Thursday, September 25, 2014

Common Dreams:
“Top News Editors Slam White House for Secrecy, Intimidation.
Obama administration ‘significantly worse than previous administrations.’
Some of the nation's top journalists are criticizing the White House for undermining journalism through lack of transparency and intimidation of sources, which they say has only gotten worse under President Barack Obama—the self-proclaimed ‘most transparent’ president in history.

Criticism of Obama's administration on the issue arose during a joint convention this week of the American Society of News Editors, the Associated Press Media Editors and the Associated Press Photo Managers in Chicago. Brian Carovillano, Associated Press managing editor for U.S. news, said during a panel discussion that the government's increasingly tightening standards on access to information are setting a trend for secrecy for other organizations around the country.

‘The White House push to limit access and reduce transparency has essentially served as the secrecy road map for all kinds of organizations—from local and state governments to universities and even sporting events,’ Carovillano said.”
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/09/19/top-news-editors-slam-white-house-secrecy-intimidation

—>The NY Times failed to cover this story. Our newspaper of record cares more about staying in the good graces of the neoliberal establishment than informing its readership of Obama’s broken promises.

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Common Dreams:
"FloodWallStreet: Protesters Stage Mass Action to Confront Climate Profiteers.
Action takes direct aim at center of global capitalism to call for complete paradigm shift to save planet from climate chaos.

Addressing the enthusiastic crowd, author Chris Hedges said it's time for nothing short of revolution. ‘Up that road lies the emerald city of Wall Street. In that city, the wizards of finance profit from the death of the planet.  No one will stop them but the people. This means revolution.’

Elisa Estronioli, a Brazilian land-rights activist with La Via Campesina People Affected by Dams, added in a press statement, ‘The real solution to global warming is organizing workers worldwide for the construction of a new model, with justice, equality and respect for life.’ “
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/09/22/floodwallstreet-protesters-stage-mass-action-confront-climate-profiteers

—>The mainstream media is blind to this message, preferring to portray the 400,000 climate march in NYC as limited to environmental reform. It is system reform, and that system is the neoliberal model of unrestrained capitalism. All the lessons of Occupy were there on Sunday and Monday. Revolution is in the air, and The NY Times will be the last to report it.

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Gigaom Research:
"When Apple published its first Transparency Report on government activity in late 2013, the document contained an important footnote that stated:
‘Apple has never received an order under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act. We would expect to challenge such an order if served on us.’

Writer and cyber-activist Cory Doctorow at the time recognized that language as a so-called ‘warrant canary,’ which Apple was using to thwart the secrecy imposed by the Patriot Act. …

Now, Apple’s warrant canary has disappeared. A review of the company’s last two Transparency Reports, covering the second half of 2013 and the first six months of 2014, shows that the ‘canary’ language is no longer there. The warrant canary’s disappearance is significant because Section 215 of the Patriot Act permits the National Security Agency to demand companies to hand over their business records in secret.”
https://gigaom.com/2014/09/18/apples-warrant-canary-disappears-suggesting-new-patriot-act-demands/

—>The mainstream media, including The NY Times cranks out stories about people waiting in line to buy their new iPhones. Issues like the USA Patriot Act and Apple’s disappearing canary are kept out of the spotlight.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Common Dreams:
“Private military contractors are reaping billions of dollars in profitable rewards from the U.S. government's global network of clandestine counter-terrorism and other overseas operations, according to a new report that examines the high-levels of integration between for-profit corporations and the Pentagon's global military and surveillance apparatus.

The new report—titled US Special Operations Command Contracting: Data-Mining the Public Record—written by researcher Crofton Black and commissioned by the U.K.-based Remote Control Project, shows that "corporations are integrated into some of the most sensitive aspects" of operations conducted by the U.S. Special Operations Command (or  USSOCOM). Those activities, according to the report include: flying drones and overseeing target acquisition, facilitating communications between forward operating locations and central command hubs, interrogating prisoners, translating captured material, and managing the flow of information between regional populations and the US military.”

—>The NY Times didn’t cover this story. Too busy building support for new military adventures abroad. But the direct tie-in to corporate profits may be the reason our newspaper of record avoids stories like this. 

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Guardian UK:
"US economic sanctions against Cuba have cost the island nation $3.9bn in foreign trade over the past year, helping to raise the overall estimate of economic damage to $116.8bn over the past 55 years, Cuba said on Tuesday.

The figures were published in a report that Cuba prepares for the United Nations each year in requesting a resolution urging an end to the comprehensive US economic embargo and other sanctions against Cuba’s Communist government.

The United Nations has passed the resolution for 22 straight years with overwhelming support. Last year the vote was 188 to 2, with only the United States and Israel voting against the resolution.“

—>American readers must go to overseas newspapers to read about how isolated America is when it comes to the blockade of Cuba. Like the criminal blockade of Gaza, the entire world condemns the US and Israel for their illegal and immoral actions. The role of the US media is to hide this fact from its citizens. 

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Telegraph UK:
"The CIA brought top al-Qaeda suspects close ‘to the point of death’ by drowning them in water-filled baths during interrogation sessions in the years that followed the September 11 attacks, a security source has told The Telegraph.

The description of the torture meted out to at least two leading al-Qaeda suspects, including the alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, far exceeds the conventional understanding of waterboarding, or ‘simulated drowning’ so far admitted by the CIA.

‘They weren’t just pouring water over their heads or over a cloth,’ said the source who has first-hand knowledge of the period. ‘They were holding them under water until the point of death, with a doctor present to make sure they did not go too far. This was real torture.’ “


—>The NY Times printed a story about Guantanamo on Sept. 1, but the emphasis was on how the US spends money on expensive medical equipment for the detainees. No mention of “point of death” torture that has just been exposed. 
Common Dreams:
“Will Ukraine Bid To Join NATO Unleash 21st Century Cold War? Experts warn that if US and Europe continue to expand NATO's reach without recognizing destructive consequences, crisis in eastern Ukraine risks serious escalation“

In a move that could dramatically spike international tensions and escalate the conflict in eastern Ukraine, the Prime Minister of the Ukraine government in Kiev on Friday submitted legislation to Parliament declaring intention to join the western military alliance of NATO and longer-term ambitions to actually join the European Union.

Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk submitted the proposal on Friday just ahead of a NATO emergency meeting held in Brussels to discuss the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. Following that meeting, NATO's Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen emerged to say NATO would ‘fully respect’ Ukraine's effort to join the alliance.”

—>Of course the new Cold War is about the US trying to establish NATO bases closer to Russia. The NY Times coverage, however, neatly skirts the issue of NATO by offering in depth analyses of why Putin is acting so warlike. Our newspaper of record would never speculate on why the empire overthrew an elected government in Ukraine and established a pro NATO regime there.

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Common Dreams:
"Israel Announces 'Unprecedented' Land Seizure. Anti-settlement group says move is ‘proof that Prime Minister Netanyahu does not aspire for a new Diplomatic Horizon.’ …

According to reporting by Haaretz, ‘The appropriated land belongs to five Palestinian villages in the Bethlehem area: Jaba, Surif, Wadi Fukin, Husan and Nahalin. …

Part of the lands being confiscated are already home to the illegal Jewish settlement of Gvaot, part of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc. Local settlers moved into the area and took over Palestinian land with military support more than a decade ago, but have been living in an area technically unrecognized by Israeli authorities despite their armed protection.’ “

—>In the pro-Zionist world of Isabel Kershner and The NY Times, Israel did not seize the land at all, but “made claims” to it and officially “declared it state land.” Kershner’s article debates whether Israel is justified in taking the land, and accepts without question that the seizure was the direct result of the killing of three Israeli teenagers. 

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 Mondoweiss:
“When tear-gas was first fired into the streets of Ferguson, Missouri at people angry at the police killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown, Palestinian activists sent out messages on Twitter giving people tips for how to deal with tear gas’ effects.

And there was another direct connection between events in Missouri and the West Bank, as Palestinian activist Mariam Barghouti noted: the company that supplies the Israeli army with tear gas is the same company supplying the police in Ferguson. …

The tear-gas, smoke bombs and rubber bullets fired on demonstrators, a symbol of the growing militarization of America’s police forces, have fed anger over Brown’s killing across the nation and has sparked an unprecedented debate over police militarization in the country.”


—> To the mainstream media, these connections don’t exist. The weapons industry is just too powerful to take on, and such links are routinely left unreported. The NY Times did a story on the Twitter advice, but left out the US weapons maker. 
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR):
"A New York Times piece (8/24/14)  about Michael Brown, the unarmed teenager shot dead in Ferguson this month by police officer Darren Wilson, has been the subject of harsh criticism because of its declaration that Brown was ‘no angel.’ In the version that ran in today's print edition, the Times' John Eligon writes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Friday, August 22, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Thursday, August 07, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Thursday, July 24, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Obama - do you have a heart?”

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

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

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

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

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


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

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