The Jindal Rebuttal

I've mentioned the Louisiana Gov before, as he signed a Discovery Institute plan to allow creationism in biology classrooms into law. It shouldn't have surprised me that Bobby Jindal was the chosen figurehead to rebut the first public Obama address to Congress. After all, he is young and dark with at least one foreigner for a parent. It seems a natural, from a certain game-playing point of view. But the talking points have all been heard before. His speech may well have been finalized weeks ago. The allegations of "pork" about the massive stimulus bill are what irk me. The examples cited are so silly, I wonder how anyone believes them. The sum of all the line items to which so-called conservatives object add up to a fraction of the bill. One line item he cited was a small fraction of a billion to upgrade aging government vehicles to newer, more fuel efficient models: Pure pork to the failing American Auto makers? It's significantly less than what they are asking for as an encore direct handout. There were mentions of some classic pork projects, like energy research and environmental studies. No one really needs to know how to prevent the collapse of our lifestyle, civilization, or species. Do they? One allegation that puzzles me every time a conservative says it is that this stimulus bill builds a bigger government. How? One of the issues with it is that no bureaucracy was set up to monitor spending. No new agencies are being created, nor are existing ones being expanded. Exactly how is this spending measure making government bigger? The biggest buildup of Big Brother government agencies was enacted by the previous administration. Why didn't they object for the last 7 years? Homeland security is a bureaucracy established to coordinate the bureaucracies sitting on top of the agencies that actually do things having to do with internal and external security. His parable of volunteer Katrina rescue boats was well aimed. They had to violate insurance regulations as if the flooding of a city was a non-typical circumstance. But it is a poor illustration of Big Brother governance. That the Dubya appointed management of FEMA failed, and his backup, Dubya himself, failed and that the manpower established to deal with such events was engaged on a foreign mission for which the Army was inadequate is hardly proof that government itself is a bad organization to organize rescue efforts. But it does prove that we should be more careful in electing and appointing those in charge.

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An inside look at the Palestinian West Bank

On February 17, 2009, Pamela Olson gave a riveting talk on the details of daily life in the Palestinian West Bank. She gave her talk at a recent session of "TechTalks," a series of talks sponsored by Google. Olson graduated from Stanford in 2002 with a major in physics. She lived in Ramallah, West Bank, for a year and a half beginning in the summer of 2004 and worked as a journalist for the Palestine Monitor. What is startling about this video are the many gorgeous scenes from the West Bank accompanying Olson's introduction to day-to-day life in the West Bank, something which Americans rarely learn of from the American media. The happiness and charm of the West Bank is covered in the first half of Olson's talk. But there is more to the West Bank, of course. Behind all of the charm:

looms the conflict, the occupation, and violence. Since September 2000, more than 5,500 Palestinians and 1,100 Israelis have been killed. A series of walls, fences, roadblocks, checkpoints, army bases, and settlements keep the Palestinians in the West Bank under an almost constant state of siege and strangle the economy of many towns and villages, including Bethlehem. Gaza has been turned into an open-air prison whose desperate inmates can only get vital supplies through smuggling tunnels -- which also transport weapons that Palestinian militants use to target Israeli civilians.

[Her story is] a fascinating world of beauty and terror, of hospitality and homicide, of the absurd and the sublime constantly together -- a microcosmic view of a little-understood human story with global implications.

Olson talks in detail about the numerous checkpoints, the wall and the Israeli settlements. She plainly explains that the occupation, the checkpoints, the wall and the settlements are indisputably illegal pursuant to international law. The wall now runs 70 km., cutting Palestinians off from each other. The wall is a "huge scar on the landscape." It keeps Palestinians from each other, keeps them from farming, keeps them from their own hospitals and keeps their children from getting to school. Even Palestinian politicians are prevented from having free access to their own people. Entire neighborhoods are being destroyed, to make way for more illegal Israeli settlements. The Palestinians are essentially being herded into an ever-smaller prison. Olson backs up her statements with extensive photography. Olson's vivid photos and her calm commentary makes the violence by Palestinians much more understandable. Watching this talk gave me more information than watching dozens of the simplistic stories told by the American Media. Perhaps this unrelenting stream of simplistic media stories is a major cause of America's unflinching support of Israeli's harsh policies toward the Palestinians. Sadly, it is a common Palestinian saying that "The silence of the West is worse than the bullets of the Israelis." Here is Olson's talk, which lasts 80 minutes: For more information on Pamela Olson, you can visit www.pamolson.org

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Powerful images from the White House

Sometimes, when I see videos of President Barack Obama, I think of how important it might be for Americans to see photos and videos of highly-accomplished African-American role models. For decades, television has too often portrayed African-Americans as dysfunctional, lazy or violent criminals. The onslaught of these abnormal images has been terrible and relentless. I assume that these media caricatures have damaged and even destroyed some lives by encouraging young African-Americans to think that they are worth less because their physical appearance is different than those TV characters who are more often portrayed to be capable or admirable. There was a time in my life when I didn't believe that media images could be so powerful. It's not that my attitude completely changed on one particular day, but I do recall one especially memorable day. In 2001, my wife (Anne) and I traveled to China to adopt our second daughter (our first daughter is also Chinese). While we were staying in a hotel in Changsha, Hunan Province, I decided to carry my new 9-month old daughter to a nearby department store to get some baby supplies. At that department store, I was surprised to see so many Caucasian mannequins. I took a photo of one of these displays. Back at the hotel, I asked two English-speaking Chinese tour guides why there were so many Caucasian mannequins, rather than Chinese mannequins. They both told me, without hesitation, that Chinese women think that Anglo women are more beautiful. I was incredulous when I heard this. But after it sunk in, it became a sad idea, indeed. I had just adopted my second daughter from China. She was a startlingly beautiful little baby. Back in Changsha, hoped that it would never occur to my daughter that she was not "pretty" because she was not Anglo.

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It’s supposedly illegal to take photographs in public spaces

I've previously read accounts of photographers being harassed. This smart guy turned on his camera's video function and recorded the outrageous conversation with a security guard. She was pleasant, but instructed him about a "policy" that is utterly bizarre (because this policy, to my knowledge, doesn't really exist in the law). Keep in mind that, according to this security guard, it's illegal for a tourist to snap any photos of the historic buildings in Washington D.C. without special clearance. I'd like to reserve this post as a place for anyone else to post comments if they or someone they know has been warned to not take photos in public spaces, prevented from taking such photos or had their camera(s) confiscated.

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Defense Department to review policy banning photos of flag-draped coffins

From DemocracyNow:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered a review of the Pentagon policy banning media from taking pictures of flag-draped coffins of military dead. The military has said the policy is meant to protect the privacy of the families of the dead soldiers, but critics say barring photographers is a political maneuver meant to sanitize the war.

Related post: What would happen if we freely published the images from Iraq for one week?

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