WOMAN MEDIA EXPLORER & ADVENTURER

Barbara Walters, the best (and most famous) television news interviewer, who broke through the concrete wall that did not allow women in TV news (except sexy weather "girls"), who has been on TV continously since 1961, announced her retirement by HER choice, in 2014.....She has been an indelible part of the American cultural experience for 52 years, since I was a boy. Barbara could get anyone to talk openly and truthfully on camera, even cry, because they trusted her. (Documentary filmmakers, journalists, and writers take note!) She interviewed EVERY U.S. President, major world leader, and superstar in entertainment and the arts....Her retirement is a major emotional and professional loss, as she is irreplaceable.

Barbara Walters, age 83, looks 63, sharp as 23.

Fidel Castro personally drove Barbara around Havana in his Jeep.

ASPIRIN WON'T FIX OUR HEADACHE

Three young women who were kidnapped in their teens, then imprisoned inside a house and raped for 10 years by three brothers (then in their 20's), were freed.

Many people want to castrate them.  But castration might be a big relief. 

Besides understandably reacting Biblically with hatred and vengeance, society must painfully delve into its own deepest twisted secret pits of hell....These 3 men had parents. They went to school. They worked. They had friends. They had neighbors..... 

What failed in our system? Unless we have the courage to confront that, and change, such traumatic events will repeat over and over. As they do now.

MRS. THATCHER

On one hand, we have so few leaders who have strong convictions, who look stunning and unforgettable, who are women in power.... On the other hand, she did so many things that hurt her country, her citizens, Argentina, and ultimately, indirectly, America....       It is not nice to speak ill of those recently deceased, because     their loved ones and many strangers grieve for them, and     because we know we will soon be next. Yet some leaders, consciously, whether misguided or not, made wrong decisions,

ABUSE

From New York Times

Payment for Afghan Debt: Daughter, Age 6

If a man at a refugee camp who borrowed $2,500 for medical care for his family cannot repay his debt, his daughter will have to marry the lender's 17-year-old son.

Comment

Immediate response: Pay the father's debt. Long-term solution: Birth control, sexual and moral education..... The physical, sexual, and psychological abuse of children, girls, wives, women, and non-married lovers has been going on in every tribe, every culture, every country, every religion, for as long as human history. Because of improved media and the internet, we now know about some of it.....Our response must be immediate, unyielding, ethical, practical, effective, and long-term. This can only be done, for more than a handful of abuse cases, at a national and global level. Yet the moral and political corruption at that level is endemic.... "Think Tanks" abound in the civilized world, yet nothing seems to change.  Are there any realistic solutions?

PRO-LIFE IN THE REAL SENSE

200,000+ peaceful Taiwanese, Hakka, Aborigine, and Han protestors in the Capital city, protesting against the building of yet another nuclear power plant on the pristine Taiwan coast, on a major earthquake fault, subject to tsunamis, yearly typhoons, greed, corruption, shoddy workmanship, and guaranteed human error....near Taipei, the largest city.

Unlike China, no army or police beat them ,or fired tear gas and bullets into the crowd.

Young and old, families, students, farmers, workers, fishermen, artists, sat down in front of the President Building, listening to fiery speeches, passionate songs, pleas from the heart, and terrifying scientific facts.

Controlled Western news media covered the story minimally, with headlines reducing the nearly 1/4-Million protestors to only "Tens of Thousands."

A GOOD WOMAN

February 3, 2013

Sotomayor, a Star on the Book-Tour Circuit, Sees a New Niche for a Justice

By JODI KANTOR

CHICAGO — At her Wednesday night book talk here, Justice Sonia Sotomayor glided through her audience of 700, dispensing homespun wisdom through a cordless microphone, interrupted by impromptu applause.

When the moderator read a question from Tabbie Major, age 7, about which books Justice Sotomayor loved as a child, she found the girl, locked her in an embrace, held on while reminiscing about Nancy Drew mysteries and then called out for a photographer to capture the moment. No need: a good portion of the crowd was already snapping pictures.

Welcome to another night in the life of Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court justice, current queen of the best-seller list and suddenly the nation’s most high-profile Hispanic figure.

OBAMA

Although Obama will not / cannot follow the powerful humanistic passion of his own words and beliefs, at least he SAID them...for the first time in American Presidential Inauguration history!  Obama's speech may serve as the final brilliant burst of American ideals, as it grows dimmer and possibly flickers out…..

NEW YORK TIMES - January 21, 2013 - by Peter Baker

OBAMA OFFERS LIBERAL VISION: “WE MUST ACT”
He became the first president ever to mention the word “gay” in an Inaugural Address as he equated the drive for same-sex marriage to the quests for racial and gender equality.

VICTORY OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT

Human beings worldwide desperately want to put a face to the brutalized Indian girl who was raped and killed. That is why the Facebook photo (real or not) went viral....because we all want to mourn a real person we can see and try to know....Any female photo can be the girl, because all women are equally vulnerable, in India and every country. Male lust is not the cause, abhorrent international cultural male barbarism is. It not only brutalizes women, it brutalizes children, the elderly, gays and lesbians, and those of other races, castes, religions, political views, and economic levels. Male barbarism is not animal instinct, it is human insanity.

from NY Times,  1/7/13, by Sohaila Abdulali 

I Was Wounded; My Honor Wasn’t

THIRTY-TWO years ago, when I was 17 and living in Bombay, I was gang raped and nearly killed. Three years later, outraged at the silence and misconceptions around rape, I wrote a fiery essay under my own name describing my experience  for an Indian women’s magazine. It created a stir in the women’s movement — and in my family — and then it quietly disappeared. 

Then, last week, I looked at my e-mail and there it was. As part of the outpouring of public rage after a young woman’s rape and death in Delhi, somebody posted the article online and it went viral. Since then, I have received a deluge of messages from people expressing their support.

It’s not exactly pleasant to be a symbol of rape. I’m not an expert, nor do I represent all victims of rape. All I can offer is that — unlike the young woman who died in December two weeks after being brutally gang raped, and so many others — my story didn’t end, and I can continue to tell it.

AUSTERE POWER

from "New York Times", 1/4/13 (by Simon Romero)

AFTER YEARS IN SOLITARY,         LIFE AS URUGUAY’S PRESIDENT

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay —  Some world leaders live in palaces. Then there is José Mujica, the former guerrilla who is Uruguay’s president. He lives in a run-down house on Montevideo’s outskirts with no servants at all. His security detail: two plainclothes officers parked on a dirt road.

GUNS: HOT ENTERTAINMENT REALITY FRANCHISE RETURNS

When I was young, idealistic, undiplomatic, and certain of right and wrong, I was outspoken. I said exactly what I believed, openly, in newspapers and magazines, on bulletin boards and telephone poles. I signed opinions, often including my address, and even, recklessly, my photo....

RELATIVITY

33 people saved.

6901 people killed,

in Iraq/Afghanistan, not including Iraqis and Afghans.

11,773 people killed by drunk drivers.