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| Taking a Closer Look at the Stories Ignored by the Corporate Media |
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Archive for the Month of December, 2005.
Viewing ALL NEWS articles 151 through 225 of 508.
- The police can now snatch or shoot anyone, without recourse, to protect the public. Bag-carrying, running and sweating are just a few examples of suspicious behaviour, which could cost you your life in the war against terror, on home soil. If you interfere in these operations, you too will be threatened, like the witnesses to events on AA flight 924, who had pistols aimed at their head by angry air marshals, while Alpizar was being murdered. - The list contains a strict "no fly" section, which requires airline staff to contact police, and a "selectee" section, which requires passengers to undergo further security checks. - Ever thought about the toxins in your sex toys? - Today, inside the corporate media frame, history can be supremely relevant when it focuses on Hussein's torture and genocide. But the historic assistance of the U.S. government and American firms is largely off the subject and beside the point. - Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV. And you think you’re so clever and class less and free. But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see. - ...thousands of children cared for by Homefirst Health Services in metropolitan Chicago have at least two things in common with thousands of Amish children in rural Lancaster: They have never been vaccinated. And they don't have autism. - I’ve talked to three people present for the meeting that day and they all confirm that the President of the United States called the Constitution "a goddamned piece of paper." - America On Line, Microsoft, Yahoo and others are slowly turning the Internet into an information superhighway dominated by barricades, toll booths, off-ramps that lead to dead ends, choke points, and security checks. - While the Iraqi people are struggling to end the U.S. military Occupation and its associated violence, the fate of their food sources and agricultural heritage is being looted behind closed doors. Unless the colonisation of Iraq ends, the U.S. Occupation of Iraq will continue to have lasting and disastrous effects on Iraq's economy and Iraq's ability to feed its people. - The names and licenseplate numbers of about 30 people who protested three years ago in Colorado Springs were put into FBI domestic-terrorism files... - Instead of a requirement that the former Iraqi President’s guilt be proved, there is an assumption of Saddam’s guilt that pervades the American media. And there is a very strong reason for that- It serves as a secondary rationale for the U.S. illegal war on Iraq, with the argument that "no one can say that Iraq isn’t better off without Saddam Hussein." - "This insurgency has got roots, it's got money, and it's got motivation," says a U.S. intelligence official, in an assessment echoed by military officers and insurgent leaders alike. "And the life span of this insurgency could be years." - A military cargo plane attempting an emergency landing Tuesday in Tehran clipped an apartment building and crashed short of the runway, killing at least 115 people, including 78 journalists who were en route to cover military maneuvers in southern Iran. - Forget Iraq’s weapons of mass non-existence, the lies about torture and other facts fixed around policies cooked up in Washington: nothing demonstrates British subservience to the United States quite as blatantly as the theft of Diego Garcia. - The Condor nations were the first to practice the art of rendition. Their prisoners became known as the "disappeared." Today, suspected terrorists who have been rendered by the CIA to other nations such as Jordan, Egypt, Morocco or Romania are known as "ghost detainees." - There have been some interesting recent developments in the CIA's Italian kidnapping caper.
- "Do you realize that the only thing that gives democracy existence is sin? The absence of democracy is perfect obedience to god." - Federal contractors, lobbying companies and outside groups spend almost $1.5 million to sponsor trips for White House employees. - What those like...the Bush White House welcome in this bloodletting is that the "war on terror" has come home. They see in the killing of Rigoberto Alpizar an act that will serve to intimidate the public at large and an affirmation of the unfettered powers of the state and its security forces to act as judge, jury and executioner. - The US has admitted for the first time that it has not given the Red Cross access to all detainees in its custody. - The United Nations investigation into the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri, is beginning to show some cracks: one witness is dead, another is in jail and still another has recanted his testimony with a fantastic story of abduction, drugging and bribery. - By 1953 Operation Mockingbird had a major influence over 25 newspapers and wire agencies, including the New York Times, Time, CBS, Time. Wisner's operations were funded by siphoning of funds intended for the Marshall Plan. Some of this money was used to bribe journalists and publishers." - by Ralph Nader - There are times when unchallenged commercial greed morphs into institutional insanity. I am referring to the overall advertising-saturated, trivialized performance of the media conglomerates' utilization of our public airwaves 24 hours a day and their dominance of the ever-expanding scores of cable channels. - An hour and a half's drive from where Bush stood, the US military ran the notorious School of the Americas from 1946 to 1984, a sinister educational institution that, if it had a motto, might have been "We do torture." It is here in Panama and, later, at the school's new location in Fort Benning, Georgia, where the roots of the current torture scandals can be found. - Nowicki said Bondsteel was "totally out of control," and added: "In truth, we have no idea what goes on in there." - ...fresh evidence shows the UK knew the ingredient it sold to Norway would be subsequently sold on to Israel for nuclear weapons. - Opiates - and cannabis - produced in Afghanistan transit through Iraq before being distributed in Europe. Their consumption is growing in Baghdad and elsewhere...narcotics seem to stubbornly want to surge through the wake of the American Army. - ...Al-waleed bin Talal owns an influential and significant number of voting shares in the company and claims that he forced Fox News to eliminate on-air references to the Muslim role in the recent riots in France. He claimed to have accomplished this by speaking to News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch. - Before he was "elected" (appointed) in 2000, Bush "joked" about dictatorship and said it would be fine and dandy by him so long as he was the dictator. Now we have this authoritarian cretin on record trashing the Constitution and the corporate media does not take note and for obvious reason—the corporate media is owned by the same "free trade" (unhindered depredation) marauders and amoral charlatan neolibs that own the government and just about every whore (politician) in Congress. - No plan to help the poor, racism, intimidation, murder, lies, blockade, slander, mercenaries, corporate profiteering, aid withheld, more racism, military invasion...The aggregate of everything that has been inflicted on New Orleans is an appalling mass crime that continues unabated. - ...the United States, especially in recent years, is increasingly being seen in the world as a lone state, thumbing its diplomatic nose at international pacts on everything from banning the use and production of landmines to curbing global warming. - Most Americans carry cellphones, but many may not know that government agencies can track their movements through the signals emanating from the handset. - There is, simply, a national denial. It’s echoed in the daily press. So the newspapers in my city run big, colorful daily sections on food preparation. In general the media is dramatically disinterested in the poor, and dramatically interested in the rich – the same newspapers carry regular sections on real estate which show baronial homes in Bel Air. - The government wants to postpone the investigation to help its favoured candidate Iyad Allawi, the former prime minister, in the election on 15 December. The money disappeared during his administration. - As wetlands disappear and shorelines are degraded, the Great Lakes are losing their ability to cope with environmental stress and ward off a catastrophic breakdown, scientists said Thursday.
- Two of Greenland's largest glaciers are retreating at an alarming pace, most likely because of climate warming, scientists said Wednesday. The other glacier, Helheim, is retreating at about 7 miles a year — up from 4 miles a year during the same period. - Venezuelan politicians claim that the CIA plotted to kill Hugo Chavez, the president, in an attempt to derail the country's legislative elections on 4 December. - Detained for throwing a tea party...Apprehended for "offensive" T-shirt...Held for shouting "nonsense" at Jack Straw... - "How can the American public understand the gravity of the torture that is currently being committed in our name when the issue is being reported with no reference to the extent to which these crimes against humanity have gone?" - Forty-nine activists who destroyed genetically modified crops have been acquitted of criminal charges in a French court. - Netanyahu, affectionately nicknamed Bibi, tells us if he "succeeds in becoming Israel’s next prime minister … he will not hesitate to order a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program in order to safeguard his nation from annihilation"...not only does Netanyahu take for granted Iran has nuclear weapons (or is about to have them), a less than factual assertion, but he also believes if Iran possesses nukes it will most certainly annihilate Israel. Netanyahu would have us believe Iran is not only genocidal and insane, but suicidal as well. - The media center in Fayetteville, N.C., would be the envy of any global communications company. The center is not part of a news organization, but a military operation, and those writers and producers are soldiers. The 1,200-strong psychological operations unit based at Fort Bragg turns out what its officers call "truthful messages" to support the United States government's objectives... - Binyam Mohammed, 27, says he spent nearly three years in the CIA's network of 'black sites'. In Morocco he claims he underwent the strappado torture of being hung for hours from his wrists, and scalpel cuts to his chest and penis and that a CIA officer was a regular interrogator. - "Building supply side capacity" implies the destruction of food sovereignty and the reorientation of Third World agriculture to corporate farming of cash crops for exports. "Trade related infrastructure" implies privatization of energy and water services, privatization of highways, ports and airports and the Walmartisation of retail. In other words, the aid for trade implies World Bank and IMF using their financial muscle to impose trade liberalization and privatization as conditionalities on developing countries. - Iraq has proven to be a particularly hazardous posting for journalists. More media workers have been killed there than during the two-decades-long war in Vietnam. And 15 have died at the hands of American forces. - The Tribune's investigation reveals a decades-long pattern of the U.S. government knowingly allowing millions of Americans to eat seafood with unsafe levels of mercury. - Additional ties between southern Christian fundamentalists, Texas oil interests, and Russian-Israeli mobsters and weapons smugglers uncovered. According to informed Washington insiders, there is increasing evidence of financial links between key "Christian Right" GOP notables and an international ring of Russian-Ukrainian-Israeli mobsters tied to notorious Russian weapons smuggler Viktor Vasilevich (aka Anatoliyevich) Bout. - The Justice Department has barred staff attorneys from offering recommendations in major Voting Rights Act cases, marking a significant change in the procedures meant to insulate such decisions from politics... - State lawmakers have crafted a bill that, if passed, would make New Hampshire the first state in the nation to regulate so-called "spy chips" in an effort to protect consumer privacy. - An attorney's decade-long search for justice in his brother's murder finally yields fruit — and breaks through a mass of lies and coverup in the OKC bombing. - Israel's armed forces have been ordered by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military sources have revealed.
- A Diary of U.S.-Backed Mass Murder in Mexico - How the Informant’s Role and U.S. Law Enforcers’ Complicity Were Exposed - "YOOIFICATION AND GITMOIZATION" - Corporations carry out some of the most horrific human rights abuses of modern times, but it is increasingly difficult to hold them to account. Economic globalization and the rise of transnational corporate power have created a favorable climate for corporate human rights abusers, which are governed principally by the codes of supply and demand and show genuine loyalty only to their stockholders. - It’s a message customized for dim-witted Americans driving around in 6.5L turbo diesel Hummers with chrome wheels, whip antennas, and "Desert Rat" insignia above multiple "Support Our Troops" magnetic ribbons: if Congress does not renew the Constitution destroying USA Patriot Act, according to our fearless ruler, it "might lead to terrorist violence..." - It's not hard to see why. The 46-year-old candidate is a staunch leftist who counts Cuba's Fidel Castro and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez among his close friends. Moreover, he's a coca farmer, promising to reverse the U.S.-backed campaign to stamp out production of the leaf that is used to make cocaine. - Whether it is water provision in Bolivia or health insurance in Kenya, the WTO is set to cement international trading according to the golden rule - that those who have the gold make the rules. - December 2 marked the 21st anniversary of the methyl isocyanate gas leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in the city of Bhopal that killed some 15,000 people and left another 800,000 suffering from the after-effects of inhaling toxic fumes, according to figures from the Indian government. - It's a shocking charge...Pentagon casualty reports show only a sliver of the injuries, mostly physical ones from bombs or bullets. But war doesn't work like that...the reports skip a horrible panoply of accidents, illness, disease and mental trauma. - This is a story that implicates all of us. Torture, and fear of torture, are factors in holding costs down in our new-age globalized production system. Take just-in-time delivery, add a touch of submersion in shit, fear of beating, fear of drowning, and voilà! You get Wal-Mart’s everyday low prices. - Thirteen of the prisoners needed hospital treatment amid torture claims. An Iraqi official speaking anonymously said 12 of the 13 men in hospital had suffered torture, including electric shocks and the loss of finger nails. - The chief executive officer of electronic voting company Diebold who once famously declared that he would "deliver" Ohio for President Bush has resigned effective immediately... - U.S. troops are waiting just across the Syrian-Iraqi border, ready for the command to cross in full force – or perhaps as part of a scouting expedition in hot pursuit of "terrorists," who will then be set upon by Syrian troops in a Middle Eastern remake of the Tonkin Gulf incident. Coming soon to a theater of war near Iraq… - Since Sept. 11, the CIA has played a vital role in the war on terror. But what role is it? Operating in the shadows, American secret services have been given wide-ranging powers by the Bush Administration. And they include murder, abduction and torture.
- Oliver North, now a celebrity with a television show on Fox News, indirectly killed far more people than Tookie Williams ever did, and the corporate media has no interest in underscoring this obvious fact because North is considered a "patriot" and Williams a bottom-feeding gangbanger. - Police in Sydney will be given tough new powers to crack down on rioters, the New South Wales premier has said. - "Propaganda ruins not only democratic ideas, but also democratic behavior—the foundation of democracy, the very quality without which it cannot exist. The question is not to reject propaganda in the name of public opinion—which, as we well know, is never virginal—or in the name of freedom of individual opinion, which is formed of everything and nothing—but to reject it in the name of a very profound reality: the possibility of choice and differentiation, which is the fundamental characteristic of the individual in the democratic society." - The Cheney detour allegedly took place on Friday, January 28, after he paid a quick visit to the Auschwitz camp and wrote in the guest book "may the evils committed here never again darken our world." - The cost of rental housing has increased faster than wages, making it increasingly difficult for low-income families to afford even modest apartments, an advocacy group said Tuesday. - If the Bush administration had its way, the whole criminal siege of Fallujah, with its depraved indifference to human life, would have gone unnoticed. The corporate media’s Pentagon-spun propaganda stories about liberation would have gone unchallenged by any unseemly intrusions of reality. Toward that end, the Pentagon declared Fallujah a no-reporting zone, barring all un-embedded journalists from the city. In short, the Pentagon hoped to control all images coming out of the massacre. And they would have pulled it off, had it not been for one independent freelance journalist from Alaska, Dahr Jamail, and an Al Jazeera TV crew. - As Australian media covers up Howard’s role - Once it is passed into law, the bill will extend sweeping attacks on democratic rights and consolidate a vast expansion of the powers of the state to spy on law-abiding individuals. - Does Wal-Mart’s money buy more than ads? - The "liberal" Washington Post was among the first to report that Bush has finally put a number on Iraqi dead since the U.S.-led 2003 invasion.
Pages for December, 2005
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