[APR-news] December 28, 2006

Thu Dec 28 10:24:37 PST 2006

Alternative Press Review - Your Guide Beyond the Mainstream
www.altpr.org - December 28, 2006

http://www.alternet.org/stories/45815/
Announcing the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2006

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http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=710
WILL STINKY CUT THE BIG ONE?
By Sheila Samples

It's almost painful to watch the disintegration of George W. Bush and what's 
left of his murderous administration. Those who haven't fled are racing 
blindly through the halls of power, lurching into one another in a desperate 
attempt to distance themselves from Bush and to escape reaping what they 
have sown. Even cutting a bit of slack, it's still inconceivable that any 
thinking person could spend more than five minutes in the presence of Bush 
without the shock of recognizing what a total idiot this country has as its 
president. Other than breaking stuff, killing anything in his path, refusing 
to admit mistakes, and making an obscene mess of anything he touches, 
apparently the only thing Bush can do with any success is break wind -- pass 
gas -- fart.

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Other articles of interest

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122606M.shtml
Inside TV News: We Were Silenced by the Drums of War
Jeff Cohen, Truthout

Everything about my nine-month stint at cable news channel MSNBC occurred in 
the context of the ever-intensifying war drums over Iraq. The drums grew 
louder as D-Day approached, until the din became so deafening that rational 
journalistic thinking could not occur. Three weeks before the invasion, 
MSNBC Suits terminated "Donahue," their most-watched program. For 19 weeks, 
I had appeared in on-air debates almost every afternoon - the last weeks 
heavily focused on Iraq. I adamantly opposed an invasion. I warned that it 
would "undermine our coalition with Muslim and Arab countries that we need 
to [help us] fight Al Qaeda" and would lead to "quagmire." In October 2002, 
my debate segments were terminated.

http://www.mediachannel.org/wordpress/2006/12/27/david-horowitz-left-behind/
David Horowitz: Left Behind?
D. J. Waletzky, Media Channel

It is no exaggeration to describe Horowitz as a conspiracy theorist. His 
vision of the left is a network of terrorist and Communist sympathizers at 
best and traitors at worst. And he knows where to peddle his claims. 
"Discover the Network" is Horowitz's crowning achievement. By linking his 
old Marxist foes to the new spectre of Islamist terrorism, he has updated 
his signature canard, made it relevant and reinvigorated for the new 
millenium. His recently published opus in the field, "Unholy Alliance," is 
helpfully subtitled, "Radical Islam and the American Left." The problem is, 
it's patent bullshit.

http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=975&Itemid=135
The Enduring Legacy of Gerald R. Ford
Chris Floyd, Empire Burlesque

Ford's enduring legacy is in no way exhausted by the glories of his 
bloodthirsty political progeny. For the sad occasion of the statesman's 
death is certainly a most appropriate time to recall what is probably his 
greatest geopolitical masterstroke: the green-lighting of Indonesia's 1975 
invasion of East Timor -- an act of state-sponsored terrorism that killed 
more than 200,000 people. True, George W. Bush has now far surpassed that 
genocidal benchmark, setting new standards of pointless and barbaric mass 
murder in Iraq -- but only with the help of Fordians Cheney and Rumsfeld!

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/billet221206.html
The World Is Worth Fighting For: The Legacy of Joe Strummer
Alexander Billet, MR Zine

Is anything left in music that is even vaguely redeeming?  In the face of 
all the soulless pabulum being fed to us in the MTV-strangled airwaves, I 
often wonder if the industry has won.  When rock n' roll is so full of the 
cynical, the snide, the intentionally ironic, it seems like record companies 
are signing bands that not only won't say anything but won't feel anything. 
Not caring is the fad of the day, and righteousness is passé, naïve, and 
stupid. Antonino D'Ambrosio agrees.  As we sit in a bar on the Lower East 
Side of New York City, we talk about the sense of collective amnesia from 
which many bands suffer.  As the head of La Lutta New Media Collective, 
D'Ambrosio is aware that most of today's artists have little bark and even 
less bite.  He is also the editor of Let Fury Have the Hour: The Punk Rock 
Politics of Joe Strummer, a book devoted to the Clash front man, now in its 
fifth printing in two years.  Almost four years after Strummer's death in 
December of 2002, it is amazing how few remember the seismic effect the 
Clash had on music.  "Every band out there is a Clash imitator," the author 
tells me, "but half of them don't know who the Clash were."

http://the-fourth-world.blogspot.com/2006/12/apocalypto-cinematic-logic-of-genocide.html
Apocalypto: The Cinematic Logic of Genocide
Juan Santos, The Fourth World

His portrayal is a conscious lie, one he uses to justify the premise that 
the Mayan city states collapsed because they deserved to collapse, and that 
they deserved to be replaced by a "superior" culture in the genocide known 
as the Conquest. "A great civilization is not conquered from without until 
it has destroyed itself from within," is how Gibson puts it. In other words 
the Conquest was not genocide but a moral comeuppance; the civilization didn't 
fall, in the final analysis, from climate change or inadvertent soil 
depletion or even war - it was conquered in god's wrath against the forces 
of evil. And Gibson's made sure you see the ancient Maya as a force of 
profound evil.

http://www.chomsky.info/talks/20061215.htm
Historical Perspectives on Latin American and East Asian Regional 
Development
Noam Chomsky, chomsky.info

This is the first time since the Spanish conquests, 500 years, that there 
have been real moves toward integration in South America. The countries have 
been very separated from one another. And integration is going to be a 
prerequisite for authentic independence. There have been attempts at 
independence, but they've been crushed, often very violently, partly because 
of lack of regional support. Because there was very little regional 
cooperation, they could be picked off one by one. That's what has happened 
since the 1960s. The Kennedy administration orchestrated a coup in Brazil. 
It was the first of a series of falling dominoes. Neo-Nazi-style national 
security states spread across the hemisphere. Chile was one of them. Then 
there were Reagan's terrorist wars in the 1980s, which devastated Central 
America and the Caribbean. It was the worst plague of repression in the 
history of Latin America since the original conquests.

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0612f.asp
Would You "Support the Troops" in Bolivia?
Jacob G. Hornberger, FFF

Where is the morality of killing people who have never attacked the United 
States and who have done nothing worse than try to defend their country from 
a wrongful invader? Where is the morality in killing in "self-defense" when 
you don't have a right to be there killing people in the first place? Does a 
burglar who has entered someone's home in the middle of the night have the 
moral (or legal) right to claim self-defense if he kills the homeowner who 
shot at him while he was burglarizing the homeowner's home in the middle of 
the night?

http://www.counterpunch.org/dickinson12252006.html
Deny Santa If You Wish, But You Can't Deny This
Michael Dickinson, CounterPunch

The Jews certainly suffered terribly under the Nazi regime, and those Jews 
in power now years later in their own State of Israel certainly seem to have 
learned a few tricks from their former overlords. The harsh conditions to 
which they subject the Palestinian people resembles the way the Jews 
themselves were treated under Hitler, putting thems into prison camp 
getthoes, creating an apartheid system, stealing their land, destroying 
their homes and fields, imprisoning thousands, and causing the deaths of 
countless innocent people and children in bombings and shellings, all of 
this is really "shocking beyond belief", and "an affront to the entire 
civilized world."

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NewsWire

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20061226234719452
Journalists Say Free Press Threatened by Army Subpoena

http://www.counterpunch.org/brauchli12272006.html
Burning EPA's books: What they don't want you to read could save your life

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m29267&hd=&size=1&l=e
Gates visited Baghdad to quell US soldiers mutiny in Anbar

http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A41687
Sgt. Ricky Clousing went AWOL over atrocities; Soldier tried to report 
abuses but was rebuffed

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/12/26/military_considers_recruiting_foreigners/
Military considers recruiting foreigners

http://news.bostonherald.com/international/view.bg?articleid=173850&srvc=news
Iran's oil exports could decline to zero in less than a decade

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,20974965-5006003,00.html
Antarctic ozone layer 90 to 99 per cent gone

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/16319129.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Climate change at crisis level

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=11915
In Many Villages, Alaskans Face Physical and Cultural Erosion

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=11934
FDA set to ok food from cloned animals

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_4900525
Foreclosing on the American Dream: lawyers, listing agents, property 
managers, investors and auctioneers making huge profits off the misery of 
others

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117956295.html?categoryid=19&cs=1
"Corrie" canceled in Canada

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/16325116.htm
US doctors being trained in Cuba

http://www.theolympian.com/103/story/57372.html
Jeff Monson: Fighter with a cause

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