Sunday, September 30, 2012

Fantasyland Media:


 http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

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

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Common Dreams:
"Alternative to Wikileaks Arises in Iceland. With the imprisonment of Bradley Manning and detainment of Julian Assange, WikiLeaks is effectively on hold. But that does not mean that leaks and whistleblowing activities have stopped.

GlobaLeaks lists a large number of leak sites, which are active to different degrees. Soon The Associated Whistleblowing Press (AWP) will be added to the list.

'One of the main motivations for the AWP is to unite journalists around the world and bring stories to light,' says Brazilian journalist Pedro Noel, one of the main people behind the initiative. 'WikiLeaks used to analyse and report on the files they released, but they don’t do that any more.' "

-->The NY Times prefers "People Magazine" stories about Julian Assange's personal life to reporting about international freedom of the press. Our newspaper of record didn't print this story.

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Common Dreams:
"Gallup poll finds that US news consumers are tuning out and losing faith with each passing cycle. Fewer are watching. And those that do tune in are less and less impressed by what they see. That's the discovery of a new Gallup poll conducted earlier this month and released today in a report that shows Americans' distrust of the corporate press, and specifically political news coverage, hit an all-time high this year, with 60% saying they have little or no trust in the mass media.

The negativity toward the media is at an all-time high for a presidential election year. This reflects the continuation of a pattern in which negativity increases every election year compared with the year prior. The current gap between negative and positive views -- 20 percentage points -- is by far the highest Gallup has recorded since it began regularly asking the question in the 1990s. Trust in the media was much higher, and more positive than negative, in the years prior to 2004 -- as high as 72% when Gallup asked this question three times in the 1970s. Distrust was also measured by political affiliation, where Gallup found that Republicans are the least trustful of the news, followed by those who consider themselves independents. Democrats exhibit the most confidence in the media, but even their level of trust topped out at less than 60%."

-->The NY Times gave a passing reference to this recent Gallop poll, but it was buried in a story about the presidential race, and omitted any mention of the "corporate press" as being what Americans distrust. The NY Times, of course, is the epitome of the corporate controlled press.

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Common Dreams:
"Study Finds Tumors in Rats Fed Monsanto GM Corn.  A new study released Wednesday by a team of scientists in France claims to have discovered a noticeable increase in tumors and kidney disease in lab rats that have been fed GMO foods produced by big ag corporation Monsanto.

The controversial study, which quickly came under fire from several GMO experts around the world, prompted France's Jose Bove, vice-chairman of the European Parliament's commission for agriculture and GMO opponent, to claim 'the study finally shows we are right and that it is urgent to quickly review all GMO evaluation processes.'

The study, published by the peer-reviewed journal Food and Chemical Toxicology and conducted by scientists at the University of Caen, said rats fed on a diet containing NK603, a seed variety made tolerant to Monsanto's Roundup weedkiller, or given water with Roundup at levels permitted in the United States, died earlier than those on a standard diet. According to the data, rats on the GM diet developed mammary tumors, as well as severe liver and kidney damage."

-->The NY Times sees no evil when it comes to GMO foods. It didn't print this story, and in its Dot Earth blog, referred to the study as an example of a “single-study syndrome,” that supports an "agenda, no matter how tenuous — or dubious — the research might be." Dubious reporting by The NY Times.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Fantasyland Media:


http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

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

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Think Progress:
"On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared on US Sunday talk shows, scaremongering about Iran's nuclear program. Meet the Press allowed Netanyahu to give a completely false picture of the Iran nuclear issue, without challenging his scaremongering through reference to known facts...

Here's what journalists on Meet the Press should have pointed out:

The most highly enriched uranium that Iran is currently known to be producing, and the sort which Netanyahu was referring to in his statement, is 'medium-enriched' uranium, not weapons-grade uranium. That enrichment is currently under UN inspection, so to convert it to weapons-grade uranium, Iran would have to first expel UN inspectors. A recent bipartisan experts' report, signed by former senior military and political officials from both Republican and Democratic Administrations, noted that UN inspections 'would almost certainly reveal any Iranian efforts to begin enriching uranium beyond 20% at declared sites.' Furthermore, the IAEA's most recent report stated that Iran's stockpile of 20% enriched uranium actually decreased in the three months period proceeding the report, since Iran converted a portion of the stockpile into fuel plates for use in their medical research reactor."

-->So why is the US mainstream media not questioning the Netanyahu line? That question goes back to the undue influence the Israeli Lobby has on all American foreign policy, from mainstream media to the US Congress.

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Common Dreams:
"Does President Obama Want to Cut Social Security by 3 Percent? That is a pretty simple and important question. Unfortunately most voters are likely to go to the polls this fall without knowing the answer.

If the backdrop to this question is not immediately clear, then you should be very angry at the reporters who cover the campaign. One of the items that continuously comes up in reference to the budget deficit is President Obama's support for the plan put forward by the co-chairs of his deficit commission, Morgan Stanley director Erskine Bowles and former Senator Alan Simpson. On numerous occasions President Obama has indicated his support for this plan.

One of the items in the Bowles-Simpson plan is a reduction in the annual cost-of-living adjustment of roughly 0.3 percentage points. This would be accomplished by using a different index that, by design, would show a lower measured rate of inflation. It is important to recognize that this is an annual cut that would accumulate over time. After a retiree has been receiving benefits for 10 years the cut would be 3.0 percent, after 20 years it would be 6 percent. If a typical retiree lives long enough to get benefits for 20 years the average benefit cut over their years of retirement would be 3 percent."

-->And that is not the only cut in Social Security the Bowles-Simpson plan outlined. Why can't our mainstream media tell Americans then truth: that both presidential candidates plan cuts to Social Security?

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The Guardian UK:
"Efforts to force reluctant Icelandic taxpayers to pick up the bill for unhonoured deposit guarantees extended to hundreds of thousands of British and Dutch savers are to be heard in a court in Luxembourg.

Despite repeated attempts to reach a negotiated settlement for Icesave customers, Icelandic voters have twice rejected proposals to repay the British and Dutch governments in a national referendum...

Lawyers for Iceland will argue on Tuesday that there is no requirement on the state to stand behind the guarantee fund, and, even if there were, the global financial crisis in the autumn of 2008 was so exceptional as to release Iceland from such a requirement."

-->Iceland didn't pay its debts to foreign banks? This story is a secret in the US media. In fact, Iceland has recovered from the dark days of its 2008 banking collapse precisely because it didn't slash social spending to pay international banks. For all The NY Times coverage of the Greek debt crisis, the experience of Iceland is always omitted. Our newspaper of record always sides with international banking.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Fantasyland Media:


http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

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

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Common Dreams:
"What an official of the rightwing government of Honduras is calling the 'most important project in half a century,' critics of the neoliberal plan to build private cities in the Central American nation are calling a 'catastrophe' and argue that so-called 'chartered cities' would violate the rights of all Hondurans, with particularly negative impacts for the nation's indigenous population.

President Porfirio Lobo—who came to power in a military coup in 2009—has fully endorsed the proposals to create privately-funded 'charter cities' as a way to attract foreign investment to his nation. Details remain elusive, but the experimental cities would be modeled on independently-governed and profit-driven business center cities, so-called 'free trade zones' like Dubai or Hong Kong, but would be built virtually from scratch on lands to be determined by the government.

Inspired by US economist advisers—namely US economist Paul Romer, a graduate of the University of Chicago school of economics and currently a professor at the Stern School of Business at NYU—the cities would operate outside the control of the regular Honduran government and have 'their own police, laws, government and tax systems.' " http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/09/06-6

-- >In US supported Latin American dictators, we see the Neoliberal future of America. The NY Times rarely prints criticism of Honduras, and certainly would not want to call attention to the plans multilateral corporations have of overthrowing the last traces of democracy.

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Common Dreams:
"Trade negotiators from the US and eight other Pacific Rim countries met outside of Washington, DC Wednesday, commencing a new round of the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement negotiations, also known as 'Nafta on steroids.'

The TPP negotiations began in 2007 and have been carried through by the Obama administration and several Pacific nations under conditions of 'extreme secrecy' without press, public or policymaker oversight. Although most of the content involved in the discussions have been kept in secret, document leaks have revealed that negotiators are working out deals which could hamper free speech on the Internet, reduce access to affordable medicines, deregulate environmental laws, and harm labor rights around the world. Earlier this year Public Citizen posted a leaked document from a past TPP meeting on their website revealing that the pact will give multinational corporations radical new political powers in global trade, including the allotment of vast legal powers to multinational corporations over governments." http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/09/06-11

-- >This story appeared in The NY Times "Green Blog," although not in print. The on-line article extolls the wonders of sharing "green growth" between nations. Only the last sentence states that one group considers the talks "overly secretive."

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Common Dreams:
"The rate of Arctic Sea ice melt has caught scientists by surprise, leaving them to describe the current record low levels as 'amazing,' 'a Goliath' and 'unprecedented.'  While a record low was recorded on Aug. 26, the ice level continues to fall, and the National Snow and Ice Data Center reports that there is still a week left in the melting season.

The speed of the Arctic ice melt is astounding, scientists say. 'It is a greater change than we could even imagine 20 years ago, even 10 years ago,' Dr. Kim Holmen, international director of the Norwegian Polar Institute told the BBC. 'And it has taken us by surprise and we must adjust our understanding of the system and we must adjust our science and we must adjust our feelings for the nature around us.'

'This year's melting season is a Goliath,' also notes geophysicist Marco Tedesco, director of the Cryospheric Processes Laboratory at City University of New York, the Wall Street Journal reports. 'The ice is being lost at a very strong pace.' " http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/09/07-3

-- >This news about the Goliath ice melt wasn't important enough for The NY Times to print. More important stories took the front page that day, like what a Muslim woman was told in a premarital counseling class in Egypt.


Thursday, August 30, 2012

Fantasyland Media:


http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

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

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Common Dreams:
"The Obama administration finalized new fuel economy rules Tuesday, boasting new requirements that are slated to double fuel efficiency of new cars and trucks sold in the US over the next 13 years; however, environmental scientists at the Center for Biological Diversity warned Tuesday that the new numbers are misleading in the complex regulations. Due to loopholes in the plan, total greenhouse gas emissions from cars and light trucks will actually increase from 2017 through 2025 and over the long term...

According to CBD, several loopholes in the rules will actually allow an increase in total greenhouse gas emissions. The rules titled, 'Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE,' allows automakers to produce cars with poorer mileage by using credits acquired by selling natural gas and electric vehicles, changing air conditioning fluid to one that pollutes less, and placing louvers on car grilles to improve aerodynamics."

-->The NY Times omitted this bad news in its story on the new fuel economy rules. Our newspaper of record called the new standards: "a victory for environmentalists and advocates of fuel conservation" and "one of President Obama’s proudest accomplishments." 

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Guardian UK:
 "Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel laureate and icon of the anti-apartheid struggle, has withdrawn from a seminar in South Africa in protest at the presence of Tony Blair and the former prime minister's support for the 2003 Iraq war.

'The archbishop is of the view that Mr Blair's decision to support the United States' military invasion of Iraq, on the basis of unproven allegations of the existence in Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, was morally indefensible,' said Roger Friedman, a spokesman for the cleric, who won the Nobel peace prize in 1984.

'Morality and leadership are indivisible. In this context, it would be inappropriate and untenable for the archbishop to share a platform with Mr Blair,' he added.

-->The NY Times doesn't like to admit how unpopular the US invasions of the Middle East are in the rest of the world. Desmond Tutu is making the Empire look bad, so the story never got printed in our newspaper of record.

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Common Dreams:
"Testimony by ex-Israeli Defense Force soldiers reveals a devastating portrayal of ill-treatment and abuse of Palestinian youth by members of Israel's occupying army in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The testimony by more than 30 soldiers, and fashioned into a booklet by Breaking the Silence, an organisation of former IDF soldiers dedicated to speaking out against Israeli policy in the occupied territories, contains descriptions of beatings, intimidation and humiliation of Palestinian children.

'It is crucial that people in Israel are confronted about what it means for Palestinian children to live under military occupation,' says Yehuda Shaul, one of the founders of Breaking the Silence.

'This is what [Israeli] society is made of, you cannot ignore it, you cannot just run away from it — this is who we are as people and I think this is something we should face.' "

-->Our premier newspaper, The NY Times, just doesn't print articles like this about Israel. It chooses to both ignore and run away from presenting the truth to its readers.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Fantasyland Media:


http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

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

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Reuters:
"CIA agents have written books about it. Former President George W. Bush has explained why he thought it was necessary and legal. Yet the al Qaeda suspects who were subjected to so-called harsh interrogation techniques, and the lawyers charged with defending them at the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals, are not allowed to talk about the treatment they consider torture.

Defense attorneys say that and other Kafkaesque legal restrictions on what they can discuss with their clients and raise in the courtroom undermine their ability to mount a proper defense on charges that could lead to the death penalty.
Those restrictions will be the focus of a pretrial hearing that convenes this week.

Prosecutors say every utterance of the alleged al Qaeda murderers, and what their lawyers in turn pass on to the court, must be strictly monitored precisely because of the defendants' intimate personal knowledge of highly classified CIA interrogation methods they endured in the agency's clandestine overseas prisons."

-->The NY Times printed a short editorial calling the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals a "regrettable step in undermining the rule of law." Why not include more specifics and make it a news story on page one if is so regrettable?

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World Socialist Website:
"The secrecy surrounding the U.S. use of drone attacks must end, and each drone strike carried out by the U.S. should be independently investigated, London barrister and UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism Ben Emmerson said Sunday. 

Emmerson is preparing a report for the next session of the Human Rights Council in March covering the use of drone attacks, which have spiked since Obama's presidency. 

He questioned the legality of the drone strikes and noted the growing global outrage over their use.

'We can't make a decision on whether it is lawful or unlawful if we do not have the data. The recommendation I have made is that users of targeted killing technology should be required to subject themselves, in the case of each and every death, to impartial investigation. If they do not establish a mechanism to do so, it will be my recommendation that the UN should put the mechanisms in place through the Human Rights Council, the General Assembly and the Office of the High Commissioner.' "

-->The NY Times doesn't print many official statements that criticize the empire. Our newspaper of record is too busy hiding America's violations of international law.

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Guardian UK:
"Violence by Jewish settlers has been cited for the first time in a US state department list of "terrorist incidents", as Israeli political leaders condemned a string of recent attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The inclusion of assaults on Palestinian targets in the annual report on terrorism reflects growing concern in Israel and internationally that violence by a minority of Jewish extremists could trigger a new cycle of conflict and further damage the prospects of a peace agreement between the two sides.

"Attacks by extremist Israeli settlers against Palestinian residents, property and places of worship in the West Bank continued,' said the Country Reports on Terrorism 2011. It referred to 'price tag" operations, meaning violence committed by radical settlers against Palestinians in retribution for actions by the Israeli government or army deemed to be 'anti-settler'.

US and European officials have become more vocal in criticising settler violence amid fears that the actions of a minority of Jewish extremists could provoke a militant response from Palestinians. According to the UN, violent attacks by settlers on Palestinians and their property, mosques and farmland has increased by almost 150% since 2009."

-->The NY Times doesn't just doesn't print articles like this about Israel, even when the story involves the US State Department. Instead, it runs stories like "A Settler Leader, Worldly and Pragmatic," a very favorable profile of the settlement leader, Dani Dayan. 

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Fantasyland Media:

http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

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

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Common Dreams:
"US wind production soars, but politics threaten federal subsidies that have helped elevate industry. As the US wind energy industry hit a new milestone recently by reaching 50GW of power production, the industry trade group warns that 'the best of times' could become the 'worst of times' if a looming deadline to extend federal subsidies for clean energy investment is not met.

The American Wind Energy Association, the lobbying arm of the wind industry, announced recently that the wind sector's 50GW (gigawatts) of capacity is enough to power nearly 13 million American homes, or as many as in Nevada, Colorado, Wisconsin, Virginia, Alabama, and Connecticut combined.

In addition, the number of new operational wind projects across the US is enough to supplant '44 coal-fired power stations or 11 nuclear power plants', and will result in emission reductions that would equate to taking 14 million cars off the road, and -- because wind energy demands almost no water use -- conserves 30 billion gallons of water a year compared to thermal electric power generation."

-->The NY Times referred to this danger of defunding wind energy on its Green Blog. But why not in print? It is a clear threat to the clean energy movement that is so desperately needed if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change.

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World Socialist Website:
"Over the last month, heavily armed 'domestic terrorism' units of the FBI used battering rams and stun grenades to conduct early-morning raids on the homes of political protesters in Seattle and Olympia, Washington and Portland, Oregon. On July 25, three homes were raided in Portland alone and, since July 10, as many as six homes have been raided.

These raids are only the latest in an emerging pattern of similar raids conducted by the Obama administration in order to terrorize, suppress and chill political dissent, in flagrant violation of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights...

At 6:00 a.m. on July 25, Dennison Williams was asleep in his Portland home when FBI agents smashed down his door without warning with a battering ram and threw flash or stun grenades into the building. FBI agents armed with assault rifles then stormed into Williams’ bedroom, pointed their rifles at him while they handcuffed him, and forced him to sit in a chair for a half an hour without pants on while they searched his apartment.

Williams, a 33-year-old self-described anarchist who helped run an information booth at recent protests and events, reported that FBI agents boxed up and removed his laptop computer, political literature, his cell phone, thumb drives, and various pieces of clothing bearing political slogans."

-->The NY Times didn't cover this story. Our newspaper of record decided that the current FBI suppression of dissent under President Obama is not a fit subject to print. 

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Guardian UK:
"The British ambassador to Israel has said international support for the Jewish state among those in the political mainstream is eroding, driven by settlement expansion in the West Bank and continued restrictions on Gaza.

There is 'growing concern' in the UK over lack of progress towards peace with the Palestinians, and Israel was now being seen as Goliath against the Palestinians as David, said Matthew Gould, in reference to the biblical story.
In an unusually forthright interview for Israel's Channel 10 news, Gould said he detected a shift among the middle ground of British members of parliament towards a more critical view of Israel...

'Support for Israel is starting to erode and that's not about these people on the fringe who are shouting loudly and calling for boycotts and all the rest of it. The interesting category are those members of parliament in the middle, and in that group I see a shift.' "

-->The NY Times doesn't print articles critical of Israel unless it absolutely has to. This story about eroding support for Israel in Britain was never covered.

Friday, August 03, 2012

Fantasyland Media:

http://www.fantasylandmedia.org

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

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Common Dreams:
"UNITED NATIONS - As U.N.-led talks on disarmament resume in Geneva Monday, calls are growing for nuclear-armed nations to cut spending on their stockpiles and instead divert resources to development.

'The amount still being spent on nuclear arms makes no sense, just as continued reliance on the weapons themselves makes no sense,' David Kreiger, president of the U.S.-based Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, told IPS.
His remarks alluded to the fact that nine out of 193 U.N. member states continue to increase budgetary allocations for the maintenance and modernization of nuclear weapons, despite promises to reduce their stockpiles.

Last year, the nuclear states spent around 105 billion dollars on their arsenals, according to independent estimates. The share of the United States alone was 61 billion dollars."
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/07/28-0

-->The NY Times didn't bother its readers with this news about tens of billions being spent on nuclear arms. It's the Olympics, for God's sake; there are better things to write stories about.

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Reuters:
"A New York man agreed on Tuesday to pay a $6,500 fine to settle a long-running dispute with the U.S. Treasury Department over a trip he made to Cuba as an unauthorized tourist 14 years ago.

Zachary Sanders, now 38, said he was 23 and had been living and teaching English in Mexico when he decided to go to Cuba for a couple of weeks in 1998.

'I wanted to learn about how a socialist country worked in practice,' Sanders said in an interview. 'I had no illusions. ... I'm not like some diehard supporter of the (Cuban) government or anything like that.'

The United States has long restricted U.S. travel to Cuba as part of a 50-year-old trade embargo aimed at punishing Cuba's communist government. The actual restrictions and the degree of enforcement have varied with different U.S. administrations and with the evolving state of U.S.-Cuba relations."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/24/us-usa-cuba-travel-idUSBRE86N1MC20120724

-->The NY Times didn't cover this story. Fining someone for visiting a foreign country just doesn't look good for the United States, that supposed bastion of freedom and democracy.

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Common Dreams:
"A recent University of Texas study, which claims to prove that the natural gas extraction process known as fracking does not cause environmental damage or water contamination, was led by a gas industry insider who currently holds up to $1.6 million in stock at a large fracking company. The information was revealed in a new exposé released by the Public Accountability Initiative (PAI).

The 400-page pro-fracking review in question was led by author Charles Groat of the University of Texas. Neither Groat nor the University openly reported that Groat himself is on the board of a fracking company, Plains Exploration and Production Company.

As a board member, Groat receives 10,000 shares of restricted stock a year. His holdings as of July 19th were worth $1.6 million. He also receives an annual fee, which was $58,500 in 2011, according to filings.

Groat did not reveal his position with the company when the report was released and told reporters that the university had turned down all industry funds for the study."
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/07/27-7

-->This article should have been printed in the NY Times because it reveals the  depth of the corporate fracking scam. Putting it on the NY Times' "Dot Earth" blog minimizes the damage to corporate and college reputations.
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