Latin American soap operas have circled the globe and made a splash in places as far flung as Poland, Russia, and Indonesia. Their secret? Plotlines that keep the poor and underprivileged glued to their sets. Now these surprising Latin exports are part of the global cultural establishment—and taking on Hollywood heavyweights.
It was too late for Marimar. By the time she found out that her long-lost father wanted to leave her his vast fortune, she had fallen hopelessly in love with Sergio. The object of her affection was handsome, young, and rich—and the same man who had saved her from the lecherous Nicandro. But, sadly for Marimar, her lover’s intentions were not pure; Sergio was using her to get back at his own family.
Marimar’s saga, captured in the eponymous Latin American soap opera, kept millions of people around the world glued to their television sets for 148 emotionally charged episodes. Produced and originally screened in Mexico in 1994, Marimar became a global phenomenon. It helped propel Mexican pop artist Thalia Sodi, who played the lead role, to global stardom. In the Ivory Coast, it was reported that mosques issued the call to prayer early so that an enthralled population wouldn’t miss an episode. When Thalia visited the Philippines, she was received by the president and attracted crowds that rivaled those for the pope.
The success of Marimar is far from unique. Accounts of the global impact of Latin American soap operas, or telenovelas, are now legion. In post-communist Russia, the Mexican hit Los Ricos Tambien Lloran (The Rich Also Cry) became the country’s top-rated show; roughly 70 percent of the Russian population, more than 100 million people, tuned in regularly. Latin American telenovela stars often find themselves mobbed at airports in places as distant as Poland, Indonesia, and Lebanon. In postwar Bosnia, U.S. diplomats intervened to ensure that the Venezuelan show Kassandra could stay on the air in the midst of a tug of war between Bosnian Serb factions for control of the media. In Israel, the Mexican novela Mirada de Mujer (The Gaze of a Woman) was broadcast with both Hebrew and Russian subtitles to ensure that recent Russian immigrants wouldn’t miss an episode. And in the United States, the Latin American shows have become top sellers on Spanish-language networks, which have themselves outpaced English-language networks in some major markets, such as Miami and Los Angeles.
In all, about 2 billion people around the world watch telenovelas. For better or worse, these programs have attained a prominent place in the global marketplace of culture, and their success illuminates one of the back channels of globalization. For those who despair that Hollywood or the American television industry dominates and defines globalization, the telenovela phenomenon suggests that there is still room for the unexpected. Indeed, the success of telenovelas is often celebrated as an example of reverse cultural imperialism or, as one academic memorably called it, “Montezuma’s Revenge.”
But the story does not end there. Telenovelas have ridden the currents of cultural globalization to astonishing success. Now, they are experiencing the complications that come with being part of the cultural establishment. They have spawned local imitators, eager to put a familiar face on tried and true story lines. And their success is luring some of the world’s largest entertainment companies.
Tobacco and Toothpaste
It is ironic that telenovelas, one of Latin America’s most successful exports, originated in what is now its most closed society: Cuba. But, in fact, the small island-nation played a vital role in launching the genre. At the end of the 19th century, Cuba was still a Spanish colony and cigars were a lucrative export. The budding cigar makers’ guilds achieved a major improvement in working conditions by creating a new job, the lector de tabaco. A worker with a flair for the dramatic would, from a platform in the factory, read novels in installments during the tedious hours of filling, rolling, and shaping tobacco leaves. Nearly all the books were Spanish translations of European social realist novels: Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, Honoré de Balzac’s Le Père Goriot, and Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities.
With the dawn of the radio age, serialized melodrama soon took to the airwaves and became known as culebrones (serpents), an allusion to their habit of extending themselves indefinitely if they captured a big enough audience. It was only a matter of time before the “radio novel” expanded into the visual realms, and exiles from the Cuban Revolution helped transform the burgeoning taste for serialized novels into the modern telenovela. When Fidel Castro stormed to power in 1959, many Cuban producers, directors, actors, and writers scattered to Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, and other parts of Latin America. It was a period of cultural ferment throughout the region. “People and scripts moved around Latin America in the 50s and 60s,” says Joseph Straubhaar, a communications professor at the University of Texas. “It’s been an export genre for a long time.”
After a period of jostling, Televisa in Mexico, Venevisión in Venezuela, and Globo TV in Brazil emerged as the leading producers of telenovelas. During the 1960s, the novelas began to claim the top spots on national television stations. They replaced imported U.S. television shows and movies, turning huge swaths of the population into dedicated viewers. But it was only a partial declaration of cultural independence. U.S. companies sponsored many of the shows and sometimes even had a hand in drafting story lines and themes. Colgate tied a fabulously successful promotion to one of the first Brazilian novelas, Em Busca da Felicidade (In Search of Happiness), and the early Mexican show Senda Prohibida (Forbidden Path) was branded as “your Colgate novela.” The persistent corporate influence led many Latin American academics to deride the shows as “agents for the creation of a capitalist and consumerist international global village ... engineered by the U.S. and U.S-allied interests,” according to Marina Vujnovic, a researcher at the University of Iowa.
Still, telenovelas were always distinct from U.S. soap operas, and most observers now see them as cultural hybrids. Unlike their North American counterparts, telenovelas have a distinct beginning, middle, and end. Most air daily for a period of between four and six months and culminate in a climactic episode that rights all wrongs. (In comparison, the U.S. soap opera Guiding Light first aired in 1952 and is now the longest story ever told on television.) A successful show might spawn a spinoff or sequel, but in most cases, audiences must regularly acquaint themselves with new characters and plotlines. And while U.S. soap operas air during daytime hours with women as their target audience, Latin telenovelas are often prime time shows, aimed at the whole family.
Telenovelas share key ingredients with their North American cousins. Romance and intrigue are, of course, never in short supply. “There is always a Cinderella in a novela,” says Helena Bernardi, director of marketing and sales for Brazil’s Globo TV. Colombian telenovela producer Patricio Wills describes the genre as “a couple that wants to have a kiss and a writer who doesn’t allow them to for 200 episodes.” The physical allure of telenovela casts and the balmy locations where they film haven’t hurt either.
But the context in which the romance, intrigue, and beauty play out is distinct from the soap operas of the United States. “It’s the journey, it’s the struggles, it’s the obstacles,” says Ramón Escobar, an executive at the Spanish-language network Telemundo. And often, those obstacles are poverty, class conflict, and institutional instability, something U.S. soaps ignore. “[U.S. soaps] do not have a historical, political, or social framework, like unemployment or inflation,” says Globo’s Bernardi. Indeed, one of the leading theories for the global success of novelas is their comfort with characters who are not affluent and are sometimes even poor. The place of struggling women, in particular, is a well-worn telenovela plotline. Simplemente María (Simply Maria), a classic telenovela that has been remade in several Latin American countries, features a poor girl from the countryside who arrives in the city and struggles to make a living as a seamstress. “Simplemente María is the founding myth,” says Venezuelan telenovela writer Alberto Barrera Tyszka. “For many years most telenovelas were nothing but variations on its plot and themes.”
That focus is not surprising given the poverty that is endemic among Latin American women. Almost half of the 90 million people in the region’s female-headed households live in poverty. Women are more likely than men to fall on hard times, and they are more likely to make up the poorest of the poor. In urban areas, 48 percent of women lack their own income (only 22 percent of men do). And so characters such as Maria are often condemned by the scriptwriters to live in the most extreme poverty until a sudden twist of fate restores them to their rightful place. In many cases, the twist comes in the form of an unexpected inheritance, which is still seen as the way to get rich in most Latin American countries.
Plots that rely on such reversals of fortune resonate in cultures accustomed to economic uncertainty. Latin America is one of the more economically volatile regions in the world. Argentina’s recent history provides ample evidence that losing everything is a persistent worry, even in relatively well-off societies. During that country’s 2001 economic crisis, half the population went to bed as middle-class bank depositors and woke up all but destitute. In this environment, people rarely find succor from the government or the justice system. This institutional weakness in many parts of Latin America may explain why law and order themes—so popular among U.S. viewers—have limited appeal abroad and never took hold in telenovelas.
If novelas often draw on the harsh realities of life in parts of Latin America, their plotlines still generally devolve into sentimental fairy tales. Happy endings are all but certain. The emotion and melodrama of the genre beg the question of whether they are anything more than distractions for the disaffected. Telenovelas endure withering criticism from Latin American elites, who are often embarrassed to see them as one of the region’s most successful cultural exports. Arturo Uslar Pietri, a prominent Venezuelan novelist and essayist, expressed what many Latin American elites still feel when he described telenovelas as “the opium of the poor.”
Condemning the genre as a whole, however, glosses over what a tailored commodity it has become. As scripts and templates were swapped and sold within Latin America, local tastes and tolerances came into play. Over time, national producers developed their own distinctive styles that departed from or modified the traditional story lines. Mexican novelas became known for their melodrama. Brazilian novelas leaned toward hard-hitting social realism and even tackled contentious social issues, including biotechnology, sex, drug use, and ethnic relations. It was a style that didn’t always go over well in other parts of the region. The edgy Globo TV novela Angel Malo (Bad Angel) underwent a thorough cleansing before appearing on screens in far more conservative Chile.
As the Latin networks hit their stride in the 1960s and 1970s, they began exporting content to the growing and relatively affluent Latino population in the United States—the richest Hispanics in the world. The U.S.-based network Univision, for example, has imported hundreds of telenovelas from Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela. In 2004 alone, it paid $105 million in licensing fees to the Mexican network Televisa. For its part, Brazil’s Globo TV has exported dozens of novelas to networks in Portugal. Culturally, the success of Latin telenovelas with Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking communities was not surprising. But what happened next was a twist worthy of a novela script. Somehow, the often sneered-at melodramas leapt out of their cultural zones and raced around the globe.
Conquering the East
When communism fell, television executives in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union faced a crisis. For decades, turning the television dial brought viewers nothing but state-approved programming. In other words, they had no shows that people actually liked to watch. Nor did these former communist-controlled networks have the budgets to purchase U.S. or European programming wholesale.
The makers of telenovelas saw an opportunity. “Telenovela producers were visionary enough to offer [eastern European] stations very good deals,” says Patrick Jucaud, general manager of DISCOP, an organization that promotes telenovelas in the region. “These stations didn’t have any money … and Latin American companies were the first ones to help them get started.” The quality was relatively high given the price. Telenovelas, after all, attract the top acting talent in Latin America. Rather than being a résumé builder, as is the case with American soaps, a telenovela spot is often the apex of a Latin American actor’s career. And recurring themes—rising from poverty, coping with economic hardship—seemed to resonate in countries struggling to emerge from state socialism. “When you’re looking at countries that are rapidly industrializing, rapidly urbanizing, with all the attendant stresses and strains on the family and personal relationships, something produced in Brazil or Mexico may be a lot more relevant to Russians in the 90s than an American sitcom, which is frothy and all about L.A.,” says Straubhaar, the University of Texas professor.
Telenovelas conquered Russia in a matter of weeks. Discussing the early success of The Rich Also Cry, the Moscow Times wrote “when the film started, streets became desolate, crowds gathered in stores selling TV sets, tractors stopped in the fields, and guns fell silent on the Azerbaijani-Armenian front.” Without breaking a sweat, Los Ricos outperformed the imported U.S. soap Santa Barbara, which ran at the same time in much of Russia. Central and eastern Europe also fell to the novela charm. A Escrava Isaura (Isaura, the Slave), a historical Brazilian telenovela about the slave trade, received top honors in Poland. In some cases, telenovelas even sparked civic activism. Townspeople in the Serbian town of Kucevo—so overwrought that they hurdled the boundary between reality and fantasy—drafted a letter to the Venezuelan government pleading the case of the title character in the hit show Kassandra. In the Czech Republic, restaurants that did not have televisions reportedly emptied out when the Venezuelan show Esmeralda aired.
This large-scale expansion into central and eastern Europe represented a new leap forward for the industry. And as international revenue poured in, production at the leading studios became more lavish. In 1995, Brazil’s Globo TV—which claims to have sold telenovelas to more than 120 countries—opened a brand new facility with Hollywood-quality technology. High-end Globo episodes can now cost as much as $100,000. The quality of the programs produced by the telenovela powerhouses has become a principal selling point.
The realization that telenovelas could succeed beyond their cultural spheres ramped up competition in the industry. Production companies that once focused on their national markets found themselves in competition for foreign-market share. Lesser-known telenovela producers dove into the export market in search of fast money, leading to occasional charges of unfair pricing and “dumping” of content. Brazilian and Mexican leaders Globo TV and Televisa, for example, were startled when Argentine and Colombian novelas met with international success.
Some themes covered in telenovelas, to be sure, have fallen flat outside of Latin America. The show Clase 406, for example, touched on issues including drugs and rape. “We could never put it on the air in [eastern Europe]—never. We really tried and we couldn’t,” said Claudia Sahab, Televisa’s director of sales for Europe, at a recent industry seminar. The steamy sex scenes in some novelas have roused the censors in more conservative countries, forcing studios to produce edited versions. Program executives in Indonesia pulled the popular show Esmeralda off the air because a particularly devious character bore the name of the prophet Muhammad’s daughter.
Some observers of the industry worry that shows deemed “too local” have been sanitized so as not to risk international revenue streams. But for the major telenovela producers, the domestic market is still the main course, and export revenue is gravy. “[Telenovela producers] get their investment back quickly on the domestic market which allows them to make money on the international markets,” says Thomas Tufte, a European academic who studies the industry. The most serious challenge to the dominance of Latin telenovelas is not watered-down content but the hungry new players entering the market.
The Price of Success
“Local always wins,” is a mantra of the entertainment industry, and producers in eastern Europe, Russia, and Asia are eager to prove it. Whereas five years ago overseas networks gobbled up ready-made telenovelas, many are now dropping that business model in favor of developing their own local productions for export. The Philippine network ABS-CBN, for example, exported its own telenovela-style dramas to Cambodia, Cameroon, Kenya, and Malaysia in 2004. Taiwanese novelas—often called “chinovelas”—have had success throughout Asia and have been particularly popular in the Philippines, where Spanish-language novelas had long ruled. “Now we have something to compare the Spanish novelas to,” a Philippine professor told the local press. “These new shows deal with conflicts that Filipinos can relate to, like going out with friends and getting into trouble.”
Some small networks in eastern Europe have opted to simply hire away scriptwriters from Latin America. Alicia Carvajal, who worked as a telenovela writer and director for almost 20 years, was stunned when the Croatian network HTV offered her a job. “Why me?” she asked. “I don’t even speak Croatian!” But her success with the hit show La Duda (Doubt) convinced Croatian executives that she did speak the international language of melodrama. And so Carvajal, still based in Mexico City, went to work on Villa Maria, a show touching on the fall of communism in the former Yugoslavia. It aired simultaneously in Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia and has already netted several honors.
In some cases, established Latin American producers enter into coproductions with local studios in an effort to foster local influences without forfeiting profits entirely. Brazil’s Globo, for example, has reportedly considered forging ties with Indian producers, creating the possibility of an alliance between the developing world’s two largest entertainment industries. In other cases, outside production companies pay licensing fees for the rights to a script, which can be adapted to the tastes of the local audience. The Colombian megahit Betty la Fea (Betty the Ugly), for example, caught the eye of Michael Grindon, president of Sony Pictures Television International. He persuaded Sony’s Hindi channel to license the program and air a local version. According to Nyay Bhushan, an Indian correspondent for the Hollywood Reporter, the remake “has spawned a merchandising and marketing bonanza.” Sony also teamed up with a Russian studio to produce Poor Anastasia, based loosely on Betty la Fea.
Sony’s emergence as a player in the telenovela world heralds the arrival of the entertainment industry’s big guns—and a potentially important shift of cultural flows. “The biggest and most important producers in the world have become interested in the telenovela,” says Carlos Bardasano, vice president of the Cisneros Group and president of Venevisión Continental. No longer willing to see Latin American production studios reap all the profits, major conglomerates have begun to produce their own telenovelas. In 2003, European giant FremantleMedia teamed up with NBC-owned Telemundo to film La Ley de Silencio (The Law of Silence) in Houston. Telemundo, the second largest Spanish-language network in the United States, has decided against importing shows from Latin America (as its competitor Univision does). “Now [telenovelas] move north to south,” says Ramón Escobar, the Telemundo executive. “That’s creating a tremendous amount of competition in the international market.” The network is banking on the multinational flavor of its shows—it uses actors from all over Latin America—and the glimpses of Latino life in the United States that it can offer. Another hint that the cultural currents may be shifting is the success of ABC’s Desperate Housewives in parts of Latin America. Argentine and Chilean networks are vying to make local versions of its provocative premise, and a half dozen other regional networks may soon follow.
For the moment, U.S. and European media conglomerates are still minor characters. Telemundo’s novelas, for example, have not yet seriously challenged the Mexican novelas shown on Univision. Globo TV’s reputation as the world leader in high-quality telenovelas is undiminished. But the industry is changing fast, and the entrance of the world’s media giants into the fray may soon test the theory that the global appeal of telenovelas derives from the economic and cultural environment in which they were born. Is there really something unique about the Latin American experience—or can their success be duplicated by Hollywood studios? Will the Latin American networks maintain their hard-won empire, or will the rich relatives from abroad snatch away their success? Will the torrid affair between novelas and Czechs, Filipinos, and Russians continue? Or will the long-distance relationship fall apart? The story, as always, is to be continued.
Ibsen Martínez is a Venezuelan columnist and playwright.
Tommy Brown, right, is shown with his sister, left, Elizabeth, and his father, Tom Brown, center.
he shoebox of memories was meant for his wedding day.
Ann Brown is leafing through the relics from her stepson's life now instead: Gator football tickets. Pictures of a boy in a baseball uniform with his lucky number, 13, on the back. Crayola pictures of race cars. Construction-paper Valentine's Day cards with "I love you, Dad" scrawled in a child's handwriting.
"I figured these little things, someday, would mean something," she said.
Tommy Brown, a student at the University of Florida's School of Building Construction, was beaten to death after the Florida-Georgia football game in Jacksonville Oct. 29. He was 23.
Brown had been watching the football game at the Jacksonville Landing with friends, but became separated from them after the game. Footage from a surveillance video camera at the nearby CSX building shows two men beating him, and three preventing him from escaping.
Five Jacksonville-area men were arrested in connection with the attack, and three have been formally charged with second-degree murder.
In his hometown of Merritt Island and in Gainesville, Tommy Brown's friends, parents, teachers and fraternity brothers are sifting through their memories of him, hoping the pieces of his life will help them come to grips with his death.
No place like home
Merritt Island is a close-knit community on a narrow swath of land between the Indian and Banana rivers, and between Cocoa and Cocoa Beach in Brevard County.
It's steeped in memories of Tommy and his ancestors, who helped settle the area as covered-wagon pioneers, said his mom, Kay Brown.
His father, Tom Brown, teaches Advanced Placement and honors biology at Merritt Island High School, where Tommy graduated with honors. His mother owns a popular barbecue restaurant.
Tommy Brown embraced the closeness. He was easygoing, thoughtful, bright and warm as a sixth-grader, said Lavonne Cussen, who taught him at Tropical Elementary School.
"When I would see him at church with his mother, he would always come over with a big hug," Cussen said. "And he wouldn't just small-talk. Sometimes, you meet students outside of school, and they freeze. With Tommy, it was more like meeting a friend."
Thomas Vaughan, who taught Tommy's honors chemistry class in high school, said he was "one of the better students I had the pleasure of teaching."
"He was a good joker, but he knew when to settle down and get his work done," Vaughan said. "As soon as class started, he was ready to go. I never remember him coming in unprepared."
That solid work ethic tempered by a streak of mischief defined Tommy's life, said Shepp Lawrence, a longtime family friend who served as a pastor at their church, Merritt Island Presbyterian, for several years.
"His parents divorced maybe 15 years ago," Lawrence said. "When his mom needed help, Tommy was there. She could count on him. He had this work ethic about him. I remember seeing him up there at different parties in the community or at the church when she'd be catering, just pitching in and helping out, and that's how I remember him. You can't separate him from his mother."
A special bond
Kay Brown's Island Barbeque is a dark, comfortable place that stays busy most of the hours it's open.
Tommy worked there through high school and during breaks from college. Until the weekend her son died, Kay usually pulled 60-hour weeks.
Kay returned to work last week. She said the memories are everywhere: How she'd cook him Porterhouse steaks, manicotti and collard greens when he'd come home from school. How he was confident enough as a pre-teen to hold her hand while walking through the mall, and confident enough as an older teen to drive a pink Volkswagen Beetle to school. How, as a curly-haired baby, he "just seemed to understand" all the things she'd try to teach him about how to live a good life.
He loved to build things with Legos as a little boy, and when he first took the engine out of his pink VW later on, "I thought, 'This is just a big Lego to him,' " Kay said.
He loved their family trips, too. They'd planned to go to Jackson Hole, Wyo., after Christmas.
On a trip they took to Costa Rica, Kay remembers walking into town with Tommy, and pausing at a house where a big German shepherd barked through a fence.
"I edged back and got a stick, and kind of got back behind Tommy," Kay said. "Tommy says, 'Mom, what are you doing?' I said, 'I'm standing in between you and that big dog, so if it gets through that fence, it gets me first. He said, 'Oh, Mom, get up here.' I said, 'That's what mothers do. We protect our children.'
"I just couldn't protect him from this evil."
She said she prays for strength and peace. She also returns to the memories, including one of a misty, magical day that almost didn't happen.
Earlier this fall, Kay realized she hadn't seen her son for a while. She planned to visit on a Thursday, but she was busy and it was rainy when the day arrived.
She almost didn't go.
She got in the car anyway, and drove to Gainesville, where she and Tommy drove to Lake Wauburg for the afternoon.
"The rain had let up, and we just talked about how his life was going, and how he was feeling about things, his dreams for the future. He told me how happy he was in his studies. We just had the most warm, sharing time together. And we happened upon this flock of 12 wild turkeys. A deer ran by. It was almost magical. Then we went out to dinner, and then I left. And that was the last time I saw him."
Family memories
The memories at Tom and Ann Brown's house on the Indian River aren't contained to the shoebox.
Tommy helped his dad build just about everything around the house, from the intricately designed birdhouse to a wooden bench on the dock designed with slopes and curves to make it more comfortable.
They remember how Tommy always wanted to help, actually getting angry as a child when Ann didn't wait for him to mash the potatoes.
"He was this big, macho guy, but he always liked helping in the kitchen," Ann Brown said.
They remember his smile the most, the cat-who-ate-the-canary grin that came when he was building something, driving his moped or riding his wakeboard - or terrorizing his little sister, Elizabeth.
"It was always 'He's touching me,' or 'She's looking at me,' or just chasing each other around and around and around the table," Tom Brown said. "They never really buried the hatchet. Eventually, they just sort of put it in the closet."
But even when they fought, they were always buddies, Tom said. At 18 months apart, they were more like twins than like brother and sister.
Ann and Tom have a little girl together, Alexandria, 3. She reminds them of Tommy a little bit, with her curly hair, quick mind and agreeable nature.
Tommy was her favorite, they said, and she's starting to realize he's gone.
Feeling the loss
Tommy Brown applied to only one school, his father said, and he's always loved Gainesville.
His favorite place in town might have been in the Beta Theta Pi fraternity house.
Beta Theta Pi voted him brother of the year last year for being the kind of guy who would smile while others complained about busy schedules, then quietly work five nights a week as the closing manager at Pizza Hut, and fix the fraternity's ice machine when he got home.
"He was a hard worker, but he never seemed stressed," said Steve Brotman, one of the fraternity's vice presidents. "Whether he was working or doing homework or going out to the bars with his friends, he never seemed unhappy. He was a rock for us."
When he did take a break, his friends remember him working on his Nissan sports car in the fraternity's basketball court, or staying up late to have heart-to-hearts with friends.
Aaron Simon remembers Tom, as his college friends called him, dropping everything to talk when he was having a rough time one night.
"We had this two-hour conversation about life, and it took my mind off of everything," Simon said. "He helped pick me up and get me excited about life again."
Brotman said those late-night conversations were a sort of trademark for Tom.
"He would stay up all night, talking," Brotman said. "It didn't even seem like he wanted to sleep."
Right after it happened, everyone in the house walked around like zombies, Simon said.
It's getting better now, he said. But still, the memories can overwhelm.
"At dinner, when we tell the new guys stories, you'll see someone stop the story and just get a blank look on their face, and you know his name popped into their head," Simon said.
Slowly, they've started to relish the memories.
An emergency meeting called right after Tom's death started formally, with fraternity president Steve Greene standing before the group to share information.
Then, people started sharing memories, and the meeting moved to the basketball court, where Tom used to work on his car. They stood in a circle, talking and crying and praying.
"It was such a genuine, great experience," said John Webermeier, Tom's little brother in the house. "We'd call it a real brotherhood moment."
And at his funeral, they found a way to bring him back to life.
They tended to his family, hugging his mom and sister and patting his dad on the back, ignoring their own pain to help someone else.
Just like he would've done.
Ann Brown said she, too, likes to think that the memories keep Tommy alive.
In addition to the memory box, she's saving every newspaper story about Tommy to give to Alexandria when she's older.
"This way, she'll understand," Ann said. "What I like to remember now is that there were so many happy times before this. That's how he will live."
Kay Brown, the mother of slain University of Florida student, Thomas Oliver Brown, 23, attends an arraignment Friday at the Duval County Courthouse for three of the five men arrested in her son's murder.
Prosecutors Release Video Of Student's Fatal Beating
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Hours after the annual Florida-Georgia football game ended and less than two blocks from the Jacksonville Landing, where thousands were partying, 23-year-old Thomas Brown was brutally beaten. Brown had no pulse when rescue personnel arrived and was pronounced dead a short time later.
In addition to witness information that allowed police to catch five suspects in the beating as they headed to Jacksonville Beach, investigators said the attack was caught by a CSX security camera.
Channel 4's Jennifer Waugh obtained that video from the state attorney's office Tuesday, screening it, frame by frame.
Brown was separated from his fraternity brothers and found himself alone just after 10 p.m. Oct. 29 at the end of Water Street. Perhaps knowing he was in danger, the video shows Brown trying to get into the locked CSX building, then he cornered. He was beaten until he was unconscious.
As recorded by the surveillance camera inside the CSX lobby, the attack lasted all of 20 seconds. The video showed at least two men separately attacking Brown, his head jerking back. It ends with Brown on the ground, one of the suspects reaching down to either touch him or take something off his body.
Brown was rushed to Shands-Jacksonville Medical Center, but could not be saved.
Last week, three suspects -- Alex Canzano, 21, Mark Foss, 18, and Jeremy Lane, 21 -- were formally charged with second-degree murder. Two other men also remain in jail on open counts of murder. All five are being held without bond.
US Army Admits Iraqis Outnumber Foreign Fighters As Its Main Enemy
By Toby Harnden in Ramadi (Filed: 04/12/2005)
Iraqis, rather than foreign fighters, now form the vast majority of the insurgents who are waging a ferocious guerrilla war against United States forces in Sunni western Iraq, American commanders have revealed.
Their conclusion, disclosed to the Sunday Telegraph in interviews over 10 days in battle-torn Anbar province, contradicts the White House message that outsiders are the principal enemy in Iraq.
On patrol: An American marine searches an Iraqi
Of 1,300 suspected insurgents arrested over the past five months in and around Ramadi, none has been a foreigner. Col John Gronski, senior officer in the town, Anbar's provincial capital, said that almost all insurgent fighting there was by Iraqis. Foreigners provided only money and logistical support.
"The foreign fighters are staying north of the [Euphrates] river, training and advising, like the Soviets were doing in Vietnam," he said.
Although there are tensions between Iraqi insurgents and foreigners from the group al-Qaeda in Iraq, led by the Jordanian zealot Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, there are also alliances of convenience.
Col Gronski identified Mohammed Bassim Hazim, a former Ramadi taxi driver known as Abu Khattab, as the leader of the town's insurgency. Abu Khattab has become an "affiliate" of Zarqawi's group, many of whose members are Iraqis, and has been responsible for most of the 1,770 attacks against US and Iraqi forces in the past three months.
Ramadi, unlike neighbouring Fallujah, where 10 marines were killed by a bomb on Friday, has never been taken over by rebels. But it remains disputed turf at best. Thirty-four troops have died there since the beginning of September. Insurgent casualties have been much heavier - more than 180 in the same period in the town's eastern half alone.
American troop strengths have doubled in the past year with a US Army armoured battalion now supplementing a US Marine light infantry battalion.
Lt Col Michael Herbert, a brigade intelligence officer, said Abu Khattab has become an almost mythical figure. "He is the face of the insurgency in Ramadi. He has been behind the majority of the attacks." He was arrested by US forces last year but released, apparently due to lack of evidence and because his significance was not then appreciated. His photograph shows him wearing a Guantanamo-style orange jumpsuit.
The insurgents have the support of most locals. "They have the ability to move freely around the city," said Capt Twain Hickman, the commander of India Company of the 3/7 US Marines battalion. "That means they can attack at a time of their choosing."
Most wanted: An American sniper's picture of Abu Khattab
Col Gronski said the local nature of the insurgency meant that even the few civic leaders prepared to work with the Americans view the fighters as legitimate. "They see them as resistance. They don't view these local guys placing IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and firing mortars at us as insurgents."
Some Iraqis in Ramadi now adhere to Zarqawi's radical Islamist philosophy, but for most the insurgency is about removing the occupiers, Col Herbert said. "Their family and tribal honour has been impugned if we're on their ground. They're almost duty bound to fight."
Unemployment, which is over 50 per cent, and widespread intimidation are also fuelling the insurgency. "It's economic," said Lt Col Robert Roggeman, who commands the 2/69 US Army battalion. "Two hundred bucks to shoot at an American, 50 bucks to lay down an IED."
Iraqi officials who deal with the Americans are routinely killed. Ma'amoun Salmi Rasheed, the governor of Anbar, has survived a dozen assassination attempts. His predecessor and deputy were murdered. Little reconstruction is being done, said Col Roggeman. "Here, it's security first."
The Pentagon plan for the country is to hand over "battle space" to Iraqi forces once they are capable of combating the insurgency so that American forces can withdraw. But this scheme has been beset by problems in Ramadi.
A year ago the local police force was disbanded because many of its members were insurgents. In October, the provincial police chief was arrested on suspicion of diverting salaries to fund the insurgency.
There are three Iraqi army battalions in the town, comprised mainly of Shia troops from outside Ramadi, where the population is Sunni. If American troops exit prematurely, this could be a factor in sparking a civil war.
Splits among insurgents, however, could assist the US aim to isolate Zarqawi's group. Recent weeks have seen what the military terms "red on red" gun battles between insurgent groups.
Bombs near houses and one that killed civilians on a bus prompted the clashes and could have eroded Abu Khattab's support. "He is feared rather than popular," said Col Herbert. "He might be overstepping the mark."
But the commander of one of the Iraqi battalions, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, said it would be "at least two or three years" before his men were ready to fight alone.
"The terrorists control Ramadi and the mosques assist them," he said. "We are getting better but the Iraqi army is still weak and we need equipment. We always rely on the Americans to do the hardest jobs for us."
Each week, US forces achieve successes. In the recent Operation Machete, Capt Hickman's men uncovered an Aladdin's cave of arms buried in caches close to the banks of the Euphrates.
There had been intelligence that the munitions were being transported across the river on small boats. But since Iraq still has huge stockpiles of weapons from the Saddam era, insurgents are unlikely to run out of supplies.
"These insurgents have a great deal of tactical and operational patience," said Col Gronski. "They will continue to look for the time and the place because time is on their side."
One day after a WorldNetDaily story brought national exposure, the home-improvement retailer Lowe's dropped references to "Holiday Trees" in favor of "Christmas Trees" only.
As WND reported, a Lowe's store in Austin, Texas, featured a banner that referred in English to "Holiday Trees" but in Spanish said "Christmas Trees."
The company responded in a statement: "To ensure consistency of our message and to avoid confusion among our customers, we are now referring to the trees only as 'Christmas Trees.' We have also removed a banner that read 'Holiday Trees' from the front of our stores."
Lowe's, in fact, issued a press release Nov. 8 touting its selection of "Christmas trees," but in its stores, it took a different tack.
AFA President Tim Wildmon said companies that choose to abandon the national observance of Christmas are finding Americans are not afraid to speak out with their pocketbooks.
"It's good to know Lowe's is a company that listens to their customers, a rarity in today's politically correct retail marketplace," he said.
Wildmon added, "Since they can't take Christ out of Christmas, many national retailers are trying to simply do away with Christmas."
The list, he said, includes Kmart, Sears, Home Depot, Target, Wal-Mart, Kroger, Office Max, Walgreens, Staples, J.C. Penney, Dell and Best Buy.
After a series of reports by WND, however, Wal-Mart officials satisfied demands by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, which had called for a national boycott after accusing the retail giant of discriminating against Christmas while promoting other seasonal holidays by name, such as Kwanzaa and Hanukkah.
More than 425,000 people have signed AFA's petition to stop bans on the use of "Christmas." The petition is being sent to retailers, although Wildmon acknowledged it may not have an impact until next Christmas season.
"Last year we called for a boycott of Federated Stores because they banned 'Merry Christmas,' and this year they are using 'Merry Christmas,'" Wildmon pointed out.
Created by Free The CPT on December 1st, 2005 at 1:17 pm AST
An Urgent Appeal: Please Release Our Friends in Iraq
Four members of Christian Peacemaker Teams were taken this past Saturday, November 26, in Baghdad, Iraq. They are not spies, nor do they work in the service of any government. They are people who have dedicated their lives to fighting against war and have clearly and publicly opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq. They are people of faith, but they are not missionaries. They have deep respect for the Islamic faith and for the right of Iraqis to self-determination.
C.P.T. first came to Iraq in October 2002 to oppose the US invasion, and it has remained in the country throughout the occupation in solidarity with the Iraqi people. The group has been invaluable in alerting the world to many of the horrors facing Iraqis detained in US-run prisons and detention centers. C.P.T. was among the first to document the torture occurring at the Abu Ghraib prison, long before the story broke in the mainstream press. Its members have spent countless hours interviewing Iraqis about abuse and torture suffered at the hands of US forces and have disseminated this information internationally.
Each of the four C.P.T. members being held in Iraq has dedicated his life to resisting the darkness and misery of war and occupation. Convinced that it is not enough to oppose the war from the safety of their homes, they made the difficult decision to go to Iraq, knowing that the climate of mistrust created by foreign occupation meant that they could be mistaken for spies or missionaries. They went there with a simple purpose: to bear witness to injustice and to embody a different kind of relationship between cultures and faiths. Members of C.P.T. willingly undertook the risks of living among Iraqis, in a common neighborhood outside of the infamous Green Zone. They sought no protection from weapons or armed guards, trusting in, and benefiting from, the goodwill of the Iraqi people. Acts of kindness and hospitality from Iraqis were innumerable and ensured the C.P.T. members’ safety and wellbeing. We believe that spirit will prevail in the current situation.
We appeal to those holding these activists to release them unharmed so that they may continue their vital work as witnesses and peacemakers.
Signed,**
Arundhati Roy, author, The God of Small Things
Tariq Ali, author, Bush in Babylon
Denis Halliday, former U.N. Assistant Secretary General and Head of the U.N. Humanitarian Program in Iraq (1997-1998)
Cindy Sheehan, mother of Casey Sheehan
Noam Chomsky, Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Haifa Zangana, Iraqi novelist
Kamil Mahdi, Iraqi economist and anti-occupation activist. Lecturer, University of Exeter
Mahmood Mamdani, "Herbert Lehman Professor of Government," Columbia University
Rashid Khalidi, "Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies," Middle East Institute, Columbia University
Cindy and Craig Corrie, parents of Rachel Corrie, killed by Israeli military
Hasan Abu Nimah, Permanent Representative of Jordan at the United Nations (1995-2000)
Ralph Nader, former independent presidential candidate
James Abourezk, former US Senator
Howard Zinn, historian
Naseer Aruri, Professor (Emeritus) University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Kathy Kelly, Voices for Creative Nonviolence/Nobel Peace Prize Nominee
Naomi Klein, author/journalist
Michael Ratner, President, Center for Constitutional Rights
Rev. Daniel Berrigan, poet
Jeremy Scahill, independent journalist
Mazin Qumsiyeh, author, Sharing the Land Of Canaan, board member US Campaign to End the Occupation
Milan Rai, author, War Plan Iraq: Ten Reasons Against War on Iraq
Sam Husseini, writer
Dahr Jamail, independent journalist
Ali Abunimah & Nigel Parry, Co-founders, Electronic Iraq
Leslie Cagan, National Coordinator, United for Peace and Justice
Eve Ensler, author
Jennifer Harbury, Director, Stop Torture Permanently Campaign
Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton, Auxiliary Bishop, Archdiocese of Detroit
Anthony Arnove, author, Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal
Medea Benjamin, Global Exchange
G. Simon Harak, SJ, War Resisters League
David Hartsough, Co-Founder and Capacity Building Director of Nonviolent Peaceforce and Executive Director of Peaceworkers. Nonviolent Peace Force
Blase Bonpane, Office of the Americas
Carol Bragg, Coordinator, Rhode Island Peace Mission
Rev. Richard Deats, former Executive Secretary and Fellowship Editor, Fellowship of Reconciliation
Omar Diop, Président de la Coalition Sénégalaise des Défenseurs des Droits humains
Jim Forest, Secretary, The Orthodox Peace Fellowship
Thomas C. Cornell, The Catholic Worker
David Grant, Nonviolent Peaceforce
Ted Lewis, Global Exchange
Charles Jenks, Chair of Advisory Board, Traprock Peace Center
Jeff Leys, Voices for Creative Nonviolence
Andréa Schmidt, independent journalist
Michael Albert, ZNet
Richard McDowell, Senior Fellow for Iraq Policy, Friends Committee on National Legislation
Dave McReynolds, former Chair, War Resisters International
Peter Lems, Program Associate for Iraq, American Friends Service Committee
Kevin Zeese, Director, Democracy Rising
Sunny Miller, Director, Traprock Peace Center
Dave Robinson, Director, Pax Christi USA
Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, National Coordinator, Clergy and Laity Concerned about Iraq
David Swanson, Co-Founder, After Downing Street, Board Member Progressive Democrats of America, Washington Director Democrats.com
Mary Trotochaud, Senior Fellow for Iraq Policy, Friends Committee on National Legislation
Michael Birmingham, activist
Barbara Wien, Co-Director, Peace Brigades International/USA
Bishop Gabino Zavala, President, Pax Christi USA
**Organizations and institutions are listed for identification purposes only
Contact: freethecpt(at)gmail.com
Name Comments
6768 Sherryl Kleinman
6767 Josee Chiasson We need direct intervention for their release! Time is of essence.
6766 Felix Rey
6765 Becky Mahan
6764 Thüring Heidi
6763 Lester Schlosberg
6762 Peggy Kelsey
6761 Curtis Wiebe
6760 Andrew Hepburn
6759 DA VID L. AXELROD, Attorney Let there be justice and mercy for all those who follow the paths of peace and nonviolence. Amnesty now for political prisoners and freedom for all the peace activists!
6758 Charlene Mitchell
6757 Olive Finn
6756 James Odling
6755 James W. Hauser
6754 Cynthia Large
6753 Norah Fraser
6752 Dr. Bud Winslow Please Release Our Friends in Iraq
Four members of Christian Peacemaker Teams were taken this past Saturday, November 26, in Baghdad, Iraq. They are not spies, nor do they work in the service of any government. They are people who have dedicated their lives to fighting against war and have clearly and publicly opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq. They are people of faith, but they are not missionaries. They have deep respect for the Islamic faith and for the right of Iraqis to self-determination.
Bud
6751 Mary Jo Burke Killing peacemakers only makes it easier for those who love war. Be merciful, as Allah is merciful.
6750 Brydon Gombay These are men of peace, who wish to help all Iraqis.
6749 Scott Zorc
6748 Sharon Streater
6747 barbel Rehfeld
6746 Chris & Mary Fogarty They are friends of Iraq!
6745 Anne Hyvarinen
6744 samah sabawi
Well I see that the scrooges on the left side of the political spectrum are at it again … taking down Christmas trees, renaming items as “holiday” such as holiday cards, holiday tree, holiday party, holiday gifts, etc. The list just keeps going on.
The only hilarious thing I have found this year is a group of people are sending the ACLU “ Merry Christmas” cards. Now that’s funny, but not as clever as what happened last year when a group of Christian protesters aligned themselves outside the ACLU headquarters and sang Christmas carols to the president of the ACLU. That was a classic. They should do it every year and include other on the list too.
Not only this, but I have seen pictures of aborted fetuses on Christmas cards that read something like, “Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, but this child will never get to experience that. Thank you”. Yes, these cards exist and some are worse and cannot be repeated in this article. Most of these are sent to abortion clinics and Planned Parenthood offices. That’s a little too gruesome for me and I don’t like looking at those pictures, so I’ll just stick with traditional Christmas cards.
The one thing that has stood out in the news ( see link below ) is the story of a family that has a nativity scene in their own front yard. The subdivision community leaders are demanding that the scene be taken down, despite the family’s freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Besides that, it is on personal private property and is not on commercial or government property. So now we have to take this mess from the left even though the display is on our own property? I should say not.
I say that the family should fight this tooth and nail and not back down regardless of what the local scrooges threaten. Now that the story has aired, the family is gaining national support as they should. I for one, support them.
What is this nation coming to when one is told what they can or cannot have on their own personal private property? That’s a dangerous ideal that leads to socialism. We cannot and must not tolerate these actions and must do everything in our power to keep our rights of freedom of speech and religion.
Some may not like it, but Christmas is not about buying gifts. It is about celebrating the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s why it is called Christmas. The atheists of the country try to boycott everything Christian, but that means that they must have a different calendar than everyone else since my calendar reads AD and our time is based on BC and AD. How can someone be atheist and have the same calendar?
The gifts that are given at Christmas are symbolic of the gifts given to baby Jesus by the wise men. Do the left give gifts? Sure they do. But why? I can’t see their reasoning in giving a gift and calling it a “holiday gift” when the whole scene is symbolic of what happened 2005 years ago.
The politically correct along with groups like the ACLU and Move On just don’t get it. Ramadan comes at a time near Halloween and Columbus Day, and Yom Kippur. Yet, we do not see a “holiday” saying then do we? What’s the difference? Wouldn’t it be easier to say holidays instead of each individual day and what it is? Why not? That’s what the left has done to Christmas. They tried to ban Christmas by claiming that the reason for “holidays” is that there are many days of importance associated around the time of Christmas. That theory fails to hold up under the example I just gave you.
Every year the war on Christmas ( yes, John Gibson and Sean Hannity was right) gets worse. From banning school plays to banning personal lawn signs, the left clearly has an agenda for eradicating Christmas. Maybe the ghost of Christmas past, present and future has not visited them yet, but I sure hope they do soon. Maybe the scrooges will wake up and see reality for what it is! Until then, I WILL keep saying MERRY CHRSTMAS and no one has the authority to tell me otherwise. I hope you do the same.
RESOURCES : Away with the manger: Another nativity scene removed
"Paying off the Iraqi media to run good news mirrors what the Bush administration has been doing at home."
It's Propaganda (Shock, Horror)!
By David Isenberg
12/02/05 "Asia Times" --- -- The news of a US military operation that pays Iraqi newspapers to run stories written by "information operations" troops about how wonderfully things are going in the war should not come as a shock.
Even before the Iraq invasion, the Pentagon planned to create its own in-house propaganda and disinformation operation, to be called the Office of Strategic Influence. The program was supposedly killed after critics pointed out how easily the phony news it created could drift back into the domestic media.
Nevertheless, the occupation of Iraq has put the Pentagon in the "strategic influence" business in a big way, with its own TV news operation (the Pentagon Channel), a then-coalition-controlled Iraqi TV and radio network (now nominally in the hands of the Iraqi government, but still powered by Pentagon dollars and run by a US vendor) and millions of dollars to hire public relations firms and consultants to spin the coalition's propaganda to the Iraqi people.
In fact, paying off the Iraqi media to run good news mirrors what the Bush administration has been doing at home.
For example, in the past year it was revealed that the Bush administration paid nearly a quarter of a million dollars to a prominent conservative commentator, Armstrong Williams, to promote a new education law that had been strongly supported by President George W Bush. The Education Department paid a public relations firm for a video that promoted the law and appeared as a news story, without making clear the reporter was hired as part of the deal.
Similarly, some-time reporter and $200-an-hour gay escort, James Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon, violated a ban on "fake" news stories by reprinting White House news releases verbatim.
The gist of the latest story is that beginning this year as part of an information offensive in Iraq, the US military began secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the US mission in Iraq.
Responding to the growing furor over the disclosure, the Senate Armed Services Committee has summoned Defense Department officials for a briefing on the issue. "I am concerned about any actions that may undermine the credibility of the United States as we help the Iraqi people stand up a democracy," said the committee's chairman, John Warner.
The White House, too, says it is very concerned and is seeking more information.
The articles, written by the US military troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers as unbiased news accounts with the help of the Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations firm located on legendary consultant central, K St, paid by the Pentagon. Lincoln's contract is with the Pentagon's special ops propaganda machine - JPOSE (Joint Psychological Operations Support Element).
In addition to paying newspapers to print government propaganda, Lincoln has paid about a dozen Iraqi journalists each several hundred dollars a month. Those journalists were chosen because their past coverage had not been antagonistic to the United States,
US officials in Washington said the payments were made through the Baghdad Press Club; an organization they said was created more than a year ago by US Army officers. Members of the Press Club are paid as much as $200 a month, depending on how many positive pieces they produce.
A spokesman for the US military in Baghdad, Major General Rick Lynch, responded that "a propaganda war is under way in Iraq" as militants were also using the media. "Conducting these kidnappings, these beheadings, these explosions so that he gets international coverage to look like he has more capability than he truly has," Lynch said.
"He is lying to the Iraqi people. We don't lie. We don't need to lie," Lynch added.
Ironically, according to the reports, the Lincoln Group has also been paying Ahmad Chalabi's newspaper, al-Mutamar, to reprint pro-American propaganda. Hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies were lavished on Iraqi exile Chalabi and his surrogates in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Chalabi is now a deputy prime minister. Chalabi was influential in helping boost the Bush administration's "case" that Saddam Hussein had a weapons of mass destruction program.
What is worth noting is the lack of substance in the stories. One of them was titled "Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism". That ranks up there with the sun sets in the West and the tide rolls in and out. It also explains why the paper was only paid $50 for it.
Also, in some cases the military articles placed in the Iraqi press had copied verbatim text from copyrighted publications and passed it on to be printed without attribution.
These stories, however, are part of a continuing and longstanding effort to shape public opinion; more accurately described as psychological operations (psyops) in Iraq.
An article in the American Prospect blog notes that in February a couple of local staffers of President George W Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney headed to Iraq to work with Iraqex, the company that in March rebranded itself as The Lincoln Group to match that of its corporate parent, the Lincoln Alliance Corporation, a DC-based "business intelligence" firm.
Also, famed New York ad man, Jerry Della Femina, is on The Lincoln Group's advisory board.
But in late 2003 or early 2004 the Lincoln Alliance Corp became Iraqex. In October 2004, it won a $6 million contract from the Multi-National Corps-Iraq (formerly known as Combined Joint Task Force-7, which had operational control of all troops in Iraq) to design and execute an "aggressive advertising and public relations campaign that will accurately inform the Iraqi people of the coalition's goals and gain their support", according to the contract's August 2004 request for proposal.
Lincoln Group executive vice president Christian Bailey, a British venture capitalist, was involved with Lead21, a Republican business organization registered with the Internal Revenue Service as a 527 committee, which is a tax-exempt organization that engages in political activities
After graduating from Oxford University in England in the 1990s, Bailey moved to the San Francisco area about 1998, and in 1999, founded Express Action, an e-commerce company he apparently later sold. In 2002, Bailey was identified as the founder and chairman of a New York-based hedge fund called Lincoln Asset Management. On March 1, 2003, it was reported that Lincoln Asset Management had an initial $100 million in commitments to underwrite a leveraged buyout fund to acquire defense and intelligence companies.
The Lincoln Group is not the only firm engaged in psyops. In June, the Washington Post reported that the Pentagon had awarded three contracts, potentially worth up to $300 million over five years, to companies it hoped would inject more creativity into its psychological operations efforts to improve foreign public opinion about the US, particularly the military.
SYColeman Inc of Arlington, Lincoln Group and Science Applications International Corp were to help develop ideas and prototypes for radio and television spots, documentaries, or even text messages, pop-up ads on the Internet, podcasting, billboards and novelty items.
It is worth emphasizing that because of the security situation, US correspondents in Iraq are rarely able to leave the Green Zone in Baghdad or other US military bases to engage in on-the-ground reporting, and thus must rely, in part, on reports by Iraqis in the Iraqi press to assess the situation on the ground.
But the news that some of this media are simply US military propaganda undermines even this source of information.
Reportedly, the US military's top commanders, including General Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not know about the Lincoln Group contract until it was first described by The Los Angeles Times. Pentagon officials said Pace and other top officials were disturbed and demanded explanations from senior officers in Iraq.
The bottom line is the Iraqi press is neither free, nor even Iraqi.
David Isenberg, a senior analyst with the Washington-based British American Security Information Council (BASIC), has a wide background in arms control and national security issues. The views expressed are his own.
Pope Benedict Enforcing Traditional Rules and Orthodoxy
By John Jalsevac – Writing from Rome
ROME, Italy, December 24, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In an apostolic letter released by the Vatican Press this past Saturday, Pope Benedict again demonstrated his unwillingness to tolerate serious dissent in the Church and further raised the ire of liberal groups, already up in arms anticipating the newly leaked Vatican document reaffirming the centuries-long ban on admitting homosexuals into the priesthood.
In the "motu proprio" (on his own initiative) letter, Pope Benedict officially revoked the unusual four decade long autonomy of the notoriously liberal Franciscan basilicas in Assisi, again placing them under the jurisdictional authority of the local bishop. The bishop of Assisi, said the pope, "from this moment on, will have the jurisdiction foreseen by (canon) law over churches and religious houses regarding all pastoral activities undertaken by the Conventual fathers in the Basilica of St. Francis and by the Friars Minor of St. Mary of the Angels."
Annoyed liberal commentators have interpreted this unexpected maneuver by the Holy Father as an attempt to 'reign-in' the Franciscans in regards to some of their more controversial or unorthodox initiatives, most notably the abuses of their so-called "inter-faith dialogues" that Benedict strongly spoke out against while still Cardinal Ratzinger. One minister of the liberal Democrats of the Left Party, however, complained bitterly that, "Now the Franciscans have their hands tied and can no longer be a bridge between the Church and society."
In Italy the Franciscan basilicas have come to be widely associated with left-leaning groups, including, amongst others, leaders of the communist party. However, the particular event that many Italian news-sources have been rehashing in the last number of days is the highly controversial visit to Assisi by former Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, one of Saddam Hussein's right-hand men, in 2003, shortly before the commencement of the Iraq wars.
Former Assisian bishop Goretti welcomed Benedict's new directives, lamenting, "Often I would learn about their initiatives from the newspapers…in Assisi it was absurd that there existed autonomous enclaves over which the bishop had no power at all."
But while conservative sources in Rome agree that, while true that this is most likely a disciplinary measure on Benedict's part aimed at the Franciscan Friars, that isn't the complete or most important part of the story.
Almost simultaneous with the announcement that the basilicas were to again answer to the bishop, Benedict announced the appointment of Archbishop Dominico Sorrentino as bishop of the diocese of Assisi. Although slipping by general notice amidst the furor over the controversy surrounding the Franciscan shrines, some commentators are speculating that the appointment of Sorrentino may be the most important development yet in Benedict's papacy.
Until his new appointment Sorrentino had served in one of the highest positions in the Church as secretary of the Congregation for Liturgy. Catholic World News reports that "The new appointment for Archbishop Sorrentino is one of the first important changes that Pope Benedict has made in the leadership of the Roman Curia, and the first time that he has assigned a Curial official to a new post outside the Vatican."
For some time now Sorrentino has not been looked upon favorably by orthodox Catholics who have questioned some of his decisions and motives pertaining to a number of technical but important issues related to the Catholic liturgy. And in Italy, especially, Sorrentino has received criticism for his involvement in seminars related to exonerating Giordano Bruno, a crazed 16th century Dominican monk who taught anti-Catholic, anti-Christian doctrines, arguing, amongst other things, that Christ was merely a skilled magician, that the Devil would be saved, and similarly and universally repugnant teachings to Christians.
Sorrentino's new post, in one of the smallest dioceses in Italy, with a population of a mere 77,000 Catholics, removes the vast majority of his universal influence in the Church. Furthermore, both Sorrentino and the Franciscan basilicas, according to Benedict's directives, will now also answer to Cardinal Ruini, one of the most conservative members in the College of Cardinals.
Archbishop Sorrentino, says the Pope, "will hear the opinion of the president of the Umbra Episcopal Conference for initiatives that affect the Region, of the Presidency of the Italian Episcopal Conference for those of a larger radius." Which is to say that any pastoral decisions having a far-reaching effect, most especially any further attempts at hosting "Peace Conferences", which in the past have appalled Christians by openly celebrating pagan religions, will have to pass by Cardinal Ruini.
Some are calling this dual decision, of reinstating the normal authority of the bishop over churches in his diocese, particularly the Franciscan basilicas, and the transfer of Sorrentino from the Roman Curia, as "brilliant", the killing of two birds with one stone.
Indeed, in light of a series of recent dramatic decisions by the Holy Father, many hopeful Catholics are increasingly speaking about the so-called "reform of the reform" that the new pope has undertaken since the beginning of his pontificate. Although the "do and don't ask questions" technique that he has employed has caused consternation amongst Catholic liberal fringe groups, many see this practical, hands-on approach as the natural conclusion to the papacy of John Paul II, who painstakingly laid the philosophical and pastoral groundwork for the new reform.
ON May 26, Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, sponsored a resolution congratulating Carrie Underwood for winning the "American Idol" television program.
Last Friday, Senators Jon Corzine and Frank Lautenberg, Democrats of New Jersey, sponsored a resolution congratulating Bruce Springsteen on the 30th anniversary of his album "Born to Run."
Guess which resolution got shot down by the party in power?
In the recent past, Senator Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, has seen fit to sponsor resolutions recognizing "Sun Studio's Contribution to the Birth of Rock 'n' Roll," and commending the Grand Ole Opry on its 80th anniversary. There have been House and Senate resolutions congratulating or commending musicians, artists and athletes like Chris LeDoux (a rodeo champion and musician), Michael Campbell (a golfer from New Zealand) and Siegfried and Roy.
But no love for the Boss.
Senator Frist or one of his colleagues didn't let the resolution come up for consideration.
I confess to having a bias here. I am from New Jersey and a big Bruce Springsteen fan. In fact, on several occasions in recent years I have even gone to Bruce Springsteen concerts with my childhood friend, Christopher J. Christie, the United States Attorney for New Jersey, arguably the state's most prominent Republican, a Bush appointee, an honorable man and a total Springsteen freak. In his office in Newark, he has a guitar signed by the Boss on his wall. Chris probably wears a black "Born to Run" concert T-shirt as a pajama top, but I can't swear to that.
Bruce Springsteen's music, especially "Born to Run," meant a lot to Chris and me growing up. It still means a lot to us. But now I wonder. Will Chris have to take his guitar down from the wall? Now that I've outed him as a Springsteen fanatic, will this hurt his standing with Senator Frist and company, with the administration, with the Republican Party? And really, when you think about it, isn't it pathetic that those last few questions aren't asked in jest?
Love him or hate him, there can be little doubt of Bruce Springsteen's contribution to culture and music. You can't even fault the guy on the personal stuff. By all accounts, he is a good husband, father, man. Unlike many of his musical colleagues, he has never been involved in scandals or self-destructive binges: "No drug busts, no blood changes in Switzerland," the singer Bono said. "No bad hair periods even in the 80's."
So why was he denied this honor?
That's a rhetorical question, of course. Does anybody on either side of the political aisle really believe that the Springsteen resolution was turned down for any reason other than political payback for backing John Kerry?
We are so shameless now, so openly hostile to one another, that we don't even pretend otherwise. Here is how the senate power structure works: the resolution sponsored by Senator Gordon Smith, Republican of Oregon, honoring that golfer from New Zealand passed unanimously - but commending one of the seminal albums and musicians of the past 30 years gets nixed right away? Come on.
What happened to embracing diversity of opinion in this country? What happened to the idea that a healthy opposition is good for us, that it helps clarify our own views, that only when one idea is shown better than another does it truly strengthen? And when did we stop listening to the other side, if for no other reason than it's polite, humane and hey, it helps us hone our own viewpoint?
I don't love it when musicians or actors (or novelists, for that matter) get on their soapbox. I know my friend Chris doesn't agree with everything the Boss says. Neither do I. But we listen. Part of the paradox here is that many of Mr. Springsteen's characters - the factory worker, the soldier, the working stiff seeking release, the Friday-night racer looking for escape - would vote Republican.
But it doesn't matter to the Boss that his own creations may disagree with him. He loves them anyway. Maybe he loves them even more because of it.
Harlan Coben is the author, most recently, of "The Innocent," a novel.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 25, 2005; Page A01
PASS CHRISTIAN, Miss. -- Three months ago, Katrina all but scoured this old beach town of 8,000 off the face of the Earth. To walk its streets today is to see acres of wreckage almost as untouched as the day the hurricane passed.
No new houses are framed out. No lots cleared. There is just devastation and a lingering stench and a tent city in which hundreds of residents huddle against the first chill of winter and wonder where they'll find the money to rebuild their lives.
Billy McDonald, the white-haired mayor whose house was reduced to a concrete slab by 55-foot-high waves, works out of a trailer. He doesn't expect the word "recovery" to roll off his lips for many months.
"Lots of folks don't have flood insurance; lots of folks don't have jobs; lots of folks don't have hope," McDonald said. "We're a hurting place."
This is the other land laid low by Katrina's fury. Like New Orleans to the west, hundreds of square miles of Mississippi coastland look little better than they did in early September, and many people here harbor anger that the federal government has fallen short and that the nation's attention has turned away. At least 200,000 Mississippians remain displaced, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency is short at least 13,000 trailers to house them.
Fifty thousand homeowners lack federal flood insurance and cannot rebuild. The casinos, which employed 17,000 people, won't begin to reopen until next year, and the unemployment rate has quadrupled, now topping 23 percent in the coastal counties.
Half a dozen towns, Pass Christian among them, are borrowing millions of dollars to pay bills, and some officials are talking about surrendering charters and becoming wards of the state.
"FEMA continues to be able to mess up a one-car funeral -- we don't begin to have enough money for major reconstruction," said Rep. Gene Taylor (D), who lost his own home in Bay St. Louis. "We're going to have a lot of defaults and bankruptcies.
"The federal response, from highways to housing to trailers, is completely unacceptable."
The personal shock of it all hasn't subsided. Locals say it's not uncommon to hear perfectly rational people talk of suicide.
Developers and casino companies and local politicians have begun to map out a rebuilding plan, but that stirs anxiety, too. In this poorest state in the nation, where nearly 22 percent of residents live in poverty and 40,000 homes lack adequate plumbing, thousands of Mississippians could find themselves unable to afford to return to the land of their birth.
The hurricane pushed tens of thousands of coastal residents north and west, spreading over four states. The longer it takes to rebuild houses and businesses, the more officials worry that the dispossessed, particularly the working class, may never return.
"The response of the federal government is bewildering and deplorable," said Bruce Katz, director of metropolitan policy at the Brookings Institution, who has written two studies of the Katrina response. "We know how to deliver quality affordable housing in the United States -- we just need the will and leadership to do it."
Public housing authorities along the Mississippi coast lost 2,000 apartments and suffered $155 million in damages. But the federal government, which expects to spend close to $2 billion on temporary trailers, has not offered a dime to rebuild public housing. A spokeswoman with the Department of Housing and Urban Development said the agency's budget could remain just as tight next year.
Roy Necaise, chief operating officer of a regional Mississippi housing authority, said: "We have no federal funds, absolutely none, to rebuild. There's absolutely nothing standing on the coast right now, and it's going to be a long time before we're able to bring folks home.
"Washington has totally let us down, and it's a disgrace."
The lack of federal flood insurance is an even greater problem. When 30-foot walls of water crashed into coastal towns, thousands who lived outside official flood zones lost their homes.
Ross Stanley, who rebuilds old boats, stands in alligator cowboy boots, jeans and reflector shades, cradling a Bud Light. He is hosing down his patio and a lawn chair, which are all that's left of his house. D'Iberville was a roiling lake for eight hours on Aug. 29, and Stanley says about three-quarters of his neighbors had no flood insurance.
"You figure it ain't happening to me," he said. "Well, time to cowboy up. That's all you can do because you sure as hell ain't rebuilding. It's like a nightmare you can't wake up from."
Gov. Haley Barbour (R) has asked FEMA to let Gulf Coast area residents buy flood insurance retroactively if they pay 10 years of premiums, or about $3,000. But FEMA lacks the money even to pay existing claims. It is waiting for Congress to appropriate more.
Two weeks ago, FEMA officials began releasing guidelines that will require most coastal houses to be built on stilts. That is perhaps advisable in a hurricane zone, but it will add tens of thousands of dollars per house to construction costs.
Not all the news is grim. Workers in Biloxi have carted away 1 million cubic yards of debris. They have stretched blue tarps over tens of thousands of damaged roofs. Every town along the Gulf Coast has an operating school -- the last one opened in Bay St. Louis on Nov. 6, albeit with only 100 of its original 300 students.
But this politically conservative state has a threadbare safety net. Two weeks ago, county officials lifted an informal moratorium on evictions. Tenants cannot claim rent breaks for water-damaged apartments. One can sit now in housing courts in Gulfport and Biloxi and watch judges order the evictions of hundreds of tenants, often with a speed that startles the tenants.
"There's a hanging judge mentality and, my God, it's going to create a social crisis," said John C. Jopling, a lawyer with the Mississippi Center for Justice, which represented a few tenants.
The mayor of Gulfport, Mississippi's second largest city, recently removed a tent city of contract workers from a golf course. And under pressure from developers, he balked at signing off on emergency trailer parks, even though the inhabitants would be displaced city residents. "It creates an environment people don't want to live around," Gulfport developer Don Hall told the Harrison County Board of Supervisors recently, according to news reports.
Katrina left behind a great swell of land speculation. Signs reading "Cash for Homes" and "We Pay Top $ for Waterfront Property" are ubiquitous, as are developers hanging around city planning offices. It's urban renewal by hurricane, clearing land for a new Mississippi of upscale condominium towers and parks and many casinos. The many working-class residents who live within view of the coast could be outward bound.
"It's possible you're going to see a demographic shift because a lot of people are going to like the opportunities," Robert Latham, executive director of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, said on a recent tour of Gulfport. "We're going to clear a lot of land. . . . You're going to see such a great economic boom down here, you won't believe it."
Keith Burton is a longtime Biloxian, a certified dice dealer and editor of the much-read Gulf Coast News online service. With local officials concerned there are still bodies buried in homes and casino ships lying like beached whales along the highway, he advised slowing down a bit.
"Maybe this is a future boomtown -- it's super-prime land," he said of Biloxi. "But if that kind of rebirth happens, it will be on the backs of the lives of a lot of Biloxians. It's like talking bad about somebody at their funeral."
A Little Kingdom
There are twin devastations in Mississippi, and it would take Solomon to pick the worse of the two. There are the coastal cities and there are such places as tiny Pearlington, deep in the woods and marshlands along the Louisiana border. Here a 35-foot-high storm surge roared up the Pearl River.
The Rev. James O'Bryan fled hours before the storm, and afterward he asked a neighbor: How far can you get into town?
Until you get to St. Joseph's church, the neighbor replied.
"My heart danced," O'Bryan recalled. "I said, 'Well, that's far enough for me.' "
The neighbor shook his head. Father, he said, your church is sitting on top of three cars in the middle of the road.
Almost three months later, O'Bryan, 79, sits in a shaft of sunlight on the site of his former church, in a white wicker chair atop a four-foot-wide swatch of orange carpet. This is a self-reliant corner of the state, and his neighbors sawed and hauled debris -- one even shot a 12-foot alligator lolling in a living room. But the local school remains shredded, its roof a spaghetti of metal beams. Everyone lost cars and trucks, and there's no money for replacements. Many people sleep in tents or shacks that have been roughly thrown together.
The county's only supermarket is gone. Six shrimp boats still sit on the river bottom. There's a good bit of drug smuggling, but that isn't really a sustaining industry.
Two weeks ago, the Catholic Diocese of Biloxi informed O'Bryan that it won't rebuild the church.
"The bishop tells me we were insured for Camille [a 1969 hurricane] but not for Katrina," O'Bryan said. "I remember going for a walk just before the storm and saying to myself, 'Lord, you aren't going to take my little kingdom from me, are you?' I realized now that he was."
Point Cadet
Point Cadet was the soul of the steamy port city of Biloxi, a place where generations of blacks and whites grew up, joined by Yugoslav and Vietnamese immigrants. It was much beloved and nothing fancy, and it's gone.
On Fourth Street, a row of old wood houses still lies in the street like toppled dominoes. At night, no lights shine. Councilman Bill Stallworth, who represents a poor black neighborhood, points to the gleaming casino towers that edge Point Cadet on three sides. Developers, he said, already talk of the condo towers and green parks in between.
"Without some quick federal money, we're going to look up and see nothing but high-rises in a few years without everyone pressured out," Stallworth said. "If we lose these people who made this city, that would be a lowdown dirty shame."
The anxiety about what was lost and what might come exacts a psychological toll. Before Katrina, county officials said ambulances made about eight calls per month on mental health emergencies. In October, ambulances transported 167 people for psychiatric treatment, many suffering from post-traumatic stress and some talking of suicide.
Rosie Alexander, a woman around age 50 with a fast smile, grew up in Point Cadet and lives in a nearby apartment. She has a master's degree in nursing and worked in a casino. She's out of work, and this state pays the lowest unemployment premium in the nation. Her old casino sent a letter stating that if she's rehired, she must accept an entry-level wage.
Her home stinks of mold, and FEMA hasn't delivered a trailer. She rode out the hurricane in Biloxi and was stunned by what she saw. Bodies in drainage canals, children's dresses and dolls in trees, her best friend's house collapsed and destroyed, along with her friend.
She keeps trying to pack up her possessions. She wrote to Oprah Winfrey and asked for help, but she knows that's foolishness. In her darkest moments, she worries that bridges will be repaired and freight trains will rumble through Biloxi again -- and too many desperate people will seek their end on those tracks.
"I have nightmares, I have flashbacks." She shakes her head; she has talked for an hour with many tears. "I get so upset with all these rich people who say Biloxi will come back bigger and better. Not for us. No, no, no. Nobody I know is getting better."
he shoebox of memories was meant for his wedding day.
Surveillance Video Shows Last Minutes Of UF Student's Life
Still Images From Security Camera
