Thursday, February 26, 2015

Guardian UK:
“A network of Republican lawmakers and their rightwing corporate funders are battling behind closed doors to block minimum wage increases in cities across the US, in a step-by-step counter-attack that could cut back the incomes of millions of Americans despite an economic upswing.

According to strategic details obtained by the Guardian, the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) – along with its localised sister organization, ACCE – is trying to prevent elected city representatives from raising the minimum wage to levels above those set by their states. The group has launched an aggressive dual-track mission that combines legislation and litigation in what Alec calls a ‘new battleground over worker compensation.’

… With an increasingly national and political focus on the inequality chasm between the so-called “1%” and a middle class that continues to struggle against wage stagnation, individual US cities have been forcing the pace of change by setting their own progressive standards. …

Alec’s response, Sullivan went on to explain at the meeting, is to frame and then lobby for model legislation in state assemblies across the country. She said that so far 12 states, most recently Oklahoma, have submitted anti-increase legislation based on the rightwing lobbyists’ language.”

—>The NYT doesn’t like to cover the class wars being waged by the 1%. It didn’t print this story. 

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Common Dreams:
“Persecuted New York Times journalist James Risen accused U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder of being the ‘nation's top censorship officer’ in a searing rebuke to comments made by Holder on Tuesday that the way his department handled the case of the now-imprisoned CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling should exemplify ‘how the Justice Department can proceed.’

Holder made the comments at the National Press Club on Tuesday when answering a question about the DOJ's crackdown on leaks and whistleblowers. After years of doggedly pursuing Risen's testimony against Sterling, the DOJ finally dropped their case after Risen vowed he would go to jail rather than reveal his source. The prize-winning journalist has previously described the Obama administration as ‘the greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation.’ "

—>Strange that The NYT did print this story of Risen’s comments on Obama’s war against press freedom, especially since Risen was one of its reporters. The only mention of the story was in the Public Editor’s Journal, an on-line feature. 

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Common Dreams:
“Fossil fuel corporations and a Canadian trade agency that has promoted the construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline have donated millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, which is jointly run by Hillary, Bill, and Chelsea. Climate campaigners say that the payments raise concerns about industry influence on Hillary Clinton, a likely 2016 presidential candidate who has so far remained mum on her position on the tar sands pipeline, despite a call from 30 environmental organizations—issued over a year ago—urging her to take a stand against it. …

According to a voluntary disclosure from the Foundation, in 2014 the not-for-profit received between $250,000 and $500,000 from Canada's Foreign Affairs, Trade, and Development department, which has pressed for approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.

This Canadian agency is not the only donor aligned with big oil. Numerous fossil fuel giants sent direct payments to the foundation in 2014, including Exxon Mobil Corp., which donated up to $5 million, Anadarko Petroleum Corp., BP, ConocoPhillips Co., Chesapeake Energy Corp., Citgo Petroleum Co”

—>The NY Times has questioned the Clinton slush fund, but for taking donations from foreign countries. Why no mention of Big Oil’s massive payments to this foundation?

Thursday, February 19, 2015

Common Dreams:
“New Analysis Shatters Narrative of Charter School Success … Public schools are outperforming charter schools in Minnesota, in some cases ‘dramatically,’ according to a new analysis by the state's Star-Tribune newspaper. In addition, many charter schools fail to adequately support minority students, close examination of the data revealed.

Journalist Kim McGuire looked at 128 of the state's 157 charter schools and found ‘that the gulf between the academic success of its white and minority students widened at nearly two-thirds of those schools last year.’ Slightly more than half of charter schools students were proficient in reading, dramatically worse than traditional public schools, where 72 percent were proficient.

Between 2011 and 2014, McGuire reported, 20 charter schools failed to meet the state’s expectations for academic growth each year, ‘signaling that some of Minnesota’s most vulnerable students had stagnated academically.’ “

—>The NYT avoids printing anything that questions charter schools. As usual, our newspaper of record is in bed with the billionaires funding the assault on our nation’s public schools. 

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Common Dreams:
“Israeli Home Strikes Claimed More Than 800 Palestinian Lives. … 
At least 844 Palestinians were killed as a result of airstrikes on homes during Israel's summer attack on Gaza, an Associated Press exclusive analysis has revealed. The review published Friday found that 508 of the dead—just over 60 percent—were children, women, and older men, all presumed to be civilians. ‘Hamas says it did not use women as fighters in the war, and an Israel-based research group tracking militants among the dead said it has no evidence women participated in combat,’ AP notes.

Among the additional findings:
• Children younger than 16 made up one-third of the total: 280 killed, including 19 babies and 108 preschoolers between the ages of 1 and 5.
• In 83 strikes, three or more members of one family died.“ 

… The results of the AP count, which looked at 247 airstrikes on homes, come on the heels of similar findings released at the end of January by Israeli human rights group B’Tselem.”

—>The NYT did not write an article about this AP analysis, although it did include the AP story on-line. That is the way The NYT diminishes the impact of such stories about Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. 

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Common Dreams:
“Doctors Worldwide Blast TPP's 'Chilling Effect' on Health, Climate Protections.
While U.S. corporations have been involved in negotiations, 'health agencies have been forced to rely on leaks,' physicians point out in letter to be published Saturday

An international coalition of doctors representing seven Pacific Rim countries is demanding the public release of draft trade agreements currently being negotiated in secret between world governments.

The corporate-friendly Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), along with the equally troubling Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), ‘threaten the ability of governments worldwide to provide affordable health care and to put in place health and environmental laws that protect public health and mitigate health inequity,’ reads a letter signed by 27 health leaders, to be published Saturday in the international health journal ‘The Lancet.’ ”

—>Massive, secret trade deals like the TPP benefit the wealthy elite in America, the segment of society that the NYT represents. It didn’t print this story.

Thursday, February 12, 2015

Z Magazine, Feb 2015:
“In his three recent columns that deal with Russia, Putin and the threat of war, (Krugman) cannot escape the mainstream party line, which is followed by the NYT editors and journalists. ... He argued that wars are almost always not worth the cost, but he failed to note that, while the society as a whole may suffer losses, particular groups like the very large and powerful military-industrial complex may do exceedingly well. ... No military-industrial complex here nor vested interests in war; no pro-Israel lobby. ...

Krugman's analysis of the Ukraine crisis and Putin's an and the US role there is dishonest and incompetent party line propaganda. He calls the takeover of Crimea "Russian adventurism." Again the word usage is instructive - for his own country's Iraq was a "war of choice," not adventurism. He also ignores he adventurism of US involvement in the regime change in Ukraine that removed the elected president ... and the threatening encirclement of Russia and placement of missile-launchers within miles of the Russian borders.

It is interesting to note how Krugman tries to exonerate and even vindicate Obama ... He ignores the fact that Obama continued the Iraq war for years, escalated the Afghan war, greatly enlarged drone assassination attacks in half a dozen different countries, and carried out a war against Libya. While trying to distance Obama from the neo-cons, he ignores the fact that the State Department's Victoria Nuland, who had been on the scene in engineering the February 2014 coup in Ukraine, is a neo-con, and his team of Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and Hillary Clinton are de facto neo-cons and warmongers.”
-Edward Herman, Feb 2015, page 11 (will be posted on the Web in Mar)

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Public News Serice:
“Nearly a half million tons of solid fracking waste form Pennsylvania have been dumped in New York landfills, according to a new report that calls upon the Cuomo administration to take emergency action. Liz Moran, water and natural resources associate with Environmental Advocates of New York, authored the report ‘License to Dump,’ which relies on Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection records to document what she called a major toxic and radioactive threat to New Yorkers. 

‘Pennsylvania reporting showed that 460,000 tons of solid fracking waste and 23,000 liquid barrels of fracking waste have gone to New York State landfills,’ she said. ‘Fracking wastes are notoriously toxic.’ Moran said New York currently has no system in place to track the potentially toxic and radioactive waste that has been dumped at seven New York landfills since at least 2010. Her organization is calling on the state Department of Environmental Conservation to issue an emergency rule to classify waste from fracking operations as ‘hazardous.’ “ 

—>The NYT did not report this story, and has underreported most environmental disasters associated with fracking. 

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Z Magazine, Feb 2015:
" 'The Interview' got its shot by blowing the head off No. 1 US evil enemy Kim Jong-un, but it wasn't Rogen's creativity that came up with that plot twist. It came from the CIA. 

Though the Los Angeles Times reported that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg claimed it was their idea to have Kim Jon-un as the target, an email from Sony's senior vice president Mairsa Liston, published in the Daily beast, indicated that it came from Sony through the intelligence agency. ‘They mentioned that is was a Sony executive that told them to not use a fictitious name, but to go with Kim Jon-un.’ wrote Liston. ...

Don't forget that it was Sony that also brought us 'Zero Dark Thirty,' a film collaboration with the CIA. The torture report shared the news cycle with the Sony hacking story and it should come as no surprise that CIA Director Jon Brennan gave the same specious defense for torture woven into the plot of ZD30 - that torture led to information ‘useful’ to the hunt for Osama Bin Laden."

—>The CIA manipulating the plot lines in our nation’s movies? The story wasn’t newsworthy according to the NYT.

Thursday, February 05, 2015

Boingboing Blog:
“After a protracted battle with the Bureau, artist and journalist Molly Crabapple (previously) has gotten them to admit that they're keeping a whopping file on her, which they will release to her lawyers at the rate of 750 (heavily redacted) pages/month for the next ten months.

UPDATE: Molly Crabapple writes, ‘Quick correction- I initially mistweeted that they'll give me 750 pages a month. They'll actually review 750 pages a month, give me what they feel like, and when I get them all, we can sue if I think they're holding out too much.’ “

—>Molly did the amazing video "How Ferguson showed us the truth about police." For that, our national security state goes crazy! See for yourself if her ideas are that dangerous: 

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Reader Supported News:
“Becoming the first credentialed, well-known media insider to step forward and state publicly that he was secretly a "propagandist," an editor of a major German daily has said that he personally planted stories for the CIA.

Saying he believes a medical condition gives him only a few years to live, and that he is filled with remorse, Dr. Udo Ulfkotte, the editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of Germany's largest newspapers, said in an interview that he accepted news stories written and given to him by the CIA and published them under his own name. Ulfkotte said the aim of much of the deception was to drive nations toward war.

Dr. Ulfkotte says the corruption of journalists and major news outlets by the CIA is routine, accepted, and widespread in the western media, and that journalists who do not comply either cannot get jobs at any news organization, or find their careers cut short.”

—>The NYT, predictably, did not carry this interesting story. Too many CIA operatives on the payroll to let this get by.

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Reuters:
“The United States looks set to succeed in watering down a proposal for tougher legal standards aimed at boosting global nuclear safety, according to senior diplomats.

Diplomatic wrangling will come to a head at a 77-nation meeting in Vienna next month that threatens to expose divisions over required safety standards and the cost of meeting them, four years after the Fukushima disaster in Japan.

Switzerland has put forward a proposal to amend the Convention on Nuclear Safety (CNS), arguing stricter standards could help avoid a repeat of Fukushima, where an earthquake and tsunami sparked triple nuclear meltdowns, forced more than 160,000 people to flee nearby towns and contaminated water, food and air.”

—>GE, one of the biggest producers of nuclear power plants, seems to have The NYT in its pocket. This insanity never made it onto the pages of our newspaper of record.

Thursday, January 29, 2015

NYT:
—>The NYT reviewed the new book, “Guantanamo Diary,” this weekend, Mohamedou Slahi’s own account of his suffering at the infamous US prison. The article is classic NYT and should certainly be read by anyone seeking to understand how our media makes such torture possible. 

The article gives one sentence to the approval of such methods by US leaders (citing Rumsfeld’s connection to a special interrogation in 2003). All the rest at the top are absolved of committing car crimes. In fact, The NYT never mentions “war crimes” at all in the article, despite the fact that they were obviously committed. 

How did our noble and good intentioned government ever do such things? Why, according to The NYT it was “woeful incompetence,” governmental “haplessness,” and and the fact that “secrecy makes blunders far easier to hide.” It was all just one big mistake.

Our newspaper of record then goes on to make the case for the prosecution. Mohamedou’s resume “cried out for scrutiny,” Communists did such things during the Cold War, and finally, he may be “simply a clever liar who has successfully hidden his crimes.” Did the CIA really have to redact huge portions of Mohanedou’s book when The NYT was willing to do it for them?

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Huffington Post:
“The Media vs. the Movement: 3 Ways the 'New York Times' Completely Misunderstands #BlackLivesMatter and Movements in General. 

Recently the New York Times published the latest in its series of sub-par articles on the current racial justice movement. Like its predecessors, this installment, ‘Protesters Out to Reclaim King's Legacy, but in Era That Defies Comparison,’ by Tanzina Vega, dutifully reinforces conventional wisdom that does not stand up to challenge. It is important to inspect the badly inaccurate depictions and deep misunderstandings that infect the Times' coverage. …

Notwithstanding its current hallowed reputation, at the time, many commentators portrayed the civil rights movement as ‘rebellious’ and ‘irrational.’ Apparently, we have learned little about movements in the decades since. We need to address the myth that movements last only as long as their media moments and develop a better grasp -- and more respect -- for the quiet, persistent periods of organizing that go into changing the flawed structures of our society.”

—>Yes, The NYT has a long track record of belittling and then dismissing social movements in the United States. It comes from our newspaper of record’s incestuous ties to big business and our government. All the news that the elites would like you to think.

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Defense News:
“WASHINGTON — American soldiers will deploy to Ukraine this spring to begin training four companies of the Ukrainian National Guard, the head of US Army Europe Lt. Gen Ben Hodges said during his first visit to Kiev on Wednesday.
The number of troops heading to the Yavoriv Training Area near the city of L’viv, which is about 40 miles from the Polish border, is still being determined, however.

The American training effort comes as part of a US State Department initiative ‘to assist Ukraine in strengthening its law enforcement capabilities, conduct internal defense, and maintain rule of law’ Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Vanessa Hillman told Defense News.

—>Soon, US soldiers will be killed in Ukraine. This brinksmanship with the world’s other nuclear superpower should be seen as criminally insane. Perhaps it will be the last bit of human folly before nuclear war brings an end to our species. Not to worry, however, since The NYT didn’t cover this story. Well, except for its resident warmonger, Thomas Friedman, crowing about “Czar Putin’s Next Moves.”


Thursday, January 22, 2015

Guardian UK:
“The groundbreaking memoir of a current Guantánamo inmate that lays bare the harrowing details of the US rendition and torture programme from the perspective of one of its victims is to be published next week after a six-year battle for the manuscript to be declassified. Guantánamo Diary, the first book written by a still imprisoned detainee, is being published in 20 countries and has been serialised by the Guardian amid renewed calls by civil liberty campaigners for its author’s release.

Mohamedou Ould Slahi describes a world tour of torture and humiliation that began in his native Mauritania more than 13 years ago and progressed through Jordan and Afghanistan before he was consigned to US detention in Guantánamo, Cuba, in August 2002 as prisoner number 760. US military officials told the Guardian this week that despite never being prosecuted and being cleared for release by a judge in 2010, he is unlikely to be released in the next year.

The journal, which Slahi handwrote in English, details how he was subjected to sleep deprivation, death threats, sexual humiliation and intimations that his torturers would go after his mother.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/16/-sp-guantanamo-diary-exposes-brutality-us-rendition-torture

—>The NYT did not report this as a news story, but rather as a “Culture At Large” feature in the Arts Section. All references to how Mohamedou was brutalized were removed. No need for the CIA to redact any text of the memoir; our newspaper of record does it for them. Go to the Guardian to read excerpts of Mohamedou's story.

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972 Blog:
“In denying that Israel limits academic freedom in Palestine, the Israeli embassy in Washington seems to forget about the Palestinian students and academics whose movement it restricts.

The Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. recently decried as baseless ‘the accusation that Israel arbitrarily limits the entry of foreign nationals who seek to lecture, teach and attend conferences at Palestinian universities.’ The embassy appears to be responding to protests and calls by American academics to boycott Israeli academic institutions, in response to restrictions on students and scholars accessing Palestinian universities. And yet in explaining Israeli travel policy, the embassy’s statement misleads, seemingly willfully. …

Arab lecturers and students are unlikely to obtain access to the West Bank and Gaza, because Israeli rules on entry to the Palestinian territory bar most people holding travel documents from Arab or Muslim countries and even some American or European citizens of Arab descent or those who have spoken out against Israel.“

—>The NYT doesn’t do stories like this. Doesn’t fit the public relations image of Israel that the NYT likes to promote.

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972 Blog:
“Two years ago this week, 15-year-old Palestinian Salih al-Amarin was shot in the head by Israeli forces with live ammunition. He died several days later. Al-Amarin, a resident of Azza Refugee Camp in the West Bank town of Bethlehem, was taking part in clashes with Israeli forces stationed on the separation wall that cuts deep into Bethlehem.

“Those soldiers sitting in their towers behind the wall, are they really in danger?” Bethlehem governor Abdi Fatah Hamayel told Sky News at the time. “There is no excuse to shoot the kids with live bullets.”

According to the same report, this and other killings at the time ‘prompted then Israel’s commander of operations in the West Bank, Brig.-Gen. Hagai Mordechai, to call for an immediate review of its rules of engagement.’ But in the months and years that followed, use of live ammunition on the streets of Bethlehem and throughout the West Bank only increased - typically 0.22 caliber bullets known as ‘two-twos’ fired from an integrally suppressed (silenced) 10/22 Ruger rifle.”

—>More Israeli human rights violation covered up by the NYT. The 972 Blog, created by a Green Party grant from Germany, seeks honest and unbiased reporting from Israel and Palestine, something our media seems incapable of.

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Common Dreams:
“A groundbreaking new study is confirming what green campaigners have long argued: in order to stave off climate disaster, the majority of fossil fuel deposits around the world—including 92 percent of U.S. coal, all Arctic oil and gas, and a majority of Canadian tar sands—must stay ‘in the ground.’

The research is a boost to world-wide green campaigns, from the bid to stop the Keystone XL pipeline to grassroots protest against Arctic drilling.
The new findings were published in the journal Nature and authored by Christophe McGlade and Paul Ekins, both of whom hail from the University College London.

They write, ‘Policy makers have generally agreed that the average global temperature rise caused by greenhouse gas emissions should not exceed 2 °C above the average global temperature of pre-industrial times.’ ”

—>The NYT didn’t cover this report. Not business friendly enough for our newspaper of record.

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Common Dreams:
“Advocacy groups vow to fight back against what they believe is a preliminary ‘stealth attack’ that portends a wider assault on a program that makes survival possible for millions of vulnerable Americans. …
An attack by the Republican Party on the nation's Social Security program took less than one full working day. Included in a new set of rules passed by the House of Representatives on Tuesday was a new measure making it more difficult to move funds between separate accounts maintained by the Social Security Administration. A seemingly technical provision on the surface, critics says it puts millions of disabled and elderly Americans at risk and sets the stage for further attacks aimed at the wider program. …

In response to approval of the new rule, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) chastised Republicans in the House. ‘The GOP is inventing a Social Security crisis that will threaten benefits for millions and put our most vulnerable at risk,’ Warren fumed via her Twitter account. ‘This is ridiculous. 233k people in MA receive Social Security disability benefits that could be threatened by these political games.’ “

—>The NYT buried this latest attack against Social Security on its Opinions Blog. The paper is in bed with Wall Street, which has always wanted to get its hands on more funds that belong to working people. 

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Freedom Socialist Party:
“Millions of workers don’t have any pension or retirement savings. Social Security will be their only income later in life. To enable the theft of that income, conservative news outlets push the lie that Social Security is going broke, even though it’s funded through 2036 and needs only minor adjustments.

The Social Security Trust Fund has over $2.8 trillion, yet politicians constantly threaten to raise the qualification age for full benefits to 70, cut payments, and reduce Cost-of-Living Adjustments (COLA). They also forced the Social Security Administration (SSA) to close 80 offices and 500 contact centers where people get in-person help. SSA has also laid off thousands of workers.

In a move akin to attacks on U.S. postal delivery, SSA plans to move to automated phone systems and subcontracting. The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) is blowing the whistle and leading a campaign to defend Social Security.”

—>Strange when the only Socialist in the Congress is Social Security’s most ardent defender. Stranger still when a Socialist Party blog gives readers a more coherent analysis of the attack on SS retirement benefits than the NYT. 

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