[APR-news] December 13, 2006

[AlternativePressReview]

Alternative Press Review - Your Guide Beyond the Mainstream
www.altpr.org - December 13, 2006

"Religion fucking blows!" -- Roseanne Barr

http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article2037496.ece
Richard Dawkins: The scientist, author and campaigning atheist answers your 
questions

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http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=698
The U.S. government hates democracy (lessons from Italy)
By Mickey Z.

As far as I'm concerned, we can't put forward enough reminders of how the 
U.S. government--and the corporations that own it--do business. Platitudes 
about peace, freedom, justice, etc., aside, the land of the free is not even 
remotely interested in spreading democracy. There is an abundance of 
evidence to back up this assertion. For now, I offer the example of 
post-World War II Italy. Mussolini was gone but the U.S. elites had no 
intention of letting Italy slip through the cracks.

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=697
Poetic Justice: Good Riddance to Augusto Pinochet
By Ron Jacobs

Let's get it straight. Augusto Pinochet ordered the deaths of perhaps 4000 
people, if not more. He did this after violently overthrowing a legally 
elected government in the sovereign nation of Chile. Of course, he had a 
little help in this endeavor from Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Anaconda 
Copper, IT&T, and that always friendly-to-dictators bureaucracy - the 
Central Intelligence Agency. That's another story, however, and one that 
would also be dealt with if there were true justice on this planet.

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Other articles of interest

http://www.reason.com/news/show/116789.html
A Healthy Dose of Anarchy
Neille Ilel, Reason Magazine

After Katrina, nontraditional, decentralized relief steps in where big 
government and big charity failed.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/120906.html
Gary Webb's Death: American Tragedy
Robert Parry, Consortium News

When Americans ask me what happened to the vaunted U.S. press corps over the 
past three decades - in the decline from its heyday of the Watergate scandal 
and the Pentagon Papers to its failure to challenge the Iraq WMD lies or to 
hold George W. Bush accountable - I often recall for them the story of Gary 
Webb.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1970086,00.html
Routine and systematic torture is at the heart of America's war on terror
George Monbiot, The Guardian

That the US tortures, routinely and systematically, while prosecuting its 
"war on terror" can no longer be seriously disputed. The Detainee Abuse and 
Accountability Project (DAA), a coalition of academics and human-rights 
groups, has documented the abuse or killing of 460 inmates of US military 
prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and at Guantánamo Bay. This, it says, is 
necessarily a conservative figure: many cases will remain unrecorded. The 
prisoners were beaten, raped, forced to abuse themselves, forced to maintain 
"stress positions", and subjected to prolonged sleep deprivation and mock 
executions.

http://jimbovard.com/blog/2006/12/08/american-conservative-bushs-torturedictatorship-scandal/
Bush's Torture Ticking Time Bomb: Sins of Commission
James Bovard, American Conservative

The MCA awarded Bush the power to label anyone on earth an enemy combatant 
and lock then up in perpetuity, nullifying the habeas corpus provision of 
the Constitution and "turning back the clock 800 years," as Sen. Arlen 
Specter (R-PA) said. While only foreigners can be tried before military 
tribunals, Americans accused of being enemy combatants can be detained 
indefinitely without charges and without appeal. Even though the Pentagon 
has effectively admitted that many of the people detained at Guantanamo were 
wrongfully seized and held, the MCA presumes that the president of the 
United States is both omniscient and always fair.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=146171
Impunity and Immunity: The Bush Administration Enters the Confessional
Karen Greenberg, TomDispatch

The Bush administration trail of confessions can be found in the most 
unlikely of places -- the very memos and policy statements in which its 
officials were redefining reality in their search for the perfect (and 
perfectly grim) extractive methods that would give them the detainee 
confessions they so eagerly sought. These were the very documents that led 
first to Gitmo, then to Abu Ghraib, and finally deep into the hidden 
universe of pain that was their global network of secret prisons.

http://www.gregpalast.com/tinker-bell-pinochet-and-the-fairy-tale-miracle-of-chile-2
Tinker Bell, Pinochet and The Fairy Tale Miracle of Chile
Greg Palast, gregpalast.com

Freed of the dead hand of bureaucracy, taxes and union rules, the country 
took a giant leap forward . into bankruptcy and depression. After nine years 
of economics Chicago style, Chile's industry keeled over and died. In 1982 
and 1983, GDP dropped 19%. The free-market experiment was kaput, the test 
tubes shattered. Blood and glass littered the laboratory floor. Yet, with 
remarkable chutzpah, the mad scientists of Chicago declared success. In the 
US, President Ronald Reagan's State Department issued a report concluding, 
"Chile is a casebook study in sound economic management."

http://www.strike-the-root.com/62/wyk/wyk1.html
An Open Letter to Drug Warriors
Thomas Van Wyk, Strike the Root

A literal maelstrom of debate over police tactics, use of paramilitary 
forces for raids, no-knock warrants, and other issues has erupted.  As is 
often the case in America, the wrong sorts of questions are being asked.  In 
this case, the concern is not whether the cops exercised their powers 
correctly, or whether they broke into the home under sufficient evidence, 
but whether they had the right in the first place to break into the private 
home of a citizen, and whether the drug war is a valid basis for such a 
usurpation of rights.  Few seem to be using the affair to question the 
underlying drug war that gives rise to so many tragic cases like that of 
Kathryn Johnston - cases that happen all too often in the United States.

http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/2006/12/bread-bread-everywhere-yet-not-morsel.html
Bread, Bread, Everywhere, Yet not a Morsel to Eat
Jason Miller, Thomas Paine's Corner

Blaming starvation's victims for populating the planet beyond its capacity 
may assuage many people's guilt, but this heartless conclusion is based on 
pernicious myths. Humanity produces more than enough food to sustain the 
entire world population. The United States alone wastes a shocking 96 
billion pounds of food each year even as we experience an epidemic of 
obesity.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eat-the-press/2006/12/07/christopher-hitchens-woul_e_35768.html
Christopher Hitchens Would Piss Me Off If His Piece Weren't So Damn Boring
Huffington Post, Rachel Sklar

All that I learned from the piece is that Hitch thinks Woody Allen is 
masculine - but otherwise no facts, which means he forgot (or doesn't know) 
the first rule of comedy, is that the best comedy is rooted in actual truth.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Dec06/Smith11.htm
The Animal Holocaust? -- Why Factory Farming is a Serious Problem
Justin E.H. Smith, Dissident Voice

Surely we may agree with Norman Finkelstein that to insist upon the 
uniqueness of the Holocaust to the point of outlawing all comparison would 
be unscientific, and irresponsible. Nothing human beings do is completely 
unlike other things they do. We might then begin by noting that factory 
farming is not carnivorism-as-usual in much the same way that the Holocaust 
was not war as usual.  We might also note that both systems of mass killing 
can be traced back to assembly-line techniques initially developed by Henry 
Ford and others not for the destruction of living creatures, but for the 
production of machines.

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/BiofuelsBiodevastationHunger.php
Biofuels: Biodevastation, Hunger & False Carbon Credits
ISIS

Biofuels are bad news, especially for poor Third World countries. Bioenergy 
crops do take up valuable land that could be used for growing food, and food 
security is becoming a burning issue. World grain yield has fallen for six 
of the past seven years, bringing reserves to the lowest in more than thirty 
years.  Chronic depletion of aquifers in the major bread baskets of the 
world, drought and soaring temperatures are taking their toll and set to do 
even more damage to food production. The pressure on land from food and 
bioenergy crops will certainly speed up deforestation and species 
extinction, and at the same time result in food price increases worldwide, 
hitting the poorest, hungriest countries the hardest.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1463
The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community
David Korten, Yes! Magazine

Will they speak in anger and frustration of the time of the Great 
Unraveling, when profligate consumption exceeded Earth's capacity to sustain 
and led to an accelerating wave of collapsing environmental systems, violent 
competition for what remained of the planet's resources, and a dramatic 
dieback of the human population? Or will they look back in joyful 
celebration on the time of the Great Turning, when their forebears embraced 
the higher-order potential of their human nature, turned crisis into 
opportunity, and learned to live in creative partnership with one another 
and Earth?

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0612/S00184.htm
Lincoln Group: Unethical Weapon Of Mass Deception
Bill Berkowitz, Scoop

Since the inception of the Iraq war, and even during the run-up to the 
invasion, the Bush Administration aimed to control the news about, and from, 
Iraq. Early on, embedded reporters told moving, albeit questionable stories 
about the toppling of the statue of Saddam and the heroism of individual 
soldiers as the military quickly seized Baghdad. Over the course of the 
subsequent three-plus-year occupation, several hundred million dollars have 
been spent on an assortment of media projects that were specifically 
designed to sell "good" news about the occupation. Perhaps the most 
notorious U.S. effort involved a U.S. public relations company that was 
contracted to pay for positive news stories -- written by U.S. military 
personnel -- to be placed in Iraqi publications.

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NewsWire

http://www.nysun.com/article/44971
New School Students Cheer Ward Churchill For Telling the Truth

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/45309/
Actually, the 'bad news' from Iraq is "significantly underreported"

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/12/washington-posts-praise-for-augusto.html
Washington Post lavishes praise for mass murderer

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/dec2006/pino-d13.shtml
Mourning for Pinochet: US establishment shows its affinity for fascism

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20061210230039126
Pinochet's death sparks clashes

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6167351.stm
Death of fascist Pinochet saddens former fascist leader in UK

http://newstandardnews.net/alivewires/staff/content/?show_item=3964
Double standards: Coverage of right-wing terrorism vs. Islamic terrorism

http://www.alternet.org/rights/45285/
Government spying goes global

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/10/AR2006121000777_pf.html
International terrorist group likes its middle-aged recruits

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8702657/
Afghan demonstrators hurl abuse at US terrorist base

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/12/09/asia/AS_GEN_Afghan_Drugs.php
U.S. terror chief: Afghan poppies to be sprayed with herbicide

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15884.htm
Holocaust denial or smart move?

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1211-05.htm
Small nuclear war would cause global environmental catastrophe

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/north-pole-ice-could-vanish-by-2040/2006/12/12/1165685658479.html
North Pole ice could vanish by 2040

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061209/sc_nm/antarctica_warming_dc_1
Antarctica works as living global warming laboratory

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2062484.ece
World's top destroyer of the environment: not the car, or the plane, or 
Bush--it is the cow

http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/45395/
Biofuels are an environmental dead-end

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,8123-2495352,00.html
Wi-fi health concerns: should we be worried?

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/dec2006/ineq-d12.shtml
60 million Americans live on less than $7 a day

http://www.alternet.org/stories/45282/
New York City On $45 A Day (And That's If You're Lucky)

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15879.htm
US dollar facing imminent collapse?

http://www.mehrnews.ir/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=416994
Iran replaces dollar with euro in most oil dealings

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-retire10dec10,0,5286541.story?coll=la-headlines-business
So you think your 401(k) money is safe

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