Can Reality TV finally help solve an ongoing world conflict? Wouldn't you watch a Survivor Special featuring groups representing Hezballah, Hamas, Israel, and maybe even Al Queda? You probably think I'm joking, yet I'm couldn't be more serious. Think of the benefits. Rather than simply hear about the everyday bombings and threats of violence that are always attached to the usual suspects, we get to really know these different factions on a level never witnessed before. Survior has been known to depart from the first season formula that many other reality television shows have since emulated and with that in mind, I don't believe anyone would need to be sent off the show on a weekly basis, instead the point would be get to know all four groups over the course of a full season's worth of shows. Isn't it time to get a different perspective on different groups of people that for the most part are only known to the industrialized world as being warriors? Wouldn't it be great if a reality television show for once could actually help put a spotlight on a divisive situation and perhaps help heal an unending toxic situation? The world awaits "Survivor and the Middle East".

The Coors "love train" television commercial tried to make us feel cool during one of the hottest summers ever recorded in the U.S. by drinking their beer. An animated Icy Coors train travels at a high rate of speed and smashes through somebody's overly hot party, instantly "cooling it down". Most trains don't go 300 miles an hour, nor are they icy cold, but if one did and it came crashing through my party I doubt I'd be celebrating. But maybe Coors is onto something and perhaps their somewhat implausible but pioneering commercial may have started the next big thing. A really big chunk of the polar ice caps recently broke away from the Artic. Rather than be an alarmist and claim that Global Warming caused it, lets turn what the Al Gores of the world would call a calamitous event into a situation that actually creates jobs and economic prosperity. This recently departed Ice cap is pretty darn big and has me wondering, can we harness the magnificence of this Ice Cap for economic gain and prosperity? That's right, I'm talking the Polar Ice Cap Victory Tour! Unlike any other amusement park ever created by humankind, this one would come to you as it floated past your city by the sea! The Polar Ice Cap Victory Tour would feature real life Eskimos, Penguins and Polar Bears in a light-hearted romp as they tell their tale of anguish and woe about living so far away from civilization, and malls. Disney could provide several ice-tastic rides for children of all ages! It will be refreshingly chilly on the Polar Ice Cap Victory Tour so furs could even make a one day comeback. Nagging issues like all the dead animals it takes to make one fur coat would be passe for the day. Ice Hockey and speed skating would do well with the men. In what might be considered the first ever "humane zoo", caged animals would be kept behind icycle bars instead of steel and the animals would have the luxury of seeing the coastline pass on by in the background as they refresh themselves with icicle lattes, what could be more humane than that, besides actually being free? Ice Capades would be another surefire (oops) way to bring families to "The Cap" by the thousands. Yes, "A Cap is born", "Lets go to the Cap", the next big phrase. In an effort to promote energy conservation, "people pooling" to the Polar Ice Cap Victory Tour would be the order of the day. Solar Powered Polar Ice Cap Victory Tour Speed Boats would pick up anxiously awaiting crowds for their day at the Cap. To stay true to the environment, only meltable foods would be served, and therein lies the ultimate beauty of this idea. Assuming the Polar Ice Cap Victory Tour eventually melts, nothing will be left behind because it will all have been returned to the sea in a non polluting form! Even Polar Bears, who don't swim very well anyways, will be returned to the sea as a new food source for what some are currently calling our "starving oceans". However, as good an idea as this is, what makes it an idea that Wall Street would love is the instant economic gratification it will provide to investors. The seafaring Polar Ice cap is available right now! Investor start up costs would be minimal and infrastructure is already in place so research costs won't be necessary. An investment opportunity that can harvest an existing resource for maximum profits without spending a dollar on research and engineering, why it's the perfect Wall Street Investment! As all News programs remind us every day, hour upon hour, if it's good for Wall Street, than it HAS to be good for you! But what about after the Polar Ice Cap Victory Tour melts away, then what? There is hope. Alaska has some of the biggest oil reserves in the world. Quite possibly even as the first Polar Ice Cap Victory Tour is bringing happiness and economic prosperity to coastal cities around the globe a new polar ice cap could be created right where the old one used to dock. Sure it may take vast amounts of ice machines working around the clock to make enough ice for a second Polar Ice Cap, but that just means even more jobs and economic prosperity for the indigenous people living at the poles. But how could a new Polar Ice Cap be made so quickly? The answer my friend, is underneath the ground. Clearly, God put oil underneath the Polar Ice Caps so we could use the petroleum to power ice making machines. Rather than wasting fuel to power oil tankers that transport Arctic oil to other parts of the world, the oil can stay right where it is as fuel for all of the ice making machines required to generate new Polar Ice Caps! Reduced shipments of oil via oil tankers means less oil tanker accidents, another environmental benefit that can be added to this remarkable idea. If Global Warming eventually becomes a far off possibility in the way too distant future, perhaps taking action now has it's advantages. The Polar Ice Cap Victory Tour will simply grow in popularity as the earth warms up even more. I don't know about you, but when it's a 120 degrees out, I think I know where I'll want to be, galvanting on the my favorite floating and very cool amusement park! Just another plus to this innovative idea that surely makes it a Wall Street Stock Market dream investment. The Polar Ice Cap that recently broke away from the Artic and is currently floating along the oceans of the world is the little Polar Ice Cap that could, the one that thought it could break away, and now it has. This Brave Polar Ice Cap has sent out a Global polar flare and now it's time for us to take this Ice Cap's warning message and change it to one of good times and cheer, afterall, that is what our media and Wall Street does best. Hooray! Alessandro Machi

Isn't it scandalous to suddenly make such a HUGE Media Publicity Scapegoat out of one person who flew to various places around the world when they had TB? Are we to believe that in the last 30 years and millions of airline flights that NOBODY has ever flown before who had TB? Is it now evident that in the near future all airline passengers will have to be "tested" for communicable diseases just prior to boarding an airplane? If the Media TB Terror Alert didn't convince you that your rights to move around the United States and other countries as well have now been further compromised, just wait until terrorists simply annoint their own with communicable diseases and send them merrily around the world to contaminate a ton more people than a bomb can maim. A whole new industry, one that "tests" people for communicable diseases right before boarding a plane may have just been born, and all it took was the Media's public outing and persecution of one American Citizen to do it. Has some business entity used the U.S. Media to ratchet up the demand for their own medical testing product? Uh oh, maybe it is time to suppress the media. It truly looks like we're damned if we do suppress the media, and damned if we don't.

How many here know that years ago Al Sharpton was directly involved in public demonstrations which included provocative chanting that led to the killing of an innocent person? It's sad to see the mainstream media rely on Mr. Sharpton and Mr. Jackson to evoke change when both men have on occasion behaved inappropriately. To me that just means nothing has really changed, the torch of inappropriateness has simply been passed from Mr. Imus to Mr. Sharpton and Mr. Jackson. Snoop Dog's recent explanation about why it was ok for himself but not outsiders to call women in his own neighborhood derogatory names left out one undeniable truth. Snoop Dog profited by calling women from his neighborhood derogatory names, which makes him at the very least no different from those he insulted, and probably worse. After profiting by condemning women for being gold diggers (to put it in a nicer vernacular), how much of that profit has Snoop put back into the very neighborhoods and people he publically criticized? Kudos to the Rutgers collegiate women's basketball team, a basketball team comprised of many nationalities that lost an early season game against Duke by 40 points, but kept improving all season long until they made it to the NCAA Women's championship game. That is one of the real stories regarding the Rutgers Women's NCAA basketball team, yet it didn't get much publicity before, during or after Imus said what he said. I don't understand why it is ok for every, and I mean EVERY radio and television news broadcaster to repeat verbatium, and rerepeat many times thereafter, the exact same comment that Mr. Imus said just once? Assuming the Imus comment was bad the first time Mr. Imus said it, isn't it just as bad the second, and far worse once we have all heard the comment repeated well over a dozen times by the news media? I wish the FCC would fine every "news" station that unnecessarily repeated and rerepeated the unrepeatable Imus phrase under the guise of "breaking news". I don't feel it necessary for newscasters to broadcast over and over a phrase that if I ever were to repeat just once would rightfully land me in trouble.

The one word that President Bush has uttered the most during his presidential tenure is the word freedom. I can recall several speeches where every few sentences the word freedom was used relentlessly by President Bush. It was as if President Bush could not escape from using the word Freedom, ironic as that may seem. But is the word freedom secret wordspeak for something else? Is Freedom a code word for another word that is rarely used in Presidential speeches? Is it also possible that it is not just President Bush that overuses the word freedom? Does our whole society habitually overuse the word freedom when another word is actually meant? Is it possible that whenever we talk about how free we are as a nation, how we are free to follow our dreams, how others have the right to be as free as we are, that we are really talking about something different? Have you been trying to figure out what the mystery word is that we have cast aside and replaced with the word freedom? Is freedom, prosperity? How many times has George Bush used the word freedom when he was really talking about prosperity? How many times do tax protestors talk about freedom from the tyranny of taxation without acknowledging that their desire for freedom is caused by the prosperity generated by law abiding businesses? How often do feminists use the phrase "free to choose" rather than "free to prosper" when they speak about terminating a pregnancy? If you haven't noticed, I am asserting that EVERY political and social group across the entire spectrum of our society prefers to use the word freedom rather than prosperity. Yet is it possible that freedom only exists because prosperity exists? If freedom really existed outside of prosperity, would I not have the right to do a job well done, even if I lost money doing it, for my entire life? If I was truly free to do the publicly acknowledged "right thing", and it caused me to not make a profit and instead lose money, would the government acknowledge my noble goal and waive my taxes? What behavior or act would I be free to continue to do on a regular basis if I was not prosperous, other than be homeless and hungry? If Freedom is a code word for prosperity, then why do we continue to use the word freedom when we really mean prosperity? Could it be that deep down we are ashamed to say we are a prosperous country, nation, people, person? Just what is it that we are ashamed of? Maybe we are not ashamed to use the word prosperity and there is another reason. Is it possible that it would be more difficult to manipulate and convince others if we talked about prosperity rather than freedom? Dare I say that the word freedom is a more manipulative word than the word prosperity? If the word freedom is a word that is used to peacefully manipulate minds, than the word freedom may only exist as an oxymoron. Manipulating others by using the word freedom is an action taken by someone who is not free, but rather driven to be prosperous. When George Bush states that the people of Iraq have the right to be as free as the people of the United States, would that statement carry an equal mandate if he had stated "The people of Iraq have the right to be as prosperous as the people of the United States". Does Iraq have the right to be as prosperous as the United States, or is equal prosperity an immeasurable myth that would never gain public acceptance? Is the word "freedom" the great pacifier that clouds the thinking person from contemplating about prosperity so they instead just go along with the plan at hand? Did George Bush use the word freedom to convince us to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq because his speech writers probably knew that the word prosperity would not be as convincing, or manipulative? If George Bush states that, "Terrorism is threatening your freedom", it becomes easier to then agree that we must defend ourselves against terrorism by going to war. But if George Bush states that "Terrorism is threatening your prosperity", doesn't that make you think for a moment, to ponder why do the terrorists want to stop our prosperity, there must be a reason they don't want us to be prosperous, no??? Our government is not supposed to negotiate with terrorists, and that may be why we are not supposed to question the government when they say our "freedom" is endangered and we must fight to protect it. The problem as I see it is that if we fight a war with the stated goal that that war will help keep us "free", but to win the war we must rely on resources from the very region where the terrorists reside, then that seems to be a contradiction that cannot allow us to either prosper or be free. I believe we can only win a war in Iraq and Afghanistan if we can abstain from their resources, yet remain prosperous while we abstain. If we cannot achieve that agenda, then we need to do much much more than "win" a war, we need to create alternate modes of prosperity that do not rely on the resources of the lands we are fighting wars in. I would ask anyone who has read this editorial that from now on, whenever you hear someone utter the word free, or freedom, that you instantly substitute the word prosperity in it's place and see if that changes how you feel about their statement. At least then you will be listening to an honest accounting as you contemplate how the new found meaning of the message makes you feel.

When people in the United States assemble for a protest, they usually are much calmer than the crowds seen protesting on the "other side of the world".  In the United States there are both industrialized and white collar jobs that appear to be peaceful.  Whether one works on an assembly line piecing together gas guzzling, oil thirsty S.U.V.'s, or one works for a fortune 500 company orchestrating IPO's so that huge malls and corporate villages that straddle pristine forest land can be built, these jobs are considered to be "peaceful" in nature, especially when business is conducted in air conditioned, relatively comfortable surroundings (no disrespect to the miners out there is intended).

I remember watching a public speaker angrily rail about events and travesties that occured over a hundred years ago.  The speaker passionately railed against past social injustices and it was almost as if they were reliving the injustice themselves as they spoke.  "Ok, you are right", I said to myself, "that shouldn't have happened, but if it had not happened, YOU AND I WOULD NOT EXIST TODAY!"