Running the Sahara - My Saturday movie pick

Ok so I know this movie was out in 2007  BUT....it was just brought to my attention the other day. Considering my upcoming trip to Africa, I decided to buy a copy. Matt Damon is the Executive Director and also H2O Africa co-founder. He and Gary White, WaterPartners executive director and co-founder, joined forces to create a new organization: Water.org (one of my favorite clean water companies for change). My DVD arrived yesterday so I'll watch it this weekend and report back -- but one thing I wanted to mention beforehand is that one of the stars, Charlie Engle ended up in jail.  Interestingly enough it was for mortgage fraud. I find that laughable!

Here's some background:

As a young man, Mr. Engle had been a serious drug addict, but after he got clean, he became an ultra-marathoner, one of the best in the world. In the fall of 2006, he and two other ultra-marathoners took on an almost unimaginable challenge: they ran across the Sahara Desert, something that had never been done before. The run took 111 days, and was documented in a film financed by Matt Damon, who served as executive producer and narrator. Mr. Engle received $30,000 for his participation.

Despite the millions of ridiculous mortgages made during the peak years of the housing bubble, despite the billions of dollars of profits raked in by Wall Street and mortgage firms like Countrywide, despite the ensuing financial crisis that nearly brought the economy to its knees, no one has been held criminally responsible.

With the exception of a couple of mortgage investors on Wall Street, in fact--both of whom were justifiably acquitted--no one has even been charged with crimes.

It’s not just that Mr. Engle is the smallest of small fry that is bothersome about his prosecution. It is also the way the government went about building its case. Although Mr. Engle took out the two stated-income loans, as liar loans are more formally called, in late 2005 and early 2006, it wasn’t until three years later that his troubles began.

You can read more here

Here's the movie trailer

  you can watch the movie for free online here