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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 June, 2005.
Viewing ALL NEWS articles 1 through 75 of 511.
- A bizarre revolutionary army supported by British politicians who want more "regime change" in the Middle East, has been accused of torture and brainwashing. - All the dead Iraqis and Afghans, being non-persons, won't be mentioned, with the exception of dead "insurgents" who had the audacity to resist the occupation of their countries. Dead Iraqi and Afghan civilians are relegated to the Memory Hole, along with stolen elections, bogus "terrorist attacks," illegal wars, war crimes and damning memos that prove the real terrorists are in Washington— - Drug companies' marketing efforts may sometimes be more subtle than pens emblazoned with their product's name or full-page ads in leading medical journals. Some journal editors say they regularly receive submissions that appear to be written by the drugmakers' marketing machines, not the scientists whose names appear as authors.
- As a longtime fan of both George Bushes' eccentric grasp of English, I naturally enjoyed this gem from W.: "See, in my line of work, you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."
- Here’s a basic moral value: taking someone’s money without their permission is stealing. Except in America, where, if you’re a corporation that takes away someone’s pension, it’s okay. With very little public outcry, we are letting corporate America dismantle the private defined-benefit pension system. At the same time, huge salary and pension benefits are lavished on executives. Remember, pensions are deferred compensation—people put off getting money in their paychecks today because of a promise that they would receive a specific amount of money (hence, the term “defined benefit”) many years later. It’s their money, not the companies’ money. - Rejoice! The world is saved! The governments of Europe have agreed that by 2015 they will give 0.7% of their national income in foreign aid. Admittedly, that's 35 years after the target date they first set for themselves, and it's still less than they extract from the poor in debt repayments. - Americans guzzle 65 billion gallons of fuel a year and lately we have been paying a pretty penny at the pump. Now we introduce you to a new way to save on those gasoline dollars. - Every item bought at Wal-Mart adds another nail in the coffin of America's future.
- The chain does 32 BILLION DOLLARS a year. We won't get into name-calling or labels. I'm presenting the facts with a few comments. There shouldn't be one person on the planet that should not be concerned about what they are doing. With more than 500 stores in the US alone, they have a big impact and far too much power.
- Almost 1,000 Palestinians face the prospect of losing their homes in one of the biggest planned demolitions in Jerusalem since Israel annexed the Arab eastern sector of the city during the Six Day War in 1967. - Hidden Agenda behind the "War on Terrorism":
US Bombing of Afghanistan Restores Trade in Narcotics - There is a strange phenomenon occurring in America, and it serves to perpetuate a widening circle of debauchery, violence and mayhem. This strange practice is the glorification of criminals through media sensationalism. - The big sister is the first deputy assistant secretary of state ever to have her own Secret Service detail, after having passed up lucrative offers to become a television commentator for the privilege of promoting democracy in the Middle East. The little sister may well be the first previously unknown presidential campaign aide to earn a million-dollar advance for her memoirs.
- The child poverty rate in the US has steadily risen every year from 2000, according to several recent reports and press releases from public policy institutes and government agencies.
- Military action would not stop Iran’s nuclear programme but could be a last resort to delay any quest for an atomic bomb, the mastermind of Israel’s 1981 air strike on the Iraqi reactor at Osiraq said on Monday. - On August 1, 2001, just five and a half weeks before the 9–11 attacks, NSA awarded Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) a more than $2 billion, 10-year contract known as GROUNDBREAKER. The contract was never popular with NSA's career professionals.
- To the average listener, Radio Free Ohio has all the earmarks of pirate radio. For weeks, it sounded as if amateurs had been bleeding their voices into the broadcasts of stations in Akron, Ohio, owned by Clear Channel, the corporate radio giant. But last week it came out that Radio Free Ohio was not a prank on Clear Channel but in fact a prank by Clear Channel.
- The U.S. government gave the slave trade a boost by offering money for al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Afghan and Pakistani warlords simply rounded up people who looked Arab or foreign and sold them to the Americans as captured fighters. The "fighters" apparently included relief workers, refugees, and Arab businessmen. The Bush administration, of course, denies that it bought its detainees, as it denies everything. - More than a billion people worldwide lack access to clean water and 6,000 children a day die of preventable water-borne diseases. This crisis is expected to worsen as the demand for fresh water continues to double every 20 years. - The Bush administration's fierce focus on and interest in reconfigured, stripped down, ever more forward systems of bases and an ever more powerfully poised military "footprint" stands in inverse proportion to press coverage of it. To the present occupants of the Pentagon, bases are the equivalent of imperial America's lifeblood and yet basing policy abroad has, in recent years, been of next to no interest to the mainstream media. - Rarely in the more than 30 years since the draft was abolished has the Selective Service triggered such angst. Two years into the Iraq war, concern that the draft will be reinstated to supplement an overextended military persists -- no matter how often, or emphatically, President Bush and members of Congress say it won't.
- It could easily be argued now that the siege of Fallujah accomplished the exact opposite of its stated goals - rather than bringing increased security and stability, it has inflamed tempers, deepened sectarian rifts and spurred the Iraqi resistance into levels of attack rarely seen prior to the siege. - Intangible investment? Why didn't we think of that sooner! The trouble with the concept is that it produces intangible products, intangible profits, and intangible wages. Maybe the employees will get to enjoy an intangible sandwich someday.
- Each day, 13-year-old Claudia Lundi wakes at 4 a.m. and begins cooking, sweeping, fetching water and doing other household chores that last until well after sunset. She sleeps on the concrete floor cushioned by a pile of clothing and eats sparingly, alone, in the kitchen. "If I don't finish my work they will beat me up," said Claudia, picking nervously at her fingernails. "They beat me with a whip all over my body."
- Attacks on workers and trade unionists are becoming increasingly common and it is instructive that the railway workers union, in an industry that has been slated for privatisation, seems to have been particularly targeted. Since the beginning of the occupation, some 200 Iraqi academics have been murdered, while control and intimidation has become systematic. Many of the victims worked in the social sciences, where overlap with progressive social movements is unavoidable. - "Cheney is hated as the most cruel monster and bloodthirsty beast, as he has drenched various parts of the world in blood," a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman was quoted as saying by Pyongyang's official KCNA news agency.
- Did you know that Israel allots 85% of the water resources for Jews and the remaining 15% is divided among all Palestinians in the territories?... Did you know that Palestinian license plates in Israel are color coded to distinguish Jews from non-Jews?....
- "Are we having fun yet?" This is the message that appeared in the window of a county optical scan machine, startling Leon County Information Systems Officer Thomas James. Visibly shaken, he immediately turned the machine off.
- With all that crap that the Nixon adminstration did, those criminals don't compare with the criminals of this Bush administration, which only got to where it is by cheating, dirty tricks, lying and criminal behavior. It's amazing we have sunk so low as a country that these Bush criminals have the untouchable reputation they have and people are accused of being traitors simply for telling the truth about them.
- Re-igniting the medical malpractice overhaul debate, a new study by Dartmouth College researchers suggests that huge jury awards and financial settlements for injured patients have not caused the explosive increase in doctors' insurance premiums. The researchers said a more likely explanation for the escalation is that malpractice insurance companies have raised doctors' premiums to compensate for falling investment returns.
- Authorities in Scotland were being forced to draw up contingency plans in response to Sir Bob Geldof's call for a million protesters to "descend on Edinburgh" for a mass rally to coincide with the G8 summit. - Soon, patrons of the Naperville Public Library - at least those wanting to use the Internet - will need more than a library card. They'll give a fingerprint.
- A spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is hosting President Bush at a $2,500-a-plate fund-raiser this month, has confirmed that porn star and potential California lieutenant governor candidate Mary Carey will attend the event with her boss, pornographer Mark Kulkis, saying they've paid their money like everyone else. - Operation Lightning—the massive deployment of 50,000 US and Iraqi government troops and police into the streets of Baghdad—began on Sunday and is unfolding amid a virtual media blackout and a complete absence of critical commentary. What is taking place amounts to the re-invasion of Iraq’s capital aimed at terrorising the population and cracking down on resistance groups that operate freely across large sections of the city.
- The Bush Administration's lies about its rationales for attacking Iraq fit a pattern of deceit that has dragged America into at least three other unjust and catastrophic wars.
- What is happening all around can no longer be denied. What I ran away from so desperately in 1938 is coming back full circle. Only the jack-boots have not yet arrived. - There are 293,655,404 worried people in the United States -- minus one. "I don't worry about anything here in Washington, D.C.," Bush said Tuesday with his usual air of pixilation. Bush is accustomed to not worrying because he’s never had to. He’s always had his own private welfare system, a coterie of political nannies to hold him and clean up after him, and his emotional abyss precludes empathy for others who were born silver-spoonless.
- By aiming the spotlight on the criminal justice system in the United States, President Castro exposed a tender nerve for Washington. My more than 20 years as a criminal defense lawyer and professor of criminal defense advocacy confirm the widely known assessment that every aspect of the criminal justice system is ripe for criticism and laden with hypocrisy.
- "We were set to perform The Hand That Feeds with an unmolested, straightforward image of George W. Bush as the backdrop. Apparently, the image of our president is as offensive to MTV as it is to me," Nine Inch Nails' leader Trent Reznor said in a statement posted on the band's Web site.
- The Bush administration is expected to soon announce a new national space policy that will give the Pentagon the green light to move toward deployment of offensive weapons in space.
- Having usurped political power the far right has now set its sight on sabotaging the academic world. - Pesticides and other man-made chemicals may lower male fertility for at least four generations, according to new research.
- Adults play their perverse war games, and children suffer. This is a severe indictment of any war - and of those who orchestrate war without assessing its potential consequences on the most vulnerable of civilian populations.
- "If it's true what people say, that big multinational companies are outsourcing health care to taxpayers, then it would be good to have a handle on which ones. It's just information."
- President Hugo Chavez warned Thursday that his opponents are allegedly plotting his assassination and urged supporters to implement "revolutionary" changes in Venezuela if they succeed.
- Eighteen Palestinians were killed in various retaliatory attacks, including eight policemen shot while manning their checkpoints near Ramallah and Nablus.
- Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush Administration ignored or dismissed Amnesty International's reports on the abuse of detainees for years, and senior officials continue to ignore the very real plight of men detained without charge or trial. - The UK Chancellor Gordon Brown has put forward a bold plan to tackle poverty in Africa ahead of the G8 Summit of rich countries in Scotland next month. But the plan is facing opposition in the US - and particularly from President George W Bush. - "Islamic fundamentalism is not the primary driver of suicide terrorism. Nearly all suicide terrorist attacks are committed for a secular strategic goal -- to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory the terrorists view as their homeland."
- Both predecessor companies owned or held as collateral several hundred slaves. The predecessor companies profited directly from the slave trade or use of slave labor. Several founders and board members of the predecessor companies were directly involved in the slave trade.
- Last week Basra saw its first conference on the threat of privatisation, bringing together oil workers, academics and international civil-society groups. The event debated an issue about which Iraqis are passionate: the ownership and control of Iraq's oil reserves. - Public concern about the safety of high voltage power lines will be heightened today by a study showing children living within 200 metres of the overhead electricity cables have a 70 per cent increased risk of developing leukaemia.
- An accelerating Arctic warming trend over the past quarter of a century has dramatically dried up more than a thousand large lakes in Siberia, probably because the permafrost beneath them has begun to thaw, according to a paper to be published today in the journal Science. - A commission investigating torture of political prisoners during Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship delivered a report including the cases of 87 children, some of whom were tortured, President Ricardo Lagos announced today. - US occupation forces announced on their propaganda radio beamed at local residents of ar-Ramadi that the US military would stop raiding houses and mosques, would open roads to local people and turn the electricity and drinking water supply in the city back on if local residents would cooperate by informing the American occupation troops of the locations and bases of Iraqi Resistance fighters operating in the city against the Americans. - It was a huge air assault: Approximately 100 US and British planes flew from Kuwait into Iraqi airspace. At least seven types of aircraft were part of this massive operation, including US F-15 Strike Eagles and Royal Air Force Tornado ground-attack planes. They dropped precision-guided munitions on Saddam Hussein's major western air-defense facility, clearing the path for Special Forces helicopters that lay in wait in Jordan. Earlier attacks had been carried out against Iraqi command and control centers, radar detection systems, Revolutionary Guard units, communication centers and mobile air-defense systems. The Pentagon's goal was clear: Destroy Iraq's ability to resist. This was war. But there was a catch: The war hadn't started yet, at least not officially.
- BP’s profits come with enormous human cost and environmental damages, and its latest venture -- the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline which opened in late May -- has done little to make amends.
- In addition to autism, Thimerosal has now been linked to a host of developmental disorders including Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder and, ironically, the pharmaceutical industry is now making money hand over fist off drugs prescribed to treat children with these disorders. - Bush claims his policies are promoting democracy, but the administration’s record of human rights abuses at home and abroad suggest that freedom and the rule of law are not what he has in mind. The permanent bases the military is building in Iraq, and the influence on U.S. policy of pro-Israel fantasists such as Bolton and Wurmser, suggest that the Bush administration’s ultimate goal is U.S. domination over the oil-rich Gulf region, and an Israel free to maintain its occupation of other people’s land. A truly democratic Middle East would make it impossible to achieve these goals.
- They made 65,000 votes disappear simply by changing the real memory card - which stores the numbers - for one that had been altered. And, while the software is supposed to create a record whenever someone makes changes to data stored in the system, it showed no evidence they'd managed to access and change information.
- Tough talk from Cheney as we cozy up to bin Laden's pals in Khartoum - Race facilitates rule. If race did not exist, the powers-that-be would have had to invent it, for an ordered, hierarchical society requires an Other, preferably physically distinct from Us. The Other typically serves many purposes, sometimes providing a disposable work force. - "Well that's another very real danger. There's no way we can legislate for that but we we must be on guard. We need a vigilant citizenry." - "In the House Of the Strongman Sodomy is the Key" - Four months after he took the oath of office in 2001, President George W. Bush was the attraction, and the White House the venue, for a fundraiser organized by the alleged perpetrator of the largest billing fraud in the history of corporate lobbying. Jack Abramoff and Grover Norquist were billing clients for Face Time with G.W. Bush. - Police in Germany are hunting pranksters who have been sticking miniature flag portraits of US President George W. Bush into piles of dog poo in public parks. - Faced with a long, tough war in Iraq, the U.S. Army has struggled mightily with recruiting. Now the service is battling to keep the new soldiers it has brought into the force. More of the new Army recruits are washing out of the service before completing their first enlistment, which typically runs three or four years. - A good case can be made that marijuana prohibition costs too much -- in money, but also in ruined lives and harm done to society. - For a week, Bret Schundler's campaign Web site showed the fiery Republican primary candidate in a suit with a crowd of cheering supporters behind him. The problem? They actually were rallying behind fiery Democratic candidate Howard Dean. - What causes the fall of empires? Why, stubborn leaders who speak like toddlers and never admit mistakes
- Taking aim at the United States, Russia's defense minister Thursday threatened retaliatory steps if any country puts weapons in space and said Moscow won't negotiate controls over tactical nuclear arms with nations that deploy them abroad. - North Korea on Thursday said the deployment of 15 US F-117 Stealth bombers to South Korea was part of preparations for a preemptive nuclear strike on the country. - Iran poses absolutely no nuclear threat to the United States, let alone Israel. Yet many Washington bureaucrats are calling for military strikes on the sovereign country. - How the U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq's Water Supply - The document names only Israel and France as the two countries the CIA was convinced had already made a decision to go nuclear at that time.
Pages for June, 2005
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