Fantasyland Media:

by: fnagel

Thu Jun 25, 2009 at 23:32:59 PM EDT

News fashioned by the people in charge, the corporations and your government. Each week, we cover the stories that are just left out of the US propaganda machine.

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"My primary feeling today is one of grief and despair and an element of anger when I see the destruction perpetrated against innocent people.... Tragically, the international community too often ignores the cries for help and the citizens of Palestine are treated more like animals than like human beings...

The starving of 1.5 million human beings of the necessities of life - never before in history has a large community like this been savaged by bombs and missiles and then denied the means to repair itself...

I feel partially responsible for this as must all Americans and Israelis."
President Jimmy Carter, speaking during his recent visit to Gaza.
http://activistnewsletter.blog...

-->The NY Times, although it did cover Carter's trip, entitles the story, "Carter, in Gaza, Urges Hamas to Meet Demands." Most of these quotes were left out.

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"Israel Radio ran a scoop this morning: poll data showing a sharp drop in Americans' perception that Israel's government seeks peace...

According to the poll, conducted among a rather large sample (800
registered voters) between June 9 and June 11, there has been a 20% drop in the perception of Israel's government as peace seeking. Furthermore, there is a steep decline in the percentage of Americans who say that the U.S. should support Israel. That has dropped from 71% in March 2008 (at the time of the Annapolis process) to only 44% now. Israel Radio reported that the Israel Project confirmed the validity of the poll and the data...

An analysis of the results shows that the largest decrease in support for Israel is among women and Democratic Party voters. Those who commissioned the poll have decided not to publicize it for now because of its negative results regarding Israel."
http://www.peacenow.org

-->Such polls showing declining support for Israel in the US simply aren't deemed newsworthy by the NY Times.

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"A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and Tony Blair before the invasion of Iraq, outlining their intention to go to war without a second United Nations resolution, will be an explosive issue for the official inquiry into the UK's role in toppling Saddam Hussein.

The memo, written on 31 January 2003, almost two months before the invasion and seen by the Observer, confirms that as the two men became increasingly aware UN inspectors would fail to find weapons of mass destruction...

Bush told Blair the US had drawn up a provocative plan 'to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft painted in UN colours over Iraq with fighter cover'. Bush said that if Saddam fired at the planes this would put the Iraqi leader in breach of UN resolutions."  
http://www.guardian.co.uk/poli...

-->Bush and Blair planning war crimes before the invasion of Iraq? Thank goodness the NY Times doesn't print upsetting stuff like that.

Fantasyland Media:

by: fnagel

Thu Jun 18, 2009 at 22:41:03 PM EDT

News fashioned by the people in charge, the corporations and your government. Each week, we cover the stories that are just left out of the US propaganda machine.

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"The AMA does not represent me. It is a common misconception that this organization speaks on behalf of most American physicians but that is a misconception with very serious consequences at such a critical time in the healthcare reform debate. So long as the public, the media and our elected officials lump all physicians together as 'the AMA,' then we are guilty by association of a failure of our hippocratic oath to 'first, do no harm.'

In fact, the AMA represents less than one-third of America's physicians and half of those are retired. The American Medical Student Association endorses Universal Healthcare Reform.

The AMA's longstanding opposition to every effort to change healthcare financing, including Medicare in the 1960s, has resulted in decades of needless and countless morbidity and mortality."
CAROL PARIS, MD
http://www.commondreams.org/ne...

-->The NY Times, in describing the AMA's opposition to the single payer healthcare reform option, makes no attempt to inform readers of these common misconceptions.

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"The White House and the Democratic Congressional Leadership are playing a very dirty game in their effort to ram through supplemental funding for the escalating US war in Afghanistan and continued occupation of Iraq. In the crosshairs of the big guns at the White House and on Capitol Hill are anti-war freshmen legislators and the movement to hold those responsible for torture accountable...

In order to block passage, 39 Democrats need to vote against it in the House. As of this writing, 34 reportedly are committed to voting against it. Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake has been doing great coverage of this issue, much of which can be found here. So too has David Swanson at AfterDowningStreet. This does seem to be one issue where phone calls and letters matter-tremendously."
http://www.commondreams.org/vi...

-->But readers of the NY Times are being pretty much kept in the dark about the White House pressures to get antiwar legislators to vote for supplemental war funding. Maurice Hinchey is undecided. The great peace candidate, John Hall, is missing in action and has not come out against the bill. UPDATE: Very few NY representatives voted against the war funding. Hinchey, Hall, and Murphy were among the sellouts.

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"Spain honors International Brigade

If the Spanish ambassador was surprised to see a defiant and elderly fist thrust into the air in the elegant reception room of his Belgrave Square office today, he gave no sign of it.

The 96-year-old hand held in clenched salute belonged to Paddy Cochrane, who, along with six ­others, had travelled to the embassy to receive a Spanish passport as thanks for ­volunteering in the Spanish civil war more than 70 years ago.

The gesture had been prompted by the words of another International ­Brigade veteran, Sam Lesser, who recalled how the communist politician Dolores Ibárruri - La Pasionaria - had promised the foreign fighters in 1938 that they would one day return to find a peaceful, republican Spain.

'We've taken a while but now we've come home,' Lesser, 94, said in ­Spanish. 'We've come home. But there are those of us who did not come home, who sleep under the sun, the soil and the olive trees of Spain.'"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl...

-->This is exactly the type of story the NY Times would never cover. Spanish Civil War? Honor war vets who happened to be Socialists or Communists? Never happen in the good old US media.

Fantasyland Media:

by: fnagel

Thu Jun 11, 2009 at 22:56:25 PM EDT

News fashioned by the people in charge, the corporations and your government. Each week, we cover the stories that are just left out of the US propaganda machine.

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"WASHINGTON - Representative Jane Harman (D-CA) introduced two bills last night to stop the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) use of satellite imagery from intelligence agencies for homeland security and law enforcement purposes. The legislation, H.R. 2703 and 2704, will prohibit funding for and close the DHS' National Application Office (NAO). This troubled office is responsible for a domestic surveillance program that the American Civil Liberties Union had long opposed in testimony and letters to Congress over the past two years.

The following can be attributed to Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office:

'Today, Representative Harman put the brakes on the drift towards the surveillance society. Thanks to Representative Harman's leadership, Congress will take the first step toward shutting down the National Application Office and its ill-conceived domestic surveillance program. This legislation would restrain domestic use of spy satellites while allowing the Department of Interior's program to continue using its imagery in a responsible way. With billions of dollars going to build satellites that see more than the human eye, the idea of turning these lenses on Americans should raise alarm bells for everyone.'"
http://www.commondreams.org/ne...

-->The NY Times is so untroubled by domestic surveillance that it didn't even run this story.

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"HELENA - Maryland psychiatrist Carol Paris is calling herself one of the "Baucus 13" these days - in other words, one of the 13 doctors, nurses and activists arrested last month while protesting before a Washington, D.C., health reform hearing chaired by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.

On Friday, Paris was in Montana, doing what got her arrested: urging Baucus, Congress and the president to consider a single-payer system of national health insurance that covers all citizens equally....

Paris's arrest was covered prominently by her local newspaper but received little or no attention from national news outlets.

She said she's not surprised: 'The mainstream, national media have blacked us out as much as Congress has. ... I would say they're following the lead of the president and Congress and simply not giving us a voice.'
http://www.commondreams.org/he...

-->True to form, the NY Times never informed its readers that physicians across the country were doing civil disobedience to protest the lack of single payer in any of the government's plans for healthcare reform. All the news that is fit for insurance companies.

Fantasyland Media:

by: fnagel

Thu Jun 04, 2009 at 20:24:36 PM EDT

News fashioned by the people in charge, the corporations and your government. Each week, we cover the stories that are just left out of the US propaganda machine.

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"Obama's Support for the New Graham-Lieberman Secrecy Law...

The White House is actively supporting a new bill jointly sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman -- called The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 -- that literally has no purpose other than to allow the government to suppress any 'photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States.' As long as the Defense Secretary certifies -- with no review possible -- that disclosure would 'endanger' American citizens or our troops, then the photographs can be suppressed even if FOIA requires disclosure.  The certification lasts 3 years and can be renewed indefinitely.  The Senate passed the bill as an amendment last week."
http://www.commondreams.org/vi...

-->Obama administration covering up US war crimes? The NY Times didn't see fit to publish this story. Nor did it cover the specifics of some of these photos: rape and sexual abuse. For that you would have to go to The Telegraph/UK:
http://www.commondreams.org/he...

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"Obama Has 250,000 'Contractors' in Iraq and Afghan Wars, Increases Number of Mercenaries.

Newly released Pentagon statistics show that in both Iraq and Afghanistan the number of armed contractors is rising. The DoD says it sees ,similar dependence on contractors in future.'

...According to new statistics released by the Pentagon, with Barack Obama as commander in chief, there has been a 23% increase in the number of 'Private Security Contractors' working for the Department of Defense in Iraq in the second quarter of 2009 and a 29% increase in Afghanistan, which 'correlates to the build up of forces' in the country. These numbers relate explicitly to DoD security contractors. Companies like Blackwater and its successor Triple Canopy work on State Department contracts and it is unclear if these contractors are included in the over-all statistics. This means, the number of individual 'security' contractors could be quite higher, as could the scope of their expansion.

Overall, contractors (armed and unarmed) now make up approximately 50% of  the 'total force in Centcom AOR [Area of Responsibility].' This means there are a whopping 242,657 contractors working on these two US wars."
http://www.commondreams.org/he...

-->No report in the NY Times or in mainstream media that the US will continue occupying Iraq using hundreds of thousands of mercenaries. Obama is ending the Iraq war, remember?

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"Navy Vet Honored, Foiled Israeli Attack...

The first thing the Israeli aircraft bombed and strafed were the Liberty's communications antennae and other equipment. They succeeded in destroying all the antennae that were functional. One antenna on the port side, though, had been out of commission and had escaped damage...

The deck was still being strafed, but Halbardier grabbed a reel of cable, ran out onto the deck, and attached new cable to the antenna so a radioman could get an SOS out to the 6th fleet in the Mediterranean.

'Mayday' went out; almost immediately the Israeli aircraft and torpedo ships broke off the attack and went back to base; the Israeli government sent a quick apology to Washington for its unfortunate 'mistake;' and President Johnson issued orders to everyone to make believe the Israelis were telling the truth - or at least to remain silent.

To their discredit, top Navy brass went along, and the Liberty survivors were threatened with court martial and prison if they so much as mentioned to their wives what had actually happened. They were enjoined as well from discussing it with one another."
http://www.commondreams.org/vi...

-->No mainstream media has ever dared to tell the story of the June 8, 1967 deliberate attack on the US Liberty by Israeli planes and ships. Two-thirds of the Liberty crew of 294 were killed or wounded that day. All hushed up by the power of the Israeli lobby. If you don't believe that the US media is censored when it comes to Israel, do a little research on the USS Liberty.

Fantasyland Media:

by: fnagel

Thu Apr 30, 2009 at 20:49:23 PM EDT

News fashioned by the people in charge, the corporations and your government. Each week, we cover the stories that are just left out of the US propaganda machine.

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"On April 24th, an Air France flight from Paris to Mexico had to make an unscheduled stop in Martinique when US air traffic controllers notified the jet that it would not be receiving permission to fly over US airspace. The plane was not en route to the US, just passing over some of it. On board the plane was Colombian Journalist Hernando Calvo Ospina, who works for the French left-wing journal Le Monde Diplomatique and wrote about US involvement in Latin America. Ospina and his publisher said they will sue for compensation.

What makes the whole incident even more interesting is that Air France had only sent its passenger manifest to the Mexicans, but now it is clear that Mexico shares this information with the United States.

Hernando Calvo Ospina has written articles about the United States involvement in Latin America, and is currently writing a book about he CIA. The exact reason for him being on the terrorist watch list is unknown, and we'll probably never know what criteria are used for adding people to it. Air France is considering asking the United States for compensation."
http://progreso-weekly.com/ind...

--->The NY Times would never reveal the hubris of the US empire by printing a story like this. How many countries do US planes fly over every day? And what if those countries didn't like what some US passengers were writing in American newspapers? But this is how the rest of the world sees us, in all our imperial ugliness.

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"BigAg Ticked at Michelle Obama's Organic Garden...

Michelle Obama's decision to make her new White House vegetable garden entirely organic has angered America's powerful agribusiness lobby who are urging the First Lady to consider the use of appropriate 'crop protection products.'

Mrs Obama started work on the kitchen garden with a gang of schoolchildren last month. Media coverage of the first White House food plot since Eleanor Roosevelt 'dug for victory' in the Second World War garnered media coverage across the world.

But to the consternation of Big Ag, Mrs Obama has said the project will not use chemical products to tackle pests or give her plants a boost, the Times reports.

Shortly after the digging began, Mrs Obama received a letter from the Mid-America CropLife Association (MACA), which represents the companies producing the pesticides and fertilizers underpinning 'conventional' American agriculture, the paper said."

--->Imagine the presumption of power that corporations have in the US, telling the First Lady to use chemicals in her organic garden! But most Americans don't have to think too much about that, since stories like this are only carried in the foreign press. This one was in the Telegraph in UK.
http://www.commondreams.org/he...

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"Clark University canceled a campus talk scheduled for later this month by controversial Holocaust scholar Norman Finkelstein, saying his presence 'would invite controversy and not dialogue or understanding,' and would conflict with a similar event scheduled around the same time.

The Clark University Students for Palestinian Rights, a student-run group on the Worcester campus, had arranged for Finkelstein to speak...

The dispute came to the attention of college administrators after Hillel, a Jewish campus group, objected to Finkelstein's scheduled appearance...

Finkelstein asserted in his book 'Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History' that Israel uses accusations of anti-Semitism to deflect criticism, a response to Dershowitz's book 'The Case for Israel.'"
http://www.boston.com/news/edu...

--->CounterPunch Magazine calls it the "new campus McCarthyism." In a recent article, this magazine identifies several faculty members who have been targeted as "anti-Israel" and simply blacklisted from speaking or denied tenure. These are smear campaigns orchestrated by the right wing Israeli lobby, a clear threat to academic freedom on today's college campuses. No mention of the new campus McCarthyism, however, in the NY Times. UPDATE: Clark University relented and Dr. Finkelstein was allowed to speak.

Fantasyland Media:

by: fnagel

Thu Apr 23, 2009 at 23:29:51 PM EDT

News fashioned by the people in charge, the corporations and your government. Each week, we cover the stories that are just left out of the US propaganda machine.

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"Palestinians get less water than Israel-World Bank.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israelis have access to more than four times more water than do Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the World Bank said in a report on Monday...

Improving conditions for Palestinians is central to peace strategies sponsored by the United States.

Peace talks launched in 2007 have stalled and the new right-leaning Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has so far balked at committing to restart them.

Efforts have been stymied by Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and a Palestinian schism over the takeover of Gaza by the Islamist group Hamas."
http://www.reuters.com/article...

--->World Bank accusing Israel of taking water from Palestinians? It never happened if you get your news about Israel from the NY Times. The story was left out.

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"60 drone hits kill 14 al-Qaeda men, 687 civilians

Of the 60 cross-border predator strikes carried out by the Afghanistan-based American drones in Pakistan between January 14, 2006 and April 8, 2009, only 10 were able to hit their actual targets, killing 14 wanted al-Qaeda
leaders, (and) 687 innocent Pakistani civilians.

The success percentage of the US predator strikes thus comes to not more than six per cent."
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_...

--->US forces slaughtering a lot of civilians, this time in Pakistan. No need to mention such things in our newspaper of record, the NY Times. Making the empire look bad is not considered all the news that's fit to print.

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C.I.A. interrogators used waterboarding, the near-drowning technique that top Obama administration officials have described as illegal torture, 266 times on two key prisoners from Al Qaeda, far more than had been previously reported.

The C.I.A. officers used waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002 against Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum. Abu Zubaydah has been described as a Qaeda operative.

A former C.I.A. officer, John Kiriakou, told ABC News and other news media organizations in 2007 that Abu Zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew.

--->We will congratulate the NY Times for covering this story. Of course, www.firedoglake.com had broken the story several days before, putting pressure on major print media in the US. One obvious question was not brought up by the NY Times article. If Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded for only 35 seconds "before agreeing to tell everything he know," why on earth was he waterboarded another 82 times? Maybe such questions just aren't brought up in the heart of the empire. We will put a link on ClassWars.org to the FireDogLake petition requesting a special prosecutor to investigate the torture of detainees.
http://action.firedoglake.com/...

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This week's booby prize for reporting goes to PBS's Frontline documentary called "Sick Across America." A whole hour spent on the nation's healthcare crisis, and not one mention of the single payer option that 68% of Americans would prefer. Public broadcasting, corporate controlled.

Fantasyland Media:

by: fnagel

Fri Apr 17, 2009 at 09:23:34 AM EDT

News fashioned by the people in charge, the corporations and your government. Each week, we cover the stories that are just left out of the US propaganda machine.

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Scott Simon, that jocular and insipid purveyor of Saturday morning good cheer on NPR outdid himself this week. He interviewed two former ambassadors to Cuba on the wisdom of ending the US embargo.

Although the ambassadors, one from the Clinton era and one from the Bush, differed on the subject, there is one thing that all three agreed on: that US decisions regarding Cuba for the last half century were all about what was "best" for the Cuban people.

As their reasoning went, Castro locked people in prisons and oppressed his own population, so the US embargo was justified in the past. No question of that. But what of all the countries in the world that the US does trade with? Dozens of dictators and violent thugs who all oppress their populations much more than Castro ever did? Or take Battista, Cuba's former dictator. His murderous and corrupt regime had the full support of the US government, until he was overthrown by the Cuban Revolution.

None of this can be mentioned by the two former ambassadors or by Scott Simon. It is almost as if NPR news is a morality play. A soap opera in fact, so divorced from reality that its reporters may as well be actors. They read their lines and go home. And the biggest lie of all? The benevolence of US foreign. If you, dear listener, can believe that one, well, I guess NPR's Weekend Edition might just be for you.

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"Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us...

It's complicated because the guys doing it are not murderers, and yet they are committing what we would normally call murder. It's a very complicated issue. Because they are young men that went into the Special Forces. The Delta Forces you've heard about. Navy Seal teams. Highly specialized...

In many cases, they were the best and the brightest. Really, no exaggerations. Really fine guys that went in to do the kind of necessary jobs that they think you need to do to protect America."
-Seymour Hersch, one of America's best and most experienced journalists
http://www.alternet.org/rights...

--->The NY Times has covered several "assassination" stories in the last year. On John Kennedy, MLK, and Hitler. Nothing on Symour Hersh's research into the dark side of American imperialism.

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"Amnesty International revealed that on March 22 the United States delivered more than 300 containers of munitions to Israel.

This weapons delivery occurred despite the fact that Amnesty International reports that the United States is reviewing Israel's misuse of U.S. weapons during 'Operation Cast Lead' in violation of the Arms Export Control Act.

During its December-January war on the occupied Gaza Strip, Israel killed 1,417 Palestinians, of whom 926 were civilians and 255 were non-combatant police officers, according to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights."
-Amnesty International website:
http://salsa.democracyinaction...

--->We here at Activist Radio don't have to tell you whether the NY Times reported this story. The US and Israel working together to commit war crimes in the Middle East? Such stories will never be printed until we actually have freedom of press in this country.

Fantasyland Media:

by: fnagel

Thu Apr 09, 2009 at 23:32:02 PM EDT

News fashioned by the people in charge, the corporations and your government. Each week, we cover the stories that are just left out of the US propaganda machine.

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"Israel created 'terror without mercy' in Gaza

The Israeli military attacked civilians and medics and delayed - sometimes for hours - the evacuation of the injured during the January war in Gaza, according to an independent fact-finding mission commissioned by Israeli and Palestinian medical human rights groups.

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and the Palestinian Medical Relief Society yesterday said their findings showed Israel's military committed serious violations of international humanitarian law. In their 92-page report, compiled by five senior health experts from across the world, they documented several specific attacks, with interviews from 44 separate witnesses."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl...

--->Instead of running this story, the NY Times printed the conclusions of the Israeli military, that reports of human rights abuses in Gaza were based "on hearsay and not supported by specific personal knowledge." Not any knowledge that the NY Times will report anyway.

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NPR is doing a three part series on the Wall in the West Bank. Monday's report was a depressing start.

Never mentioned was the fact that the Wall was built, for the most part, on Palestinian land. A half million illegal Settlers don't exist either. The wall, according to NPR was built to stop suicide bombers, and "it works," despite the suffering of some Palestinians.

So that you don't miss the point, NPR takes you back to a suicide bombing eight years ago. An Israeli doctor repeats the mantra. Without the wall, things would be this bad again.

It is time that NPR learned to do honest reporting rather than repeat Israeli justifications for its policy of racial apartheid.

--->To the NY Times, NPR's series on the West Bank is: "...is everything you would expect from NPR: intelligent, informative and polished..." In fact, it is just like the reporting that the NY Times does on Israel: highly polished propaganda.

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"Thousands Flee Bomb Attacks by US Drones

AMERICAN drone attacks on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan are causing a massive humanitarian emergency, Pakistani officials claimed after a new attack yesterday killed 13 people.

The dead and injured included foreign militants, but women and children were also killed when two missiles hit a house in the village of Data Khel, near the Afghan border, according to local officials.

As many as 1m people have fled their homes in the Tribal Areas to escape attacks by the unmanned spy planes as well as bombings by the Pakistani army."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t...

--->Ah, bringing democracy to yet another country in the Middle East. The NY Times, true to form, is talking a lot about the need for MORE US involvement in Pakistan. In the NY Times Sunday Magazine, Pakistan is "becoming the most dangerous failed state in the world." Count on the NY Times to cheerlead any new US military aggression in the region.  

Fantasyland Media:

by: fnagel

Thu Apr 02, 2009 at 21:10:41 PM EDT

News fashioned by the people in charge, the corporations and your government. Each week, we cover the stories that are just left out of the US propaganda machine.

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"IDF combat soldiers and officers from the Gaza operation are now beginning to confirm what our enemies have been saying for months. They tell us that, contrary to our own beliefs and expectations, combat norms in Gaza exhibited a blatant disregard for Palestinian civilians. Their comments were not a left-wing leak, but emerged from a frank discussion at pre-army training institute. As Amos Harel writes: 'The soldiers are not lying, for the simple reason they have no reason to.'

...Yet we still must ask ourselves: When Jews around the world literally endangered themselves marching in solidarity rallies in January this year, was this what they had in mind? Were Jewish communities and individuals, and of course the vast majority of the  Israeli public, were we all in favor of a lax attitude to civilian casualties? Or did not we all take comfort in the IDF's high moral standards?

Searching for cold comfort, we can nevertheless pride ourselves on the vibrant, dynamic, and brutally honest democracy of Israel. It is unlikely that issues such as these are exposed or ever debated in the countries of Israel's enemies..."
http://makom.haaretz.com/topic...

--->But what about the dishonesty of Israel's supposed friends? Ethan Bronner, The NY Times' chief propagandist for Israeli militarism, had this to report last weekend: "'When we entered houses, we actually cleaned up the place,' said Yishai Goldflam, 32, a religiously observant film student in Jerusalem...'There are always idiots who do immoral things. But they don't represent the majority. I remember once when a soldier wanted to take a Coke from a store, and he was stopped by his fellow soldiers because it was the wrong thing to do.'

300 plus children dead in Gaza, and the NY Times is talking about an Israeli soldier returning a Coke. No "brutally honest democracy" in sight in the good old USA.

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"Protesters mark Iraq war anniversary across U.S... Although participation is shrinking, anti-war protestors still marked the sixth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war across the country on Thursday.

A group of war veterans made a modest protest near the White House in the morning. Known as 'Iraq Veterans Against the War,' the group said it would hold a three-day vigil outside the White House to call for ending 'occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan.'

Adam Kokesh, who served in Iraq, was critical of President Barack Obama's Iraq and Afghanistan policies. 'Relabeling the remaining forces in Iraq 'non-combat troops' will not change the fact that these occupations are being perpetuated to maintain a criminal empire,' he said."
http://news.xinhuanet.com/engl...

--->Compare this story in China View with its eight photographs and interviews of Iraqi War Vets to the coverage in the NY Times. Coverage? One must read a Chinese newspaper to find out about last weeks demonstrations against the war. Demonstrations that took place all across the US.

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"Human Rights Watch report claims Israel committed war crimes in its use of air-burst white phosphorus artillery shells

'Israel's military fired white phosphorus over crowded areas of Gaza repeatedly and indiscriminately in its three-week war, killing and injuring civilians and committing war crimes,' Human Rights Watch said today.

In a 71-page report, the rights group said the repeated use of air-burst white phosphorus artillery shells in populated areas of Gaza was not incidental or accidental, but revealed 'a pattern or policy of conduct.'

It said the Israeli military used white phosphorus in a 'deliberate or reckless' way..."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl...

--->Rather than covering this story, Ethan Bronner of the NY Times gives it one sentence, buried in an article that disputes Israeli soldiers' accounts of committing war crimes in Gaza. I wonder if Israeli citizens would put up with this level of dishonesty from their own media?

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"Israeli soldiers routinely and intentionally put children in harm's way during their 22-day offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza, according to a United Nations report made public Monday.

The report said a working group had documented and verified reports of violations 'too numerous to list.'"
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WO...

---> The CNN World account cited numerous examples of the IDF's use of children as human shields. CNN World, by the way, is far superior to the CNN we get in the US. Readers in other nations would never put up with the censorship imposed on the US public. This story was buried in a NY Times report on Netanyahu. It got one line.  

Fantasyland Media:

by: fnagel

Thu Mar 26, 2009 at 23:18:56 PM EDT

News fashioned by the people in charge, the corporations and your government. Each week, we cover the stories that are just left out of the US propaganda machine.

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"Now testimony is emerging from within the ranks of soldiers and officers alleging a permissive attitude toward the killing of civilians and reckless destruction of property that is sure to inflame the domestic and international debate about the army's conduct in Gaza.

On Thursday, the military's chief advocate general ordered an investigation into a soldier's account of a sniper killing a woman and her two children who walked too close to a designated no-go area by mistake, and another account of a sharpshooter who killed an elderly woman who came within 100 yards of a commandeered house.

When asked why that elderly woman was killed, a squad commander was quoted as saying: 'What's great about Gaza - you see a person on a path, he doesn't have to be armed, you can simply shoot him.'"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03...

---> We at Activist Radio praise the NY Times for covering a story that has gotten worldwide attention. Of course, that is one of the reasons that the NY Times may have printed it. It was too big to avoid.

But we have to contrast this story of Israeli troops revealing war crimes in Gaza with the "Winter Soldier Testimony" given by hundreds of US Iraq War veterans in DC. The event took place last March. It again received worldwide coverage, but with one important exception. It received no coverage in the mainstream US media.

So does Israel have a freer press than the US? The invasion of Gaza killed over 1,000 and stories of Israeli vets' admissions appear two months later. The US has been directly or indirectly responsible for a million deaths in Iraq. Yet US vets' stories of wartime atrocities are still taboo, and not released to the American public. Amazing the government control of the US press.

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"Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription 'Better use Durex,' next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, '1 shot, 2 kills.' A 'graduation' shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, 'No matter how it begins, we'll put an end to it.'"
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/s...

--->This story is even more damning than the previous one. Both stories were first carried by Haaretz, Israel's leading progressive newspaper. Of course, the NY Times couldn't carry this one. There are simply limits to have much the NY Times can reveal about Israeli human rights abuses.

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"The Guardian has compiled detailed evidence of alleged war crimes committed by Israel during the 23-day offensive against Gaza earlier this year, involving the use of Palestinian children as human shields, the targeting of medics and hospitals, and drone aircraft firing on civilians.

Three Guardian films based on a month-long investigation, add weight to calls this week for a full inquiry into the events surrounding Operation Cast Lead, which was aimed at Hamas but left about 1,400 Palestinians dead, including up to 300 children."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl...

--->You can be sure that the NY Times will not be undertaking such a study, despite the fact that the US funded and provided the weapons used to kill Palestinians in Gaza.