[APR-news] Alternative Press Week in Review - July 21, 2003

Mon Jul 21 13:29:10 EDT 2003

www.altpr.org

Alternative Press Week in Review

Your Guide Beyond the Mainstream

July 21, 2003 

A weekly roundup of news, announcements, articles and other items of interest.

http://www.latimes.com/includes/ramirez/today_ramirez_20030720.gif

'Bush assassination' comic

http://www.drudgereport.com/mr.htm

Secret Service concerned after LA Times depicts 'Bush assassination'

http://www.theonion.com/onion3927/unemployed_man.html

The Onion: Unemployed Man Getting Really Good at Unemployment

http://www.ucomics.com/tedrall/2003/07/14/

Bush Lied. They Died.

http://www.geocities.com/purplesage23/

Timeline of Events Surrounding the US Invasion of Iraq

http://www.guerrillanews.com/war_on_terrorism/doc2332.html

Weapons of Mass Deception: Interview with John Stauber

http://www.prwatch.org/books/wmd.html

Weapons of Mass Deception - The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq
New book by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber

Publication of the Week

Slingshot (Summer 2003 issue)

http://www.tao.ca/~slingshot

Slingshot is a quarterly, independent, radical newspaper published in the East Bay since 1988. 

Articles of the Week

Sovereignty and Solidarity

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=24&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

David Grenier, Alternative Press Review

All of this came to a head on Monday when the Narragansetts opened a cigarette shop on their land and claimed that because they are a federally recognized tribe, they do not have to charge State taxes. Carcieri sent in the Troopers to terrorize the Indians - simply to assert his authority as a White Governor over uppity Native Americans. The scene was like something out of the civil rights movement. Unarmed people set upon by attack dogs and State Troopers using violent takedowns with no provocation.

Bushspeak: Bush and Orwell

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=23&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Scott D. O'Reilly, Alternative Press Review
Rereading Orwell's essay as the Bush administration's rhetoric continues to deceive the American public, alarm our friends and allies, and inflame world opinion against the United States, I couldn't help but wonder how Orwell can help us make sense of, what we might call, Bushspeak.

Blind Imperial Arrogance - Vile Stereotyping of Arabs by the U.S. Ensures Years of Turmoil
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0720-05.htm

Edward Said, Los Angeles Times

Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate. These ideas are by no means shared by the people who inhabit that empire, but that hasn't prevented the U.S. propaganda and policy apparatus from imposing its imperial perspective on Americans, whose sources of information about Arabs and Islam are woefully inadequate.

Privacy invasions 'R U.S. - Round-up of Bush Administration-sponsored domestic spy ops

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=15315

Bill Berkowitz, Working for Change
Since 9/11, domestic spying projects have become as American as apple pie, the 4th of July and baseball. And like baseball in the age of free agency -- when eligible players can switch teams when their contracts expire -- it's difficult to follow the multitude of spy ops without a scorecard. With "The Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003," otherwise known as the Patriot Act II, now under consideration by Congress, it's an opportune time to review some of the projects offered up by the Bush Administration since 9/11. 

Bush deserves to be impeached

http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/margolis_jul20.html

Eric Margolis, Toronto Sun

Thanks to Bush's blundering, nearly 50% of U.S. Army combat units are now stuck in a spreading guerrilla war in Iraq , costing $4 billion US monthly, that is becoming the biggest, most expensive, and bloodiest foreign mess since Vietnam. This when the U.S. is threatening military action against North Korea.

How Britain Exports Weapons of Mass Destruction

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles7/Pilger_UK-WMD-Exports.htm

John Pilger, Dissident Voice

Blair's festival of lies has shocked some people: those who still believe that their elected representatives tell the truth. Perhaps they are prepared to tolerate some "fudge", but not deliberate lies, especially those, such as Blair's, that lead to the criminal killing of thousands of people.

The Chill Is On: Fighting raves, squelching speech http://www.reason.com/sullum/071803.shtml

Jacob Sullum, Reason
Biden referred to an incident in Billings, Montana, on May 30, when a DEA agent brought a copy of the Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act to the local Eagles Lodge. The agent warned the lodge's manager that a fund-raising concert sponsored by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and Students for a Sensible Drug Policy might violate the law if anyone attending the event lit up a joint.

Is Iraq Hell on Earth? No, Shut Up and Sniff Your Glue

http://www.antiwar.com/gancarski/gan071803.html

Anthony Gancarski, Antiwar.com

What have we created for those people, if not hell on earth? Keep in mind that temperatures in the "dog days of summer" in Iraq routinely pierce the century mark. With insufficient food and water for a city of five million people, what has Baghdad become but a concentration camp?

Talking Back to the Ganglords: Free speech activist defeats computer industry
http://www.corpwatch.org/issues/PID.jsp?articleid=7628

Ted Nace, CorpWatch
Computer giant Intel lost a major lawsuit against a fired employee who sent email protest letters to thousands of his former colleagues, in a court decision that experts say is a major victory for free speech and workers' rights.

The web rewires the movement

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030804&s=boyd

Andrew Boyd, The Nation

If Seattle was the birth of this new kind of organizing, last February 15's global peace demonstration marked its coming of age. That day, some 400,000 people turned out onto the streets of New York to protest Bush's impending war on Iraq, and close to 10 million more turned out in cities across the globe. It was arguably the single largest day of protest in world history; the New York Times dubbed its participants "the other superpower."

Bush Uranium Lie is Tip of the Iceberg

http://www.fair.org/press-releases/beyond-niger.html

FAIR Alert

Five months later, the truthfulness of one claim in George W. Bush's State of the Union address has become the focus of growing media scrutiny. The attention media are paying to this single assertion should be part of a larger journalistic inquiry into other misstatements and exaggerations that have been made by the Bush administration about Iraq.

Is Bush Another Hitler?

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff07182003.html

David Lindorff, CounterPunch

Wall Street Journal commentator Taranto may mock Counterpunch and other publications that point to fascist tendencies in the current administration, but he had his forebears aplenty in 1930s Germany, where the newspapers of the day were awash in apologists for Chancellor Hitler's gradual assumption of dictatorial powers.

Media's War Boosters Unlikely to Voice Regret 

http://www.fair.org/media-beat/030717.html

Norman Solomon, MediaBeat
But back in late September, when a media frenzy erupted about Rep. Jim McDermott's live appearance from Baghdad on ABC's "This Week" program, what riled the punditocracy as much as anything else was McDermott's last statement during the interview: "I think the president would mislead the American people."

The Iraq war and the phony debate on intelligence

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/jul2003/iraq-j19.shtml

Editorial, WSWS

The debate touched off by the admission that Bush's State of the Union address included a false report of an Iraqi attempt to buy uranium has something of a surreal character. There is an intense effort on the part of the media and the political establishment to frame the controversy within absurdly narrow and superficial parameters.

Surreality Bites

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/03/07/18_bites.html

Gregg Gordon, Democratic Underground

At least I'm not the only one, I thought, who feels this strange sense of unreality that grows with each passing day of the Bush Administration. And then I thought of the 16 months until the 2004 election, and I wondered if this grand charade can last that long. How long can the story lines of our government and media fly in the face of plain and obvious facts that are there for all to see? How long before the whole edifice crumbles?

Heil Ceasar

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4155.htm

William Bowles, Information Clearing House

"Poison.deadly.virus.incubation.terrorism.darkness." The parallels with speeches from the Third Reich are all too obvious but ultimately, in spite of carefully crafted phrases it owes more to King Lear when Blah tells us that, "I feel a most urgent sense of mission about today's world." So it's all about what Blah 'feels' rather than what he knows. The dialogue is a carefully crafted theatrical propaganda act, designed to elicit the right kind of emotional responses from its target audience.

Rumsfeld would have been fragged in Vietnam

http://www.newsinsider.org/cgi/printable.cgi/madsta/unfit_for_office.html

Wayne Madsen, News Insider

The Pentagon never likes to talk about the phenomenon of fragging - the killing of American officers by their own troops. But if Donald Rumsfeld had served in Vietnam and acted the way he now acts as Secretary of Defense, he would have likely wound up with an American grenade tossed into his tent. 

Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press

http://www.wanttoknow.info/buzzsaw10pg

Kristina Borjesson, Into the Buzzsaw

This is a 10-page summary of the fascinating accounts of 18 award-winning journalists from the book Into the Buzzsaw. All of these writers were prevented by corporate media ownership from reporting major, incredibly revealing news. Some were even fired or laid off. These journalists have won numerous awards, including several Emmys and a Pulitzer Award.

Palast the Iconoclast

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16438

Ed Rampell, AlterNet
Greg Palast, author of "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" and investigative reporter for the UK's The Guardian, The Observer and the BBC, is once again raking the muck for the truth about our current leaders, using English media platforms to report stories the mainstream American press won't touch. His latest foray, a one-hour BBC3 special, "Bush Family Fortunes," which first ran June 19th, allowed British audiences to watch reportage virtually forbidden to American viewers - but revealed, in part, here.

Careful: The FBI may be watching you

http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2003-07-17/rant.html

Marc Schultz, Creative Loafing

Reading the wrong thing in public can get you in trouble.

Big Brother Under the Bumper: Activists find mysterious tracking systems on their cars

http://www.boulderweekly.com/coverstory.html

Joel Warner and Pamela White, Boulder Weekly

Ever get the sneaking suspicion you are being watched? Maybe you should look under your bumper. On Sunday, July 6, three Boulder residents discovered sophisticated Global Positioning System (GPS) devices attached to the bottom of their cars, apparently used by someone to track the whereabouts of their vehicles.

The Fugs: An Encore After Forty Years 

http://slash.autonomedia.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/15/1330246&mode=nested

Ben Sisario, NYTimes

Four decades ago Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg founded the Fugs in an East Village bookstore on a bedrock of sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll and poetry. They sang raunchy encomiums like "Slum Goddess" and set Blake and Swinburne to a groovy beat at a time when "Leader of the Pack" and "I Want to Hold Your Hand" were the cutting edge of pop. With the coming of the Vietnam War they developed a confrontational, absurdist pacifism in songs like "Kill for Peace" and became what many pop historians call the first underground rock band. 

Military Morale Hits Rock Bottom

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j071803.html

Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com

American troops in Iraq, who creamed Saddam Hussein and his cronies in record time, are turning their sights on another target: the Bush administration - and if I were the Bushies, I'd be scared. A sergeant stationed in Fallujah recently told ABC News: "I've got my own 'Most Wanted' list. The aces in my deck are Paul Bremer, Donald Rumsfeld, George Bush and Paul Wolfowitz."

Cake Walk

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2003/07/18/120.html

Chris Floyd, Moscow Times

While it is of course highly edifying to see the designer-shod feet of George W. Bush and Tony Blair held to the fire over their mendacious manipulation of crudely forged documents concerning the Niger nukestuff, the persnickety parsing of a few words in a couple of speeches is merely a diversion from the larger moral corruption that stems from aggressive war and military occupation -- a corrosive flow that eats away the very spirit of a nation.

Lying: A Bush Family Value

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2003/071803a.html

Robert Parry, ConsortiumNews

Bush's words and deeds around the Iraq War suggest that deception was one lesson that George W. Bush learned from his father. With his blue-blood connections and his CIA experience, George H.W. Bush understood the expediency of truth. From his CIA tradecraft, the elder Bush also knew how a population could be manipulated through lies, which could then be covered up or forgotten in the glow of victory.

For the homeless, sleeping under Twin Cities bridges is no longer an option http://www.citypages.com/databank/24/1180/article11385.asp

Mike Mosedale, City Pages

For John and the estimated 500 other people who spend the night on Minneapolis streets on a given night, the time-honored option of seeking shelter under bridges has become less viable of late. That's because for the last several years, the Minnesota Department of Transportation--as well as the city's Department of Public Works--have been busy installing "transient barriers" in prime sleeping areas.

State of West Virginia still screwing over prisoners http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=03/07/17/1168740

Chuck0, Infoshop
In a story reported here in mid-May, Infoshop News exposed an ongoing effort by prison officials in West Virginia to eliminate the rights of prisoners, including Joseph Lavigne Jr., who had all of his prison "privileges" suspended merely because his name appeared on the Internet.

Resisting the Entirety of the Spectacle

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=03/07/18/5244971

Infoshop

We have to be honest with ourselves, we know we don't want their world. We don't want a society that favors competition instead of cooperation, we know we don't want a society that isn't sustainable, where communities don't have any sort of say, and no autonomy. We know that we all want radical change from the established norms.

Barefoot, Sick, Hungry and Afraid: The Real US Policy in Africa

http://www.blackcommentator.com/50/50_cover_africa.html

Black Commentator

American policy is designed to place Africans at the extremes of insecurity, in order to foreclose the possibility of civil societies taking root. This policy has always resulted in mass death.

Who's Who on the 9/11 "Independent" Commission http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO307B.html

Michel Chossudovsky, globalresearch.ca
Conflicts of interest abound within the Commission. Yet what perhaps is most disturbing are the links of both the Commission Chairman Thomas Kean as well as the Legal Counsel Daniel Marcus to individuals closely linked to the bin Laden family. 

Clusterfuck Nation

http://www.kunstler.com/mags_diary7.html

James Howard Kunstler

After a certain point in the peak oil drama, there will no such thing as production house-building anymore, auto sales will no longer be a democratic phenomenon, and WalMart will founder as international mischief cuts off its 12,000 mile merchandise supply lines. For practical purposes, we won't have these activities anymore. 

The Educational System Was Designed to Keep Us Uneducated and Docile

http://www.thememoryhole.org/edu/school-mission.htm

The Memory Hole

The captains of industry and government explicitly wanted an educational system that would maintain social order by teaching us just enough to get by but not enough so that we could think for ourselves, question the sociopolitical order, or communicate articulately. We were to become good worker-drones, with a razor-thin slice of the population-mainly the children of the captains of industry and government-to rise to the level where they could continue running things.

Nothing left to lie about

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=%2Fgate%2Farchive%2F2003%2F07%2F16%2Fnotes071603.DTL

Mark Morford, SF Chronicle

And the lies, the flagrant GOP bitch slappings of the American public, the maniacal jabs straight in eye of truth with the icepick of utter BS, have just reached some sort of critical mass, some sort of saturation point of absurdity and pain and ridiculousness and you just have to stand up and applaud.

Blood in the Water: Watergate II http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/071503_watergate_II.html

Mike Ruppert, From the Wilderness

The writing appears to be on the wall for a beleaguered and disarrayed presidency, as key administration officials including Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice either wittingly or unwittingly line up like chess pieces to take the fall for a doomed King.

Grassroots Uprising Fights to Protect Rights and Freedoms http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0715-01.htm

Betsy Barnum, CommonDreams
This is the real story -- that the Bush administration's efforts to launch the most direct assault on individual rights and protections since the Alien and Sedition Acts in the early days of our nation, have sparked in response the most open and defiant assertion of local democracy ever seen.

How George W. Bush Won the 2004 Presidential Election http://globalresearch.ca/articles/INF307A.html

Purging voter lists is just the beginning: the U.S. has embraced a form of electronic voting that is unreliable, unverifiable and funded by the radical Christian right.

BILL GATES: KILLING AFRICANS FOR PROFIT

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=232&row=0

Greg Palast, GregPalast.com

The bully billionaire's "philanthropic" organization is currently working paw-in-claw with the big pharmaceutical companies in support of the blockade on cheap drug shipments.

Political death of a usurper

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,997621,00.html

George Galloway, The Guardian

Morale among US forces is dropping towards Vietnam-type levels, with heavy drug consumption, and commanders turning a blind eye to the prostituting of Iraqi women. No doubt the spectre of troops "fragging" overly strict officers is on their minds. 

Lies that come home to roost: The Mask slips on real war aims
http://www.mediamonitors.net/albertdoyle3.html

Albert Doyle, Media Monitors
The administration lies that formed the propaganda background for the attack on Iraq are not fading away. They are now getting mainstream media attention - not just in the alternative media and internet circles. The Bush folks never expected it and they are in disarray. Their response has been clumsy and amateurish.

NewsWire

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/31833.html

RIAA nails 1,000 music-lovers in 'new Prohibition' jihad

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0718-04.htm

Bush Launches Propaganda Magazine

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/international/20MILI.html

US admits Iraq war started in 2002

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4160.htm

US accused of torture in Iraq

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/leopold11.html

Office of Special Plans Behind Phony 'Intelligence'

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4158.htm

'Dark actors' - Kelly gave no indication he planned to take his life

http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,1002112,00.html

Dr. Kelly was 'hung out to dry' by MoD

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0720-03.htm

Decades of devastation as global warming melts the Alps

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4154.htm

Spin doctors can't find a cure for Bush's wilting credibility

http://www.news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?id=782572003&tid=911

Blood on the hands of UK spin machine

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/19/1058545627436.html

Troop morale plummets, death toll mounts

http://www.prolog.net/webnews/wed/bh/Qus-iraq-troops.RHEF_DlI.html

In US army town, soldiers' wives decry extension of Iraq mission

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/07/18/MN248299.DTL

Brass retaliates against grunts

http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/sanluisobispo/news/politics/6335469.htm

Pentagon struggling to find replacement troops

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/environment/story.jsp?story=425342

'Rainforests Of The Sea' Ravaged: Overfishing And Pollution Kill 80% Of Coral On Caribbean Reefs

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0719-09.htm

Islanders consider exodus as sea level rises

http://www.mediainfo.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1935586

Media underplays death toll in Iraq

http://www.judicialwatch.org/071703.b_PR.shtml

Cheney Energy Task Force Documents Feature Map of Iraqi Oilfields

http://www.islam-online.net/English/News/2003-07/17/article01.shtml

US Brass: Criticism will be punished - shut up and fight

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/shutup.html

Top US General to Troops: Shut Up!

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/story/101565p-91932c.html

Warning from the brass: GIs who criticize leaders will pay

http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E27772%257E1516373,00.html

Nuns who protested war face up to 8 years in prison

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4136.htm

Like the Vietnamese, Iraqis not ready to surrender hearts and minds to US

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3076531.stm

Time running out to secure Iraq

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/07/17/ED51513.DTL

The next West Bank?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4138.htm

US Syria raid killed 80

http://allafrica.com/stories/200307160078.html

Africa trip: Bush was shopping for military bases

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4144.htm

U.S. media still REFUSES to mention Bush sexual assault lawsuit

http://ens-news.com/ens/jul2003/2003-07-15-01.asp

Fuel Price Hike Spells Doom for Nigeria's Forest

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/17/international/worldspecial/17MILI.html

Fresh troops needs to pacify Iraq

http://www.latimes.com/la-oe-danziger16jul16,0,268709.story

Tour of duty or deplorable deployment?

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030714-113918-2868r.htm

Pentagon to dig into marketing data on citizens

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0329/lee.php

Ashcroft could face reckoning on detainee mistreatment

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/030716/1/3cljj.html

Iran admits beating journalist who died

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0715-03.htm

Are combat deaths being disguised as accidents?

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_309219,00050004.htm

US troops shocked and bitterly disappointed by decision to keep them in Iraq indefinitely

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,998778,00.html

Stuck here forever

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4121.htm

Letter from a young soldier in Iraq: "President Bush has lost the respect of every soldier"

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0716-04.htm

US soldiers demoralized, fed up, ask for Rumsfeld resignation on national TV

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/World/iraq030716_2ndBrigade.html

A big letdown

http://www.sanmateocountytimes.com/Stories/0,1413,87~11268~1513547,00.html

Anti-war cards flying off the shelves

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4110.htm

President caught in another lie

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/12/national/12NET.html

Website causes unease for the police

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/story.jsp?story=424280

'Mr Blair, I hold you personally responsible for my son's death. You should stand down'

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=424007

'My life has changed for ever ... I don't think Mr Blair should get away with it'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3063361.stm

Of the nine main conclusions in the British government document "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction", not one has been shown to be conclusively true.

http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/8353

Were the American people victims of an orchestrated campaign to link Iraq to Al Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks?

http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=424006&host=3&dir=62

Sitting ducks for snipers' bullets, far from home and unable to contact their families, US troops in Iraq are finding their morale slipping away.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56066-2003Jul14.html

Homecomings postponed; troops stay in Iraq extended

http://www.sundayherald.com/35223

Afghanistan: The war that just won't end

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/EG15Ag01.html

Washington's Afghan plan unravels

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_307067,0005.htm

US sliding into major energy crisis

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=9511

1929-style Stock Exchange crash likely this October 2003?

Alternative Press Review

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