Latvian Journalist Released!!!

February 2, 2015.

Passing Though

AMAZING GOOD NEWS!  The Latvian journalist held in Egypt for 400 days was released, and apparently the Canadian will be 'deported' back to Canada soon too!!

So that news of course was juxtaposed against the video of the unlucky Japanese journalist.
Obviously football eclipsed all that yesterday and was far more engaging than thinking about our mean world and the pain caused by meaness arising from people with black and evil hearts.  I want to be in a happy place that celebrates excellence and achievement and discovery and research and conquering new frontiers in science and math and all the while sing and dance.

I am not a journalist, nor a person elected to any office, so I really don't feel compelled to keep working the grindstone but there are so few journalists left.  It has become more lucrative to sell advertising and so pander to the audience and not really tell the stories right.  I don't want to hear one horror story after another, but then again I don't like eating the candy floss, mind decaying celebrity gossip pumped out non stop on most network stations or listen to the gobbely-goop from political pundits either.

Today's focus on NPR radio was on Obama care and ransom for hostages and I wanted to offer my three cents worth on both those subjects, as I believe my Tale involved both those issues.   Greg was a hostage, and we paid a ransom and then he was able to leave Alabama.  I think that his story is relevant and should not be whitewashed into anything other than political corruption.  It just is nasty that the terrorists were allies, and one thing I have learned is that it is very dangerous to criticize or make fun of people who have some peculiar ideas.  Look what happened to the French cartoonists?

However,  being Latvian, I want to say, there was a devastating hurricane, then a $14 billion plan to help the people affected, and no one, at least in Alabama, investigated how the money was spent and who benefited.  Greg sure as anything didn't see a penny of that Federal money and perhaps should have had more of the whole scheme explained by the lawyers and consultants he had hired to advise him.  Perhaps he placed too much trust into the politicians as well and when the economic collapse happened, powerful folks just resorted to old tricks and masked themselves under the cloak of the legal system for a titilating lynching, flogging, or in modern vernacular,  hostage taking.  After paying a fine, the charges were dismissed.  I think this is very relevant discussion since American foreign policy does not support ransom for hostage takings and the debate continues for the big picture but what about if the camera turned back and took a selfie about what really takes place on American soil.  Greg told me that no one cares about this, because he is not a celebrity and that is the only thing that is interesting for most people.  I am hoping for one journalist, just one,  to sniff out the real and the ugly!

And then there is the reality of public health care as we experienced last year 35 years into it!