Despite calls from the Obama administration and other members of the international community, Israeli settlers continue to occupy parts of the West Bank, in violation of the Geneva Convention and Israeli law. For the Palestinians, this means continual harassment, pressure, and intimidation as settlers attempt to force them from their homes. And the ongoing power struggle within the Palestinian government isn’t helping things, either.
To the apparent consternation of the Israeli government, the issue of the settlements has been brought front and center, and it’s not something that will be settled soon, nor easily. Episode 4 of “Political Graffiti” examines the problem from the ground level.
The anticipated demand for newspaper keepsakes of Tuesday’s election raised alarm bells at Freecyle NYC, the cyber-swap freebie message board that turns one person’s trash into another’s treasure. (We scored some boxes and bubble wrap from there last spring for a big office move.) Seems that multiple requests for Wednesday’s papers threatened to jam the message boards and Freecycle’s moderators sent an email today asking that people hold off on posts asking for day-old papers:
Freecycle’s mission is to keep stuff out of landfills, and newspapers would be recycled anyway, and valuable ones as these are either kept as treasures or sold, so we moderators have to decide whether the extra hundred wanted posts for the same item might actually do some good or are just clogging our mailing list and all our inboxes uselessly.
That, and the papers are selling for over $100 on eBay. Freecycle’s moderator says memento seekers should “realize that if you don’t have yesterday’s historical newpaper already, the chances of getting one on Freecycle right now are as low as getting a computer or a car.”
We’ve been listening to the candidates tell us what they what they promise to do. At the end of the long campaign season we tracked down someone to tell us what they HAVE to do.
Three years after our first trip to Afghanistan the country is spinning out of control. What are the candidates going to do to stabilize the region after seven years?
Things are getting expensive in the land of the petroleum junkies. We drove our guzzler minivan across the country to ask farmers and politicians how they were handling the increase in the price of. . . everything.
Expensive gas is just the tip of the iceberg. We talk with Congressman Ron Paul and the Wise Men of Abeline, KS about what the candidates can really do about the economy.
