hello, America

by twit

How’s that American Dream™ treating you these days?

Via the BBC on July 17, 2008:

“The Measure of America reveals huge gaps among some groups in our country to access opportunity and reach their potential,” said the report’s author, Sarah Burd-Sharps.

“Some Americans are living anywhere from 30 to 50 years behind others when it comes to issues we all care about: health, education and standard of living. … the state human development index shows that people in last-ranked Mississippi are living 30 years behind those in first-ranked Connecticut.

… Of the world’s richest nations, the US has the most children (15%) living in poverty.

Iranian dissident leader escapes to America… with a video camera

by twit

Via the International Herald Tribune:

After nearly 8 years in prison, Ahmad Batebi fled Iran, documenting the journey on a pocket-sized video camera.

A July 13, 2008 video report can be seen here. More information is available from a July 13, 2008 article:

… He rose to fame in 1999, appearing on the cover of The Economist magazine holding the bloody T-shirt of a fellow student demonstrator – an image he first saw when a judge slapped it before him and declared: “You have signed your own death sentence.”

At the age of 31, after nearly eight years in Iranian prisons, subjected to torture and twice taken to the gallows and fitted with a noose, Batebi had fled.

His own awakening began in the fourth grade, when his teacher, fed up with the distortions of an official history textbook, burst out: “Go out and read other things to try to get the truth.”