Thursday, April 16, 2015

Truth-Out:
"West Bank - It is becoming increasingly risky to cover clashes and protests between Israeli security forces and Palestinian protesters in the West Bank as the number of journalists injured, in what appears to be deliberate targeting by Israeli security forces, continues to rise.

During the last 12 months, Israel's Foreign Press Association (FPA) has issued numerous protests at the manhandling, harassment and shooting of both members of the foreign media and Palestinian journalists.

'The Foreign Press calls on the Israeli border police (a paramilitary unit) to put an immediate end to a wave of attacks on journalists. In just over a week, border police officers have carried out at least four attacks on journalists working for international media organizations, injuring reporters and damaging expensive equipment. These attacks all appear to have been unprovoked,' was one of many statements released by the FPA last year."

-->The NY Times did not cover this story. Hiding the abuses of apartheid Israel is more important to our newspaper of record than exposing attacks on journalists.

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Common Dreams:
"A new investigative look at the ties between big business interests in Colombia, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and her family's charitable foundation are raising troubling questions about the role that corporate trade deals and big oil may have played in softening the powerful Democrat's position on human rights in the South American country.

During her time heading the State Department, presumptive 2016 presidential nominee Clinton stayed silent on reports of violence and threats against labor activists in Colombia, even as her family's 'global philanthropic empire' was developing—and benefiting from—private business ties with a major oil corporation accused of worker-intimidation in the country, according to new reporting published Thursday by 'International Business Times.'

In addition, the IBT investigation shows that after millions of dollars were pledged by the oil company to the Clinton Foundation, Clinton reversed her position on a U.S.-Colombia trade pact she had previously opposed on the grounds that it was bad for labor rights."

-->Mainstream media is trying to dust off an old product, Hillary, the Lesser of Two Evils. Most US media, including the NYT didn't cover this story of oil money flowing to the Clinton slush fund.

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Common Dreams:
"Researchers in Pennsylvania have discovered that the prevalence of radon, a radioactive and carcinogenic gas, in people's homes and commercial buildings that are nearer to fracking sites has increased dramatically in the state since the unconventional and controversial gas drilling practice began in the state just over a decade ago.

Both odorless and tasteless, radon is a naturally-occurring gas released from bedrock minerals beneath the ground and is found in millions of homes across the country. However, in a study published Thursday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, scientists compared the results of state-wide radon testing in Pennsylvania to find a significant correlation between unusually high levels of the deadly gas in some buildings (mostly residential homes) and the proliferation of fracking in certain areas of the state.

'By drilling 7,000 holes in the ground, the fracking industry may have changed the geology and created new pathways for radon to rise to the surface.' (said) Joan A. Casey, John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health."

-->The NYT treats the oil industry as gently as it treats Israel. It didn't cover this story of fracking and radon gas.

Wednesday, April 08, 2015

Common Dreams:
"In a determination that could have far-reaching implications for the agro-chemical giants like Dow Chemical and Monsanto, the research arm of the World Health Organization has declared that glyphosate—the key ingredient of widely-used herbicides such as Roundup—should now be categorized as a 'probable carcinogen' for humans.

In a report published on Friday in The Lancet Oncology medical journal, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), based in France, announced its findings after a meeting of 17 oncology experts from 11 countries met to review the available scientific research exploring the connection between glyphosate, as well as several organophosphate insecticides, and various human cancers.

According to IARC, glyphosate is used in more than 750 different herbicide products and its use has been detected in the air during spraying, in water and in food. The panel of experts concluded that 'limited evidence' exists to show the herbicide can cause non-Hodgkins lymphoma in humans and additional 'convincing evidence' that it can cause other forms of cancer in both rats and mice. ..."

-->The NY Times covered this story in its usual way, by diminishing the findings as based on "that same mouse study," while printing numerous denials by Monsanto. Our newspaper of record followed up by an op-ed peace by Monsanto entitled, "A View From Monsanto on Herbicide Safety." An opinion peace entitled "Stop Making Us Guinea Pigs," while better, still insisted that "more research must be done."

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Common Dreams:
"Exclusive: Upset by Warren, U.S. Banks Debate Halting Some Campaign Donations.

What could she possibly be doing right? According to exlusive reporting by Reuters on Friday, big Wall Street banks are so upset with Elizabeth Warren’s call to 'un-rig' the economy and proposals for stronger financial regulations that discussions are underway about withholding campaign contributions to Senate Democrats as a form of 'symbolic' protest against the freshman senator from Massachusetts.

Citing sources familiar with the situation, representatives of some of the nation's largest banks—including Citigroup, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America—have actively considered putting pressure on the Democratic establishment by making a coordinated threat to withhold campaign contributions unless the populist rhetoric coming from Sen. Warren and her colleague from Ohio, Sen. Sherrod Brown, is toned down."

-->The story can be read as a Reuters report on-line, but didn't make it into The NYT print edition. Big banks blackmailing the Democratic Party not newsworthy? 

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Green Shadow Cabinet:
"Over fourteen hundred international election experts gathered data last year and pronounced the United States last in election integrity among long-standing democracies. On a 100-point scale, the U.S. received an integrity rating of 69.3 percent -- one notch ahead of the narco-drug state Colombia at 69.1 percent and just behind the nearly-narco-drug state of Mexico at 69.8 percent, neither country with a long-standing democracy.

'The November 2014 Congressional elections got poor grades because experts were concerned about the electoral laws, voter registration, the process of drawing district boundaries, as well as regulation of campaign finances,' according to the Electoral Integrity Project report.

The experts particularly found U.S. voting registration problematic. So let me summarize that for you. We have 50 different state election laws -- some quite fair, others authoritarian in nature. With the elimination of the Voter's Rights Act of 1965, Republicans have declared open season on Black, Latino, elderly and young voters. Over 90 percent of the U.S. House districts are rigged to be non-competitive. Corporations can secretly launder money into political campaigns. 

And our Supreme Court has declared corporations are people and spending money is free speech."

-->Our mainstream media avoids comparing our electoral process to other democracies. In that way, our media serves as propaganda for the state, always hiding deficiencies in our electoral system.

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Guardian UK:
"The United Nations’ top investigator on the use of torture has accused Washington of dragging its feet over his requested visits to prisons and refusing to give him access to inmates at Guantánamo.

Juan Méndez said he had been waiting for more than two years for the United States to provide him access to a range of state and federal prisons, where he wants to probe the use of solitary confinement. ...

According to Méndez, 'it is not rare' for prisoners in the United States to spend 25-30 years in solitary confinement, locked up in a cell with no human contact for 22-23 hours a day. ... According to the ACLU, more than 80,000 people are held in solitary confinement in the United States on any given day.

Méndez said he was particularly concerned about the use of solitary confinement for underage offenders. Solitary confinement for children 'should never happen, even for a single day', he said, pointing out that the punishment, widely considered cruel even for adults, was 'particularly harmful for children because of their state of development and their special needs'.

-->The NY Times buried this story on-line, and the report from Reuters even left out the part about the solitary confinement of children in the US Gulag. 

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NPR:
"Israeli Politician Changed Her Mind On Palestinian Conflict," an interview of an Israeli politician by By Steve Inskeep March 13.

This Israeli politician did more than change her mind about the Palestinians. She became an overt racist with statements like all Palestinians are terrorists. There are certainly racists in the world. The despicable part of Steve Inskeep's interview is that he politely accepts all the racist stereotypes she has to offer. Would he have been so well behaved if the interviewee were Palestinian and claiming that all Jews were murderers? Or a Nazi skinhead claiming that the Holocaust never happened? Or a KKK member saying that all African Americans were street criminals? 

Steve Inskeep is in touch with what racism is fashionable in American society. The notion that all Muslims are terrorists has become an acceptable point of view on NPR. In that way, our mainstream media feeds racial hatreds. Shame on such journalism. Expressions of racial hatred should never be treated as acceptable opinion.

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Common Dreams:
"The yawning racial wealth gap in the United States is no accident, but rather, driven by unjust public policy decisions—from the re-segregation of education to the redlining of home ownership to poverty wages, according to a new analysis by Brandeis University and the public policy organization Demos.

Inequalities are vast, note the researchers. For example, Census data shows that, in 2011, median white households in the U.S. held $111,146 in wealth, compared to a mere $7,113 for Black homes and $8,348 for Latino ones.
These disparities emerge from historical choices on the political and policy levels, the researchers note.

'The racial wealth gap is large because we instituted it in public policy historically and continue to make public policies that exacerbate the problems,' said report coauthor Catherine Ruetschlin, a senior policy analyst at Demos, in a press statement. Therefore, it is vital 'to find new opportunities to address the way that we’re constantly perpetuating this disparity between black, white and Latino families,' Ruetschlin continued.

Researchers offer a series of solutions aimed at reversing these trends, from equalizing home ownership to racially integrating schools at all levels. In addition, the study calls for a significant boost to the minimum wage, as well as 'making it easier for workers to form and join unions.'

-->The NY Times, owned and operated by the rich elite, didn't want to spread these anti-Wall Street solutions around. Our newspaper of record didn't print the story.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Mondoweiss:
“Two days ago Israel’s foreign minister called for beheading Arab citizens of Israel who are ‘against us.’ Haaretz did the story yesterday. So did Newsweek. Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman has said that Arab citizens who are not loyal to the state of Israel should have their heads ‘chopped off with an axe.’

The minister, leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party and an outspoken critic of Israel’s Arab population, made the controversial remarks on Sunday in a speech to an election rally held in the western Israeli city of Herzliya …

‘Those who are with us deserve everything, but those who are against us deserve to have their heads chopped off with an axe,’ the ultra-nationalist politician said. The incitement resulted in a call to behead Haneen Zoabi, the outspoken Palestinian member of Knesset …"

—>The NY Times has carried many gruesome stories about Muslim beheadings, but so far has refused to print this. The NYT did carry a Reuters story on-line, under the misleading title of “Lieberman Says Israel Should Execute Arabs Who Carry Out Deadly Attacks.” 

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Mondoweiss:
“Today The New York Times printed a long article at the top of its national section stating that the ugly prejudice of anti-Semitism has returned to the United States, on college campuses. …

‘The session… has served to spotlight what appears to be a surge of hostile sentiment directed against Jews at many campuses in the country, often a byproduct of animosity toward the policies of Israel.’

Let’s repeat that phrase: ‘what appears to be a surge of hostile sentiment directed against Jews at many campuses in the country.’ That’s a very large claim, and the piece offers no evidence for ‘a surge.’ None. If there really is ‘a surge’ of Jew-hating bigotry, why isn’t the Times sending its army of correspondents out nationwide to track down this awful trend?

The Times does not cite any other example of alleged hostility against Jews besides the UCLA case. …”

—>The NYT is echoing the right wing Zionist view that all criticisms of Israel are antiSemitic. We deserve more from our newspaper of record.

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Guardian UK:
“Top Afghan officials have presided over murders, abduction, and other abuses with the tacit backing of their government and its western allies, Human Rights Watch says in a new report.

A grim account of deaths, robbery, rapes and extrajudicial killings, 'Today We Shall All Die,' details a culture of impunity that the rights group says flourished after the fall of the Taliban, driven by the desire for immediate control of security at almost any price.

'The rise of abusive political and criminal networks was not inevitable,' the report said. 'Short-term concerns for maintaining a bulwark against the Taliban have undermined aspirations for long-term good governance and respect for human rights in Afghanistan.' "

—>The NYT put this story by Reuters on-line rather than in print, and the story itself consisted mostly of denials by Afghan officials.

Thursday, March 05, 2015

The Helen Caldicott Foundation:
“The Symposium: The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction. Russia and the U.S. possess 94% of the 16,400 nuclear weapons in the global nuclear arsenal. The U.S. maintains its first strike winnable nuclear war policy, and both countries have raised their nuclear arsenals to a higher state of alert because of the situation in the Ukraine. Furthermore it has just been announced that the administration has plans to replace every nuclear warhead and their delivery systems via ship, submarine, missile and plane, at a cost of one trillion dollars over the next thirty years. This symposium to be held by The Helen Caldicott Foundation will address the following issues:

. What are the human and technological factors that could precipitate a nuclear war between Russia and the U.S., how many times have we come close to nuclear war and how long will our luck hold? . What are the ongoing technological and financial developments relevant to the nuclear weapons arsenals of the US and Russia? . What problems are associated with lateral proliferation of nuclear weapons via strenuous corporate marketing of nuclear technology? . What are the medical and environmental consequences of either a small or large scale nuclear war? . What are the underlying philosophical, political, and ideological dynamics that have brought life on earth to the brink of extinction?”

—>This symposium was held last week at the New York Academy of Medicine. Amazing that the insanity of nuclear war isn’t discussed in our media. As we inch closer to the brink, our major news sources cheer on the US war machine.

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Common Dreams:
“Gaza Rebuild Effort Could Take 100 Years: Oxfam. Despair and destruction continue to envelop the blockaded Gaza strip, where the rebuilding of vital structures could take up to a century, Oxfam International has warned.

The organization's statement comes six months after a ceasefire agreement ended Israel's 50-day assault on Gaza, which left over 2,100 Palestinians dead, decimated thousands of structures, and weakened already damaged infrastructure systems.

Oxfam is one of 30 international aid agencies that operate in Gaza, including the Norwegian Refugee Council and United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), to issue a joint statement Thursday expressing alarm at the slow pace of reconstruction and worsening living conditions for Gaza's residents.”

—>The NYT put this report on-line where it would get much less coverage. Why not print this story of immense suffering and impending genocide? Maybe because protecting Israel has always trumped reporting the truth for our newspaper of record. 

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Common Dreams:
“Corporate-Friendly Democrats Mobilize to Drag Party Rightward. So called 'centrist' Democrats are attempting to distance themselves from progressive voices like Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Afraid ‘a sharp turn to the left could prove disastrous in the 2016 elections,’ factions within the Democratic Party more closely aligned with Wall Street and other corporate interests than with the progressive left are ‘gathering their forces to fight back against the Elizabeth Warren wing of their party,’ The Hill reported Monday.

Framed as a fight between so-called ‘centrists’ of the party and more progressive voices, exemplified by Sen. Warren (D-Mass.), journalist Kevin Cirilli describes how leaders of three corporate-friendly groups—the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), the New Democrat Network (NDN), and Third Way—are moving to steer the Democratic agenda away from issues like income inequality, the student debt crisis, and corporate tax breaks.”

—>The NYT didn’t report this major battle within the Democratic Party. Why call attention to the fact that both parties serve the same corporate masters? The same corporate elite that controls most of our media.

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Guardian UK:
“A network of Republican lawmakers and their rightwing corporate funders are battling behind closed doors to block minimum wage increases in cities across the US, in a step-by-step counter-attack that could cut back the incomes of millions of Americans despite an economic upswing.

According to strategic details obtained by the Guardian, the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) – along with its localised sister organization, ACCE – is trying to prevent elected city representatives from raising the minimum wage to levels above those set by their states. The group has launched an aggressive dual-track mission that combines legislation and litigation in what Alec calls a ‘new battleground over worker compensation.’

… With an increasingly national and political focus on the inequality chasm between the so-called “1%” and a middle class that continues to struggle against wage stagnation, individual US cities have been forcing the pace of change by setting their own progressive standards. …

Alec’s response, Sullivan went on to explain at the meeting, is to frame and then lobby for model legislation in state assemblies across the country. She said that so far 12 states, most recently Oklahoma, have submitted anti-increase legislation based on the rightwing lobbyists’ language.”

—>The NYT doesn’t like to cover the class wars being waged by the 1%. It didn’t print this story. 

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Common Dreams:
“Persecuted New York Times journalist James Risen accused U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder of being the ‘nation's top censorship officer’ in a searing rebuke to comments made by Holder on Tuesday that the way his department handled the case of the now-imprisoned CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling should exemplify ‘how the Justice Department can proceed.’

Holder made the comments at the National Press Club on Tuesday when answering a question about the DOJ's crackdown on leaks and whistleblowers. After years of doggedly pursuing Risen's testimony against Sterling, the DOJ finally dropped their case after Risen vowed he would go to jail rather than reveal his source. The prize-winning journalist has previously described the Obama administration as ‘the greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation.’ "

—>Strange that The NYT did print this story of Risen’s comments on Obama’s war against press freedom, especially since Risen was one of its reporters. The only mention of the story was in the Public Editor’s Journal, an on-line feature. 

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Common Dreams:
“Fossil fuel corporations and a Canadian trade agency that has promoted the construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline have donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, which is jointly run by Hillary, Bill, and Chelsea. Climate campaigners say that the payments raise concerns about industry influence on Hillary Clinton, a likely 2016 presidential candidate who has so far remained mum on her position on the tar sands pipeline, despite a call from 30 environmental organizations—issued over a year ago—urging her to take a stand against it. …

According to a voluntary disclosure from the Foundation, in 2014 the not-for-profit received between $250,000 and $500,000 from Canada's Foreign Affairs, Trade, and Development department, which has pressed for approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.

This Canadian agency is not the only donor aligned with big oil. Numerous fossil fuel giants sent direct payments to the foundation in 2014, including Exxon Mobil Corp., which donated up to $5 million, Anadarko Petroleum Corp., BP, ConocoPhillips Co., Chesapeake Energy Corp., Citgo Petroleum Co”

—>The NY Times has questioned the Clinton slush fund, but for taking donations from foreign countries. Why no mention of Big Oil’s massive payments to this foundation?

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Common Dreams:
“New Analysis Shatters Narrative of Charter School Success … Public schools are outperforming charter schools in Minnesota, in some cases ‘dramatically,’ according to a new analysis by the state's Star-Tribune newspaper. In addition, many charter schools fail to adequately support minority students, close examination of the data revealed.

Journalist Kim McGuire looked at 128 of the state's 157 charter schools and found ‘that the gulf between the academic success of its white and minority students widened at nearly two-thirds of those schools last year.’ Slightly more than half of charter schools students were proficient in reading, dramatically worse than traditional public schools, where 72 percent were proficient.

Between 2011 and 2014, McGuire reported, 20 charter schools failed to meet the state’s expectations for academic growth each year, ‘signaling that some of Minnesota’s most vulnerable students had stagnated academically.’ “

—>The NYT avoids printing anything that questions charter schools. As usual, our newspaper of record is in bed with the billionaires funding the assault on our nation’s public schools. 

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Common Dreams:
“Israeli Home Strikes Claimed More Than 800 Palestinian Lives. … 
At least 844 Palestinians were killed as a result of airstrikes on homes during Israel's summer attack on Gaza, an Associated Press exclusive analysis has revealed. The review published Friday found that 508 of the dead—just over 60 percent—were children, women, and older men, all presumed to be civilians. ‘Hamas says it did not use women as fighters in the war, and an Israel-based research group tracking militants among the dead said it has no evidence women participated in combat,’ AP notes.

Among the additional findings:
• Children younger than 16 made up one-third of the total: 280 killed, including 19 babies and 108 preschoolers between the ages of 1 and 5.
• In 83 strikes, three or more members of one family died.“ 

… The results of the AP count, which looked at 247 airstrikes on homes, come on the heels of similar findings released at the end of January by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.”

—>The NYT did not write an article about this AP analysis, although it did include the AP story on-line. That is the way The NYT diminishes the impact of such stories about Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. 

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Common Dreams:
“Doctors Worldwide Blast TPP's 'Chilling Effect' on Health, Climate Protections.
While U.S. corporations have been involved in negotiations, 'health agencies have been forced to rely on leaks,' physicians point out in letter to be published Saturday

An international coalition of doctors representing seven Pacific Rim countries is demanding the public release of draft trade agreements currently being negotiated in secret between world governments.

The corporate-friendly Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), along with the equally troubling Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), ‘threaten the ability of governments worldwide to provide affordable health care and to put in place health and environmental laws that protect public health and mitigate health inequity,’ reads a letter signed by 27 health leaders, to be published Saturday in the international health journal ‘The Lancet.’ ”

—>Massive, secret trade deals like the TPP benefit the wealthy elite in America, the segment of society that the NYT represents. It didn’t print this story.
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