[APR-news] December 20, 2006

Wed Dec 20 07:33:09 PST 2006

Alternative Press Review - Your Guide Beyond the Mainstream
www.altpr.org - December 20, 2006

http://www.prwatch.org/falsies2006
Falsies on Parade: The Worst Spinners of 2006

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/56423
The Onion: The Last Thing America Needs Is Another President

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http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=707
"Defending our interests and our people" (lessons from Panama)
By Mickey Z.

On December 20, 1989-just two weeks after the fall of the Berlin 
Wall-President George H.W. Bush ushered in the post-Cold War era by sending 
25,000 troops into Noriega's Panama. Called Operation Just Cause (sic), the 
foray would have been deemed a "surprise attack" if any other nation had 
initiated it.

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=706
Palestinian Boiling Pot
By Dr. Elias Akleh

Israel had done everything it could to multiply and intensify the suffering 
of the Palestinian people. Israel had confiscated tax dollars it collects on 
behalf of the Palestinian government. It raided and robbed many Palestinian 
banks and financial institutions under the justification of money laundering 
to a terrorist group. The Israeli army had tripled its road blocks 
preventing Palestinian from traveling to their neighboring cities for work 
or health treatment. Palestinian citizens have been completely imprisoned 
and isolated in their own towns. Border crossings have been sealed to 
enforce economical siege and all humanitarian, trade, and economical 
transactions had been prevented from going in or out of the occupied 
Palestine. The Israeli terrorist army intensified its extrajudicial 
assassinations of resistance leaders. They routinely raided civilian homes 
after midnight kidnapping men, old and young. They shelled civilian homes 
with their artilleries, their tanks, and their fighter airplanes. They 
demolished many homes, razed farm lands, and built more Israeli colonies on 
usurped Palestinian land.

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Other articles of interest

http://www.alternet.org/stories/45730/
Wikipedia vs. Women
Annalee Newitz, AlterNet

WikiChix was recently formed by women contributors sick of how 
male-dominated Wikipedia has become. The question their move raises is as 
old as feminism itself.

http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2995
Stone Age Had Rocks, Not June-and-Ward Cleavers
Caryl Rivers, Women's Enews

Anthropologists who suggest early humans survived by dint of separate gender 
roles are grabbing headlines. Caryl Rivers says it shows the media's 
fondness for evidence--however dubious--of the species being hardwired for 
male dominance.

http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/2006/12/call-me-ebenezer-but-christmas-as-we.html
Call me Ebenezer, but Christmas as we know it needs to go...
Jason Miller, Thomas Paine's Corner

While Christmas may only come once a year, the pernicious effects of the 
Consumerism it manifests to such a high degree are virtually omnipresent in 
a society premised on acquisitiveness. Consumerism is the tap root of the 
sprawling and gnarled tree of predatory Capitalism. Like an aberrant black 
walnut tree of gargantuan proportion, American Capitalism(1) exudes toxins 
that stunt or eradicate nearly every living thing attempting to grow within 
the circumference of its expansive root system.

http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/38900
Expanding Markets and Dying Oceans: Eating the Planet like a Bag of Doritos 
for Jesus
Phil Rockstroh, Media Monitors

We are both the threatened, dominate species -- as well as the comet of 
destruction that will end this Empire of Endless Burgers and Ceaseless 
Bullshit. Our delusions of the sustainability of ever-expanding market-based 
economies, wholly dependent upon a never wavering abundance of resources, 
has rendered us as inflexible as the dinosaurs were before a global wide, 
sky-occluding dust cloud. We're devouring the life-sustaining resources of 
the earth as if it were a bag of Doritos.

http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/2006/12/letter-to-american-gi.html
A letter to an American G.I.
Layla Anwar, Arab Woman Blues Blog

When I see you kicking young Iraqis around and beating them to death, when I 
see you raping little girls and burning them, when I see you making Iraqi 
children run miles after a plastic bottle of water or when you teach those 
poor little souls to say "Fuck you Iraq", just for the fun of it--I can't 
but have hate for you. (I will not even mention the torture, nor the 
pillaging - you know all of that already.) When I see you urinating in and 
on sacred places and when I see you writing your degenerate graffitis on 
7'000 years old archeological sites, with absolutely no respect or regard 
for other people's Faith, Culture and History--I can't but have contempt for 
you.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/121606.html
Ronald Reagan's Bloody 'Apocalypto'
Robert Parry, Consortium News

[T]he U.S. media has done a better job separating fact from fiction about 
Gibson's movie than in explaining to Americans how some of their most 
admired modern politicians, including Ronald Reagan, were implicated in a 
more recent genocide against Mayan tribes in Central America. America's hand 
in the later-day slaughter of these Mayas traces back to Dwight Eisenhower's 
presidency in 1954 when a CIA-engineered coup overthrew the reform-minded 
Guatemalan government of Jacobo Arbenz. The coup set in motion waves of 
murder, torture and assassination against almost anyone or any group deemed 
leftist, including Mayan tribes in Guatemala's highlands.

http://members.aol.com/bblum6/aer40.htm
Some things you need to know before the world ends
William Blum, Anti-Empire Report

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a man seemingly custom-made for the White House in 
its endless quest for enemies with whom to scare Congress, the American 
people, and the world, in order to justify the unseemly behavior of the 
empire. The Iranian president has declared that he wants to "wipe Israel off 
the map". He's said that "the Holocaust is a myth". He recently held a 
conference in Iran for "Holocaust deniers". And his government passed a new 
law requiring Jews to wear a yellow insignia, à la the Nazis. On top of all 
that, he's aiming to build nuclear bombs, one of which would surely be aimed 
at Israel. What right-thinking person would not be scared by such a man?

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6272.shtml
Do America and Israel want the Middle East engulfed by civil war?
Jonathan Cook, Electronic Initfada

Western politicians like to portray civil war as a consequence of the West's 
failure to intervene more effectively in the Middle East. Were we more 
engaged in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or more aggressive in opposing 
Syrian manipulations in Lebanon, or more hands-on in Iraq, the sectarian 
fighting could be prevented. The implication being, of course, that, without 
the West's benevolent guidance, Arab societies are incapable of dragging 
themselves out of their primal state of barbarity. But in fact, each of 
these breakdowns of social order appears to have been engineered either by 
the United States or by Israel.

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NewsWire

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1215-03.htm
Reporter summoned to testify against war resister

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_12_01_digbysblog_archive.html#116607297627079797
John McCain wants to escalate the Iraq war and shut down the internet, too

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn12192006.html
Harry Reid: More Troops to Iraq! - Democrats Plan to Fund Longer War

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/dec2006/balb-d18.shtml
Evidence surfaces that Indonesian military executed "Balibo Five" Australian 
newsmen in 1975

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1218-02.htm
Vermont woman is unlikely peace activist

http://www.thestar.com/article/157872
Agent provocateur: hedonist, atheist, libertarian, and anarchist philosopher 
remains defiant

http://insubordination.blogspot.com/2006/12/new-reports-of-abu-jamal-confession.html
New Reports of Abu-Jamal Confession after 25 years

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16226231/
US Army may break Goodyear strike

http://www.antiwar.com/glantz/?articleid=10167
Experts Expect Democrats to Increase Military Spending

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/121806K.shtml
US special forces terrorist teams carrying out operations in Europe

http://civillibertarian.blogspot.com/2006/12/republicrats-to-voters-people-have.html
REPUBLICRATS TO VOTERS: "THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN! NOW SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/117275.html
Life in prison for a $2 robbery

http://news.newsmax.com/?bUY73bF1Rs-Iaj-qFqRMmnUKkQb
OPEC abandons US dollar

http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/45530/
Corporate agribusiness is behind our dangerous food supply

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/17/AR2006121701122.html
Nothing New Here -- In California, 10 Friends Eschew Consumer Culture to 
Live Secondhand

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N14462540.htm
More Americans hungry, homeless in 2006

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