After being kidnapped and held prisoner by Colombia’s rebel FARC for the past 6 years, Ingrid Betancourt is alive and has been rescued by Colombian officials in a secret coup.
This new video, Ingrid’s first press conference, is very, very moving.
In 2007, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research reported that Al Gore, Nobel-prize winning global warming guru, lived in a house that “burned through 213,210 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, enough to power 232 average American households for a month.” Once Mr. Green was alerted to this fact, his mansion promptly underwent a green renovation. So now, one year later, Al Gore’s new bright green house actually uses 10% more energy. I know, I know. Public figures rarely live up to what they fight for in real life, but using more energy per month than the average American home goes through in one year is excessive by any standard. And with news now breaking that he flies all over the world in private jets (sometimes even solo) to deliver speeches on global warming and that little story about him plagiarizing scenes from the film “The Day After Tomorrow” for use in his own documentary, I think his pot’s officially calling.
Did you know that farmers now rent honey bees to pollinate their crops because bees are no longer returning to the hive? According to a recent study, bee pollination is responsible for roughly $15 billion annually in crop value. But according to the Agriculture Department’s Agricultural Research Service, that number is quickly declining as beekeepers have reported a 30%-90% decline in hives since 2006, culminating in what’s now being termed “Colony Collapse Disorder.” Obviously, no one knows exactly how many bees have died but what’s puzzling here is that no one knows what’s caused them to die either.
According to the World Bank, global food prices have risen 83% in the past three years. So if bee life is rapidly dwindling as is being reported, then so is the opportunity for our nation’s farmers to continue to grow nutritional food it needs to sustain its inhabitants. Therefore, disapperaring honey bees is its own factor in rising food costs and that, grouped with the fact that honey bees are responsible for 1/3 of the foods we eat, is part of the world food crisis that can no longer be ignored.
We’re no longer living in “Ulee’s Gold“, people. Times are changing.
It wasn’t a bad idea back in 2003 for the Bush Administration to set up a television station called Alhurra (”The Free One”) with the goal of countering global anti-American sentiment during the 2003 US invasion of Iraq (besides the false premises of the war and the television station merely being introduced as a mask of sincerity and truth). But it was the worst idea possible to select the former government auditor Brian Contiff, an American who speaks no Arabic and has no journalistic or broadcasting experience whatsoever, to be its President. Did I mention that all broadcasts sent over the airwaves for the last 4 years were in Arabic and never once translated into English by anyone at the company? And that the content of those broadcasts were exactly in line with what airs on a regular day at Al-Jazeera? And that the junior staff is mainly Arabs working a television company headquartered in Springfield, Virginia? Think “Catch Me If You Can” foreign policy style.
Real suspicion of Alhurra only arose this past year after it provided coverage of the Holocaust Deniers Conference in Tehran. Apparently a few members of Congress threatened to deny funding to the station that reported that Jews still hadn’t provided the world with any scientific evidence of the Holocaust’s existence. Threatened to pull funding? Wow, because that would be huge and way too heavy-handed for a television station simply reporting that millions and millions of people, who happened to be Jewish, were executed en masse for no real reason. In the end, Congress just fired the reporter. Whatever happened to guilt by association?
However, Alhurra is now undergoing a joint investigation by ProPublica and CBS’ 60 Minutes. Among their findings thus far is this profound jewel:
“There is no adult supervision there by people who know what is on the actual broadcasts,” said William Rugh, who served as U.S. Ambassador in Yemen and the United Arab Emirates. “You need bilingual managers who understand both languages and cultures and understand journalism.”
Now, if you could see my face after reading that snippet, I’m pretty sure it looks like I was just mugged by a band of midgets. Not only did this “Voice of America” idea become a voice of anti-Americanism from our own backyard, but we - American taxpayers - have paid $500 million for the effort.
Shameful.
It is a rare moment indeed when a brave, undecidedly brave Lebanese man mounts some giant كرات / balles / cohones and decides to stick it to the government by opening up a fast food restaurant called Buns & Guns: A Sandwich Can Kill You, in a heavily Hezbollah-supported neighborhood of Beirut. But owner Yousef Ibrahim has done just that. I guess that’s one way to rebuttal claims that you’re part of a terrorist militia. I mean let’s face it, nothing says “I’m not a terrorist” like the ‘Kalashnikov’ meal served with ‘terrorist bread.’ And if that doesn’t get the point across, there’s always the ‘B52′ or the ‘Rocket Propelled Grenade’ (otherwise known as chicken on a skewer).
When interviewed, the owner claimed he wanted to first and foremost make people laugh before addressing the underlying irony. “They accuse us of terrorism, so let’s serve terrorist bread, why not?” Mr Ibrahim told Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV. So if anyone is heading to Beirut any time soon, swing by the terrorist themed burger bar for a cold one and have a ‘Dragunov’ while listening to gunfire from the speakers instead of the usual muzak. Apparently, sales have been explosive. (I’m pretty sure there’s a Molotov Cocktail joke somewhere in there too).
The Huffington Post is reporting that all the major networks are putting the war in Iraq on the back burner. 
Debt, schmebt. Housing crisis? Rent. Rising inflation? You could live in Zimbabwe. CHEER UP, PEOPLE. Because apparently, today is the happiest day of the year according to psychologist Cliff Arnall’s formula:
O + (N xS) + Cpm/T + He
Are you feeling optimistic?
Although this year’s festival is packed with searing documentaries of struggle, identity, and incredible loss, one has particularly grabbed my attention, as well as the “Special Jury Prize” at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, THE GREATEST SILENCE: RAPE IN THE CONGO.
This film was shot inside the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with the aim of giving a voice to the thousands and thousands of women who’ve endured and continue to endure the Congolese Army’s most savage, (and now the most common), weapons: rape, torture, and mutilation.
The filmmaker, Lisa F. Jackson, who was gang raped herself, introduces us to really the first great public effort to shatter the silences that surrounds the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.
For New Yorkers, this film is playing here today. However, it was also picked up by HBO and will run on their documentary series as well. If you’re interested in helping women in the DRC find a true, sustainable way of life for themselves and their families in a country with a culture of impunity, Women For Women is a great place to start.
Last week, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a long awaited report that said, definitively, that President Bush repeatedly exaggerated his claims of WMDs in Iraq and the country’s ties to terrorists groups in order to drum up support for a U.S. invasion. Anyone else find this stunning? No? Because it’s gotten about as much attention and press as Bill O’Reilly’s soon to be released memoir is likely to fetch - none.
So why is this? Why has the news media failed to tout such a shocking find? After all, the Senate committee that researched this and put together the report is a bipartisan committee that still says that the Bush administration made consistent misstatements on prewar Iraq intelligence. I don’t know about you, but it’s kind of a big deal when your President lies to you. And it’s an even bigger deal when he manipulates you through that lie in order to declare war on another country.
“It is my belief that the Bush Administration was fixated on Iraq, and used the 9/11 attacks by al Qa’ida as justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein. To accomplish this, top Administration officials made repeated statements that falsely linked Iraq and al Qa’ida as a single threat and insinuated that Iraq played a role in 9/11. Sadly, the Bush Administration led the nation into war under false pretenses. There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate.”
And there you have it. Those are words from our United States’ Senate. That’s the unfiltered, propaganda-free truth. It’s telling and very disappointing that such difficult, bipartisan research and hard work hasn’t made more of a splash in today’s media. I mean, it says that we went into war under false pretenses led by the President of the United States, which means that since 2003, the world has been under the grand illusion of intelligence that was ultimately just a lie.
So if that isn’t riveting enough for some real national discussion, more riveting than, say, following Lindsay Lohan, or some other self-obsessed, talentless D-star down their boozy meaningless path toward celebrity destruction, then we’ve got a real crisis on our hands here, people.
