[APR-news] Alternative Press Review - December 9, 2004

Thu Dec 9 09:51:28 PST 2004

Alternative Press Review - Your Guide Beyond the Mainstream
www.altpr.org
December 9, 2004

"COWARDICE, n. A charge often levelled by all-American types against those
who stand up for their beliefs by refusing to fight in wars they find
unconscionable, and who willingly go to prison or into exile in order to
avoid violating their own consciences. These 'cowards' are to be contrasted
with red-blooded, 'patriotic' youths who literally bend over, grab their
ankles, submit to the government, fight in wars they do not understand (or
disapprove of), and blindly obey orders to maim and to kill simply because
they are ordered to do so-all to the howling approval of the all-American
mob. This type of behavior is commonly termed 'courageous.'" -- Chaz Bufe

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http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=395&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
A Phoenix Program for Iraq
By Ron Jacobs

Retina scans to get into your own home. Work details under armed guard. No
cars. Military armor on every corner. All men to be shot on sight after
curfew. No freedom of movement. These are just some of the details of the
new order in Fallujah (and one assumes any other Iraqi city that the US
destroys in the future). Somewhere between a concentration camp and what US
troops called a strategic hamlet in Vietnam, this is the latest version of
Washington's freedom and democracy installation in Iraq.

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=394&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
A Review of "Under the Influence: The Disinformation Guide to Drugs"
By Tracy McLellan

Because several of the writers in Under the Influence examine seriously this
religious/mystical aspect of the drug policy issue, the call for reform
takes on a much more urgent and fundamental dimension. Drug prohibition is
really, says Richard Glen Boire, who holds a Doctorate of Jurisprudence from
UC Berkeley, "a war on consciousness itself - how much, what sort we are
permitted to experience, and who gets to control it. More than an
unintentional misnomer, the government-termed 'war on drugs' is a strategic
decoy label; a sleight-of-hand move by the government to redirect attention
away from what lies at ground zero of the war - each individual's
fundamental right to control his or her own consciousness."

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Other articles of interest

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=2053
No Escape from Dependency: Looming Energy Crisis Overshadows Bush's Second
Term
Michael Klare, TomDispatch

As Bush approaches his second term in office, another energy crisis looms on
the horizon -- one not likely to dissipate of its own accord. The onset of
this new energy crisis was first signaled in January 2004, when Royal
Dutch/Shell -- one of the world's leading energy firms - revealed that it
had overstated its oil and natural gas reserves by about 20%, the net
equivalent of 3.9 billion barrels of oil or the total annual consumption of
China and Japan combined. Another indication of crisis came only one month
later, when the New York Times revealed that prominent American energy
analysts now believe Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer, had
exaggerated its future oil production capacity and could soon be facing the
wholesale exhaustion of some of its most prolific older fields.

http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=Hacks%20Target%20Homepage.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=95&rnd=3.5426705716827267
Uncle Sam Wants Your Kids - Now!
David H. Hackworth, SFTT.org

By the end of this recruiting year, the Regular Army, Reserves and Guard
could fall short more than 50 percent of its projected requirement, or about
60,000 new soldiers. And according to many recruiters, quality recruits are
giving way to mental midgets who have a hard time telling their left foot
from their right. Shades of our last years in Vietnam. "The bottom line is
that Recruiting Command is in trouble," says another recruiter with almost
30 years of service. "The Army has re-instituted 'stop loss,' which is
basically a backdoor draft. They're stopping people from retiring or
completing their enlistment and leaving the Army.

http://www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/affalert294.shtml
Militainment Gone Amok
Rory O'Connor, Mediachannel.org

Now the generals have their own cable channel. As the Fourth Estate
continues to morph into what General/Journalist Tommy Franks calls the
"Fourth Front" in the ongoing and endless war on terror, and as the lines
blur ever-further between military public affairs -- disseminating accurate
information to the media and the public -- and psychological and information
operations -- using often-misleading information and propaganda to influence
the outcome of a campaign or battle -- the inevitable has finally happened.
The Military Channel.

http://www.newstatesman.com/site.php3?newTemplate=NSArticle_Economy&newDisplayURN=200412130010
Remembering Kosovo
John Pilger, New Statesman

Lies as great as those told by Bush and Blair were deployed by Clinton and
Blair in their grooming of public opinion for an illegal, unprovoked attack
on a European country. Following the same path as the build-up to the
invasion of Iraq, the media coverage in the spring of 1999 was a series of
fraudulent justifications, beginning with the then US defence secretary
William Cohen's claim that "we've now seen about 100,000 military-aged
[Albanian] men missing . . . they may have been murdered". David Scheffer,
the then US ambassador-at-large for war crimes, announced that as many as
"225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59" may have been killed.
Blair invoked the Holocaust and "the spirit of the Second World War". The
British press took its cue. "Flight from genocide," wrote the Daily Mail.
"Echoes of the Holocaust," chorused the Sun and the Mirror.

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NewsWire

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A41430-2004Dec6.html
Federal vehicles torched outside military recruitment offices in Va., Md.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/202796_homefire08.html
26 homes set ablaze in upscale development on rare, environmentally
sensitive wetland in Maryland

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/28486/story.htm
Quebec Group Damages Tower Carrying Power to US

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1208-08.htm
Huge No-Fishing Zones 'Offer Only Hope' of Saving Marine Ecosystem From
Disaster

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200412/s1260377.htm
US Marine claims unit killed Iraqi civilians

http://www.wjactv.com/news/3981703/detail.html
AWOL Soldier Says He Didn't Want To Be War Criminal

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/12/06/60II/main659336.shtml
5,500 soldiers have deserted military since start of Iraq war

http://www.socialistworker.org/2004-2/523/523_12_StopLoss.shtml
Hell no, we don't want to go! -- Reservists fight stop-loss orders

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/dec2004/rums-d09.shtml
US troops confront Defense Secretary Rumsfeld

http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20041207-121848-6449r.htm
Homeless Iraq Vets Showing Up At Shelters Around the Country

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A4BD8038-8970-4542-9E9C-E4FD18C11051.htm
The New Nazis: Israeli soldiers murder boy 'for fun'

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1102432932687
Over 50% of Germans equate Israeli military with Nazi army

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002112639_diss08.html
Foreign dissidents facing U.S. hurdles to publishing

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