[APR-news] January 5, 2006

Thu Jan 5 22:38:08 GMT 2006

Alternative Press Review - Your Guide Beyond the Mainstream
www.altpr.org - January 5, 2006
"Magazine of the Year" -  2005 Press Action Award

http://www.nsawatch.org/
NSA Watch

http://www.prwatch.org/node/4335
The 2005 Falsies Awards

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http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=567&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
The People Are Unfit to Rule: The Ideological Meaning of Maury Povich and
Jerry Springer
by Paul Street

Beyond their profitable (for broadcasters) appeal to the public's most base
and voyeuristic instincts, these and other "real-life" television shows play
a neglected ideological role in the corporate-crafted "popular culture" of
parasitic late capitalism. They are part of an elitist thought control
project: the cultural engineering and enforcement of mass consent to social
hierarchy.

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=569&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
The Army of Good Americans
By Manual Velenzuela

Festering in our midst like a toxic cloud of pollution the army of good
Americans exists, living and working among us, inhabiting our neighborhoods
and cities, co-existing peacefully with us, though perceiving an utterly
different conception of reality than the rest of us. Their numbers, though
dwindling more every day with the almost weekly revelations of corporatist
lies built upon corporatist lies and government deceptions meshed with
corporate criminality, remain high, thanks to those unable to escape the
clouds of 9/11 and the manipulative propaganda of the corporatist media. The
Kool-Aid drinking brigades remain strong, still ardent supporters of
frivolous, fictitious and diminishing deceptions, still hypnotized to the
dim-witted, slurred speech of their great Commander in Chief, still spewing
the talking points they hear emanating from the corporatist media and still
clinging to the ingrained and unenlightened selfishness that permeates their
existence.

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=568&mode=nocomments&order=0&thold=0
Pity the Miner A-Diggin' My Bones
By Ron Jacobs

International Coal Group is itself owned by multi billionaire investor Wibur
Ross, who is known in the world of investments as a "vulture investor."
According to a Business Week profile from December 22, 2003, vulture
investing is "a corner of the finance world dominated by big personalities
who rise to prominence in times like these, the bust after a boom." Those
involved in this type of investing are not usually interested in long term
involvement in their investments preferring instead to get improved returns
and a fast exit by reselling the "distressed" companies at a profit. The
improvements usually involve some form of restructuring of the purchased
companies: new management, cutting corners so that profits will increase, or
new sales strategies are the favored "improvements." After these so-called
improvements are made, vulture investors then sell their investments for a
profit, usually to even larger companies. As the Business Week article puts
it, "ultimately he (Ross) makes money from others' misfortune."

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Other articles of interest

http://anthropik.com/2006/01/thesis-21-civilization-makes-us-sick/
Civilization Makes Us Sick
Jason Godesky, The Anthropik Network

The "diseases of civilization" are so well known as to hardly bear
repeating. While we work far longer hours than even the most overworked
forager, our work is quite different. Affluent First Worlders are too busy
working extraordinarily long hours sitting behind desks to exercise, while
agrarian societies emphasize back-breaking labor for the torso, back and
arms. A cursory examination of the human body's construction shows that it
is adapted best to one activity: walking. Whether hunting or gathering, most
of a forager's short work day consists simply of walking for hours at a
time. The sedentism of First World life has led to a host of maladies. At
the same time, we suffer from the psychosomatic and mental disorders that
are the result of such stressful lives. We are primates adapted to small,
egalitarian bands, but we find ourselves locked into large-scale,
hierarchical societies.

http://people.lulu.com/blogs/view_post.php?post_id=16601
The Myth of the Hydrogen Economy
Dale Allan Pfeiffer, lulu.com

There is a lot of talk about the hydrogen economy. It is at best naïve, and
at worst it is dishonest. A hydrogen economy would be a pitiful,
impoverished thing indeed. There are a number of problems with hydrogen fuel
cells. Many of these are engineering problems which could probably be worked
out in time. But there is one basic flaw which will never be overcome. Free
hydrogen is not an energy source; it is rather an energy carrier. Free
hydrogen does not exist on this planet, so to derive free hydrogen we must
break the hydrogen bond in molecules. Basic chemistry tells us that it
requires more energy to break a hydrogen bond than to form one. This is due
to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and there is no getting around it. We
are working on catalysts which will help to lower the energy necessary to
generate free hydrogen, but there will always be an energy loss, and the
catalysts themselves will become terribly expensive if manufactured on a
scale to match current transportation energy requirements.

http://www.energybulletin.net/11934.html
Predictions for 2006
James Howard Kunstler, ClusterFuck Nation (via Energy Bulletin)

High gasoline, heating oil, and methane gas prices will absolutely kill the
housing bubble for reasons I've already outlined. The production home
builders will be idle, stuck with huge inventories in places that never
should have been suburbanized in the first place. A lot of Americans holding
"creative" mortgages -- no money down, interest only, adjustable rate,
what-have-you -- will be crushed by the expense of their obligations. Many
of them will go bankrupt under new bankruptcy laws that leave no wiggle room
for escaping partial repayment. Their houses will flood the real estate
markets in an orgy of distress selling.

http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/fiyouzat01052006/
What's Wrong With Amy Goodman?
Reza Fiyouzat, Press Action

[W]hy does Amy Goodman invite rightwing pundits for "debates" and
"discussions"? Not just a few times, but lately quite regularly. Don't the
Rightwing propagandists have almost all the other platforms already? A
majority of people are thirsting for some truthful explanation of their
social environment, they are dying for some new ideas, and sick and tired of
the same old mainstream typecasting of reality in stupefied, simplified
journalism of "two sides of the story." So, why does Amy Goodman mimic the
corporate media?

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan06/Pilger05.htm
The Quiet Death of Freedom
John Pilger, Dissident Voice

Last October, an American surgeon, loved by his patients, was punished with
22 years in prison for founding a charity, Help the Needy, which helped
children in Iraq stricken by an economic and humanitarian blockade imposed
by America and Britain. In raising money for infants dying from diarrhea, Dr
Rafil Dhafir broke a siege which, according to UNICEF, had caused the deaths
of half a million under the age of five. The then Attorney-General of the
United States, John Ashcroft, called Dr Dhafir, a Muslim, a "terrorist", a
description mocked by even the judge in his politically-motivated, travesty
of a trial.

http://www.counterpunch.org/petras01042006.html
Evo Morales: All Growl, No Claws?
James Petras, CounterPunch

Once again in Bolivia we have a popular leader elected to power. Once again
we have an army of uncritical left cheerleaders, ignorant of significant
facts and policy changes over the last 5 years.

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NewsWire

http://www.prwatch.org/node/4344
Another journalist on the US payroll, in Haiti

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/01/nbc-confirms-its-investigating-whether.html
NBC confirms it's investigating whether Bush spied on CNN's Christiane
Amanpour

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/01/03/1435201
NSA whistleblower warns US is decaying into a police state

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0104-03.htm
NSA acted on its own authority, without any directive from Bush, to expand
domestic surveillance operations

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010506I.shtml
NSA destroyed evidence of domestic spying

http://progressive.org/mag_mc010206
History professor's mail opened by Homeland Security

http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=979bc356fbfc082be8930f269e2bde50
Cheney/Rumsfeld Surveillance Plans Date Back to 1980s

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-e4572547jan02,0,1655697.story?coll=ny-linews-headlines&track=rss
US military shuts down soldiers blogs

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/04/Oldman.Marine.ap/index.html
Marine, 65, arrested for not going to Vietnam 40 years ago

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1965623,00.html
Corporate publishers dump Nobel award-winning authors in the trash

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/editorials/la-op-psych1jan01,0,1868753.story?coll=la-home-sunday-opinion
Psychiatry's sick compulsion: turning weaknesses into diseases

http://www.socialistworker.org/2006-1/570/570_02_GaryFreeman.shtml
Why they want to put Gary Freeman on trial: 1960s Black radical fighting
extradition to US for show trial in Chicago

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jan2006/sago-j05.shtml
West Virginia mine tragedy: Families denounce company, state officials

http://www.nysun.com/article/25284
Wobblies resurface in NY, target Starbucks

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010406H.shtml
Mexico furious over proposed wall

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/01/04/opinion/edacker.php
Watch the streets of Iran: defiance against Ahmadinejad's authoritarianism
increasing

http://www.alternativenews.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=352&Itemid=1&lang=ISO-8859-1
Israel Plans De Facto Annexation of Palestinian Land

http://progressive.org/mag_wx010306
IMF occupies Iraq, riots follow

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060103/wl_nm/iraq_usa_strike_dc_2
Air strike on civilian home by cowardly US terrorists kills 14 members of
one family

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11441.htm
21st century warfare: disparate cells of armed guerillas disrupting critical
energy supplies that sustain the global economy

http://survival-international.org/news.php?id=1295
India: Massacre of tribe in Orissa

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10694125/
Ecuadorian, Nigerian cases seek compensation from Chevron: Oil boom a bust
for us, villagers say in court

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/03/science/03crop.html
Lax oversight found in tests of gene-altered crops

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4581428.stm
Deep sea fish species in the northern Atlantic are on the brink of
extinction

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/13554593.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
Vital signs of California's delta have suddenly plunged to new depths

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/01/04/060104185028.juffd4y7.html
Global warming 55 million years ago shifted ocean currents

http://www.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-234/0601035729190447.htm
Bush's former energy advisor expects oil to hit $250 barrel

http://www.cepr.net/columns/weisbrot/2005_12_31.htm
U.S. Economy Faces Large Imbalances in 2006

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060101/BUSINESS/601010363
Clock is running down on cheap mortgages

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