It's Like the '60s, Only Different

At an Anti-War Demonstration in Denver, 2005

(click to watch vidie)

Be Moved

I've often wondered when these new media will start to be used in more powerful ways. To me, the secret of film and video is that it can permeate your brain and cause you to have emotions. These emotions can help bring new ideas to more cortical areas and move you to decision and action.

It is with this in mind that I refer you to the VoteVets.org project. In conjuction with MoveOn.org, they selected 23 videographers to each produce a 2-min vidi of a military/family person expressing themselves.

I was fortunate to have been asked to participate and to be paired up with Pamela Osborne. Rather than just embed our work here, use this link to the gallery. You will be moved.

Down and Down It Goes (US$ Index)

The Day the Bees Stood Still

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?

Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees
By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross
Published: 15 April 2007

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.

CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.

Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK."

The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".

Plunge Protection Team in Action

Look Out Below

The dollar is sliding towards the edge again this morning.

Go here to sign up.

New 9/11 Movie Focuses on Cheney

If you've watched the 9/11 movies you are probably already convinced that the buildings were demolished. Now the nagging story of Cheney hunched down in the White House Secret Bunker, getting the reports of how close "the plane" was, finally gets full exposure here. A full 4 stars out of 4.

Justice for 9/11

Thank You Josh Wolf

Thank you Josh Wolf. Thank you for not caving in to unreasonable government demands. Thank you for your sacrifice in spending 244 days in jail. Thank you for being articulate and accurate. Thank you for posting your original video footage to the public. And most of all, thank you for having your video camera running.

Roll tape!