Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Common Dreams:
"Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Saturday warned the United States not to interfere with a shipment of oil bound for Venezuela after the South American nation said it would provide an armed escort for the tankers.

In a statement posted on his website, Rouhani said the United States had created 'unacceptable conditions' in different parts of the world, but that Iran would 'by no means' be the one to initiate conflict. ...

Venezuela said Wednesday that planes and ships from the nation’s armed forces will escort the tankers in case of any U.S. aggression."

-->Imminent war, but the US media, including the NYT, is not reporting on the confrontation. Our media does not like to highlight how reckless and provocative our military is in the rest of the world. 

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Carnegie Mellon University, School of Computer Science:
"Carnegie Mellon University researchers have discovered that much of the discussion around the pandemic and stay-at-home orders is being fueled by misinformation campaigns that use convincing bots.

To analyze bot activity around the pandemic, CMU researchers since January have collected more than 200 million tweets discussing coronavirus or COVID-19. Of the top 50 influential retweeters, 82% are bots, they found. Of the top 1,000 retweeters, 62% are bots. ...

'Conspiracy theories increase polarization in groups. It’s what many misinformation campaigns aim to do,' Dr Carley [professor in the School of Computer Science] said. 'People have real concerns about health and the economy, and people are preying on that to create divides. ... Spreading conspiracy theories leads to more extreme opinions, which can in turn lead to more extreme behavior and less rational thinking.' "

-->You would think that the widespread use of bots to divide citizens and encourage conspiracy theories would be covered by our "newspaper of record." But the NYT is often missing in action when it comes to reporting on AI manipulation of the internet.  

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Common Dreams:
"New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is facing new criticism after the Associated Press reported Friday that a state directive led to over 4,300 still recovering coronavirus patients being sent to New York's 'already vulnerable nursing homes.'

'It was a death sentence,' tweeted Daniel Choi, a doctor at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell. He called the directive a 'horrendous idea' and 'definitely not something any doctor taking care of nursing home patients would have signed off on.'

The state health department directive, issued March 25, barred nursing homes from requiring patients deemed 'medically stable' from being tested for Covid-19 prior to admission. Cuomo, a Democrat, rescinded the order May 10, but not before thousands of infected patients likely entered nursing homes and contributed to the coronavirus's spread."

-->The NYT has done several stories about the appalling death rate in the state's nursing homes, but criticism of Cuomo is always left out. He has become the darling of the neoliberal Democrats. 

Wednesday, May 20, 2020

Common Dreams:
"Big Oil Taking $1.9 Billion in CARES Act Tax Breaks Aimed at Helping Small Businesses in 'Stealth Bailout' Report. ...

Reporting Friday from Bloomberg News showed that '$1.9 billion in CARES Act tax benefits are being claimed by at least 37 oil companies, service firms, and contractors'—what watchdog group Documented senior researcher Jesse Coleman described as a 'stealth bailout' of the climate-killing industry.

'In the name of small business, we're shoveling out billions of dollars to big corporations and rich guys,'  Steve Rosenthal, a senior fellow with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, told Bloomberg. 

-->This discouraging news was kept from readers of the NYT, a newspaper that always gives Big Oil a break in its reporting.

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Common Dreams:
"Esteemed medical journal The Lancet on Friday took an unusual step towards calling on American voters to remove President Donald Trump from office in November, condemning the Trump administration's 'incoherent' response to the coronavirus pandemic and expressing shock at the CDC's inability to cope with the public health crisis.

The journal's frustration with Trump centered on the president's downplaying of the pandemic and his refusal to coordinate a robust national effort of social distancing, lockdown orders, and a testing regime to stem the Covid-19 outbreak.

'The administration is obsessed with magic bullets—vaccines, new medicines, or a hope that the virus will simply disappear,' wrote the editors. 'But only a steadfast reliance on basic public health principles, like test, trace, and isolate, will see the emergency brought to an end, and this requires an effective national public health agency" ".

-->Why wouldn't this call by one of the most influential medical journals in the world be covered by the NYT? Yes, it gets a one sentence commentary in an opinions piece, but that is hardly sufficient. As much as the NYT hates Trump, our "newspaper of record" thinks it more important to protect America's image in the world. 

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Vice:
"The US Senate has voted to give law enforcement agencies access to web browsing data without a warrant, dramatically expanding the government’s surveillance powers in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The power grab was led by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell as part of a reauthorization of the Patriot Act, which gives federal agencies broad domestic surveillance powers. Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Steve Daines (R-MT) attempted to remove the expanded powers from the bill with a bipartisan amendment.

But in a shock upset, the privacy-preserving amendment fell short by a single vote after several senators who would have voted 'Yes' failed to show up to the session, including Bernie Sanders."

-->The NYT covered this story with the headline: "Senate Approves Surveillance Bill With Sharper Privacy Safeguards." Sharper privacy safeguards? So much for the NYT being interested in web privacy. 

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Common Dreams:
"Public education advocates on Wednesday rejected New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's pledge to work with billionaire entrepreneurs like Microsoft founder Bill Gates to 'reimagine' his state's school systems once the coronavirus pandemic subsides.  ...

Critics including New York State Allies for Public Education, Class Size Matters, and the Parent Coalition for Student Privacy were wary of handing the state's education system over to Gates, who previously launched—among other 'education reform' projects—a $1 billion initiative in three states to improve 'teacher effectiveness' which policy think tank RAND found did 'more harm than good' for students. 

'Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation have promoted one failed educational initiative after another, causing huge disaffection in districts throughout the state,' wrote the three organizations in a letter to the governor. 'Whether that be the high-handed push by the Gates Foundation for the invalid Common Core standards, unreliable teacher evaluation linked to test scores, or privacy-violating data-collection via the corporation known as inBloom Inc., the education of our children has been repeatedly put at risk by their non-evidence based solutions, which were implemented without parent input and despite significant public opposition.' "

-->We have a governor who is so enamored by the billionaires he wants them to help him dismantle public education. Don't the people get any say at all? The NYT wasn't interested in printing this story, although its webpage carried the Reuters article.  

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Common Dreams:
"Five major U.S. corporations that have laid off thousands of workers in recent weeks have simultaneously dished out hundreds of millions of dollars in cash dividends to wealthy shareholders, drawing outrage from Sen. Bernie Sanders and others who say the companies should be using the money to keep people employed.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that manufacturing giant Caterpillar, toolmaker Stanley Black & Decker, clothing company Levi Strauss, office furniture company Steelcase, and World Wrestling Entertainment have paid out a combined $700 million in cash dividends to shareholders while they shutter operations and lay off employees as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to ravage the U.S. economy. ...

[Quoting Sanders] 'Instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on dividends to enrich wealthy shareholders, Caterpillar, Black & Decker, Levi Strauss, and other corporations should be using this money to compensate the thousands of workers they laid off.' "

-->Even Apple got a huge payout from the government and bought back their own stock, giving their shareholders hundreds of millions. But our "newspaper of record" just can't bring itself to cite these ripoffs, much less expose the two top Democrats, Pelosi and Schumer, who resisted efforts to limit what corporations can do with Covid-19 bailout money. 

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Common Dreams:
"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has thrown her support behind a proposal to allow corporate lobbying groups to receive bailout money from a Covid-19 relief program meant for small businesses, a move one critic bluntly described as the 'dumbest political maneuver you could possibly make right now.' ...

Pelosi's support for a lobbyist bailout comes as she is facing pressure from outside progressives, including nurses, to advance a bold Covid-19 stimulus package and stop rubber-stamping piecemeal legislation that provides insufficient relief to frontline workers, the unemployed, and states and localities.
In a blog post on Thursday, David Dayen, executive editor of The American Prospect, offered a scathing assessment of both Pelosi's leadership and the refusal of Congressional Progressive Caucus leaders to raise their voices in dissent."

-->The NYT does not do stories about top Democrats selling out to the corporations, and now even to the various lobbying groups in Washington. Our media promotes the fantasy that our two corporate controlled parties are a functioning democracy. 

Thursday, May 07, 2020

FAIR:
"As the pandemic takes hold around the world and the death toll mounts, journalists wring their hands in despair, as if to say, 'How did this happen? How could the people elect someone they knew would butcher public health and be poorly equipped to deal with any kind of emergency?' ...

Could, for example, the Guardian’s publishing 1,215 articles and op-ed pieces accusing the Labour Party of antisemitism, between 2016 and the December 2019 elections, have anything to do with the fact that tens of thousands of people are now dying due to the Tory’s botched mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic? Did Labour’s actions really warrant this treatment? After all, it is the British political party which is behind 100% of all anti-racism legislation in the modern history of the UK. An independent 2016 study revealed that the Labour Party was not overrun by antisemitism, and polls show that antisemitism within the party significantly declined during Corbyn’s leadership."

-->Yes, Labour was defeated in England by false charges of antisemitism. FAIR points out how implicated the Guardian was in these smear tactics. Read about it in FAIR, because you certainly won't find this story in the US media, which has itself often used unsubstantiated claims of antisemitism to destroy progressive candidates.  

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CounterPunch:
"I am reaching out to you as current official friends and former enemies of Vietnam because I want you to know the truth about what could have been, an alternative and viable path of history that both countries could have trod together for mutual benefit and a more peaceful world.

One milestone that inspired me to write to you at this auspicious moment is the 45th anniversary of the end of what you call the 'Vietnam War' and what the Vietnamese logically know as the American War because it was a war that the US fought on Vietnamese soil.

Tragically, but not surprisingly, based on your history and foreign policy since the late 19th century, you chose the road to war – not once but thrice ..."

-->Read this astonishing letter if you want to understand the Viet Nam War, and American imperialism since that time. Don't bother looking for this letter in the US media, however. The truth about Viet Nam is still being hidden from the American people.

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The Guardian UK:
"Nearly 130 parliamentarians, including former Conservative cabinet ministers, have written to Boris Johnson urging him to impose economic sanctions against Israel if Benjamin Netanyahu’s new coalition government goes ahead with its threat to annex parts of the West Bank.

The letter, signed by the former Tory chairman Lord Patten and the former international development secretary Andrew Mitchell, says annexation would be clearly illegal under international law. ...

They argue 'international law is crystal clear. The acquisition of territory through war is prohibited. The Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 is a recent example where Britain quite properly opposed such acts with appropriate measures, including robust sanctions.' "

-->Reading the NYT, one would never realize how many countries are vehemently opposed to Israel's annexation of the West Bank. But our "newspaper of record" always works hard to protect the image of this apartheid state.




Wednesday, April 29, 2020

Mondoweiss:
"Despite the global coronavirus pandemic, Israel has stepped up its arrest of Palestinian children in the occupied territories, a new report from Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCIP) says. 

According to the report, released on Tuesday, 194 Palestinian children detained in Israeli prisons and detention centers, marking a six percent increase from January. 

Using data released by the Israeli Prison Service (IPS), DCIP found that as of March 31 only 28 percent of Palestinian child detainees were actually serving out sentences, while the rest, over 60 percent of them (117 out of 194) were being held in pretrial custodial detention."

-->No major media in the US covered this story. The apartheid crimes of Israel are always off the table when it comes to our mainstream press.

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Common Dreams:
"Progressives on Monday criticized Whole Foods, the grocery chain owned by Amazon, for using a heat map to track potential union activity at its stores across the U.S.—relying on data around racial diversity, 'loyalty,' and  labor complaints as indicators that affect how the corporation scores the sites.

'This is infuriating but it's also a testament to the urgency and importance of essential workers unionizing,' tweeted The Atlantic's Adam Serwer. ..

As Common Dreams reported on April 15, Whole Foods and Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, has already made $24 billion in 2020 as the pandemic rages around the country and the world."

-->The obscene disparity between the billionaires and working people never gets covered in the corporate controlled media. You have to read about it in FantasyLand Media.

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J Street:
"It is clear that those pushing annexation intend to prevent the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. It is also clear they have no intention of extending citizenship to the millions of Palestinians living inside and between the enclaves annexed by Israel.

The annexationists, therefore, offer a future in which Israel rules over millions of Palestinians without equal rights or protections. That is not democracy. That is not what Israel’s founders envisioned when they drafted a declaration of independence that promised equal rights to all.

Annexation is opposed by a plurality of Israelis and a majority of Palestinians, who understand that it would have disastrous consequences for regional stability, human rights and prospects for a just and sustainable peace."

-->Even J Street, a middle of the road Jewish lobbying group is appalled at what Israel and the US are planning to do: create an apartheid state in the Holy Land. Where have them been for the last 49 years? Where has our media been too?

Wednesday, April 22, 2020

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR):
"Cuba Under Media Attack for Sending Doctors, Not Bombs, to Help Covid-19 Victims. 

As coronavirus ravages the world, Cuba has exhibited disproportionate heroism, deploying medical personnel to at least 14 countries thus far to battle the pandemic—including to Italy, which has been particularly devastated. The response is in keeping with Cuba’s decades-long tradition of 'doctors, not bombs,' which has seen the tiny island nation dispatch tens of thousands of medics across the globe to combat everything from Ebola to more mundane diseases like malaria and tuberculosis. The Cuban approach stands in marked contrast to the modus operandi of the global superpower and Cuba’s primary antagonist, the United States, a country with an established predilection for bombing rather than saving people.

Cuba’s coronavirus performance is a welcome bit of uplifting news in an otherwise mostly dismal international panorama. Lest anyone start feeling too inspired by the idea of humanity, however, sectors of the US corporate media are dutifully standing by to burst the bubble."

-->Our mainstream media is having a field day attacking Cuba for sending doctors abroad to fight the epidemic. But the US media doesn't have much to say about this country's embargo of medical supplies to countries on the Pentagon's hit list, like Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran.

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Common Dreams:
"Analysis Reveals 'Rotten, Un-American Giveaway' GOP Buried in COVID-19 Relief Package to Overwhelmingly Benefit Millionaires. Democratic lawmakers and progressive critics expressed outrage Tuesday after a nonpartisan congressional body found that nearly 82% of benefits from a Republican tax provision in the most recent coronavirus relief package will go to the nation's millionaires and billionaires and cost taxpayers an estimated $90 billion this year alone.

'This analysis shows that while Democrats fought for unemployment insurance and small business relief, a top priority of President Trump and his allies in Congress was another massive tax cut for the wealthy,' [Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse] said in a statement. 'Congress should repeal this rotten, un-American giveaway and use the revenue to help workers battling through this crisis.' "

-->Trillions of dollars going to the richest of Americans never bothers the NYT very much. It didn't report this analysis. 

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Huffington Post:
"WASHINGTON ― President Donald Trump’s campaign is secretly paying one Trump son’s wife and another one’s girlfriend $180,000 a year each through the campaign manager’s private company, according to top Republicans with knowledge of the payments.

Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of eldest son Donald Trump Jr., and Lara Trump, wife of middle son Eric Trump, are each receiving $15,000 a month, according to two GOP sources who are informal White House advisers and who spoke on condition of anonymity.

They were unsure when the payments began but say they are being made by campaign manager Bradley Parscale through his company rather than directly by either the campaign or the party in order to avoid public reporting requirements."

-->This is just routine corruption at the base of our political system. Mainstream media, including the NYT, isn't interested. 

Wednesday, April 15, 2020

The New York Times:
"Childbirth in Venezuela, Where Women's Deaths Are a State Secret. We spent weeks following women inside the country's health care system, which has been crippled by a broken economy overseen by an increasingly authoritarian government."

-->Another long propaganda piece on Venezuela by The NYT. Only once in the entire article does it even mention the crippling blockade and sanctions imposed by the US. Maternity deaths are all supposedly the fault of "a broken economy overseen by an increasingly authoritarian government."

But let's compare Venezuela's maternity deaths to Haiti's, a country whose elected president has been overthrown twice by the CIA. A country completely in the grip of the US corporate interests, like Disney, Polo, J.C.Penney and Walmart. Venezuela had 125 deaths per 100,000 live births, but Haiti had 480. Why doesn't the NYT do a story on maternity deaths there?

Or a story about maternity deaths in the US, where Black women are "six times as likely to die of pregnancy related conditions as white women (ABC Eyewitness News story on Illinois Jan 30, 2020)? Why, that would put the number of Black maternity deaths in the US at much higher than the death rate in Venezuela. The deceit of our state run propaganda machine, our neoliberal NYT! 

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Code Pink:
"On Wednesday, April 7, 2020, the Jerusalem Post broke the story: "US Department of Defense gives 1 million [surgical] masks to IDF for coronavirus use." The shipment, which had arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport the night before, was also described on Twitter by Israeli army radio journalist Tsahi Dabush: 'Credit to US Department of Defense procurement delegates,' he wrote. 

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has described over and over the shortage of medical equipment facing his state and the entire country. Nurses at many U.S. hospitals must stretch one disposable N95 respirator mask throughout an entire work shift — up to 12 hours — because there are simply not enough." 

-->Our mainstream media didn't cover this story. And Cuomo is not likely to object, having shown himself a greater friend to Israel than to his own NY State constituents even as thousands of New Yorkers die of COVID 19.

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Common Dreams:
"Climate advocates are slamming banking interests after a report Thursday revealed that JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Citigroup are planning to take over distressed oil and gas companies assets in the wake of an industry collapse, likely by using new access to federal bailout money included in the coronavirus relief package passed by Congress.

'It's never been more obvious that fossil fuels are a bad investment, and yet rather than following their supposed commitments to climate action, these big banks are doubling down on their toxic investments and getting directly into the fossil fuel business,' Sierra Club campaign representative Ben Cushing said in a statement. 

-->This bailout is going to be worse than in 2008, when the corporations and the very rich showered themselves with taxpayer dollars. 

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