U.S. National

If water is the oil of the 21st century, then Michigan, smack dab in the middle of the Great Lakes, is Saudi Arabia. And after banging their straws at the Big Dipper for years, Nestle Corporation has finally succeeded in plunging into the liquid gold.

On February 28th Michigan Governor Granholm signed a bill that will, for the first time, permit a multinational corporation to scoop up given amounts of the Great Lakes and sell bottled water across the world. For the first time in history the concept of the Great Lakes as a commons for all to enjoy has been breached. And NAFTA, as we'll see, might insure a run on the Great Lakes.

The new Michigan law allows Nestle Corporation to continue its five-year takings of up to 250,000 gallons per day and sell them at a markup well over 240 times its production cost. Nestle's profit from drawing this water could be from $500,000 to $1.8 million per day. A key proviso is that the bottles can be no larger than 5.7 gallons apiece.

The right to vote, as well as the principle of “one person, one vote,” are cornerstones of our democracy. The anti-slavery, women’s suffrage, and civil rights movements as well as the expansion of voting to young people are all part of the history of electoral reform in this country. Equally fundamental is the assurance that each voter knows that her or his vote counts and is counted as intended. At this time in our history, many have lost confidence in our voting system.

Tsotsi: Written and directed by Gavin Hood, based on the book by Athol Fugard. Running time: 94 minutes.

Tsotsi, the recent Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Film, is currently playing at the Drexel East Theater. The film centers on a young hoodlum (Presley Chweneyagae) from the Soweto township of Johannesburg, South Africa. He goes by the name of “Tsotsi,” which is the local street slang for “thug.”

NEW ORLEANS –– In a moment captured from a page of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, thousands of disenchanted citizens marched across the Crescent City Connection Bridge on Saturday, seeking the right of displaced New Orleans citizens to vote in the election scheduled April 22.

After fiery speeches delivered on the grounds of the Ernest M. Morial Convention Center by leaders of the civil rights movement, politicians and celebrities, such as Rev. Jesse Jackson, the president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, Rev. Al Sharpton, president of the National Action Network, and celebrity Judge Greg Mathis, the marchers crossed the Crescent City Connection Bridge, spanning the Mississippi River, where thousands of New Orleans citizens were stranded after Hurricane Katrina and the floodwaters of the Gulf of Mexico caused devastation in the city last summer.

A serious question has been raised as to how C. Ellen Connally, a little-known, underfunded, African-American municipal judge from Cleveland, running for Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court against a well-financed incumbent, could have received more votes than John Kerry in 12 counties in Ohio. Not just a larger percentage of the vote. She drew more votes than John Kerry in these counties, in a race for Chief Justice that drew 1,195,882 fewer votes, statewide, than did the presidential race. The matter will be forever known, in the words of Reverend Jesse Jackson, as “The Connally Anomaly.”

The 12 counties are: Auglaize, Brown, Butler, Clermont, Darke, Highland, Mercer, Miami, Putnam, Shelby, Van Wert, and Warren.

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TALLY OF REJECTED PROVISIONAL BALLOTS, HAMILTON COUNTY, BY LOCATION

Cincinnati        3179
Harrison            60
Cleves              40
Loveland            34
North Bend           9
Miamitown            7
Terrace Park         5
Hamilton             4
Hooven               2
Addyston             1
Pisgah               1
Subtotal          3342
 

TALLY OF CHALLENGED VOTERS,
LUCAS COUNTY, BY LOCATION

Ward 8             121
Ward 2             111
Ward 4              76
Ward 6              62
Ward 17             39
Ward 13             32
 
Subtotal           441
 
Toledo             810
Suburbs            120
Total              930

Hollywood’s latest blockbuster V for Vendetta, another comic book adaptation, is the cause to commotion and ongoing discussions. Praised as an anti-authoritarian action film on the one hand, criticized for it’s recasting of current American politics on the other.

Originally a comic produced in the mid 1980s by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, V for Vendetta is about a man who destroys the corrupt state he lives in, promoting Anarchy to the masses all the while.

Obviously, Hollywood twisted this core message so severely, that Alan Moore asked to be withdrawn from all media references and to have his name removed from the film's posters.

"One of the things I objected to in the recent film ... recasting it as current American neo-conservatism vs. current American liberalism. There wasn't a mention of anarchy as far as I could see."

Alan Moore started working on the novel around 1981, a time of severe political insecurity in Britain. Margret Thatcher had been in power for two years. There were riots all over the country and fascists groups, trying to make political capital out of what were fairly depressed and jobless times.

"V For Vendetta"
Directed by James McTeigue
Written by Andy and Larry Wachowski
Based on the graphic novel by Alan Moore
Running Time, 132 mins

Does the name Clint Curtis ring a bell? It should. He’s the computer programmer from Florida who passed a polygraph test a year ago, strengthening the case that Rep. Tom Feeney had committed election fraud in 2000.

In October 2000, Clint was working for an Oveido software firm, Yang Enterprises. At a company meeting attended by Feeney (who was then a Florida state legislator and Yang’s attorney and lobbyist), Feeney asked Curtis to devise a vote-rigging prototype to “control Democratic fraud in South Florida.” Curtis obliged, not realizing at the time that Feeney was engaging in projection…his true motive was to rig the election for the Republicans.