military. Former County Police Chief Timothy Fitch was one of 15 American officials to participate in a weeklong training in Israel three years ago.

The April 2011 National Counter-Terrorism Seminar (NCTS) was sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). It brought together leaders from the largest American police departments, the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with members of the Israeli National Police, Israel Defense Forces and other intelligence organizations. …

Over 9,000 American officials have trained with Israeli police and military units on responding to civilian protests and terrorism. These operations reflect failure to distinguish between the apparent duty of police to protect civilians and military responses to war. This fusion has had life-costing implications for Americans, specifically black, Muslim and Arab people.”


-->This story was left out of The NY Times, which does everything it can to make apartheid Israel look good to the American people.

Friday, August 22, 2014

Human Rights Watch:
"(Gaza) – Israeli forces in the southern Gaza town of Khuza’a fired on and killed civilians in apparent violation of the laws of war in several incidents between July 23 and 25, 2014. Deliberate attacks on civilians who are not participating in the fighting are war crimes.

Seven Palestinians who had fled Khuza’a described to Human Rights Watch the grave dangers that civilians have faced in trying to flee the town, near the Israeli border, to seek safety in Khan Younis. These included repeated shelling that struck apparent civilian structures, lack of access to necessary medical care, and the threat of attack from Israeli forces as they tried to leave the area. ...

Human Rights Watch investigated several incidents between July 23 and 25 when, local residents said, Israeli forces opened fire on civilians trying to flee Khuza’a, but no Palestinian fighters were present at the time and no firefights were taking place.”.

->The NY Times prefers to avoid specifics when it comes to the slaughter in Gaza. As usual, our newspaper protected Israel’s reputation by not running this story.

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Guardian UK:
"When Ahmed Owedat returned to his home 18 days after Israeli soldiers took it over in the middle of the night, he was greeted with an overpowering stench.

He picked through the wreckage of his possessions thrown from upstairs windows to find that the departing troops had left a number of messages. One came from piles of faeces on his tiled floors and in wastepaper baskets, and a plastic bottle filled with urine.

If that was not clear enough, the words "Fuck Hamas" had been carved into a concrete wall in the staircase. "Burn Gaza down" and "Good Arab = dead Arab" were engraved on a coffee table. The star of David was drawn in blue in a bedroom."

-->The NY Times didn't print this story. It reveals too much about the intense racism involved in the invasion of Gaza.

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Common Dreams:
"The international criminal court has persistently avoided opening an investigation into alleged war crimes in Gaza as a result of US and other western pressure, former court officials and lawyers claim.

In recent days, a potential ICC investigation into the actions of both the Israel Defence Forces and Hamas in Gaza has become a fraught political battlefield and a key negotiating issue at ceasefire talks in Cairo. But the question of whether the ICC could or should mount an investigation has also divided the Hague-based court itself.

An ICC investigation could have a far-reaching impact. It would not just examine alleged war crimes by the Israeli military, Hamas and other Islamist militants in the course of recent fighting in Gaza that left about 2,000 people dead, including women and children. It could also address the issue of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories, for which the Israeli leadership would be responsible.

The ICC's founding charter, the 1998 Rome statute (pdf), describes as a war crime ‘the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the occupying power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies’."


-->This story was left out of The NY Times, probably because it reveals just how complicit the US is in the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. 

Thursday, August 07, 2014

Guardian UK:
“MPs warn that restrictions on buildings and water causing ‘very real suffering, often without real security justification.’ … In a report on the UK’s development work in the occupied territories (OPTs), the international development committee (IDC) argues that Israel’s policies – which include restrictions on building, access to water, and 3G and 4G for Palestinian mobile providers – are proving seriously counterproductive.

Members of the committee said they had been shocked by what they had seen during a visit in March. ‘We saw a country whose people have known immense suffering now imposing conditions on their Palestinian neighbours which cause a different but very real suffering and often without real security justification,’ says the report.

‘We saw Israel taking a range of actions that hinder Palestinian economic development and must, at the very least, cause deep resentment on the Palestinian side, even amongst the most moderate and pragmatic people, and so will actually worsen Israel’s own security.’ “

-->The NY Times doesn’t print articles that reveal too much about Israel’s intentions. The worst The NY Times has printed about the West Bank recently is Jodi Rudoren’s admission that, “Israel’s occupation of the West Bank hardly made it seem like paradise.” For the immediate bad news about how many civilians Israel slaughtered in Gaza, our newspaper of record prefers an intellectual debate on numbers with headlines like, “Civilian or Not? New Fight in Tallying the Dead in Gaza.” Anything to obscure the genocide.

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Mondoweiss:
“The New York Times’ reporting on Israel’s latest assault on Gaza has been a rollercoaster. Unfortunately the high points have been few, short and quickly followed by dizzying and prolonged plunges back into a morass of lazy, credulous recitations of Israeli government talking points, and efforts to portray balance and symmetry in a dramatically unbalanced situation, all permeated by an absence of skepticism and critical analysis, and a failure to explain context. Though Israel has slaughtered over 1000 Palestinian civilians in Gaza and only three civilians have been killed in Israel, in The Times’ upside down world, every Palestinian weapon is a major threat, while Israeli weapons are either defensive or non-existent.

As a result, a few days of strong, urgent reporting by Anne Barnard and Tyler Hicks on the ground in Gaza have been overwhelmed by embarrassing headlines, false equivalencies, and a seemingly unembarrassed willingness to promote Israeli perspectives no matter how obviously outrageous they might be. …

At it’s worst The Times’ reporting on this crisis has reminded some readers of Judy Miller’s and Michael Gordon’s enthusiastic shilling for the US attack on Iraq. There is so much that could be written about these failures, but I’ll focus on a few highlights – The Times’ failure to examine Hamas’ involvement in kidnappings or the manipulation of information about Israeli teens’ deaths, The Times’ failure to explain basic context about Gaza, Times’ explainers that grossly distort reality, and the papers’ hyping of Palestinian military capacity, in contrast to the invisibility of Israel’s massive arsenal.” 

-->Check out Mondoweiss for a more honest intellectual debate about the slaughter in Gaza. This blog’s goal is to “publish important developments touching on Israel/Palestine, the American Jewish community and the shifting debate over US foreign policy in a timely fashion.” It publishes everything The NY Times does not.

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Vox:
“One reason Congress is so pro-Israel? Fundraising. …

To anyone who's familiar with Democratic Party fundraising — particularly for non-incumbent underdogs, who typically have trouble raising money — this won't be too surprising (leaked memo states that saying the right things about Israel will net Michelle Nunn $250,000 for her upcoming campaign in Georgia).

Jewish donors are very important to Democratic Party finances, some of these donors have strongly held hawkish views on Israel, and the financial clout of AIPAC is the stuff of legend. At the same time, talk of rich Jews throwing their financial muscle around to influence policy in favor of Israel touches far too many anti-semitic tropes to be regularly mentioned in political discourse. But the concrete world of political fundraising doesn't leave a ton of time for beating around the bush, so we get a little window here into how it looks to the finance people: if Michelle Nunn wants to maximize her donations, she needs to take the right stance.”


-->Would The NY Times ever touch a story like this? The story reveals not only how corrupt our political process is, but also how billionaire Zionists pay for Congressional support of Israel. 

Thursday, July 24, 2014

Guardian UK:
“Shawahar Matin Siraj was sentenced to 30 years in prison in 2007 after he pleaded guilty to conspiring to plant bombs at a Manhattan subway station near the Republican National Convention in 2004. As is frequent in post-9/11 domestic counter-terrorism investigations, a new Human Rights Watch report documents, Siraj might never have gotten there but for the involvement of someone else: an older man at a mosque in Brooklyn's Bay Ridge neighborhood who posed as a nuclear engineer and cancer patient with a deep knowledge of Islam. …

The older man would later testify that he and Siraj developed a father-son relationship, perhaps since he said he had cancer and Siraj's father was disabled. Siraj, he judged, was ‘impressionable.’

When word of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal broke the next year, Siraj received a barrage of images from the older man of US forces abusing Muslims. Then his friend recommended inflammatory websites for Siraj to view. He intimated to Siraj that he lamented ‘dying without a purpose’ as Siraj became ‘inflamed by emotions.’ ”

—>It takes the Guardian in the UK to reveal how Siraj was set up by the FBI (which paid the informer $100,000 for influencing the young Muslim to become a terrorist). The NYT didn’t cover this new report by Human Rights Watch.

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Middle East Monitor:
“Ashy grey faces - Oh NO! not one more load of tens of maimed and bleeding, we still have lakes of blood on the floor in the ER, piles of dripping, blood-soaked bandages to clear out - oh - the cleaners, everywhere, swiftly shoveling the blood and discarded tissues, hair, clothes,cannulas - the leftovers from death - all taken away...to be prepared again, to be repeated all over. More then 100 cases came to Shifa last 24 hrs. enough for a large well trained hospital with everything, but here - almost nothing: electricity, water, disposables, drugs, OR-tables, instruments, monitors - all rusted and as if taken from museums of yesterdays hospitals. But they do not complain, these heroes. They get on with it, like warriors, head on, enormous resolute.

 And as I write these words to you, alone, on a bed, my tears flows, the warm but useless tears of pain and grief, of anger and fear. This is not happening!

An then, just now, the orchestra of the Israeli war-machine starts its gruesome symphony again, just now: salvos of artillery from the navy boats just down on the shores, the roaring F16, the sickening drones, and the cluttering Apaches. So much made and paid in and by US.

Mr. Obama - do you have a heart?”

—>These are the words of Dr. Mads Gilbert, Professor and Clinical Head
Clinic of Emergency Medicine, University Hospital of North Norway. He is volunteering as a surgeon in Gaza, but his voice will never be heard in the US mainstream media, obsessed as it is with presenting the Israeli narrative. 

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Guardian UK:
“The Israeli military is using flechette shells, which spray out thousands of tiny and potentially lethal metal darts, in its military operation in Gaza.

Six flechette shells were fired towards the village of Khuzaa, east of Khan Younis, on 17 July, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. Nahla Khalil Najjar, 37, suffered injuries to her chest, it said. PCHR provided a picture of flechettes taken by a fieldworker last week. …

B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization, describes a flechette shell as ‘an anti-personnel weapon that is generally fired from a tank. The shell explodes in the air and releases thousands of metal darts 37.5mm in length, which disperse in a conical arch 300 metres long and about 90 metres wide.’ 

The munitions are not prohibited under international humanitarian law, but according to B'Tselem, ‘other rules of humanitarian law render their use in the Gaza Strip illegal. One of the most fundamental principles is the obligation to distinguish between those who are involved and those who are not involved in the fighting, and to avoid to the extent possible injury to those who are not involved. Deriving from this principle is the prohibition of the use of an imprecise weapon which is likely to result in civilian injuries.’ "


->The NYT did not print this story. Why remind its readers that Israel is using high tech weapons to slaughter civilians?  

Friday, July 18, 2014

Common Dreams:
“A class of insecticides linked to the decline of bees may be even more ecologically damaging than previously thought, possibly causing declines in birds as well. The new findings by researchers from the Netherlands was published Wednesday in the journal Nature. …

‘In ten years it's a 35% reduction in the local population, it's really huge,’ study co-author Hans de Kroon from Radboud University told BBC News. ‘It means the alarm bells are on straight away.’

The scientists suspect that the imidacloprid builds up and can persist for years in the soil, killing insects that the birds depend on for food, therefore leading to their decline.

‘Our results suggest that the impact of neonicotinoids on the natural environment is even more substantial than has recently been reported and is reminiscent of the effects of persistent insecticides in the past,’ the study reads.”

—>The NYT published an editorial warning this spring against the use of neonicotinoids in the environment, but has routinely omitted studies like these in its news reporting. Even its science section supports agribusiness interests by stating that “Honeybee collapse has been particularly vexing because there is no one cause, but rather a thousand little cuts.” 

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Common Dreams:
“Speaking at a conference in San Diego last week for the world's largest trade organization of biotechnology firms, potential presidential candidate Hillary Clinton backed GMOs and Big Ag, further displaying her allegiance to the industry in the eyes of sustainable food and organic advocates.

While trumpeting her endorsement of GMO seeds when she served as Secretary of State, Clinton told the crowd that the term ‘genetically modified sounds Frankensteinish,’ and thus turns people off to GMOs. ‘Drought resistant sounds really like something you'd want,’ she said, encouraging the industry to improve their semantics. ‘There’s a big gap between the facts and what the perceptions are.’

Clinton's certainty concerning the safety of GMO foods stands in stark contrast to public opinion. A Consumer Reports poll in June found that 92 percent of Americans favor labeling the foods.”

—>Of course, distrust of GMO is not just a perception problem, but is backed by many scientific studies.The NY Times omitted this story about Hillary as the race for a Democratic presidential candidate begins to heat up. Our newspaper of record doesn’t care too much who wins, as long as they support the interests of big business over the American people.

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Guardian UK:
“The United Nations's top human rights official has suggested that the United States should abandon its efforts to prosecute Edward Snowden, saying his revelations of massive state surveillance had been in the public interest.
The UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, credited Snowden, a former US National Security Agency contractor, with starting a global debate that has led to calls for the curtailing of state powers to snoop on citizens online and store their data.

‘Those who disclose human rights violations should be protected: we need them,’ Pillay told a news conference. 

‘I see some of it here in the case of Snowden, because his revelations go to the core of what we are saying about the need for transparency, the need for consultation,’ she said. ‘We owe a great deal to him for revealing this kind of information.’ “

->Interestingly, The NYT did not print this story. Why remind US citizens that the government is trying to hide the extent of its snooping on Americans?  

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Common Dreams:
“Former employees of the Pennsylvania Department of Health were ordered by supervisors to ignore complaints about fracking-related health issues and follow a host of other rules to keep the dangers of drilling under wraps — even at the expense of people's health.

NPR State Impact spoke with two retirees from the department who said they were instructed never to return phone calls from residents with health problems stemming from natural gas development, like skin rashes, nausea, and nosebleeds. Employees were also given a laundry list of ‘buzzwords’ and phrases to refrain from using when talking with the public — particularly those that explicitly related to the issue, like ‘fracking,’ ‘gas,’ and ‘soil contamination.’

Other terms covered health and environmental issues, such as ‘hair falling out,’ ‘water contamination,’ and ‘cancer cluster.’ …

Marshall P. Deasy, a 20-year veteran of the department, said that drilling was the only issue he could remember being censored by supervisors.”

—>The NYT employs similar tactics to preserve the reputation of the fracking industry. It didn’t print this story.

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NY Times:
—>If we had any doubts before about our newspaper of record’s stance on Palestine, the July 4  story on page 6 makes it clear. The pro-Israeli propaganda begins with two pictures above the article, one of masked Hamas fighters with guns, and the other an Israeli woman inspecting the "damage" from a rocket attack on her home. Thousands of homes destroyed by the Israeli military don't count. Israel having one of the world's most powerful militaries doesn't count either. It's just those horrible terrorists making life miserable for poor Israelis. 

And the article is just as bad. "We need to finish them off before they finish us off" is the prevailing sentiment. Amazing how we as a country allow our major newspaper to get away with what is close to advocating genocide. We should picket The NYT for stories like this. Our newspaper of record has blood on it's hands. Interesting enough, the article is not even included in their on-line publication!

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Common Dreams:
“In a victory for environmental campaigners fighting to prevent the use of bee-killing pesticides, the agrochemical giant Syngenta on Friday withdrew an emergency application seeking permission to use such chemicals in the UK this planting season. …

As part of a coalition to uphold a ban on the European use of neonicotinoids, a class of chemicals used in pesticides shown to be extremely harmful to pollinating bees, both Friends of the Earth and Avaaz were among those  who reacted to Syngenta's decision with celebration. …

Though Europe has maintained its ban and campaigners continue to press for stronger protections for the world's most effective pollinating species, efforts in the U.S. to ban these pesticides and other toxins have continued to falter despite the growing threat.”


—>No word on this victory from The NYT. One of the reasons that efforts to ban these pesticides in the US is faltering is our corporate controlled media. The NYT never prints a bad article about the agrochemical giants.

Thursday, June 05, 2014

Green Shadow Cabinet:
“The New York Times and Obama's Afghanistan Draw Down: Selling the Never-Ending War on Terror. Mark Landler's "U.S. Troops to Leave Afghanistan by End of 2016" was the lead story … on Wednesday, May 28. Landler reports President Obama's decision to reduce troop levels from the present 32,000 to 9,800 by the end of 2014 to half that by the end of 2015 to ‘a vestigial force’ by the end of 2016. There are several reasons why one ought to be skeptical of these numbers (not least of which are that that Obama for years referred to Afghanistan as ‘a war of necessity,’ he ordered two troop surges during his first term, the number of U.S. paid contractors to remain is not clear, and predictable events may upset the timetable). Landler expresses no such skepticism. …

The only critical voices Landler rounds up are those unhappy with Obama's plans to draw down American forces on what they consider an overly brisk two-year schedule. Code Pink and the American Friends Service Committee—unhappy with the fact that the withdrawal is not immediate and complete—are not to be found in the piece. …

The story fails on another basic level. … He fails to ask a single follow up question of his sources. Landler and his editor let Keane get away with: ‘Just arbitrarily pulling those forces out absolutely risks successful completion of the mission.’ Even a cub reporter and novice editor might have queried Keane as what mission he had in mind, what successful completion of it looked like, and when it might be accomplished.”

—>Selling the war on terror to the American elites has always been a top priority of our newspaper of record.

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Common Dreams:
“After months of demanding a hefty administrative fee for the privilege, national archives officials have announced that due to public interest they will post on-line an estimated 2,500 pages of FBI files on iconic activist, patriot, music historian, alleged seditionist and ‘well-known left-wing folk singer’ Pete Seeger, who died in January at 94. With a cogent look at the way the blacklist of the 1950s, like the NSA abuses and any other form of political repression, worked - through not just the actions of those in power, but the infrastructure of support, cooperation and coercion of many others seeking ‘their own personal definition of the good’ that ‘made the machine go.’ With a link to Seeger's memorable appearance before HUAC, when he politely declined to name names but happily offered to sing songs. He was the best.

(Sample from released archives) ‘(Redacted) took the tape home and played same and found that it consisted largely of parodies that were highly inflammatory and derogatory toward the Armed Services of the United States, U.S. defense systems and the FBI....(He) became highly incensed (and his) feelings of revulsion were shared by his family and some neighbors who also heard the tape.’ “

—>To no one’s surprise, The NYT redacted this whole story. Why make the FBI look bad when the history of surveillance can just be omitted? 

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Ynet News (the Hebrew Israel News portal):
“Legislation obligates the president to report to Congress every 3 months on Qualitative Military Edge issues for Israel, authorizes provisions for Iron Dome, David's Sling and Arrow 3. The US House of Representatives, controlled by a pro-Israel Republican majority, adopted the National Defense Authorization Act for 2015 that includes the approval of $600 million military aid package for Israel for missile defense.

The bill authorizes $350.9 million for the Iron Dome rocket defense system, that protects from short and medium-range missiles and rockets, and $268.7 million for David's Sling - providing protection from long-range missiles - and Arrow 3 - that could intercept ballistic missiles before they enter the atmosphere. Both David's Sling and Arrow 3 are missile defense programs developed in cooperation with the United States. …

The adoption of the NDAA reiterates that it is ‘the policy of the United States to take all necessary steps to ensure that Israel possesses and maintains an independent capability to remove existential threats to its security and defend its vital national interests,’ an amendment to the act said.”


—>Why remind the American public of the obscene amounts of military aid we send to Israel? Our newspaper of record left this story out.

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