Word: townes
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...have a small model of it that's a foot high. It's gold. I'm naked on a rearing horse. I have a modest loincloth on. It's this rather wonderful homoerotic work of art that I was hoping to put in the middle of this tiny little town where I was born. Unfortunately the fortunes of Warracknabeal are so grim at the moment with the recession and this chronic drought that's going on that it feels a little in bad taste to erect a giant gold statue...
...open for cultural interpretation. Dolphin meat - like whale - contains high levels of mercury, and at its highest instances, the concentration of methyl mercury in bottlenose dolphin meat is 32 times the limit set by Japan's Health Ministry. School children in Taiji eat dolphin, like the rest of the town's population. Junichiro Yamashita, who years ago raised national awareness of dolphin meat's health risks as Taiji's local assemblyman, was interviewed for the film along with current assemblyman Hisato Ryono. But Ryono, who was touted as a hero on the mercury issue in the documentary, told a local...
...Killing dolphins for meat is a cultural issue on both sides of the debate. While cute and often anthropomorphized, dolphins, unlike some whale populations hunted by Japanese fishermen, are not endangered. The film editorializes that the statues and images of whales and dolphins in Taiji purposefully hide the town's dark secret of killing the animals. But the Japanese have a history of venerating and praying for animals that die for the well-being of humans and sometimes erect statues and hold festivals to comfort the animals' souls. What might be considered macabre or inappropriate by Western standards...
Business magnate Salah Ezzeddine was known as a pious, generous man. Hailing from a small Shi'ite Muslim town in southern Lebanon, he was a success story among the country's poorest, historically marginalized religious sect. With his reputation for generosity (he built a stadium and a mosque for his hometown of Maaroub, sponsored pilgrimages to Mecca and published children's books), few were suspicious when Ezzeddine promised investors a share of his business with the lure of outstanding returns - from 20% to 40% - and few details of how the plan worked or guarantees or paperwork. Still, what he seemed...
...able to gain people's confidence easily due to his connections with Hizballah," says Mohammad Duhaini, the mayor of Toura, another town in southern Lebanon, where he says at least 250 people invested with Ezzeddine. Says Duhaini: "Most of those who dealt with him were supporters of Hizballah [and] many people were encouraged to do business with Ezzeddine due to Hizballah's propaganda for him." Indeed, one Hizballah source told TIME that some top leaders did business with Ezzeddine. The Lebanese press has published unsubstantiated reports that his enterprise collapsed when a check he wrote to a senior Hizballah official...