[APR-news] May 5, 2006

Fri May 5 09:17:32 PDT 2006

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

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http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12900.htm
Colbert Roasts Bush (video and transcript)

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http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=640&mode=nocomments&order=0&thold=0
The Invisible M3 and Plumping Up the Economy
The Subsurface World of Inflation, Cannibalism and the Plight of the 
Squeezees
by Zbignew Zingh

In March 2006, with practically no explanation, the federal government 
stopped reporting on M3, the broadest measure of the money supply in the 
U.S. economy. The most important "asset" in the 21st Century is not cash, 
gold, real estate, guns or even petroleum, but Information. "Knowledge" 
trumps everything. That is why, for example, the telecommunications industry 
is right now in the process of buying up Congress so that it can finish off 
"network neutrality" and, eventually, strangle your access to knowledge and 
information on websites like this one.

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=639&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
United 93, anti-war sentiment, and illegal CEOs
By Mickey Z.

With the recent release of "United 93," the full-blown commodification of 
9/11 has begun in earnest. Most telling about the debates and discussion 
surrounding this politically sterile film is the omnipresent question: "Is 
it too soon?" Only a nation sufficiently insulated from the impact of its 
policies can indulge in such a concern. Forty people died on the doomed 
United Flight 93. With all due respect, that's a typical Wednesday in Iraq. 
Thus, I wonder: Is it too soon for a movie about Fallujah?

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=641&mode=nocomments&order=0&thold=0
Stephen Colbert: The mouth that roared
By Ed Naha

"Satire is moral outrage transformed into comic art" Philip Roth once 
declared. He should have added: it's on the wane. It's been almost a week 
since Stephen Colbert headlined at The Washington Steno Pool's annual 
dinner, zeroing in on both Bush and the Steno Pool itself. And, the results 
are finally dribbling in. Depending on the amount of Kool-Aid in your 
system, Colbert was "ballsy," or "crude," or "strident," or "dull" or 
"brave" or "embarrassing" or "heroic" or "cringe-inducing" or "sarcastic" or 
someone who "needed editing." Okay. Let me be the first to say it. He was 
fucking funny as Hell.

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Other articles of interest

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060503_maelstrom_of_vitriol.php
MAELSTROM OF VITRIOL - THE BBC SMEARS MEDIA LENS
Media Lens

Fuller's article represents the first substantial coverage the BBC have 
afforded Media Lens and is the most distorted and damaging smear of our work 
to appear over the last five years. The report began with about the most 
basic factual error that can be made about the topic, with Fuller asserting: 
"IBC compiles a list of all violent deaths in Iraq reported in the media 
since the outbreak of the war." In fact IBC only records civilian deaths 
reported by the media. Other basic errors followed. Fuller claimed: "The 
Lancet study is the highest estimate available." Les Roberts, lead author of 
the Lancet report, told us last year that his report was the third from 
highest out of eight studies. Fuller also asserted that the Lancet report 
"dealt with a relatively small sample". This is a standard journalistic 
error that we have repeatedly challenged in earlier alerts

http://www.juancole.com/2006/05/hitchens-hacker-and-hitchens.html
Hitchens the Hacker; And, Hitchens the Orientalist
Juan Cole, Informed Comment

Christopher Hitchens owes me a big apology. I belong to a private email 
discussion group called Gulf2000. It has academics, journalists and policy 
makers on it. It has a strict rule that messages appearing there will not be 
forwarded off the list. It is run, edited and moderated by former National 
Security Council staffer for Carter and Reagan, Gary Sick, now a political 
scientist at Columbia University. The "no-forwarding" rule is his, and is 
intended to allow the participants to converse about controversial matters 
without worrying about being in trouble. Also, in an informal email 
discussion, ideas evolve, you make mistakes and they get corrected, etc. It 
is a rough, rough draft. Hitchens somehow hacked into the site, or joined 
and lurked, or had a crony pass him things. And he has now made my private 
email messages the subject of an attack on me in Slate. Moreover, he did not 
even have the decency to quote the final outcome of the discussions.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=25953
The Great American Firewall: Why the Net is poised to become a global weapon 
of mass deception
Elliot D. Cohen, Ph.D., Smirking Chimp

Now unfolding is a legal-political-corporate plot for turning a vibrant, 
democratic Internet into a global web of corporate and government deceit. 
The tell-tale signs exist but as in domestic abuse, the perpetrators 
(federal government and a small group of interconnected, powerful telecom 
and mainstream media monopolies) have done their utmost to keep it hidden 
behind closed doors.

http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/06-3om/Jensen.html
Beyond Hope
Derrick Jensen, Orion Magazine

We're losing badly, on every front. Those in power are hell-bent on 
destroying the planet, and most people don't care. Frankly, I don't have 
much hope. But I think that's a good thing. Hope is what keeps us chained to 
the system, the conglomerate of people and ideas and ideals that is causing 
the destruction of the Earth. To start, there is the false hope that 
suddenly somehow the system may inexplicably change. Or technology will save 
us. Or the Great Mother. Or beings from Alpha Centauri. Or Jesus Christ. Or 
Santa Claus. All of these false hopes lead to inaction, or at least to 
ineffectiveness.

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_8534.shtml
George W. Bush: An American Hitler
Doug Thompson, Capitol Hill Blue

In George W. Bush's petty, pathetic, partisan world, laws he doesn't agree 
with don't have to be obeyed, Congressional actions that differ from his 
political agenda can be ignored and the Constitution of the United States is 
just a "goddamned piece of paper." Charlie Savage of The Boston Globe 
brought this point home Sunday when he revealed Bush has chosen to ignore 
more laws passed by Congress than any President in history, appending more 
than 750 laws with "signing statements" that say, in effect, that he doesn't 
give a damn what the law says because he will do whatever he pleases as a 
"wartime president" and "commander-in-chief."

http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/05/04/dicum/index.html?source=daily
A Cure for What Jails Ya: An interview with jailed "eco-terrorist" Jeffrey 
Luers
Gregory Dicum, Grist

In 2000, 21-year-old Jeff Luers and an accomplice set fire to three pickup 
trucks at a dealership in Eugene, Ore., to bring attention to gas-guzzlers' 
contribution to global warming. They were promptly arrested. Luers, who 
refused to plea bargain, was sentenced to 22 years, eight months in prison. 
It is the longest term ever handed down for environmentally motivated 
sabotage in America -- and far longer than sentences given to arsonists in 
Oregon who have destroyed more property and endangered peoples' lives.

http://www.vanityfair.com/commentary/content/articles/060501roco03
The Rape of Appalachia
Michael Shnayerson, Vanity Fair

Appalachia's mountains are being blasted at a rate of several ridgetops each 
week. Parents fear for the health of their children. And those trying to 
fight the devastation have found that coal baron Don Blankenship, C.E.O. of 
Massey Energy, is tougher than bedrock.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0503-35.htm
We Must Honor Earth's Limits
Pete Letheby, Common Dreams

If you check out an atlas of California, you'll notice that Owens Lake is 
filled in with white, not blue. That's because Los Angeles sucked it dry 
decades ago. Las Vegas is considering similar plunder of groundwater 
elsewhere in Nevada. And there are many other cities -- Denver, Phoenix, 
Houston, Tampa, to name a few -- that have chosen to push nature's limits. 
Closer to my Nebraska home, I watch the continuing plunder of the Great 
Plains' Ogallala Aquifer, the largest underground reservoir in the United 
States and one of the largest on the planet. It once held as much water as 
Lake Huron. It is a treasure that took millennia to accumulate. Remarkably, 
it could cease to be a water source within another generation.

http://www.countercurrents.org/us-pilger050506.htm
The Salvador Option Has Been Invoked In Iraq
John Pilger, The New Statesman

Now that al-Zarqawi has been replaced by "sectarian violence" and "civil 
war", the big news is the attacks by Sunnis on Shia mosques and bazaars. The 
real news, which is not reported in the CNN "mainstream", is that the 
Salvador Option has been invoked in Iraq. This is the campaign of terror by 
death squads armed and trained by the US, which attack Sunnis and Shias 
alike. The goal is the incitement of a real civil war and the break-up of 
Iraq, the original war aim of Bush's administration. The ministry of the 
interior in Baghdad, which is run by the CIA, directs the principal death 
squads.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12895.htm
Destroying to Save: The Not so Hidden Agenda in Administration Policies
Daniel Jordan and Neil Wollman, ICH

One infamous line from the Vietnam War was, "It became necessary to destroy 
the village to save it." The Bush Administration has carried this thinking 
to stratospheric heights.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/May06/Jacobs03.htm
Neil Young Kicks Out the Jams!
Ron Jacobs, Dissident Voice

On April 30, 1970, Richard Nixon told the world that US forces were invading 
the country of Cambodia. Within twenty-four hours of his announcement, the 
streets of many cities and towns around the United States and elsewhere were 
filled with angry protests against the US action. On May 4th National Guard 
troops opened fire on protesters in Kent, Ohio killing four and wounding 
many others. Within days, the rock band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young 
released the angry single "Ohio" about the murders at Kent.

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NewsWire

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2876
Journalistic accuracy AWOL at Washington Post

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/washington/30leak.html
White House wants to prosecute journalists under espionage laws

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1936571,00.asp
Hijacking the internet

http://jimhightower.com//node/5794
Google's unethical weasling

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12534959/
Who is buying cell phone records online? Cops

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12929.htm
Spies among us: Police across the nation are keeping tabs on ordinary 
Americans

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/may2006/spy-m05.shtml
US continues to escalate domestic spying

http://www.counterpunch.org/potter05042006.html
How the Bush Administration is Using Terror Laws to Prosecute Nonviolent 
Environmental Activists

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/30/america/web.0430bush.php
Law-and-order man George Bush asserts his right to violate hundreds of laws

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12616864/
Antipsychotic drug use among kids soars

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/New_Army_documents_reveal_US_knew_0502.html
ACLU reports the obvious: US Army knew of and approved torture

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/spiegel/0,1518,druck-413981,00.html
Iraqi oil industry on the verge of collapse

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12903.htm
Depleted Uranium: far worse than 9/11

http://news.com.com/2100-1008_3-6067665.html?part=rss&tag=6067665&subj=news
X-Men may be closer than you think

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/freeport-mine-poisoning-west-papuas-environment/2006/05/03/1146335803354.html
Freeport mine 'poisoning' West Papua's environment

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/MDSGBTC.php
Mass Deaths in Sheep Grazing on Bt Cotton

http://enn.com/today.html?id=10371
Greenhouse gases show steady rise in 2005

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70811-0.html?tw=rss.index
Warming Portends Pacific Havoc: important wind circulation pattern over the 
Pacific Ocean has begun to weaken because of global warming

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=10381
Dire environmental consequences predicted as China's 'roof of the world' 
glaciers rapidly melt

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0504-08.htm
Global Warming Fastest for 20,000 Years

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,173-2164140,00.html
3C hotter. Earth's danger point. Now scientists say it is going to happen

http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/feeds/ap/2006/04/29/ap2708404.html
Natural Gas Economy Is Losing Steam

http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=SOLAR-RISINGCOST-05-03-06
Solar power dims amid shortage of key material

http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/3114
Immigrants Demonstrate Power through Strike, Boycott, Protests

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1916891
Study: US mothers deserve $134,121 in salary

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12931.htm
The inevitable collapse of the greenback

http://www.prwatch.org/node/4758
Neil Young clobbers the thought police

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