Another long overdue roundup

Newly discovered Brazilian tribe

I've had one test after another this week, which is why updates are so slow. Here is a list of long overdue items, over the past two weeks:

Brazil: The photo above is a very, very rare event in the world today. A tribe in the Amazon jungle that has never had contact with the outside world. In photos, you can see red painted warriors pointing bows at the aircraft, and one black painted individual (maybe a woman?).

Ethiopia: Ethiopia is in the midst of another serious famine and drought, no doubt exacerbated by the rising price of food around the world. But there's another reason. The fertility rate in Ethiopia is 7.07- one of the highest in the world. That means that the average woman in Ethiopia has more than a staggering 7 children in her lifetime. Compare this to the United States, where the rate is only 2.27. If Ethiopia wanted to get serious about it ever being a viable nation in the future, they would take a hard look into trying to get control of their skyrocketing population growth, in a country that is already struggling simply to feed the people who are here now.

Caribbean: Barely mentioned in the papers, but in another black mark in history, the Caribbean monk seal is now officially extinct. Hawaiian and Mediterranean monk seals will be the next to go. Their numbers stand at only 1200 and 500, respectively.

Kenya: Wild lions are not so far behind the monk seals.

UK: Total vindication. Police apologize and are forced to pay a fine for unjustly prosecuting a news program for airing video of inflammatory remarks, rather than the mosque that made those remarks. I covered this story earlier here.

Maine, USA: An author makes a wildly irresponsible claim that Roosevelt and Churchill were war criminals on the same level as Hitler, and of course, some people just eat this tuff up.

Massachusetts, USA: In another chapter in the annals of zero tolerance insanity, a fourth-grader was suspended from school for bringing a shell casing to class. An empty shell casing. In other words, a small piece of metal with no value as a weapon whatsoever. A pencil is more dangerous. When school administrators interpret these kinds of rules, it would be nice if they tried to keep in mind what the reason was for these rules in the first place. I can assure you, the punishments were not supposed to be so arbitrary. I hope the family pursues legal action.

Hollywood: To some people, race is everything. Director Spike Lee recently criticized director Clint Eastwood for having no black characters his films "Flags of our fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima", both of which dealt with the invasion of Iwo Jima in 1945. The films were incredible; one dealt with the marines who raised the flag on the island, and the other was from the Japanese point of view. The problem is, people like Spike Lee want nothing less than a full racial distortion of history; the characters in the movies were people in real life - none of whom were black. Why is that so hard for Mr. Lee to understand? After Mr. Eastwood told Lee to "shut his face", Lee responded with "we're not on a plantation anymore", proving his obsession with race yet again.

Zimbabwe: In a new low, Robert Mugabe supporters burn a woman alive.

UK: Sometimes it seems as if WWII is never truly over. Another war-era bomb is found in London, this one 2,000lbs!

UK: An "asian" policeman (a sikh) wins a settlement for racial discrimination for an outrageous third time. His payments so far total £300,000 (about $580,000 US). Sounds like detective work doesn't pay nearly as much as the lucrative side job of racial discrimination complaints...

USA: As a veteran, I realize that PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) can be a serious condition. I'll also tell you it is one of the most overdiagnosed and easily faked conditions there are. Especially when it can involve disability payments. But to show how explosive the issue is, when one doctor, Norma Perez, simply asks her colleagues to be more careful in their diagnosis, all hell breaks loose, and he is forced to apologize. Absolutely shameful - on the part of the hospital for not supporting her, and on the part of VoteVets.org, and anti-war organization that has been deliberately manipulating this this issue and twisting it into a "scandal".

France: A muslim man who physically prevented a male doctor from attending to his wife during childbirth, showed incredible gall by attempting to sue the hospital for 100,000 Euros, after the child was born with severe neurological problems. The court rejected his claim, and fined him 1000 Euros instead. The child is severely handicapped. The man should have been jailed.

UK: A man moves into his new home to find a family of 20 illegal immigrants already living in his attic.

Australia: It boggles the mind - court approves a sex change operation for a 12 year old girl. Oh, and it's all taxpayer funded, of course. The father objects, but nobody is listening to him.