Follow Amanpour on Twitter & Facebook
What time is Amanpour on?
Check showtimes to see when the program airs on CNN where you are. Or watch online.
Egypt’s Jon Stewart getting laughs amidst turmoil
By Samuel Burke and Claire Calzonetti, CNN
For years, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has been one of the most influential shows on American television.Similar programs have popped up all over the globe, and now it’s Egypt’s turn.
Bassem Youssef is the host of "Al Bernameg,” (“The Program”), and you don’t have to speak Arabic to see the similarities between Stewart and Youseff. Their studios and even their mannerisms look the same.
A trained heart surgeon, Youssef started the satirical show from his apartment and posted his work on YouTube. It became so popular that a major Egyptian channel picked it up.
Youssef is not scared to take on anybody, even Egypt`s new president, Mohamed Morsy, whom Youssef dubbed “SuperMorsi” in a recent program. FULL POST
How to jump-start a movement: changing U.S. gun culture
By Mick Krever, CNN
Want to change American gun culture? Ask Candace Lightner.Thirty years ago, she did more than almost anyone else to change another seemingly entrenched aspect of American culture: drunk driving.
When her 13-year-old daughter was struck and killed by a drunk driver, there was a cavalier attitude towards driving under the influence.
“Unlike gun violence, which has always been abhorred, drunk driving was joked about, talked about, accepted,” Lightner told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an exclusive interview on Thursday. “I called it the only socially acceptable form of homicide in this country.”
Lightner founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) – her first office was in her daughter’s bedroom – and became a fierce advocate for change.
“My first thought was to protect my children and anyone else from seeing this happen,” she said. “My second thought was to punish the man who was responsible for the crime. The third thought actually was to change the system that I felt allowed this man to continue to drink and drive.”
Lightner said she, from the very beginning, had a broad strategy for her campaign. She worked on every level of American society, from neighborhood groups to the president, Ronald Reagan, encouraging them to form task forces and change laws.
For the advocates of change in the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Lightner distilled four critical elements from her fight: passion, practicality, public support, and an appeal to personal accountability.
Activists already have the passion and public support, she said, though they must seize the momentum of support before it inevitably fades. The practicality, she said, “is hard to understand in the beginning.”
As she successfully lobbied her governor at the time, Jerry Brown, and President Reagan to organize drunk driving task forces, she encouraged them to bring all stake holders to the table.
The alcohol industry was vehemently opposed to raising the drinking age to twenty one, she said, but “if you can get them to agree to most of it, you will get [the initiatives] passed, and you can move forward. But you need everybody involved.”
The NRA, Lightner admits, is a more formidable foe than the alcohol industry, which had no inherent stake in allowing people to drink and drive.
But allowing such easy access to guns is “like leaving your [car] keys around the house when you have an alcoholic in the home,” she said.
As for President Obama’s promise to “pull together real reforms right now,” Lightner was skeptical.
“I honestly believe that we need to do much more,” she said. “I’ve heard wonderful suggestions on this show and other shows over the past few days – they’re going to go into the [ether]. They’re not going to go anywhere, unless you get all of these people together and you actually make a plan to adopt these solutions.”
CNN's Ken Olshansky produced this story for televison.
How moms can stop America’s gun violence
By Samuel Burke and Lucky Gold, CNN
Could a grass roots movement change America's permissive gun laws in the wake of the massacre of six- and seven-year-olds?It happened thirty years ago, when a grieving mother named Candy Lightner turned her anguish into action and created Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or “MADD”.
She did that in 1980, just days after she buried her 13-year-old daughter Cari. MADD’s first office was Cari's bedroom.
From there she launched a movement that changed the way Americans and America’s laws treat drunk driving. And it soon spread to the rest of the world. MADD now has 600 chapters in all fifty states.
The result?
Since 1991, drunk driving deaths have been cut by almost 40%. And for the first time on record, the number of alcohol-related traffic deaths dipped below ten thousand.
The loss of one child helped change America’s drinking culture.
Will the loss of twenty young lives mark a sea change when it comes to tolerating military style weapons on America's streets?
The risk of daring to disagree with the NRA
By Samuel Burke, CNN
Tennessee lawmaker Debra Maggart was a lifetime member of America’s most powerful gun lobby, the National Riffle Association.She had an A+ rating with the group and even supported allowing guns in bars.
But when Maggart decided not to back a bill allowing guns in cars – even on properties where the owners did not want guns- the NRA turned against her.
The group did everything in its power to ensure her election defeat.
They succeeded.
FULL POST
Could the NRA become obsolete?
By Samuel Burke, CNN
The NRA might run the risk of being obsolete, according to Eliot Spitzer.The former New York governor says America's most powerful gun lobby has two choices: Either it can "revert to their normal posture ... and refuse to compromise," Spitzer told CNN's Christiane Amanpour in an interview Monday. Or, he believes, the NRA can pivot: remain strong gun advocates, but encourage their membership in to help limit certain gun rights.
If they do not, Spitzer believes the organization runs the risk of becoming politically irrelevant and their membership might drift away.
FULL POST
Tom Brokaw: Risks and rewards from warzone reporting
By Samuel Burke, CNN
Veteran anchor Tom Brokaw kept tabs on his colleague, Richard Engel,
from the first days of his captivity in Syria, he told CNN’s Christiane
Amanpour on Tuesday.Engel was freed on Monday after five days of captivity in Syria, where he was reporting for NBC.
Engel believes his kidnappers were members of the Shabiha – the militia allied with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad – and that his captors hoped to exchange him and his team for Iranian agents held by the Syrian opposition.
It is the nightmare that shadows all journalism organizations and reporters who cover the world's danger zones.
For more than two decades Tom Brokaw was the anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News. He oversaw Engel from his first days at the news network.
Brokaw said he was overjoyed when Engel was released, but added that there is an extremely delicate balance between a reporter’s safety and the important work of doing journalism on the front lines.
“Now that Richard is out, I said one of the after-action evaluations we have to do is: What are the risks and what are the rewards for these assignments,” Brokaw told Amanpour, “But at the same time you’ve got to get on the ground to find out what is going on.”
The Committee to Protect Journalist says this was one of the deadliest years for journalists: Sixty seven have been killed covering stories this year.
America’s news anchor on gun violence
America’s news anchor, veteran journalist Tom
Brokaw, is “enraged” by the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in
Connecticut. In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour Brokaw
pointed out that other recent incidents – this year’s shootings at a
movie theater in Colorado and Sikh Temple in Wisconsin – did not even
break the waterline in the presidential debates this year. But he
believes this latest massacre is a tipping point for the United States
and its gun culture.
|
|
Filed under: Gun Control • Latest Episode COPY http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/ |
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário