Show Details for August 6th, 2006

Alternative Media – Raw Story; Lebanon and the UN

LARISA ALEXANDROVNA, Managing News Editor for Raw Story, on alternative media and what’s being missed


Monitor co-host Pokey Anderson will talk with Larisa Alexandrovna today.  Larisa, who was raised Jewish, will take a look at the uproar about Mel Gibson’s anti-Semitic comments, and what the media barons AREN’T looking at.  (See her piece below, “Mirror Mirror.”)  We’ll take a look at the evolving position of alternative media in the U.S., and some of the stories she’s following.Larisa Alexandrovna is a journalist, essayist and poet. She is managing news editor for Raw Story, and contributes regularly to other publications in the alternative press. She spent part of her childhood in a part of the former Soviet Union which is now Ukraine, and speaks fluent Russian.

Her work is cited by mass media outlets such as Rolling Stone, New York Times, Mother Jones, and other notable publications. She is best known for her reporting on domestic intelligence issues and foreign military affairs. For the past year she has been focused on the build up for war with Iran.

WEBSITE:
Raw StoryARTICLES:
“Mirror Mirror – The Passion of Hypocrites”
by Larisa Alexandrovna
08.06.2006
Read it here“US military, intelligence officials raise concern about possible preparations for Iran strike”
by Larisa Alexandrovna
May 11, 2006
Raw Story
Read it here

QUOTES by Larisa Alexandrovna:
“This is after all an administration that writes its own news and disseminates it.” 

“The ‘values voter’ is and has always been a propaganda concept, sold and bought by the mass media to justify the inexcusable and twisted ‘compassionate’ authoritarian agenda.”

ROBERT NAIMAN of Just Foreign Policy on Lebanon and the U.N.



Monitor co-host Mark Bebawi welcomes Robert Naiman to the Monitor.  They’ll be talking about about UN resolutions, their implementation and the security council veto framed in the context of events in Lebanon.Naiman is national coordinator of the new D.C.-based advocacy group Just Foreign Policy, which issued a statement today saying:

“Under international law the UN Security Council is supposed to act to stop crimes against peace but [it] cannot do so in this case because it is paralyzed by the veto of the Bush administration, which opposes an immediate cease-fire and is backed in this position by the United Kingdom. However, under resolution 377, ‘Uniting for Peace,’ the UN General Assembly can act when the Security Council fails to do so. This procedure has been used 10 times in the history of the UN, often at the initiative of the United States.”

WEBSITE:
Just Foreign PolicyRELATED ARTICLE:
“A Road to Peace in Lebanon?”
Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith
July 27, 2006
Read it hereQUOTES:
“We are circulating a petition calling for the UN General Assembly to act to bring about an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon, Israel and Gaza. Any UN member country could put this forward. Even a significant movement towards the convening of the General Assembly to consider an immediate, unconditional cease-fire will put significant pressure on the major powers to support an immediate cease-fire.”

Just Foreign Policy: “This critical role of foreign policy in our domestic politics also opens up the opportunity that people who are more concerned with domestic issues such as health care, poverty, or civil liberties will begin to see that progress on any of these issues will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, so long as our current foreign policy remains in place.”