Common Dreams:

"Historic Day: Jubilation as Evo Morales Returns to Bolivia One Year After Military Coup. Twelve months after being driven into exile by right-wing forces, socialist former president Evo Morales was 'received by the very social movements who defeated the coup and restored democracy.' ...

Morales' return comes one year after the former president of the Latin American country was forced into exile by a violent far-right regime that was installed via a military coup, which was facilitated by unsubstantiated claims of electoral fraud made by the U.S.-dominated Organization of American States (OAS) and condoned by corporate media outlets.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/11/09/historic-day-jubilation-evo-morales-returns-bolivia-one-year-after-military-coup

-->The NYT was in favor of the coup that overthrew Morales last year. This year upon his return, our "newspaper of record" is still spinning its own version of the facts. In the NYT coverage of his return, we read, "Morales, made a triumphant return to his homeland Monday, a year after his failed attempt to keep power tore the nation apart and sent him into exile." In other words, it was Morales' fault for trying to "keep power" after he was elected president. And he even sent himself into exile. No mention of the US support for this coup and the OAS lies about about electoral fraud. The NYT is the empire's newspaper. 

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FAIR:

"Joe Biden hadn’t even been declared the victor of the 2020 election before establishment Democrats, in the face of poorer-than-expected results in House and Senate races, began pointing fingers at the left—with corporate media giving them a major assist.

Democrats had been hoping for big wins on election night, with the possibility of winning not only the presidency but also the Senate, and increasing their majority in the House. But while Biden has come out on top, the party’s most optimistic outcome in the Senate would be a 50/50 split (if they win both Georgia runoff seats), giving them a majority with the vote of Vice President Kamala Harris. And rather than gaining in the House, Democrats lost several seats.

In the wake of these disappointments, the right wing of the party immediately blamed its left wing for the poor showing, airing their grievances in a private conference call among House Democrats that was leaked to reporters."

https://fair.org/home/when-centrists-lose-corporate-media-blame-the-left/

-->FAIR does a nice job in demonstrating how the NYT and the major US media comes down in favor of the "corporate" way for Democrats to proceed. There are some juicy details here as well. South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn "has taken more money from the pharmaceutical industry in the past decade than any other member of the House or Senate." Who knew? Certainly not the readers of the NYT.

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The Guardian UK:

"The recent HBO film 537 Votes, about the Florida 2000 election mess, offers one overarching message: Democrats’ refusal to sound a clear alarm about the slow-motion heist in process ultimately let the election be stolen.

In that debacle, Democrats seemed to think things would break their way with well-honed arguments inside the cloistered confines of the legal system – they never understood how public-facing politics can play a role in what ended up being a pivotal political brawl outside the courtroom.

Now, 20 years later, the lesson of that debacle isn’t being heeded. Donald Trump and his cronies are quite clearly waging a public-facing campaign designed to create the conditions to pull off a coup in the electoral college process. This is a full-scale emergency – and yet the Democratic strategy seems to be to try to pretend it isn’t happening, in hopes that norms win out, even though nothing at all is normal."

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/12/trump-election-concede-republicans-democrats

-->The US media, including the NYT, doesn't like to expose the dangerous fascist tendencies of our current administration. Like the 2000 election theft, our media pretends that all is in order, when it is clearly not. What good is exposing the lies of the Trump regime when you can't put a name on what is really happening? This is fascism, folks.

 Common Dreams:

"'Gross Abuse' of Power, Says International Election Observer About Trump Lies of US Voter Fraud. Baseless allegations of systematic deficiencies, notably by the incumbent president, including on election night, harm public trust in democratic institutions,' the delegation concluded. ...

Trump's effort to stop the count 'is something that does need to be described as breaking a taboo,' the election observer told rbb [German public broadcaster]. 'He has neither the right nor the possibility to do this. Responsibility for the count lies exclusively with states.'

The observation mission carried out by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly (OSCE PA) involved 102 observers from 39 countries—50 experts and observers deployed by ODIHR and 52 parliamentarians and staff from the OSCE PA."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/11/05/gross-abuse-power-says-international-election-observer-about-trump-lies-us-voter

-->The NYT doesn't like it when international observers tell it like it is in our faux democracy. Our supposed "newspaper of record" omitted this story.

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Mondoweiss:

"Under cover of US elections, Israel wipes entire Palestinian community off the map. Israeli forces demolished the entire Bedouin community of Khirbet Humsah in the northern Jordan Valley, leaving 41 Palestinian children homeless just as winter storms spread through the West Bank. ...

At around 11am on Tuesday morning, the residents of Khirbet Husna were shocked to see a caravan of Israeli military jeeps, accompanied by a number of bulldozers and excavators, heading down the dirt pathway to their village. ...

After what felt like mere seconds, as Abu Awwad and her husband tried to empty their home of all the belongings they could, the Israeli bulldozers began demolishing everything around them, as what she described as hundreds of soldiers and Civil Administration workers surrounded them.  'They didn’t leave anything untouched,' Abu Awwad said. 'Our homes, our livestock pens, our bathrooms, our water tanks, solar panels, everything. They destroyed everything.' ”

https://mondoweiss.net/2020/11/under-cover-of-us-elections-israel-wipes-entire-palestinian-community-off-the-map/

--NPR reported on this story, but in its typically "balanced" reporting, with lots of explanation by Israeli authorities. But the "progressive" NYT didn't cover the story at all. 

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Common Dreams:

"'Every. Single. One.': Ocasio-Cortez Notes Every Democrat Who Backed Medicare for All Won Reelection in 2020. The same cannot be said for those more centrist lawmakers who continue to defend the nation's increasingly unpopular for-profit healthcare system.

The tweet emerged as many across the corporate media landscape, including pundits and former high-level Democratic officials like Rahm Emanuel, unabashedly pushed a narrative that progressives calling for policies like a single-payer universal healthcare system or the Green New Deal are somehow a hindrance to electoral success. ...

As Common Dreams reported Friday, while corporate-friendly Democrats have continued to go to bat for the for-profit healthcare system that lavishes billions of dollars each year on insurance companies, for-profit hospitals, and pharmaceutical giants, a new poll this week—put out by Fox News no less—shows that 72% of all U.S. voters would prefer a 'government-run healthcare plan.' "

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/11/07/every-single-one-ocasio-cortez-notes-every-democrat-who-backed-medicare-all-won

-->The NYT, ever friendly with the corporate controlled wing of the Democratic Party, made a one sentence mention of AOC's statement, but did not show how universal healthcare is the preferred choice of 72% of all US voters. Why can't we have universal healthcare? Because of publications like the NYT.

 Common Dreams:

"The four first-term progressive congresswomen collectively called the Squad filed a letter Friday calling for independent international investigation of 'recent, ongoing, and credible allegations of egregious human rights abuses by the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), its components, and its private contractors.'

'From the unwanted and unnecessary hysterectomies of migrant women, to the forced separation of children from their families, to the indefinite detention of immigrants in abhorrent conditions—the cruelty and callousness of the Department of Homeland Security under [President] Donald Trump knows no bounds,' Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said in a statement Friday.

'This administration has demonstrated time and again its utter disregard for the lives of our immigrant neighbors, while our institutions of government have done little to hold it accountable—that must change. It's time we had a truly independent, external, and impartial investigation into these alleged human rights abuses by DHS, and I am proud to partner with my sisters in service in leading this call,' she added."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/23/ocasio-cortez-omar-pressley-and-tlaib-lead-call-un-probe-alleged-dhs-human-rights

-->The truth hurts, especially when it exposes the racist and fascist nature of our nation. The NYT, ever vigilant to stories that might upset its readers, Didn't print this open letter from the "Squad." 

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Common Dreams:

"Amnesty International on Sunday condemned President Donald Trump for 'condoning violence and intimidation' after the president applauded the caravan of his truck-driving supporters that surrounded a Biden campaign bus on a Texas highway Friday, prompting allegations of reckless endangerment and an FBI probe of the incident.

'In my opinion, these patriots did nothing wrong,' Trump tweeted hours after absurdly claiming that his supporters were 'protecting' the Biden campaign's bus. ...

Following the swarming of the Biden campaign bus by dozens of Trump supporters attempting to bring the bus to a halt, Texas Democrats canceled three scheduled events for the former vice president due to safety concerns."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/11/02/amnesty-slams-trump-condoning-violence-and-intimidation-president-praises-texas-mob

-->Why didn't the NYT cover the Amnesty International condemnation? I think that the NYT, although free to criticize Trump, remains vigilant against any mention of fascism. And that is such a disservice to the people of America. Unless the mainstream media is free to talk about the fascism in the US, we all remain vulnerable to its significant inroads. 

=====

LA Progressive:

"It is difficult for most Americans to judge just how dangerous Donald Trump might be. It is not that the clues are missing; there is a daily list of lies, racist comments, misogynist ramblings, and outrageous self dealing. But most citizens just don’t have the right vocabulary to put his actions into some sort of context, even in these pandemic times. ...

By avoiding the use of the word fascism, mainstream media analysis fails our democracy in two ways. First, we as citizens can’t look at Trump and judge him by historical standards. His actions may be outrageous and deplorable, but we remain oblivious to the pattern of a fascist leader that he exhibits.

The second way that the media fails is to limit how fascism is described. It is always a person rather than a national movement; a Netanyahu rather than the Israeli people, or a Hitler rather than all Germans. Fascism may be encouraged by someone with the right combination of charisma and viciousness, but in the end it becomes a social illness that moves whole populations towards war and genocide."

https://www.laprogressive.com/spread-of-fascism/

-->Yes, the media has been covering up fascist trends for decades. Now it is right there in our faces. What will be the price that we the people will have to pay? 

 CEPR Center for Economic and Policy Research:

"Data from Bolivia’s Election Add More Evidence That OAS Fabricated Last Year’s Fraud Claims. 

The OAS’s initial claims of fraud centered around a 'drastic' and 'inexplicable' change in the trend of the vote, which allegedly took place after the preliminary results system, or TREP, was suspended for nearly 24 hours. In the time since, myriad statistical analyses — from CEPR (beginning the day after the OAS allegations), and from academics at MIT, Tulane, University of Pennsylvania and elsewhere, have shown the OAS’s statistical analysis to be deeply flawed. In fact, there was no 'inexplicable' change in the trend of the vote."

https://cepr.net/data-from-bolivias-election-add-more-evidence-that-oas-fabricated-last-years-fraud-claims/

-->To the NYT, the recent election was all about how "Bolivia Overcame a Crisis and Held a Clean Election." Little mention of the US backed OAS's false accusations. No mention of the US coup that followed. Down the empire's memory hole with our "newspaper of record."

 

=====

The Guardian UK:

"The Trump administration is reportedly considering labelling a number of leading international humanitarian organisations as antisemitic after they documented Israeli rights abuses against Palestinians, including settlement building in the occupied territories.

The groups include the UK-based Amnesty International and Oxfam as well as the US organisation Human Rights Watch. Amnesty International accused the Trump administration, and the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, of attempting 'to silence and intimidate international human rights organisations'.

The plans were detailed in reports in Politico and the Washington Post and based on briefings from unnamed officials and a congressional aide who said that a declaration labelling the groups antisemitic could come as early as this week."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/22/donald-trump-considers-labelling-rights-groups-antisemitic-criticism-israel

-->The NYT is not covering this story, probably because the US collusion with Israel just looks too bad. In fact, the collusion stinks, with the US government willing to attack human rights organizations for exposing Israeli Apartheid. 

=====

Common Dreams:

"The four first-term progressive congresswomen collectively called the Squad led a letter Friday calling for independent international investigation of 'recent, ongoing, and credible allegations of egregious human rights abuses by the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), its components, and its private contractors.'

'From the unwanted and unnecessary hysterectomies of migrant women, to the forced separation of children from their families, to the indefinite detention of immigrants in abhorrent conditions—the cruelty and callousness of the Department of Homeland Security under [President] Donald Trump knows no bounds,' Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said in a statement Friday.

'This administration has demonstrated time and again its utter disregard for the lives of our immigrant neighbors, while our institutions of government have done little to hold it accountable—that must change. It's time we had a truly independent, external, and impartial investigation into these alleged human rights abuses by DHS, and I am proud to partner with my sisters in service in leading this call,' she added."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/23/ocasio-cortez-omar-pressley-and-tlaib-lead-call-un-probe-alleged-dhs-human-rights

-->Always ready to protect the empire's image, the NYT didn't cover this story. Maybe they will eventually. 

 Aljazeera:

"For 13 years, Sehar Bibi has waited for her son to be released from Guantanamo Bay, where life for one of the last Afghan prisoners has been defined by hunger strikes, force feedings and isolation. Hundreds of detainees including senior Taliban leaders have been released from the notorious detention centre run by the United States military. But Asadullah Haroon, who has never been charged with a crime, remains.

Haroon was working as a honey trader travelling between Peshawar and eastern Afghanistan’s Jalalabad when he was arrested in 2006 in what his family claims was likely a trap to claim a cash reward for fighters. 

Haroon, whose wife had just given birth to a girl when he was detained, is now a so-called 'forever prisoner', part of about half the jail’s remaining 40 inmates stuck in legal limbo."

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/19/afghan-mother-waits-for-son-stuck-in-guantanamo-bay-since-2006

-->Guantanamo's "forever prisoners" remain one of the empire's most egregious violations of international human rights. At least 780 prisoners were held in detention there, and many were brutally tortured, making their statements and "confessions" unusable in trials. Only 8 prisoners have ever been convicted, and they were found guilty by illegitimate military tribunals. Three of those convictions were eventually overturned. The NYT didn't cover Haroon's story. 

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The Guardian UK:

"People in Gaza are searching through rubbish to find food as Palestinians battle unprecedented levels of poverty, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has said.

Across Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Gaza and elsewhere, Palestinian refugees are suffering at new depths because of the pandemic, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency chief, Philippe Lazzarini. 'There is despair and hopelessness,' he said in an interview.

'In Gaza, people are going through the garbage,' Lazzarini said, referring to reports from UNRWA staff in the enclave. 'More people are fighting to provide one or two meals a day to their families.' ”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/12/people-in-gaza-sifting-through-rubbish-for-food-un-head-says

-->The NYT, always alert to stories that make Israeli apartheid look bad, didn't print this story. 

=====

Politico:

"Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam Adelson gave $75 million to a super PAC that flooded battleground states with anti-Joe Biden ads in September, a huge investment from the GOP megadonors as President Donald Trump slipped in the polls.

The Adelsons gave the massive sum to Preserve America PAC, accounting for roughly 90 percent of the group’s fundraising in September, according to a person familiar with the group's finances who shared details with POLITICO ahead of the group's campaign finance filing.

The money for Preserve America brought the Adelsons' giving to Republican candidates and committees to a whopping $176 million for the 2020 election cycle, according to FEC data. The couple had previously given $50 million to Senate Leadership Fund, the GOP super PAC focused on defending the Senate majority. An additional $40 million in donations to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the Republican super PAC focused on the House, was revealed in new filings late Thursday night."

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/15/adelson-trump-super-pac-429688

-->Strangely, Politico never mentions why Israeli citizen, Sheldon Adelson, has given a fortune to the Republican Party. It's all about Israel, stupid! Well, the NYT never even covered this story.

 Physicians for Human Rights:

"For 34 years, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has documented abuse of force by governments and their security and police forces in countries around the world. ... This current report reveals that the violence exerted by law enforcement officers against peaceful demonstrators in Portland constitutes unlawful use of force that could amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.[1] ...

A Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) investigation conducted in Portland from July 24 to July 31, 2020 examined evidence of excessive use of force by Portland Police Bureau (PPB) officers and federal agents in July 2020, through a focus on both attacks against volunteer protest medics and the medics’ own experiences treating injured protestors. The team also examined whether there was interference with emergency medical assistance and whether in any cases medics were specifically targeted. ...

This study’s findings provide evidence that PPB officers and federal agents engaged in a consistent pattern of disproportionate and excessive use of force against both protestors and medics over the course of June and July 2020. Medics further reported treating an increasing number of serious injuries among protestors from kinetic impact projectiles following the arrival of federal agents on July 1."

https://phr.org/our-work/resources/now-they-just-seem-to-want-to-hurt-us-portland-oregon/

-->What a troubling finding that local and federal agents in Portland engaged in violent tactics designed to injure peaceful protesters. Except for the fact that most of our major media, including the NYT, didn't cover this story.

=====

FAIR:

"Ever since the Great Recession in 2008, and accelerating with Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential run, there has been a resurgence of popularity and interest in socialism in the US, and an increasing skepticism of capitalism. ... Democrats across the country view socialism more positively than capitalism, with a large majority willing to vote for a socialist as president. ...

Looking at the representation of socialism among the hundreds of pundits in corporate media, one can be forgiven for almost thinking socialist pundits don’t exist. The New York Times opinion writer Elizabeth Bruenig appears to be the only pundit employed by corporate media who both explicitly identifies as a “socialist” and makes arguments for some form of socialism in the US (Washington Post, 3/6/18). ...

Perhaps it’s no surprise that corporate media outlets owned by oligarchs and the investor class are hostile to socialism, but when socialist pundits are virtually nonexistent at these agenda-setting outlets, despite 76% of Democrats being willing to vote for a socialist, it’s clear that these institutions are intended to propagandize the US population into accepting the status quo. Even when politicians and policies often described as “socialist” are presented in a positive light, the fact that these journalists are uncomfortable embracing the label is evidence that McCarthyism still exercises a formidable restraint on the US political imagination and discourse."

https://fair.org/home/socialisms-increasing-popularity-doesnt-bring-media-out-of-mccarthy-era/

=====

Common Dreams:

"Facebook Profited From Climate Misinformation Even After Vowing to Fight It, Report Shows. Inaccurate and misleading ads—which were bought by right-wing lobby and nonprofit groups—were viewed by eight million U.S. users during the first half of 2020. 

Millions of U.S. Facebook users have viewed dozens of climate disinformation ads paid for by shadowy right-wing groups this year, a think tank revealed Monday. A study by InfluenceMap found that during the first half of 2020 at least eight million people in the U.S. saw 51 Facebook ads containing false claims about global heating. The ads were highly targeted, with people in rural states and men—especially over age 55—much more likely to see them than women. ...

In July, Sen. Elizabeth Warren [said] 'We have repeatedly asked Facebook to close the loopholes that allow misinformation to run rampant on its platform, but its leadership would rather make a quick buck while our planet burns, sea levels rise, and communities—disproportionately Black and Brown—suffer,' she added. 

'Facebook must be held accountable for its role in the climate crisis.' "

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/08/facebook-profited-climate-misinformation-even-after-vowing-fight-it-report-shows

-->More corruption that our "newspaper of record" covers up. The NYT was missing in action when it comes to printing this story.

Independent UK:

"The silence of journalists in Britain and the US over the extradition proceedings against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is making them complicit in the criminalisation of newsgathering by the American government.  

In an Old Bailey courtroom in London over the past four weeks, lawyers for the US government have sought the extradition of Assange to the US to face 17 charges under the Espionage Act of 1917 and one charge of computer misuse. At the heart of their case is the accusation that in leaking a trove of classified US diplomatic and military cables in 2010, Assange and WikiLeaks endanger the lives of US agents and informants.

One of the many peculiarities in this strange case is that the evidence for any such thing is non-existent. The Pentagon has admitted that it failed to find a single person covertly working for the US who had been killed as a result of the WikiLeaks disclosures. This failure was not for lack of trying: The Pentagon had set up a special military task force, deploying 120 counter-intelligence officers, to find at least one death that could be blamed on Assange and his colleagues but had found nothing."

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/julian-assange-trial-extradition-us-trump-wikileaks-press-freedom-b747774.html

-->The US media is so lockstep in its condemnation of Assange, that we must go to a foreign press to read this opinion. First, Julian Assange revealed the war crimes of the American Empire in the Middle East. Now his trial is revealing the self censorship of the empire's media. 

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+972 Magazine:

"The decision of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to withdraw from a memorial honoring Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin has rightly been seen by observers as evidence that Palestinian voices and perspectives are finally being taken seriously in progressive Democratic circles. But while some of AOC’s critics in the United States are using the incident to score political points, others seem genuinely confused by her decision.

A key reason for this bafflement is that many Americans’ memories of Rabin have long been colored by a relentless media narrative that deprived them of critical perspectives on his life and legacy. ... As samples, I examined two daily newspapers — The New York Times and The Washington Post — and two weekly news magazines — The New Republic and The Nation — over a 50-year period, from 1970 to 2019. ...

I had expected to find relatively few opinion pieces by Palestinians, and I was correct. But what surprised me was how much Palestinians have been talked about in major U.S. media outlets over the decades. ... This trend was especially striking in the daily press. In the New York Times, less than 2 percent of the nearly 2,500 opinion pieces that discussed Palestinians since 1970 were actually written by Palestinians. In the Washington Post, the average was just 1 percent."

https://www.972mag.com/us-media-palestinians/

-->The coverage of Palestine is another example of the complete unanimity of the US media. Is this what we are supposed to call a "free press"? 

=====

The Guardian:

"A militia-promoting father and son duo of fake news publishers and a Trump-connected social media consultant are linked to pages which promote the idea of an American civil war with material presented in a way that appears to be an effort to sidestep Facebook’s fact-checking system.

Comments on their Facebook pages and other materials obtained by the Guardian show that some rank and file Donald Trump supporters are enthusiastically receiving the message that they should prepare for violence against their perceived political enemies in November.

Asked to comment on the site’s apparent reach, and the nature of its community, [Becca] Lewis, the extremism researcher [from Stanford University], said: 'This is not some dark corner of the internet, this is not a fringe thing, it’s mainstream Republicans that are stoking this.' ”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/04/revealed-trump-linked-consultant-facebook-pages-warning-election-cause-civil-war

-->Our media, including the NYT, always soft pedals the real chance of armed conflict during this upcoming election. Like never talking about fascist movements in America, the mainstream media leaves us unaware and unprepared.