FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'
Beautiful Stockholm at night, looking west towards Gamla Stan
"...Britain's worst hostage outcome in living memory," says Channel 4 presenter Jon Snow. That was how it was described Wednesday night across the U.K. after news was issued about the death of a the third and fourth hostage.
Friends of Peter Moore, lone remaining hostage, believe the British government must admit that mistakes were made in their handling of the hostage situation, including, most fundamentally, trusting Iraqi govt. officials and intermediaries.
Apparently, the U.S. was also duped by the same group of people, as they allowed the release of someone under their custody to effect release. Result? After Iranian-backed Shia militant is released by U.S. military, U.K. was given two bodies of dead bodyguards last month and a note saying, oh, by the way, the other two bodyguards are also dead. Looks like they were killed TWO years ago.
The Guardian has the timeline here for the events that have led us to this point, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul/30/iraq-hostages-timeline
Marsden doesn't mess around with his intro, he gets to the heart of the matter: "Iraqi government officials may have colluded in the kidnapping of five Britons two years ago in a bid to prevent high-level corruption being exposed, it was reported today..."
Famous last words: "There are a lot of secrets in District 9." ----------
---------
Daily Variety review of District 9 from
July 28th, 2009:
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117940744.html?categoryid=31&cs=1&query=District+9
This official Sony website is great, with by far
the most information, best trailers and even some
p.s.a.s and games, even MNU training simulation.
http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/district9/ You may prefer to watch the official trailer here
and and click theater format: http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/district9/player/
For more information on film director Neill Blomkamp, see
How Peter Jackson Discovered District 9 Director Neill Blomkamp
As is almost always the case, there's never a big story
that isn't without a South Florida angle:
http://www.d-9.com/communitywatch?division=miami&call=1&hs308=D9IVR
http://www.d-9.com/communitywatch?division=miami&call=2&hs308=D9IVR Multi-National United, Miami Division,
Police you can count on in an emergency!
Like most people in Iceland -only one of the world's MOST literate places, after all, unlike, well, here- Yohanna's multi-lingual and has released at least a half-dozen versions of the song in different languages.
As some of you may or may not already
know, many kids in Iceland actually learn
Danish while they're in school, and as it
happens, she was actually born in
Copenhagen, albeit to Icelandic parents.
Also, speaking of the French language,
for a sign of the times last year at Eurovision, see this perceptive piece from Le Monde titled La chanson française in english
and see the reality of the current NHS URL: http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1529573111?bclid=30437470001&bctid=30621718001
This topic starts at 4:10, following news re
Norwich North by-election won by Conservative
Chloe Smith, now the youngest MP, who received
twice as many votes as her Labour opponent,
Ostrowski, who was, himself, selected by the party
to replace popular Labour MP Ian Gibson,
who was embroiled in theExpenses scandal
as a result of letting his daughter stay at a home,
rent-free, that U.K. taxpayers were actually paying
for.
And for good measure, substitute candidate Ostrowski caught Swine Flu, and was unable to campaign the last few days!
When it rains, it pours!
The bigger story is the completely inadequate number
of intensive care beds in the U.K. for victims of H1N1 -esp. units for children- and most particularly in the
SE and SW of England, as well as in the Midlands.
And the National Pandemic Flu Service website was
crashing just hours after being put up, after 100,000
people in the U.K. reported symptoms last week,
twice the number of the previous week.
If you let the segment roll on, you'll come to the
very well-produced report from the previous night,
including comparisons to the flu of 1969,
before anti-virals were available, that resulted in
30,000 deaths in the U.K.
To see their take on Obama's health care plan
and the ads using British doctors and patients
complaining about care under the NHS.
After seeing it, perhaps you'll better appreciate why I try to watch Channel Four everyday, or catch up on segments I missed on rainy Saturdays like this past weekend, when I thought that I'd be down on South Beach with some friends, instead of staring at my computer and listening to the Cards-Phillies game in the background, after my friends canceled our plans.
Sebastian Coe, Chair of theLondon 2012 Organising Committee shares his thoughts as the calendar strikes three years and counting today, 1096 days to be exact: http://www.london2012.com/blog/2009/07/27/three-years-to-go-believe-me-it-s-going-to-be-fantastic.php The Observer Sebastian Coe: Golden boy with success in his sights As an athlete in the 1980s, he was single-minded in his efforts to be first across the finishing line. And ever since he masterminded the British 2012 Olympic bid, Sebastian Coe has been quietly but efficiently overseeing the job of bringing in the Games on time and in budget. No also-ran? No noble failure? How terribly unBritish . By Andrew Anthony July 19, 2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/jul/19/olympic-games-london-2012-sebastian-coe
BBC Olympics webpage: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/olympic_games/default.stm
British Olympic Association: http://www.olympics.org.uk/home2.aspx Official U.S. Olympic Committee website: http://www.teamusa.org/ 500 Days and counting: 5 live Breakfast chats with Sir Coe about tickets to London 2012 Olympic tickets going on sale today
Maybe it's because I lived for so long in communities like Chicago and Washington, D.C., where taking a commuter train was both de rigeur and common sense, but after reading the story below about the truly exasperating and economically brutal transportation situation in Berlin, all I could think of was how badly this situation would've been portrayed on CNN or more importantly, CNN International, right before the height of the South Florida tourist season for Europeans, if this had happened here involving an intact and thriving FEC Corridor commuter train system along U.S-1 that was logically connected to both Tri-Rail and the Miami-Dade Metro system to create the smartest possible options for people and businesses in South Florida.
A system that quickly and effortlessly moved residents and tourists around the area from airports to seaports to hotels, museums to nightclubs to theaters to sports arenas, from work to home and more.
My educated guess is that it would also show, once again, that if South Florida didn't have bad luck/negative stories shown on CNN, they'd have no stories at all. Instead, though I'm a news junkie, I've yet to see a single TV news story about this situation in Berlin on any of the American cablenets, or even on Channel Four in Britain, which I watch just about every day via the Internet.
Have you? ---------- Spiegel Online 'THIRD WORLD' CONDITIONS Commuter Chaos in Berlin until December
Berlin has had to take two-thirds of its commuter trains out of service due to safety issues.It has resulted in angry locals, crowded platforms, confused tourists, near accidents, amulti-million-euro bill and political fallout. And it's going to go on until the end of the year. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,638049,00.html
Re my post yesterday, Et tu, Florida?: Georgia DOT joins ProPublica's Stimulus Spot Check project, just a head's-up before you head out for the night. Stephen Stock of the hard-charging CBS4 I-Team wrote this morning to say that they'll be doing a story on Florida stimulus spending tonight at 11 p.m., so have your VCRs/TiVos at the ready. http://cbs4.com/iteam
Above, some CBS4 Miami screenshots I did this
afternoon while I caught a promo for Stephen
Stock's report tonight.
In case you miss it, I should have the story link up tomorrow on my blog, along some with some other interesting articles on the stimulus spending in
[1] This is an unexpected development: The Georgia Department of Transportation has joined our Stimulus Spot Check project [2] and volunteered to provide us with information about 12 road and bridge construction projects. Officials in that department need to pull together information about the projects now for public release on their stimulus Web site in August, and they’ve offered to share it with us in advance.
Deal!
Evidently the Georgia DOT took notice of our plan [3] to report on how easy it is for the general public to get basic stimulus information from the state DOTs. Now, you may ask, as you should, how can a news organization partner with a state Department of Transportation? Well, we’re asking volunteers to find out information by contacting state DOTs and then to fact-check some of that through alternative sources. Georgia DOT officials are doing in advance what we’d ask of them over the phone in coming days. Of course, we will fact-check such information, as we do for other states. Now, the question just begs to be asked: Will other DOTs follow Georgia’s lead? -------------------
Sorry to say but I discovered over the weekend that the very compelling p.s.a. video that was the focus of my advertising industry-related blog post of July 10th, TAC-SWAP -which I've gotten a lot of positive email about, esp. from overseas visitors to Hallandale Beach Blog- has, for now at least, been rendered invisible on YouTube as a result of a copyright claim by the very people in Australia whom you'd think would want the message they paid for to be seen by as many people as possible, the Transportation Accident Commission.
You don't have to have read every one of world-renown Northwestern marketing professor Philip Kotler's many great books on marketing strategies, or sat in on his Kellogg classes in Evanston, to know what a very bad decision that will likely turn out to be in retrospect. http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/bio/Kotler.htm http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/Faculty/Blogroll/All-Blogs.aspx http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/Faculty/Books_By_Faculty/Marketing.aspx Looking northeast towards the main part of Northwestern's campus and Lake Michigan. Until you've been there, you can't imagine how beautiful the Evanston campus is. It's not quite in IU's class in terms of beauty, but it's much beter than 95% of this country's college campuses. Here they have precisely the sort of great interest in their awareness campaign that you'd want, and they not only don't have a means for sharing it from their own website, but they've actually now clamped down on the one-and-only way most people will ever hear about it, including similarly-situated groups around the world, who, it might be hoped, might get the kick-in-the-pants they need to start being as realistic and compelling on their home turf as this and the preceding TACads have been.
Just imagine if overnight, Miami-Dade County and Broward County governments were forced to pay for ads on local TV this realistic, to induce citizens to call anonymously to report govt. graft and abuse, kick-backs, contract chicanery or ethical funny business by elected officials or govt. employees?
That would be great to see on TV, and the sort of thing that the Broward County Ethics Commission really ought to be pushing hard, if you ask me. http://www.broward.org/ethicscommission/welcome.htm So, with all that said, here is the only legally-sanctioned website where you can actually see the SWAP p.s.a., although a few places around the world still have it up until the Australians force them to pull it down -like at Sostav in Moscow, http://www.sostav.ru/news/2009/07/10/cod3/ - albeit without the benefit of a large screen.
Kudos to the people at Grey Melbourne who made this great ad possible, which hasn't gone un-noticed: creative director Nigel Dawson; executive creative director Ant Shannon; writer Nigel Dawson; art director Pete Becker; agency producer Jess Smith, account director Claudia McInerney, TV Director Sean Meehan, film company Soma Films; client Emma Mulholland and John Thompson; Media Mitchells.
What to do about Johnson Street will be the subject of two meetings
By Ihosvani Rodriguez
June 11, 2009
HOLLYWOOD
City officials are asking residents to put on their thinking caps and come up with ideas on what to do with a city-owned property on the beach.
The first of two informal public meetings will be held next week to gather input on the long-awaited redevelopment of the city-owned Johnson Street property at A1A on Hollywood beach.
The first meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall.
A second meeting will be at the Hollywood Beach Culture and Community Center on June 18.
The city has also established an e-mail address to gather comments: johnsonstreetrfp@hollywoodfl.org.
The meetings come after a developer walked away from a plan
to build a $100 million hotel and beach resort on the property
now occupied by an aging garage and a parking lot.
--------------------
See also:City seeks community input for Johnson Street property
A year's progress at the Olympic Stadium 
