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May 06, 2005

05.06.05 | Medicating Aliah; USDA Food Pyramid; Army "Bends" Rules, Desperate for Recruits
May 6, 2005 Edition

"The Best of the Rest of the Web"

THiS WEEK: 5500 U.S. military deserters can't all be wrong; new food pyramid seeks to help Americans help Big Agribusiness; Yes Men via bittorrent; a high school journalist gets the goods on shady army recruiters; Colombia's role in the rising U.S. campaign against Venezuela; how alternative media like Conscious Choice sold out labor in the struggle to unionize Whole Foods; an interview with Paul Buhle, the co-author of a new graphic history of the IWW; The Bitch Spring reading list reveals some gems; Surprise! U.S. contractors misused Iraq reconstruction funds!; in Burma, Bitch reviews books; Unocal finds out that some lawsuits targeting corporations in human rights abuse cases can be very costly.

This Week's Picks:

  1. AWOL in America
    AWOL, French Leave, the Grand Bounce, jumping ship, going over the hill-in every country, in every age, whenever and wherever there has been a military, there have been soldiers discharging themselves from the ranks. The Pentagon has estimated that since the start of the current conflict in Iraq, more than 5,500 U.S. military personnel have deserted, and yet we know the stories of only a unique handful, all of whom have publicly stated their opposition to the war in Iraq, and some of whom have fled to Canada.

    Kathy Dobie | Harpers
    http://www.harpers.org/AWOLInAmerica.html


  2. My Pyramid
    Many of USDA's top officials have worked in the Agribusiness industry, providing the expertise necessary to develop a pyramid that best represents the truth about healthy eating—it's not what happens to the food before it gets to your table, but simply that you eat substantial servings of all foods. Following these guidelines will help ensure the health of American families while guaranteeing the health of Agribusiness Corporations around the world.

    http://www.mypyramid.org


  3. VIDEO / TORRENT | The Yes Men
    Anti-corporate activists travel from conference to conference, impersonating members of the World Trade Organization.

    Torrent: http://tracker.pi ratbyran.org/torrents-details.php?id=3294837&hit=1
    [Wikipedia entry: "What is a BitTorrent"?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_torrent ]
    [Blog Torrent - The easiest and best bit torrent client: http://www.blogtorrent.com]


  4. VIDEO | How Far Will the Army Go?
    A creative high school journalist, David McSwane, gets the goods on shady recruiting tactics, including instructions on getting a fake high school diploma, and a free ride to a local headshop for a marijuana detox kit. This is a mainstream media news link, but it also provides video interviews with McSwane, so we figure it's a service.

    CBS4 Denver
    http://news4colorado.com/topstories/local_story_118125046.html

    +
    Army Recruiters Say They Feel Pressure to Bend Rules
    Army recruiters are bending the rules more and more in a desperate attempt to sign up troops. According to one recruiter, one in every three people he had enlisted had a "problem that needed concealing," or a waiver. "The only people who want to join the Army now have issues...they're troubled, with health, police or drug problems."

    Damien Cave | New York Times / Truthout.org
    http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/050305Y.shtml


  5. Medicating Aliah
    The story of Aliah, a thirteen-year-old African-American girl who was forcibly hospitalized and drugged after a mandatory "mental health screening" at her school deemed her suicidal. During her nine-month stay, she was placed in restraints more than 26 times and medicated—against her will and without her parents' consent—with at least 12 different psychiatric drugs, many of them simultaneously.

    Rob Waters | Mother Jones
    http://www.breakfornews.com/articles/MedicatingAlliah.htm


  6. Bitch Reads
    The second web-only book review from this feminist response to pop culture. Featuring: Becoming: Young Ideas on Gender, Identity, and Sexuality ed. by Diane Anderson-Minshall and Gina de Vries; Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi; Helen Keller: Selected Writings ed. by Kim E. Nielsen; Midnight at the Dragon Café by Judy Fong Bates; Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell; Choir Boy by Charlie Anders; It's My Party Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America by Christine Todd Whitman; Deliver Me From Nowhere by Tennessee Jones; Job Hopper by Ayun Halliday; Never Mind the Goldbergs by Matthue Roth; and Lessons in Taxidermy by Bee Lavender.

    http://www.bitchmagazine.com/archives/05_05books/index.shtml

     


  7. Will Colombia Be the Proxy in a US Attack on Venezuela?
    Colombia appears to be the United States' one ally against Hugo Chavez -- and the U.S. is showing signs of a desire to use Colombia as a proxy to contain or topple Venezuela's government.

    Sean Donahue | Narco News
    http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/4/28/03337/2826


  8. 'Alternative' Media Quietly Sells Out to Whole Foods Market
    In July 2002, employees at the Whole Foods Market in Madison, Wisconsin, made history when they voted to become the first unionized store at the natural foods mega-chain. Meanwhile, Whole Foods execs were bullying "alternative" media like Conscious Choice into not running pro-union ads.

    Mark T. Harris | Z Net
    http://www.zmag. org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=19&ItemID=7751


  9. "It's a Wobbly Year": An Interview With Paul Buhle On The IWW
    Paul Buhle, a professor of American Civilization at Brown University and a leading scholar of American radical history, is co-author of the new Wobblies! A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World. In a recent interview with Left Hook co-editor Derek Seidman, Buhle answered some questions about the IWW, his new book, and the Traveling Wobbly show.

    Derek Seidman | Left Hook
    http://www.lefthook.org/In terviews/SeidmanBuhle042205.html


  10. Vigilante Wedge
    Since this is the season for intensive pre-election-year planning, we have to be worried about the public relations victory achieved by the Minuteman Project in Arizona. In five weeks time, they have gone from "vigilante" to "brave and caring." And in the process they have staged a powerful wedge issue for 2006.

    Greg Moses | Counterpunch
    http://www.counterpunch.org/moses05042 005.html


  11. Audits Find U.S. Mishandled Millions of Iraqi Money Meant for Reconstruction
    U.S. audits released Wednesday state that the United States carelessly, and possibly fraudulently, handled some Iraqi money used for reconstruction, in one case nearly $100 million in cash went unaccounted for in one area of Iraq alone.

    Al Jazeera
    http://www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?servi ce_ID=8495


  12. The Making of the Arab Menace
    Anti-Arabism and Islamophobia are so much a part of the political and cultural discourse on Arabs and Muslims in American society today that most do not even recognize it as racism. The fear mongering of the Bush administration and the right wing media pundits who make a living from demonizing Arabs and Muslims have inundated people with images of the violent Arabs bent on death and destruction. For media outlets like Fox Television, it is a way to sell their sensationalist news programs and for the current administration, a way to sell its wars. The green menace has replaced the red menace, and the "evil empire" of the cold war has become the less eloquent, but just as deadly, "evil doers" of the Arab and Muslim world.

    Rayan El-Amine | Left Turn
    http://www.leftturn.org/Ar ticles/Viewer.aspx?id=615&type=M




  13. Unocal Settles Lawsuit With a $60 Million Payout to Burmese Villagers
    Early in April, the California-based Unocal Corporation announced it was being bought out by its neighbor, the oil giant ChevronTexaco. Splashed across the business pages, the news overshadowed another announcement, made much more quietly two weeks earlier: that Unocal had agreed to pay to settle a long-running lawsuit charging the oil company with assisting and encouraging the torture, murder and rape of Burmese villagers by government soldiers so that Unocal could build a gas pipeline. The timing of these two announcements is no coincidence, and it underscores just how seriously these legal cases are now being taken in corporate boardrooms. Once considered mere nuisances, lawsuits implicating corporations in international human rights abuses have become major obstacles to corporate profitability and prospects.

    Daphne Eviatar | The Nation
    http://www.thenation.com/doc. mhtml?i=20050509&s=eviatar

- Media Picks Contributing Editor: Erica Wetter
- Media Picks compiled and edited by Erin Wiegand and Brian Awehali

Posted by erin at May 6, 2005 10:16 AM

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