text:
L'image correspondait à la réalité de la situation, non seulement à Gaza, mais en Cisjordanie. Charles Enderlin (Le Figaro, 27/01/05)
Oui, l'existence d'une identité palestinienne séparée n'est là que pour des raisons tactiques. L'établissement d'un Etat palestinien est un nouvel expédient pour continuer le combat contre le sionisme et pour l'unité arabe. Zuheir Muhsin (chef des Opérations militaires de l'OLP et membre du Conseil exécutif de l'OLP, Trouw, le 3 mars 1977)
La lutte contre l'ennemi sioniste n'est pas une lutte au sujet des frontières d'Israël, mais au sujet de l'existence d'Israël. Nous n'accepterons jamais moins que le retour de toute notre terre et l'établissement d'un État indépendant. Bassam Abu Sharif (conseiller d'Arafat et porte-parole de l'OLP, Kuwait News Agency, le 31 mai 1986)
Un preneur d'images militant notoire filmé le jour-même en train de tourner des images de faux combats et de faux blessés, un petit mort qui change de position plusieurs fois après sa mort supposée, les membres d'un cortège funèbre qui le soir-même portent des photos-banderoles du petit mort, un correspondant qui décrit à distance des images comme s'il était sur place…
Voilà quelques uns des ingrédients – patiemment rassemblés, cinq ans plus tard et dans l'indifférence générale, par la journaliste américaine Nidra Poller – de l'une des plus grandes falsifications de l'histoire récente (après Jenine mais avant Katrina et… l'Irak tous les soirs !).
A savoir les images de la mort supposée du petit Mohamed Al Dura, qui, diffusées par le correspondan permanent en Israël de France 2 Charles Enderlin, ont fait le tour de la terre et lancé, avec le « succès » que l'on sait (650 victimes du côté palestinien, 170 du côté israélien), la deuxième insurrection palestinienne à l'automne 2000 …
Myth, Fact, and the al-Dura Affair
Nidra Poller
This past June, Wafa Samir al-Bis, an aspiring twenty-one-year-old shahida, or « martyr, » was apprehended by Israeli guards at the Erez checkpoint in Gaza and found to be carrying 20 pounds of explosives in her underwear. The young woman intended to make a last trip to the Soroka Medical Center in Be'er Sheva, where she had been receiving medical treatment for severe burns incurred in a domestic accident. Her goal this time was to blow herself up and kill as many young people as possible. Asked why she was aiming specifically at children, she replied that she wanted to retaliate for the death of Muhammad al-Dura.
Wafa Samir al-Bis is but one in a long line of shahids and would-be shahids inspired by the image of a twelve-year-old Palestinian boy whose death scene was broadcast worldwide at the very onset of the so-called al-Aqsa intifada that broke out in September 2000. Televised images of the boy, reportedly killed by Israeli soldiers, instantly ignited anti-Israel and anti-Jewish passions all over the world, provoking a wave of violence from the lynching of two Israeli reservists in Ramallah to synagogue burnings in France. In the ensuing years, the story of Muhammad al-Dura has attained near-mythic stature in the Arab and Muslim world. In the West, though its essence is largely forgotten, it has fired the political imagination of many who accept it as emblematic proof of Israeli culpability for the outbreak of the armed conflict and even for Palestinian « martyrdom operations » against Israel's civilian population.
The killing of Muhammad al-Dura is not the only long-lived accusation against Israel in the last five years. Another tale of atrocity, perhaps even better known, is the Jenin « massacre. » In the spring of 2002, the Israeli army moved into that West Bank city to wipe out a nest of terrorists responsible for a particularly intense sequence of murder and mayhem. Immediately, Palestinian sources claimed a figure of 5,000 dead (later reduced to a more modest 500) and an entire « refugee camp » bulldozed to rubble. By the time the truth emerged Palestinians themselves finally confirmed a total of 56 dead, most of them in armed combat, and aerial views demonstrated the pinpoint nature of the Israeli operation, the damage had been done. Still today the Jenin « massacre » endures, out of reach of rational refutation.
But at least there is reliable information on what really happened in Jenin. That is not the case with the death scene of Muhammad al-Dura.
The background can be quickly summarized. In the summer of 2000, even before Yasir Arafat brought down the final curtain on the Oslo « peace process » by rejecting an American-brokered deal at Camp David, reports were circulating of a Palestinian military buildup. The first act of war was the murder of an Israeli soldier by his Palestinian partner on a joint patrol. But this was dismissed as a mere fluke. Instead, the spark that ignited the intifada was alleged to be Ariel Sharon's September 28 visit to the Temple Mount, Judaism's most sacred site and also the home of a number of Muslim shrines, including the al-Aqsa mosque.
The next day, September 29, the eve of Rosh Hashanah, riots broke out as Palestinians exiting from Friday prayers in the mosque overran a police post and hurled paving stones, conveniently stockpiled nearby, onto the heads of Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall below. On September 30, Marwan Barghouti, the West Bank leader of Arafat's Fatah organization, asserted that he could not and would not restrain further expressions of Palestinian protest.
It was later on that same day that a cameraman for France-2, a channel of the state-owned French television network, captured the death of a twelve-year-old Palestinian boy, allegedly shot in front of his helpless father by Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip. A news report, dramatically narrated by France-2's Jerusalem correspondent, was instantly aired and was offered free of charge to the world's media.
The effect was immediate, electrifying, and global. Overnight, Muhammad al-Dura became the poster child of the incipient Palestinian « struggle » against Israeli « occupation » and a potent symbol of the genocidal intentions of Israel's government. A doctored photomontage was soon produced for Arab-Muslim viewers, featuring an imported image of an Israeli soldier apparently shooting the boy at close range.
That the death of Muhammad al-Dura was the real emotional pretext for the ensuing avalanche of Palestinian violence and a far more potent trigger than Sharon's « provocative » visit to the Temple Mount is attested by the immediate and widespread dissemination of his story and of the pietà-like image of his body lying at his father's feet. Streets, squares, and schools have since been named for the young Islamic shahid. His death scene has been replicated on murals, posters, and postage stamps, even making an iconic appearance in the video of Daniel Pearl's beheading. His story, perhaps the single most powerful force behind the Palestinian cult of child sacrifice over the last years, has been dramatized in spots on Palestinian television urging others to follow in his path, retold in a recruitment video for al Qaeda, and immortalized in epic verse by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish.
But is it true? Although serious doubts were immediately raised about the veracity of the France-2 news report, they were swept aside by the emotions it provoked and by the flare of violence in the last months of 2000. France-2 indignantly turned down all requests to investigate or even to help others investigate by releasing outtakes. To this day, many people believe that even to raise a doubt about the authenticity of the report is tantamount to denying the reality of the 9/11 attacks on New York City.
But let us begin at the beginning, with France-2's prize-winning scoop, aired just hours after the incident.
Here is what viewers saw and heard: a few seconds of rioting somewhere on the West Bank, followed by a vague scene of armed men at Netzarim junction, a crossroads in the Gaza Strip. A jeep comes down the road. A single shot rings out, and a man in uniform at the open door of the jeep falls or jumps to the ground, clutching his right leg. An ambulance pulls up, stops on the far side of the road. The man is dragged across the ground, placed on a stretcher with his weight resting on his wounded right leg, and loaded into the ambulance. Charles Enderlin, France-2's correspondent, announces in an eyewitness-style voiceover:
Three PM at Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip. A dramatic turn of events. The Palestinians shot live ammunition, the Israelis replied. Ambulance drivers, bystanders, journalists are caught in the crossfire.
Now the camera focuses on a man and a boy crouched behind a concrete barrel or culvert, their faces contorted in fear. Enderlin: « Here Jamal al-Dura and his son are targets of gunfire from Israeli positions. » The camera pans to a nearby Israeli outpost. The father waves with his right hand in the direction of the Israeli position. The father is hunched behind the barrel, the boy nestled against his back. Enderlin:
Muhammad is twelve years old. His father tries to protect him. He waves. But another round of fire bursts out. Muhammad is dead, and his father grievously wounded.
During the 55-second sequence, two shots have hit a concrete-block wall that stands like a backdrop for the scene, landing far afield of the father and son. Other bullet holes, similarly off-target, can be seen in the wall as well. The father shields the boy; the father's arm is clearly visible, perpendicular to the ground. Guttural cries are heard, adding to the feeling of panic. The last round of gunfire kicks up a cloud of dust, obscuring the man and boy. When the dust clears, the boy is stretched out at his father's feet; the father bobs his head as if groggy.
And that was it. As Enderlin would later explain, the reason France-2's scoop was offered free to the world was that the producers did not want to earn a profit from so tragic an incident. Only the terrible moments of the child's death throes, he added, had been edited out, being « too unbearable. » The film sequence itself, attributed at first to a « France-2 cameraman, » was subsequently identified as the work of the station's Palestinian stringer, Talal Abu Rahmeh. By then, the full authority and reputation of France-2 itself had been indelibly stamped on the footage.
Within days, an elaborate narrative was being disseminated to flesh out the elusive details of the 55-second video. On October 3, 2000, testifying under oath before the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, the cameraman Talal Abu Rahmeh alleged that Israeli soldiers had intentionally, in cold blood, murdered the boy and wounded the father. Abu Rahmeh's testimony was precise and vivid. There had been, he said, a five-minute exchange of fire between Palestinian policemen and Israeli soldiers. This was followed by fully 45 minutes of gunfire coming exclusively from the Israeli position and aimed directly at the man and the boy crouching desperately behind a concrete barrel. According to the cameraman, he had captured on film a total of 27 minutes of this fusillade, risking his own life in the process. As an experienced war photographer, he could attest without hesitation that the Israeli outpost was the only position from which the boy and the man could be hit.
This amplified version of the incident, with slight but significant variations and a wealth of human-interest details, then took on a life of its own, being repeated and embellished in numerous background stories, special reports, and interviews about the tragic fate of the « simple boy from Gaza, who loved birds. » In one of these narratives, Jamal and Muhammad were said to have left the El Bureij refugee camp early on the morning of September 30 to visit a used-car market. Finding the market closed, they headed home in a communal taxi, arriving at Netzarim junction shortly before midday. The taxi was blocked by a raging gun battle, so Jamal decided to go the rest of the way on foot. In an interview on Israeli television, Jamal said that upon entering the crossing he found the firing so heavy that he took refuge behind an upended concrete culvert, where he and his son were pinned down for the 45 minutes of relentless gunfire aimed deliberately at them from the Israeli position. He waved to the soldiers, who could see he was an innocent civilian trapped there with a boy; they shot him in the hand. He tried to protect his son with his arm, but they shot him in the arm and shoulder. He tried to protect him with his leg, but they shot him in the leg, smashing his pelvis. The tragic outcome was described for a BBC documentary by Talal Abu Rahmeh: Jamal tried to call for help on his cellphone, asking someone to get the soldiers to stop shooting, or to send an ambulance. The ambulance driver was shot dead. The soldiers kept on shooting until they killed Muhammad, who died either instantly from a fatal wound to the stomach or, in another version, bled to death for 15 to 20 minutes because no ambulance could get through to evacuate him.
In the following weeks, journalists like Suzanne Goldenberg in the (London) Guardian, Gilles Paris in Le Monde, and dozens of others would write about this incident as if they themselves had been at Netzarim junction on the fatal day.
The al-Dura story was so immediately and so deeply harmful to Israel that no matter what government officials might say or do, they only seemed to make matters worse. Enderlin has stated that, before airing the report, he called the IDF spokesman to inform him of the breaking news and to caution him against shirking Israeli responsibility. The soldiers in the fort, however, had reported nothing remotely resembling what Enderlin described, for the simple reason that they had seen nothing. And yet, the first official Israeli statement on the incident included an apology for the death of the boy and a promise to investigate. It took a few days before the IDF concluded that, given the shooting angle from the Israeli position, the man and boy could not have been hit by IDF gunfire. This was treated as adding insult to injury.
Other objections were dismissed with similar contempt. Early on, for example, it was pointed out that the 55-second video did not show any of the normal signs consistent with wounds from high-power bullets. There was no blood on the victims' clothes, on the wall, or on the ground. Their postures appeared wholly voluntary, with no sign of shock or trauma. As for Abu Rahmeh's claim of a 45-minute free-for-all, experts in ballistics concurred that automatic rifles fired uninterruptedly for that length of time would reduce their victims to shreds, and the concrete block wall behind them to rubble. Nor did such behavior accord with what one knew about the ethics, discipline, and skill of IDF soldiers.
Early doubters of the received version included the French documentary filmmaker Pierre Rehov, who sued France-2 for spreading false information; the case was thrown out of French court. Nahum Shahaf, an Israeli physicist who led the first official IDF investigation, has been studying the incident ever since, accumulating one of the most exhaustive film libraries on the subject. Metula News Agency (MENA), an Israel-based, French-language service, likewise undertook a lengthy and still ongoing investigation. Esther Schapira, a German television producer who went to Israel convinced of IDF guilt, came away with a film exposing the contradictions and discrepancies of the France-2 news report; she was convinced that the boy had been killed by Palestinians. In a June 2003 article in the Atlantic, the American journalist James Fallows concluded that Muhammad al-Dura « was not shot by the Israeli soldiers who were known to be involved in the day's fighting, » but also that we would never know who killed him.
Was Muhammad al-Dura shot by Israelis? By Palestinians? Perhaps not shot at all? Most attempts to develop a cogent counter-scenario have fallen victim to the tangle of conflicting details and the sheer accumulation of minutiae. Though it is almost impossible to say anything meaningful about the 55-second filmed news report to someone who knows little or nothing about the elaborate surrounding narrative, it is extremely difficult to get beyond the emotions elicited by the visual image to a critical examination of that narrative. Even « corrective » articles regularly commit factual errors about everything from the chronology of the intifada to the layout of Netzarim junction, ignore anomalies in the eyewitness accounts, or are oblivious to the absence of corroborating evidence. Finally, and fundamentally, every effort to reproduce the event dispassionately butts up against quite understandable resistance from those who cling to the packaged version.
But we do have extensive evidence of what was occurring at Netzarim junction on September 30, 2000. More than a dozen cameramen were at the junction filming the action that day. They were all Palestinian, but they were working for Reuters, AP, NHK, France-2, and other prestigious networks. Aside from Abu Rahmeh's footage, brief excerpts from what they shot have appeared in news broadcasts. But hours of outtakes also exist, and their eloquence is astounding. I cannot claim they show everything that happened, but enough raw footage exists to substantiate what follows.
Netzarim junction is a simple intersection where one road leads (or, following Israel's disengagement, will have led) to the Jewish settlement of Netzarim and another to the Palestinian village of El Bureij. A rudimentary Israeli outpost stands on the road to the settlement a small fortress of blind slabs with a few tiny gunslits surmounted by a fragile lookout cage. Otherwise, Palestinian police and civilians circulated freely throughout the area on the day in question. They occupied a pair of three-story apartment buildings, known as « The Twins, » that overlooked the outpost and that housed the families of Palestinian policemen assigned to joint patrols under the Oslo agreement. Palestinians also held another building, an abandoned factory, that towered over the Israeli position. In addition, they operated from a mound of sandy earth directly facing the al-Duras and known because of its shape as « the pita, » and, down the road a bit toward El Bureij, from a cluster of what look like concrete bunkers.
On all the outtakes I saw, only one exchange of gunfire takes place: a brief outburst from the bunkers and a responding series of shots, ostensibly from the Israeli position. As for the death scene, it was filmed in front of a concrete-block wall abutting a makeshift building, opposite the pita but situated at an angle that made the al-Duras' barrel inaccessible to gunfire from the Israeli outpost.
In one version of his story, Talal Abu Rahmeh went to Netzarim junction at seven in the morning on a hunch that the children would be out demonstrating « because it was a school day, » and he knew they demonstrated on school days. In another version, he ran over to the junction at 3 PM, after someone called his office to inform him that there were fierce battles going on. The outtakes show he was there from early morning. Apparently, a dozen of his colleagues had the same intuition; they too can be seen in the raw footage.
The Reuters, AP, and France-2 outtakes that I viewed show two totally different and easily identifiable types of activity at Netzarim junction: real, intifada-style attacks, and crudely falsified battle scenes. Both the real and the fake scenes are played out against a background of normal civilian activity at a busy crossroads. In the « reality » zone, excited children and angry young men hurl rocks and Molotov cocktails at the Israeli outpost while shababs (« youths ») standing on the roof of the Twins throw burning tires down onto the caged lookout; this goes on seemingly for hours, without provoking the slightest military reaction from Israeli soldiers.
At the same time, in the « theatrical » zone, Palestinian stringers sporting prestigious logos on their vests and cameras are seen filming battle scenes staged behind the abandoned factory, well out of range of Israeli gunfire. The « wounded » sail through the air like modern dancers and then suddenly collapse. Cameramen jockey with hysterical youths who pounce on the « casualties, » pushing and shoving, howling Allahu akhbar!, clumsily grabbing the « injured, » pushing away the rare ambulance attendant in a pale green polyester jacket in order to shove, twist, haul, and dump the « victims » into UN and Red Crescent ambulances that pull up on a second's notice and career back down the road again, sirens screaming. In one shot we recognize Talal Abu Rahmeh in his France-2 vest, filming a staged casualty scene.*
Split seconds of these ludicrous vignettes would later appear in newscasts and special reports; the husk, the raw footage that would reveal the fakery, had been removed, leaving the kernel rich in anti-Israel nutrients. Such staged scenes showed up, for example, in a dramatic CBS 60 Minutes special report on Netzarim crossing a place « now known, » intoned Bob Simon, echoing Palestinian sources, « as Martyr's Junction. »
The al-Dura death scene was filmed right in the middle of these falsified incidents. It can be localized and situated. In one section of Reuters footage we see the man and the boy crouched behind the upended culvert as a jeep drives slowly up the road, stops in firing range of the Israeli position that is clearly visible in the near distance, makes a U-turn, drives in the opposite direction, stops short of the barrel/culvert, and helps perform the clearly faked evacuation of a man wounded in the right leg, as also shown in the France-2 news report. In fact, two ambulances stand for a long moment no more than fifteen feet from the al-Duras. There is no evidence of armed combat in their vicinity. No sound of gunfire. Men run down the road, passing in front of the al-Duras. No one is hit.
Nobody who was present at the junction that day has ever corroborated Abu Rahmeh's testimony, though he claims that several children huddled around him for protection as he filmed, and voices of grown men were recorded by the microphone attached to his camera. None of the other cameramen working at the junction that day filmed the al-Duras during their alleged ordeal under Israeli fire (though the pair can be discerned on one occasion, inadvertently captured in the background in an uneventful stretch of Reuters outtakes).
I also viewed a copy of the satellite feed transmitted by Abu Rahmeh late in the afternoon of September 30. In addition to the 55 seconds aired that evening, it includes a final image of the boy who would be described afterward as « killed instantly by a shot to the stomach »: in it he is seen shifting position, propping himself up on his elbow, shading his eyes with his hand, rolling over on his stomach, covering his eyes.
In addition, I saw outtakes from an interview in which Abu Rahmeh tells how he discovered the boy's identity. Leaving the junction at around 4:30 PM, he bumped into a colleague and showed him the images he had just filmed. The other journalist, by chance a relative of Jamal al-Dura, supplied the names of the victims. Mourners in the massive funeral procession, allegedly held before sundown that very day, carried Muhammad al-Dura posters. Where and when were they printed?
It is no easy task to challenge the integrity of a powerful broadcaster in France, where the state-owned media operate with limited independence and no real competition. Charles Enderlin's prestige and the dominant position of France Télévisions were enough to discredit the most diligent early analysts. To this day, Enderlin (a French Jew who became an Israeli citizen some 20 years ago and has served in the Israeli army) refuses to reply to questions about the accuracy of the news report and its enveloping narrative; responding with ad-hominem counterattacks, he threatens to sue his detractors for libel.
More than normal journalistic pride may be involved here. Enderlin's news report was consistent with his stated overall view of the Middle East conflict. In his 2003 book, Shattered Dreams, he places the blame for Oslo's failure squarely on Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and U.S. President Bill Clinton, effectively absolving the Palestinians of responsibility. The same interpretation is, of course, shared by virtually the entire French intellectual and political elite, and endorsed by influential print media like Le Monde, Le Monde Diplomatique, Le Nouvel Observateur, and Télérama.
Still, in 2004, as the intifada slowed and its mythology faded, the al-Dura story, too, began to break down. Charles Enderlin and the French media gradually backed away from their initial assertion as to the origin of the fatal bullets, leaving the incident in a limbo where the Palestinians could continue to accuse Israel of murdering the boy in cold blood while the French let it be understood that he was killed in a crossfire. Then, at the end of October 2004, something happened that would have broken the logjam if the French media were truly free, which they are not.
Luc Rosenzweig, a retired Le Monde journalist who had doubted the veracity of the al-Dura news report from the first, completed an investigative article in which he formally accused France-2 of an « almost perfect media crime. » His essay was scheduled to appear in the mainstream newsweekly l'Express on the fourth anniversary of the intifada. But the magazine's editorial director, Denis Jeambar, decided to delay publication in order to double-check Rosenzweig's facts.
Given his position, Jeambar was able to arrange a meeting with France-2's news director. He was accompanied there by Rosenzweig and Daniel Leconte, a prize-winning TV producer. Asking simple questions about Abu Rahmeh's satellite feed, the trio got shocking answers. They requested the 27 minutes of raw footage showing the al-Duras pinned down by Israeli gunfire; they were shown a half-hour of fake battle scenes similar to those described above. They asked why there were no pictures of Israeli soldiers aiming at the al-Duras; they were told that on this point the cameraman had retracted his testimony, given « under pressure » to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights. They asked to speak to the cameraman, then said to be undergoing medical treatment in Paris; they were told he did not speak French and that his English was too rudimentary (patently untrue). They asked to see the scene of the child's death throes, professedly edited out by Charles Enderlin because it was « too unbearable »; they were told that no such images existed. They in turn produced pictures of a dead child, identified as Muhammad al-Dura, who had been admitted to Gaza's Schifa hospital at noon or 1 PM on September 30, several hours before the alleged incident occurred; his face did not match that of the boy in the shooting scene, his wounds did not match the eyewitness descriptions. They were told that the channel's forensic specialists would look into the matter.
At this point, Jeambar, perhaps thinking that the whole affair had become too hot to handle, reneged on his commitment to publish Rosenzweig's exposé. Seizing the initiative, Metula News Agency immediately leaked a report of the meeting and, at a press conference in Paris, reiterated its case for the al-Dura death scene as an outright falsification. Thereupon France-2, threatening legal action against anyone daring to question the integrity of its journalists, launched a spin operation: it sent Abu Rahmeh to Gaza to film Jamal al-Dura's scars and showed the resulting footage at a press conference from which all known skeptics were excluded. Articles appeared defending Charles Enderlin and denouncing Metula News Agency; most of them were incongruously illustrated with an image from the original news report clearly showing Jamal's bare arm perfectly intact a few short seconds before the round of gunfire that ended the scene.
But the bubble of tolerance protecting the French media had begun to stretch and tear. Three months after their October 2004 meeting with France-2, Denis Jeambar and Daniel Leconte came forward with their side of the story. The gist of their essay, published in Le Figaro after being rejected by Le Monde, confirmed the MENA release while chastising both Rosenzweig and MENA for jumping to the unwarranted conclusion that the death scene had been staged. Jeambar and Leconte also enjoined France-2 to make a full disclosure, withdraw its unjustified accusations, and recognize the incalculably damaging effects of its report in inciting violence and blackening Israel's name.
The very next day, Enderlin responded with an article in Le Figaro suggesting that his distinguished colleagues join him in a sort of gentleman's agreement to lay the affair to rest. His broadcast may have been hasty, he wrote, but it was justified on the grounds that the public had to know the truth, because so many children were being killed. He should have said, « were going to be killed, » because Muhammad al-Dura, as his father proudly proclaimed, was the first shahid, and Enderlin's broadcast itself was instrumental in much of what followed. But, more than four years later, Enderlin was still trying to defend his report as an accurate reflection of the situation on the ground.
Whatever his intentions, the result for Enderlin was disappointing. Indignantly defending their integrity, Jeambar and Leconte took him to task for having compromised his own. As Jeambar stiffly noted, journalists are supposed to report on what happens, not on what might have happened. Or, one could add, might not have happened.
So, is there now general agreement on the truth about the al-Dura affair?
Interviewed on a French-Jewish radio station in the thick of the controversy, Jeambar and Leconte described their sense of astonishment upon discovering the staged battle scenes. And yet, by the end of the interview, they were assuring themselves and their audience that the death of Muhammad al-Dura was not staged, that the father's injuries were authentic, that the Metula News Agency had exaggerated, and that the poor child must have been killed in a crossfire.
This notion of a death by crossfire is the deus ex machina of the al-Dura controversy. I have heard it a hundred times, and once used it myself. It is invoked in order to save reasonable people from even contemplating the possibility of a fabrication. But it is a figment of the imagination. The sole eyewitnesses the cameraman and the surviving victim, Jamal al-Dura have described 45 minutes of uninterrupted shooting from one direction only.
And what does the filmed news report show? The answer is staring us in the face, cinched by the collapse of France-2's four-year concealment of its lack of evidence. As even Charles Enderlin has tacitly admitted, the al-Dura report was not some brief excerpt from a longer stretch of filmed reality but a scene with no depth, no duration, no origin, and no continuation. The 45 minutes? Gone. Abu Rahmeh's 27 minutes? Gone, too. We are left with approximately a single minute of Jamal and Muhammad al-Dura filmed in continuous time.
In that minute, the two crouch behind an upended culvert and contort their faces in fear. Guttural screams are heard, but they do not come from the man or the boy; they come from men standing within range of the France-2 cameraman's microphone. Jamal bobs his head. Muhammad stretches out at his father's feet. Then, in the brief portion that was carefully edited out but that can be seen in the outtakes, the boy changes position several times, using voluntary muscles that only living people can activate.
During the 55-second sequence we see two bullets hitting the wall, which is already pockmarked with a number of other bullet holes nowhere near father and child. A cloud of dust obscures the last few frames. There is no sign or sound of a crossfire. There are no death throes.
The rest, as we say in French, is literature. There can be no further attempts to reconstruct the incident by adding to those 55 seconds since, as France-2 has now revealed, there is no additional footage.
But now look again at the Reuters outtakes. A jeep drives up a road, turns, goes down the other side, takes part in a battle scene. An ambulance pulls up, a « wounded » man is dragged across the road, placed on a stretcher, loaded into the ambulance, the ambulance drives away. Men run from position A to position B. Children toss Molotov cocktails at the IDF fortress. There is much laughter and cheering from the « audience, » clusters of cheerful young men watching the show. All this time, traffic trundles through the intersection, schoolchildren go by with their bookbags, a fashionably dressed woman talks on her cellphone and chats and jokes with cameramen who stand nonchalantly with their backs to the Israeli position. Things are moving, the energy level is high, the shababs are fearless. Palestinian policemen mingle in the crowd, occasionally shoot a few rounds into the air, join in the battle scenes, get « wounded » and come back for more. Children set fire to tires; you can almost smell the rubber burning. The France-2 cameraman, Abu Rahmeh, is there, too, clearly visible, in the heat of the action, filming ambulance evacuations of fake casualties in large patches of real time. Familiar, retrievable, believable.
Where then did the story, the enveloping narrative, come from? Where did all those prestigious journalists get the background information they developed with such evident sincerity in their reports? There is only one source: Talal Abu Rahmeh. The story told by Jamal, bandaged in a hospital room, dovetailed with Abu Rahmeh's story. Enderlin religiously confirmed it. Everyone else repeats it.
Charles Enderlin constantly reaffirms his confidence in the professional competence and honesty of Abu Rahmeh they have been working together for years and systematically reiterates the dramatic facts of the al-Dura incident just as he heard them from his trusted cameraman. Where else could the story have come from? Though Enderlin narrated the incident as if he were on the spot, he has made no secret of the fact that he was in Ramallah on September 30, covering Marwan Barghouti's press conference. His account of the dramatic phone calls he received from Abu Rahmeh is part of the fleshed-out narrative. According to Enderlin, the cameraman phoned to say that he was caught in a shooting zone and that his life was in danger. He asked the France-2 correspondent to look after his family if the worst should befall him. The two men called each other several more times, the photographer describing the scene of the man and the boy trapped, the father repeatedly wounded, his hand, his shoulder, his elbow, his hip. The child's horrible death. Somewhere around 5:30 PM, the cameraman transmitted the satellite feed that would be edited into the famous news report narrated by Charles Enderlin.
How long did it take Enderlin, a seasoned journalist, to realize that his cameraman was lying, and that there were no additional images, no 45 minutes and no 27 minutes, to confirm the scene Abu Rahmeh said he had filmed? How long did it take France-2 officials to realize they had made a mistake in trusting the word of Enderlin? As long as the burden of proof rested on France-2's challengers, it was relatively easy to quibble over details. Now that the event has been reduced to its 55 inconclusive seconds, one must ask a different question. What was the role of the government-owned French television network, which is to say the French government itself, in devising, implementing, and spreading this atrocious calumny, whose repercussions are with us to this day?
Nidra Poller, who lives in Paris, has written for National Review Online, Frontpage, the New York Sun, and other publications. Her essay, « Betrayed by Europe: An Expatriate's Lament, » appeared in the March 2004 Commentary.
* Students in a special course at the Israeli Military Academy, who had access to this raw footage, tagged and tracked the amateur actors as they went through their day, playing multiple roles. The injured and dead jump up, dust themselves off, play at offensive combat; casualties evacuated by ambulance are later seen loading a fellow actor into an ambulance or smiling with satisfaction as the ambulance door slams shut.
Voir aussi:
David Kupelian: World Net Daily Managing Editor (Article in al-Dura page: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=32137)
Amnon Lord, Israeli commentator, (Article in al-Dura page: http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp482.htm)
Gerard Huber, a psychoanalyst and permanent Paris correspondent of the Israel-based Metula News Agency (Link to his book)
Serge Farnel, French Journalist, (Website in al-Dura page: http://www.truthnow.org/)
Luc Rosenzweig
Alyssa Lappen, New York based writer, (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16432)
David Gelernter, LA Times columnist, (Article in al-Dura page: http://jewishworldreview.com/david/gelernter091205.php3)
Stephane Juffa , Metula News Agency editor in chief
Voir enfin les extraits video sur :
MÉDIAS Qui a tué le jeune Palestinien de Netzarim, le 30 septembre 2000 ?
Guet-apens dans la guerre des images
Par Denis JEAMBAR *et Daniel LECONTE **
Le Figaro
25 janvier 2005
Partis pour faire notre travail journalistique de façon honnête, nous voilà aujourd'hui accusés d'être les complices d'une manoeuvre malhonnête, voire conspirationniste, un comble. C'est dire l'état d'une certaine presse en France.
Résumons. Depuis plusieurs années, la Mena, une agence francophone de presse israélienne, et la rédaction de France 2 s'affrontent. A l'origine de cette bataille médiatique, la fusillade du carrefour de Netzarim, dans les Territoires, le 30 septembre 2000. Elle oppose des soldats israéliens à des soldats palestiniens. Entre les deux, des lanceurs de pierres. Et parmi eux, un enfant et son père, pris dans la fusillade. Charles Enderlin, le correspondant de France 2 en Israël, n'est pas sur place. Il récupère les images tournées par son cameraman palestinien, Talal Abou Rama. Il les monte. Et le soir, sur l'antenne de France 2, il les commente de la façon suivante : «Ici Djamal et son père. Ils sont la cible des tirs venus de la position israélienne. L'enfant fait des signes mais… une nouvelle rafale… l'enfant est mort et son père est
Faux, rien ne permet de dire que l'enfant a été tué par des soldats israéliens, affirme très vite la Mena. Et pendant trois ans, l'agence de presse accumule des indices troublants qui mettent en cause la version donnée par Charles Enderlin. Plutôt que les tirs israéliens, elle évoque des tirs palestiniens et demande des explications. En guise de réponse, France 2 se retranche derrière
des arguments juridiques et décide de ne plus bouger.
C'est dans ce contexte que nous sommes approchés, il y a six mois environ, par Luc Rozensweig, ancien du journal Le Monde. Nous savons les ravages causés par cette image, la haine qu'elle a entretenue et développée sur place, chez nous, dans les banlieues dites sensibles, et partout ailleurs dans le monde, où elle a été présentée sur la base du commentaire fourni par Charles Enderlin comme un exemple de la barbarie israélienne.
Après discussions, nous acceptons donc d'accompagner Luc Rozensweig dans son enquête pour tenter de savoir ce qui s'est vraiment passé ce jour-là au carrefour de Netzarim. Mais pour empêcher les manoeuvres médiatiques habituelles, nous demanderons à Luc Rozensweig de garder le secret jusqu'au bout. Nous entendons même nous réserver la possibilité de ne rien dire s'il n'y a rien à dire de plus que ce qu'on connaît déjà.
C'est ce que nous faisons. Luc Rozensweig enquête et nous présente des faits totalement contradictoires avec la version officielle donnée par Charles Enderlin et Talal Abou Rama. Rozensweig va même plus loin. Il reprend les thèses de la Mena et suggère que les images de l'enfant et de son père sous le feu des balles pourraient être le résultat d'une mise en scène organisée par les Palestiniens.
A ce stade de l'enquête, Arlette Chabot, directrice del'information de France 2, accepte de nous rencontrer. Et de collaborer sincèrement et courageusement à la recherche de la vérité. Nous lui présentons les éléments en notre possession. Nous lui confions nos doutes sérieux sur la version fournie par Enderlin et Talal Abou Rama. Mais dans le même temps, nous ajoutons que nous sommes prêts à écarter les accusations de Rozensweig sur la mise en scène de la mort de l'enfant si le visionnage de l'ensemble des rushes tournés par Talal Abou Rama confirme ce que Charles Enderlin a déclaré à deux reprises au moins, dont à Télérama : «J'ai coupé l'agonie de l'enfant. C'était insupportable… Cela n'aurait rien apporté de plus.»
Arlette Chabot accepte sans réticence. Sauf que le visionnage des rushes ne nous apprend rien de plus sur «l'agonie de l'enfant». Ou plutôt, si ! Cette fameuse «agonie», qu'Enderlin affirme avoir coupée au montage, n'existe pas.
En revanche, le visionnage permet de relever, avec l'approbation de nos confrères de France 2 présents autour de la table que, dans les minutes qui précèdent la fusillade, les Palestiniens semblent avoir organisé une mise en scène. Ils «jouent» à la guerre avec les Israéliens et simulent, dans la plupart des cas, des blessures imaginaires. Le visionnage intégral des rushes démontre aussi qu'au moment où Charles Enderlin donne le gamin pour mort, tué par les Israéliens, c'est-à-dire le soir même sur le journal de France 2, rien ne lui permet d'affirmer qu'il est vraiment mort et encore moins qu'il a été tué par des soldats israéliens. Tout, bien au contraire, à commencer par l'emplacement des uns et des autres sur le terrain, incriminerait plutôt une ou des balles palestiniennes.
Face à cette dernière remarque, nos confrères de France 2 reconnaissent que rien effectivement ne permet de dire que l'enfant a été touché par des tirs israéliens. Leurs experts ont même démontré, nous assurent-ils, que l'enfant a été touché par des éclats ( ?) ou par des balles qui auraient ricoché sur la chaussée, des balles qui en tout état de cause ne visaient ni l'enfant ni son père. «De toute façon, conclut l'un d'entre eux, on ne pourra jamais savoir d'où venaient les tirs.»
Autrement dit, en attribuant la mort de l'enfant à des tirs israéliens le soir même sur France 2, Charles Enderlin a extrapolé à partir des rushes et de la version des événements fournie par son cameraman. Pourquoi ? Pourquoi a-t-il privilégié cette interprétation ? Dans quel but ? Peu importe, le fait est là et suffit en soi à revisiter toute cette affaire de fond en comble pour trier le vrai du faux.
Alors que, de part et d'autre, nous nous sommes engagés dans ce travail, la Mena, informée sans que nous le sachions par Luc Rozensweig, rend public le lendemain, dans une longue dépêche, les détails de la rencontre entre France 2 et nous. Elle profite même des premières conclusions auxquelles nous sommes arrivés la veille avec France 2 pour pousser l'avantage et exposer la thèse de la mise en scène de la mort de l'enfant, thèse que, pour notre part, nous n'avons, faute de preuves sérieuses, jamais reprise à notre compte.
Sollicités par la presse, nous choisissons de nous taire. Nous savons en effet que dans le tintamarre orchestré par la Mena, nous ne pouvons plus être entendus. France 2, entre-temps, d'ailleurs, nous a présenté des éléments sérieux qui réfutent la thèse de la mise en scène de la mort de l'enfant. Nous décidons alors d'interrompre notre enquête comme le fait la presse sur bien des
sujets tous les jours.
Aujourd'hui que le tintamarre est un peu retombé, il redevient possible de dire les choses et qui sait, peut-être, d'être enfin entendus. A ceux qui, comme la Mena, ont voulu nous instrumentaliser pour étayer la thèse de la mise en scène de la mort de l'enfant par des Palestiniens, nous disons qu'ils nous trompent et qu'ils trompent leurs lecteurs. Non seulement nous ne partageons pas ce point de vue, mais nous affirmons qu'en l'état actuel de notre connaissance du dossier, rien ne permet de l'affirmer, bien au contraire.
A certains journalistes «médias» qui ont tenté d'amalgamer notre point de vue à celui de la Mena pour mieux le discréditer, nous voulons dire qu'ils participent une fois de plus à rendre ce dossier opaque. Il n'en avait pas besoin. En tout cas, compte tenu de la valeur symbolique de ces images et de leurs effets ravageurs, c'est un devoir professionnel pour tous, nous semble-t-il, d'éviterles approximations et de dire exactement ce que l'on sait. Ni plus ni moins.
* journaliste (L'EXPRESS);** journaliste, producteur et réalisateur (ARTE).
Si vous n'avez pas pu écouter l'interview de Denis Jeambar et Daniel Leconte sur RCJ,
alors cliquez sur ce lien:
Réponse d'Enderlin:
pour moi, l'image correspondait à la réalité de la situation non seulement à Gaza, mais aussi en Cisjordanie.
Denis Jeambar et Daniel
Leconte évoquent l'utilisation qui a été faite de l'image de la mort de l'enfant et posent ainsi un problème fondamental : lors de la réalisation de son reportage, un journaliste doit-il tenir compte de l'usage malhonnête qui pourrait en être fait ultérieurement par des groupes extrémistes?
Non à la censure à la source
Charles Enderlin
Le Figaro
le 27 janvier 2005
Je dois remercier Denis Jeambar et Daniel Leconte pour leur tribune publiée par Le Figaro (1). Evoquant la mort à Gaza du petit Mohammed al-Dura le 30 septembre 2000 et filmée par Talal Abou Rahmeh de France 2, ils admettent qu'il ne s'agit pas d'une mise en scène. Le directeur de L'Express et mon excellent confrère, journaliste de télévision, considèrent que la Metula News Agency (NDLR : citée sous l'abréviation «Mena» dans leur article) a voulu les «instrumentaliser». Ouf ! Pour en arriver là, il aura fallu que France 2 retourne dans le camp de réfugiés al-Boureij à Gaza chez le père, Jamal al-Dura, pour lui demander de montrer ses cicatrices devant la caméra. Il a répété sur la tombe de son fils qu'il était prêt à témoigner. Les lecteurs du Figaro doivent savoir que cette «Agency» et d'autres sites Web mènent, depuis quatre ans, une campagne diffamatoire affirmant que toute cette histoire n'est que du cinéma tourné par les génies de la propagande palestinienne. Certains allant même jusqu'à affirmer que l'enfant serait encore vivant ! Bizarre ? Oui, mais cela a eu pour résultat que ma famille et moi-même avons reçu des menaces considérées comme sérieuses par la police israélienne. Nous avons été obligés de prendre des mesures de sécurité avant de changer de domicile. Plusieurs plaintes en diffamation ont été déposées. En France, un individu qui m'a menacé de mort a été condamné et jugé. Mais revenons à l'article de Denis Jeambar et Daniel Leconte. Ils posent la question suivante : pourquoi Enderlin a-t-il dit dans son reportage que les balles venaient de la position israélienne ? Voici les réponses : D'abord, parce que, au moment de la diffusion, le correspondant de France 2 à Gaza, Talal, qui a filmé la scène, indiquait que tel était le cas. Là, je dois répéter que, journaliste reporteur d'images, Talal travaille en toute confiance pour notre chaîne depuis 1988. Dans les jours suivants, d'autres témoignages – de journalistes et de certaines sources – sont venus me confirmer les faits. Il en était de même pour les réactions des chefs de l'armée qui allaient dans le même sens tout en rejetant sur les Palestiniens la responsabilité des affrontements et, plus tard, en lançant un débat sur l'origine des tirs. Toutes choses dont j'ai rendu compte dans les journaux de France 2. Mais, à aucun moment, l'armée ne nous a écrit pour nous proposer de collaborer à une enquête en bonne et due forme. Proposition que nous avons malgré tout faite par écrit auprès du porte-parole de Tsahal sans jamais recevoir de réponse. Sans cela, pour les uns et les autres, le débat ne sera jamais clos. Ensuite, parce que, pour moi, l'image correspondait à la réalité de la situation non seulement à Gaza, mais aussi en Cisjordanie. L'armée israélienne ripostait au soulèvement palestinien par l'utilisation massive de tirs à balles réelles. D'ailleurs, Ben Kaspit du quotidien israélien Maariv révélera un secret militaire deux années plus tard : durant le premier mois de l'Intifada, Tsahal avait tiré un million de cartouches de calibre divers, 700 000 en Cisjordanie et 300 000 à Gaza (2). Des enfants palestiniens se sont retrouvés en première ligne. Du 29 septembre à la fin octobre 2000, 118 Palestiniens sont morts, parmi eux 33 avaient moins de 18 ans. Onze Israéliens ont été tués, tous adultes (3). Les envoyés spéciaux sur place et les reportages filmés sur le terrain peuvent le confirmer. Dans ce contexte, Denis Jeambar et Daniel Leconte évoquent l'utilisation qui a été faite de l'image de la mort de l'enfant et posent ainsi un problème fondamental : lors de la réalisation de son reportage, un journaliste doit-il tenir compte de l'usage malhonnête qui pourrait en être fait ultérieurement par des groupes extrémistes ? Une telle exigence signifierait une inacceptable censure à la source. Quant aux éléments de mon reportage qu'ils relèvent par ailleurs, je suis à leur disposition pour leur fournir toutes les explications nécessaires. * Journaliste à Jérusalem. (1) Le Figaro du 25 janvier 2005. (2) Maariv, 6 septembre 2002. Ben Kaspit cite le général Amos Malka, chef des renseignements militaires. (3) Chiffres du Btselem, l'organisation israélienne des droits de l'homme (http ://www.btselem. org/English/Statistics/index.asp).


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Clapan – Telemetria
So, we are pleased to announce, that after many months of hard work, the new full-length album by Clapan aka Denis Korsunsky (also known as …More →
Clapan – Native Elements – Podcast
Fourth Jumble podcast is a live-session called "Native Elements" from worshipful Denis Korsunsky aka Clapan. First of all this live improvisation is recorded by Denis …More →
VA – Re-Passage 1
Passage presents an overview compilation devoted to the label's update – now Passage is a part of Fuselab media association. This compilation covers the musical …More →
Clapan – My Siren Dub – Podcast
The second podcast issue presented by Krasnodar electronic musician Denis Korsunsky aka Clapan / Information Ghetto. Hourly live-session, that have already been recognized in Compass …More →
VA – Re-Fragment
Fragment / Fuselab present new Re-Fragment compilation, dedicated to the label's re-launch. This collection of magical works by our regulars and jumped at the light …More →


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|How to Propose to Your Bridesmaids
|Tuesday, 09 September 2014 00:00
When preparing for your wedding, one of the first things you need to check off the to-do list is finding your "team". There's the decision of how large you want your bridal party to be, whether you have an equal amount of friends and family on each side, who to pick... and HOW to ask them!
This is going to be your group of friends who you'll grow closer with through all of the parties before the big day. It's your group of friends who you're asking to potentially spend a lot of time and money on you. These are the people who will be standing behind you and supporting you and your marriage!
Often, little thoughtful details are what make a wedding memorable, so why not take some time to make your future bridal party feel special by proposing to them in a special way? Ditch the text message and send your bridal party some real mail! Below are three amazing DIY tutorials for creative ways to propose to your bridal party:
photo on right from Style Me Pretty
Unraveling Ribbon DIY from BridalMusings.com This simple DIY only require wooden spools and strips of fabric or ribbon! This gets right to the point with a cute touch of whimsy and would cost next to nothing to ship!
Paper Doll Bridesmaid Invites from OnceWed.com These adorable personalized paperdolls not only ask your friend if she wants to be your bridesmaid, it also tells your girls who the entire team will be! Hopefully they all say yes after that! :)
Be my Maid? Boxes from RinseRepeatBlog.com These simple cigar boxes were transformed into gorgeous boxes filled with everything a bridesmaid would need to know. From touching messages to paintchips to figure out what colour of dresses to pick up! These aren't just a beautiful parcel to receive but a great keepsake for holding small trinkets in the future.
If you're not the type to do elaborate DIYs, there's always traditional invitations or a heartfelt handwritten letter too!
xo Sylvia


text:
Live your Unitarian Universalist values out loud. Make your year-end gift today!
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November 1, 2011
When the Rev. Barbara Meyers began a mental health ministry at the Mission Peak Unitarian Universalist (UU) Fellowship in Fremont, Calif., in 2005 it was the only one. Not anymore. Now there are several others, including Quimper UU Fellowship in Port Townsend, Wash., and Jefferson Unitarian Church in Golden, Colo.
Establishment of a mental health ministry generally requires one committed person within a congregation or a small, dedicated group to make it happen, says Meyers. That's the case at both Port Townsend and Golden. Meyers has written a curriculum, The Caring Congregation Handbook, about educating a congregation about how to be intentionally supportive of people with mental disorders and their families.
At the Quimper fellowship Judy Tough had been a volunteer with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). That work grew out of the fact she has family members with bipolar disorder.
What would happen, she wondered, if congregations could become a place where mentally ill people, as well as families of those with a mental illness, could feel safe talking about it?
"It seemed like an obvious field to plow," said Tough. Her minister, the Rev. Bruce Bode, agreed. Tough started by putting together a conference on mental health and inviting all of the congregations in town. The conference included a day of workshops and a discussion about the documentary Minds on the Edge. Meyers preached at the fellowship Sunday morning and stayed for an afternoon of conversation. About 175 people attended various parts of the weekend, said Tough.
Soon after that Tough got permission to establish a new committee, "Caring Congregation." In 2010-11 the committee sponsored a worship service presented by three people who lived with mental illness. Meyers also taught a course on her book, The Caring Congregation Handbook. Before Thanksgiving a panel of mental health professionals spoke about reducing holiday stress. In January there was an all-congregation read, Souls in the Hands of a Tender God. The author, the Rev. Craig Renneboehm, also spoke at a service. There was a film festival with mental health topics and a celebration of art created by people with mental health conditions. Tough has also used the NAMI mental health curriculum for children and youth, "Breaking the Silence."
"We're taking the approach that mental health is part of us, that a brain disorder is no different from any other illness," said Tough. "It's not shameful, and people can recover."
She said she believes the new mental health ministry has helped reduce the stigma against mental health issues. She said that when a member's mentally ill son was arrested and was facing prison time a dozen or more fellowship members showed up in court to support him. They wrote to the judge, she said, who acknowledged the young man's strong support and did not send him to prison.
She said in its first year the program at Quimper spent about $200, mostly on the conference. She said the congregation is in the process of training greeters and others to respond to people with mental health issues who might visit the congregation or a homeless shelter where congregation members volunteer.
At Jefferson Unitarian Church in Golden, Judy Gangloff was inspired to begin a mental health ministry by a family member who has a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder. Plus, in a small group Chalice Circle several years ago, of the eight members, four had strong connections to mental health issues.
Gathering some of those people she approached Jefferson's minister of pastoral care, Tracey Wilkinson, who supported a mental health ministry. Gangloff introduced the new group, Mental Wellness Advocates, through a chalice lighting one Sunday. At Jefferson, chalice lightings include a statement that corresponds with the sermon. "I announced a meeting, and I was amazed by the number who came to me, who wanted such a group."
She said Meyers presented a program at a Mountain Desert District cluster meeting at Jefferson that drew 60 people. "It was very powerful," said Gangloff. Last March the ministry invited the larger community to a program on bipolar issues. "We plan to do one of these a year," she said.
As to the difference the ministry has made in the congregation, Gangloff said, "I know it has made a difference for individuals, just knowing there is a group there. People come to us asking for information. And we've had good participation in our educational programs."
Her group posts information on Jefferson's pastoral care bulletin board and has created a brochure about Mental Wellness Advocates. Information is also in the newsletter and on the church website.
At Mission Peak, in addition to creating The Caring Congregation Handbook curriculum, Meyers leads worship, helps with pastoral care, and writes a monthly newsletter message, often on mental health issues. In the community, she is producer and host of a public access TV program called Mental Health Matters. She is also assistant manager of Reaching Across, a mental health drop-in center in Fremont. She testified earlier this year in Sacramento about the need for mental health funding.
She also presents workshops and worship services at congregations around the country, when invited. Here are the steps she recommends in starting a mental health ministry:
Not sure if your congregation needs a mental health ministry? Do an exercise that Meyers recommends. "When I do a worship service about mental health at a congregation, I'll tell my own story of recovering from depression as part of the sermon. Sharing a personal story of recovery is a very powerful way to reach people. At the end I'll ask people to stand or raise their hand if they or someone in their family has a mental health problem. Generally at least 75 percent of people stand up. Everyone is always amazed."
She added, "People with mental health issues will come to church to get hope, but they're often reluctant to share their concerns with anyone. Then when they discover almost everyone knows of a similar problem that makes it safe to talk. That's the single most effective thing I've done to dispel the myth that mental health is a taboo subject."
Learn more about Meyers' UU Mental Health Ministry.
For more information contact interconnections @ uua.org.
This work is made possible by the generosity of individual donors and congregations.
Please consider making a donation today.
Last updated on Saturday, December 21, 2013.
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text: The B.S. of A. lampoons Glenn's "Independence" park Tuesday, Jan 22, 2013 at 4:25 PM EST http://profile.yahoo.com/GOD3QQVYCMGOAJ23H2OISBIHBQ Vicki Independence Park does not sit well with me anymore. It sounds like a trick to get us to our last destination. Anonymous I'm concerned about the Fisting Fountain and Golden Showers Falls. Sounds like Beck is building a fetish park lol


text:
North Korea Has An Interesting Offer. And Another Threat.
By Scott Neuman
North Korea, which denies that it had anything to do with a hack against Sony Pictures Entertainment, now wants to help the U.S. root out the real culprit.
By Scott Neuman
North Korea, which denies that it had anything to do with a hack against Sony Pictures Entertainment, now wants to help the U.S. root out the real culprit.
By The Associated Press
Rayvonte Rice hit a 3-pointer at the buzzer for the last of his 19 points, giving Illinois a 62-59 victory over Missouri in the annual Braggin' Rights game on Saturday.
by Amelia Mugavero for WILL
Music may not make you smarter, but many researchers say learning to play an instrument can help with other abilities.
By Bill Chappell
Some witnesses were clearly lying when they spoke to a grand jury about the August police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., according to St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Robert McCulloch.
By The Associated Press
Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn has named his budget chief as a short-term replacement for late Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka.
By Jeff Bossert
A Post Office in Champaign will bear the name of the area's first and only African-American countywide elected official.
by Eyder Peralta, with Additional Reporting from The Associated Press
The Obama administration says it's determined the North Korean government was behind a devastating hacking attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment.
By The Associated Press
The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee says he has no doubt that North Korea was involved in the hacking attack against Sony Pictures and the threat against movie theaters.
By Hannah Meisel
Nine months after the Illinois Supreme Court struck down the state's eavesdropping law, the legislature passed a bill to replace it. The legislation, which defines eavesdropping and its consequences, is currently waiting on the governor's desk.
There's a lot of forethought, and sometimes a lot of stress, that's a part of the holiday season. That's completely counter-intuitive considering the holidays are supposed to be a time to relax and enjoy time with family and friends. During this encore hour on Focus, we talked about why certain expectations are attached to the holidays and what we can do about it.


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- shopping
Joe Fresh Is Coming to a JC Penney Near You
Last fall, JC Penney's newly appointed CEO, Ron Johnson, held a press conference to describe his vision for the brand. His plans included a logo change (that American flag-like rectangle you're probably now familiar with) and the introduction of in-store shops. Some will have merchandise from the chain's current selection of labels, such as Levi's and Liz Claiborne. Others will feature special designer lines—exclusive ranges from Nanette Lepore and Betsey Johnson are already in the works. What he didn't mention, however, was that one of those mini boutiques would be a collaboration with Joe Fresh.
The two have inked a four-year agreement to sell the Canadian import's affordable clothing at 683 JC Penney stores nationwide. Nothing has officially launched yet, but the project is well underway. As you can see from this photograph of the shop-in-shop's mock-up, it appears to be a tinier version of Joe Fresh's larger outposts. Kind of similar to what Topshop will look like when it launches in Nordstrom, or the way Sephora already lives in JC Penney, it'll ring true to the Joe Fresh aesthetic.
"I think it's really important that the brands that populate the store feel like true brands and feel genuine," Johnson recently told WWD.
Joe Fresh also plans to open more free-standing stores throughout the US beyond the six that already exist. Add all that expansion to its spot in Canadian supermarkets (where the affordable line actually got its start) and it seems that Joe Fresh is poised to take over the world. Or, at least, North America.
The company's bright future is undoubtedly the reason why it was approached by J.C. Penney in the first place; we're curious to see how this team-up goes. Do you think, after several years of spotty sales and lackluster product, the mega-chain is finally poised for a comeback?
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From A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, 1837
TEMPLECORRAN, or BROAD ISLAND, a parish, in the barony of LOWER BELFAST, county of ANTRIM, and province of ULSTER, 5 miles (N. E.) from Carrickfergus, on the road from Belfast to Larne, and on Lough Larne; containing, with the village of Ballycarry (which is separately described), 1338 inhabitants. In 1597 a battle was fought at the highly romantic vale called Old Mill Glen, near Ballycarry, between the MacQuillans and MacDonnells, in which the former were defeated; and in November of the same year another took place on the same spot between the MacDonnells and Sir John Chichester, in which the latter was slain and his army cut to pieces.
This parish, which is also called, after the name of the village, Ballycarry, comprises, according to the Ordnance survey, 4744 ¼ statute acres, in a high state of cultivation. The system of husbandry is in a very improved state, and has been much promoted by the present proprietor, who is a practical and spirited agriculturist. Limestone and basalt are found in great abundance. Red Hall, the seat of G. Kerr, Esq., is an elegant mansion with a fine demesne. The spinning of yarn and the weaving of linen cloth are carried on. A court is held for the manor of Broad Island by the seneschal of Marriot Dalway, Esq., for the recovery of debts and determination of pleas to the amount of £20; its jurisdiction extends over this parish and that of Kilroot. Fairs are held at Ballycarry.
It is a vicarage, in the diocese of Connor, forming part of the union of Ballynure and of the corps of the prebend of Kilroot in the cathedral of Connor; the rectory is impropriate in D. Kerr, Esq.
The tithes amount to £347. 1. 6., of which £231. 7. 8. is payable to the impropriator, and the remainder to the vicar. The church, originally a spacious and handsome cruciform structure, is now a ruin; it was at one time occupied by the Presbyterians, since whose ejectment it has not been used as a place of worship. There are chapels for Presbyterians, Independents, and Methodists; the first is in connection with the Remonstrant Synod, and of the first class.
There are two national schools, situated at Ballycarry and Windygap, in which are about 120 children; and a private school of 10 girls. R. G. Kerr, Esq., in 1825, bequeathed £200 in trust to the vicar and the senior Presbyterian minister, to divide the interest among the poor. There is a curious hollow cave, called the Salt Hole, into which rushes a large stream of water which is not found again; and in the grounds of Red Hall is a glen of very extraordinary character. The Rev. Mr. Bryce, minister of the first Presbyterian congregation established in Ireland, lived and was buried here: and over the remains of a poet, known only as the Bard of Ballycarry, a monument has been raised.
« Templecarne | Index | Templecroan »
Charlotte Milligan Fox, sister of the poet Alice Milligan, was a founding member of the Irish Folk Song Society and an indefatigable field collector of Irish traditional music. Her singularly important work on Irish haprers is here presented for the twenty-first century reader. This edition of Annals offers a much greater number of illustrations than were included in the original 1911 publication, a full biographical introduction, an extensive bibliography of the writings of Milligan Fox and an appendix discussing the variant texts of Arthur O'Neills Memoirs.
Annals of the Famine in Ireland
Annals of the Famine in Ireland, by Asenath Nicholson, still has the power to shock and sadden even though the events described are ever-receding further into the past. When you read, for example, of the poor widowed mother who was caught trying to salvage a few potatoes from her landlord's field, and what the magistrate discovered in the pot in her cabin, you cannot help but be appalled and distressed.
The ebook is available for download in .mobi (Kindle), .epub (iBooks, etc.) and .pdf formats. For further information on the book and author see details ».
Ireland's Welcome to the Stranger
This book, the prequel to Annals of the Famine in Ireland cannot be recommended highly enough to those interested in Irish social history. The author, Mrs Asenath Nicholson, travelled from her native America to assess the condition of the poor in Ireland during the mid 1840s. Refusing the luxury of hotels and first class travel, she stayed at a variety of lodging-houses, and even in the crude cabins of the very poorest. Not to be missed!
The ebook is available for download in .mobi (Kindle), .epub (iBooks, etc.) and .pdf formats. For further information on the book and author see details ».
Henry Ford Jones' book, first published in 1915 by Princeton University, is a classic in its field. It covers the history of the Scotch-Irish from the first settlement in Ulster to the American Revolutionary period and the foundation of the country.
The ebook is available for download in .mobi (Kindle), .epub (iBooks, etc.) and .pdf formats. For further information on the book and author see details ».
Join our mailing list to receive updates on new content on Library, our latest ebooks, and more.
You won't be inundated with emails! — we'll just keep you posted periodically — about once a monthish — on what's happening with the library.


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Sofia Kochi Continental Airlines
Continental Airlines is a US certificated air carrier. It is the fourth largest airline in the US and the eight largest in the world by revenue passenger miles.Its marketing slogan has been Work Hard, Fly Right ever since 1998.It offers more than 3,000 daily departures while serving 151 domestic and 120 international destinations. Currently, Continental is on an ambitious program to expand it's in flight services in terms of entertainment and comfort. Having grown by leaps and bounds ever since its inception, this airline is only on the path to growing further and bettering its services. It can be identified with Continental written across the fuselage and half of a sphere with grids on the tail. It provides professional services within a league of its own. Continental Airlines Destinations Connected from India to USA: New Delhi to Newark Continental Airlines Flights, New Delhi to Washington Continental Airlines Flights, New Delhi to Charolette Continental Airlines Flights, New Delhi
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PrestaShop is rapidly growing and wants to fulfill the high-demand of web design enquiries. By joining our partner network, web agencies gain the opportunity to access highly qualified leads and increase their portfolio. PrestaShop is looking of partners that will promote the best e-commerce shopping carts, while assisting customers by providing the highest quality of service. Everyday PrestaShop handles many requests for a variety of projects. From small businesses to enterprise-level, PrestaShop web agency partners will have access to qualified customer leads.
Partnership Benefits
Everyday PrestaShop handles many requests for a variety of projects. From small businesses to enterprise-level, PrestaShop web-agency partners will have access to qualified customer leads.
PrestaShop provides partners with the appropriate communication materials to guarantee successful sales and increase exposure within the PrestaShop network. Web Agency Partners will enjoy the benefits of a dedicated page on PrestaShop.com and additional promotional support during PrestaEvents.
PrestaShop offers skilled technical support to assist in understanding the PrestaShop software and ensure that developers are prepared to address customer's questions. PrestaShop nurtures partner relationships and supports them every step of the way. A PrestaTeam member will gladly visit potential key customers during the sales process.
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Saddletowne Library
Do you live in Castleridge, Falconridge, Saddle Ridge, Martindale, Taradale, Coral Springs, Temple, Whitehorn or Monteray Park?
If so, we are looking for YOU to come volunteer at the brand new Saddletowne Library, opening soon!
Saddletowne Library is located at 7555 Falconridge Blvd NE. Once the library is open there will be a variety of volunteer positions to be filled. Feel free to fill out a volunteer application today on our website, or pick one up at any branch; be sure to list 'Saddletowne' as your Library location of choice.


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Home Page / The companies / Corporate life
Corporate life
Get the latest news here about GROUPE ADEO companies
Mars 2014 -AKI Portugal récompensé pour une belle innovation : le projet « Mobilité AKI ».
AKI Portugal innove et renforce la proximité avec ses clients. Chaque conseiller en magasin est doté d'un smartphone ; l'application SI AKI lui permet de renseigner et assister son client en temps réel et de garder durablement le contact avec lui.
Une initiative récompensée lors du congrès de l'Association Portugaise des Entreprises de Distribution (APED) par un jury d'experts dans la catégorie «Excellence en Innovation dans le Retail».
Le prix a été décerné en présence du Prix Nobel d'Economie 2013, Lars Peter Hansen.
Leroy Merlin Poland is the winner of the 1st edition of the contest "Tomorrow's employer"
Leroy Merlin Poland is the winner of the 1st edition of the contest "Tomorrow's employer", organised by the Polish Agency for Enterprise Development.
Aki Spain
Leroy Merlin Spain and Aki Spain, award winners in the 2012 Best Workplaces survey
This year once again, Leroy Merlin Spain (7,700 employees) and Aki Spain (1,300 employees) are named among the top ten in the 2012 Best Workplaces in Spain awards, achieving 7th and 8th places respectively.
Two companies that are well on the way to becoming the companies of choice both for their clients and their employees.
13-03-2012 Great Place to Work rankings are proof of Leroy Merlin's sustained performance
- Fifht place overall in companies with more than 500 employees,
- Voted one of the best for eight consecutive years in a survey that now covers 127 participating companies.
Our employees once again demonstrated how much they cherish this common culture based on developing every member of the team, professional autonomy, the pleasure of working together, and serving the customer each and every day.
BRICOMAN France
07-02-11 BRICOMAN France: Values on line
On 7 February, BRICOMAN inaugurated its HR site recrute.bricoman.fr. A window displaying all the jobs on offer plus a presentation of the company, its recruitment and integration processes and its training programme and potential career path.
The interactive site promotes the BRICOMAN France project and values through storyboarding and video witness accounts from actual employees to illustrate each type of mission. Objective? Expand the store's reputation and attract not just the best candidates but those who support its values fully.
LEROY MERLIN Ukraine has opened its first store
On November 18, the three million inhabitants of the city of Kiev had the chance to explore the first LEROY MERLIN location in the Ukraine. The store is found just north of the city, in the Obolon residential area, and stretches over nearly 13,000m² divided into five departments (DIY, construction, garden supplies, kitchen/bath, and home decoration). With 240 employees and 38,000 products, this store is expected to be the top choice for locals in price, selection, and customer service, meeting the needs of both private individuals and professionals.
06-04-2010 Brazilianian President Lula da Silva has awarded LEROY MERLIN Brazil
as the biggest sales network for construction and DIY in the country. LEROY MERLIN Brazil is proud to be committed to the economic development of one of the biggest emerging country and to allow his growing middle class to access to housing and comfort. In 2009 sales were up to 30% and new stores had opened. In a leading country for sustainable development especially for his forest management, LEROY MERLIN Brazil has invested in a distribution unit of High Environmental Quality an international standard in term of sustainability.
15-09-08 KBANE France: the new chain has opened for business.
"Everything you need for sustainable housing." Kbane is the specialist in sustainable and new energy solutions. For the past few months 25 enthusiasts - engineers, eco-coaches, approved installers and sustainable housing professionals - have been helping residents with their home improvement projects, from diagnostics to installing solutions.
The first, highly-innovative store will open in the Lille region early in 2009.
Its 1400 sq. m will offer an educational showroom, project advice and monitoring centre and a self-service section.
Click here to monitor the Kbane activity
LEROY MERLIN Spain: The first eco-designed house.
LEROY MERLIN Spain is inaugurating at Gandia (Valencia, Spain) its first green store.
This 7000 m2 store is located in the Benieto shopping centre and employs 200 people. It is the first retail area in Spain and even Europe to have been eco-designed from construction to operation, with systems to optimise energy resources and waste management and to reduce the impact on the surrounding area. LEROY MERLIN Spain is also expanding its "eco-options" range at Gandia: appropriate signage and guides lead customers to the friendliest products and services in terms of natural resource management and environmental protection for the construction and fitting out projects in their living spaces.
ZODIO France
05-12-07 ZODIO France: opening of the first shop at Massy (Essonne)
And supposing we made the house move? This was the ambition of ZODIO France when it opened its first store on 5 December 2007 after meeting with, listening to and observed the living patterns of hundreds of residents. Everything for cooking, entertaining, creating, decorating, storing and pampering the children.
There is a world of services and attentions at ZODIO as well: cookery and interior design classes, a bookshop and a gourmet area.
ZODIO is an ambition and a future. It is the adventure of a start-up within a major group.


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Event Date 1: April 13, 2011 02:45 pm - 03:45 pm
Michael Lach, special assistant for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, will discuss the state of STEM education and its importance to the economy during a panel organized by the Institute for a Competitive Workforce (ICW), a non-profit affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, at 2:45 p.m. on Wednesday, April 13. The event will be held at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C.
At the event, ICW will unveil a new report on STEM education titled "Strengthening the STEM of Our Workforce." The report will address what needs to be done to strengthen the quality of STEM education in the United States and what kind of leadership will be required on the part of the business community to make it happen. ICW will host a live webcast of the event on their website, http://icw.uschamber.com/events.
Event 1
|Who :
|Michael Lach, special assistant for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education
|What :
|Panelist at the release of an ICW report: "Strengthening the STEM of Our Workforce"
|When :
|2:45 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, April 13
|Where :
|U.S. Chamber of Commerce
1615 H St. N.W.
Washington, D.C.


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Halloween Highlighted All Weekend
Submitted by Aspenskier on Fri, 10/26/2012 - 08:55
We love our Halloween celebrations here in the Roaring Fork Valley and this year is no exception. Tonight a "Halloween Black Egg Hunt" for kids will take place at 5:30 at Crown Mountain Park in Basalt (be sure to bring a flashlight and a candy bag - costumes suggested). On Sunday, October 28, the Aspen Skating Club will present their annual free Halloween Skating Party from 5:15-6:15pm. And if that's not enough fright for you, Aspen Writers' Foundation and Thunder River Theatre are offering "Love, Death and Halloween" on Monday night, October 30 at 7pm at the Thunder River Theatre in Carbondale.


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Obama and Congress are moving toward dramatically reducing carbon emissions over time, but they are not acting fast enough. The recent financial collapse is just the latest thing we can easily blame on global warming. After all, if human carbon emissions can cause the whole earth to warm up, certainly they could cause the economy to falter.
Here's my theory, which I'm working to get federal grant money to pursue further: The boom in construction and development, spurred by human greed, caused global warming, which in turn has led to the bust. Don't ask me how exactly, unless you're a denialist. Surely the right response is for the government to pump money into the economy, but we must make sure that the printed green is really green.
This means no more public works projects that build up infrastructure that encourage carbon use. No projects that themselves use gas-powered motors of any kind. Everyone should be made to use eco-friendly farming implements and tools, rather than modern anti-Earth ones, to produce for the new 21st century economy, one that fails to grow and will thus avoid the boom-bust cycle endemic in capitalism.
Imagine a world with no heavy industry, no oil, no coal, no energy except that which we get from eating a raw and healthy, rationed vegan diet. It will require sacrifice, but the planet is at stake. There are too many people on earth, too, so we'll have to find those who use the most carbon and liquidate them. Anyone who requires specially designed technology just to get by, like eyeglasses (sorry, Lew) will also have to go. And anyone whose cultural biases are toward the Industrial Revolution and thus eco-genocide will have to go, as well. This probably means we'd have to rid of those with an attachment to Western traditions such as English or Christianity. The plan sounds ambitious, but we have good models to look at. Cambodia tried a somewhat similar policy in the 1970s and consequently had one of the most earth-friendly regimes in modern times. They didn't take it far enough, but it's a good start.
Let us commit to making every day Earth Day. Humanity has had its chance, and it has meant economic inequality, war, and even a reduction in ice at the North Pole. The financial collapse is only the latest reminder that the world can no longer afford mankind.4:18 pm on April 22, 2009 Email Anthony Gregory


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In affirming his commitment to the Second Amendment, Curry joined dozens of sheriffs across the U.S. who have voiced their opinions on gun control in the wake of President Obama's 23 executive actions to curb gun violence.
"I'm a proponent of the Second Amendment, and I believe that an armed society is a polite society," Curry said Wednesday. "I can tell you that until someone attempts to take enforcement action in Franklin County, I have no reason to take a stance. But I can tell you that my position is that I will not enforce any federal regulations that inhibit a person's Second Amendment rights."
On Friday, Johnson County Sheriff Frank Denning issued a pointed response to Obama's actions. In his open letter, Denning took direct issue with Obama's executive actions, which largely increase the enforcement of current gun laws and require federal agencies to provide data for background checks.
"As sheriff, I will never support, nor advocate for, any legislation at any level (local, state or federal) that would restrict the legal possession or ownership of any type of firearm (or high-capacity magazine) by lawful, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens of Johnson County, Kansas and of the United States of America," Frank Denning wrote in the letter, which was posted Friday on the Johnson County Sheriff's Office's website. "From reading the proposed changes and suggestions for future legislation from Washington, I see nothing whatsoever that would have prevented these past atrocities from occurring, nor do they pretend to effectively prevent future incidents from happening. ... Even in our national grief, we must adhere to reason and logic."
In addition to Denning's comments, a Dallas-area sheriff recently announced his office plans to ignore any gun laws that he considers to violate the U.S. Constitution. Collin County Sheriff Terry Box said Monday that imprudent lawmakers' actions could infringe on citizens' rights granted in the Constitution.
"Unfortunately, the recent surge in the numbers of innocent victims who have died at the hands of unstable criminals has prompted politicians in Washington to seek to pass laws that would seriously erode the constitutional rights of innocent and law abiding citizens," the Texas sheriff wrote in a statement. "Neither I, nor any of my deputies, will participate in the enforcement of laws that violate our precious constitutional rights, including our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. As long as I remain sheriff of Collin County, I will not participate in the actions of misguided politicians who seek to impede our citizen's right to all of the privileges afforded by our Constitution."
Collin County is part of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, and includes small portion of the city of Dallas, as well as such other cities as Allen, Frisco, McKinney and Plano.
"I believe we the people deserve to know if our sheriff or anybody else that has or would run for sheriff in future elections obey the Constitution, or [Obama]," David Feuerborn wrote in an email to The Herald. "I would like the question asked: 'Would you abide by the Constitution with the other sheriffs or would you obey [Obama] and disarm good people?' ... I believe we need to know all this — even where all [of] Franklin County's politicians stand — so we know how to vote."
Not all sheriffs, however, are in agreement with disregarding gun laws considered by some to violate the Second Amendment, including Calhoun County, Ala., Sheriff Larry Amerson. Amerson, who also serves as president of the National Sheriffs Association, said public dialogue regarding Obama's recent executive orders often is misguided, as many believe it will lead the disarmament of Americans.
"There are some people who are trying to change the focus of this discussion and using this argument of disarming the American public," Amerson, a firearms instructor and hunter, said, according to media reports. "That takes the attention away from the problem we are trying to deal with. ... Any sheriff who knows his duty knows we don't enforce federal law, per se."
While he did not say "gun" or "gun control," Obama's inaugural address Monday did hint at efforts to decrease gun violence.
"Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for and cherished and always safe from harm," Obama said.
Obama's recent efforts, however, have done little to deter prospective gun violence from occurring, Curry said. Lawbreakers inevitably will find access to firearms if they so choose, he said, as many guns already are available to the public.
"The guns are already out there. The bad guys already have guns," Curry said. "By making laws prohibiting law-abiding citizens from possessing guns, you're taking the guns out of the wrong hands."
Curry said that while he thinks Obama's initiatives are misguided, such actions do not affect the operation of his office. The sheriff, whose office is responsible for the administration of conceal and carry permits within Franklin County, said it's his desire that lawmakers now take new approaches to bridle gun violence in the U.S.
"It's my hope," Curry said, "that instead of targeting the gun, we spend more time targeting the criminals."


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Toni Braxton will star as Darlene Love in My Name Is Love: The Darlene Love Story, an upcoming TV movie about the singer that will air on OWN in December, the network announced Thursday.
In addition, Octavia Spencer will star in a two-night event miniseries tentatively titled Tulsa, about the largest race riot in U.S. history, in Tulsa, Okla. Spencer will play journalist Mattie Clay.
Good to know I'm not the only one who needs pizza to make it through a long night at the Oscars.
With Ellen DeGeneres serving up laughs along with slices, disarming the starry crowd with stunts like a pizza delivery for the starving captive audience and a Superstar Selfie that temporarily broke Twitter (and during the taking of which Meryl Streep delightfully blurted, "I've never tweeted before!"), even the Oscars' inevitable dull patches felt less painful than usual.
Singer and actress Darlene Love talks about the Academy Award-nominated documentary "20 Feet from Stardom." watch
Smash box office sequel of mismatched Los Angeles cops who take on South African drug smugglers protected by diplomatic immunity. Pesci steals the show as a crazed criminal-turned-assistant!
Detectives Riggs and Murtaugh team up again to battle a dirty ex-cop who has stolen thousands of confiscated weapons from a police warehouse. Once again, Joe Pesci steals the show as goofy Leo Getz!
Riggs and Murtaugh, those buddy cops whose work is anything but routine, are back, along with some new additions, for plenty of action, laughs and incredible stuntwork.
Darlene blows away the crowd with her final Late Show performance of "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)."
More Clips & Interviews
The fourth installment of the "Lethal Weapon" franchise finds Mel Gibson teamed up with reluctant partner Danny Glover, Renee Russo, Joe Pesci in another explosive adventure.
Murtaugh's last week before retirement has no chance of being peaceful -- not while Riggs is still his partner, and an ex-cop turned criminal mastermind is on the loose.
More Darlene Love Movies Videos
Singer and actress Darlene Love talks about the Academy Award-nominated documentary "20 Feet from Stardom."
More Darlene Love On TV Videos
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Neil Diamond, Alice Cooper, Darlene Love and Tom Waits were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame along with Dr. John and Leon Russell.
Diamond, 70, is well known for his song "Sweet Caroline," inspired by Caroline Kennedy and now used as the Boston Red Sox anthem.
Neil Diamond, Tom Waits and the Alice Cooper Band are among the new inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the organization announced Wednesday.Watch videos of Neil Diamond"I think it's great. I'm happy that that they ...
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Street Parking Placeholder
Street Parking Space Savers- revisiting Snowmageddon 2010. Many people are experiencing more snow right now. So is it a Pittsburgh thing? You see all kinds of chairs reserving parking spaces all around the city after someone has shoveled out their space, planning to return to it, later.
I've seen a port-a-crib to reserve a parking space!
Originally posted on Ruth E Hendricks Photography:
People shovel their car out, drive to the store. Need to park when they return. Captain, folding, white plastic lawn, kitchen, or dinette chair holds the spot.
Old Trees New Trees on a Winter Path
After school I drove into Highland Park, right near my home. I'd taken a series of black and white photos for a film class years ago in this same spot and still have a print on my wall.
With the new snow today, I thought it might look interesting but the light was low and the sky thick and gray.
Found some new trees planted along the path, though.
I plan to return in the Spring.
There weren't many dog walkers or walkers or runners or any activity in the park. The Super Playground deserted and covered with snow and ice. No bicycles. The fountain turned off. The reservoir a layer of ice. The sounds muffled with the snow, but barely a car driving around the circle today.
It's in color but almost looks black and white.
Mark Tests My New Remote Cable Release in the Snow
Here I am in snowy Ohio and I didn't pack boots to come out here for Christmas vacation. Must have been lulled by all that Spring like weather we were having in December.
Mark is the guest blogger cause when he got home at ten Saturday night he showed me a photo he had taken with his phone of the Christmas lights in the snow. I asked him to go back out for me and take one for the blog.
So he took out my camera(Canon 5D with a 50mm lens) and the new remote cable release that just got delivered via UPS and it was set at ISO 400 f.1.4. 1/60 shutter. I thought the result was excellent . First time using a cable remote and now he knows how to reduce camera shake. Tripod in the back of the freezing car and no way we're setting up unless the snow stops falling.
Thanks Mark. Maybe tomorrow night I will borrow Erika's boots and trudge around in the snow.


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TC Recipe: Curried Kettle Corn
By Sous Chef Benjamin Nadolny
Suggested Pairing: 2009 next: Riesling
Serves 2
|Once you start eating this kettle corn it is hard to stop. We used it once to accompany halibut ceviche on a special and loved it so much that it mades its way on to the restaurant menu as a side dish. I myself am guilty of eating enough for three people in one sitting. It is a great pairing with a glass of the next: Riesling.
|Heat the oil in a large pot. Add the popcorn and sprinkle with sugar. Cover and shake back and forth until the popcorn begins popping. Lower the heat to medium and continue to move the pot. Cook until the popping has slowed to once every 1-2 seconds. Remove from pot and sprinkle with salt, cumin, and curry. Enjoy. Covered, the popcorn will keep 1-2 days.