Week in Review

I want to get back to some of the points made in response to my post on the London air-terror plot that was uncovered on Tursday, but I'm trying to decompress from a 10-hour drive back from P-town. In the meantime, I wanted to pull together a recap of someother interesting news items that unfolded this week:

-- World Trade Center makes it debut this weekend. I won't see it, in spite of the fact that I'm a fan of Oliver Stone. We're still living this war and I have no intention of reliving the worst day of our nation's history. I don't see the need for this film (yet).

-- Hottie hot-speedo-wearin' David Beckham has been dropped from the England soccer team. Says the AP: "[Coach] McClaren didn't name him in the squad to play Greece in Wednesday's friendly -- his first match in charge. While his accuracy from dead balls is still sharp, Beckham has started to lose pace, highlighted when 19-year-old Aaron Lennon twice replaced him at the World Cup. It also marks a break from the reign of former coach Sven-Goran Eriksson, who developed a close relationship with Beckham during his five years."

-- El Comandante is still MIA. Cuban officials say that both Fidel and Raul are out of sight as there are threats from the U.S. against Raul Castro. Take this news with a grain of salt as it comes from the official newspaper of the Cuban government.

-- And speaking of Cuba, Granma also reports that Benicio Del Toro has "added his voice to the 3,780-plus intellectuals and artists from more than 50 countries who are condemning the aggressive and interventionist tone of the George W. Bush government toward Cuba."

I don't think Benicio wants to reprise his place on our radar by backing Fidel's Cuba. Tsk tsk. Also, kudos to the Cuban government for coming up with the most odd-ball figure -- 3,780-plus intellecutals, eh? Well then, let's call the last 47 years of missile threats and botched-invasions a bad first date and start all over again. I mean, 3,780-plus intellectuals CAN'T be wrong. Though I envision this being a somewhat unlikely group; Castro's biggest fans are Harry Belafonte and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. But I digress...

-- Heads up on a new film some of you might want to check out: Jesus Camp.

"JESUS CAMP, directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady (The Boys of Baraka), follows Levi, Rachael, Tory and a number of other young children to Pastor Becky Fischer's Kids on Fire summer camp in Devil's Lake, North Dakota, where kids as young as 6 years-old are taught to become dedicated Christian soldiers in God's army. The film follows these children at camp as they hone their prophetic gifts and are schooled in how to take back America for Christ. The film is a first-ever look into an intense training ground that recruits born-again Christian children to become an active part of America's political future."

Blogger David Byrne offers some more insight on the film:

Saw a screening of a documentary called "Jesus Camp." It focuses on a woman preacher (Becky Fischer) who indoctrinates children in a summer camp in North Dakota. Right wing political agendas and slogans are mixed with born again rituals that end with most of the kids in tears. Tears of release and joy, they would claim — the children are not physically abused. The kids are around 9 or 10 years old, recruited from various churches, and are pliant willing receptacles. They are instructed that evolution is being forced upon us by evil Godless secular humanists, that abortion must be stopped at all costs, that we must form an “army” to defeat the Godless influences, that we must band together to insure that the right judges and politicians get into the courts and office and that global warming is a lie. (This last one is a puzzle — how did accepting the evidence for climate change and global warming become anti-Jesus? Did someone simply conflate all corporate agendas with Jesus and God and these folks accept that? Would Jesus drive an SUV? Is every conclusion responsible scientists make now suspect?)

** Hat tip: Alejandra.

-- Did I miss anything? Let me know.