[APR-news] Weekend Edition (February 3-4, 2007)

Sun Feb 4 07:02:22 PST 2007

Alternative Press Review - Your Guide Beyond the Mainstream
www.altpr.org - Weekend Edition (February 3-4, 2007)

"It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of 
intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The 
real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and 
dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them." - Noam Chomsky

"The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans 
think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda 
accomplishments." -- Michael Parenti

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http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=728
Resisting Corporate Power in Colombia
Hans Bennett interviews Aviva Chomsky

Tabaco was an Afro-Colombian village in the northernmost Guajira province. 
It was the largest of a network of small indigenous and Afro-Colombian 
villages, the only one with paved roads, a school, a post office, and other 
government services. In August 2001 this village was violently displaced as 
part of an expansion project by the Cerrejon coal mine, the largest open-pit 
coal mine in the world. The mine was then jointly owned by Exxon and a 
consortium made up of BHP Billiton (an Australian company), Glencore (a 
Swiss company), and Anglo-American (a British
company). As one resident described the events: "We didn't know what was 
happening. All of a sudden we saw the police, the riot police, and the army 
surrounding our houses and people coming into the town in trucks, in 
bulldozers.

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=727
Stopping the Torture Business in Our Hometowns
By Ron Jacobs

Without Aero Contractors and similar CIA front companies, rendition 
literally wouldn't "get off the ground." Aero uses publicly funded airport 
facilities in North Carolina as a launching pad to help the CIA kidnap and 
torture people in various parts of the world. Once we realized this, we 
couldn't ignore it.

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=726
What I heard on the W Train
By Mickey Z.

We are being asked--check that--we're being told to not only view desperate 
humans as law-breakers but also to ignore them. No one flinches. Let's 
rewind back to, say, 1973. If some sci-fi flick injected that exact 
pre-recorded spiel into a futuristic subway scene, we'd all have chuckled at 
the representation of such a callous-and highly unlikely-future.

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Other articles of interest

http://carolynbaker.org/archives/collapse-and-its-discontents-a-carolyn-bakerorg-exclusive-by-dmitry-orlov
COLLAPSE AND ITS DISCONTENTS
Dmitry Orlov, Speaking Truth to Power

It's been a couple of years since I started writing on the subject of 
economic collapse, as it occurred in Russia and as it is likely to occur 
here in the United States. Thus far, I remain reasonably content with my 
predictions: it's all lining up, slowly but surely.

http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=99&Itemid=2
The compatibility of collapse and resistance
Jan Lundberg, Culture Change

First, let us sweep aside long-held simplistic images in our minds about the 
goodness of civilization in terms of crowded cities as vibrant Meccas of 
sophistication and hope. For although there is beaucoup sophistication and 
hope as well as beauty and wonder in today's large modern cities, the 
reality of petroleum dependence and the vicious assault on the climate by 
today's huge metropolitan areas call our long-held images into question. 
Suddenly the artificial environment appears insane. The notion of progress, 
as it has been amply discredited by our record on ecological stewardship and 
social-justice, ought to be enough to stimulate new thinking or a return to 
older wisdom. It has occurred, though for only a tiny minority of citizens.

http://auto_sol.tao.ca/node/view/2510
Making Friends with Failure: A Critical Response to Richard Day's "Gramsci 
Is Dead"
AK Thompson, Autonomy & Solidarity

The secret is out. "Activism" and its contentious repertoires have become 
ritualized. In 2003, CrimethInc proclaimed it with usual gusto in their 
Inside Front: International Journal of Hardcore Punk and Anarchist Action: 
"We have worked hard to improve activism - now it must be destroyed!"

http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair02032007.html
The Withering of the American Environmental Movement
Jeffrey St. Clair, CounterPunch

You don't have to be versed in the works of Hannah Arendt or Michel Foucault 
(although Madness and Civilization ought to be required reading for all 
activists and other "eccentrics") to understand the dynamics of power and 
repression at work here. Activists are now aliens on the political 
landscape; their relationship to the lawyers, lobbyists, economists, 
marketing agents, PR flaks and CEOs that management the environmental 
movement parallels that of welfare mothers to the welfare bureaucrats: 
abusive indifference. To quote Jospeh Heller: Something happened. Somewhere 
along the line, the environmental movement disconnected with the people, 
rejected its political roots, pulled the plug on its vibrant and militant 
tradition. It packed its bags, starched its shirts and jetted to DC, where 
it became what it once despised: a risk-aversive, depersonalized, 
hyper-analytical, humorless, access-driven, intolerant, centralized, 
technocratic, dealmaking, passionless, direct-mailing, lawyer-laden monolith 
to mediocrity. A monolith with feet of clay.

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/bohm040207.html
Freedom Fight: An interview with Milenko Sreckovic
Steffen Böhm, MR Zine

The purpose of the movement is to encourage people to oppose oppression, 
through acts of disobedience against the system and its institutions -- the 
military and police, government, educational institutions, etc.  One of our 
primary goals is to connect people according to the principles of 
non-existence of hierarchy and authority, the principles of individual 
participation, community decision-making, and decentralization.

http://www.redress.btinternet.co.uk/dpwelch37.htm
Everything old is new again: Our generation's Gulf of Tonkin is about to 
drag us further into endless war
Daniel Patrick Welch, Redress

In the aftermath of the Cold War, two long-term adversaries were waxing 
nostalgic about their governments' respective propaganda. "Yes, but the 
difference," said the Russian, "is that your people believed yours." And 
now, having been lied to by a stream of shameless governments, having 
swallowed their leaders' crap about our "destiny" and "greatness", is it 
even possible to imagine that we are going to let ourselves get sucked in 
again?

http://www.antiwar.com/pilger/?articleid=10452
Iran: A War Is Coming
John Pilger, Antiwar.com

The "threat" from Iran is entirely manufactured, aided and abetted by 
familiar, compliant media language that refers to Iran's "nuclear 
ambitions," just as the vocabulary of Saddam's non-existent WMD arsenal 
became common usage. Accompanying this is a demonizing that has become 
standard practice.

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6494.shtml
The American proxy war in Gaza
Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada

In the fevered minds of Bush administration ideologues, Palestine has become 
another front in what they conceive of as a new Cold War against 
"Islamofascism." They see Iran as the central target and proxy battles are 
being waged against a phantom enemy from Afghanistan and Pakistan, through 
Iraq into Palestine, Lebanon, Somalia and ever onwards wherever Arabs and 
Muslims are to be found. In every case, local conflicts with specific 
histories are being escalated and marshalled into this grand narrative.

http://www.counterpunch.org/gibson02022007.html
No Child Left Behind and the Imperial Project: Cutting the Schools-to-War 
Pipeline
Rich Gibson  E. Wayne Ross, CounterPunch

Any nation promising perpetual war on the world is likely to make peculiar 
demands on its schools and impositions on its teachers and youth. While it 
may seem a sideshow to war and exploitation, the sharp pressure from the 
Bush administration and its liberal allies to re-authorize the No Child Left 
Behind Act (NCLB) is, in fact, a vital part of the imperial project.

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NewsWire

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2211566.ece
Global warming: The final warning

http://www.energybulletin.net/25604.html
Limits of Growth co-author says collapse due to climate possible

http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2007/01/16/01314.html
Methane threatens to bake humanity like Turkeys in an Oven

http://www.guardian.co.uk/birdflu/story/0,,2005605,00.html
World braced for huge surge in bird flu cases

http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,461828,00.html
China's ecological rape creating problems on a global scale

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0202-26.htm
Game Over: Thirty-Six Sure-Fire Signs That Your Empire Is Crumbling

http://newstandardnews.net/alivewires/staff/content/?show_item=4235
Bush Seizes Powers While Media Fixates on Chavez

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3037
Won't Get Fooled Again? -- NYT, networks offer scant skepticism on Iran 
claims

http://mwcnews.net/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12261&pop=1&page=1&Itemid=42
Iraqi Massacre Continues

http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=180532007
UK guilty of sending 'child soldiers' to Iraq

http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/02/dfnbudget070202/
Al Qaeda on Steroids: Largest International Terrorist Outfit Needs $622.6 
Billion in 2008

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,463765,00.html
Munich to US: "Don't Send Your CIA Thugs out into Europe's Streets"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2004258,00.html
Muslims are now getting the same treatment Jews had a century ago

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2007/02/02/070202153436.fywopsky.html
UK becoming a 'police state', looking more like Nazi Germany

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6382257,00.html
Criminalizing medical care: It is a crime to treat people the US Gestapo 
labels "terrorists"

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http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=81&page=1
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