Guerilla Traveler - Have pen, will travel..

Christopher Hitchens is gone. The strident writer and proponent of rationalism in an increasingly superficial pop culture world, he took shots at sacred cows from Mother Teresa to Arab Terrorism. Dead of cancer at age 62, he was my favorite TV talker and essayist. He will be sorely missed.

Michael Ruppert is a voice crying in the cyber wilderness. Like many of us he has watched for twenty years and more as politicians and corporations have raped the world for profit without conscience. Ruppert is a rare voice. He is Job of the 21at century. if he weren't so frighteningly brilliant, it would be easy to dismiss his cogency as the bright man's paranoia. But Ruppert is not only compelling, he is chillingly accurate. The apocalypse is already here. "This is the way the world ends . . . not with a bang but a whimper . . . "

Christopher Hitchens is unwell. In fact he is dying. Let alone the details. You may google them. CH is the finest polemicist and essay-writing journalist operating during the last 20 years of my own sporadic career in reporting. I have often admired but never envied him. His screeds, diatribes and quips, not to mention his various books including The Missionary Postion in which he evicerates the saccharin memory of Mother Theresa along with God is Not Great in which he takes on the Boss (not Bruce Springsteen) himself, are as remarkable for their erudition as they are for their readability. No easy task. Along with William F. Buckley, Ch has been my favorite public speaker for as long as I can remember. They even appeared together at least once (see youtube) and though remarkably different in many aspects-- Buckley being a devout Catholic and avowed anti-Marxist-- they found civilized common ground on which to converse, not least of all because CH has long been, since at least the time of the fatwa imposed on Salman Rushdie, an indefatigable opponent of Islamis fascism. They also saw common sense in the need to legalise drugs . . . In short Hitchens is a mensch, whether or not you agree with him.

Eleven years in the making, FUEL is the in-depth personal journey of filmmaker and eco-evangelist Josh Tickell, who takes us on a hip, fast-paced road trip into America’s dependence on foreign oil. Combining a history lesson of the US auto and petroleum industries and interviews with a wide range of policy makers, educators, and activists such as Woody Harrelson, Sheryl Crow, Neil Young and Willie Nelson. Animated by powerful graphics, FUEL looks into our future offering hope via a wide-range of renewable energy and bio-fuels. Winner of the Sundance Audience Award. The events of Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina factor in both visually and thematically, providing provocative anchors for the movie’s indictment of what Tickell believes is the Big Oil-cozy, ecologically indifferent Bush administration. Johnny O’Hara’s WGA Award-nominated script doesn’t dwell on muckraking, however; it’s more focused on broadly inspiring viewers than preaching to the converted. Interviews with a wide range of environmentalists, policy makers and educators, along with such “green” celebrities as Woody Harrelson, Sheryl Crow and Larry Hagman offer serious fuel for thought – as well as for action. Smartly animated interstitials, memorable archival material and a lively soundtrack round out the fast-paced proceedings.