Posted 11:44 PM by Blah blah

Adam Felber: Funniest Political Blog

Once more, check out Fanatical Apathy, the funniest blog about current events I've ever seen. It makes me laugh like crazy! Its sharp, timely humor rivals that of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central. (The Daily Show is also damned funny and the best political TV humor we have now. This show is funnier and smarter than Letterman. See their video clips on the web.)

The writer, Adam Felber, is in New York City. He's a panelist on that funny, intelligent show on National Public Radio, "Wait Wait---Don't Tell Me!" It's a quiz show about the weekly news. Adam "writes and performs for screens of all sizes and resolutions, and spends almost every night on some stage or another. He comprises exactly one half of the Irwin Smalls Trio, a sketch comedy duo. His writing credits include PBS' Wishbone, and his first screenplay, Women Are From, is currently in development at Paramount/MTV Films. Felber has been improvising comedy all over the world for the past 15 years."

Please Watch Avoiding Armageddon! Tamil Tigers

Tonight I saw Part 3 of Avoiding Armageddon. They covered some of the people, ideas, politics, history, and environments that lead people to turn to terrorism. Again, I keep promoting this TV program (9 pm EST, PBS, April 14-17) because I think it profoundly affects all of us, whether we like it or not.

We all must be informed of what is out there and why perfectly reasonable, educated, well-off people STILL decide it makes sense to bomb and kill innocent people.

Please make an effort to watch Part 4, the last episode, tomorrow night.

Tonight's show interviewed children who had been persuaded to join the Tamil Tigers. I didn't know much about them and it shocked me.

The Tamil Tigers are a rebel group in Sri Lanka, the tiny land off the southeast coast of India. Sri Lanka holds a Tamil minority population. They have been fighting the Sri Lankan government, with terrorist tactics, for 20 YEARS. They want a separate Tamil nation. In the process, more than 64,000 people have died.

What's more shocking is they actively recruit and train a huge proportion of CHILDREN to fight. See some of the child soldiers' pictures.

Avoiding Armageddon interviewed a young person who had done well in the Tigers. He joined because his parents had been killed by Sri Lankan soldiers some years back, and he wanted revenge. He talked of their training. He didn't really know the pros and cons for doing what he did. His leaders didn't teach much politics. They mainly taught how to kill. Tigers are not allowed to leave or quit the organization. People dispersed in the group keep a close eye on possible dissent. People who leave are considered traitors.

We are talking about 12-16 year old kids, carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles. This boy did well in his initial assignments, so they "promoted" him to a special group within the Tigers. They didn't tell him what it was for, and he just obeyed orders. This group, which got special glory and honor from the Tigers' head commander, was trained to do suicide bombing against Sri Lankan officers.

Yup, all that work was for these kids to go kill themselves. They wear pouches that hold plastic explosives. Each group member gets a vial of cyanide to wear around his neck. If caught, he's supposed to kill himself with it and preserve all the Tiger secrets.

This boy, who kept his identity secret, ultimately chickened out of suicide bombing and left the Tamil Tigers. But the thousands of other child soldiers, in Sri Lanka, the Gaza Strip, and elsewhere, keep growing.