[APR-news] January 25, 2007

Thu Jan 25 09:27:15 PST 2007

Alternative Press Review - Your Guide Beyond the Mainstream
www.altpr.org - January 25, 2007

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http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=720
What's so Civil About Disobedience?
By Ron Jacobs

I've always had mixed feelings about the concept of civil disobedience. When 
I was a teenager, the actions of Martin Luther King, Jr, Gandhi and the 
Berrigan brothers stirred my conscience and even inspired me to take a 
(civil) risk now and then at protests against the war in Vietnam. However, 
as I grew older and angrier I gave up any hope (or desire) to be civil with 
those who represented the policies of war, greed and racism that I was 
opposed to.

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Other articles of interest

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0704,hentoff,75597,2.html
The Enemy Within: Journalists, under fire today by the Bush White House, 
have been the enemy before
Nat Hentoff, Village Voice

In the more than half a century I've been a reporter, there has never been 
as systematic an operation to intimidate and then silence the press as is 
now taking place under the Bush-Cheney-Gonzales administration.

http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=10382
The Empire Turns Its Guns on the Citizenry
Paul Craig Roberts, Antiwar.com

Today 17,000 local police forces are equipped with such military equipment 
as Blackhawk helicopters, machine guns, grenade launchers, battering rams, 
explosives, chemical sprays, body armor, night vision, rappelling gear, and 
armored vehicles. Some have tanks.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070205/pollitt
Ayatollah D'Souza
Katha Pollitt, The Nation

In his new book, The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility 
for 9/11, far-right provocateur Dinesh D'Souza argues that Al Qaeda really 
does hate our freedoms--and so does he. Forget 
geopolitics--Israel/Palestine, US military bases in Saudi Arabia, our 
support for assorted corrupt regimes, Arab socioeconomic stagnation. No, 
9/11 was provoked by feminism, birth control, abortion, pornography, 
feminism, Hollywood, divorce, the First Amendment, gay marriage, and did I 
mention feminism? Muslims fear the West is out to foist its depraved, 
licentious, secular "decadence" on their pious patriarchal societies. And, 
D'Souza argues, they're right.

http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/article.php?id=4246&IssueNum=56
History off the shelf: Howard Zinn on the power of protest and tuning out 
the mainstream press
Joe Piasecki, Pasadena Weekly

Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" is now widely regarded as 
the authoritative story of resistance to government and corporate power in 
The New World since 1492. More than just an appendix to the stale version of 
history you learned in high school, it shatters it, retelling the story of 
America from the perspective of those who fought its biggest battles: Native 
Americans struggling against the genocidal impulses of European settlers, 
visionaries who worked to end slavery and racial injustice, laborers who 
organized against rampant exploitation, soldiers of the anti-war movement 
and others who have stood up against the established order of their times.

http://kurtnimmo.com/?p=727
Jimmy Carter apologizes for telling the truth
Kurt Nimmo, Another Day in the Empire

On page 213 of his book, Carter wrote: "It is imperative that the general 
Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that 
they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when 
international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are 
accepted by Israel." In other words, the Palestinians will stop resisting 
occupation-condemned as illegal under international law-when the Israelis 
agree to stop slaughtering Palestinian school kids, plowing under 
century-old orchards, dividing up historic Arab land into squalid 
Bantustans, stealing tax money, siphoning off precious water, throwing kids 
in medieval torture dungeons, and converting Gaza and the West Bank into the 
largest open-air prison on the planet.

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/596/1/
Introduction to Horizontalidad: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina
Marina Sitrin, Upside Down World

They are everywhere. They are in the autonomous Zapatista communities of 
Chiapas, Mexico, where indigenous communities are organizing autonomously 
from the state to meet their basic needs, while using consensus-based 
decision-making to create themselves anew. They are in the massive 
organizations in rural Brazil, where the landless movement (MST) has been 
reclaiming the land, creating the future in their daily activities and 
interactions. They are in the shanty-towns of South Africa, where women and 
men, "the poors," use direct democracy and action to take back electricity, 
housing, water, and other things stolen by corporations and government. They 
are in India, where many thousands of people are coming together to protect 
the environment and prevent the construction of dams, using mass action and 
participatory decision-making. They are in Ecuador and Bolivia, where 
indigenous groups are stopping privatization and preventing the destruction 
of the earth through mass blockades and mass democracy. They are in Italy, 
where new social centers are providing direct services as well as space to 
gather for those involved in direct democracy projects. They are in the many 
groups in Eastern Europe, organizing against borders, while asserting the 
principal that no person can be illegal. They are in the US and Canada, 
where autonomous groupings are being built on the basis of consensus 
decision-making, anti-hierarchy, and anti-capitalism.

http://www.orionmagazine.org/pages/om/07-1om/Kunstler.html
Making Other Arrangements: A wake-up call to a citizenry in the shadow of 
oil scarcity
James Howard Kunstler, Orion

The truth is that no combination of alternative fuels or systems for using 
them will allow us to continue running America, or even a substantial 
fraction of it, the way we have been. We are not going to run Wal-Mart, Walt 
Disney World, Monsanto, and the Interstate Highway System on any combination 
of solar or wind energy, hydrogen, ethanol, tar sands, oil shale, methane 
hydrates, nuclear power, thermal depolymerization, "zero-point" energy, or 
anything else you can name. We will desperately use many of these things in 
many ways, but we are likely to be disappointed in what they can actually do 
for us. The key to understanding the challenge we face is admitting that we 
have to comprehensively make other arrangements for all the normal 
activities of everyday life.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan07/Zingh23.htm
A Report on the Citizen's Hearing on the War in Iraq
Zbignew Zingh, Dissident Voice

We cannot criticize the occupation while we benefit from the fruits of the 
occupation. We cannot blame the Administration when our own engineers, 
lawyers, psychologists, programmers, technicians, media consultants, 
reporters, doctors, scientists, longshoremen, truckers and businesspeople 
profit from the business of war through our work, our complicity and our 
consumerism.

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NewsWire

http://www.prwatch.org/node/5668
'DEFEND THE PRESS' ORGANIZES TO SUPPORT REPORTER SARAH OLSON

http://ucsaction.org/campaign/1_17_07epalibraryclosures
The EPA closes its libraries, destroys documents

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/20/wgoogle20.xml
Google blots out Iraq bases

http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=29907&s2=21
Google stops indexing Uruknet.info as a news source

http://www.alternet.org/story/47085/
Fed Up Soldiers Finding New Ways to Protest the War

http://www.antiwar.com/glantz/?articleid=10387
Antiwar groups plan surge on Washington

http://www.idsnews.com/news/story.php?id=40393&adid=world
Blackwater terrorists targeted and killed

http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2006/12/yearinphotos_portfolio200612?slide=13
What Manhattan may look like if sea levels continue to rise

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6288445.stm
Nigerian houses swallowed by sand

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/water/story/0,,1996211,00.html
World is running out of water

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0123-01.htm
Tuna stocks close to exhaustion

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1169612728115700.xml&coll=7
Mercury found in all fish tested in the West

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0120-20.htm
Vegetarian is the New Prius

http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/46876/
Government food safety system a sham

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012207E.shtml
Your Mastercard or your life

http://realestate.msn.com/buying/Article2.aspx?cp-documentid=2507006
Foreclosures jump 35% nationwide

http://patrick.net/housing/crash.html
US housing crash continues

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20070120/bob9.asp
Could smart urban design keep people fit and trim?

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