Musicians of all stripes are coming out to support the new film “Countdown to Zero,” which documents the rise of nuclear weapons and advocates the urgent need to to secure loose nukes and eventually eliminate all weapons of mass destruction.
Macy Gray, Ok Go, and Weezer are just a few of the bands urging their fans to see the movie and rally support for it across the nation.
Directed by Lucy Walker, the creators of the film described it in a press release as
trac[ing] the history of the atomic bomb from its origins to the present state of global affairs: nine nations possessing nuclear weapons capabilities with others racing to join them, with the world held in a delicate balance that could be shattered by an act of terrorism, failed diplomacy, or a simple accident. Written and directed by acclaimed documentarian Lucy Walker (The Devil’s Playground, Blindsight), the film features an array of important international figures, including President Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, Pervez Musharraf and Tony Blair. It makes a compelling case for eliminating all nuclear weapons worldwide, an issue more topical than ever with world leaders working to achieve this goal today.
Watch a preview below.
For more information and to buy tickets, visit GlobalZero.org
(CNN) — Six months after a devastating earthquake struck Haiti, most governments that promised money to help rebuild the country have not delivered any funds at all, a CNN investigation has found.
Donors promised $5.3 billion at an aid conference in March, about two months after the earthquake — but less than 2 percent of that money has been handed over so far to the United Nations-backed body set up to handle it.
Only four countries have paid anything at all: Brazil, Norway, Estonia and Australia.
The United States pledged $1.15 billion. It has paid nothing, with the money tied up in the congressional appropriations process.
Venezuela promised even more — $1.32 billion. It has also paid nothing, although it has written off some of Haiti’s debt.
Former President Bill Clinton, a U.N. special envoy for Haiti, said he plans to put pressure on governments that have been slow to deliver on their promises.
“I’m going to call all those governments and say, the ones who said they’ll give money to support the Haitian government, I want to try to get them to give the money, and I’m trying to get the others to give me a schedule for when they’ll release it,” Clinton told CNN’s Anderson Cooper earlier this week.
He said the worldwide economic crisis was at least partly to blame.
“I think that they’re all having economic trouble, and they want to hold their money as long as possible,” Clinton said.
Altogether, about $506 million has been disbursed to Haiti since the donors’ conference in March, said Jehane Sedky of the U.N. Development Program.
That’s about 9 percent of the money that was pledged. But about $200 million was money that had been in the pipeline for aid work before the earthquake, and about another $200 million went directly to the government of Haiti to help it get back on its feet, Sedky explained.
That has left the commission with about $90 million in donations since the conference, Sedky said.
There is some dispute about the World Bank’s contribution
The bank says it has made available $479 million dollars, and of that $56.6 million has “already been used” for different government-led projects. The World Bank says that this money was provided directly to the Haitian government and did not go into the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission.
After more than a year of virulent debate, Democrats marched through a throng of jeering protesters, whose slurs recalled a Washington of the 1960s — when the party forced civil rights legislation and Medicare through a fiercely divided Congress. Against unified Republican opposition, they built on that foundation Sunday with the passage of a health care reform bill that extends coverage to 32 million Americans and tightly regulates the insurance industry.
“It is with great humility and with great pride that we tonight will make history for our country and progress for the American people,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) before the vote to a standing ovation on one side of the aisle and silence on the other. “Just think–we will be joining those who established Social Security, Medicare, and now tonight, health care for all Americans.”
From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.
Bill Maher Explains Why You Should Move Your Money (VIDEO)
On the eve of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission’s first day of hearings, where the CEOs of four of America’s largest banks are scheduled to testify about the banks’ roles in the financial meltdown, Bill Maher explains why you should move your money out of a “too big to fail” bank and put it into a local community bank or credit union.
According to Maher: “This is not a conservative idea or a liberal idea. It’s not left or right. It’s populism at its best.”
Too-big-to-fail banks are profiting from bailout dollars and government guarantees, and growing bigger.
Find community banks in your neighborhood now!
Last week, over a pre-Christmas dinner, a group of people, along with political strategist Alexis McGill, filmmaker/author Eugene Jarecki, and Nick Penniman of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, began talking about the huge, growing chasm between the fortunes of Wall Street banks and Main Street banks, and started discussing what concrete steps individuals could take to help create a better financial system. Before long, the conversation turned practical, and with some help from friends in the world of bank analysis, a video and website were produced devoted to a simple idea: Move Your Money.
