Tuesday, May 23, 2017

The Guardian UK:
"Had Assange not sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, he would have been on his way to the kind of American torture pit Chelsea Manning had to endure. This prospect was obscured by the grim farce played out in Sweden. 'It's a laughing stock,' said James Catlin, one of Assange's Australian lawyers. 'It is as if they make it up as they go along'.

It may have seemed that way, but there was always serious purpose. In 2008, a secret Pentagon document prepared by the 'Cyber Counterintelligence Assessments Branch' foretold a detailed plan to discredit WikiLeaks and smear Assange personally.

The 'mission' was to destroy the 'trust' that was WikiLeaks' 'centre of gravity'. This would be achieved with threats of 'exposure [and] criminal prosecution'. Silencing and criminalising such an unpredictable source of truth-telling was the aim."

-->The NYT coverage of Assange has always been a perfect example of "fake news" orchestrated by the CIA. Read JohnPilger.com if you want the real story about why the Swedish charges against Assange were dropped.

-----

Common Dreams:
"Americans are dying at a shockingly high rate from preventable causes, found a first-of-its-kind global health study published late Thursday.

The new research demonstrates that despite the fact that the U.S. has the largest economy in the world, healthcare for many of its residents is woefully inadequate. The U.S. was tied with Estonia and Montenegro, far below other wealthy nations such as Norway, Canada, and Australia, in the study's ranking of 195 countries.

'America's ranking is an embarrassment, especially considering the U.S. spends more than $9,000 per person on healthcare annually, more than any other country,' said Dr. Christopher Murray, senior author of the study and director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. 'Anyone with a stake in the current healthcare debate, including elected officials at the federal, state, and local levels, should take a look at where the U.S. is falling short.' "

-->The NYT didn't cover this story. Our newspaper of record almost always comes out in favor of the big insurance and pharmaceutical companies. Take a peek at the current NYT Board of Directors to see what conflicts of interest they represent. http://www.nytco.com/board-of-directors/

-----

The Guardian UK:
"Facebook has censored a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist for publishing a series of posts alleging corruption by the prime minister of Malta and his associates.

Matthew Caruana Galizia, a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ award-winning Panama Papers team, was temporarily locked out of his Facebook account over four posts, which were deleted for violating the social network’s community standards. 'For me, this process was enlightening because I realised how crippling and punitive this block is for a journalist,' Caruana Galizia told the Guardian by email.

The posts, which were written in Maltese, contained allegations of wrongdoing by prime minister Joseph Muscat, his chief of staff Keith Schembri, and minister of energy Konrad Mizzi. Each post included images of documents from the Panama Papers leak."


-->No coverage of this by our NYT. A story about Facebook censoring investigative reporters should be big news. Check out the Board of Directors again to see why this story never made it into print. 

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

The Guardian UK:
"Apparent National Security Agency (NSA) malware has been used in a global cyber-attack, including on British hospitals, in what whistleblower Edward Snowden described as the repercussion of the NSA's reckless decision to build the tools. 'Despite warnings, @NSAGov built dangerous attack tools that could target Western software. Today we see the cost,' Snowden tweeted Friday.

At least two hospitals in London were forced to shut down and stop admitting patients after being attacked by the malware, which operates by locking out the user, encrypting data, and demanding a ransom to release it. The attacks hit dozens of other hospitals, ambulance operators, and doctors' offices as well."

-->The NYT covered this story, but left out the most important part. No mention of the NSA's malware role in all this hacking.

UPDATE: The NYT finally reported the NSA's role in an article entitled, "Malware Case Is Major Blow for the NSA." The story asks us to feel sorry for the NSA because of the "trials" the agency has endured.

-----

Black Alliance for Peace:
"The United States has been conducting a brutal, 20-year-long campaign of destabilization against Venezuela in an attempt to cause 'regime change' in that country.  This has taken the form of economic sabotage and financial manipulation as well as support for the mobilization of right-wing forces in increasingly violent demonstrations.

This is not a recent policy but one that has also been carried out under the Obama and Bush administrations as well as the present Trump administration.  In 2002, right-wing forces inside Venezuela attempted a coup against then-President Hugo Chavez. Many sources have confirmed that the U.S. gave the go-ahead to the opposition to orchestrate the coup and promised support.  Soon after the coup, the people of Venezuela turned out in the streets in massive numbers and restored Chavez to the presidency.

Barack Obama continued the assault on the Venezuelan revolution by imposing crippling sanctions and asserting that Venezuela was a 'security threat' to the United States. These attacks from the U.S. exemplify attempts to realize full-spectrum dominance, the epitome of imperialist intervention which has brought so much suffering to the world."

-->Do you think that US media would ever even whisper these words about the CIA's long term assault on Venezuela? The current media coverage of Venezuela shows the extent to which newspapers like the NYT print propaganda rather than news.  

-----

The Guardian UK
"Contrary to what nearly every US mediator has asserted, it is not that Israel greatly desires a peace agreement but has a pretty good fallback option. It is that Israel greatly prefers the fallback option to a peace agreement. No tactical brilliance in negotiations, no amount of expert preparation, no perfect alignment of the stars can overcome that obstacle. Only two things can: a more attractive agreement, or a less attractive fallback. The first of these options has been tried extensively, from offering Israel full normalisation with most Arab and Islamic states to promising upgraded relations with Europe, US security guarantees, and increased financial and military assistance. ...

The second option is to make the fallback worse. This is what President Eisenhower did following the 1956 Suez crisis when he threatened economic sanctions to get Israel to withdraw from Sinai and Gaza. This is what President Ford did in 1975 when he reassessed US relations with Israel, refusing to provide it with new arms deals until it agreed to a second Sinai withdrawal. This is what President Carter did when he raised the spectre of terminating US military assistance if Israel did not immediately evacuate Lebanon in September 1977. And this is what Carter did when he made clear to both sides at Camp David that the United States would withhold aid and downgrade relations if they did not sign an agreement. This, likewise, is what the US secretary of state James Baker did in 1991, when he forced a reluctant Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to attend negotiations in Madrid by withholding a $10bn loan guarantee that Israel needed to absorb the immigration of Soviet Jews. That was the last time the United States applied pressure of this sort."

-->Would our US media ever really give the American people this short history lesson about what has worked in the Middle East? All of it goes down the NYT memory hole.

Tuesday, May 09, 2017

The Guardian UK:
"Israeli ministers have approved the wording of a new law that would downgrade Arabic as an official language and which states that the right to self-determination in Israel 'is unique to the Jewish people', despite the country’s sizeable non-Jewish minority.

The go-ahead for the nation state bill by the ministerial committee for legislation means it will now move forward to a vote by the country’s parliament. The bill has to pass several stages in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, for it to become law and could also be challenged in the courts.

Critics say the law is discriminatory and could undermine Israel’s balance of being both a Jewish and democratic state by harming the rights of minorities.
Hebrew and Arabic are both Israel’s national languages, but the bill states that Hebrew would be the lone national language, downgrading Arabic to 'a special status in the state' whose 'speakers have the right to language-accessible state services'."

-->Yes, apartheid gallops ahead in Israel. But the NYT, ever protective of Israel's image in the US, didn't cover the story.

-----

The Guardian UK:
"More than 20 states have proposed bills that would crack down on protests and demonstrations since Donald Trump was elected, in a move that UN experts have branded 'incompatible with US obligations under international human rights law'.

The proposed laws would variously increase the penalties for protesting in large groups, ban protesters from wearing masks during demonstrations and, in some states, protect drivers from liability if they strike someone taking part in a protest.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said more than 30 separate anti-protest bills have been introduced since 8 November in 'an unprecedented level of hostility towards protesters in the 21st century'. Their introduction comes amid a huge increase in activism and engagement, much of it inspired by Trump’s election to the presidency."

-->The NYT didn't cover this dangerous turn in US politics, making laws against political demonstrations. Our newspaper of record has always been against political activism in the streets, and this is just another example. This same week, the NYT enthusiastically reported on street demonstrations in Venezuela, Poland, and Russia. CIA run street demonstrations always get prime coverage. 

-----

Common Dreams:
"The city of Flint, where the pipes have still not been fixed and the water crisis is ongoing, is threatening to place tax liens on people's homes for non-payment of water bills, according to a local news source.

NBC affiliate 25News reported Tuesday that more than 8,000 people have received notice from the city that they are 'at risk of losing their homes to foreclosure if they don't pay up on their water bills' by May 19. ... 

Melissa Mays, a Flint mother and water activist, told the station of the notice: 'I got scared, for probably the first time since this all started this actually scared me.' Mays plans to 'go against what she believes' and pay the $900 she owes in order to ensure she doesn't lose her home ..."

-->Paying for poisoned water in Flint? The NYT wasn't interested in this story.

Wednesday, May 03, 2017

Common Dreams:
"Underscoring previous assessments that the Democratic establishment, including the party's 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, has 'a Wall Street problem,' new polling and focus group data shows that Democrats are perceived as woefully out of touch when it comes to the economy.

The pro-Clinton super PAC Priorities USA surveyed 801 voters who backed former President Barack Obama in 2012 but who then voted for Donald Trump in 2016, as well as hundreds of drop-off voters who opted to stay home on election day. Priorities USA also conducted a series of focus groups with voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Florida—swing states that had voted for Obama but switched to Trump, handing him the presidency. 

Reporting on the survey, the Washington Post's Greg Sargent wrote Monday: 'One finding from the polling stands out: A shockingly large percentage of these Obama-Trump voters said Democrats' economic policies will favor the wealthy—twice the percentage that said the same about Trump.' "

-->More Hillary bashing, or the simple truth that the Democrats favor the wealthy as much as the Republicans? Readers of the NYT, however, were spared this view of our corporatized Democratic Party. It didn't cover this story.

-----
The Guardian UK:
"Elizabeth Warren, one of the most prominent Democrats in the Senate, has broken ranks to criticise Barack Obama for misreading the economy and a swath of Democrats for selling out to wealthy elites.

In an interview with the Guardian, the Massachusetts senator, tipped as a potential presidential candidate in 2020, also spoke of her optimism about grassroots resistance to Donald Trump and how it has changed American democracy. ..

The senator went on take a swipe at members of her own party while describing the collapse of old distinctions between left and right. 'I think there are real differences between the Republicans and the Democrats here in the United States,' she said. 'The Republicans have clearly thrown their lot in with the rich and the powerful, but so have a lot of Democrats.' ”

-->Top Democrat criticizes former president and calls her party out of touch on wealth issues? No mention of the story in the NYT, which almost always comes down on the side of that same wealthy elite.  

-----

Common Dreams:
"As President Donald Trump and the GOP attempt once again to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with a much crueler bill, House Democrats are pushing in the total opposite direction: as of Thursday, a record 104 have signed on to co-sponsor a Medicare-for-All bill.

The bill, H.R. 676, known as the 'Expanded & Improved Medicare for All Act,' has been introduced into Congress repeatedly by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). It has now received support from more than half of the Democratic caucus, a record for the party. ...

'Americans are fed up with an inhumane, profit-driven health system that leaves millions without care,' said Dr. Carol Paris, president of Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), in a statement. 'Quality health care is not a luxury, nor is it a commodity that can be bought and sold in a marketplace. It is a social good that can be best delivered through a single-payer national health program.' "

-->Another story not covered by the NYT, which obviously favors our current profit driven system over universal healthcare.

Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Mondoweiss:
"The New York Times’ decision to run an op-ed by imprisoned Palestinian political leader Marwan Barghouti in its international edition raised many eyebrows and sparked a vigorous reaction. The article, penned to commemorate hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners on Palestinian Prisoners Day, pulls no punches against the regime that has imprisoned Mr. Barghouti. Barghouti assails Israel’s imprisonment of near 40 percent of Palestinian men, its systematic violation of the laws of war, and the lack of basic due process in Israel’s military tribunals.

The backlash that ensued included the former Israeli ambassador accusing the Times of being complicit in terrorism, while the Israeli prison authorities moved Barghouti into solitary confinement. Under intense lobbying pressure, the New York Times updated the article by describing Barghouti’s convictions in the Israeli court system following his abduction by the Israeli military. Now, readers of the article are introduced to Barghouti’s insightful perspective alongside a byline that slanders him as a convicted terrorist and a murderer. There is no mention of the fact that Barghouti’s convictions, although carried out through a civilian rather than military court, similarly lacked basic process-related protections and was widely viewed by observers as a political show trial that violated the guarantees of international law. Further, Barghouti’s defiant refusal to accept the legitimacy of the Israeli court proceedings–an act of civil disobedience–is left unexplained."
http://mondoweiss.net/2017/04/israelpalestine-contributors-doesnt/

-->The NYT gets slammed and changes its story on Barghouti to make him out as a convicted terrorist.

-----

Vanity Fair:
"Chlorpyrifos, diazinon, and malathion are a group of pesticides that are a big money-maker for Dow Chemical, with the company selling approximately 5 million pounds of chlorpyrifos in the U.S. each year, according to the Associated Press. ...

Luckily for Dow, the E.P.A. is now run by climate-change skeptic and general enemy of living things Scott Pruitt, who last month said he would reverse 'an Obama-era effort to bar the use of Dow's chlorpyrifos pesticide on food after recent peer-reviewed studies found that even tiny levels of exposure could hinder the development of children's brains.' Plus, Dow Chemical C.E.O. Andrew Liveris is good buddies with President Donald Trump. So, you can see how the company, which the AP reports also spent $13.6 million on lobbying last year, might feel like it is in the clear."
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/04/dow-chemical-endangered-species

-->Dow paying to pollute, even though children's brains will pay the price. Why didn't the NYT do an article on this corporate corruption of our political process?

-----

Common Dreams:
"The Massachusetts Democratic Party has been plunged into turmoil by a proposed resolution stating that Israel's illegal settlements in the West Bank are an obstacle to peace between Israel and Palestine, the Boston Globe reported Friday.

Carol Coakley of Millis, Mass., proposed the resolution that reads in part: 'the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee affirm our support for the long-standing U.S. policy of the State Department and every administration from President Lyndon Johnson to President Barack Obama, that Israel's settlements in the occupied West Bank are obstacles to peace.' Coakley has been a member of the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee for 18 years, the Globe notes.

'This resolution targets a hypocrisy in the position of the national Democratic Party which says it supports a two-state solution, but gives huge aid and backing to Israel and very little to Palestinians,' said Cole Harrison, Massachusetts Peace Action.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/04/21/massachusetts-dems-turmoil-over-proposal-condemn-west-bank-settlements

-->The NYT does not like to remind readers of how the Democratic Party has been bought off by the Israel Lobby. It didn't carry this story.

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

FAIR:
"So, many people in the United States don’t realize that the US has maintained the threat of a nuclear attack against North Korea for decades. From 1958 to 1991, the US had hundreds of nuclear weapons in the southern half of the Korean peninsula, in South Korea. So at that time, North Korea’s countermeasure to deter a US nuclear attack was to forward deploy all of its conventional forces near the DMZ.

In 2001, when George W. Bush came to power, many things changed. There were technological advancements, and he also made doctrinal changes, centered around very high-tech, precision-capable weapons that gave the US preemptive strike advantage. He named North Korea part of the 'Axis of Evil.' He also listed North Korea as one of seven countries that were potential targets for a US preemptive strike in the US Nuclear Posture Review. So then, in response to that, North Korea had to develop a new kind of deterrent, and that’s when it seriously turned to developing nuclear weapons, and its first nuclear test was in 2006."  CounterSpin interview of Hyun Lee.

-->With all the heated warmongering in the US media, it is a distinct pleasure to finally read an alternative view of US/Korean history. The mainstream media has become a Pentagon mouthpiece again, a sure sign that the US is considering starting another war.

-----

Common Dreams:
"Trump Administration Considering 'Back-Door Way' to Cut Social Security. President Donald Trump, who campaigned on a promise not to cut Social Security, is reportedly considering a plan to eliminate much of the payroll tax that funds the critical safety net program.

According to the Associated Press on Monday, the proposal is being floated as the Trump administration goes 'back to the drawing board in a search for Republican consensus behind legislation to overhaul the U.S. tax system.'

The AP reported that one option 'circulating this past week would change the House Republican plan to eliminate much of the payroll tax and cut corporate tax rates. This would require a new dedicated funding source for Social Security.' "

-->Most of US media is behind gutting social security and privatizing the system to benefit Wall Street. Readers of the NYT won't be learning about Trump's back-door way to slash benefits.

-----

Common Dreams:
"Hackers and security experts are raising alarm over a massive cyber weapons dump that they say underscores the danger of government spy agencies developing intrusive surveillance tools. ...

This means that any computer-savvy individual could download the tools and hack into any of the millions of personal Microsoft computers worldwide. ...

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said the release makes clear that the 'lawful access' debate is over, 'and the government's claim that 'nobody but us' has access to these surveillance tools is moot.' "

-->The debate is certainly moot for readers of the NYT, who didn't get to read about their government's spy efforts and the disastrous effect they have had on computer security.

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Common Dreams:
"Corporate media and D.C. politicians on both sides of the aisle are falling over themselves to shower praise on President Donald Trump for unilaterally bombing a Syrian air base on Thursday, demonstrating that Washington's hunger for war continues no matter who is at the controls.

Some talking heads' praise for the new war effort has been so over-the-top that it alarmed viewers, as when NBC's Brian Williams called the launch of 59 Tomahawk missiles—which state media now reports have killed civilians, including children—'beautiful' no less than three times in 30 seconds. Williams even misguidedly quoted a Leonard Cohen lyric to gush over the strike. ...

The Washington Post's David Ignatius claimed that it was evidence that 'the moral dimensions of leadership' had penetrated Trump's Oval Office. And in a New York Times op-ed titled 'On Syria Attack, Trump's Heart Came First,' White House correspondent Mark Landler framed the bombing as 'an emotional act by a man suddenly aware that the world's problems were now his—and that turning away, to him, was not an option.' "

-->Oh, what a merry war we will have with both war parties talking tough about Syria. Even the nations most virulent warmonger, defeated lesser of two evils, Hillary Clinton, is calling for an attack on ALL of Syria's air bases, not just one. 

-----

The Guardian UK:
"You can’t buy time – except, it seems, in America. Increasing inequality means wealthy Americans can now expect to live up to 15 years longer than their poor counterparts, reports in the British medical journal the Lancet have found.

Researchers said these disparities appear to be worsened by the American health system itself, which relies on for-profit insurance companies, and is the most expensive in the world. Their conclusion? Treat healthcare as a human right. ...

All of these health outcomes arrive in the context of widening general inequality. The share of total income going to the top 1% of earners has more than doubled since 1970, making the US more unequal than all but three developed countries: Chile, Mexico and Turkey."

-->The NYT doesn't think it newsworthy that the rich live much longer than the poor due to our dysfunctional medical system. All the news that comforts the 1%.

-----

Democracy Now:
"What’s said on all sides, actually—Israel, Palestinians, international commentary—is that there are two options: either a two-state settlement, in accord with the long-standing international consensus, or else one state, which would be an apartheid state, in which Palestinians wouldn’t have rights, and you could have an anti-apartheid struggle, and Israel would face what’s called the demographic problem—too many non-Jews in a Jewish state. But those are not the two options.

There’s a third option, the one that is actually being implemented—namely, construction of a Greater Israel, which will not have a demographic problem, because they’re excluding the areas of dense Palestinian population, and they’re removing Palestinians slowly from the areas they expect to take over. ... The so-called Area C, where Israel has total control, about 60 percent of the West Bank, is slowly being incorporated into Israel with big infrastructure programs and so on. And this program is just taking place right before our eyes. The United States is providing diplomatic, economic and military support for it. It will leave the Palestinians with essentially nothing. There will be a Greater Israel, which will have—which will not face the dread demographic problem." -Noam Chomsky speaking on Democracy Now

-->The NYT would never express this opinion, and very rarely even quotes Chomsky, one our nation's leading intellectuals. If you want to know how Israeli apartheid will work, you will have to read a more reliable source of information on the Middle East. Our newspaper of record spends it's print on selling a new wars to the American public.
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)