The Council on Foreign Relations video: Counterterrorism and Homeland Security: Does the United States Have the Right Strategy? September 12, 2011.
Thom Shanker of the N.Y. Times is the panel moderator, with Henry A. Crumpton, Frances "Fran" Fragos Townsend, and John F. Lehman as featured guests. I highly recommend watching the entire video at one time when you have no distractions. In particular, I urge you to listen at the 10:03 mark to former Navy Sec. Lehman, a member of the 9/11 Commission, who makes some spot-on comments I agree with 100% re wasted band frequency, the failure to fully comply with the 9/11 Comm.'s recommendations, and the remaining bloated bureaucracy in the intelligence community, In fact, Lehman is so disgusted with that bureaucratic red-tape that he admits he'd favor the Office of DNI being abolished if it can not be kept intentionally small as it was originally intended.
On 9/11, I was four blocks east of The White House and working in an office on Pennsylvania Ave. directly across the street from the FBI and DOJ. http://youtu.be/HQXveZjQgdg
-----
Forget about your own silly Cyber Monday nonsense, read this GREAT story recently written by Thom Shanker & Eric Schmitt of the New York Times -co-authors of the book "Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda"- about the military's Digital Engagement Team, who is doing the heavy lifting to counter online Islamic extremist ideology, "promote cultural awareness and explain U.S. interests” Yes, strategic counter-terrorism that will make a tangible difference.
New York Times
U.S. Military Goes Online to Rebut Extremists’ Messages
By Thom Shanker & Eric Schmitt
November 18, 2011
MacDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. — The morning sun had barely cast its fresh light over Tampa Bay when Ardashir Safavi — born in Iran, a refugee to Turkey, educated in the mid-Atlantic states — was up and patrolling two dozen Persian-language Web sites, hunting militant adversaries in cyberspace.
His mission was to scan news reports, blogs, social media and online essays to identify those he viewed as “containing lies, misinformation or just misperceptions” about American military operations and Pentagon policy across the Middle East.
Above and below, July 13, 2010 photos by South Beach Hoosier, looking south at the Broward County Schools HQ, 600 S.E. Third Avenue, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
More bad reporting on education at Miami Herald -We'll tell you about meetings the morning of them rather than in advance so you can attend them ...
We'll tell you about govt. meetings the morning of them rather than in advance, like on Sunday, so you know in advance and can maybe plan to attend.
The same reason we run our "Week Ahead" calendar on Monday instead of Sunday like most normal newspapers would do.
And if Broward School Board members engage in questionable personal behavior, we'll tell you about it MONTHS after-the-fact.
That is, if we do at all.
Love,
The Herald
They did the same thing for the Broward Courthouse Task Force meetings, only quoting -parroting- judges and selected courthouse workers and never interviewing anyone in depth who was knowledgeable and AGAINST the construction of a new County Courthouse, despite the fact that a clear majority of the county's taxpayers were/are against it.
Not that you'd ever have known it from what the Herald wrote at the time.
They could never find the opposing P.O.V. because they never honestly looked.
Was Thursday's story in the Herald by Laura Figueroa,
(*Friday night postscript: Actually, the Herald has changed the story that used this URL on Thursday afternoon, wherein Figueroa talked about the meeting being held that night, and then used the same exact URL on Friday on that meeting. I checked the Herald's archives and they completely deleted the original story I complained about in an email I sent to about 6-7 dozen people around South Florida. Surprise!)
If so, Runcie would be better off telling the Herald not to even bother sending anyone to meetings -not that they always were, just like the Broward County Ethics meetings they rarely attended- and that henceforth, he'll call their bluff, and make arrangements for his public comments to be videotaped and placed on the school's website or a new YouTube page within 24 hours for the public to see for themselves.
If only...
Oh, and in case you forgot, in the year 2011, the Herald STILL doesn't have an Education blog, either!
Predictably, NOT mentioned in Thursday's Herald story -why wasn't this meeting with Runcie being televised on taxpayer-owned BECON, which is on both satellite and cable systems in Broward County?
Is it the same reason that the three-headed Integrity meetings -none of whose meetings were ever held south of Downtown FTL- were also NOT aired on BECON?
Plain old-fashioned incompetency!
See my January 10, 2001 post on the topic of the complete under-utilization of BECON to communicate with shareholders, Monday night's public meeting of Notter's Three Amigos -Bring hand warmers! Where are BECON's TV cameras?
Supt. Runcie needs to take the initiative ASAP and make an example out of some highly-paid people in the school system, who can't even conceive of the simple idea of putting that meeting on TV and having an email address that questions could be sent to from Broward parents and taxpayers, and give them their unconditional release.
The only forum being held in south Broward will be on October 20th at McArthur High School, 6501 Hollywood Blvd. from 7-9 p.m.
BCPS to Host Broward Legislative Delegation Public Hearing Broward County Public Schools will host a Broward Legislative Delegation public hearing to receive testimony concerning issues related to education and cultural affairs on Monday, October 10, 2011 from 4 to 7 p.m. at Collins Elementary School, 1050 NW 2nd Street, Dania.
My previous posts on the James Notter-appointed Integrity Committee:
Oh yeah, and be sure to ask Integrity member Bob Butterworth what he thinks -on camera, too- about the very idea of the present School Board members voting on this before the new members are sworn-in. Yet another nail in Broward Schools ...
Rather ominously for concerned Broward citizens and taxpayers who hoped for more diligence and speed on their part, panel member Bob Butterworth said "he is confident Broward School Board members "want to do right" and will take the ...
The three members of the independent commission – Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jack Seiler, attorney W. George Allen, and former Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth — are donating their time. But the school district agreed to pay for ...
previously that the January 10th Butterworth & Company public meeting could've been and should've been televised on the Broward School Board's own cable channel, BECON-TV, using the very TV cameras that Broward taxpayers have ...
To serve on the commission, Superintendent Jim Notter chose former Florida Attorney General Bob Butterworth; Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jack Seiler, a former state legislator; and attorney W. George Allen, who filed the lawsuit that forced ...
Does PR guru Bob Butterworth know about this meeting in secret? And when, specifically, is he going to meet with Broward parents and taxpayers in public and answer their questions? Just wondering. Or is that too much to ask? ...
1st Sun-Sentinel column about FP&L and Notter both turning to Bob Butterworth to lend some assistance, In Sticky Situations, Just Add Mr. Butterworth http://www.sun-sentinel.com/sfl-butterworth-mayocol-b103009,0,2880202.column ...
TEN Network News, Australia: Playground inspiration at the railway station in Utrecht, The Netherlands. August 11, 2011. http://youtu.be/vZrUuC8j7XY
Dutch genius and ingenuity at its best -making the familiar even more useful and fun! The quickest distance between two points is a slide!
Despite The Netherlands being a small country, size-wise, it's ranked number eight, right behind Sverige (Sweden), in the number of readers coming to my humble blog, and the home of a few readers who fairly regularly send me a head's-up on interesting ideas, news stories, songs and videos.
Blijvendie ideeënkomen!
Let me take the opportunity to show you some of my favorite recent Dutch treats...
(In case you forgot or weren't reading the blog then, as I've previously mentioned here, The Netherlands is a country that my family has always had a great deal of warm feelings for. We not only knew a few very friendly Dutch emigres in North Miami Beach as I and my sisters were growing up there in the 1970's -esp. me- but one of my two younger sisters studied in Rotterdam at Erasmus University for a semester her junior year atIU -January of 1985- and absolutely LOVED IT.
So much so that four short years later, she had her honeymoon in Amsterdam and the rest of the country after getting married in New Amsterdam -New York!- which is when I first became aware of and a regular subscriber to the salmon-colored New York Observer.)
-----
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines video:KLM Personal Space Experiment
I first posted this video in my January 10th, 2011 post titled Armin van Buuren feat. Christian Burns - This Light Between Us -Official Music Video; Unplugged version with Christian Burns & Eller van Buuren at
The land that feminism forgot: They wouldn't dream of working full-time, spend three hours a day drinking coffee and their men pay for everything - have Dutch women found the secret to happiness?
By Liz Jones
Last updated at 11:34 PM on 9th March 2011
Have you wondered what life would be like if feminism had never happened? If we were all housewives? If we were not required to live on our wits and our adrenaline, and were able to take up a hobby? If men were happy to step up to the mark and look after us?
Am I talking about travelling back in time to see what life was like in the Fifties? No, it is much simpler than that. I am catching a flight to Amsterdam.
TV4.se Nyheterna video:Kommuner raggar arbetskraft i Holland.
Sverige behöver invandrad arbetskraft. I dag finns det tusentals kvalificerade och arbetslösa invandrare i Sverige. Samtidigt raggar kommunerna arbetskraft utomlands. TV4Nyheternas Lena Sundström har besökt Emigrantmässan i Utrecht.
TV4 Nyheterna reporter Lena Sundström visits an Emigration Fair held in Utrecht, The Netherlands in February that sought to motivate smart and educated Dutch workers to consider emigrating to Sweden, with various parts of the convention space dedicated to different aspects of life in the country, with about 100 cities and towns represented. This fair is very successful as over 700,000 Dutch citizens a year seriously consider emigrating overseas and over 120,000 actually do it.
It's not said in the video but one way of looking at this fascination that Sweden holds for some Dutch citizens is that just as kids who grows up in small towns in the U.S. often aims to go to a big city some day to do whatever it is they they aim to do, so it is that for a person who grows-up in a small and congested country like the NL, where land is precious, going to a country with lots of space to breathe sounds appealing.
For someone from NL, the mid-central and northern parts of Sweden -where as I recently wrote, film director David Fincher has recently recorded some scenes in Sollefteå for the new American film version of "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" starring Daniel Craig- can be like visiting another planet.
Space is everywhere, along with hills, mountains and lakes.
To quote myself, whether in Iceland or the Hill Country of Bandera, Texas, the Faroe Islands or Holland, "girls love horses..."
And if there are a few things we know about our friends in the land of the Oranje, de nederlandse, one is of them is that Cinzia ♥ horses and Johnny Depp and Pirates of the Caribbean.
That is a stone-cold fact you can't deny.
I first discovered Cinzia's earnest YouTube videos a few months ago after seeing it next to one by Eva Skemm, another devout teenage horse lover -from the Faroe Islands- whom I first mentioned in my July 27th post,
Question: If Miami-Dade County or Broward County had a 'Sister County' sort of deal along the lines of the Sister Cities program, with Amsterdam or Rotterdam -cities where my sister her honeymoon and went to school for a semester while going to IU- and they did an exchange of elected officials and employees, what would happen quicker?
The people from South Florida "accidentally" flooding the city, or the Dutch using common sense and some style to make Miami more sane, livable and possibly, sexier?
Slate
HOME / ARCHITECTURE: WHAT WE BUILD.
Can Cities Save the Planet?
Scientists are skeptical. Planners are hopeful. The Dutch are pragmatic.
By Witold Rybczynski
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2008, at 6:58 AM ET
Winning With Water
According to Timothy Beatley, an urban-planning professor at the University of Virginia and the author of Green Urbanism, the per-capita carbon dioxide emissions of American cities are almost twice as high as those of their European counterparts. Hardly surprising, since European cities are denser and more compact, homes are smaller, and people rely to a far greater extent on mass transit. So if Americans are to significantly reduce their carbon footprint, we will have to do a lot more than switch to reusable shopping bags and recycle our soda cans. But as a recent conference on "urban design after the age of oil" at the University of Pennsylvania (where I teach) demonstrated, there is something of a disconnect between the global-warming problem and the available solutions.
On Tuesday night I had the pleasure to meet several members of the Dutch delegation that came to Miami for a two-day ThinkBike workshop. The purpose of the ThinkBike workshop was to learn from the expertise of Dutch planners. They came to teach us how we could improve downtown Miami’s bikeability. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the actual workshop, but I was able to make it to the post-seminar cocktail hour. Over a couple of Cold Stellas I spoke with several members from the Dutch delegation, a gentleman from the County Public Works Department, as well as citizens all of whom participated in the seminar. The feedback I recieved was extremely positive.
By the way, I spotted someone riding one of the Dutch bikes -with the KLM basket- in May in Hollywood, east of The ArtsPark, that I strongly suspect had been stolen
I didn't know what it was, though, since I hadn't read the story yet.
-----
Houston Chronicle
Steffy: U.S. and BP slow to accept Dutch expertise
By Loren Steffy
June 8, 2010, 10:13PM
Three days after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, the Dutch government offered to help.
It was willing to provide ships outfitted with oil-skimming booms, and it proposed a plan for building sand barriers to protect sensitive marshlands.
The response from the Obama administration and BP, which are coordinating the cleanup: “The embassy got a nice letter from the administration that said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,'” said Geert Visser, consul general for the Netherlands in Houston.
Now, almost seven weeks later, as the oil spewing from the battered well spreads across the Gulf and soils pristine beaches and coastline, BP and our government have reconsidered.
Please be sure to read my blog post of almost a year ago, August 18, 2010, titled Fascinating Deutsche Welle TV video of innovative architect Thomas Rau in Amsterdam, and what he's done with the WWF HQ in The Netherlands
Last year before the 2010 World Cup tourney started in South Africa, I predicted that The Netherlands would win, likely beating Spain 4-2 in the final. C'est la vie.
-----
This was a real gold nugget of useful information.
This Matthew Ingram piece is an excellent analysis of the changing media landscape, and the legacy media's attempt to freeze things in place to maintain their old advantages.
Sometimes, even when that old media is, in fact, a popular website or blog itself, like Deadline Hollywood, Nikki Finke's site that I've had on my blog roll since I started this humble blog of mine just over four years ago.
In general, those efforts as such aren't working as American news consumers continue voting with their feet -and eyeballs- to get more and better written information with unique content.
And to bring this issue to a local level, it doesn't help when the majority of South Florida's mainstream media is risk-averse, seemingly wanting stories either nice-and-neat when they deign to show-up somewhere, or, delivered to them like hotel room service over the telephone, without the reporter ever leaving his or her desk. Worst of all, most of them DON'T and WON'T show-up at public events that are clearly newsworthy, a noticeable fact very much on the minds of people like myself, who actually DOSHOW-UP at government meetings and public policy forums in South Florida.
gigaom.com You Can’t Play a New Media Game By Old Media Rules By Mathew Ingram Feb. 24, 2011, 9:02am PT
If there’s one aspect of the media business that has been disrupted more completely than any other, it’s the whole idea of “breaking news.” Just as television devalued the old front-page newspaper scoop, the web has turned breaking news into something that lasts a matter of minutes — or even seconds — rather than hours. If your business is to break news, your job is becoming harder and harder every day...
South Florida blogging scene in 2011; Observations re NY Times' article on growing cleavage between using blogs and Twitter to disseminate original content: "Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter"; On comparing the blog portals at the Miami Herald to the ones used by savvy Swedish news media that makes young women like Blondinbella, Tess Montgomery and Josefina Boston influential voices on so many issues; The whole blogging scene in Sweden is not just different from the U.S. -it's better. Meanwhile, here, MSM and "Usual Suspects' try to dominate the conversation
* Updated in January of 2016 I'm still laughing and bemused after reading this New York Times article, below, with my emphasis in red. This fascinating-yet-revealing quote is what really hit me:“It’s different from blogging because it’s easier to use,” she said.“With blogging you have to write, and this is just images. Some people write some phrases or some quotes, but that’s it.” Yes, putting those pesky words together in sentences and paragraphs sure is hard work! These kids are all thumbs. New York Times Blogs Wane as the Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter By Jim Wilson/The New York Times Published: February 20, 2011
SAN FRANCISCO — Like any aspiring filmmaker, Michael McDonald, a high school senior, used a blog to show off his videos. But discouraged by how few people bothered to visit, he instead started posting his clips on Facebook, where his friends were sure to see and comment on his editing skills. “I don’t use my blog anymore,” said Mr. McDonald, who lives in San Francisco. “All the people I’m trying to reach are on Facebook.”
Read the rest of the article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/technology/internet/21blog.html Meanwhile, in Europe, media companies that create a stable of popular and blogs stressing text and visuals, esp. those written by popular teens and twenty/thirty-somethings about fashion, design and pop culture, are making money. Why? Because they offer something that readers always want: interesting unique content.
The hugely-popular blog, The Blond Salad, http://www.theblondesalad.com/created by a very savvy and resourceful Italian twenty-something named Chiara Ferragni@ChiaraFerragni today had this exclusive: Burberry fashionshow in real time on Theblondesalad! Yes, timeliness and genuine relevancy for her readers, just two of the things that concerned residents like me perpetually complain that we have far too little of in South Florida for local politics and government, in part because in the year 2011, we also STILL lack an All-News local cable channel that can fill that gap. To match the All-News radio station that South Florida also still lacks.
Above, the colorful header used by model Tess Montgomery for her popular blog, TessM.se.
*2016 Update to below: In 2013 Tess was one of the featured bloggers on the very popular Stureplan.se platform at http://stureplan.se/bloggar/tess but in 2016 Tess is now blogging at http://tessm.metromode.se/ Spotlife.se with two London-based blogs, Josefina Boston'sAbsolute Boston, http://absolutboston.se/ and Tess Montgomery's, http://tessm.se/, both of which I have mentioned here very positively in this space previously, have multi-national advertisers, and that's even more the case at Isabella Löwengrip'sBlondinbella blog -also at Spotlife-who has become a well-known celebrity/author throughout Scandinavia and Europe. She's also not onlya frequent presence on national TV in Sweden, but is more influential than most veteran reporters and correspondents at well-known European newspapers, magazines and wire services covering fashion or pop culture. And everyone knows it, too. In Sweden, there's even a nationally-televised awards show for blogs on Channel 4, for the best blogs in about a dozen different subject and age categories, and it's promoted on both TV and in print, even to the point where they have TV ads featuring the various candidates in the weeks leading up to the telecast.I've even placed those some of promos here on the blog in the past to give you an idea of how differently blogs are viewed. Here's the video they produced for the Blog Awards2010 show in the category of Best Newcomer -Årets nykomling
http://www.tv4play.se/noje_och_humor/blog_awards?videoId=1.1773279 See some more recent clips at: https://www.tv4play.se/program/blog-awards Let me tell you something -there is no station promo for local Miami TV newscasts or Dolphinsor Hurricanes shows that isas well-produced as that one. Yes, genuine effort and vision still counts for something with readers and viewers. And the numbers show it. Here's the list and video of the 2010 winners: http://www.tv4.se/1.1831566/2010/09/27/vi_vann_blog_awards_2010 Meanwhile, the Miami Herald's blog network such as it is, is featured in the bottom-third of the website's first page, and has no identifiable icon or graphic next to it, just boring black text saying South Florida Blogs. Above, a screenshot I took Monday night of the location on the Miami Herald's website where their blogs and collection of South Flordia blogs are located, with, as you can see, no icon to attract your attention or differentiate them -just text in black. Boring! I'll leave to another time the question of why a media company like McClatchy that prints both English and Spanish language newspapers in Miami insists on placing Spanish language blogs on an English language website, and even worse, confuses people by having a Spanish language blog with an icon being the first one that people actually see on the English language website. And it's also the only one. Why are there blogs listed in the South Florida blogs section that are actually written by Herald staffers, and why aren't they listed in the Herald's own section? That's real genius! And nervy!
Lots of online Heraldreaders no doubt see that and say, "Why even bother?" And when you get there, you aren't exactly wowed visually by what you see! http://yourblogs.miamiherald.com/ Compare that frumpy-dumpy scene of the Herald blog page to not only Spotlife'scolorful blog home, http://spotlife.se/ but also the very popular Stureplan blogs, which are very much about Stockholm's exciting nightlife and entertainment scene which puts Miami/South Beach's to shame for genuine fun for non-millionaires, http://stureplan.se/ Could there be more of a contrast between the integration of color and design? And there are other differences, too. For reasons that were never explained to me, my own blog -yes, this one- was listed on the Herald's blog page when it first launched, but since I was never asked about it or received any info from the Herald about their plans prior to its launch, I only found out about it a fewweeksafter it started, thru an email from a friend who'd seen my blog on it and was puzzled why it was there without my ever having mentioned it to her. She wanted to know who I got there to put in a good word for me. Nobody -it was a complete surprise to me, too. That's NOT exactly a strategy to win well-informed hearts and minds -or readers and eyeballs.
And now that theHerald's link for their hodgepodge collection of blogs has migrated from near the top of the website to some dubious real estate with no promotion, graphics or icon, it's not at all clear that readers even realize it's STILLthere. I don't even think about it anymore, even though I'm on it.
Since this article is about a downward trend among some sub-set of bloggers, let's call them the never-reads, let me leave you with a more encouraging stone-cold fact about one who gives people facts and context they are looking for.
Isabella Löwengrip at Blondinbella has more people following her on Facebook than the Miami Heraldand South Florida Sun-Sentinel and ALL their reporters, columnists or subject blogs combined. She's... actually recognized in Stockholm at the airport when she flies home intoArlanda.
Interesting and unique content-it's why I read the blogs I've mentioned here and why so many other people do, too. Just saying...
Facebook and Twitter Are Changing the Middle East 2/18/2011 9:42:59 AM In an interview with WSJ'sAlan Murray, social media expert Clay Shirky discusses the effect of Facebook, Twitter and other social media in the recent uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and what it could mean for the Middle East at large.
When Clay Shirky speaks, very smart people with resources and connections listen -and so should you! He believes that Libya is the next domino to fall... ker-plunk! Pull-quote from the Shirky interview: "Governments are NOT afraid of informed individuals, they're afraid of informed synchronous groups." Hmm-m... that's Joy Cooper's biggest fear at Hallandale Beach City Hall. http://www.shirky.com/
http://www.shirky.com/weblog/
New York Times video: Tunisia, After the Revolution
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeTY4zl02-4
Libya teetering on the brink of great change... I've been listening intently this morning to the 6 a.m. BBC World ServiceWorld Today broadcast and have heard a fascinating interview with a Libyan-born expert in the U.S. who actually knows Colonel Qadafi and his son, Sayf.
Following a BBC correspondent's report from Tripoli, scene of so much violence this weekend, and even now, the scene of sustained gunfire, the expert in the U.S. being interviewed was quite negative about the speech Qadhafi'sson made today on Libyan TV, and what he characterized as the very strange behavior he exhibited.
He said that Libyan people would not respond well to the behavior or words, esp, his wild gesticulations during the speech as well as the very threatening manner, which made it seem like it had not been rehearsed. Almost like the first time he saw it was when he was reading it. Hmm-m...
See it for yourself. BBC video of excerpts of Sayf al-Islam Qadafispeech: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12520550
The situation is moving very, very rapidly... How will Libya transition into next phase of development?
Another expert said that it's his sense of things that with the eastern part of the country basically opting out of central control, Qadafi will be out of Libya within the next 24-36 hours because the army and police are starting to realize that they have no futureif he is around.
He no longer is able to control things and "the genie is out and can't be put back into the lamp."
BBC's Middle east Protests web page: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12480844
BBC-TV video segments on http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12513941
Listen LIVE to BBC Radio's World Service here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/audioconsole/?stream=live Facts on Libya at the CIA Factbook: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ly.html The Channel 4 News Snowmail that I received by email on Sunday afternoon, written by Krishnan Guru-Murthy, said as follows on Libya:
LIBYA
The Libya uprising is showing its differences and difficulties. While Tunisia, Egypt and Bahrain have been playing out on television cameras, amateur video, mobile phones and Twitter the Libyan protests are much harder to follow. International journalists have not managed to get in the way they did with the others. Access to the internet is restricted, and websites such as YouTube which can upload video, and social networks seem to be disrupted. However the phones still work so we have been gathering testimony the old fashioned pre-internet way. Amid reports of hundreds of people now killed in the protests in and around Benghazi there is clearly huge determination by the demonstrators. We spoke to one man there who told us "A lot of people are dying in the streets. There are a lot of cars with troops from outside Libya, I think they are Nigerian, from African countries. They have guns and they shoot anyone they find on the streets...From the eastern part of Libya, the protesters have received some heavy artillery, they haven’t used it yet – they're telling us they are going to now. Nobody knows the number (of dead) because there are many hospitals – they go to four or five different hospitals. Most of them are being shot by snipers, from far away in the head or the chest by Africans. Most of them don’t speak good Arabic, they speak French." Obviously there is no way for us to check these claims on the snipers but they give you a good idea of what the talk is going around the protesters at least. Heavy gunfire could be heard in the background and the man had to break off to shout at friends to get inside.
And it is clear Tripoli is far from calm too. We spoke to a woman there who told us "I live in the east side of Tripoli but I cannot go out. My husband went out this morning, he said the streets were empty, people were scared. So I said, ok let my son go to the store but my son – he didn’t come back and I hear from people – I call them and they say why did you send him? People have gone to the court – I hope he didn’t go there because he’s young and very nervous. For two days I kept him in the house but I hope he didn’t go there. Oh my goodness, there’s something happening now – they are shooting I’m sorry I have to go.". So we are gathering what we can, and will have the latest. We will also be discussing what the West can and should do about Libya. The US ambassador Louis Susman was pretty unsubtle in a diplomatic way this morning with Andrew Marr - it was clear he thinks Britain has been wrong to deal with Gadaffi in a way that makes him seem like a legitimate leader.
Here are the two news segments they aired last night on Libya.
Channel4 News February 20, 2011Libya unrest http://bcove.me/4tbtcgj2
Channel4 News February 20, 2011Libya discussion http://bcove.me/idmo6ot5
BCPS to Host Broward Legislative Delegation Public Hearing
