[APR-news] Alternative Press Week in Review - January 29, 2004

Thu Jan 29 15:46:03 EST 2004

www.altpr.org

Alternative Press Week in Review

Your Guide Beyond the Mainstream 

January 29, 2004 

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

http://www.supersizeme.com

Website of the Week

http://www.thememoryhole.org/pol/bush-hitler-ads.htm

The Bush-Hitler ads removed by Moveon.org

Articles of the Week

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=4900

Chomsky on Hegemony or Survival
Evan Solomon, CBC Interview

If you go south of the U.S. border, there's something called the other 9/11, not in the United States, but south of the border. The other 9/11 is September 11, 1973, when operations supported and backed by Henry Kissinger among others, led to the bombing of the presidential palace in Chile, the overthrow of the parliamentary government and the killing, by conservative estimates, of about 3,000 people. It's probably maybe, twice that. Three thousand people in Chile is the equivalent of, counterpart of 60,000 in the United States. If 60,000 people were killed on September 11th, our September 11th, do you think that people would notice that? Yeah, they would. But when we do it to them, it's like you know, a mistake.

http://www.hindu.com/2004/01/18/stories/2004011800181400.htm

Do turkeys enjoy thanksgiving?
Arundhati Roy, The Hindu
We have to become the global resistance to the occupation. Our resistance has to begin with a refusal to accept the legitimacy of the U.S. occupation of Iraq. It means acting to make it materially impossible for Empire to achieve its aims. It means soldiers should refuse to fight, reservists should refuse to serve, workers should refuse to load ships and aircraft with weapons.

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=04/01/24/6890763

To sir, with grenade

Curious George Brigade, Infoshop

Make no mistake, lawful authority - even in its civilian disguises - is as repressive and dangerous as military authoritarianism. The mutiny has never ended. We should be willing to stand up to any authority that is willing to throw away our lives and passions in the name of imperialism, consumerism, or patriotism. When the never-ending Orwellian "War on Terror" has militarized everyday life in the cities and suburbs, we can all be
mutineers. People are already deserting their workplaces, schools, and malls in ever growing numbers. When desertion is not an option, sabotage is a must.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5568.htm

Power, Propaganda and Conscience in The War On Terror
John Pilger, ICH
There is no difference, in the principle of the law, between the action of the German regime in the late 1930s and the Americans in 2003. Fuelled by religious fanaticism, a corrupt Americanism and corporate greed, the Bush cabal is pursuing what the military historian Anatol Lieven calls "the classic modern strategy of an endangered right-wing oligarchy, which is to divert discontent into nationalism". Bush's America, he warns, "has become a menace to itself and to mankind."

http://www.antiwar.com/spectator/spec30.html

I believe in conspiracies - the real nutters are those who believe in al-Qa'eda and weapons of mass destruction
John Laughland, The Spectator

Opponents of conspiracy theories often allow that conspiracies have occurred in the past, but refuse to contemplate their existence in the present. For some reason, you are bordering on the bonkers if you wonder about the truth behind events like 9/11, when it is established as fact that in 1962 the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lyman L. Lemnitzer, tried to convince President Kennedy to authorise an attack on John Glenn's rocket, or on a US navy vessel, to provide a pretext for invading Cuba. 

http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/01/int04006.html

Interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!

Buzzflash
Amy Goodman, host and executive producer of the popular news radio program Democracy Now! is one of the toughest no holds barred journalists in America. Goodman is fearless whether she's covering hot spots and protests on the streets in America, to covering atrocities throughout the world ignored by the corporate media, to hard hitting interviews in the studio. 

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jan2004/jour-j19.shtml

Pentagon lies exposed over killing of reporters in Baghdad
Mike Head, WSWS
These ongoing killings point to an orchestrated campaign to intimidate journalists and suppress unvetted coverage of the Iraq operation. All the media victims were attempting to operate outside the "embedded" regime adopted by Washington, with the willing collaboration of the major media conglomerates. It is clear that no inquiry by the military can be trusted to reveal the truth.

http://www.fair.org/activism/hitler-ads.html

When Are Nazi Comparisons Deplorable? For Fox News, only when Republicans are the target

FAIR Alert

Closer to home for Fox News, on the very same day that Gibson, Hannity and O'Reilly were talking about the Hitler/Bush comparison as evidence of the left's extremism, a column ran in the New York Post that described Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean as a follower of Josef Goebbels, referred to him as "Herr Howie," accused him of "looking for his Leni Riefenstahl," called his supporters "the Internet Gestapo" and compared them to "Hitler's brownshirts." 

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_3976.shtml

CBS: The Censor Broadcast System
Paul Campos, Capitol Hill Blue

This ad was rejected by CBS, which is broadcasting the Super Bowl, as "too controversial." (My brother, who let me know about this controversy, speculates that the decision is based on the Roman law doctrine that "there is to be no criticism of the Emperor during the Circus.") 

http://www.counterpunch.org/philion01272004.html

Ritter Was Right; Kay Was Wrong - My Exchange with CNN's Aaron Brown
Steve Philion, CounterPunch

Mr. Brown, now that it is clear that Mr. Ritter was right, will you let him back on your program and concede to him that he should have been an expert analyst at CNN? Imagine if CNN had used him instead of Ken Pollack as an expert witness, how smart you guys would have looked now. 

http://www.swans.com/library/art10/takram02.html

Historian And The Distortion of History
Tanweer Akram, Swans
The interesting thing about Schlesinger is that in spite of his knowledge of the facts, he chooses to distort and to propagate the myth that the Bush administration's goal is "converting the Arab world to representative democracy." If the Bush administration is so eager for democracy why is it so resolutely opposed to elections in Iraq and to handing over power to the representatives of the Iraqi people? Because its goal is to ensure that a subservient puppet regime is installed in Baghdad.

http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=127

'Thus Far and No Further' - Journalists Screen Presidential Candidates and Establish Boundaries
Chris Shumway, New Standard

Last autumn, long before Democratic Party insiders Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina finished one-two in the Iowa Caucus, the most important primary of the political season was already underway. But unlike the Iowa Caucus, or the Washington DC primary held one week before it, this primary does not involve actual voters going to the polls. Rather, it is the process through which major news outlets "elect" the presidential front-runners and frame the issues, thus setting the boundaries for acceptable political discussion. 

http://www.counterpunch.org/donahue01262004.html

Kerry's Drug War Zealot: The Toxic Career of Rand Beers
Sean Donahue, CounterPunch
When Rand Beers quit his job as counter-terrorism advisor to President Bush, and signed up with John Kerry's presidential campaign, he quickly became a hero to Democratic Party loyalists and the "Anybody but Bush" crowd. But Beers, who has become Kerry's top national security advisor and would likely serve as National Security Advisor or Secretary of State in a Kerry administration, has a dark history.

http://www.pressaction.com/pablog/archives/001260.html#001260

When Mikey Met Wesley: Clueless in America
Mickey Z, Press Action
General Wesley Clark is a war criminal. Filmmaker Michael Moore is clueless.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/26/1632224

Wesley Clark Confronted Over His War Crimes in Yugoslavia

Jeremy Scahill, Democracy Now!

Since the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, General Wesley Clark has not answered any in-depth questions about his targeting of civilian infrastructure in Yugoslavia, his bombing of Radio Television Serbia, the use of cluster bombs and depleted uranium, the speeding-up of the cockpit video of a bombing of a passenger train to make it appear as though it was an accident and other decisions he made and orders he gave as NATO's Supreme Allied Commander. 

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jan2004/moor-j27.shtml

Michael Moore enlists with General Clark: the pathetic-and predictable-logic of protest politics
David Walsh, WSWS
The decision by American independent filmmaker and radical gadfly Michael Moore to endorse former army general Wesley Clark for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, while deplorable, is hardly astonishing. On the contrary, the move possesses a certain inevitability. It expresses the political and intellectual limitations, indeed bankruptcy, of an entire trend of current liberal-left thinking in America.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=43&ItemID=4876

A brief history of the democrats: Some perspective for the 2004 elections
Mickey Z, ZNet

While the parties are not monolithic (spending time with Cynthia McKinney will convince anyone of that), at the highest level (i.e. presidential candidates, powerful Senate and House members), perception surmounts reality. Bush may talk the talk on national security while Ted Kennedy regurgitates his pro-social services spiel but neither really gives a shit about the soldiers dying Iraq or a disabled (dis-labeled?) child in an inner city school. They're selling an image, a package...and we're the all-too-willing consumers. 

http://www.satyamag.com/jan04/kay.html

Free Free: The Case of Jeff Luers
Dylan Kay, Satya
Back in June 2000, a young activist named Jeff Luers, known to his friends as 'Free,' set fire with friend Craig Marshall to three Sport Utility Vehicles (SUVs) at Romania Chevrolet car lot in Eugene, Oregon, using simple milk jugs of gasoline, incense sticks and matches. Instead of receiving a three year sentence and fading into the background, Jeff was slapped with a 22.5 year sentence-which was not only longer than his lifetime at that point, but is one usually reserved for the most heinous of crimes like rape and murder, not acts of property destruction.

http://www.monthlyreview.org/1203law.htm

A turn for the worse in the United States: Criminalizing dissent

Lynne A. Williams, Monthly Review

This is not about terrorism or locating terrorists or containing terrorists. Rather, it is about a dangerous push on the part of the United States Department of Justice to redefine certain free speech activities. No longer is non-violent dissent protected by the First Amendment. Quite the opposite, it is non-violent dissent that is the primary target of a law enforcement community that is flexing its newly developed muscles.

http://www.progressive.org/feb04/roths0204.html

Protester=Criminal?
Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive
In many places across George Bush's America, you may be losing your ability to exercise your lawful First Amendment rights of speech and assembly. Increasingly, some police departments, the FBI, and the Secret Service are engaging in the criminalization--or, at the very least, the marginalization--of dissent. "We have not seen such a crackdown on First Amendment activities since the Vietnam War," says Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo57.html

The Neocon Case for Imprisoning and Executing Congressional War Opponents
Thomas J. DiLorenzo, LewRockwell.com
The neocon cabal is beginning to make the case for imprisoning - or possibly executing - members of Congress who oppose the war in Iraq. An example of this development is a December 23 Insight magazine article by senior editor J. Michael Waller entitled "When Does Politics Become Treason?"

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0116-02.htm

The Concentration Camp at Guantanamo

Marjorie Cohn, Jurist
Nearly half the prisoners are interrogated each week in sessions lasting up to 16 hours. A prisoner released in May told Amnesty International that the interrogations "were like torture." Australian lawyer Richard Bourke asserted on ABC Radio that prisoners had been subjected to "good old-fashioned torture, as people would have understood it in the Dark Ages." He reported: "One of the detainees had described being taken out and tied to a post and having rubber bullets fired at them. They were being made to kneel cruciform in the sun until they collapsed." 

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/liberty-death.html

Give You Liberty or Give You Death
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., LewRockwell.com
The US is claiming that it could round up 10,000 to 20,000 Americans and hold them without trial on the mere suspicion of wrongdoing - which could consist only of writing and selling a popular song that takes an anti-regime political view. Many people warn that this is precisely what the administration's Patriot Act makes possible. It criminalizes speech and permits the government to round people up without trial solely on grounds that they are saying things the government doesn't like.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/jan2004/army-j20.shtml

Discontent in the military: "Stop-loss" orders prevent soldiers from leaving US Army
Jeff Riley and Peter Daniels, WSWS
The new and broader "stop-loss" order just invoked by the US Army on active, National Guard and reserve troops currently deployed in the Middle East reflects growing Pentagon worries over manpower shortages as the occupation of Iraq drags on and new military adventures are considered in other parts of the world.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/wiggins/wiggins8.html

How to Defeat the United States Army - in Your Underpants!
David Wiggins, LewRockwell.com
Most people think that they could never defeat United States Army. The Army possesses nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and knows how to use them. They have Apache helicopters, Abrams tanks, and more depleted uranium rounds than you can shake a stick at! No one would believe that one man, not even one as strong as Arnold Schwarzenegger, could defeat the Army. Yet using my method, I was able to defeat the entire United States Army and gain my freedom - armed with nothing but my underpants. I have a certified letter from the US government to prove it!

http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17563

America's Empire of Bases
Chalmers Johnson, Alternet

As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize - or do not want to recognize - that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire - an empire of bases with its own geography not likely to be taught in any high school geography class.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0126-04.htm

Cluster Bombs: War Crimes of the Bush Administration
Paul Rockwell, Common Dreams
In defiance of U.N. reports, Air Force studies, and repeated warnings from Human Rights Watch, Rumsfeld reauthorized the expanded use of cluster bombs with full knowledge of their indiscriminate and treacherous results. The consequences of his war crime, as reported by international journalists and photographers, are appalling.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5546.htm

The US has no idea what it has gotten itself into
Dahr Jamail, ICH
I am troubled by the mainstream news I see on the internet in the US-it seems that about the only news from Iraq being reported are the most heinous, high casualty bombings, or demonstrations that surpass the 20,000 protestor level. What isn't being shown is the terrible living situation for millions of Iraqis, US troops being permanently disabled (physically and/or mentally) on what has become a daily basis, and generations of younger Iraqis being raised with a deep disdain towards the US and British who sanctioned, bombed, invaded and now occupy their country.

http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/4107/?PHPSESSID=9e3c655885dd558033208de7eb534bdd

One Man's Terrorist is Another Man's Intelligence Agent

Victor Lama, Media Monitors
Normally dismissed by rational people as the product of an overactive imagination, the existence of "Black" operations, or the intelligence operations of a government to inflict violence and destruction upon its citizens (or those of a friendly country) to create a pretext for desired military intervention, has been documented in recent history. Take Operation Northwoods. According to an ABC News report on November 7, 2001, "In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba."   

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn01242004.html

The Fog of Cop-out

Alexander Cockburn, CounterPunch

My dear friend and late Nation colleague Andrew Kopkind liked to tell how, skiing in Aspen at the height of the Vietnam War, he came round a bend and saw another skier, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, alone near the edge of a precipice. This was during the period of Rolling Thunder, which ultimately saw three times as many bombs dropped on Vietnam as the Allies dropped on Europe in the Second World War. "I could have reached out with my ski pole," Andy would say wistfully, "and pushed him over." Alas, Andy shirked this chance to get into the history books and McNamara survived the 1960s, when he contributed more than most to the slaughter of 3.4 million Vietnamese (his own estimate). He went on to run the World Bank, where he presided over the impoverishment, eviction from their lands and death of many millions more round the world.

http://www.nypress.com/17/3/news&columns/rotation.cfm

Cheney on the Moon: The celestial endgame of Halliburton logic

Alexander Zaitchik, NY Press

While a majority of Americans oppose throwing more money at Mars-most would prefer the Sci-Fi channel plus health insurance-it's no secret that among the biggest boosters for drilling the red planet is our ashen, aortically challenged vice president, Dick Cheney, who spearheaded the new space plan in the White House.

http://www.yellowtimes.org/article.php?sid=1750&mode=thread&order=0

Diagnosing Benny Morris: the mind of a European settler
Gabriel Ash, YellowTimes
Morris, a respectable, Jewish, Israeli academic, is out in print in the respectable daily, Haaretz, justifying genocide as a legitimate tool of statecraft. It should be shocking. Yet anybody who interacts with American and Israeli Zionists knows that Morris is merely saying for the record what many think and even say unofficially.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan04/Ophir0117.htm

Genocide Hides Behind Expulsion

Adi Ophir, Dissident Voice
In an astonishing recent Ha'aretz interview, after summarizing his new research, Morris proceeds to argue for the necessity of ethnic cleansing in 1948. He faults David Ben-Gurion for failing to expel all Arab Israelis, and hints that it may be necessary to finish the job in the future. Though he calls himself a left-wing Zionist, he invokes and praises the fascist Vladimir Jabotinsky in calling for an "iron wall" solution to the current crisis.

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=310&row=0

The State of the Union's New Educational Eugenics

Greg Palast, gregpalast.com

It is the new Republican social Darwinism, educational eugenics: Identify the nation's loser-class early on. Trap them, then train them cheap. The system will provide the new worker drones that will clean the toilets at the Yale alumni club, to punch the McDonald's cash registers color-coded for illiterates, to pamper the winner-class on the higher floors of the new service economy order.

http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2004/jf04/jf04cavallo.html

Oil: The illusion of plenty

Alfred Cavallo, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
One hundred and twelve billion of anything sounds like a limitless quantity. But in terms of barrels of oil, it's just a drop in the gas tank. The world uses about 27 billion barrels of oil per year, meaning that 112 billion barrels--the proven oil reserves of Iraq, the second largest proven oil reserves in the world--would last a little more than four years at today's usage rates.

http://www.antiwar.com/spectator/spec33.html

The great whitewash
Rod Liddle, The Spectator

So what were you all waiting for? You surely could not have been expecting an inquiry, headed by an eminent law lord, to deliver an indictment of the government? They don't do that, law lords. Certainly they haven't in my lifetime. And it hasn't happened now, with Lord Hutton. 

NewsWire

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=36798

Condi Rice a 'murderer' - 'Boondocks' creator levels charge on national TV

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0116-01.htm

CBS blocks PETA, MoveOn.org Super Bowl ads

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/IND401A.html

TV Execs Meet Homeland Security to Discuss Coverage Of Next Terror Attack On US

http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story795.shtml

Apache killing video becomes viral news

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=2077477

Editorials Question Bush's Role in 'Cooking' Up a War

http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/TorontoSun/News/2004/01/20/318488.html

U.S. security agents have master list of "five million names of known terrorists and other persons representing a potential problem"

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/18/1074360636917.html

Northwest Airlines provided information on millions of passengers for a secret US Government air-security project

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040118-114335-2930r.htm

Study used census data for terror profile

http://www.kron4.com/Global/story.asp?S=1614705&nav=5D7lKOC9

Library Officials Fight Against Patriot Act

http://antiwar.com/article.php?articleid=1748

Bush pushes plan to permit internet surveillance

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=4179427

Military Lawyer Slams U.S. Terrorism Tribunals

http://indiancountry.com/?1074631684

Mexican troops suppress Indian town: Two killed, others disappeared, during President Bush visit

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=440269&section=news

U.S. still holds children at Guantanamo

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1075245010934&call_pageid=968256290204

Demand for oil outstripping supply

http://www.ems.org/rls/2004/01/28/oil_supply_short.html

Oil Supply Shortages Likely After 2007, New Report Shows

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0129/p14s01-wogi.html

Has global oil production peaked?

http://famulus.msnbc.com/famuluscom/bizjournal01-17-010317.asp

Energy crunch: Demand outpaces gas production

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-gas16.htm

Summertime shocker: Gas could hit $3 a gallon

http://www.nature.com/nsu/040119/040119-3.html

Power blackouts likely: Electricity systems are becoming ever more vulnerable, and there's no quick fix

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=484490

Global warming will plunge Britain into new ice age 'within decades'

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0120-06.htm

Earth's life support system in peril

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=485405

Smouldering rebellion against Saudi rule threatens to set country ablaze

http://antiwar.com/lobe/?articleid=1802

Concerns Grow Over Taliban Resurgence

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/7809543.htm

Whispers of "revolution" grow louder in Baghdad, mull repeat of 1920s revolt

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0128-06.htm

US Plans Spring Offensive in Pakistan

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3419715.stm

Wars 'useful' says US Army chief

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-01-22-guard_x.htm

Mass Exodus from National Guard

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1130771,00.html

Stress epidemic strikes US troops in Iraq

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/01/24/politics1558EST0593.DTL

Kucinich says Iraq policy will lead to military draft

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=542&e=3&u=/ap/20040129/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/iraq_us_military

Army May Keep Forces in Iraq Through '06

http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=19892

Families stunned, angered by units' deployment extension past one year

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=1896&u=/nm/20040128/us_nm/arms_usa_troops_dc_1&printer=1

Strained by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. Army will boost its forces by 30,000 through emergency authority

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/01/18/MNGB44CJKR1.DTL&type=printable

U.S. death toll in Iraq over 500, roughly matching the number who died in the first four years in Vietnam

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/16/1073878027960.html

Crackdown on soldiers questioning occupation

http://www.antiwar.com/blog/more.php?id=411_0_1_0_M

Defense budget much higher than officially acknowledged

http://www.independent.org/tii/news/031222Higgs.html

The defense budget is bigger than you think

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=4168225

Iraqi's want Saddam's old US friends on trial

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=483202

Kurds turn against US: Claims it had more autonomy under Saddam

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=482565

Saddam capture has done little to weaken resistance

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1126468,00.html

100,000 demand Iraqi elections

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5543.htm

Life in Iraq: Lakes of sewage in the streets

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=485689

Demands grow for inquiry into the case for war as Hutton is accused of a 'whitewash'

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