[APR-news] January 11, 2006

Wed Jan 11 08:09:16 PST 2006

Alternative Press Review - Your Guide Beyond the Mainstream
www.altpr.org - January 11, 2006
"Magazine of the Year" -  2005 Press Action Award

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http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=574&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Citizen's Arrest: In Pursuit of Accountability in U.S. Foreign Policy
By Mark Hand

Last Thursday would have been the perfect moment for the American people to 
express their collective will in Washington and initiate a citizen's 
arrest...a mass citizen's arrest. President Bush had assembled a group of 
former Secretaries of Defense and former Secretaries of State in the 
Roosevelt Room of the White House for a photo opportunity to lend 
multigenerational Republican and Democratic legitimacy to U.S. conduct in 
the Middle East. In other words, some of the world's leading war criminals 
from the past 40 years had gathered in one place.

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=575&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Of The Evil Empire: Imperialist Devastation of Peoples and the Evils Done in 
our Names
By Manuel Valenzuela

Let us for a few moments put aside our lavish lifestyles of fortuitous 
endowment and providence that have made us blind to the realities of 
billions of our fellow humans. Let us ignore our plasma televisions, our 
DVDs, our two-story cookie cutter homes and gas-guzzling SUVs. Let us 
promise to not open our overstocked pantries and refrigerators, or to go out 
and eat at one of many corporate controlled franchise restaurants offering 
vast assortments of gargantuan meals. We should ignore the opulence of our 
society that dwells permanently in our minds that makes us forget the severe 
indigence and suffering that transpires beyond our shores and borders. In 
short, we should come out of our luxurious bubble that has shielded us from 
the evils inflicted on billions of humans that have not been as privy to a 
life of safety and security. Let us traverse the road of reality, sojourning 
through history and through mirages of hidden truths. Let us dive into the 
making of the Evil Empire so that we may see what our government has and 
continues to do in our name.

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=573&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Advice From An Old Man: "Just Say No" to State-Sponsored Murder
By Doug Soderstrom

Each of us will be held accountable for upholding the laws of justice, 
peace, and love. There are no exceptions. Every human being on this planet 
will be held responsible for his own actions. No one, regardless of his 
country of origin (even if he happens to be a citizen of the United States 
of America), will be allowed to escape judgment simply because he 
inadvertently assumed that he had no choice but to follow "his orders," the 
commands given to him by "his superiors," the government. The Nazis learned 
this the hard way. The people of Germany should have known better than to 
follow in the footsteps of a mad man.

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=572&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
China's Stranglehold on the Dollar
by Mike Whitney

On Thursday, The People's Republic of China fired off the first volley in 
what could turn out to be economic Armageddon. China announced that it would 
begin to diversify its foreign-exchange reserves away from US dollar. Gulp! 
The only thing keeping the dollar atop its fragile perch is the fact that 
other countries have been willing to lap up the $600 billion of American red 
ink every year via the trade deficit. That amounts to roughly $2 billion per 
day or nearly 7% GDP.

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Other articles of interest

http://www.sploid.com/news/2006/01/i_want_youfor_u.php
I WANT YOU FOR U.S. BLOGGING
Sploid, sploid.com

The U.S. Army is giving "exclusive content" to pro-war bloggers through a 
propaganda company funded by American tax dollars. The Washington Post's 
national security columnist reported the shameful news today. The goal of 
the Army's propaganda is to obscure the horrible truth of the Iraq 
occupation, the propaganda company admitted in an e-mail to unquestioning 
supporters of the endless war. No longer able to control the usually corrupt 
Washington press corps, the Bush administration has been repeatedly caught 
creating fake newscasts and fake news agencies while bribing "independent" 
journalists to repeat the government's lies.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jan2006/mine-j10.shtml
US media sheds crocodile tears for West Virginia miners
Jerry Isaacs, WSWS

In the hundreds of hours of television news coverage and reams of news 
articles, nothing could be found that enlightened the worldwide audience 
following the gripping events as to the Sago Mine disaster's social and 
historical dimensions. Indeed it generally takes such a tragedy for the US 
media to discover there is a working class at all. This was all but 
acknowledged by the editors of the New York Times, who commented, "Just as 
Hurricane Katrina forced Americans to look at the face of lingering poverty 
and racism, this mining tragedy should focus us all on another forgotten, 
mistreated corner of society." "Forgotten, mistreated" by whom? If the 
social realities of West Virginia or New Orleans have been kept out of 
public view it is because the US media has done its best to conceal them.

http://brickburner.blogs.com/my_weblog/2006/01/moveonorg_surre.html
Silence Is Complicity: MoveOn.org Surrenders
Joshua Frank, BrickBurner

If I remember correctly, it wasn't just the Republican Party that got us 
into this dreadful mess. The Democrats voted for it, helped sell the damn 
thing, and even bombed the hell out of Iraq during the 1990s, all the while 
supporting deadly UN sanctions. And as Americans begin to turn on this war, 
including prominent elected officials from both parties, Hillary still won't 
retract her defense of the war, let alone meet with genuine antiwar 
activists here in New York. All of this, and the feckless MoveOn.org still 
won't call Hillary out for her warmongering.

http://www.indexonline.org/en/news/articles/2006/1/united-states-rumsfeld-s-archipelago-of-gula.shtml
Rumsfeld's Archipelago of Gulags: Focus on Cuban camp obscured far worse 
activities around the world
Clive Stafford Smith, Index on Censorship

For four years Guantánamo's high profile obscured a far shadier world of 
US-sponsored interrogation chambers around the world. Only now is the world 
finally asking about the archipelago of US prisons around the world, and the 
fleet of CIA aircraft ferrying prisoners from one torture chamber to the 
next.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=48180
A Formula for Slaughter: The American Rules of Engagement from the Air
Michael Schwartz, TomDispatch

As one American officer explained to New York Times reporter Dexter Filkins, 
the willingness to sacrifice local civilians is part of a larger strategy in 
which U.S. military power is used to "punish not only the guerrillas, but 
also make clear to ordinary Iraqis the cost of not cooperating." A Marine 
calling-in to a radio talk show recently stated the argument more precisely: 
"You know why those people get killed? It's because they're letting 
insurgents hide in their house." This is, by the way, the textbook 
definition of terrorism -- attacking a civilian population to get it to 
withdraw support from the enemy. What this strategic orientation, applied 
wherever American troops fight the Iraqi resistance, represents is an 
embrace of terrorism as a principle tactic for subduing Iraq's insurgency.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2005/011006.html
Death of an American Hero
Robert Parry, Consortium News

"Hero" is one of the most abused words in the English language, often 
applied to people who simply face some danger or who do well in sports or 
business. But the word really should be reserved for someone who - in the 
face of danger - does the right thing. Hugh Thompson, who died on Jan. 6 at 
the age of 62 from cancer, was such a hero. In one of the darkest moments of 
modern American history - on March 16, 1968, in the Vietnamese village of My 
Lai - Thompson landed his helicopter between rampaging U.S. soldiers and a 
group of terrified Vietnamese villagers to save their lives.

http://www.haitiaction.net/News/JS/1_6_6.html
Coup payoff in Haiti: BO's "smoking gun," the $100,000 NED grant
Jeb Sprague, This Week in Haiti

Recently declassified National Endowment for Democracy (NED) documents 
reveal that a "leftist" workers' organization, Batay Ouvriye (BO), which 
promoted and called for the overthrow of the constitutionally elected 
government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was the targeted beneficiary 
of a US $99,965 NED grant routed through the AFL-CIO's American Center for 
International Solidarity (ACILS). Listed in NED's "Summary of Projects 
Approved in FY 2005" for Haiti, the grant states, "ACILS will work with the 
May 1st Union Federation- Batay Ouvriye [ESPM-BO] to train workers to 
organize and educate fellow workers."

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=55&ItemID=9504
On Sprague's Alleged Smoking Gun
Batay Ouvriye, ZNet

This is a Reply to Jeb Sprague's article on Batay Ouvriye and the NED. As 
some may know, our Batay Ouvriye workers' movement has recently been under 
the attacks of a questionable political current based in the United States. 
This current has published several articles, individually intervened on the 
internet, hosted presentations and debates, and held various other 
activities questioning our sources of funding.

http://www.counterpunch.org/andrew01092006.html
How Many Iraqis Have Died Since the US Invasion in 2003?
Andrew Cockburn, CounterPunch

President Bush's off-hand summation last month of the number of Iraqis who 
have so far died as a result of our invasion and occupation as "30,000, more 
or less" was quite certainly an under-estimate. The true number is probably 
hitting around 180,000 by now, with a possibility, as we shall see, that it 
has reached as high as half a million.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4389.shtml
Sharon was a man of war, not peace
Maureen Clare Murphy, Electronic Intifada

To the Palestinians, he was as Hitler was to the people of Europe," said 
Rahmeh Mansour, who works in Palestinian civil society and is part of the 
women's movement. "We never forget Sabra and Chatila; we never forget his 
role in displacing the Palestinian people in 1948 and setting off the 
Al-Aqsa Intifada ... He should be tried like any other war criminal."

http://www.alternet.org/story/30444/
The Death of Hunting
Christina Larson, Washington Monthly (via AlterNet)

As landowners close off their private property, many hunters have hung up 
their shotguns. It's up to progressives to preserve hunting -- if we even 
want to.

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=476&row=0
No Child's Behind Left: The Test
Greg Palast, gregpalast.com

President Bush told us, "By passing the No Child Left Behind Act, we are 
regularly testing every child and making sure they have better options when 
schools are not performing." But there are no "better options."

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NewsWire

http://democracyrising.us/content/view/402/164/
Antiwar group has documents proving NSA spied on them

http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2006/01/abcs_scoop_mill.html
"Millions" of Americans' phone calls tapped by NSA

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/010806A.shtml
The NSA Spy Engine: Echelon

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=8100
Jailed for 30 years for criticizing 'free' Iraq

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001807768
US military kidnaps award-winning journalist in Iraq

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/060110/w011026.html
Whistleblowers to be tried in UK

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12956,1682258,00.html?gusrc=rss
UK: MPs leaked Bush plan to bomb Al-Jazeera

http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=59009
Citizen's Tribunal Indicts Bush Administration for War Crimes and Crimes 
Against Humanity; Indictments to be Delivered to White House

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13594370.htm
War crimes: Aerial slaughter to intensify

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5532836,00.html
Belafonte Calls Bush 'Greatest Terrorist'

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11488.htm
Bush advisor says President has legal power to torture children - including 
by crushing that child's testicles

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,16937,1681736,00.html
Scandal of force-fed prisoners

http://www.workingforchange.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=A0F9DC2B-04D3-2C5F-66CF035D2F6150DA
Bush announces radical shift in foreign policy; No U.S. media report it

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/british-officer-lashes-us-army-for-insensitivity/2006/01/11/1136956241154.html
British officer lashes US Army for institutional racism

http://www.slate.com/id/2133908/
How low can Army recruiters go?

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan06/Leupp09.htm
Neocons Considered Planting WMD Evidence in Iraq?

http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=19&story_id=26643&name=Bremer+warns+Dutch+to+back+Afghan+mission
Paul Bremer demands Dutch provide cannon fodder to Afghanistan, threatens US 
retribution if they refuse

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/53948.html
Israeli's update plans for a preemptive strike on Iran

http://villagevoice.com/news/0602,ridgeway,71636,6.html
Coal miners' slaughter

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/09/AR2006010900535_pf.html
Chinese peasants sentenced for one to five years in jail for defending 
themselves

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1365595.cms
Armed Orissa tribals demand land back, set trucks ablaze

http://www.terradaily.com/news/Activists_Threaten_To_Ram_Japanese_Pirate_Whalers.html
Activists threaten to ram Japanese whalers

http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__business&articleid=260957
US sees Iraqi oil production choked for years to come

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0108-01.htm
GM: New Study Shows Unborn Babies Could Be Harmed

http://www.terradaily.com/news/Chinas_Growth_Potentially_Fatal_For_The_Planet.html
China, industrial countries economic systems could be fatal for planet's 
environment

http://www.terradaily.com/news/Deforestation_Threatens_Brazils_Pantanal_Wetland.html
Deforestation Threatens Brazil's Pantanal Wetland

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article337356.ece
Whales: in deep trouble

http://www.terradaily.com/news/Nobel_Laureate_Blames_EAfrica_Drought_On_Deforestation.html
Nobel Laureate Blames East Africa Drought On Deforestation

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=9627
Receding groundwater threatens Boston neighborhoods

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13593302.htm
Rapidly shrinking Arctic ice could spell trouble for the rest of the world

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/09jan_electrichurricanes.htm
Three of most powerful hurricanes of 2005 were filled with mysterious 
lightning

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