[APR-news] Weekend Edition (Dec 31, 2005 - Jan 2, 2006)

Mon Jan 2 19:53:37 GMT 2006

Alternative Press Review - Your Guide Beyond the Mainstream
www.altpr.org - Weekend Edition (Dec 31 - Jan 2, 2005)
"Magazine of the Year" -  2005 Press Action Award

"I'm in favor of anything that destabilizes the republic." - George Carlin

http://www.chrisjordan.com/
Portraits of American Mass Consumption

http://riotporn.blogspot.com/
While America sleeps, the world resists

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http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=565&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Inside TeenScreen: The Making of Mental Patients
By Sandra Lucas

Psychologist, author and director of Texans for Safe Education, John
Breeding, doesn't mince words, "TeenScreen is nothing more than a government
sponsored marketing tool created to serve the interests of the corporate
pharmaceutical industry and psychiatrists. It is a shame and a disgrace that
the United States is putting millions of children on psychiatric drugs
today. This is obviously not enough to satisfy the insatiable greed of big
pharma. We must stop TeenScreen and protect our children from more deadly
poisoning."

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=566&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Skirmishes in the Information Wars
By Mike Whitney

We now know that the Bush administration authorized massive illegal spying
operations and is actively engaged in planting pro-American stories in the
foreign press. These suggest that the administration's overall theory of
information management is much more extensive then originally imagined. In
fact, news and information manipulation is at the forefront of Bush's war on
terror, a comprehensive strategy to control of every bit of information a
citizen hears, sees or reads from cradle to grave. It is information warfare
on a scale that would make George Orwell cringe.

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Other articles of interest

http://www.hopedance.org/new/issues/54/article11.html
Conserve Energy; Be Idle: Tom Hodgekinson on living rich while working less
Katie Elizabeth Renz, HopeDance

The idea of a government is to create an ordered, willing work force where
there's no trouble. So I think idlers are generally seen as potentially
dangerous because they're asking questions. They're saying, "Well, actually,
this life of buying bigger cars and getting a raise, getting a second home
and working hard for somebody else doing something I don't enjoy, isn't such
a great idea, so I'm going to explore the alternatives."

http://counterpunch.org/montague12312005.html
Genetic Engineering on Steroids: A Darker Bioweapons Future
Peter Montague, CounterPunch

One of the top developments of 2005 is a kind of genetic engineering on
steroids -- a new field called "synthetic biology" in which scientists are
setting out to create new forms of life that have never existed before.

http://www.unknownnews.org/051230a-hh.html
Truth or dare, America
Helen & Harry Highwater, Unknown News

What if news reporters reported news? What if newspapers from the Washington
Post to the Hicksville Gazette simply told the truth, with headlines that
"Bush lied yesterday, when he said ..." and "Cheney is a pathological liar"?
What if the nightly news was designed to make current events understood,
instead of obfuscated? What if, instead of simply repeating what federal
spokesandroids said, their statements were reported alongside the facts --
allowing anyone with a brain to see what the Scott McClellans of the world
are made of, or full of.

http://progressive.org/mag_zinn0106
After the War
Howard Zinn, The Progressive

There is a persistent argument against such a possibility, which I have
heard from people on all parts of the political spectrum: We will never do
away with war because it comes out of human nature. The most compelling
counter to that claim is in history: We don't find people spontaneously
rushing to make war on others. What we find, rather, is that governments
must make the most strenuous efforts to mobilize populations for war. They
must entice soldiers with promises of money, education, must hold out to
young people whose chances in life look very poor that here is an
opportunity to attain respect and status. And if those enticements don't
work, governments must use coercion: They must conscript young people, force
them into military service, threaten them with prison if they do not comply.

http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20051231093731872
It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over
Michael Novick, Turning the Tide (via Infoshop News)

The Empire would have us believe that its system is "a done deal." The key
to exposing that as a lie is to say - "No Deal!" We cannot bargain or
negotiate for liberation except when we have the power to exact deadly
consequences on the colonizers. We need to recognize that the choice is not
between Republicans and Democrats, between neo-conservatives and
neo-liberals, but between slavery and freedom, between sustainability and
genocide or ecocide.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11435.htm
A Gestapo Administration
Paul Craig Roberts, ICH

Bush has actually declared it treasonous to reveal his illegal behavior! His
propagandists, who masquerade as news organizations, have taken up the line:
To reveal wrong-doing by the Bush administration is to give aid and comfort
to the enemy. Compared to Spygate, Watergate was a kindergarten picnic. The
Bush administration's lies, felonies, and illegalities have revealed it to
be a criminal administration with a police state mentality and police state
methods. Now Bush and his attorney general have gone the final step and
declared Bush to be above the law. Bush aggressively mimics Hitler's claim
that defense of the realm entitles him to ignore the rule of law.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_mark_a___060102_following_orders.htm
Following Orders
Mark A. Goldman, OpEdNews

If I have my facts straight, Hitler killed only one person in his lifetime:
himself. All the other atrocities that are attributed to him were carried
out by people who were only following orders. If it is true that the war in
Iraq is illegal, as I and others believe it is-including the Secretary
General of the United Nations-then all the deaths and atrocities that have
occurred to date, inflicted by our coalition forces, are the acts of
individuals who, knowingly or unknowingly, with good intentions or not, have
been willing to break the law in order to follow the orders of superiors.

http://www.observer.com/opinions_wiseguys.asp
Police-State Powers Are Our Biggest Threat
Martin Garbus, New York Observer

The Pentagon has already expanded its domestic-surveillance activity beyond
any previous time in history. It breaks into homes, wiretaps and eavesdrops
at will, and builds secret dossiers on citizens while arguing that there can
be no judicial review of its activities. President George W. Bush argues
that there can be no judicial review of any decision he makes when he
decides whether an alien or an American citizen is or is not an enemy
combatant. Congress supports this; so does the judiciary.

http://lefti.blogspot.com/2005_12_01_lefti_archive.html#113597725009689942
Iraqi children: one (hopefully) saved, more than half a million killed
Eli Stephens, Left I on the News

In heavy rotation on the cable channels and also featured prominently on
local and national coverage is the story of "Baby Noor," a 3-month-old Iraqi
child with spina bifida, who is being sent to the U.S. for what one hopes
will be a life-saving operation. If only as much coverage had been given to
the 567,000 Iraqi children under the age of five who died (or, more
accurately, were killed) during a decade of U.S./U.N. sanctions which
crippled what had been perhaps the most advanced medical system in the
Middle East, not to mention the deliberate (and criminal) destruction of the
Iraqi water supply by American bombing during the Gulf War, with full
foreknowledge of the likely consequences.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Dec05/Rodgers1231.htm
The Real Left Behind Story: The Reactionary American Left and the Law of
Diminishing Returns
Christy Rodgers, Dissident Voice

Now, in a political sphere that reminds me of a Star Trek episode, where the
characters are all caught in a time warp which keeps them repeating exactly
the same words and actions, potentially forever, I am haunted not so much by
the ghoulish rhetoric of the radical right, as by the deer-in-the-headlights
response of the self-identified progressive, or left sector, to which I have
belonged all of my adult life. In 21st century America, we have entered a
kind of Through the Looking Glass world where progressives are the real
conservatives: we spend most of our time trying to stop something bad from
changing to something worse, rather than potentializing positive social
change.

http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/samples12302005/
Go to the Light!
Sheila Samples, Press Action

After the New York Times recently reported that Bush authorized the National
Security Agency (NSA) to cast a wide net to spy on American citizens' e-mail
and phone calls without seeking warrants from the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA) court, Bush went on the offense, saying yeah, he did
it, and he was gonna keep on doing it, cause he was the president and-like
he told the Washington Post's Bob Woodward-that means he doesn't have to
explain to anybody why he does anything.

http://villagevoice.com/news/0601,mondo1,71442,6.html
The Bush Family Coup
James Ridgeway, Village Voice

The 9-11 attacks provided the rationale for what amounts to a Bush family
coup against the Constitution. From the outset, President George Bush used
9-11 to reorganize the federal government and increase its reach far beyond
any existing law to delve into the lives of innocent, ordinary people. The
new powers allowed the government to arrest them at will and to subject them
to endless incarceration without judicial review.

http://valenzuelasveritas.blogspot.com/2005/12/americas-tomorrow.html
America's Tomorrow
Manuel Valenzuela, Valenzuela's Veritas

The corporation has become the demon of the modern age, becoming, to 21st
century humanity, what totalitarian regimes were to the 20th, a threat
allowed to grow and prosper, slowly gaining power and influence, becoming
wealthier than entire nations, allowed to control and manipulate the
population, swallowing whole the branches of government, becoming overlord
of Earth, master of the masses. It is the corporation, allowed to develop
through debauched capitalism and the power of the Establishment, through our
indifference and failure to act, which has accelerated the dastardly stage
of degenerate capitalism we are immersed in today. It is the corporation,
and the people that control it, that has become the greatest threat to the
continued survival of humankind.

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/view/2479/1/140/
Secret Invasion: US Troops Steal into Paraguay
W.T. Whitney Jr, Political Affairs Magazine

The Bush administration has sent troops into Paraguay. They are there
ostensibly for humanitarian and counterterrorism purposes. The action
coincides with growing left unity in South America, military buildup in the
region and burgeoning independent trade relationships.

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NewsWire

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/02/politics/02propaganda.html
Muslim scholars were paid to aid US propaganda

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/9B76BA4A1A51D52A862570E80072B913?OpenDocument
ACLU will provide cameras to monitor police

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11407.htm
UK torture memos leaked in defiance of secrets acts

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/123005Y.shtml
Justice Department targeting whistleblowers

http://clnlb.us.publicus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051228/ATLNEWS01/512280392/-1/ATLNEWS
IWW stripper targeted by the FBI

http://news.findlaw.com/ap/o/632/12-30-2005/c8c8000f66df87e6.html
Two teens expelled from high school because they were suspected of being
lesbians have sued

http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/29/narrest29.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/12/29/ixnewstop.html
UK: Now you can be arrested for any offense

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1965621,00.html
UK military fears big losses in Afghanistan

http://www.antiwar.com/blog/index.php?id=P2591
Afghan casualties doubled in 2005

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1965182,00.html
US forces dramatically stepping up air attacks on civilians

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20060102&articleId=1703
Mordechai Vanunu: Israel preparing to use nuclear weapons against Iran

http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20051230-112208-8968r
German media: US plans Iran strike

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/12/31/wtest31.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/12/31/ixworld.html
German tyranny: Germany to force Muslims to undergo rigorous loyalty test

http://www.theeagle.com/stories/010106/world_20060101034.php
Fuel shortages, darkness greet Iraqis in 2006

http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/nyt184.html
Fuel crisis deepens in Iraq with long lines at pumps

http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/nyt186.html
In Iraq, rich in oil, anger at skyrocketing gas prices

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,175-1964719,00.html
Largest oil refinery in Iraq shut down

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4574954.stm
Iraq oil production hits new low

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1103AP_Europe_Gas_Worries.html
Gas supplies fall sharply in Europe

http://www.tidepool.org/original_content.cfm?articleid=181773
With energy prices sky-high and big oil reaping record profit, outdoor
camping comes inside

http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/6134.asp
As we get closer to 2012, extreme climate changes engulf the earth - the
geologic and biogeochemical cycles dominate

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/politics/13510433.htm
America's weather was extreme this year

http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,12070,1676400,00.html
Australia battles wildfires as new year brings record heatwave

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