[APR-news] Alternative Press Week in Review - November 12, 2003

Wed Nov 12 09:49:50 EST 2003

www.altpr.org

Alternative Press Week in Review

Your Guide Beyond the Mainstream 

November 12, 2003 

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

Articles of the Week

http://www.earthisland.org/project/newsPage2.cfm?newsID=491&pageID=177&subSiteID=44

America's Ministry of Propaganda Exposed
By Gar Smith, The-Edge
The 56-page investigation was assembled by USAF Colonel (Ret.) Sam Gardiner. "Truth from These Podia: Summary of a Study of Strategic Influence, Perception Management, Strategic Information Warfare and Strategic Psychological Operations in Gulf II" identifies more than 50 stories about the Iraq war that were faked by government propaganda artists in a covert campaign to "market" the military invasion of Iraq.

http://www.indexonline.org/news/20030919_unitedstates.shtml

US media subservient to the state: Playing piano in the war whorehouse

Nicholas von Hoffman, Index on Censorship

George W Bush has a four-person team doing for him what the 1930s movie maker Leni Riefenstahl did for Adolf Hitler, that is prepare backdrops heavy with symbolic meaning for presidential appearances. The pledge of allegiance has become a tool of social intimidation. One is pressured to recite it in the classroom, on the athletic field, at theatrical events and at the commencement of every kind of meeting. The singing of the national anthem is incessant. Athletic events begin with an 'Oh, say can you see' and are interrupted midway for a rousing chorus of 'God Bless America'. The country is taking on a hue and tone reminiscent of the authoritarian state.

http://www.lefthook.org/Politics/Seidman3%20111103.html

Interview with Stan Goff

Derek Seidman, Left Hook

Eventually, of course, I believe the soldiers will have to overthrow some of their officers, but not until we overthrow all of our bosses. The important thing for revolutionaries - if that term is to mean anything other than phrase-mongering and adventurism - is to build and maintain a bridge with the military. The day will come when we will need them, and they will need us. 

http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news1/salon1.html

Oiling up the draft machine?
Dave Lindorff, Salon
The community draft boards that became notorious for sending reluctant young men off to Vietnam have languished since the early 1970s, their membership ebbing and their purpose all but lost when the draft was ended. But a few weeks ago, on an obscure federal Web site devoted to the war on terrorism, the Bush administration quietly began a public campaign to bring the draft boards back to life.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1105-01.htm

Will U.S. Bring Back the Draft?
Tim Harper, Toronto Star
"This is significant," said Ned Lebow, a presidential scholar at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and former professor of strategy at the National War College in Washington. "What the department of Defense is doing is creating the infrastructure to make the draft a viable option should the administration wish to go this route."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1077906,00.html

Appeal for draft board volunteers revives memories of Vietnam era
Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian
The Pentagon has begun recruiting for local draft boards, dredging up painful memories of Vietnam era conscription at a time of deepening misgiving about America's occupation of Iraq.

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff11052003.html

A Draft in the Forecast? The Pentagon Puts Out the Help Wanted Sign
Dave Lindorff, CounterPunch
With winter is approaching, it appears the White House may start feeling a bit drafty. It's not a matter of poor insulation, but rather the result of mounting evidence that the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld war plan in Iraq is not going well, and there may well need to be more U.S. troops sent to Iraq.

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=15959

Cannon Fodder Day

Geov Parrish, Working for Change

On government's systematic abandonment of America's veterans -- current and future.

http://www.nhgazette.com/cgi-bin/NHGstore.cgi?user_action=detail&catalogno=NN_Bush_Nazi_2

Bush - Nazi Dealings Continued Until 1951
John Buchanan and Stacey Michael, New Hampshire Gazette
After the seizures in late 1942 of five U.S. enterprises he managed on behalf of Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen, Prescott Bush, the grandfather of President George W. Bush, failed to divest himself of more than a dozen "enemy national" relationships that continued until as late as 1951, newly-discovered U.S. government documents reveal. Furthermore, the records show that Bush and his colleagues routinely attempted to conceal their activities from government investigators.

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0346/otis.php

Terrorist Tactics: A State Law Would Pin the T-Word on Animal-Rights and Eco Protesters
Ginger Adams Otis, Village Voice
More than fur would fly when animal rights activists and, perhaps, environmental groups mount protests in New York, under a new law proposed by an upstate legislator: Protesters would be considered "terrorists."

http://www3.sympatico.ca/sr.gowans/soros.html

When a billionaire's buying elections is called "promoting democracy"
Stephen Gowans, What's Left
Saying Soros promotes democracy is kind of like saying Augusto Pinochet restored democracy to Chile -- it works, if you're willing to really stretch and allow a certain laxity in the use of the word "democracy." Otherwise, the claim is pure nonsense.

http://www.statesman.com/metrostate/content/auto/epaper/editions/sunday/metro_state_f3b9f79ec2b23175009c.html

Rhizome Collective seeks to revolutionize urban living
Jeremy Schwartz, Austin American-Statesman

Welcome to the Rhizome Collective, a group of 20-something activists from around the country who live communally in a 9,400-square-foot warehouse tucked in a nook off Fifth Street in East Austin. For the 10 or so members who have lived and worked in the converted bingo hall and carpet storehouse for three years, the goal is to revolutionize the very notion of city living. 

http://www.counterpunch.org/cassel11072003.html

FBI to Website Owner: "We Are Watching You"
Elaine Cassel, CounterPunch
Cryptome is a web site dedicated to investigating and publishing accounts of government improprieties, particularly as they relate to secrecy and First Amendment violations. On November 4, FBI agents visited the website's New York City office and met with site owner John Young.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=43&ItemID=4471

Starve the Racist Prison Beast
Paul Street, ZNet
In the second year of the new millennium, 40 of every 100,000 people in Italy were imprisoned. The incarceration rate in Sweden was 60 per 100,000. France: 90 per 100,000. England: 125. South Africa: 400 per 100,000. Russia, with the second highest rate in the world: 675. The United States led the world with 690 per 100,000. Incredibly enough, the nation that proclaims itself the homeland and headquarters of world freedom comprises 5 percent of the world's population but houses more than 25 percent of the world's prisoners. "No other Western democratic country has ever imprisoned this proportion of its population," says Norval Morris, a professor emeritus at University of Chicago Law School.

http://www.pressaction.com/pablog/archives/001137.html#001137

Collective Punishment for Downing Black Hawk?

Abu Spinoza, Press Action

Under international laws, it is a war crime to punish Iraqi civilians for the Iraqi resistance downing U.S. military helicopter(s).

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5177.htm

How we denied democracy to the Middle East
Robert Fisk, Independent
We created this place, weaned the grotesque dictators. And we expect the Arabs to trust Bush's promise?

http://www.counterpunch.org/christison11082003.html

Zionism as a Racist Ideology
Kathleen and Bill Christison, CounterPunch

In its drive to establish and maintain a state in which Jews are always the majority, Zionism absolutely required that Palestinians, as non-Jews, be made to leave in 1948 and never be allowed to return. The dirty little secret is that this is blatant racism.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/nov2003/sold-n06.shtml

Relatives of US soldiers killed in Iraq denounce Bush policy
Kate Randall, WSWS
Opposition to the war and occupation in Iraq is being voiced by the families of a number of US soldiers who have been killed there. Some relatives of the 15 soldiers who died as a result of last Sunday's missile attack on a Chinook helicopter have openly denounced the Bush administration's war policy.

http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/1878/?PHPSESSID=26b6511a9a1a73bc3ee5c70dbbbcb5ab

Fooled Again: Democracy, American-Style
Gordon Arnaut, Media Monitors
Of course America's incapacity for introspection makes bin Ladin's observations a moot point. And that's the worrisome part-even the tiny US antiwar movement is critical mostly because American troops are dying, not because of the morally repugnant nature of the whole Iraq enterprise.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0310/S00154.htm

Tarzan, Indiana Jones and Conservation International's Global Greenwash Machine
Aziz Choudry, Scoop
In many countries, the establishment of CI-initiated protected areas have trampled on Indigenous Peoples' land, social, spiritual, cultural, political and economic rights, without consultation, in deals cut with governments and corporations in the name of "conservation". The Wai Wai and Wapishana in southern Guyana recently accused CI of "gross disrespect" towards Indigenous Peoples in moves to set up a protected area on their territories. 

http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/9326

The eyes have it

Christian Parenti, TomPaine.com

Recent weeks have brought a slew of stories about the rapid proliferation of routine surveillance. First, Jet Blue violated its own privacy policy by handing over a million passenger names to a Pentagon contractor. Then came the news that the Biloxi, Mississippi school system has installed surveillance cameras in every classroom, and that a number of other schools are doing the same. Taken on their own, these news stories can seem minor, but the political whole of creeping surveillance is greater than the sum of its many disparate parts. 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5156.htm

Maher Arar complete statement to media
Maher Arar, Information Clearing House

I was scared and did not know what was going on. I told them I wanted a lawyer. They told me I had no right to a lawyer, because I was not an American citizen. They asked me where I worked and how much money I made. They swore at me, and insulted me. It was very humiliating.

http://www.infoshop.org/news7/apartheid_westbank.php

A dislocation so vast as to stagger the imagination: Apartheid and nonviolent resistance in the West Bank
Kadd Stephens, Infoshop
Welcome to Qalqilia, a municipality of the occupied West Bank of Palestine: 42,000 people, living on less than 1,000 acres of land, trapped on all sides by Israel's infamous Apartheid Wall, cut off from the rest of the world. The barrier is equipped with 3 gates (none of which have been opened since the beginning of October), and a checkpoint opened at the whim of Israeli soldiers. The term bantustan would be an optimistic description.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/nov2003/nyt-n04.shtml

The New York Times' Friedman libels the Iraqi resistance
Barry Grey, WSWS

The New York Times' Friedman expresses most crudely and cynically the continuum between the Republican right and American liberalism on Iraq. His column, in the outlandishness of its lies and vitriol against those who oppose the US occupation, suggests something approaching panic at the prospect of a debacle for the US in Iraq and the emergence of a mass anti-war movement within the US.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1076591,00.html

Long queue at drive-in soup kitchen
Julian Borger, The Guardian

Last year alone, another 1.7 million Americans slipped below the poverty line, bringing the total to 34.6 million, one in eight of the population. Over 13 million of them are children. In fact, the US has the worst child poverty rate and the worst life expectancy of all the world's industrialized countries, and the plight of its poor is worsening.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1077230,00.html

Land where calling an ambulance is first step to bankruptcy
Julian Borger, The Guardian

In the US today, there are nearly 44 million people in her position - without medical insurance in a country that does not guarantee basic healthcare - and the crisis is deepening. In the three years since George Bush took office, the ranks of the uninsured have risen by 10%, or four million people.

http://www.nypress.com/16/45/news&columns/cage.cfm

Oligarchs R Us

Matt Taibbi, NYPress
There is big news brewing in Russia this week, and America is being sold a line of goods about what's happening there. The coverage of the arrest by the Vladimir Putin administration of "businessman" Mikhail Khodorkovsky has featured such grossly, shockingly transparent propaganda that it could hardly have been worse during the Cold War.

NewsWire

http://www.thememoryhole.org/mil/draft-boards.htm

Defense Department Deletes Notice About Draft Boards

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/147483_draft08.html

Talk of a draft grows despite denials by White House

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/11/11/156207

"My son died for oil"

http://www.nuvo.net/archive/2003/11/05/a_new_underground_railroad.html

A new underground railroad: Some soldiers would rather desert than return to Iraq

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3357598,00.html

128,000 GIs, National Guard and Reserve Troops Told They're Heading to Iraq

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1066565672385

Army tour of duty in Iraq 'must be longer'

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/7228342.htm

Police to Embed Journalists at Protests

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001787201_historyiraq10.html

New Iraq textbooks: Entire swaths of 20th-century history have been deleted by U.S.-appointed Iraqi educators

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/nov2003/bord-n10.shtml

Borders workers strike in Ann Arbor

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=401995&section=news

U.S. troops arrest Iraqi for criticising them

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6B135A01-B99C-41C1-B36A-53197281D21E.htm

Shocking pictures revealing US soldiers tying up Iraqi women and children in their own home has provoked international outrage

http://www.thisislondon.com/til/jsp/modules/Article/print.jsp?itemId=7602147

White House security demands for Bush's visit to Britain:  Three-day shutdown of central London, ban on all marches, seal off the city center

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1082739,00.html

Report finds 'alarming deterioration' in Iraqi health

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=461953

Case for war confected, say top US officials

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1079225,00.html

Tony Blair could potentially face international prosecution for war crimes

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6AD5CFDC-3146-4CFC-9BB4-F4FBECEE28BE.htm

Falluja revenge fuelled by civilan deaths

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1080989,00.html

Americans sow seeds of hatred

http://www.msnbc.com/news/990598.asp?0si=

School drug raid causes uproar

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s985098.htm

Power blackout hits most of Chile

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1108-01.htm

Jessica Lynch's Story, Some of it Hyped, Made her a Star. Shoshana Johnson Faded Away

http://business-times.asia1.com.sg/sub/premiumstory/0,4574,98871,00.html?

US economy is running out of fuel

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/06/1068013331454.html

LA Times orders its journalists to stop describing anti-occupation forces in Iraq as resistance fighters

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1078652,00.html

Embedded reporters sanitized war

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/World/hage031105-1.html

U.S. Government Spurned Peace Talks Before the War With Iraq

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EK04Ak01.html

Aljazeera increasing criticized in Arab world for capitulating to United States pressure and taming its news coverage

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar%2FLayout%2FArticle_Type1&c=Article&cid=1067728207768&call_pageid=968332188854

Hiding the human cost of war: body bags sanitized as `transfer tubes'

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/5929DF29-C01F-4BAA-A1A8-E702B3DCCE2B.htm

Film exposes Guantanamo 'scandal'

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1104/p01s04-woiq.html

Sabotage still clogs Iraq's oil

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3236083.stm

Inuit battle to shut down one of America's most secretive military bases

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1104-07.htm

Layoffs more than double in October

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