One of the things that used to bother me about printed newspapers in particular -- and all the other news media, to an extent -- was how poorly they followed up on news stories. Big ones that had extended developments, from Vietnam and Watergate to the Gulf oil spill, will generate enough fodder for continuing coverage, but many small, eye-catching stories pop up for a day or a week, and then sink almost without a trace (unless, as in the case of an Octomom or Sarah Palin, they fight desperately to create more breaking news, and in those cases you don’t want to hear any more about them).
The Internet has made this somewhat easier to remedy; as long as you can remember the story (not an easy task, with a constant flood of distracting new events) and the names involved (even more difficult), a Google News search might enable you follow up, if there was anything further.
Going back nearly to the launch of American Currents at the start of last November, here are updates on some of the more interesting stories we tackled.
On October 12, 2009, 15-year-old Michael Brewer (shown here) allegedly doused 15-year-old Matthew Bent with rubbing alcohol and set him on fire after a dispute over payment for a video game. Bent suffered third-degree burns over 65 percent of his body and remained in critical condition for weeks, unable to speak and under heavy sedation. Brewer and two friends were charged by the Broward County, Florida district attorney with second-degree attempted murder, to be tried as adults.
I argued that teenagers should not be tried as adults, because they cannot be held fully responsible for their actions. Inadequate sentencing guidelines should be adjusted to punish heinous crimes for longer than currently allowed, however, and to include community service that requires a perpetrator to help care for his victim and others like him in the hope that this will awaken a sense in the convict of the enormity of the crime.
The victim Bent was released from the hospital after intensive rehabilitation and started school in Palm Beach County in April. Today Brewer, Denver Jarvis, and Jesus Mendez remain in jail awaiting trial. They face 25 years to life in prison if convicted. Jeremy Jarvis, 13, a younger brother of one of the accused and one of five originally taken in custody for the Bent incident but not charged, was arrested June 16 for an alleged burglary on May 24 to steal a Nintendo Wii.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder stated last year that the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, would proceed in civilian court in Manhattan. Critics argued that the case should be heard before a military tribunal, and in a less provocative location -- one that would not invite another terrorist attack, and would be less traumatic for survivors of 9/11 -- outside the city. I argued that a civilian trial in New York was the best way to show how we uphold the values we stand for in front of the eyes of the world, as well as trust the huge Homeland Security superstructure devised and financed by the Bush administration. (We do trust it, don’t we?)
In February, however, Holder and the White House left open the possibility that the trial, thus far unscheduled, could be moved from federal court to the military justice system. The appointment of a respected ex-Navy lawyer to oversee military war crimes trials was seen as a possible step in that direction. James Cole, a longtime friend of Holder who was nominated to be deputy attorney general in June, also said he would consider the use of both civilian and military courts to try terrorists.
In a speech in Grand Rapids, Mich. on June 2, former President Bush said his administration had waterboarded Mohammed and “I would do it again to save lives.” (Not that anybody’s offered any more proof that this has actually happened, any more than there were WMDs in Iraq. Note also that the U.S. prosecuted Japanese soldiers after World War II for doing the same thing … which suggests that might, not righteousness, makes right, apparently.)
Released in mid November, a Hollywood thriller called “2012” depicted a world cataclysm supposedly predicted by the ancient Mayan calendar and expected to occur Dec. 21, 2012. In its opening weekend, the film raked in $65 million at the box office in the U.S., and $225 million worldwide. It subsequently made at least $150 million a week for the ensuing 10 weeks. Never mind that plenty of experts told the media the movie badly misinterprets Mayan cosmology. The American Currents crew were pretty blasé. I predicted a fairly imminent end of the world as we know it, but not that soon.
Of course there’s been no end of other predictions for potential mid-sized disasters. Just in the past week, NASA’s Helophysics division predicted significant solar storm activity, a combination of its 22-year magnetic energy cycle and the peak of an 11-year sun spot cycle, for the end of 2012 and early 2013 that could cause ripples in the Earth’s magnetic field and more damage than Hurricane Katrina – just in time to disrupt the 2012 London Olympics. Astronomer Chris Impey noted in the London Independent that a meteor crashes into the Earth with the force of a nuclear blast about once every 100 years.
The Gulf of Mexico oil spill that commenced on April 20 offered us a whole new vision for how the world (as we know it) might end. To date, somewhere between 25 and 42 million gallons of crude oil have erupted into the ocean; more than 900 animals, from pelicans and gulls to turtles and porpoises, have reportedly died; about 78,264 square miles of the Gulf are closed to fishing; and “dead zones” where oxygen has all but disappeared from the water and fish cannot survive are turning up as deep as 3,300 feet down. When the hurricane season starts up fairly soon, who knows where the goo could end up: Spain, Portugal, France, Ireland?
To many Americans, the scope of the disaster is hard to comprehend because we can’t really see much of it yet; but trust me, we will. As of today’s writing, the news is that sharks, dolphins, and other deep water dwellers are showing up along the Gulf coast, apparently to escape the black death. And all this is just a harbinger of what’s to come.
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