Thursday, March 25, 2010

Fantasyland Media:

http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

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

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Common Dreams:
"According to senior Indonesian officials and police and details from government files, the US-backed Indonesian armed forces (TNI), now due for fresh American aid, assassinated a series of civilian activists during 2009.
The killings were part of a secret government program, authorized from Jakarta, and were coordinated in part by an active-duty, US-trained Kopassus special forces General who has just acknowledged on the record that his TNI men had a role in the killings.
The news comes as US President Barack Obama is reportedly due to announce that he is REVERSING longstanding US policy - imposed by Congress in response to grassroots pressure - of restricting categories of US assistance to TNI, a force which, during its years of US training, has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians..."
-->US under Obama once again giving aid to death squads in Indonesia? If you depend on The NY Times for your news, you wouldn't know about US supported death squads, or about Obama's decision to drop any restrictions on their funding.

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Common Dreams:
"Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) excoriated the national press on Wednesday during a debate over the war in Afghanistan, charging reporters with shirking their duty to cover the issue and instead focusing on the peccadillos of former Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.).
'There's one, two press people in this gallery,' he thundered. 'We're talking about Eric Massa 24/7 on the TV. We're talking about war and peace; $3 billion; 1,000 lives and no press! No press!'
The House is debating a resolution written by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), which would require the military to withdraw from Afghanistan within 30 days or longer if it couldn't be done safely that quickly."
-->The NY Times referred to Patrick Kennedy's comments, but only in a section called reader's "laugh lines." The reporting of The NY Times is an important part of the failure of our media to confront US wars in the Middle East.
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Guardian in the UK:
"...Like so many other states, New York is in the red, facing a budget deficit of $9bn dollars in the coming fiscal year. In response to that deficit our political leaders have thrown out the scalpel and are wildly swinging the axe on just about every public service you can imagine, from prenatal care to senior centres. The accepted wisdom is that there is just no money to be had so these cuts have to be. But the truth is that there are billions of dollars out there for the taking, if Governor Paterson or Mayor Bloomberg were willing to raise income tax on the richest of New Yorkers even by a tiny amount.
Wall Street has just had a bumper year with the top three banks who benefited from Tarp paying themselves almost $30bn in bonuses, higher even than their previous record in 2007. It seems reasonable to expect that a small portion of this windfall would be paid back in the form of income taxes to help out the people who are suffering now largely as a result of Wall Street's wild behavior. But for some bizarre reason the inflated salaries of New York's wealthiest people are off limits."
-->Leave it to the Guardian in the UK to present the simple truth about NY politics and the very wealthy. Such opinions are rarely seen in the US media.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Fantasyland Media:

http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

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

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Jerusalem Post:
"A massive demonstration will greet IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi when he arrives at the luxury Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan this week to speak at a Friends of the IDF fund-raiser.
Ashkenazi will leave Sunday for the US to attend the fund-raiser and also hold talks with his American counterpart, Chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen. The two last met in Israel in mid-February.
According to a press release issued by the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a large protest sponsored by more than 25 different American, Jewish and Israeli organizations will be held outside the hotel starting at 5 p.m. on Tuesday and then move throughout the neighborhood.
In an article about the planned protest which appeared online, Ashkenazi was described as the 'Butcher of Gaza.'"
-->The Jerusalem Post covers a story in NYC, but The NY Times avoids it. Our media has been more sullied by the Zionist lobby than the Israeli media.
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Guardian UK:
"Court begins hearing civil suit brought against Israeli government over death of US activist killed by Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza.
A British witness told a court today about how he had watched an Israeli military bulldozer run over and kill the American activist Rachel Corrie while she was trying to stop Palestinians' homes being demolished in Gaza."
-->Will The NY Times cover the trial of the Israeli military accused of killing a US citizen? Doesn't look like that's going to happen. The NY Times puts the interests of Israel over Americans' right to know, even when it comes to the murder of 23 year old Rachel Corrie.
NOTE: "My Name is Rachel Corrie", Starring Courtney Day Nassar, Friday, March 26 , 8:00 - 9:30 pm, Rockefeller Hall, Room 200, Vassar College, 124 Raymond Ave., Poughkeepsie, For tickets call: 845 679-3299
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Common Dreams:
"WASHINGTON - The House on Wednesday soundly rejected an effort by anti-war lawmakers to force a withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year. The outcome of the vote, 356-65 against the resolution, was never in doubt. But the 3 1/2 hours of debate did give those who oppose President Barack Obama's war policies a platform to vent their frustrations."
All three Democrats from the Hudson Valley voted against the resolution! Hinchey, Hall, and Murphy. 
-->The NY Times couldn't even bring itself to cover the vote.
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The Progressive:
"The Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security have been spying on Planned Parenthood, as well as anti-abortion groups and other domestic groups.
On February 2, 2002, a Joint Forces Command 'update' to the FBI’s Olympic Intelligence Center provided information on 'US Persons' and organizations, including Planned Parenthood and a white supremacist group, and their 'involvement in protests and literature distribution,' according to a May 1, 2002, memorandum from a Pentagon deputy inspector general. The memo was part of a trove of documents that the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org) recently pried loose in a lawsuit. The information about Planned Parenthood was 'clearly outside the purview of military intelligence,' the deputy inspector general said."
-->Although The NY Times carried several stories about the Electronic Frontier Foundation, at least on its website, there were no references to massive FBI spying on domestic political groups. Another favor to the corporate police state that the NY Times serves so well.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Fantasyland Media:

http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

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

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Agence France Presse:
"European NATO allies are to urge President Barack Obama to remove all remaining US nuclear weapons from European soil, as domestic pressure grows to rid its soil of outdated Cold War-era aerial bombs.

Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and Norway will call 'in the coming weeks' for more than 200 American warheads, mostly stocked in Italy and Turkey, to be taken back, a spokesman for Prime Minister Yves Leterme told AFP.

A joint proposal by the five NATO members will demand 'that nuclear arms on European soil belonging to other NATO member states are removed.' Dominique Dehaene said.

Only the United States has nuclear arms stored in other NATO member states in Europe, he added."

-->Even NATO growing impatient with US nuclear aggressiveness around the globe? The US media, however, portrays the US as eager to reduce the threat of nuclear war. More PR brought to you from the Pentagon and the nuclear weapons industry.

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Common Dreams:
"Here we go again.  A report issued Thursday by the new Director General of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano, has injected new adrenalin into those arguing that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon. 

The usual suspects are hyping—and distorting—thin-gruel language in the report to 'prove' that Iran is hard at work on a nuclear weapon.  The New York Times’ David E. Sanger and William J. Broad, for example, highlighted a sentence about 'alleged activities related to nuclear explosives,' which Amano says he wants to discuss with Iran. 

Amano’s report said: “Addressing these issues is important for clarifying the Agency’s concerns about these activities and those described above, which seem to have continued beyond 2004.” 

Sanger and Broad play up the 'beyond 2004' language as 'contradicting the American intelligence assessment…that concluded that work on a bomb was suspended at the end of 2003.'  Other media have picked that up and run with it, apparently without bothering to read the IAEA report itself. 

The Times article is, at best, disingenuous in claiming: 'The report cited new evidence, much of it collected in recent weeks, that appeared to paint a picture of a concerted drive in Iran toward a weapons capability.'"

-->What evidence? Judith Miller style reporting indicates that The New York Times is once again beating the drums of war, and this time for Obama.

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Observer/UK"
"In the weeks before and after the Copenhagen climate change conference last December, the science of climate change came under harsh attack by critics who contend that climate scientists have deliberately suppressed evidence - and that the science itself is severely flawed...

The fact is that the critics - who are few in number but aggressive in their attacks - are deploying tactics that they have honed for more than 25 years. During their long campaign, they have greatly exaggerated scientific disagreements in order to stop action on climate change, with special interests like Exxon Mobil footing the bill...

Today's campaigners against action on climate change are in many cases backed by the same lobbies, individuals, and organizations that sided with the tobacco industry to discredit the science linking smoking and lung cancer. Later, they fought the scientific evidence that sulfur oxides from coal-fired power plants were causing 'acid rain.' Then, when it was discovered that certain chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were causing the depletion of ozone in the atmosphere, the same groups launched a nasty campaign to discredit that science, too."

-->US media like The NY Times gives about equal coverage to the scientists warning us about global warming and debunkers paid for by Exxon Mobil. Corporate money just talks louder in this country. Maybe that is why the Supreme Court recently decided that corporations can pour their unlimited millions into national campaigns. America has the best media and election campaigns that money can buy.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Fantasyland Media:

http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

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

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Democracy Now:
"Low-income Americans are facing a higher unemployment rate today than at the height of the Depression...The Center for Labor Market Studies at Boston's Northeastern University divided U.S. households into ten groups based on annual income. The lowest tenth, with an annual household income of $12,499 or less, had a fourth-quarter unemployment rate last year of 30.8 percent. The next lowest-income group had an unemployment rate of 19.1 percent."
Center for Labor Market Studies:
"At the end of calendar year 2009, as the national economy was recovering from the recession of 2007-2009, workers in different segments of the income distribution clearly found themselves in radically different labor market conditions. A true labor market depression faced those in the bottom two deciles of the income distribution, a deep labor market recession prevailed among those in the middle of the distribution, and close to a full employment environment prevailed at the top. There was no labor market recession for America’s affluent. 
-->The NY Times, published for the affluent, did not report this finding from the Center for Labor Market Studies as news, although Op-Ed Columnist Bob Herbert wrote a column on it.
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School of Americas Watch:
"Since the 'election' of President Porfidio Lobo in late November, in a balloting process boycotted by the majority of Hondurans, over 10 leaders of the resistance movement have been murdered. Those who dare to raise their voices about this situation are also targeted. Last week two cameramen from media programs opposing the government were kidnapped and tortured. After filing reports on these and other situations, members of the COFADEH human rights team received death threats.
Instead of denouncing this critical situation, the Obama Administration is doing the opposite: attempting to rally international support for an illegitimate regime that almost no other government recognizes. This is part of a complete turnaround by the administration. When SOA graduates orchestrated a coup against President Manuel Zelaya last June, President Obama lent his voice to the chorus of rejection coming from all corners of Latin America. In the following months, however, that position shifted from rejection to complacency to acceptance to promotion. While most Latin American nations view the recent Honduran elections as an illegal effort to whitewash a coup, the U.S. insists that they are legitimate, and the resulting change has been positive."
-->The NY Times "see no evil" reporting when it comes to right wing death squads in Honduras is all the more deplorable since we read about Iranian human right abuses every day. In Honduras, the US supports the dictatorship. In Iran, the US wants to overthrow a democracy. And The NY Times plays its role as media harlot of the US Pentagon.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Fantasyland Media:

http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

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

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Inter Press Service:
"Civil liberties advocates and legal authorities struck back Friday at what they describe as the 'deliberate targeted killing of U.S. citizens far away from any active hostilities, as long as the executive branch determines unilaterally that they meet a secret definition of who the enemy is.'
In an admission that took the intelligence community and its critics by surprise, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair acknowledged in a congressional hearing Wednesday that the U.S. may, with executive approval, deliberately target and kill U.S. citizens who are suspected of being involved in terrorism.
The American Civil Liberties Union is among those expressing serious concern about the lack of public information about the policy and the potential for abuse of unchecked executive power."
-->US citizens locked up without charges, and now murdered by executive authority? These are distopian visions a society's dissent into lawless authoritarianism. Not the type of stories fit to print in The NY Times.
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LA Times:
"The U.S. military plans to extradite stop-lossed Iraq veteran and IVAW member, Marc Hall, to Iraq "within a few days" to face court martial for allegedly threatening military officers in a protest rap song he made.
Marc has been sitting in Liberty County jail near Fort Stewart, GA since December 11, 2009 becuse he wrote a song called, "Stop Loss" about the practice of involuntarily extending military members' contract.
Marc's lawyer believes that moving him to Iraq will violate his due process, isolating him from his legal support and making calling witnesses on his behalf nearly impossible..."
-->We don't think the mainstream media is covering the abuse of US service personal by their own military. Stop loss is nothing more than Shanghing young people after their tour of duty is over. Take action to support Marc by calling Ft. Stewart Public Affairs Chief, Kevin Larson at 912-435-9879. Thanks to Pat for reporting this story.
SONG: Stoploss
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The Independent, UK:
"An orchestrated campaign is being waged against climate change science to undermine public acceptance of man-made global warming, environment
experts claimed last night.
The attack against scientists supportive of the idea of man-made climate change has grown in ferocity since the leak of thousands of documents on the subject from the University of East Anglia (UEA) on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit last December.
Free-market, anti-climate change think-tanks such as the Atlas Economic Research Foundation in the US and the International Policy Network in the UK have received grants totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds from the multinational energy company ExxonMobil. Both organisations have funded international seminars pulling together climate change deniers from across the globe."
-->The NY Times doesn't do stories about right wing think tanks like Atlas Economic Research Foundation that influence public opinion on climate change. This despite the fact that Atlas Economic Research Foundation is based in the US. Or maybe because it is.
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Agence France Presse:
"JERUSALEM - Human Rights Watch said on Sunday that Israel has failed to properly investigate alleged crimes committed during last winter's devastating Gaza war as demanded by the United Nations.
'Israel claims it is conducting credible and impartial investigations, but it has so far failed to make that case,' said Joe Stork, HRW's New York-based group's deputy director for the Middle East.
'An independent investigation is crucial to understand why so many civilians died and to bring justice for the victims of unlawful attacks,' Stork said in a statement.
About 1,400 Palestinians were killed during the 22-day onslaught launched by Israel on December 27, 2008, aimed at halting rocket attacks from the Islamist Hamas-ruled enclave. Thirteen Israelis were killed in the fighting."
-->With pro Israel reporters like Ethan Bronner, and Isabel Kershner, stories like this don't have a chance in our newspaper of record. The NY Times didn't cover Stork's comments or Israel's failure to investigate war crimes. Kershner did write an lengthy article alleging Hamas war crimes. 

Thursday, February 04, 2010

Fantasyland Media:

http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

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

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FAIR - Fairness & Accuracy in in Reporting:
"When progressive historian Howard Zinn died on January 27, NPR's All Things Considered (1/28/10) marked his passing with something you don't often see in an obituary: a rebuttal.

After quoting Noam Chomsky and Julian Bond, NPR's Allison Keyes turned to far-right activist David Horowitz to symbolically spit on Zinn's grave. 'There is absolutely nothing in Howard Zinn's intellectual output that is worthy of any kind of respect,' Horowitz declared. 'Zinn represents a fringe mentality which has unfortunately seduced millions of people at this point in time. So he did certainly alter the  consciousness of millions of younger people for the worse.'"
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/01/29-8

-->Horowitz is a right wing race-bater and Muslim basher. Nice going, NPR. Contrast this treatment of Zinn with NPR's treatment of William F. Buckley. NPR aired six segments commemorating him. Scott Simon, that windbag of conventional thought, had the final say: "Emphysema, such an unseemly thing for a man who was so often a breath of fresh air."

Call NPR and complain about Zinn's trashing: 202 513-3245

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Common Dreams:
"President Barack Obama is seeking increased funding for nuclear weapons research and security programs next year, even as his administration promotes nonproliferation and has pledged to reduce the world's stockpile of nuclear arms.

The administration on Monday asked Congress for more than $7 billion for activities related to nuclear weapons in the budget of the National Nuclear Security Administration, an increase of $624 million from the 2010 fiscal year...

Greg Mello, director of the nuclear watchdog Los Alamos Study Group, said budgets for NNSA and DOE have increased in recent years, but the nation 'hasn't seen any increase in weapons activities like this since the early years of Ronald Reagan.'

He called the budget 'a complete surrender to Senate Republicans,' who have argued that stockpile reductions must be accompanied by a modernized nuclear weapons complex."
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/02/01-11

-->The NY Times carried this AP story on its webpage. But like a lot of stories about nuclear weapons and nuclear energy production, the news never made it into the print edition.

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Ynet News (Israeli News Service)
"The Amnesty International organization has called on Israel to lift the siege on the Gaza Strip immediately, as it serves as a collective punishment.

The organization said in a statement that the blockade does not hurt the armed organizations, but punished the civilian population in Gaza. Amnesty issued a document with testimonies from the Strip's residents, who are finding it difficult to rehabilitate their lives since Operation Cast Lead due to the siege."
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3835804,00.html

-->It's OK to publish such criticisms of the blockade of Gaza in Israel. But please, not in the United States. The NY Times didn't touch this story.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Fantasyland Media:

http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

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

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Common Dreams:
"President Obama's plan to freeze 'non-security' discretionary spending could spell disaster for a broad range of federal programs. ... The proposed 'freeze' is actually a cut. The proposal caps non-security spending at $447 billion for each of the next three fiscal years. During that time, inflation will erode the purchasing power of that total, requiring additional cuts in services in each successive year. While meaningless in reducing the deficit, these cuts could be devastating to non-security discretionary programs such as nutrition, education, energy and transportation.
These types of programs account for only 17 percent of total federal spending, yet they will absorb all of the proposed cuts. ... Military spending, which in the current fiscal year represents roughly 55 percent of discretionary spending, will be spared the budget knife. And all indications are that military spending will go up next year. In fact, based on the Office of Management and Budget's projections as part of the FY 2010 budget request released last year, we will spend an additional $522 billion on the military over the next decade."
-Jo Comerford, Executive director of the National Priorities Project
-->Forget it if you are looking for this type of budget analysis in the NY Times. We don't talk about Military Empire in America's newspaper of record.
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Guardian UK:
"The health of 1.4 million people is being put at risk by the ongoing Israeli and Egyptian blockade of Gaza, a report by more than 80 humanitarian organisations warned today.
The aid groups, including the World Health Organisation and UN agencies, said more than one-fifth of sick Palestinians who needed to leave the territory for treatment in Israel had either been refused or had their applications delayed. The groups called on Israel and Egypt to open the border crossings with Gaza.
Max Gaylard, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator for the Palestinian territories, said the blockade undermined the local healthcare system and put lives at risk."
-->1.4 million people's lives being put at risk? Not newsworthy when it comes to the NY Times coverage of Palestine. Stories that cover US or Israeli human rights violations rarely make it into print.
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Common Dreams:
"The Obama administration may soon guarantee as much as $18.5 billion in loans to build nuclear reactors to generate electricity, and Congress is considering whether to add billions more to support an expansion of nuclear power.
These actions come after an extensive, decade-long campaign in which companies and unions related to the industry have spent more than $600 million on lobbying and nearly $63 million on campaign contributions, according to an analysis by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University.
Nuclear power generates about 20 percent of America's electricity, but many existing reactors are aging. No new plant has been authorized since the 1979 incident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, when small amounts of radiation were released and authorities feared for days that a huge surge might escape."
-->The NY Times has long had a soft spot for nuclear energy, and the billions in profits it brings to corporate interests. It didn't cover Obama's loan guarantees. Nuclear energy you can believe in.
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