Thursday, March 19, 2015

Guardian UK:
"The United Nations’ top investigator on the use of torture has accused Washington of dragging its feet over his requested visits to prisons and refusing to give him access to inmates at Guantánamo.

Juan Méndez said he had been waiting for more than two years for the United States to provide him access to a range of state and federal prisons, where he wants to probe the use of solitary confinement. ...

According to Méndez, 'it is not rare' for prisoners in the United States to spend 25-30 years in solitary confinement, locked up in a cell with no human contact for 22-23 hours a day. ... According to the ACLU, more than 80,000 people are held in solitary confinement in the United States on any given day.

Méndez said he was particularly concerned about the use of solitary confinement for underage offenders. Solitary confinement for children 'should never happen, even for a single day', he said, pointing out that the punishment, widely considered cruel even for adults, was 'particularly harmful for children because of their state of development and their special needs'.

-->The NY Times buried this story on-line, and the report from Reuters even left out the part about the solitary confinement of children in the US Gulag. 

———

NPR:
"Israeli Politician Changed Her Mind On Palestinian Conflict," an interview of an Israeli politician by By Steve Inskeep March 13.

This Israeli politician did more than change her mind about the Palestinians. She became an overt racist with statements like all Palestinians are terrorists. There are certainly racists in the world. The despicable part of Steve Inskeep's interview is that he politely accepts all the racist stereotypes she has to offer. Would he have been so well behaved if the interviewee were Palestinian and claiming that all Jews were murderers? Or a Nazi skinhead claiming that the Holocaust never happened? Or a KKK member saying that all African Americans were street criminals? 

Steve Inskeep is in touch with what racism is fashionable in American society. The notion that all Muslims are terrorists has become an acceptable point of view on NPR. In that way, our mainstream media feeds racial hatreds. Shame on such journalism. Expressions of racial hatred should never be treated as acceptable opinion.

———

Common Dreams:
"The yawning racial wealth gap in the United States is no accident, but rather, driven by unjust public policy decisions—from the re-segregation of education to the redlining of home ownership to poverty wages, according to a new analysis by Brandeis University and the public policy organization Demos.

Inequalities are vast, note the researchers. For example, Census data shows that, in 2011, median white households in the U.S. held $111,146 in wealth, compared to a mere $7,113 for Black homes and $8,348 for Latino ones.
These disparities emerge from historical choices on the political and policy levels, the researchers note.

'The racial wealth gap is large because we instituted it in public policy historically and continue to make public policies that exacerbate the problems,' said report coauthor Catherine Ruetschlin, a senior policy analyst at Demos, in a press statement. Therefore, it is vital 'to find new opportunities to address the way that we’re constantly perpetuating this disparity between black, white and Latino families,' Ruetschlin continued.

Researchers offer a series of solutions aimed at reversing these trends, from equalizing home ownership to racially integrating schools at all levels. In addition, the study calls for a significant boost to the minimum wage, as well as 'making it easier for workers to form and join unions.'

-->The NY Times, owned and operated by the rich elite, didn't want to spread these anti-Wall Street solutions around. Our newspaper of record didn't print the story.

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Mondoweiss:
“Two days ago Israel’s foreign minister called for beheading Arab citizens of Israel who are ‘against us.’ Haaretz did the story yesterday. So did Newsweek. Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman has said that Arab citizens who are not loyal to the state of Israel should have their heads ‘chopped off with an axe.’

The minister, leader of the Yisrael Beiteinu party and an outspoken critic of Israel’s Arab population, made the controversial remarks on Sunday in a speech to an election rally held in the western Israeli city of Herzliya …

‘Those who are with us deserve everything, but those who are against us deserve to have their heads chopped off with an axe,’ the ultra-nationalist politician said. The incitement resulted in a call to behead Haneen Zoabi, the outspoken Palestinian member of Knesset …"

—>The NY Times has carried many gruesome stories about Muslim beheadings, but so far has refused to print this. The NYT did carry a Reuters story on-line, under the misleading title of “Lieberman Says Israel Should Execute Arabs Who Carry Out Deadly Attacks.” 

———

Mondoweiss:
“Today The New York Times printed a long article at the top of its national section stating that the ugly prejudice of anti-Semitism has returned to the United States, on college campuses. …

‘The session… has served to spotlight what appears to be a surge of hostile sentiment directed against Jews at many campuses in the country, often a byproduct of animosity toward the policies of Israel.’

Let’s repeat that phrase: ‘what appears to be a surge of hostile sentiment directed against Jews at many campuses in the country.’ That’s a very large claim, and the piece offers no evidence for ‘a surge.’ None. If there really is ‘a surge’ of Jew-hating bigotry, why isn’t the Times sending its army of correspondents out nationwide to track down this awful trend?

The Times does not cite any other example of alleged hostility against Jews besides the UCLA case. …”

—>The NYT is echoing the right wing Zionist view that all criticisms of Israel are antiSemitic. We deserve more from our newspaper of record.

———

Guardian UK:
“Top Afghan officials have presided over murders, abduction, and other abuses with the tacit backing of their government and its western allies, Human Rights Watch says in a new report.

A grim account of deaths, robbery, rapes and extrajudicial killings, 'Today We Shall All Die,' details a culture of impunity that the rights group says flourished after the fall of the Taliban, driven by the desire for immediate control of security at almost any price.

'The rise of abusive political and criminal networks was not inevitable,' the report said. 'Short-term concerns for maintaining a bulwark against the Taliban have undermined aspirations for long-term good governance and respect for human rights in Afghanistan.' "

—>The NYT put this story by Reuters on-line rather than in print, and the story itself consisted mostly of denials by Afghan officials.

Thursday, March 05, 2015

The Helen Caldicott Foundation:
“The Symposium: The Dynamics of Possible Nuclear Extinction. Russia and the U.S. possess 94% of the 16,400 nuclear weapons in the global nuclear arsenal. The U.S. maintains its first strike winnable nuclear war policy, and both countries have raised their nuclear arsenals to a higher state of alert because of the situation in the Ukraine. Furthermore it has just been announced that the administration has plans to replace every nuclear warhead and their delivery systems via ship, submarine, missile and plane, at a cost of one trillion dollars over the next thirty years. This symposium to be held by The Helen Caldicott Foundation will address the following issues:

. What are the human and technological factors that could precipitate a nuclear war between Russia and the U.S., how many times have we come close to nuclear war and how long will our luck hold? . What are the ongoing technological and financial developments relevant to the nuclear weapons arsenals of the US and Russia? . What problems are associated with lateral proliferation of nuclear weapons via strenuous corporate marketing of nuclear technology? . What are the medical and environmental consequences of either a small or large scale nuclear war? . What are the underlying philosophical, political, and ideological dynamics that have brought life on earth to the brink of extinction?”

—>This symposium was held last week at the New York Academy of Medicine. Amazing that the insanity of nuclear war isn’t discussed in our media. As we inch closer to the brink, our major news sources cheer on the US war machine.

———

Common Dreams:
“Gaza Rebuild Effort Could Take 100 Years: Oxfam. Despair and destruction continue to envelop the blockaded Gaza strip, where the rebuilding of vital structures could take up to a century, Oxfam International has warned.

The organization's statement comes six months after a ceasefire agreement ended Israel's 50-day assault on Gaza, which left over 2,100 Palestinians dead, decimated thousands of structures, and weakened already damaged infrastructure systems.

Oxfam is one of 30 international aid agencies that operate in Gaza, including the Norwegian Refugee Council and United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), to issue a joint statement Thursday expressing alarm at the slow pace of reconstruction and worsening living conditions for Gaza's residents.”

—>The NYT put this report on-line where it would get much less coverage. Why not print this story of immense suffering and impending genocide? Maybe because protecting Israel has always trumped reporting the truth for our newspaper of record. 

———

Common Dreams:
“Corporate-Friendly Democrats Mobilize to Drag Party Rightward. So called 'centrist' Democrats are attempting to distance themselves from progressive voices like Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Afraid ‘a sharp turn to the left could prove disastrous in the 2016 elections,’ factions within the Democratic Party more closely aligned with Wall Street and other corporate interests than with the progressive left are ‘gathering their forces to fight back against the Elizabeth Warren wing of their party,’ The Hill reported Monday.

Framed as a fight between so-called ‘centrists’ of the party and more progressive voices, exemplified by Sen. Warren (D-Mass.), journalist Kevin Cirilli describes how leaders of three corporate-friendly groups—the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), the New Democrat Network (NDN), and Third Way—are moving to steer the Democratic agenda away from issues like income inequality, the student debt crisis, and corporate tax breaks.”

—>The NYT didn’t report this major battle within the Democratic Party. Why call attention to the fact that both parties serve the same corporate masters? The same corporate elite that controls most of our media.

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. 

———

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. 

———

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. 

———

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. 

———

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)

———

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. 

———

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: 

———

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.

———

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.

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)