Sunday, October 4, 2009

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Government Pays Mortgage Servicers Billions, While Homeowners Suffer Top
WASHINGTON -- The federal government is engaged in a massive mortgage modification program that's on track to send billions in tax dollars to many of the very companies that judges or regulators have cited in recent years for abusive mortgage practices. More on Banks
 
John Farr: The Man Who Made The Best Movie Ever Top
Those who hold to the American Film Institute’s view will assume the subject of this piece is Orson Welles, who, at the tender age of 25, made “Citizen Kane” (1941), a film that both cursed and immortalized the young man. This admittedly brilliant feature heads their much scrutinized list of the top 100 movies ever made. Personally, I think the A.F.I’s number two pick, “Casablanca” (1942) should have won top honors. Though it’s almost absurd to compare them, “Kane” today feels more self-conscious, more eager to show off its virtuosity and originality than “Casablanca”, a film that, viewed once or a hundred times, simply seems to have nothing wrong with it. So this piece will instead concern Michael Curtiz, a Hungarian-born director who never commanded the adulation of a Lubitsch, Hitchcock, Ford or Welles. Part of his relative obscurity came from being so thoroughly emmeshed in the intricate machinery of the studio system in the thirties and forties. Unlike Welles, Curtiz was never known as an auteur, innovator or maverick, but simply put, he knew his business.  A superb film craftsman, from roughly 1933-1945 he was widely acknowledged as the best director on the Warner lot (along with William Wyler). And today we have his pictures to prove it. Born in 1886, he’d been in movies almost as long as there’d been movies. By the time he landed at Warners, he had established a signature style anchored in crisp pacing and frequent camera movement. Curtiz also knew how to use unusual compositions and camera angles to heighten tension. Just as important to Jack Warner, Curtiz was adept at running a disciplined set and moving a production along. He would never have claimed to be an “actor’s director”. Still, he was unfailingly courteous to Ingrid Bergman on the “Casablanca” set (how hard could that have been?), and got on well enough with the unruly Errol Flynn to make twelve pictures with him. When asked about the importance of “character” in his films, Curtiz replied that character was secondary for him; audiences need hardly be concerned with it since he kept his stories moving so fast.  What humanized Curtiz most was his thick accent and scant understanding of proper English, which often made him incomprehensible on set. The memorable title of David Niven’s memoir “Bring On The Empty Horses” was an actual Curtiz quote, referring to a group of riderless stallions Curtiz needed to shoot. Then of course, there’s this hilarious rant which Niven once endured from the director: “You think you know f**k everything! Well, you know f**k nothing! And I know f**k all!” On the set of “Casablanca”, the director made an unexpected but urgent request for poodles. When the dogs were ushered into his presence, Curtiz went volcanic and screamed: “No! I said poodles! Poodles of water!!!”  After the Second War, Curtiz broke with the Warner studio that had been his home for so long, and in the roughly fifteen ensuing years until his death in 1961, the director’s output would rarely equal the quality of his pre-war features.  But in his hey-day, what fine work he did. Beyond his universally admired masterpiece, just behold some of the other enduring classics Michael Curtiz bequeathed to future generations: Captain Blood (1935) - In this lusty recounting of the Rafael Sabatini tale, Errol Flynn is Peter Blood, a doctor unjustly sentenced to servitude by the British Crown. Chafing against captivity, Blood escapes and becomes a pirate on the high seas. He makes as good a pirate as doctor, wielding a sword in a way they don't teach you in medical school. Beyond zesty sword fights, there are grand sea battles, and of course, romance, as Blood falls for Arabella Bishop (Olivia de Havilland), daughter of Colonel Bishop (Lionel Atwill), cruel master of the penal colony where Blood is initially sent. "Blood" made an overnight star of the Tasmanian Flynn, and no wonder. His combination of good looks, athleticism, and sheer personality brought back the swashbuckler in one fell swoop. Curtiz's direction is predictably assured, and both Atwill and pirate nemesis Basil Rathbone make truly despicable villains. Finally, young de Havilland is the perfect match for Flynn; it's easy to see why they'd be paired in seven more Warner pictures. The Adventures Of Robin Hood (1938)- Robin of Locksley, a noble Saxon (Flynn), sees the people of England exploited by the Normans and their leader, Prince John (Claude Rains), who's seized the throne in his brother Richard's absence. Robin and his followers work to undermine the corrupt regime until King Richard's return. With Maid Marion (Olivia De Havilland) as love interest and Sir Guy Gisbourne (Basil Rathbone) as nemesis, Robin is kept constantly occupied. This rousing, gorgeously photographed adventure movie exemplifies the magical heights Warner Brothers attained in the Golden Age of the studio system. Bolstered by a consistently clever script, with both humor and romance complementing the derring-do, Curtiz’s "Robin Hood" is a milestone in Hollywood cinema- the first, and perhaps best, color swashbuckler. Angels With Dirty Faces (1938)- Rocky Sullivan and Jerry Connolly, two young hooligans on the make, are caught stealing, and only Jerry gets away. As the years go by, the reform school-hardened Rocky (James Cagney) enters a life of crime, becoming a famous and feared gangster, while Jerry (Pat O'Brien) ultimately sees the light and enters the priesthood. While maintaining affection for each other, criminal and priest must compete for the souls of a new generation of hoodlums in the neighborhood, played by the Dead End Kids. “Angels” represents the peak of the gangster picture genre which Warners developed and refined in the thirties, when the age of Capone was still fresh in people’s minds. Cagney, whose screen career had been launched seven years before in “The Public Enemy”, perfects his rendition of the crook with a heart of gold, and his close real-life friend Pat O'Brien counters him perfectly as the mellow, morally upright Father Connolly. Meanwhile Humphrey Bogart, in full villain mode, is deliciously slimy as Rocky’s “business partner”. Whatever you do, don’t miss that ending! The Private Lives Of Elizabeth and Essex (1939)- Based on Maxwell Anderson's play, "Elizabeth The Queen", this opulent drama profiles the uncoventional relationship between aging Queen Elizabeth I (a heavily made–up Bette Davis, in a rare character role), and the handsome Earl Of Essex (Flynn). Their obvious mutual affection creates an interesting dynamic, with the Queen's age and position forcing a measure of restraint, and the Earl's awareness of her true feelings making him bolder than your average subject. A sterling supporting cast includes Flynn's frequent co-star de Havilland (in a featured role), Donald Crisp, and a young Vincent Price as Sir Walter Raleigh! In this handsome production, historical accuracy is sacrificed to achieve an intelligent and intriguing character piece, shot in glorious Technicolor. The film admirably showcases its two stars, whose on-screen chemistry never hints at their off-screen disdain for each other. Davis is forced to stretch more in her part, and bravely foregoes any vanity in playing the spinster queen, while Flynn's Essex fits the actor's breezy, effortless charisma like a glove. Another direct hit for Curtiz and Flynn. The Sea Hawk (1940)- Captain Thorpe (Errol Flynn), a British privateer, seizes the bounty on Spanish ships to help thwart that country's hostile intentions towards Britain and fill England's coffers. On capturing a vessel carrying the Spanish Ambassador (Claude Rains) and his niece (Brenda Marshall), he returns to England and advocates for greater preparedness against Spain with Queen Elizabeth. To get him out of the way, the Spanish capture Thorpe at sea and the buccaneer must escape to warn his queen of the advancing Spanish armada. Along with "Captain Blood", this remains Flynn’s best pirate film- it’s a good old-fashioned sword-fest, with plenty of intrigue. Joined by Warner character players Claude Rains, Donald Crisp and Flora Robson (superb as the Queen), "Hawk" remains an exhilarating experience, with a lusty Erich Korngold score and incredible sets (two full-size ship replicas were built for the production). You’ll find it’s as bracing as the sea air. Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)- Curtiz's homage to patriotic songwriter/entertainer George M. Cohan was perfectly timed to stir our spirits as we entered World War II. A meeting with F.D.R on the eve of the conflict prompts an aging George M. (James Cagney) to look back on his colorful life, from the lean early days touring the country with his parents and sister in vaudeville, to later heady, happy times as our country's most prominent songwriter/performer, who stirred love of country through the first several decades of the twentieth century. This exuberant slice of Americana is Cagney's show entirely, netting him his only Oscar (after all those gangster roles!). The actor actually began his career as a song-and-dance man, and here he gets to prove it, in a series of rousing, nostalgic numbers that keep the rich Cohan legacy alive. Walter Huston stands out in a sterling supporting cast playing George's loving Dad. Good enough to watch any old time, but a must for Independence Day. Mildred Pierce (1945)- This timeless, tawdry Joan Crawford melodrama is based on the James Cain story of a ruthless career woman (Crawford), who will do anything to ensure her daughter Veda (Ann Blyth) gets all the advantages she never enjoyed. Veda grows into a spoiled monster, but the other characters surrounding the hard-working Mildred aren't too sympathetic either, whether it's the oily Monty Berrigan (Zachary Scott) whom Mildred thinks she loves, or lascivious realtor Wally Fay (Jack Carson), who just might help Mildred if she becomes friendlier. There's a foul odor in this town, and it may be the scent of murder. Here Curtiz the master creates a diabolical murder yarn. Crawford resuscitated her fading career with the driven Mildred, a part she was born to play. The Oscar- nominated Blyth grates as the hateful Veda (hard for her not to), and Scott and Carson each ooze their particular brand of acid as the calculating men in Mildred's life. For a vicarious glimpse into seamy small town intrigue, you can't beat this one. Joan won an Oscar. Note: several other Curtiz titles would have made this list but either are not on DVD, or available only on inferior “public domain” editions. Among them: “The Kennel Murder Case” (1933), “The Sea Wolf” (1941), and “Life With Father” (1947). Another winner, “Four Daughters” (1938), has just been released on  the Warner Archive Collection. For over 2,000 outstanding titles on DVD, visit www.bestmoviesbyfarr.com
 
Steven G. Brant: Why Obama Must Follow Drucker's (Not McChrystal's) Advice Top
David Sirota has written a great essay called " Who are "the deciders"? " In it, he lays out both the basic Republican "Obama had better do what General McChrystal tells him to do" mantra and the basic How the Government Actually Works rules of the Constitution. Personally, I side with the Constitution, which says the president is Commander in Chief (civilian control over the military having been one of the Founding Fathers' great ideas). I harbor no Seven Days in May type fantasies in which the military "resolves the Obama problem" by staging a coup. Thank you Newsmax magazine for, I hope, spiking sales of the DVD of this classic 1964 film , directed by John Frankenheimer from a screenplay by Rod Serling. Perhaps if more Americans were familiar with the civics lessons of this 45-year-old masterpiece, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Alright. So, I don't want President Obama to follow General McChrystal's advice. Listen to him, sure. But treat his advice as if it's the most relevant advice available? No! That's what I don't want President Obama to do. And now, here's what I do want President Obama to do. I want him to follow Peter Drucker's advice, not General McChrystal's. (Peter Drucker? Who's Peter Drucker?) If you don't know who Peter Drucker is, allow me to explain. First, he's dead. Died in 2005. Was 96 years old at the time. (WTF? You want President Obama to take the advice of a dead man? How's he supposed to do that?) Yes, I do. And here's how and why. Peter Drucker basically invented the science of modern management theory. And both his personal work and that theory have survived his death. ("Modern management theory"? What's that? And why does it matter?) Well, basic management theory is the organized study of how human beings accomplish what they say they want to accomplish. And modern management theory is the latest and best result of that research. In a matter of speaking, human beings have been using various types of management theory since the cave man days. Back then, some cave man figured out that using a club was better than using his fists to defend his watering hole from another group of cave men. (Thank you, Stanley Kubrick, for that imagery .) This was an early form of management theory, because at its core was innovation, planning, and adopting new habits. But it was largely the activity of one person, which was then shared with others. Modern management theory is something Peter Drucker and his fellow researchers began to formulate in the years after WWII (when there was a lot of interest in studying how humans organized themselves most effectively, since we had just fought the biggest "who's going to control the watering hole" event in history). Drucker's book, The Practice of Management (1954) is credited with launching the formal profession of management as it's known today. Here's the bottom line of why I'm bringing all this up: We have a huge problem here in America. A great many of us think that you make something happen by... just making it happen. Literally by force of will (or, for some, prayer). Because we don't know any better, this leads to a situation in which our society -- especially the civic side -- uses the only model of organized effort we've ever experienced: the Autocracy that exists in most families. We are raised under Father (or Mother) knows best circumstances. And if we serve in the military, that experience of "top down leadership" dynamic is reinforced... big time! And relying on this form of thinking, this form of planning, in which we "do as we're told," is sending our nation perilously close to going off a cliff (economically, environmentally, and sociologically). But modern management theory is different. Unlike top down management, it creates an environment that fosters innovative thinking . An environment in which asking questions is actually encouraged, as well as its sister behavior: challenging conventional thinking! This modern management-type process is what we need to make sure we do the right thing in Afghanistan. "We, the people" and our elected representatives must support President Obama in making a decision that's wise, not fast. One that's based on asking questions -- lots of them -- not just listening to General McChrystal. General McChrystal's perspective is -- by the nature of his job -- limited and less comprehensive than that of the civilian leadership in the Obama administration. Just to be clear, I am not saying that General McChrystal shouldn't be saying he needs more troops now. What I am saying -- from the perspective of modern management theory -- is that General McChrystal's request is akin to the request coming from the head of the production department of a large company , a company that is functioning in an environment that is changing in ways that go beyond how the market for the product that McChrystal's department produces is changing. And what President Obama is doing -- as the CEO of the overall business -- is taking the request from his head of production and factoring that into the wider perspective that comes from he and his other advisors seeing that the customers for the product McChrystal produces are actually changing themselves and, perhaps, need a different product now than the one McChrystal currently produces! It is from this larger -- and, yes, ultimately wiser -- perspective that President Obama will make his decision. My intuition tells me that President Obama knows more about the big picture thinking side of modern management theory than General McChrystal knows. (Were General McChrystal to be a student of modern management theory, he might actually be able to see beyond the needs of the "department" he runs.) For this reason, I trust Barack Obama to be the Commander in Chief. And I do not harbor any "military resolving the Obama problem" fantasies like the people at Newsmax do. If we, as a nation, take a step back and see what's going on from a planning perspective -- from a "thinking" perspective -- this could be a huge, teachable moment for "we, the people." We could finally learn, as a nation, that there is a science to developing truly effective plans for doing what we say we want to do. There's much more to making something happen than just "trying hard" or "praying hard." We could learn that there's a very effective alternative to thinking the only choice is to use the lessons we learned from growing up in autocratic family environments. That other choice is to study the work of Peter Drucker , W. Edwards Deming , Russell Ackoff , and Peter Senge , to read books like Idealized Design and Blue Ocean Strategy , out of the recognition that their methods have been responsible for most of the positive innovative developments in our society. Were a significant portion of America to discover this side of the "how we organize and plan what to do" world, a second American quality revolution might be launched, one that would go far beyond the one we had in the 1980's (see "If Japan Can Why Can't We?" and the Baldrige National Quality Program at NIST.gov started by President Reagan) I'll leave you with a brief quote from Peter Drucker: "The righter we do the wrong thing, the wronger we become." And one additional place where you can go to learn more about all this: The journal Systems Research and Behavioral Science . And, finally, a 30 minute keynote about all this given by Dr. Russell Ackoff in 2004. Believe me, if you will take the time to watch this keynote, it may change your life. More on Afghanistan
 
Goldman Sachs To Be Paid $1 Billion If Citi Fails; Taxpayers Would Lose $2 Billion Top
Goldman Sachs stands to receive a payment of $1bn -- while US taxpayers would lose $2.3bn -- if embattled commercial lender CIT files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, people familiar with the matter said. More on Goldman Sachs
 
Town Gets Rid Of 44 Tons Of Stinking Bison Meat Top
BRIDGEWATER, S.D. — Behind the freezer doors at a meat plant mysteriously abandoned by its owner, the 44 tons of bison meat managed to hold its own for months, masked by the brutal chill of two South Dakota winters. Once the power was cut and spring thaw arrived, nature took over. And enough rotting meat to fill a high school gym did exactly what you'd expect: It stank. It stank at the bank. It smelled at the law office. It reeked at the cafe. Even the jewelry store wasn't immune. Everyone in this tiny town could smell it, everywhere they went. A putrid odor so downright nasty the cleaners sent to mop up the gooey mess of liquefied meat – topped by a blanket of swarming white maggots and buzzed by a legion of flies – gave up after two days. "You've also got the city offices, the grocery store and the post office. And then you spread out to the local residences," said Mayor Marty Barattini, pointing to each place. "This is a small town. We have just over 600 people, so that stench was enough to overwhelm the entire town. Not just this street." Fed up with the smell, a brave crew of 18 city and county workers took matters into their own hands this summer and stormed the plant to haul away the putrid meat and take back their town. What came next was the biggest indignity: Three months after the cleanup, the owner still hasn't paid the $11,151 cleanup bill, and owes about $14,085 in unpaid property taxes on top of it. "We tried to work with that guy," said a dismayed Barattini. The saga of the smell began in January 2008, when owner Ilan Parente closed Bridgewater Quality Meats and moved the business to Dawson, Minn., as Noah's Ark Processors LLC. He left the boxed kosher bison meat behind, apparently to be sold to a pet food company. It stayed frozen until the electricity was cut off in December for lack of payment. When the town about 40 miles away from Sioux Falls began to warm in the spring, the smell began to creep out. Some said the scent was like road kill. The mayor said he spent two tours of duty in Vietnam and could not recall smelling anything as bad. "This is worse than rotten bodies," Barattini said. The city sent a notice to Parente to remove the caustic cause, and he dispatched two workers who toiled without protective masks, clothing, equipment or access to water or electricity. Defeated by the mess, they quit after two days. So city and county officials got permission from the South Dakota Animal Industry Board to go inside and finish. It then became clear that the source of the smell was the meat: 88,420 pounds, according to the scale at the Sioux Falls landfill, where the mess was hauled in five dump trucks and three extra-large trash bins. The crews and a skid loader spent two days removing the meat, which had swollen so much that the shrink-wrapped bags had burst, which caused the stacked boxes to topple. Most crew members wore an oxygen mask and hazardous materials suit because of the strong ammonia odor. Crews cleaned the building with fire hoses and doused it with bleach. City employee and volunteer firefighter Todd Letcher wore his fire gear. "I don't think anybody should ever do something like that," he said of the job. "That was bad." Parente's phone number is disconnected and the attorney representing him, Mike Unke, declined to comment. A woman who answered the phone at the Minnesota business said Parente is no longer affiliated with it. Requests for someone to comment went unanswered. Parente has said before that he checked the meat in May and found it iced over due to a broken water pipe. He's claimed the meat might have stunk but says he never put anyone in danger. "I feel bad for the people of Bridgewater who had to live with the smell. But that's really where the extent of my feeling bad goes. It wasn't ever a health hazard to anyone," he told The Daily Republic of Mitchell in July. The county spent about $5,000 on dump trucks and men to drive them, the city submitted a bill of $3,918 to Parente for trucking costs, landfill fees, attorney fees, overtime and pest control, and the fire department's cost came in at $2,233 for wages, air tanks, two fire trucks and clothing replacement. Parente also owes $8,628 in back property taxes and interest on the business and $5,457 on a rural house he owns, according to McCoy County records. Bridgewater City Attorney Mike Fink said that the city is in the process of discussing a settlement to recoup the cleanup costs. Months after the massive cleanup, though, the city hasn't seen a dime. The stink wasn't the first issue with the plant. Problems with the business started several years ago when the city's sewer system began getting stopped up because of blood and other parts going down the drain at Bridgewater Quality Meats. The state Department of Environment and Natural Resources filed a civil lawsuit against Bridgewater Quality Meats in 2003 seeking $10,000 per day of violation for dumping between October 2001 to October 2003. The last action on the case was a delay issued in March 2008. If convicted and assessed every day of that period, the penalty could top $7 million. The fate of the building is in limbo. Parente has a "for sale" sign up in the window, but so far, there haven't been any takers. The mayor says the building could be used again, "but it would take some work." So after all the mopping, slogging, bill-paying and legal wrangling, the mayor and his citizens are left with one small, but not insignificant, benefit. The smell is gone.
 
David Kirby: Kathleen Sebelius: Autism Now Hits 1 in 100 Children, We Have No Idea Why Top
Washington loves to dump its bad news on a Friday afternoon, and on October 2 it confirmed that one percent of American children (and by extension, perhaps 1-in-58 boys) has an autism spectrum disorder. On a hastily arranged telephone "visit" with US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the autism community, the health chief announced that "the prevalence of autism might be even higher than previously thought." But, she added, "We don't know if it has gone up, and we are hoping to unlock these mysteries." The Secretary then declared autism "An urgent public health challenge," proclaimed that President Obama was "right to make it one of our top health priorities," including research into "treatments and a cure" for the disorder, and then promptly ended her visit. Helping to fill in some of the details was Dr. Thomas R. Insel, Director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and Chair of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, who confirmed that CDC data to be published later this year will estimate the current childhood ASD rate at 100-per-10,000 children. The data, collected from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network, shows a significant uptick in ASD prevalence estimates in just two years. According to ADDM, the average rate of autism among eight-year-olds across all study sites was 67-per-10,000 in 2000 (the 1992 birth cohort), and 66-per-10,000 in 2002 (the 1994 birth cohort). Only six sites were included in both studies, and their average prevalence rate increased by 10%, from 67-per-10,000 to 74-per-10,000. Now, CDC has announced that among the 1996 birth cohort, the estimated rate of ASD is 100-per-10,000 -- a staggering 50% increase over the 1994 birth cohort. It is easy to understand why the Feds would call autism an "urgent" issue, but any sense of urgency by the officials on the phone was clearly absent, at least from my perspective. In fact, much of the discussion was centered around providing services and education to the growing ranks of Americans with ASD, an entirely laudable goal, to be sure. But no one expressed any alarm that up to 1-in-58 boys in this country is now on the autism spectrum. The officials on the call seemed to think that wider diagnostic criteria - such as adding Asperger Syndrome and Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) -- to the concept of an "autism spectrum disorder" vastly inflated the rate of ASD in the United States. There was no alarm, and little time for questions from the community that was invited to "visit." After about 15 minutes, questioning was cut off, and the call abruptly ended. I tried three times to ask a question (via a telephone switching system) and so did many other people on the call, which lasted a total of 39 minutes. And so, here is my (expanded) question, directed to Dr. Insel: Dr. Insel, thank you for arranging this call. I understand that the estimated average ASD rate increased from 66-per-10,000 to 100-per-10,000 between the 1994 and 1996 birth cohorts. Officials on this call believe this increase could be attributed purely to expanding diagnostic criteria and greater awareness, though they don't know for sure. But how could you attribute a 50% increase in just two years to wider diagnostics, especially when the 1994 cohort would have been diagnosed, on average, in 1999 and the latter cohort in 2001? The expansion of the ASD definition to include Asperger and PDD-NOS occurred in the early 1990s, so how can you explain this sudden and delayed explosion in the numbers? Also, you have declared that the vaccine-autism link has been disproven, yet all the studies you cite have only looked at MMR and thimerosal. But why is the IACC, which you chair, not investigating the possible role of Hep-B vaccine , given the following facts?: 1) For the 1994 birth cohort, Hepatitis-B vaccine was given to 27% of all newborns, but in 1996 it had jumped to 82%, according to CDC data. 2) An abstract just published in the Annals of Epidemiology said that giving Hepatitis B vaccine to newborn baby boys more than triples the risk of ASD. 3) A study just published in Neurotoxicology reported that infant male primates who received one dose of the Hepatitis-B were far more likely to display developmental delays than unvaccinated controls. 4) A study last year in Toxicological and Environmental Chemistry showed that boys getting the 3-shot HepB vaccine series were eight times more likely to require early intervention services than boys who did not have the series. 5) A study in the journal Neurology found that children who received the Hepatitis B vaccine series were 50% more likely to develop "central nervous system inflammatory demyelination" than children who did not receive the vaccine. For Merck's Engerix B brand vaccine, the elevated risk was 74%. Finally, why did you jettison the vaccinated-vs.-unvaccinated study that your own committee had previously voted to recommend, and why are you spending only 39 minutes speaking with the community that represents, according to your boss, one of the nation's "top health priorities?" I am also sending this question to HHS, to see if I can get a proper response. But I am not holding my breath. More on Health
 
David Dayen: Sometimes The People Win - 100,000 MoveOn Members Force CIGNA To Provide Health Care To Woman With Brain Tumor Top
In a post at Brave New Films' blog about closing in on the insurance industry , I mentioned the case of Dawn Smith, a MoveOn member and CIGNA who suffers from a treatable brain tumor. She spent two years being denied treatment for her tumor, and has seen her premium costs rise consistently since being diagnosed, and then, CIGNA raised her medication a whopping 10,000%. Dawn wrote a letter to CIGNA's Chief Medical Officer asking how they could do this: Dr. Kang: As you probably know, your company has denied me needed care for two years while I suffer from a debilitating but treatable brain tumor. I pay my $753.47 premiums. I follow the proper procedures. But CIGNA refuses to give me the care I need. Instead, you keep increasing my prices. First my premiums rose by hundreds of dollars, and now my prescription costs are going up by more than 10,000%. What makes you think you can treat sick people this way? When will you stop doing this to me and the thousands of people like me who are suffering? And if you solve this latest problem, how do I know you won't do this to me again next week--that you're actually changing your ways and not just trying to make your PR problem disappear? Please answer these questions. I need to know, for the sake of my health and my life. Many others have signed this letter too, to support me and make sure I get answers. Respectfully, Dawn Smith MoveOn asked people to join Dawn in signing the letter, and over 100,000 did. In the comments to the post asking people to co-sign Dawn Smith's letter, a representative from CIGNA responded in the comments: CIGNA has spoken with Ms. Smith and successfully resolved the issue pertaining to this matter. We originally filled the prescription as prescribed by Ms. Smith's doctor. CIGNA learned through a third party political organization that Ms. Smith's prescription mistakenly did not specify "brand name needed". We have been in contact with both Ms. Smith and her physician and have corrected the inaccuracy. Customer service and satisfaction is important to us, we remain committed to working with our customers and physicians to ensure they receive the highest level of service. Without that third party political organization - MoveOn - raising the profile of Dawn's case, there is probably no chance CIGNA would have responded so swiftly. But there's more to do. CIGNA may have agreed to lower the drug costs, and allowed various tests to go forward, but she is not giving up the fight. She wants answers about why she was denied treatment for two years, and why she and so many others have to suffer because CIGNA wants to maximize their profits. Dawn talked about her story in this video, and how it's not unique, but sadly the norm for a rapacious insurance industry that happily takes premium cash but resists giving it out in health care costs. You can help Dawn by adding your name to a statement of support for her that will be delivered to CIGNA CEO Edward Hanway. Fighting the insurance industry is a game of inches, but a collection of voices can make a difference. With some help from Congress, we can move toward a system of health care that doesn't involve ganging up on the insurance industry to force them to do the right thing. More on Health Care
 
6 Supreme Court Justices Attend Catholic Service Red Mass; Cardinal Pleads For Rights Of Unborn Top
WASHINGTON — An American cardinal on Sunday issued a plea for the rights of the unborn at a church service that included Vice President Joe Biden, six members of the Supreme Court and hundreds of members of the legal community. Five of the six Roman Catholics on the high court – Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito – heard the homily by Cardinal Daniel DiNardo; the sixth, Justice Clarence Thomas, did not attend. Justice Stephen Breyer, who is Jewish, was there as well. Speaking at the annual Red Mass the day before the opening of the Supreme Court term, DiNardo said that people represented by lawyers are "more than clients. ... In some cases the clients are voiceless for they lack influence; in others they are literally voiceless, not yet with tongues and even without names, and require our most careful attention and radical support." As DiNardo spoke, protesters opposed to abortion demonstrated in front of the church. DiNardo did not elaborate on the rights of the unborn, focusing instead on how the complexity of the law can have a dehumanizing effect on those who practice it. Increasing specialization within the law is "dizzying" and such formal knowledge "frequently becomes semi-mechanical, even distancing," DiNardo said at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle. "The law and lawyers are around because justice among human beings will always be an issue." "Even sophisticated knowledgeable human lawyers need reminding, need a divine fire ... both in their personal lives and in their profession itself." The Red Mass has been held since 1953 at the cathedral by the John Carroll Society, a group of Washington professionals who are Catholic. The name of the service, which dates to the 13th century and is conducted to ask for guidance for those who seek justice, comes from the red vestments worn by the celebrants. DiNardo is the newest U.S. cardinal and is the archbishop of Galveston-Houston. The Supreme Court's caseload this term involves an important challenge to gun control at the state and local level. A separate case deals with whether the presence of a cross in the Mojave National Preserve violates First Amendment religious protections. Also attending Sunday's Mass were Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. ___ On the Net: John Carroll Society: http://www.johncarrollsociety.org/ More on Supreme Court
 
Supreme Court To Hear Animal Sex Fetish Case; "Crush Videos," Dogfighting Footage May Be Treated Like Child Porn Top
Kittens, brutality, fetish videos, and dogfighting--these aren't the elements of a twisted cable-television show; they're just some of the factors in one of Tuesday's U.S. Supreme Court cases that will kick off the court's new term. The court will hear the federal government's appeal of U.S. v. Stevens, a circuit court's overturning of a 1999 federal law that makes it a crime to create, sell, or possess depictions of animal cruelty for commercial gain. More on Supreme Court
 
Jeff Antebi: Voting and Violence in Thailand Top
Thailand held sub-district, local government elections in September. I went to South Thailand and observed a little bit of what voting was like in that troubled part of the region. I don't know how to explain what I saw in South Thailand because I witnessed only 72 hours in what has been a five-year insurgency. In a span of less than three days, I visited several bombing scenes and a man I was supposed to meet was assassinated, gunned down along with his daughter and son-in-law. The towns I visited, Pattani and Yala, were veiled in fear. Somber during the day; at night, spectral and deserted. Darkened, overcast skies. Driving from one town to the other, I had to pass through five separate checkpoints. The killings in Thailand's three southern provinces are a slow, steady trickle. About 4,000 murders since 2004. That's an average of one or two insurgency related murders a day, every day, every week, every month for four years. While the insurgency is portrayed as a separatist movement, with ethnic Malay Muslims wanting the South to become its own state along an ethno-religious fault line, it's mostly Muslims who are being killed, not Buddhists, who represent the authorities of Bangkok. Rather than taking the fight to the seat of power in Bangkok, the separatist fighters kill locals. They blend in as regular citizens. A grocery store clerk. A waiter. A DVD bootlegger. Every village has a handful hiding in plain sight. The three southern provinces have a population of around 1 million people. Mostly ethnic Malay Muslims. Of that 1 million, maybe 100,000 are sympathetic to the mujahideen cause. And of that 100,000 only about 5,000 are hardcore insurgency soldiers. But those 5,000 are able to keep a stranglehold on half a country by patiently sewing a shroud of terror. In Pattani City, a bomb was planted in a motorcycle and detonated in front of a Buddhist restaurant on Naklua Soi 6 Road. 27 people were wounded and a 65-year-old man was killed. In Yala City, a Buddhist restaurant called Yim Yim was bombed, but the target might have been the store across the street selling police uniforms. Twelve people were wounded and a policeman was killed. I visited a hospital in Pattani where some of the wounded were taken and discreetly spoke with some of the victims while hospital administrators were distracted. One woman I spoke with was a waitress. Her face was massively swollen and stitched where shrapnel had dug deep into her forehead, narrowly missing her eyes. Another woman had been across the street, selling fried bananas. Her legs were smeared black with bruises. Both seemed in fairly decent spirits, but it was hard to maintain while a third woman nearby, held down by nurses and doctors, moaned in excruciating pain, her belly ripped open by the blast. My fixer and interpreter set up a meeting for me with Waedolah Wae-u-Seng, a local government leader in the Tanjong district. In the 60's Waedoah had been part of the first real separatist movement. As he got older, his politics mellowed. I arrived at Waedolah's daughter's house. The bodies were gone, replaced by large pools of blood on the ground. Kids peered through open windows into the house. People hung around outside, lethargic from shock, the heat, and the mourning. I went to one of Waedolah's son's houses so I could take a photograph of a photograph of Waedolah. The son explained what unfolded at the daughter's home, saying that a group of men in a pickup truck arrived at one of Waedolah's other son's homes. They wore Thai Border Police uniforms and spoke Thai, not the more common Malay dialect of the South. They asked the son where Waedolah was. He said he didn't know. They drove to another of Waedolah's son's houses, the son who was recounting the story, asked the same question and was given the same response. They drove to a third son's house. They were told Waedolah was possibly at the house of his daughter Dariyal and her husband. It was Ramadan and everywhere in the provinces, friends and families were breaking their Ramadan fasts. I was told that as a former guerilla, Waedolah was savvy about personal security. If someone he didn't know called out his name, he never replied. Who knows why after all those years he made the mistake. Maybe it was the uniforms that threw him off, because when this group of men called out, asking for the local leader, he stepped outside. His daughter followed. Both were gunned down on the spot. Dariyal's husband Muhammad ran outside and he, too, was murdered. Seated in the son's small house, listening to him recount the story of what had transpired only hours before, I couldn't ignore the obvious. He had spoken with the killers. He had seen their faces. He had seen what they were wearing. He had seen their truck. He had nowhere to go. This was his home. And they had every reason to murder him next. It was in their best interest to do so. His eyes were glazed over. He managed a brief and dreadful smile. We both stared at one another for a second. We both knew he was a dead man. For updates, please see www.twitter.com/jeffantebi and www.jeffantebi.com for photos Jeff is currently at work producing book of photographs of elections taken during times of war and conflict. Photo excerpts of the book can be seen at www.jeffantebi.com . More on Thailand
 
Erica Abeel: Splendors and Challenges at the New York Film Festival Top
Perhaps no film event, with the possible exception of Cannes, comes in for more scrutiny than the New York Film Festival. Unlike other fests, the NYFF has no agenda other than to present what its selection committee considers the best in global cinema. So the lineup inevitably invites the question, Why this film and not another? But this year's 47th edition, unspooling from September 25th to October 11th at a spiffed-up Alice Tully Hall, has engendered outright bursts of hostility. And this despite an exciting lineup of films by artists working deep within their own vision. Last Saturday's screening of AntiChrist by Lars Von Trier was greeted with derisive titters and groans of disgust. And at the Q & A following the screening of The Art of the Steal , Don Argott's doc about the priceless Barnes collection of art, one audience member yelled "elitist bullshit." The perception of elitism has long dogged the fest, presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, because, except for donors and other deep pockets, tickets have been hard to score. (Mara Manus, the Society's new Executive Director, is working to expand access, beginning with a half price rush line). Then, too, the fest's lineup is heavily tilted toward the work of European auteurs -- an "elite" of filmmakers -- many drawn from Cannes, and often perceived as inaccessible to all but initiates. Yet why the hostility among the event's usually reserved audience? Chief among the reasons, I suspect, is that this year's films are especially challenging, both formally and thematically. For the culturally insecure, the implication might be, You don't like "the best?" Then you're an idiot. For every batch of culturally savvy New Yorkers, you can find another out of touch with their own taste, who rely on the judgment of a few critics to tell them what they think. Other attendees are turned off by the relentlessly dark tenor of the films dominating this year's edition. After viewing in succession AntiChrist , Lebanon by Samuel Maoz, and Trash Humpers by Harmony Korine you might conclude the planet is one great hell-hole. Cinema, though, has a way of reflecting back the state of the world. Some of the best films out of Toronto slammed economic inequities and corporate skulduggery in America. But those films' revelations were offset by the implicit hope that lucidity -- the ability to name the enemy -- lays a seedbed for change. No such hope offered by one of my faves at the NYFF, Harmony Korine's nightmarish Trash Humpers . But it's a confoundingly original -- and often funny -- nightmare, a one-of-a-kind "found object" that captures an underbelly of America you never dreamed existed -- or exists only in the fevered imagination of its creator. "The title is to be taken literally," reads the deadpan description of Trash in the Playbill. It follows a band of loonies in grotesque masks as they also hump trees, hydrants, whatever; spank the upended bottoms of fat ladies in garters; brutalize dolls -- taking time out for the odd tap dance -- all the while reciting moronic ditties, cackling insanely, and grunting like rutting boars. The film is shot with cruddy disposable cameras to echo the degraded content. Korine was inspired by a place he grew up in near Nashville and some shady locals who scared and horrified him, he told Richard Pena, Programming Director of the NYFF, during a Q & A. "I don't even want to call it a movie," Korine added. "I wanted to make an artifact that was found, like, in a ditch." Some viewers saw echos of the painter Francis Bacon, others saw elements from Freddy Krueger horror movies or The Theater of Cruelty. But Korine claims he was referencing no one, just into the idea of making a film "as quickly as I could think." A damn shame Trash hasn't yet been picked up by a distributor. Any takers out there? Fortunately for cinephiles, the peerless Sony Pictures Classics has stepped up to the plate and acquired Venice's Gold Lion winner Lebanon by Israeli Samuel Maoz. The entire film unspools deep inside the iron belly of a tank imprisoning four Israeli soldiers during the '82 Lebanon war. The dynamic is altered by the arrival in their midst of a Syrian captive. Revisiting the same conflict so memorably limned in Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir , Maoz draws on his own trauma sustained during that war. With claustrophobic intensity and a thunderous soundtrack, the film offers a snapshot of camaraderie and terror, spiked with gallows humor. It's so vivid you all but smell the stench inside that tank. Inevitably, Lebanon will trigger comparisons with that other account of wartime horrors, Kathryn Bigelow's Hurt Locker . But Lebanon is the larger film. Hurt Locker examines a particular -- masculine, I might add -- adrenalin rush that addicts fighters to living a heartbeat away from death, while Lebanon is emotionally compelling and more in the mode of classic humanism, exploring matters of conscience and the ironies of fate. In a wrenching moment at the end, a character in the tank pisses at length and in real time. How, you ask, does a filmmaker get an epiphany out of that? Trust me, he does.
 
Geoffrey R. Stone: Free Ibrahim Top
Ibrahim Parlak is a Kurd who was born and raised in southeastern Turkey. As a young man, he became active in the Kurdish human rights movement both in Turkey and Europe. He was arrested in Turkey in 1988 and held incommunicado and tortured repeatedly in three different Turkish police stations. He was then tried and convicted of "separatist activities" by one of the notorious Turkish security courts. After serving a sixteen-month sentence, he was granted political asylum in the U.S. in 1992 on the ground that he had "established a well-founded fear of persecution" if he were to return to Turkey. During his seventeen years in the U.S., Ibrahim has been a model member of his community in Michigan. He has established a very successful restaurant, has a twelve-year-old daughter, and contributes actively to charitable and civic activities. After 9/11, however, the Department of Homeland Security initiated proceedings to have Ibrahim deported back to Turkey, where he is very likely to face imprisonment and torture. His many friends and admirers, including members of the United States House of Representatives and Senate, have actively and generously supported him throughout this ordeal, but in a recent (and, in my view, ill-advised) two-to-one decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that it could not block Ibrahim's deportation. I have known Ibrahim for several years and I am convinced to a moral certainty that his deportation would be a grave injustice. I therefore encourage you to consider signing a petition to President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano asking them to allow Ibrahim Parlak to remain in the United States. Learn more about Ibrahim and his plight (including the legal proceedings) here . Sign the petition here . Thanks so much for considering this. (I would also encourage you, if this persuades you, to bring this to the attention of others.)
 
ESPN Fantasy Football Down: Check Status Here Top
ESPN's Fantasy Football site went down on October 4, according to web users who reported trouble logging into ESPN.com's Fantasy Football website. Mashable.com also noted that users had been having problems accessing their accounts on the ESPN fantasy football page, and suggested that high traffic volume may have been behind the outage. No word yet on when ESPN log ins will be working again. For real-time updates on the status of ESPN's Fantasy Football site (and to see what people have to say about the outage) check out the Twitter feed below. Follow HuffPostTech On Facebook And Twitter!
 
Matt Osborne: Obama is Not God: the Projection Principle Top
There is a limitless supply of videos chronicling the August teabaggery, but this is the one I found most interesting: a woman declaring that "Obama is not God." It perfectly encapsulates the mind of the American right: She was repeating a meme given voice by Jon Voight in June at a Republican fundraiser. The actor, who hosted the dinner, delivered a particularly harsh rebuke to Obama, saying he was "embarrassed" by the president and that Obama's leadership would cause the "downfall" of the country."We are becoming a weak nation," he said, calling Obama a "false prophet" and his administration the "Obama oppression." Of course, this meme is really an exercise in psychological projection . Denying their own mental habits, the wingnut ascribes those habits to the president. Projection is a profoundly subtle psychological process because it takes place internally, yet it is an important way the closed mind keeps itself uninformed about itself -- as well as the larger world. In other words, it helps them avoid facing facts. "Belief" replaces facts, such as this one: to date, no one has quoted Obama claiming to be God. In his speeches, calls to divine authority have been limited to scriptural allusions on such issues as reducing poverty. None of them posit a special calling for himself. Indeed, he has yet to claim any special powers of communication with the divine. On the other hand, right-wing conservatives make exactly these claims all the time . Michele Bachmann, for example, has been courting the teabagger demographic. In an interview with the arch-birther website Wing Nut Daily World Net Daily, Bachmann claimed -- amidst quotes about abortion, "death panels," and the moral danger of compact fluorescent bulbs(!) -- that God had "called" her to run for Congress and might yet "call" her to run for president. Bachmann, who regularly infuses her rhetoric with blood imagery and overwrought religious hyperbole , came to office via the message-machine of the evangelical church. Railing against the "attitudes, values and beliefs" of the Goals 2000 program, she was invited by other right-wing education activists to run for Congress. It's worth noting that the Goals 2000 curriculum seems rather uncontroversial: getting guns and drugs out of schools, emphasizing math and science skills, etc. Presumably, Bachmann was upset by the part where students were asked to identify with children from another culture and religion -- like, say, Hawaii. We can't have the kids think of other people as human , after all. The representative from Minnesota is perhaps the best example of this, but by no means the only one. Indeed, the entire " C Street Family " story is about public piety matched by private self-dealing and hypocrisy. One need only watch video of Senator James Inhofe talking about a trip to Africa and contrast it with his denialism of global warming to see that his agenda is faith-based. Like so many on the right, science is made to serve belief, and that science which contradicts belief is to not to be believed. Of course, this meme has actually been with us a long time. It's the latest manifestation of the "Obama is antichrist" meme: This silliness is a direct result of manufactured fear within the evangelical movement. "Informed" by films like Left Behind and The Omega Code , the wingnut mind has seized on Obama's global background and middle name to invent a narrative of Satanic influence. Xenophobia is a consistent strain of modern apocalyptic narratives. This meme is a form of wishful thinking from the party of faith-based policy: if Obama is illegitimate in the eyes of God, then it is a Christian's duty to oppose him, no matter what he actually does. Thus questions of policy, like scientific studies, are no longer argued on their own merits, but on the sole merit of opposition to the evil president. This delegitimating of a president -- and, by extension, his agenda -- explains the odd crowing reaction of Republicans to the failed Chicago Olympic bid. It is as if Obama has lost some sheen of idolatrous perfection and been "revealed" as a fraudulent prophet; but only a wingnut would ever think of a politician as a prophet. This meme also shows up in right-wing coverage of various nontroversies. For instance, Obama's announced back-to-school speech brought condemnation for encouraging " a worship-like reverence " and " indoctrinating " students. None of those fears materialized. Glenn Beck used a video of high school step-dancers to promote the idea of a secret Negro army of Obama goons , claiming -- again -- that "indoctrination" was going on. More recently, we've seen a video of schoolchildren singing a song about the country's first black president (during Black History month) given national exposure as "proof" the president is encouraging an actual cult of personality, and video of a mock funeral for wealthcare portrayed as prayer to Obama . Yet the origin of this narrative has nothing at all to do with anything the president has said or done. Nor can it be traced to any actions of his supporters. Indeed, "The One" was a satirical meme from the right in last year's election. So where do they get these cockamamie ideas? Maybe this video can explain it:   Osborne Ink is a Website of Media Deconstruction   More on Barack Obama
 
Vook: Changing The Book? Top
Is a Vook: A) An endangered bird B) What you hear when Zsa Zsa Gabor curses you out C) The latest development in digital reading D) None of the above E) All of the above (including 'None of the above') More on Video
 
Napster For Books: The Way Of The Future? Top
You can buy "The Lost Symbol," by Dan Brown, as an e-book for $9.99 at Amazon.com. Or you can don a pirate's cap and snatch a free copy from another online user at RapidShare, Megaupload, Hotfile and other file-storage sites.
 
Rachael Chong: To be a woman entrepreneur - what does it take? Lessons from Coco Chanel, a self-made woman. Top
My Saturday night was spent enthralled by Audrey Tautou's rendition of Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel's incredible rags to riches story. After hours of my afternoon had disappeared in frustration as a result of entrepreneur's block (like writer's block except worse because there's just no time to wait for creative genius to strike), I decided to clear my head by going to the movies. Coco before Chanel could not have been a better choice. Here I was, an aspiring woman entrepreneur in 2009 learning from and relating to a woman entrepreneur who existed at a time when I'm sure that "woman" and "entrepreneur" were never uttered in the same sentence. Coco Chanel, the epitome of a self-made (wo)man, singlehandedly redefined suffocating French fashion from constraining corsets and feathery displays of wealth to simple, feminine elegance that allowed a woman to breathe. A woman ahead of her time, Coco Chanel was a true entrepreneur, who brought women freedom through fashion. The relevant questions that this biography sparked for me were: Why was Coco so different from the male entrepreneurs of her time? A century later, why are women entrepreneurs still so different from their male counterparts? What makes a woman's journey to becoming her own boss so different from that of a man's? And, most importantly, why are there still so few of us? Sure, the first question may be easy to answer - Coco lived in a time when it was truly a man's world and women's rights were a thing of the future. Fine; but why is it that even today, in a more gender-neutral world, only 10 of the 1,125 Forbes 2008 billionaires are self-made women ? Why is it that only a minuscule number of women have made their fortunes by launching big companies? The fact that I can name many of the biggest women entrepreneurs of all time by their first names is clearly not a good sign. Hats off to Coco, Estee, Oprah, Martha, and Arianna. A USA Today article from last year asks a similar question: Why is it so rare to find women who have built big companies? Their explanation falls largely into two camps: 1) men have easier access to startup capital from banks and venture capitalists, and 2) that women are naturally more devoted to family, and "even those who out-earn their husbands often remain responsible for children and households." While I can understand anyone (man or woman) who chooses to make family a priority; I have trouble understanding why, all things being equal, women are not as fundable as men? The House of Chanel wouldn't exist if Coco's love, Arthur "Boy" Capel, hadn't provided her with the startup capital to fund her first hat shop. Back then, it wasn't even an option for women to get a loan to start a business from the bank, but today, banks (at least those in the developed world) don't discriminate based on gender, so why is it that women aren't getting funded as readily as men? Does the corporate glass ceiling for women also exist in entrepreneurism? Are women not getting the proper education or experience to succeed as entrepreneurs? Or are women just not coming up with as many good ideas as men? A bit of research reveals some startling statistics. Although women launch twice as many businesses as men , only 6% of all venture-backed startups are women-led , only 1.7% of venture capital-backed technology startups are founded by one or more women , and only three companies on the Fortune 1000 were founded or co-founded by women . The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) last month spotlighted the issue of women and girls in the developing world. Women perform 66 percent of the world's work, and produce 50 percent of the food, yet earn only 10 percent of the income and own 1 percent of the property," President Bill Clinton said . I applaud the global companies, nonprofits and foundations that made over a dozen commitments to empowering women and girls in the developing world at CGI last month. But we also need commitments to help empower women and girls in the developed world, because even in the developed world, decreases in inequality can improve overall productivity. Goldman Sachs reported that different countries and regions of the world could dramatically increase GDP simply by reducing the gap in employment rates between men and women: the Eurozone could increase GDP by 13 percent; Japan by 16 percent; the U.S. by 9 percent. To learn more about the campaign for women and girls check out the Girl Effect . If I could make my own girl effect video to make the case for more women entrepreneurs, it would go something like this: "Woman Entrepreneur + No Funding = Glass Ceiling, Gender Imbalance, Lack of Role Models." But, "Woman Entrepreneur + Funding = Job Creation, Gender Equality, Better Role Models." The stark statistics of women being underrepresented in entrepreneurism is sad and disappointing, but I hope that these statistics prompt entrepreneurs out there to action. Entrepreneurs (women and men alike) have very little tolerance for what should be done, because it's all about what can be done. So as I reflect on the story of Coco and the sacrifices she made to build her empire (she never married or had children), I draw hope from the fact that despite all odds, Coco succeeded. I believe that this is a good sign for us women entrepreneurs of the 21st century. If Coco could do it, so can we. Resources for women entrepreneurs (again, there are too few): Women 2.0 in Silicon Valley , Young Women Social Entrepreneurs , Womensphere , and Forum for Women Entrepreneurs & Executives . If you know of other websites, please share!
 
Anne Frank (VIDEO): Museum Posts Only Known Footage Of Anne Frank To YouTube Top
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — The Anne Frank House museum in Amsterdam has begun airing the only known video of the teenage diarist on a channel dedicated to her on YouTube. The channel also features clips of others, including her late father Otto and Nelson Mandela, talking about Anne, museum spokeswoman Annemarie Bekker said Friday. "It is really a great platform to show all the different kinds of films and documentaries about Anne Frank," Bekker added. The channel shows footage taken during a neighbor's wedding on July 22, 1941. It briefly shows Anne before she and her family were forced into hiding to avoid the Nazis during their World War II occupation of the Netherlands. The fleeting moving images of Anne already are on display at the museum and on its Web site in slightly shorter versions. Bekker said the YouTube channel also has a video about the making of a 3-D virtual version of the secret annex concealed in an Amsterdam canalside house where the Frank family hid for 25 months until they were betrayed and deported. The virtual version of the secret annex is due to be formally launched next year to help mark the 50th anniversary of the museum's founding. Anne died aged 15 of typhus in the German concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen, seven months after her arrest and just two weeks before British and Canadian troops liberated the camp. Her posthumously published diary has made her a symbol of all Jews killed in World War II. ____ On the Net: http://bit.ly/ubOYb
 

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