Thursday, January 30, 2020

Common Dreams:
"Establishment Democrats Panic at Possibility Bernie Sanders Could Be 2020 Nominee. 'The knives are out.'

As Sen. Bernie Sanders continues to rise in polls for early primary states Iowa and New Hampshire and nationally, the Democratic establishment is turning to pleading with voters, attacking the Vermont lawmaker, and plotting a coordinated strike against the campaign as possible avenues of pushback. 

According to the Daily Beast's reporting Monday, those knives may be wielded by the Democratic Majority for Israel, a group run by pollster Mark Mellman. The group has bought tens of thousands of dollars in ads in Iowa, the Beast reported."

-->The knives are out for Bernie, especially from the Israel Lobby. But the NYT didn't report that. Our newspaper of record has been bashing Bernie for the last several years, eager to do the dirty work for the corporate Democrats and the right wing Zionists. 

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Common Dreams:
"Medicare for All 'Is What Patients Need': New Harvard Study Shows Even Those With Private Insurance Can't Afford Care. 'When so many people can't get the care they need even when they have insurance coverage, it says that insurance is not doing what it is supposed to do: ensure that healthcare is affordable when you need it.'

The for-profit U.S. healthcare system is so broken that a growing number of people who are fortunate enough to have private insurance coverage are still unable to afford doctor visits and other essential services due to soaring costs—leaving a larger number of Americans with more unmet medical needs today than there were two decades ago.

That's a central finding of a new study by Harvard University researchers published Monday in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA Internal Medicine, examining 20 years of government data between 1998 and 2017."

-->The NYT didn't report this story. The interests of insurance, pharmaceutical, and private healthcare companies always comes first.

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Common Dreams:
"Denouncing Trump Plan as 'Unacceptable,' Sanders Declares It Is Time to 'End the Israeli Occupation.' 'Trump's so-called 'peace deal,' warned the White House hopeful, 'will only perpetuate the conflict, and undermine the security interests of Americans, Israelis, and Palestinians.' ...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), one of Sanders' rivals in the primary race, tweeted Tuesday that 'Trump's 'peace plan' is a rubber stamp for annexation and offers no chance for a real Palestinian state.'

'Releasing a plan without negotiating with Palestinians isn't diplomacy, it's a sham,' Warren added. 'I will oppose unilateral annexation in any form—and reverse any policy that supports it.' "

-->The NYT likes to omit any criticism of Israeli apartheid, and it didn't print this story either.

Thursday, January 23, 2020

Common Dreams:
"In Historic Shift, Second Largest Physicians Group in US Has New Prescription: It's Medicare for All. 'Major changes are needed,' declares the 159,000-member American College of Physicians, 'to a system that costs too much, leaves too many behind, and delivers too little.'

The fight for Medicare for All received a two-handed boost from tens of thousands of doctors on Monday when the American College of Physicians—in a move described as a 'seachange for the medical professions'—officially endorsed a single-payer system as among only one of two possible ways to improve the nation's healthcare woes.

Representing 159,000 doctors of internal medicine nationwide, the ACP is the largest medical specialty society and second-largest physician group in the country overall after the American Medical Association (AMA)."

-->The NYT doesn't like "sea changes" when it comes to their favorite corporate interests: the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, and the private healthcare providers. It didn't cover this story. 

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The Guardian UK:
"A British mercenary company established by former SAS veterans conducted clandestine and highly controversial operations around the world, with successive British governments either unwilling or unable to rein it in, a new book reveals.

Keenie Meenie Services (KMS) was one of Britain’s first mercenary companies, believed to have taken its name from Arabic slang for 'undercover'. It was set up in the 1970s and recruited veterans battle-hardened by the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Operation Storm in Oman – when Anglo Omani forces quashed an uprising – and the 1980 siege of London’s Iranian embassy. ..

In Nicaragua, one of the company’s directors worked with US-backed Contra rebels. Documents seized from Colonel Oliver North, who oversaw the funding of US operations in Nicaragua, confirmed KMS’s involvement in the country."

-->War crimes committed by private corporations were being paid for by both US and British governments. The US media doesn't cover war crimes unless given the go ahead by the Pentagon, even though the KMS was closed down in the early 1990s. This story was ignored by virtually all US mainstream media.

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The Guardian UK:
"Targeted assassinations via drone strikes, such as the killing of Iran’s Qassem Suleimani, have become progressively normalised with the help of official secrecy, government propaganda and some uncritical press coverage, according to a report.

In The Frame, published by pressure group Drone Wars, concludes that 'an easy narrative for targeted killing' had been constructed by the UK and the US during the conflict with Islamic State, where several high-profile individuals were killed by drones and the existence of a British 'kill list' emerged.

Chris Cole, the director of Drone Wars, said it helped reinforce the justifications for the US assassination of Suleimani, the leader of the Quds Force in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, earlier this month."

-->Trump has said the legal justifications for drone assassinations "don't really matter." They don't seem to matter for the NYT either, which didn't report this story. 

Wednesday, January 15, 2020

Mondoweiss:
"GOP lawmakers are using recent attacks on Jews as an excuse to push anti-BDS, pro-Israel curriculum in public schools. 

On January 9, Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC) introduced H. Res. 782. The legislation, which is cosponsored by Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) and David Kustoff (R-TN), would encourage 'public schools to design and teach a curriculum about the history of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, and the vital and historic importance of the Jewish State of Israel.' The bill also cites the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which it claims is spreading 'rampant anti-Semitism' across college campuses."

-->It may soon be illegal to criticize apartheid Israel, but the NYT has no stomach for stories about the new McCarthyism in the nation's schools and colleges. It didn't cover this impending legislation.

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FAIR:
"For Western Press, the Only Coup in Venezuela Is Against Guaidó. The international corporate media have entered crisis mode following the replacement of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó as head of the country’s National Assembly.

In headline after headline, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro 'Takes Over' (NBC, 1/6/20), 'Claims Control of' (New York Times, 1/5/20; CNBC, 1/6/20) or 'Seizes' (Reuters, 1/5/20; NPR, 1/6/20) parliament, and 'Ousts' Guaidó (Wall Street Journal, 1/5/20) in the process."

-->There is no Fourth Estate when it comes to reporting about foreign leaders the US is trying to overthrow. The mainstream media is as single minded about delivering Pentagon propaganda as they were in the 1950s. The empire's news has always been fake.

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The Guardian UK:
"A group of US environmental activists engaged in non-violent civil disobedience targeting the oil industry have been listed in internal Department of Homeland Security documents as 'extremists' and some of its members listed alongside white nationalists and mass killers, documents obtained by the Guardian reveal. ...

The document also listed two of the [environmental] group’s members alongside violent white supremacists and other extremists who have engaged in mass killings, including the man behind the racist 2015 slaying of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina."

-->Strange to say, the NYT reported a story about British Police doing pretty much the same thing in a story entitled, "British Police Said Watch Out for Extremists — Like Climate Activists." No mention that the US Department of Homeland Security had vilified environmentalists much more extensively. 

Thursday, January 09, 2020

The Guardian UK:
"Suleimani killing [is] the latest in a long, grim line of US assassination efforts.
There has been no shortage of US attempts to remove foreign adversaries through highly dubious legal or ethical means.

The US government is no stranger to the dark arts of political assassinations. Over the decades it has deployed elaborate techniques against its foes, from dispatching a chemist armed with lethal poison to try to take out Congo’s Patrice Lumumba in the 1960s to planting poison pills (equally unsuccessfully) in the Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s food.

But the killing of Gen Qassem Suleimani, the leader of Iran’s elite military Quds force, was in a class all its own. Its uniqueness lay not so much in its method – what difference does it make to the victim if they are eviscerated by aerial drone like Suleimani, or executed following a CIA-backed coup, as was Iraq’s ruler in 1963, Abdul Karim Kassem? – but in the brazenness of its execution and the apparently total disregard for either legal niceties or human consequences."

-->How is it that a foreign newspaper can tell it like it is, and the NYT can never connect the dots? The empire is a lawless killer and has been that way since WWW II.

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The Guardian UK:
"A top United Nations official has accused the US government of using torture against Chelsea Manning, the former army intelligence analyst currently jailed in the US over her refusal to testify against WikiLeaks.

Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur on torture, made the charge in a letter sent in November but only released on Tuesday.

In the missive, Melzer says Manning is being subjected to 'an open-ended, progressively severe measure of coercion fulfilling all the constitutive elements of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.' ”

-->Chelsea Manning tortured because she revealed US war crimes in Iraq. How refreshing to read that, even if it is in a foreign newspaper. Forget the US media when it comes to telling the truth about the US empire. 

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Mondoweiss:
"Report: In 2019 Israel arrested over 5,500 Palestinians, including 889 children. ... The Palestinian prisoners’ and human rights institutions, Palestinian Prisoners’ Society, Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, Prisoners’ Affairs Commission, indicate that the number of Palestinian prisoners and detainees in occupation prisons to the current date is approximately 5000, including 40 women, approximately 200 child detainees and 450 Palestinians held in administrative detention. ...

During 2019, Israeli occupation forces continued to use torture as a tool of revenge and coercion against the prisoners to strip them of their human dignity and, most importantly, coerce them to give confessions during the interrogation period. According to investigation, 95% of detainees are subjected to torture, from the moment of arrest, through interrogation or even after transferring them to detention centers."

-->Want some truth about Israel's apartheid barbarism? Don't read the US mainstream media. Try alternative media like Mondoweiss.

Wednesday, January 01, 2020

FAIR:
"In an earlier article (FAIR.org, 12/18/19) regarding the Washington Post’s Afghanistan Papers (12/9/19), I discussed how the Post’s exposé also exposed the Post as one of the primary vehicles US officials use to spread their lies, and why it’s impossible for corporate media outlets like the Post to raise more substantive questions about the deceptive nature of US foreign policy
.
But those aren’t the only significant takeaways. The Afghanistan Papers should also be considered an excellent case study of contemporary colonial propaganda, and yet another example of corporate media criticizing US wars without opposing US imperialism.

Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s famous analysis of media coverage of the Vietnam War, in Manufacturing Consent, found that questions of the invasion’s 'tactics and costs'—to the US—dominated the debate, because the media absorbed the framework of government propaganda regarding the 'necessity' of military intervention, the 'righteousness of the American cause' and the US’s 'nobility of intent.' Decades later, Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model of corporate media is still a useful tool in understanding the Post’s Afghanistan Papers."

-->The US empire makes tactical mistakes, but never moral ones. Or so the mainstream media is constantly preaching to the American people. 

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NPR:
"More than 100 Gold Star families are suing several major defense contractors, alleging they made illegal "protection payments" to the Taliban — thereby funding the Taliban's insurgency efforts that killed or wounded thousands of Americans in Afghanistan. ...

'Defendants supported the Taliban for a simple reason: Defendants were all large Western companies with lucrative businesses in post-9/11 Afghanistan, and they all paid the Taliban to refrain from attacking their business interests," the complaint says. "Those protection payments aided and abetted terrorism by directly funding an al-Qaeda-backed Taliban insurgency that killed and injured thousands of Americans.' "

-->Why wouldn't the NYT cover this story? Perhaps it's because our "newspaper of record" doesn't want to expose the criminality of our country's neoliberal wars for profit. 

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Common Dreams:
"'Cutting Social Security Is Murder': Flood of Public Outrage Greets Trump Proposal to Slash Benefits for Hundreds of Thousands. ...

 Those are just a few of the more than 1,700 official comments members of the U.S. public have left on President Donald Trump's proposed Social Security rule change, which could strip lifesaving disability benefits from hundreds of thousands of people.

The proposal received hardly any media attention when it was first published in the Federal Register in November. But recent reporting on the proposed rule change, as well as outrage from progressive Social Security advocates, sparked a flood of public condemnation and calls for the Trump administration to reverse course."

-->Where is the NYT when it comes to reporting this attack on Social Security disability benefits? Why in bed with its Wall Street buddies! It didn't report this story.

Thursday, December 26, 2019

Common Dreams:
"Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer worked behind the scenes through December in the Senate to defeat a bipartisan initiative to curb surprise medical billing, according to a new report Friday which details the lobbying victories won by the for-profit healthcare industry in 2019.

'The success shows how formidable the health-care industry remains.'
Reporting Friday by the Washington Post's Jeff Stein and Yasmeen Abutaleb points to Schumer, a New York Democrat, as a consequential figure in stopping the surprise billing measure from being included in an end-of-year spending bill.

As Common Dreams reported on Tuesday, Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, effectively killed the bill last week by introducing a competing measure and pushing off the legislation until 2020."

-->The NYT reported the bill's failure, but omitted Schumer's role in killing it. Schumer's neoliberal agenda and collusion with big business never make it into print. 

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Common Dreams:
"'Bernie Blackout' Strikes Again? Despite Iowa Poll Average Showing Sanders in Solid 2nd, CNN Uses Old Poll to Show Him in 4th.

After CNN on Monday reportedly twice displayed a six-week-old poll from Iowa showing Bernie Sanders in fourth-place among hopefuls for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination to viewers, ignoring more recent polling showing the Vermont senator climbing to a strong second behind South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, progressives struck back. ... "They had to use a poll over a month old to mis-inform it's audience this morning. We have had over 15 Iowa polls released since then that have Bernie in 1st or 2nd. Still think this is not deliberate?"

The CNN poll wasn't the only instance of perceived bias against the Sanders campaign from the mainstream media, dubbed the "Bernie Blackout" by the senator's supporters."

-->Any real change in the direction of this country will have to overcome the neoliberal media. The NYT is famous for not covering Bernie except when the news is bad. Our supposed "liberal" media is really in bed with the large corporations, just like Trump is. 

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Common Dreams:
"Google co-founder and billionaire Larry Page is the subject of a report Wednesday from tech journal ReCode which shows how the Silicon Valley super-rich use workarounds in managing their private foundations that avoid direct contributions to actual charities. 

Page's Carl Victor Page Memorial Foundation pushed around $400 million in publicly announced Christmastime donations between 2015 and 2017, but none of it reportedly went directly to charity. 'This a very bad look for Larry Page,' tweeted National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy researcher Ryan Schlegel. ...

As a result of the DAF [donor-advised funds] system the money in the funds can remain, untaxed, forever. It's a clever tax workaround that uses the specter of altruism to mask a cold calculation over how to hoard capital."

 -->Billionaires cheating the tax system to hoard even more money. One would think that our "newspaper of record" might cover this story. But no, the NYT has always served the interests of the very rich.

Thursday, December 19, 2019

Global Research:
" 'Progressive leftists' in the U.S., also known as liberals who claim to oppose U.S. Empire but tolerate all of its crimes, cannot be described as anything less than nauseating. Anything short of outright U.S. military invasion or bombing of a country is not worthy of their public condemnation, much less their activism. 

As explained  by the Black Alliance for Peace, 'The silence, lack of visible opposition, and outright support for the coup [in Bolivia] from across the Western world is yet another example of the cross-class white supremacist commitment to the imperialist project.' 

There are many examples of this but the most recent is the U.S. backed coup in Bolivia. The contradictions in liberal justifications for not vehemently opposing what is nothing short of a US backed coup against a popular government can be examined with Bolivia as a case study."

-->When it comes to the crimes of empire, the mainstream media is always out to lunch. And even the Democratic presidential candidates dance their way around the issue. Empire is the core of US foreign policy, and has been since World War II. But one has to read about it in a Canadian Publication. 

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Palestine Is Here:
"We shared with communities across the US that their local police departments, ICE and TSA agents, and even campus security are training in Israel. We have been promoting campaigns nationwide, supporting diverse coalitions – from Boston to LA – working to end these collaborations. This is a major step to demilitarize our cities. Together, we can work towards real security, built through fighting for racial and economic justice and defending our civil rights.

In recent weeks, Israeli security forces conducted waves of arrests of Palestinian students taken from their university campuses in broad daylight and arrested without trial. At the same time, Israel’s Minister of Public Security Gilad Erdan has committed tens of millions of dollars and activated the Mossad, with ties to the CIA, to combat activism for Palestine at US universities putting students here at risk. 

Trump’s new executive order, intended to silence and criminalize advocacy for Palestinian rights, is a serious threat to faculty and students. As US universities collaborate with Israeli institutions complicit in the occupation, they prove again the deep ties between US-Israeli state repression and the necessity of a strong US-Palestinian movement to break them."

-->The mainstream media in the US has reported the friction between our racist President and his directives on freedom of speech on campuses. But It is hard to find a news source that makes the link between these assaults on US colleges and Israel itself. Track US-Israeli State Violence from Palestine to Your City. 

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Common Dreams:
" 'Astonishing' Trump Rule Could Let Banks Classify NFL Stadium Investments as Aid to Poor Communities. The financial institutions would get significant tax breaks for their investments, thanks to the 2017 Republican tax law.

Rule changes proposed by the Trump administration last week could let banks classify investments in professional sports stadiums as aid to the poor, and then give the financial institutions a significant tax break for their efforts.

The changes are part of an Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) plan to overhaul the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which requires banks to invest in low-income communities. Both bank regulators are run by appointees of President Donald Trump."

-->Many of the astonishing abuses of Presidential power by Donald Trump have been covered by the NYT. But economic abuses that benefit the rich and powerful, not so much. Our "newspaper of record" didn't print this story.

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