Snapped in March 1960, Alberto Korda’s iconic image of Ernesto “Che” Guevara is possibly — who’s counting? — the most-reproduced photograph in the world. Some version of it has been painted, printed, digitized, embroidered, tattooed, silk-screened, sculpted or sketched on nearly every surface imaginable. Brick and mortar city walls. Poster board waved high above a crowd. Gisele Bündchen’s bikini.
And though he never went away — except in the strictly mortal sense — Che is suddenly everywhere again. In October, an Iranian student militia organized a “Che Like Chamran” conference, attempting to enlist the martyred Marxist in the Islamic revolution. (They made the mistake of inviting his daughter, who pointed out that her dad did not believe in God.) Hollywood is at it as well: Steven Soderbergh’s long-anticipated, two-part Che biopic (”The Argentine” and “Guerrilla”) premiered May 21 at Cannes, with Benicio Del Toro playing the legendary Argentine-doctor-cum-internationalist-revolutionary. And “Chevolution,” Trisha Ziff and Luis Lopez’s documentary on the mass dissemination of the Korda image, is now making the film festival rounds…
Rebels and activists the world over still take inspiration from Guevara. But the image has lost something; Che’s face on a poster in 1968 isn’t quite the same thing as it is on a mousepad 40 years later. Perhaps it is precisely that loss — the shedding of Che’s radicalism and ideological rigor — that renders him so supremely marketable today. Things are not going well these days. Kids don’t want revolution so much as, um, something different.
So it shouldn’t be a surprise that L.A. artist Shepard Fairey, in his design for a Sen. Barack Obama poster, looked to Korda’s Che. Fairey’s Obama is not wearing a beret, and he’s looking left instead of right, but his face tilts at the same angle as Che’s. His jaw is set with the same willfulness and strength, and he too is gazing recognizably upward into the future (hasta la victoria siempre . . . ). Obama’s eyes, though, are filled not with righteous anger but with vague and lofty hope.
Che means change, if nothing else — and not necessarily Marxist or anti-imperialist or radical at all.
[Guevara] was a psychopath with a central role in Cuba’s 1961 mass executions in the “year of the wall.” Guevara signed at least 600 death warrants and executed children against firing squad walls; he was responsible for at least 2,000 deaths.
After that, the Argentine-born communist organized Cuba’s gulag. His violence was so over the top it scared even Castro, who eventually sent him away to fight mercenary wars in Africa.
Guevara also left a lot to be desired on a personal level, never paying bills, living in houses he confiscated and wearing Gatsby suits and smoking from a cigarette holder as Cubans starved.
It’s now a cliche: fat-cat oilmen control our destiny by holding back supplies, letting prices soar, then pocketing the profits. But if any fat cats are to blame for the energy crisis, it’s those on Capitol Hill.
Funny how so few, especially our friends in the mainstream media, seem to notice Congress is the culprit. When it’s not stopping the development of the energy resources we need, it’s busy demonizing the very entities — such as the oil companies — that can go get them…
That oil has surged to $130 a barrel is no surprise: The supply is shrinking. Yet, Congress refuses to let our oil companies tap the massive assets that lie offshore and under our mountains — reserves that dwarf what we have today.
Our Outer Continental Shelf contains as much as 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of gas, according to the U.S. Minerals Management Service. That’s more than 10 times the oil and 20 times the natural gas we use each year.
Then there’s oil shale. At least 1 trillion barrels of crude — possibly as many as 2 trillion — lie in formations across the Rocky Mountains and into Canada. “This,” the Institute for Energy Research said recently, “is more than seven times the amount of crude oil reserves found in Saudi Arabia, and enough to meet current U.S. demand for over 250 years.” Yet we don’t want to disturb it.
And then, of course, there’s the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Since 2000, U.S. oil consumption has increased roughly 750,000 barrels a day. If we had started drilling in ANWR back in 1995 — when President Clinton and congressional Democrats joined to kill it — we’d have an extra 1 million barrels of oil a day now.
The problem is clear: We now pump about 5 million barrels on our own and import 12 million, making us vulnerable to market blackmail by foreign producers. As recently as 1985, we pumped 9 million on our own and imported just 4.3 million.
This is our energy deficit, created by congressional incompetence and inaction. It’s time to stop the blame and start the drilling.
The White House is calling on NBC News to declare whether the network still believes Iraq is mired in a “civil war,” escalating a fight that began when NBC aired an interview with President Bush that the White House called the product of “deceitful editing.”
The network rattled the White House in November 2006 when it called the conflict in Iraq a “civil war.” On Monday [May 26], White House Counselor Ed Gillespie wrote a letter to NBC News President Steve Capus, looking in part for an explanation of how NBC News now views the war.
White House press secretary Dana Perino said Tuesday the administration is “fed up” with the way NBC News is treating the Iraq war.
“I remember very distinctly, how there was a quite the pomp and circumstance when NBC, on The Today Show, decided to declare that they were declaring Iraq was a civil war. But since then, after the surge and things certainly have improved in Iraq, NBC has never had a corresponding ceremony to say that Iraq is not in a civil war. We’re just curious to find out what they believe,” she said.
You’ve got to give the media credit for continuing to find new and innovative ways to make the U.S. economy look bad.
This time an increase in Spam sales are being touted as a sign that people are suffering as they are being forced to trade in their fancy meats and poultries for something less expensive - a sign of “our times,” according to “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams.
“And in what may be a huge economic indicator, this may say more about our times than we realize,” Williams said on the May 29 broadcast. “Spam, the canned luncheon meat product, not the junk e-mail but, Spam sales have surged, lifting profits for the maker Hormel by 14 percent in just the first quarter of this year…”
Williams didn’t note that many fresh meats are still cheaper than Spam, which sells for about 22 cents per ounce. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, ground beef (15 cents), boneless hams (20 cents), most chicken (10 cents) and whole frozen turkeys (7 cents) retail for less per ounce than Spam.
Uncle Sam bans states from drilling in the Atlantic, Pacific and eastern Gulf mainly to protect the environment. Some 85% of the U.S. coastline is off-limits to energy production — including huge reserves off Florida’s coast, which China is exploiting in Cuban waters.
To change that, a lawmaker is offering a novel idea. Rep. Sue Myrick of the House Energy and Commerce panel wants to let coastal states decide whether drilling is environmentally risky. She has introduced a bill that would give coastal states that want offshore drilling the power to opt out of the Interior Department’s offshore restrictions…
But the bill faces major hurdles. Even if Myrick can get the House panel’s Democrat chair, Rep. John Dingell, to take it up, it would face stiff opposition in the Senate. Florida Sens. Mel Martinez and Bill Nelson have blocked previous attempts to lift the ban on drilling — although Martinez, a Republican, lately has shown signs of softening.
Foes have successfully cloaked their arguments against offshore drilling in eco-apocalypse, claim it will lead to oil spills. Fearing tar-ball-pocked beaches, the tourism industry has joined the greens in lobbying against such bills.
Their fears are unfounded. And politicians concerned about America’s energy security ought to do a better job educating the public with the facts. For example:
• Less than one one-thousandth of a percent (0.001%) of the 7 billion-plus barrels of oil that Washington has allowed to be produced offshore over the past 25 years has been spilled, according to the Interior Department.
• A whopping 63% of petro pollution in North American seas comes not from offshore rigs, but from natural seepage from the sea floor. Source: National Academy of Sciences.
• There hasn’t been a major oil spill from an offshore well since 1969 even though rigs since then have been lashed by Katrina and other major hurricanes.
Today’s drilling operations are safer and cleaner. Offshore operators are subject to at least 17 major permits and must follow 90 sets of federal regulations. Clean beaches can coexist with offshore production. The mammoth reserves can be captured with little risk to the environment.
In fact, the government estimates that 50% of our undiscovered oil lies offshore. It’s time to let states go after it.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House announced Friday that a Pennsylvania soldier who jumped on top of a grenade in Iraq and saved the lives of his comrades will posthumously receive the Medal of Honor.
The nation’s highest military honor will be given to 19-year-old Army Pfc. Ross McGinnis of Knox, Pa., on June 2.
McGinnis “distinguished himself by extraordinary heroism,” said White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto.
He was in the gunner’s hatch of a Humvee on Dec. 4, 2006, when a grenade sailed past him and into the truck where four other soldiers sat. He shouted a warning to the others, then jumped on the grenade that was lodged near the vehicle’s radio. It blew up and killed him.
Lt. Col. Anne Edgecomb, an Army spokeswoman, said McGinnis easily could have jumped out of the truck and saved himself.
“The instinct is, jump out of the vehicle, but his four buddies were in the vehicle with him … and he chose to place himself on top of the grenade and absorb the impact, and it saved their lives,” Edgecomb said.
McGinnis was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, in Schweinfurt, Germany.
Three others have also been awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously for their actions in Iraq. They are Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith, Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor and Marine Cpl. Jason L. Dunham.
INDIANA — When he returned home from World War II, Hollywood icon James Stewart was featured on the cover of Life magazine in front of the Indiana County courthouse.
“In New York, Stewart refused a hero’s welcome,” the text read. “Instead, he drove to Indiana, Pa., 50 miles from Pittsburgh. There, in his parents’ comfortable red-brick home overlooking the town, he slept late, played the piano and joked with his family about the old days.”
Just plain folks. That was the Jimmy Stewart legend. It also appears to have been much of the reality.
Starting with a community church service today, Indiana will celebrate the centennial of Stewart’s birth on May 20, 1908, with events titled “100 Years of America’s Hometown Hero” scattered over the next week.
As Stewart slowly fades from popular culture — while still finding new audiences with the Christmas classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” — Indiana’s 14,000 residents cling ever more proudly to a native son who seemed to embody all that was right and good about living a small-town life.
The Stewart family had deep military roots as both grandfathers had fought in the Civil War, and his father had served during both the Spanish-American War and World War I. Since Stewart considered his father to be the biggest influence on his life, it was not surprising that when another war eventually came, he too served. Unlike his family’s previous infantry service, Stewart chose to become a military flyer…
Since the United States had not entered the conflict and due to the Army’s unwillingness to put celebrities on the front, Stewart was initially held back from combat duty, although he enlisted as a private, he earned a commission as a Second Lieutenant and completed pilot training…
In August 1943 he was finally assigned to the 445th Bombardment Group in Sioux City, Iowa, first as Operations Officer of the 703rd Bombardment Squadron and then its commander. In December, the 445th Bombardment Group flew its B-24 Liberator bombers to RAF Tibenham, England and immediately began combat operations. While flying missions over Germany, Stewart was promoted to Major. In March 1944, he was transferred as group operations officer to the 453rd Bombardment Group, a new B-24 unit that had been experiencing difficulties. As a means to inspire his new group, Stewart flew as command pilot in the lead B-24 on numerous missions deep into Nazi-occupied Europe. These missions went uncounted at Stewart’s orders. His “official” total is listed as 20 and are limited to those with the 445th. In 1944, he twice received the Distinguished Flying Cross for actions in combat and was awarded the Croix de Guerre. He also received the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters. In July 1944, after flying 20 combat missions, Stewart was made chief of staff of the 2nd Combat Bombardment Wing of the Eighth Air Force. Before the war ended, he was promoted to colonel, one of only a few Americans to rise from private to colonel in four years…
Stewart continued to play an active role in the United States Air Force Reserve after the war, achieving the rank of Brigadier General on 23 July 1959.
…
Politically, Stewart was a staunch supporter of the Republican Party. He was an active supporter of the anti-communist movement in Hollywood in the late 1940s.
“The war against illegal plunder has been fought since the beginning of the world. But how is… legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay … If such a law is not abolished immediately it will spread, multiply and develop into a system.” –from The Law
“The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.”
Narathiwat - Militants launched a terrorist bomb attack at an annual charity event in Narathiwat province, setting off a bomb that wounded at least 12 persons, police said.
The Sunday night attack occurred at the annual Thai Red Cross fair, held in a Narathiwat municipality park. The bomb was hidden inside a canned milk container left in a garbage can, officers said.
The 12 wounded persons were sent to hospital for treatment. One was treated and discharged; the others were kept for treatment abd observation.
The 10-day fair, which began on April 30, copntinued on Monday, but police revised security measures for visitors.
Extremists also burnt two schools in Rueso district on Sunday night, police said, and six roadside pavilions were torched by suspected insurgents.
A high voltage electricity transmission tower in Rangae district was blown into two pieces after a bomb was remotely detonated by a cell phone, causing a complete blackout in one village.
In nearby Pattani province, closed circuit television captured the images of four men wearing knitted ski-masks who stormed into an automobile showroom and burned five cars in an operation that took only three minutes to complete.
