[APR-news] January 23, 2007

Tue Jan 23 07:00:50 PST 2007

Alternative Press Review - Your Guide Beyond the Mainstream
www.altpr.org - January 23, 2007

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http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=714
Cointelpro to the Patriot Act: A Legacy of Torture
By Ron Jacobs

In today's world where torture and complicity in torture by various agents 
of the US government is part of the headlines on a regular basis, it seems 
that very few US citizens believe that methods like waterboarding, beating, 
electrical shocks and other methods would be used on US citizens. Indeed, 
the revelations by Jose Padilla concerning his treatment by US agents as a 
so-called enemy combatant barely made the news. Of course, there are those 
in this country who see nothing wrong with torturing (or even killing) 
supposed enemies and wrongdoers if such methods extract information. This is 
true even though intelligence experts state repeatedly that information 
extracted through torture is usually unreliable, if not just plain false. 
What is more shocking, though, are the large numbers of US citizens who are 
in some way upset that their government is torturing people in their name, 
yet do nothing to stop said torture either out of a greater fear or some 
level of apathy or impotence.

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=718
Washing War Crimes at the Washington Post
by Ahmed Amr

You can read all about the nasty business of washing war crimes at the 
Washington Post. They start with fixing the headline "Death in Haditha" --  
not "Mass Murder in Haditha" or "Another American Atrocity in Iraq." Next, 
forget the damning details, screw the truth and give the perpetrators all 
the room in the world to blame their conduct on "mistakes" made in the heat 
of battle amidst the fog of war.

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=719
Newsweek's cover boys
By Mickey Z.

Anyone who makes time to actually read the NewsWeak article might encounter 
this quote from Hassan Ali, a sociologist at the Ministry of Labor and 
Social Affairs: "These children will come to believe in the principles of 
force and violence. There's no question that society as a whole is going to 
feel the effects in the future." What if NewsWeak had opted to instead 
present the image a young American boy holding any number of weapons? 
Imagine that above this tow-headed, lily white lad were these words: "The 
Next Imperialists." Or perhaps even: "The Next War Criminals."

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=716
Walking the Line Between Justice and Reconciliation
By Zbignew Zingh

The US did not "heal" after it lost the War in Vietnam because it never got 
to the root problem: why was the United States in Vietnam in the first 
place? Because the illness was never properly diagnosed or treated, the 
agents of disease became dormant, survived, and finally erupted in lethal 
sickness during the Reagan Administration's war on Central America and 
during the current Administration's Global War on Terror.

******
Reviews

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=717
One Country: Reviewing an Alternative Vision
(Review of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian 
Impasse)
By Remi Kanazi

Ali Abunimah's new book, "One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the 
Israeli-Palestinian Impasse", exposes the impracticality of partition and 
presents an alternative vision, one that encompasses both peoples on the 
basis of equal rights. The vision Abunimah presents is a one state solution.

http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=715
In the Grip of Militant Liberalism
(Review of Jello Biafra: In the Grip of Official Treason 3-CD set)
By Tom Wheeler

Jesse Walker at Reason magazine wrote that there "were two Jello Biafras, 
one a liberal statist and one a punk anarchist" and, for the most part, what 
you get on this CD set is Biafra the liberal statist.

******
Other articles of interest

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=43&ItemID=11877
Open Letter From Concerned Academics: Opposition Mounts as Showdown 
Approaches Over the Firing of Ward Churchill
Concerned Academics, ZNet

The firing of Churchill, a tenured professor and former head of the Ethnic 
Studies Department at UC Boulder, is increasingly being seen by those in 
academia as an attack on academic freedom, dissent and critical thinking 
that must be stopped.

http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/829/Sued_Banned_Despised_And_Applauded
Sued, Banned, Despised, And Applauded: Brazilian Cartoonist Latuff Pummels 
Bush, Sharon, Olmert
Anna Shen, Iraq Slogger

Latuff is not shy to ignite debate, and in fact, in 2002 the Swiss-based 
Jewish organization Aktion Kinder des Holocaust sued the Independent Media 
Center (IMC, also known as Indymedia) of Switzerland on the charge of 
anti-Semitism. The reason was the forementioned cartoon of Latuff's "We are 
all Palestinians" series, published in Swiss IMC website, which depicted a 
Jewish boy in Warsaw Ghetto saying: "I am Palestinian." The criminal 
proceedings were suspended by a Swiss court. His most recent cartoon video 
which he wanted to post on the Internet was rejected. His blog has a snarky 
retort on that issue, saying, that his video called Similarities "has been 
rejected by YouTube (just bought by Google) due to its "inappropriate 
nature". Perhaps for YouTube/Google is inappropriate any comparison between 
Nazi troops in Europe and U.S. troops in Iraq.

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/january2007/170107propaganda24.htm
Is 24 Propaganda? Is The Pope Catholic?
Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet

To coincide with the start of a new season of Fox's much vaunted 24 program, 
MSNBC featured a debate asking whether the lead character, Jack Bauer, was a 
right-wing propagandist. What the talking heads and others that defend the 
neutrality of the show consistently fail to omit is the fact that 24 cast 
and crew members met with U.S. government officials and Neo-Con ideologues 
to run PR for the war on terror last year.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_richard__070107_the_closer_we_look_2c_.htm
The Closer We Get, the Worse It Looks
Richard Heinberg, MuseLetter via OpEd News

The problems of Climate Change and Peak Oil both result from societal 
dependence on fossil fuels. But just how the impacts of these two problems 
relate to one another, and how policies to address them should differ or 
overlap, are questions that have so far not been adequately discussed.

http://the-fourth-world.blogspot.com/2007/01/part-3-of-apocalypse-no-law-of-life-and.html
Apocalypse No! -- The Law of Life and the Law of Death (Part 3)
Juan Santos, The Fourth World

The feel good approach Gore pushes is dead wrong: Economic growth and saving 
life on Earth are not compatible goals. Industrial civilization isn't 
harming the Earth, it's killing the Earth. The system has long since passed 
the limits of growth - it can't be sustained.

http://www.orionmagazine.org/pages/om/07-1om/Rasmussen.html
Green Rage
Matt Rasmussen, Orion Magazine

By the time she was in her early twenties, Gerlach had come to believe that 
Western culture was having a ruinous effect on the global environment, that 
the Earth faced environmental catastrophe. She felt compelled to do 
something about it. At some point, passion and frustration drove her over 
the boundary of her country's laws. Playing by the rules, it seemed, was 
doing no damn good.

http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=94&Itemid=1
Ending Industrialism
Jan Lundberg, Culture Change

Do-it-yourself mutual aid, as happened with post-Katrina New Orleans, or 
Miami's Liberty City neighborhood for the former homeless, is perhaps 
becoming more common, and will come back bigtime. Another even bigger 
return-phenomenon will be primitive living and living as a tribe; the two 
seem to go together. These concepts have been demonized, even though they 
are 99.9% of our history -- before global problems emerged with civilized 
agriculture and its offspring industrialism. As part of the swing of the 
pendulum, spirituality identified with the Earth will return strongly, as 
people revere life in part by deploring the past era's trashing of the 
living world.

http://www.yesweekly.com/main.asp?SectionID=19&SubSectionID=45&ArticleID=2066&TM=42442.4
Greensboro resident not keeping up with the Joneses
Sue Edelberg, Yes! Weekly

Alternative living in the modern age can be difficult, but especially living 
in a city where land is minimal and the technological modern times are in 
your face 24/7. However, at least one Greensboro resident has pulled off a 
lifestyle close to the earth in a town brimming with SUVs, construction and 
big business. At the moment he's choosing to go by "Jake Midnight", a stage 
name for his impromptu house band Jake Midnight & the New Moonbeams (new 
moons don't have moonlight, get it?). He claims to have JDD - "Job Deficit 
Disorder" - and says he hasn't owned a TV in ten years.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=22&ItemID=11925
Empire marches on: After West Asia and the Caspian Sea Basin, Horn of Africa 
is the next Great Game
Aijaz Ahmad, ZNet

The hastily confected judicial assassination of Saddam Hussein, the last 
President of independent Iraq, was part of an extraordinary three-month-long 
offensive that United States President George W. Bush has mounted on all 
fronts, domestic and international, since mid-October 2006. That offensive 
has now culminated in the invasion of Somalia by the Ethiopian proxy of the 
U.S., massive U.S. bombings of Somali territory by huge U.S. cargo planes 
that have been turned into gunships, and the "invitation" by the puppet 
regime, which the Ethiopian proxy has imposed on Somalia, to the U.S. to 
send its troops to this newly occupied country. A "new" Eastern Africa is 
now as much a U.S. objective as is a "new" West Asia. An integrated 
offensive from the Caspian Sea to the Mombasa Bay, so to speak.

http://www.newstatesman.com/200701220021
Terror and starvation in Gaza
John Pilger, New Statesman

A genocide is engulfing the people of Gaza while a silence engulfs its 
bystanders. "Some 1.4 million people, mostly children, are piled up in one 
of the most densely populated regions of the world, with no freedom of 
movement, no place to run and no space to hide," wrote the former senior UN 
relief official Jan Egeland and Jan Eliasson, then foreign minister of 
Sweden, in Le Figaro. They described a people "living in a cage", cut off by 
land, sea and air, with no reliable power and little water, and tortured by 
hunger and disease and incessant attacks by Israeli troops and planes.

http://www.voltairenet.org/article144748.html
The Strategy of Tension: NATO's Hidden Terrorism
Silvia Cattori, Voltairenet.org

Daniele Ganser, professor of contemporary history at Bale University 
(France) and chairman of the ASPO - Switzerland, published a landmark book 
about "NATO's Secret Armies." According to him, during the last 50 years the 
United States have organized bombings in Western Europe that they have 
falsely attributed to the left and the extreme left with the purpose of 
discrediting them in the eyes of their voters. This strategy is still 
present today, inspiring fear for the Islam and justifying wars on oil.

http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/46813/
Is Breast Cancer Awareness a Marketing Sham?
Lucinda Marshall, AlterNet

There is no other disease that we try to eradicate by going shopping. We are 
bombarded with all manner of wonderful pink things we can buy to raise money 
to help fight breast cancer. Everything from makeup to a line of clothing 
from the Ford Motor Company. Never mind that the makeup contains ingredients 
linked to cancer and auto exhaust contains known carcinogens, it's all for a 
good cause.

******
NewsWire

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Groups_seek_records_on_warrantless_mail_0122.html
Groups seek records on warrantless mail surveillance that Bush authorized 
through 'signing statement'

http://www.counterpunch.org/solomon01222007.html>Raid on the First 
Amendment: The Pentagon vs. Press Freedom

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0119-21.htm
CNN's "Journalism" is a Fool's Paradise

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16235.htm
Award-winning writer assassinated in Istanbul

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=39741
Libraries under siege by Patriot Act

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/us/22unabomber.html
Unabomber Wages Legal Battle to Halt the Sale of Papers

http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=722
Anti-first amendment S.1 passes Congress

http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/joshua/46915/
Pentagon now set to conduct witch trials

http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20070110-114542-1241r
US may be funding germ warfare research

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36232
Southern Tribes Joining Armed Resistance

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=2196
Bush Orders More CIA Activity in Venezuela

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0119-09.htm
Surge in Carbon Levels Raises Fears of Runaway Warming

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1995348,00.html
Experts says global warming will happen faster and be more devastating than 
previously thought

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070123/ap_on_sc/austria_melting_glaciers
Alps glaciers will melt by 2050

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2559209,00.html
Ironman athletes put hearts at risk of fatal damage, experts warn