Thursday, October 30, 2014

Z Magazine Nov:
“According to the UN and other groups, 40,000 Yazidi had been stranded on Mount Sinjar, awaiting imminent ‘genocide.’ … When US Special Forces arrived at the top of Mount Sinjar, they realized that the Yazidis had either been rescued by Kurdish militias or were already living there.

They found less than 5,000 Yazidis, half of them refugees. The mountain is revered in local legend as the final resting place of Noah’s ark. It was also the final resting place for the Yazidi genocide story. … 

That same media has also cleverly devalued and branded conflicts, and acts of genocide, in ways consistent with US foreign policy agendas. While the Yazidis were purportedly standed on Mount Sinjar, Israel was carrying out a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Over 2,150 were killed, mostly civilians, hundreds of them children…”

—>Our media hyped the Yazidi genocide, and then suddenly the Pentagon generated lies disappeared, just like Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction. Why isn’t this a headline story in the NYT? Another lie to sell endless US military intervention in the Middle East, while covering up Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians.

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Common Dreams:
“Green groups on Wednesday sued the Environmental Protection Agency over its recent approval of Dow AgroSciences' herbicide Enlist Duo, which farmers and scientists warn threatens human and environmental health.

‘The toxic treadmill has to stop,’ said Jay Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides. ‘EPA and USDA cannot continue to ignore the history, science, and public opinion surrounding these dangerous chemicals so that a failed and unnecessary system of chemically-dependent agriculture can continue to destroy our health and environment.’ …

Enlist Duo's key ingredient, known as 2,4-D, was also used in Agent Orange, the toxic defoliant used as a weapon by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. Studies find 2,4-D interferes with hormonal and reproductive function and is linked to cancer, liver disease, Parkinson's disease, and other health problems. Scientists warn that 2,4-D builds up in the environment and spreads from one field to another, posing a risk to animals as well as people.”

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—>The NYT cited a short Associated Press story about the EPA approval, and gave one sentence to critics of 2,4-D. No mention of its use in Agent Orange. To the NYT, it has been a “popular herbicide used since the 1940s.” Popular with Vietnam vets who came home poisoned by it? Popular with Vietnamese civilians who have given birth to generations of deformed children?

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Common Dreams:
“Detroit's ‘unprecedented’ shutoff of water utilities to city homes condemns residents to ‘lives without dignity,’ violates human rights on a large scale, and disproportionately impacts African-Americans, United Nations investigators declared Monday following a two-day inquiry.

‘Denial of access to sufficient quantity of water threatens the rights to adequate housing, life, health, adequate food, integrity of the family,’ wrote UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing Leilani Farha and UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation, Catarina de Albuquerque, in a joint statement. ‘It exacerbates inequalities, stigmatizes people and renders the most vulnerable even more helpless. Lack of access to water and hygiene is also a real threat to public health as certain diseases could widely spread.’

The officials visited the city following appeals in June from organizations concerned with the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department's (DWSD) escalation of water shut-offs to accounts that have fallen behind on their bills, amounting to up to 3,000 disconnections a week. …”

—>The NYT could care less about water as a human right, unless it is being used to justify some new US invasion of the Middle East. It didn’t print this story.

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Common Dreams:
“The wind power boom in Nordic countries is making fossil fuel-fired power plants obsolete and is pushing electricity prices down, according to reporting by Reuters published Friday.

Power prices in Finland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden have dropped sharply as renewable energy floods the market, efficiency measures lower energy use overall, and growth remains stagnant, reporter Nerijus Adomaitis writes. This, in turn, will lead to the ‘mothballing’ of 2,000 megawatts (MW) of coal capacity in Denmark and Finland over the next 15 years, a Norway-based consultant tells Adomaitis.

According to the article, ‘Pushing fossil-fueled power stations out of the Nordic generation park is part of government plans across the region.’ It seems to be working. One gas-fired power plant in Norway was put in ‘cold reserve,’ or decommissioned, this January; a coal-fired power plant in Finland was shut down earlier this year; and Swedish-owned power company Vattenfall said in May it will shut down its coal-fired power plant in Denmark in May 2016. Meanwhile, Denmark wants to phase out all coal use in power generation by 2030 and to generate all power and heat from renewables by 2035, Reuters reports. …”

—>Both the US media and the elites who run our government are far too invested in fossil fuels to report on this greening of other countries. The NYT did publish an article on Germany’s switch to renewable energy, but why not follow up with how this is being done with other industrialized nations?

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Guardian UK:
“Monsanto, the largest genetically-modified seed corporation in the world, has so far spent over $4 million in a bid to crush an Oregon initiative, up for vote in November, to mandate the labeling of genetically engineered food. Records from the Oregon Secretary of State's office show that the company, on October 8, made a contribution of $2.5 million to opponents of the bill, bringing the company's total contributions to $4,085,150.

The initiative—ballot measure 92—would require manufacturers and retailers to label ‘genetically engineered raw and packaged food.’ Backers of the provision say that Oregonians ‘have the right to know’ what is in their food.
This is not the first time Monsanto has poured its funds into efforts to crush such measures. Earlier this month, it was revealed that the company has spent $4.7 million to defeat a similar initiative in Colorado, also up for vote in November.“ 

—>The NYT didn’t print this story. Big media in the US is in Monsanto’s pocket, and for the same reason this company is able to defeat ballot initiatives calling for food labeling. The NYT rarely covers stories that are unfavorable to US business interests. It is profit over the people’s right to know, even in its acclaimed Science Section.

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Common Dreams:
"As the official West African death toll from the worst Ebola outbreak in recorded history nears 5,000, global concerns about the infectious disease continue to mount. Analysts and medical providers, from Liberia to the United States, say that in order to address the crisis, the international community must tackle the real culprit: western-driven economic policies defunding public health systems around the world, particularly in the countries hit hardest by the outbreak.

‘The neoliberal economic model assassinated public infrastructure,’ said Emira Woods, a Liberia native and social impact director at ThoughtWorks, a technology firm committed to social and economic justice, in an interview with Common Dreams. ‘A crisis of the proportion we've seen since the beginning of the Ebola catastrophe shows this model has failed.’

Since the 1980s, western financial institutions have given loans to third world governments on the condition those states impose austere domestic reforms and roll back public services. This approach is encapsulated in the 1981 World Bank report Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa, which presses for ‘structural adjustments,’ including rapid privatization, shrinking of public services and subsidies, and a shift towards export dependency as a solution to ‘slow economic growth.’ “


—>The NYT never connects the dots when it comes to the bad outcomes of neoliberalism. In fact, a search of the last 30 days in the NYT shows that the words “neoliberalism” and “ebola” never come up together in the same article. 
NYT:
Our story of last week by Jeff Cohen, “The assault by the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times drove Gary Webb out of the newspaper business, and ultimately to his death” now has a response from the NYT.

UPDATE: The NYT finally reviewed “Kill the Messenger” and it's another hatchet job too. The NYT is still saying that Webb's reporting was "deeply flawed," and that rival newspapers easily "blew holes in his story." Our newspaper of record offers no examples of Webb's flawed reporting, but then again nothing substantial was offered the first time The NYT savaged his journalistic credibility. 

Most of the movie review is another thinly veiled attack on Webb's series, calling it a "lurid presentation" and criticizing "his willingness to draw causality based on very thin sourcing and evidence." Referring to its own supposed august position in the US media, The NYT concludes with the observation that "Sometimes, when David takes on Goliath, David is the one who ends up getting defeated."

Just in case anyone could miss how bad Gary Webb really was, he is described in the movie review as: "lurid," "overheated," "oversold," and "wrong." And that's before Tim Golden, a NYT reporter who had attacked him 18 years ago, is brought in to say, "the hand that struck Mr. Webb was mostly his own. Webb made some big allegations that he didn't back up..." 

And Tim Golden's qualifications? "Extensive background covering the CIA and Central America," according to The NYT. Of course, The NYT has learned nothing from Gary Webb's professional assassination, except that it is safer and more profitable being a whore to the CIA than to do honest reporting.

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Guardian UK:
“The UK authorities are operating a surveillance system where “anything goes” and their interceptions are more intrusive to people’s privacy than has been seen in the US, Edward Snowden said.

Speaking via Skype at the Observer Ideas festival, held in central London, the whistleblower and former National Security Agency specialist, said there were “really no limits” to the GCHQ’s surveillance capabilities.

He said: ‘In the UK … is the system of regulation where anything goes. They collect everything that might be interesting. It’s up to the government to justify why it needs this. It’s not up to you to justify why it doesn’t … This is where the danger is, when we think about … evidence being gathered against us but we don’t have the opportunity to challenge that in courts. It undermines the entire system of justice.’ “ 

—>The NYT didn’t print this story. Very much like the original revelations of massive data collection by its own reporter, James Risen, our newspaper of record only defies the surveillance state when it is forced to do so. Risen had to publish a book to get the NYT to print his first story of massive US spying on its own citizens.

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Fair:
"NPR's Morning Edition (10/8/14) decided to examine the terminology used to describe Israel's illegal building projects in the West Bank, which could have been a useful exercise. Unfortunately, its sole source for the discussion was an Israeli newspaper columnist who essentially endorsed the Israeli government's misleading rhetoric.

NPR aired excerpts from a recent interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Morning Edition, 10/2/14), in which he said of a planned expansion: ’These are not settlements. These are neighborhoods in Jerusalem.’

As host Steve Inskeep explained: ‘It matters a lot to Israelis and Palestinians alike just what things are called. The differences in language suggest differences in ways of seeing the issue on the ground.’

This is certainly true. But what to call something depends on what that thing ‘on the ground’ really is. Under international law, it's illegal to colonize territories captured in war, which is what Israel is doing by constructing housing for Israelis in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank. This is true whether or not Israel claims sovereignty over the land, as it does in the part of the West Bank known as East Jerusalem, as it's also illegal to annex territory captured in war. But that was not the kind of perspective NPR was looking to share with listeners. Instead, Morning Edition turned to historian Ari Shavit, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz.“


—>NPR helps its listeners make the transition from “colonies” to “settlements” and now to “neighborhoods.” Anything to make apartheid Israel look good.

Friday, October 10, 2014

CounterPunch (Jeff Cohen):
“It’s been almost a decade since once-luminous investigative journalist Gary Webb extinguished his own life.

It’s been 18 years since Webb’s ‘Dark Alliance’ series in the San Jose Mercury News exploded across a new medium – the Internet – and definitively linked crack cocaine in Los Angeles and elsewhere to drug traffickers allied with the CIA’s rightwing Contra army in Nicaragua. Webb’s revelations sparked anger across the country, especially in black communities.

But the 1996 series (which was accompanied by unprecedented online documentation) also sparked one of the most ferocious media assaults ever on an individual reporter – a less-than-honest backlash against Webb by elite newspapers that had long ignored or suppressed evidence of CIA/Contra/cocaine connections.

The assault by the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times drove Webb out of the newspaper business, and ultimately to his death.”

—>The NYT is not interested in reliving its role in protecting the CIA and banishing an honest journalist. See “Kill the Messenger” when it comes to your movie theater. 

UPDATE: The NYT finally reviewed the movie, and it's another hatchet job too. The NYT is still saying that Webb's reporting was "deeply flawed," and that rival newspapers easily "blew holes in his story." Our newspaper of record offers no examples of Webb's flawed reporting, but then again nothing substantial was offered the first time The NYT savaged his journalistic credibility. 

Most of the movie review is another thinly veiled attack on Webb's series, calling it a "lurid presentation" and criticizing "his willingness to draw causality based on very thin sourcing and evidence." Referring to its own supposed august position in the US media, The NYT concludes with the observation that "Sometimes, when David takes on Goliath, David is the one who ends up getting defeated."

Just in case anyone could miss how bad Gary Webb really was, he is described in the movie review as: "lurid," "overheated," "oversold," and "wrong." And that's before Tim Golden, a NYT reporter who had attacked him 18 years ago, is brought in to say, "the hand that struck Mr. Webb was mostly his own. Webb made some big allegations that he didn't back up..." 

And Tim Golden's qualifications? "Extensive background covering the CIA and Central America," according to The NYT. Of course, The NYT has learned nothing from Gary Webb's professional assassination, except that it is safer and more profitable being a whore to the CIA than to do honest reporting.

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Common Dreams:
“The administration of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo altered and delayed the findings of a key federal fracking study commissioned by the state, according to a review of internal government documents published on Monday.

An original draft of the United States Geological Survey (USGS) study, obtained and reported on by the Albany newspaper Capital, reportedly contained descriptions of environmental and health risks posed by the shale gas drilling technique. However, following ‘extensive’ email communication between the USGS representatives, study authors and state officials—also obtained in ‘heavily redacted form’ through a Freedom of Information Act request—those details were either ‘played down or removed’ from the final published report.

‘The messages reveal an active role by Cuomo's Department of Environmental Conservation in shaping the text, and determining the timing of the report's release,’ writes Capital reporter Scott Waldman.“ 

—>The NYT gave this story one sentence in its “City Room Blog.” Top politicians altering scientific reports to favor Big Oil isn’t deemed “fit to print.” 

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Common Dreams:
"Disappearances, Deaths of Leftist Mexican Students Spark Federal Investigation. Mexico is an ‘assassin state,’ charges human rights activist, saying Iguala tragedy is ‘not isolated.’

Responding to the discovery of a mass grave thought to contain the bodies of dozens of students who were attacked by local police last month, Mexican federal agents on Monday were dispatched to the city of Iguala in southern Guerrero state to investigate the scene.

On September 26, two busloads of students from a local teachers college, the Raúl Isidro Burgos Ayotzinapa Normal School, were attacked. According to surviving students who were interviewed by VICE News, local Iguala police and other armed men ‘surrounded and confronted the buses on the outskirts of Iguala,’ and opened fire. …

According to VICE News reporter Melissa del Pozo, the school is a ‘Revolutionary-era rural teachers college known nationally for the ardently leftist politics that guide everything the students do and study.’ “


—>Omitted from most mainstream reporting of the event, is the fact that the students were leftists. The NYT blames drug gangs, but why hide the government’s motive for killing these students?

Thursday, October 02, 2014

San Jose Mercury News:
“Rising income inequality is undermining the growth of tax revenue in states across the United States, according to a new report by Gabriel Petek of San Rafael, an analyst with Standard & Poor's Ratings Services.

Petek's report comes out a month after Beth Ann Bovino, a chief economist with Standard & Poor's, issued a report concluding that income inequality in the U.S. is contributing to slower economic growth and that this represents a structural, rather than a cyclical change. Both reports have attracted the attention of the national media. …

Petek reported that from 1980 to 2011, average annual state tax revenue growth dropped from 10 percent to 5 percent while the share of total income for the top 1 percent of earners doubled. During this 31-year span, the portion of total income going to the top percentile grew from 10 percent to about 20 percent.”

—>Most of our major media did not cover this story that highlights how the very rich suppress economic growth, and diminish state revenues that can be used for education, healthcare and other social needs. The NY Times avoids stories like these that criticize the very people that sit on its board of directors. 

 UPDATE: The NY Times has finally covered this story.

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Portside:
“Israel Outsources West Bank Security to ‘Uncontrolled Militias.’

A new report from Yesh Din, Volunteers for Human Rights, denounces the Israel Defense Force's (IDF) privatization of law enforcement in the occupied territories. The Israeli Human Rights group accuses the IDF of transferring the power to arrest, search, question, and detain West Bank Palestinians to settler militias ‘who are motivated by an aspiration to seize additional Palestinian land and who refuse to recognize Palestinian land rights.’

Privatizing the state’s use of force should be a source of concern to us all. Such a process – and particularly when the powers are transferred to a body with a clear political agenda – creates uncontrolled militias. This is the process that has occurred in the West Bank due to the army’s policy of delegating some of its law enforcement powers to civilian security coordinators, as discussed in Yesh Din’s new report, ‘The lawless zone.’ 

—>The NY Times didn’t print this report, although if our government had appointed the KKK to police Mississippi the story would have been on page one.

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Common Dreams:
"An Israeli-owned container ship that was blocked from unloading its cargo at the Port of Oakland by pro-Palestinian protesters over the weekend was headed to Los Angeles on Monday, according to a ship-tracking website.

The Zim Shanghai left Oakland with its cargo still onboard on Sunday evening, according to the website marinetraffic.com. It was expected to arrive in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

Some 200 people angry over Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip in response to Hamas rocket salvoes staged a protest of the Zim Shanghai at the Port of Oakland on Saturday morning and again that afternoon.“

—>This growing movement to stop Israeli cargo ships from unloading at US and Canadian ports is a huge story. Not only is apartheid Israel being challenged, but a united group of students and labor activists are leading the BDS effort. 

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. 
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