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Alternative Press Week in Review

Author

Dean Thomas

Date Created

08 Apr 2003

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A weekly roundup of news, essays and other items of interest.

Alternative Press
Week in Review

Your Guide Beyond the Mainstream
Vol. 1, No. 8, April 6, 2003

A weekly roundup of news, essays and other items of interest.

Pictures of anti-war protests over the weekend

Pictures of Victims of the Anglo-American Aggression in Iraq>

Operation Iraqi Freedom Pictures

An Iraqi War Quiz

The ‘Shock and Awe’ Photo Gallery

Wall of Shame: forget what the US says, look at what is being done

Refusing to Kill
Are you in the military, or have a son in the military? Do you or your brother work for the military? Join the growing number of men who refuse this killing work!

INCOMING! – A short list of some of the more interesting items received at the Alternative Press Review office this week.

Publications of the Week

PR Watch
Public Interest Reporting on the PR/Public Affairs Industry
(Volume 10, Number 1 – First Quarter 2003)

Quarterly 12-page newsletter that specializes in blowing the lid off today's multi-billion dollar propaganda-for-hire industry, naming names and revealing how public relations wizards concoct and spin the news, organize phony 'grassroots' front groups, spy on citizens, and conspire with lobbyists and politicians to thwart democracy.

HopeDance
Serving Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties #37 – March / April 2003

A 40-page bi-monthly community newspaper in California that publishes material and information on environmental activities for building an ecologically sustainable, holistic, healthy and awakened community.

CD of the week

Ward Churchill – Pacifism and Pathology in the American Left
Liberal activism often embraces non-violent resistance in reponse to state-sponsored terrorism at home and abroad. In this emotional critique, Churchill urges activists to support any and all tactics in order to stop the tyranny of the state. Churchill argues that the terrorist attack of 9/11 disrupted U.S. global capitalism more radically than any peaceful protest the Left has been able to organize. Recorded at a packed and fired up AK Press warehouse in Oakland.

Articles of the Week

As the World Burns
Nick Schou, Orange County Weekly
Alexander Cockburn eviscerates Operation Iraqi Fiefdom-and Christopher Hitchens, the 'barstool bombardier'

Are Independent Journalists Being 'Executed' By the Bush Administration?
Cheryl Seal, Baltimore Indymedia
Since the war started, a total of at least half a dozen journalists have been killed - an outrageously high percentage of casualties - the highest for any single group of people in the war zone, from the civilian support personnel to the soldiers themselves. It seems way, way beyond coincidence that most of the fallen journalists are non-embedded writers dedicated to telling the truth.

U.S. Military Detains, Beats and Threatens to Kill Four Foreign Journalists in Iraq
Democracy Now
The international press watch group Reporters Without Borders has accused the US and British coalition forces in Iraq of displaying contempt for journalists covering the conflict who are not embedded with troops.

Israelization of the United States
M. Shahid Alam
The images of the American armada plowing through the deserts of Iraq, bombing military and civilian targets, laying siege to Iraqi cities, targeting Iraqi leaders, shooting civilians, blinded by sandstorms, stalled, ambushed, shocked by the Iraqi resistance, facing suicide attacks, suggests an eerie but inescapable comparison. Is this America's West Bank? Is this the Israelization of United States--heading to its logical conclusion?

How the Rich Go to War – They Send the Poor to Fight
James Ridgeway, Village Voice
When it comes to making war in the Bush administration, the rich call the shots, while the working class and the poor dodge the bullets or get killed.

THE WAR FOR TRUTH
John Pilger, The Mirror
"We dropped a few civilians, but what do you do?" He said there were women standing near an Iraqi soldier, and one of them fell when he and other Marines opened fire. "I'm sorry," said Sgt Schrumpf, "but the chick was in the way".

We see too much; We know too much
John Pilger, The Independent
For those journalists who see themselves as honourable truth-tellers, there are difficult choices now: rather like the choice of the young woman at the GCHQ spy centre in Cheltenham who allegedly leaked documents revealing that US officials were trying to blackmail members of the Security Council; rather like the two British soldiers who face court martial because they exercised their right, enshrined by the Nuremberg judges, to refuse to fight in a criminal war that kills civilians.

Iraqis Slaughtered, Islam Slandered, Humanity Demeaned
John Stanton, Centre for Research on Globalisation
As American made projectiles rip through Iraqi tissue, fracture bone, severe heads and scatter what was once a human body onto fields, floors and walls, the Bush fascists in business and government are salivating for a bite of the carcass that is Iraq.

The digitalization of slaughter
James Conachy, World Socialist Web Site
Many Americans already suspect what is being done in their name. The military arsenal of the world’s largest and most technically advanced economy is carrying out what could be described as digitalized slaughter.

Indefensible
Editorial, The Hindu
This century’s first major war has entered its most dangerous, nightmarish phase and, despite initial American claims, is causing a humanitarian tragedy of massive proportions.

Busy Day for Israeli Bulldozers
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom
Palestinian remarks made to the soldiers: Villager #1: You better kill us, because if you don't, we'll kill you. Villager #2: See that kid over there? You just turned him into a suicide bomber. And a Palestinian woman who alternately cried and shouted in broken English, "You are animals, where is your humanity, don't you have a mother?"

From Guernica to Baghdad via Dresden and Hiroshima
By B.J. Sabri, Online Journal
We, the people of the world, are saddened, beyond any fathomable description, to see the fate of the Iraqi people in the hands of, ideological zealots, fanatic militarists, and empire-craving addicts whose genocidal whims and thirst for blood can only surpass their vacuous political pretensions, and their self-endowed uniqueness in the human landscape.

Hell for Leather
Chris Floyd, Moscow Times
Even as the sleek techno-wizardry of "Shock and Awe" gives way to the old-fashioned slog of "Blood and Guts" on the battlefields of Iraq, the Bush Regime's postwar plans continue apace. It's now clear that the Bushists aim to turn Iraq into an American protectorate -- a supine dependency like Guam, Puerto Rico or Britain -- by controlling every aspect of life in the conquered land.

Media Images, State Propaganda and ‘Happy Iraqis’
Tim Wise, ZNet
It was just a week ago that reporters were noting the smiling faces of Iraqi youth as "coalition" forces rolled by, only to note that as soon as the troops were out of sight, they would curse their presence and pledge allegiance to Saddam, even when there were no Ba'ath officials around to enforce such loyalty.

The flowering of fascism
John Sugg, Creative Loafing
Jerry told me that he had heard the same message broadcast by all of the airwave hate clones -- Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Neal Boortz and Rush Limbaugh are four he named. The message was that anti-war protest threatens national security, is unpatriotic and that dissent endangers our troops.

Distant Voices Calling Me
Steve Hesske, InfoshopNews
The Death Star managers of Operation Iraqi Freedom and their compliant shills, America's mainstream media, are doing their damndest to suppress the dark history of Vietnam while American tanks roll toward Baghdad, but two more reminders from the macabre lexicon of Nam are now part of America's current sad and sick endeavor. Combat refusal and Friendly fire.

Wailing children, the wounded, the dead: victims of the day cluster bombs rained on Babylon
Robert Fisk, The Independent
The wounds are vicious and deep, a rash of scarlet spots on the back and thighs or face, the shards of shrapnel from the cluster bombs buried an inch or more in the flesh. The wards of the Hillah teaching hospital are proof that something illegal – something quite outside the Geneva Conventions – occurred in the villages around the city once known as Babylon.

Myth of Precision Bombing
Marc Herold, Cursor
The Pentagon, DoD, defense 'intellectuals', retired generals, and mainstream corporate press sign collective hosannas to 'precision' bombing which ring ever so hollow.

Palestine's International Solidarity Movement (ISM): Tactics for fighting imperialism
A-Infos News Service
I think what unifies us all as activists, both Palestinian and International, is a commitment to strategic, non-violent confrontation with Israeli military aggression and human rights abuses, in co-operation with all Palestinian parties, NGOs and refugee committees. The aim is to get the message out about what's happening in Palestine.

Bay of Pigs Meets Black Hawk Down
Robert Parry, Consortium News
The chilling realization is spreading in Washington that Bush’s Iraqi debacle may be the mother of all presidential miscalculations – an extraordinary blend of Bay of Pigs-style wishful thinking with a “Black Hawk Down” reliance on special operations to wipe out enemy leaders as a short-cut to victory.

Arrogant Propaganda: US Propaganda During First 10 Days of the US-Iraq War
Paul de Rooij, Dissident Voice
It has become much more difficult to sell wars these days and the propagandists are remarkably inept. Watching CNN or BBC reveals jarring shoddy propaganda that is immediately transparent.

Mesopotamia. Babylon. The Tigris and Euphrates
Arundhati Roy, The Guardian
When invading American soldiers (from the army "that's only here to help") are taken prisoner and shown on Iraqi TV, George Bush says it violates the Geneva convention and "exposes the evil at the heart of the regime". But it is entirely acceptable for US television stations to show the hundreds of prisoners being held by the US government in Guantanamo Bay, kneeling on the ground with their hands tied behind their backs, blinded with opaque goggles and with earphones clamped on their ears, to ensure complete visual and aural deprivation.

Destroying Iraq to Save it
Marjorie Cohn, Centre for Research on Globalisation
Perhaps the reason Iraqis are not receptive to "coalition" forces is fear that the U.S. will set up a government supportive of U.S. interests. Or perhaps the rising number of civilians killed by U.S. bombs and troops has angered Iraqis. Bush’s claims that laser-guided bombs hit their military targets with "lethal precision" ring hollow to the Iraqi people.

Get Ready for PATRIOT II
Matt Welch, AlterNet
Constitutional watchdog Nat Hentoff has called it "the most radical government plan in our history to remove from Americans their liberties under the Bill of Rights."

For no good reason
Michelle Goldberg, Salon
Military families opposed to the war face a double anguish: Losing their loved ones for a cause they don't believe in.

The firing of Peter Arnett: right-wing straitjacket tightens on the US media
By Patrick Martin, World Socialist Web Site
The firing of longtime war correspondent Peter Arnett is intended to send an unambiguous message to American journalists that the Bush administration and the corporate media will not tolerate any reporting that deviates from the official presentation of the invasion of Iraq as a war of liberation.

Exporting Jenin
Nigel Perry, Electronic Iraq
That the US has apparently not only "learned" from what human rights groups characterised at the time as "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity" but has actually purchased from the very same perpetrators the very same tools used to commit these acts for reuse in Iraq, communicates an undeniable message to the Arab world of American support for Israel so blind and insensitive to both Palestinians and Iraqis that it is terrifying.

Liberating Iraqis…From their Homes
David Lindorff, CounterPunch
Drew Brown, reporter from Knight Ridder News Service who was embedded with the unit, reported that Col. John P. Gardner ordered the two families to leave their land and turn it over to his men.

Once More Into the Swamp
Eric Margolis, Toronto Sun
The immediate uprisings against Great Satan Saddam, the quick, almost effortless "liberation" of Iraq, and the joyous reception by grateful Iraqis promised by the neo-conservatives who misled America into this increasingly ugly war have been exposed as a farrago of lies or distortions.

Corporate Homocide
Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, Focus on the Corporation
Street murders occur every day in America. And they are prosecuted every day in America. Corporate homicides occur every day in America. But they are rarely prosecuted.

NewsWire

Censorship in the Media

US accused of hypocrisy on human rights

Red Cross horrified by number of dead civilians

Pentagon defends use of civilian clothes by special operations forces

Brit Defense Secretary suggests Iraqi mothers of children killed by cluster bombs will thank them for their use

Weapons of Mass Destruction: US terrorists developing and planning to use ‘low-yield’ nuclear bombs

US Forces uses schools for cover

Widespread Use of Cluster Bombs Sparks Outrage

Furor Over Rapper’s Cover-Art Statement

Detecting disinformation, without radar

Oregon law would jail protesters as terrorists