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(12/07/05 4:46am)
All I care about right now is finishing that last paper and then going brain dead for about three weeks. Well, not exactly brain dead because I have to take a placement exam in January. And, you have to stay on your toes around my family, or you're definitely going to wind up the worse for it. But you know what I mean.\nHowever, I keep coming across things that force my limping gray mass back into action, new facts that demand at least some response. Facts such as three of the counties surrounding us here in Monroe County are labeled "Impoverished Zones" by the federal government. That means the government has officially admitted there are not enough jobs in those counties for the people who live there. I found myself struggling to decide what was more exasperating about the situation: that the government would allow these to exist or that the people would choose to stay there instead of seeking brighter prospects elsewhere.\nA friend of mine who is involved with the county government tells me it is good for a community to have about 5 percent unemployment. While that is likely true from a purely economic viewpoint, it's not a good thing for those out of work and on the dole. I know; I've been among them before. Whether it's rural poverty or urban blight, the struggle for jobs (and consequently, the dignity we Americans attach to our work) is a deeply personal mission for which no economic chart can truly account. What's worse, poverty in rural areas is often out of sight and ignored. \nThis struggle is being coupled with an attack on our social safety net. As I have discussed previously, Gov. Mitch Daniels is seeking to privatize many parts of our government (including, ironically enough, our public assistance). What is worse, the money Indiana does receive to help those struggling against rural poverty (programs like Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) is mostly diverted to such flawed programs as abstinence-only sex education. Many parts of our social safety net are woefully mismanaged by an idealogue-driven agenda mandated by people whose primary interests do not lie with our poor. Those few parts of our public assistance program that actually offer real help to our poor are constantly being threatened with elimination in order to help pay for a new tax cut or for some other reason that usually strikes me as either worthless or flat-out immoral. It just ain't right to steal from the mouths of the poor to finance a new tax cut.\nWinter is coming, and it is an easy time to lose ourselves in our own lives. Between the buzzing in our ears that is the stress of impending deadlines and our dread/anticipation of family gatherings, it is easy to lose sight of the suffering that is going on in our community. But if you have ever gone a day with a hungry belly, or spent a night without heat, or found yourself in a situation that brought you embarrassment, you might be able to empathize with those who are quietly suffering. You need to force yourself to remember those who lack your good fortunes, and find some time or means to help out, particularly in this season of giving.
(12/01/05 12:53am)
Since the time of Richard Nixon and his abuse of the Internal Revenue Service it's a common joke that anyone who angers the president is highly likely to get an audit. It's unfortunate, though, that such a threat doesn't always remain in the land of jest and conjecture.\nIn a nod toward Nixon, it seems the Bush administration's IRS is reviewing the nonprofit status of a church in the Los Angeles area for some statements a guest pastor made a few days before the election last year. The Sunday before the election, All Saints Episcopal Church, hosted two guest preachers: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the high-ranking Episcopal official and winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace, and George F. Regas, a former pastor of All Saints. \nRegas gave a speech in which he envisioned Jesus having a conversation with both President Bush and the president's primary challenger, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. In the speech, Regas imagined that Jesus would have upbraided President Bush for his doctrine of pre-emption and committing the country to an unnecessary war. While Regas repeatedly stressed his belief that a good Christian could vote for either candidate, the IRS still objected to the speech as political advocacy, something that nonprofit churches are forbidden from doing.\nAt the same time, there are a number of churches that were noted for hosting speakers that gave stridently pro-Bush speeches from the pulpit in the days leading up to the election. In particular, a former staffer for Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., drew fire for seeking the use of churches in the Pennsylvania area as a platform from which to launch a Republican Get-Out-The-Vote campaign. However, while the IRS could see no fault with using churches as bases from which to launch recruitment campaigns, it seems to believe that criticizing the Iraq War for going against Christian teachings scandalously crosses the church/state line.\nI'm a Catholic, and I don't know how many different churches I've attended where the Iraq War was soundly criticized as immoral and un-Christian. None of these churches are being investigated. Neither are the ones participating in the blatantly political actions in Pennsylvania. Yet, somehow, All Saints (considered to be at the core of the religious left movement in California) manages to draw the ire of the IRS. This is, in my mind, ridiculous and smacks of the same sort of political persecution figures on the right (such as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson) faced from the IRS in the 1980s.\nWhile churches should rightly stay out of the endorsing business (something the Bush administration actually sought to change early in its first term), they must be allowed to criticize current events based upon their religious understandings. Freedom of religion implies that the church should be free from unwarranted restrictions on their speech, just as the state should be free from unwarranted pressure from the church.\nThis audit seems politically motivated. I would hope, dear reader, that you share my concern and will consider taking a few minutes to contact one of your elected officials.
(11/16/05 11:53pm)
On Veterans Day, President Bush spoke before the nation. The topic of his speech was, perhaps unavoidably, Iraq and his "War on Terror." Our president decided to use the opportunity to formalize what seems to be our new cold war.\nPresident Bush spent about a third of his speech directly comparing what he terms "Islamic radicalism" with communism and the regimes of Maoist China, Soviet Russia and the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia. He went to great lengths to tie the ideology of al-Qaida and affiliated organizations with the ideology of our cold war nemesis. Even setting aside what I believe to be errors in the president's assessment of the situation, I find characterizing this conflict as "Cold War II" to be deeply problematic. \nOne could assume from the president's speech that the United States' objective in the Cold War was ultimately to destroy any vestige of the communist ideology. The president argued that the destruction of ideology should be our goal in the struggle we find ourselves in now.\nThe problem with this paradigm is that, not only is it not very helpful, it's also dangerous. The first danger inherent in it is that we are not fighting "terror." We are fighting a specific insurgent movement. And unlike the idea of "terror," which is so nebulous and abstract as to be nigh impossible to deal with, our opponents have both a coherent strategy and a specific list of grievances. Fighting "terror" reduces our foe to an unthinking and unfeeling force only suitable for annhiliation. Dehumanizing them like this is what makes things like Abu Ghraib possible.\nThe second problem with this paradigm is that it is conceived as a "war." On one level, that is fine as an analogy. We've declared war on drugs, poverty, illiteracy and a host of other ideas. As a slogan, it's fine. The problem is, though, we're not fighting an idea. Again, we're fighting an actual foe. The use of the war analogy tempts us into viewing the struggle as being one between armed forces, which I believe our last three years or so demonstrates is largely an unhelpful approach. Iraq has shown us the weakness of fighting this foe with our military might.\nBush tried to respond to this criticism that his conception, which led to the invasion of Iraq, is strengthening our enemy by observing, "I would remind them that we were not in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001." True, but also beside the point. The Iraq invasion has strengthened our enemy. Polls have shown that we lost popular global support when we invaded. I would argue that global cooperation and goodwill for America is a far more valuable tool in fighting al-Qaida than occupying a country that al-Qaida refused to work with in the first place and is, as the attacks in Jordan suggest, creating for us more and not fewer enemies.\nOur president seems unwilling or unable to recognize errors that the vast majority of his people believe he has made. Our president seems trapped by his pride. As many have intoned before, "Pride comes before the fall." God spare us should we fall because of one man's hubris.
(11/09/05 4:57am)
I was watching "Meet the Press" with Tim Russert, as I am wont to do Sunday mornings. One of the guests this past week was Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. It struck me as remarkable that Sen. Coburn reiterated a position he made clear in his last election. On Sunday, he reaffirmed his belief that the "gay agenda" of legalizing same-sex marriage and homosexual adoption represented "the single greatest threat to America today."\nI was struck by that statement. "Surely he will refine it," I thought to myself. "Surely he doesn't mean to say that al-Qaida, an organization dedicated to blowing us up because of its vehement disagreement with us about foreign policy, is less of a threat than a bunch of dudes and chicks that want to marry each other? Surely he's not thinking that global warming, which is taken as fact now by the scientific community as a whole -- and threatens to make the recent flooding that happened in New Orleans look like a light drizzle in the next century or so -- is a more serious threat than a group of guys who want to be able to visit their ailing lovers in the hospital?" \nMy wife, ever snarky, responded, "Of course he's serious. Al-Qaida only wants to blow him up. 'The gays' want to do something that terrifies him much more."\nOf course, eventually I calmed down and remembered, "Oh yeah, this is Tom Coburn." This is the same Tom Coburn who criticized NBC for showing an unedited run of "Schindler's List" because he thought there was too much T&A in the movie. This is the same guy who claimed that silicone breast implants make women healthier. This is also the guy who claims that he can basically read people's minds through his training as a medical doctor. \nAs the Republican Party struggles with a public relations dilemma of mammoth proportions, why would the GOP allow such a controversial (and arguably "loony") member of its party to speak for it? Sen. Coburn is a lightning rod for partisan disdain from the left, just as President Clinton, Sen. Clinton or anyone with the last name of Kennedy is for those on the right. Why wouldn't the GOP encourage popular centrists, like the inestimable former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, to step forward now and encourage the likes of Tom Coburn to bide their time until the Republican Party regains its footing?\nIn times of political crisis, such as the one the GOP currently finds itself in, maintaining Party unity is particularly difficult. We have already seen signs that all those Republicans who face re-election next year (save those that live in the reddest of the red states) intend to put as much distance between themselves and our highly unpopular president as they reasonably can. With 2,000-plus dead Americans sparking a strong call for withdrawal from Iraq, wide-spread corruption charges facing all levels of the Republican establishment and a growing disenchantment with GOP governance, the Party needs to take steps now to recover its standing with the public as a whole. \nOtherwise, Mr. Bush is going to find 2006 to be, for him, just like 1994 was for Mr. Clinton.
(11/02/05 4:44am)
Last week, our Congress voted to allow the privatization of food stamps. Our governor, Mitch Daniels, is a strong proponent of privatizing, well, everything. When our governor was a Washington bureaucrat in service to George W. Bush, he said, "The business of government is not to provide services but to make sure that they are provided." As governor, he wants to privatize our roads, essentially selling them to companies who will charge us to drive on them. He wants to privatize hospitals, presumably because government isn't in the business of keeping people alive. With this most recent food stamp go-ahead, Indiana has begun to emulate that bastion of civil justice, Texas, and is looking to put the job of making sure hungry people have food to eat in the hands of a for-profit organization. \nUnfortunately for him and for us, his idea is ill-conceived. Let me tell you why.\nIt is the responsibility of the government to provide us the services we, the people, demand is because the government is the embodiment and manifestation of our will. The government is directly accountable to us. Private companies are not. Oh, certainly there is supposed to be oversight, but that is never as efficient as doing it yourself. It's like leaving your kid (if you have any) with a baby sitter -- he or she might be your kid's best friend or he or she might lock your kid in a closet all night. You'll only know for sure when you get home to check on your kid yourself, and the baby sitter might have covered her tracks of any misdeeds by then. Government might have its problems, but at least we know it's being watched for abuses.\nOne of the most frequently cited reasons for privatization is that it cuts costs. Unfortunately, though, that doesn't seem to be the case. For proof of this, I will point you to a study conducted by the Bush White House. A 2002 study prepared for the Department of Health and Human Services examining government privatization concluded that "the empirical evidence about cost savings through contracting out social services tends to be mixed." While many private contractors seem to provide marginal savings on paper, "cost estimates, however, often do not include the transaction costs entailed in the contracting process." \nAt the same time, private companies that win contracts from the government often recruit from the agencies they are serving. Hiring our bureaucrats means we have to pay them more to do something we were already paying them to do. At the same time, we also need to hire replacements for them. These overhead costs have to come from somewhere, and often as not they come out of the mouths of, in this most recent case, the hungry.\nThose who support privatization speak of it as though it is a magic panacea for all society's ills. Like most things that sound too good to be true, it is.
(10/26/05 5:07am)
Conflict and disagreement are at the heart of the democratic experience. The belief that reasonable people can disagree, yet still come together as a nation to strive for a common good, is the cornerstone of our society. Without this understanding, we risk evolving into nothing more than warring clusters of rival interests.\nSure, this notion of everyone being reasonable, fair and intellectually honest in their disagreements might be a bit utopian, but I have been really struck by some of the truly horrible ideas put forth in the past few weeks. People sometimes take cheap shots at each other -- that's human nature. My wife reminds me that I've put on some extra weight every time we get into an argument. The thing is, though, she recognizes it's a cheap shot when she says it and (usually) apologizes for it shortly thereafter. While hoping that people will always be fair might be a bit idealistic, I do not consider it unreasonable to ask that people who disagree at least disagree in good faith.\nLet me give you an example of what I mean. There is a group called the American Friends Service Committee. It's an activist group founded by Quakers in 1917 to oppose U.S. involvement in World War I. It has opposed every military venture the United States has been involved in. In the 1930s, it was one of the few American groups that responded to the plight of the Jews in Germany by trying to help resettle them. It went to India in 1947 to help people displaced by the rioting that followed the Indian/Pakistan partition. It went to the Gaza Strip in 1948 to help Arab refugees. The group was even co-awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947 for its humanitarian work. What I'm saying is that this Quaker organization is a serious group that has a long commitment to a pacifistic ideology.\nNow the AFSC is planning a series of candlelight vigils and silent protests to mark the 2,000th American death from the Iraq War. Some conservative pundits, such as Michelle Malkin, have not taken the opportunity presented by this action to discuss why they believe the Iraq War was a meritorious action, however. Instead, they have chosen to attack the action by framing it as, and I quote, "The ghouls of the left -- They support the troops ... by partying over their deaths."\nThis is not just something one finds on the right. Conspiracy theories on the left, such as the one that says the Bush administration knew Sept. 11 was going to happen but thought it would be politically advantageous to let it go, are equally odious and unhelpful. These needless attacks on each other only further cement our differences rather than help us come together to find common purpose. In a time of war in which we now find ourselves, we must at least set aside our animosity to look for common ground. After all, as Abraham Lincoln once said, "A house divided against itself cannot stand"
(10/19/05 4:45am)
On the outskirts of Bloomington, the city is planning to build a collection of 12 single-family homes. What is notable about this planned development is that, aside from trying to create affordable housing for people who plan to be here for a while, the city is planning to build them using eco-friendly methods. The homes will utilize a design that maximizes solar energy for heat and will be built partially out of recycled materials.\nBloomington has a long history of environmental consciousness. You can see this reflected both in community actions, positive and negative, as well as the conscientiousness shown by local governmental officials. \nBloomington is not alone in its concern about the continuing welfare of the environment. Communities from Portland, Ore., to New York have taken greater eco-friendly steps in the past decade. \nHowever, this concern, acknowledged at the local level, is something our national leaders are choosing to blithely ignore.\nA nationwide poll conducted in May 2005 by the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies shows both a deep concern for the environment and a great reservation about how things are going. Sixty-eight percent of poll respondents said the federal government should do more to protect the environment. Half of the poll respondents said they felt very strongly about this.\nThe same poll revealed that the greatest area of concern was American dependence on foreign oil. When asked what they think should be done about this issue, 90 percent of poll respondents said they supported mandating higher Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards. CAFE standards have not changed for 20 years and are measured so inaccurately as to be worthless numbers anyway. According to one Consumer Reports study, the average car in the 2003 fleet tended to be about 30 percent less fuel efficient than what the federal government measured it to be.\nBloomington's environmental policy is a good start. Building more eco-friendly homes is something all municipalities should do. Building homes to make the best use of solar energy is not only smart -- it'll lower your heating bill in the winter -- it also reduces our need to dig up and burn coal. Likewise, utilizing recycled materials only makes sense -- it saves space in landfills and spares parts of our forests. However, these steps alone cannot solve our environmental problems. The federal government needs to take action as well.\nUnfortunately, instead of looking toward conservation and the reduction of consumption, the current government proposes ineffectual stop-gags. Rather than trying to stretch out the oil supply we have, they propose we try to burn it all up now so we can temporarily decrease our dependence on imported oil. That is not a solution; it's just passing the buck. It's completely irresponsible.\nPress your government to act like a grown-up. Write your representatives, senators and local government officials. Do your part as well -- walk instead of drive, open your curtains to let the heat in and keep that thermostat low. If we don't start getting our act together, we're going to find ourselves up that proverbial creek when the gas runs out.
(10/12/05 4:52am)
Last week, State Sen. Patricia Miller, R-Indianapolis, proposed a bill to ban gays and single people from using medical technology to have children. Her rationale for the motion was to harmonize state reproductive laws with state adoption laws. She figured if gays and singles aren't allowed to adopt kids, why should they be allowed to have their own? Happily, this idiotic bill was withdrawn so quickly you would have received whiplash had you tried to read it, but it does open up a line of questions. Why aren't gays and singles allowed to adopt kids?\nIndiana is currently one of six states that has either made gay adoption illegal, or made it so difficult for gays to adopt that the effect is about the same. (The other five states are Florida, Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma and Colorado.) The arguments behind banning or hindering gay adoption are varied, but the predominant argument is that married heterosexual couples are the ideal parental structure and should be the one that is sought out. \nIt might well be that heterosexual parents are your ideal. That's fine. However, the problem we face today is that there is a shortage of married heterosexual couples willing to adopt children. There is a large gap between the number of children currently in the foster care system who need an adoptive home and the number of "acceptable" people willing to adopt them. Prohibiting homosexuals and singles who are willing to adopt condemns many children to the foster care system. \nThe temporary and unstable realities of foster care have been conclusively shown to contribute to higher levels of delinquency, substance abuse and academic problems. While there might be short-comings in the eyes of some critics of gay and single-parent homes, the deficiencies in those sorts of homes cannot be worse than those created by leaving kids in the foster care system. \nThere is an additional host of arguments against gay adoption. Ancillary arguments include the notion that gay parents are more likely to have or raise children who experiment with homosexuality or that homosexuals are more likely to molest their kids. Of course, the ancillary arguments are extremely homophobic. They also happen to be false. The majority of studies on the question suggest that children who grow up with gay parents are not significantly more likely to identify as homosexual when they are adults than children with heterosexual parents. Furthermore, according to www.youdebate.com, men who describe themselves as heterosexual are seven to nine times more likely to be a pedophile than a self-identified homosexual. \nWhile Sen. Miller's radical bill was nothing short of vile, it does at least serve the purpose of putting state adoption laws back into the spotlight. Hopefully, the same forces that coalesced to pressure out her bill can work together to remove similar prohibitions. We shouldn't condemn children to live in unstable situations because of widespread homophobia in our state. As the son of a woman who lived part of her life in the foster care system, I can vouch that any safe home is better than no home at all.
(10/04/05 1:40am)
Git yer chainsaws, boys.\nDecisions taken during September have put the issue of logging on the front burner of Indiana politics. Gov. Mitch Daniels has announced his intention to increase logging in the state five-fold in the next few years. His reasons for doing so seem primarily to revolve around putting more green in the state coffers rather than in our Hoosier forests, but his administration has also mumbled something about how increasing logging will help oak saplings grow. \nIt is interesting to note that Daniels intends to increase the cutting down of new growth trees under this same plan. Currently, the loggging industry cuts down about 12.5 percent of young trees in state forests. They intend to bump that number up to about 70 percent. If you can convincingly explain to me how chopping down the bulk of young trees in the forest meshes with the idea that you increase logging to help the young trees, I'll buy you a cookie.\nThe Daniels argument would likely be more convincing had his administration done an environmental impact study, something it is required to do it by state law. It might also be palatable if the idea was put forward and opened up to public comment on the idea, something that the U.S. Forestry Service does any time it is considering a similar change, rather than autocratically decreeing the move. However, the Daniels administration has done neither to date.\nThe Daniels plan does have some good ideas in it. In particular, I approve of the idea of using the largest portion of the revenues gained by the state for private conservation assistance and purchasing private forested land adjacent to existing forests. I would not be opposed to a smaller increase in logging if the benefits to the forest ecosystem as a whole would be improved by such a move. However, rather than seeking to promote the meritorious ideas contained in his problematic plan in a public forum, he simply enacted his idea. His disinterest in public comment and the generosity the plan shows toward lumber interests tends to discredit his argument that what he is doing is in the best interest of the forests and the people of Indiana.\nWe Hoosiers have been watching out for our forests for a long time. We stroll in them, camp in them, hunt in them and take pleasure in their existence. We are, in short, mighty partial to our woods. The incredibly cute (and endangered) Indiana brown bat and a wide array of other fauna depend on these woods as well. Making a mistake could be costly for them; for we who enjoy our natural bounty and for Daniels' future political prospects. Daniels would be well advised to put the brakes on his plan, give scientists the time they need to figure out what impact his plan will have and, above all, give us the chance to say whether or not we want this.
(09/28/05 5:05am)
If you've been living in one of our many fine local caves recently, you might not know that a pair of hurricanes ripped up much of the U.S. Gulf Coast. Hurricane Rita, and particularly Hurricane Katrina, destroyed huge swaths of property and will cost billions of dollars to clean up. Somebody has to pay to fix up the mess down South. The question is, though, who should foot the bill?\nPresident Bush, for good or ill, is the man who sets the tone for the discussion. Even in the face of his excessively expensive adventure into Iraq and now the cost of rebuilding pretty much half of the Gulf Coast, Bush is saying he will not even consider tax increases. Instead of making the rich pay their fair share, he's suggesting to cut some $200 billion dollars from existing budgetary allotments to eventually pay for the reconstruction.\nWhat's he going to cut? The military budget? Fat chance of that -- he'll never touch the military's budget in a time of war. Welfare? It barely exists as it stands now, and cutting it would only further show the Republican callousness and disregard for the suffering of the poor. I might remind you that it was primarily the poor that were left to drown in New Orleans, it has been the poor that have received the worst end of the Bush tax cuts, and it is the ranks of the poor that have swelled every year since Bush has taken office. \nU.S. Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., has not expressed a preference yet on how we should tackle the tab we've run up for Katrina, but he is in agreement with many Americans when he said everything should be on the table. A recent Associated Press/Ipsos poll showed 42 percent of respondents thought taking from the Iraq war chest to pay for Katrina was the best way to go about it, and 29 percent supported raising taxes as the first choice.\nCutting the budgets of the soldiers in Iraq is not a feasible option, as they are already strapped for cash as it is. Pulling them out of Iraq is feasible, but I suspect that if we did that, we will have hell to pay for doing so down the road. That brings us to the option of Bush's tax cuts.\nEliminating most of the Bush tax cuts is the best course of action right now. Many of the tax cuts approved in 2001 were passed with "sunset clauses," which means they expire after a handful of years. This was originally done to help keep down the projected cost of the Bush tax cuts, and many expected they would eventually be made permanent. However, in this crisis we now find ourselves in, I think it unconscionable to consider extending them indefinitely. The United States is spending money like a freshman with a new credit card, and like many who made unwise credit decisions, we're going to regret it if we don't stop.
(09/21/05 5:27am)
In 1986, the Reagan administration was considering rounding up all Arabs and Iranians living in the United States and interning them in two military compounds in the South, according to information brought to light by Freedom of Information Act requests. This detention would have been implemented similar to the way the Japanese internment happened during World War II. Clearly, Reagan and his government decided against this course of action. \nHowever, the fact that it was brought up and considered, and as recently as 20 years ago, serves to well illustrate the delicate situation in which Muslims find themselves.\nThe position of Muslims in the United States is a precarious one. On one hand, Muslims can expect the same general freedom to worship as any other person in the country. On the other hand, Muslims can also expect that an FBI agent somewhere might compile a dossier on them should they utilize that right. The Patriot Act gave the FBI that ability in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. Nobody needs to inform an American Muslim of this surveillance, of course, as the Patriot Act also allows for the collection of their evidence in secret.\nIf FBI agents don't like what they see, they could label the Muslim in question an "enemy combatant," lock them away without access to the outside world and hold them indefinitely. The FBI can do this to a native-born American, even if it is arresting them in, say, Bloomington, according to recent rulings in the Jose Padilla case. The government can suspend the inalienable rights of an American, rights over which the Revolutionary War was fought, at its discretion.\n"That sure does suck," many of you might be thinking to yourself right about now, "but what's that got to do with me?" Well, first of all, a violation of any American's civil rights can conceivably serve as a precedent to violating all Americans' civil rights. That means you too could one day be labeled an "enemy combatant." The second reason I mention this to you is because probably some of it is new information to you.\nThe best way to prevent the former scenario from happening to you is to stay informed of what is going on around you. As luck would have it, there is an excellent opportunity to learn more about the situation of Muslim Arabs tomorrow. Dr. James Zogby, head of the Arab American Institute, will be kicking off a three-day conference on the situation of Muslims in the West with a lecture at 4 p.m. in the Whittenberger Auditorium. \nYou can't really defend yourself against issues you don't understand. In the end, it's a matter that \naffects us all.
(09/14/05 4:47am)
I recently returned to Bloomington after several years. On my return, I brought my wife who had never spent much time here. At first brush, Bloomington struck her as a pretty town. Wonderfully maintained architecture, excellent parks and, of course, the verdant skyline all contributed to an initial impression that impressed even the skeptical viewer I had brought with me. \nComing down College Avenue and turning off onto our side street, she remarked how surprisingly cute she found my town. Unfortunately, when she got out of the car, she spotted an unopened Miller can abandoned on a stone fence and an empty Doritos bag tossed casually into a bush. \nWe walked many miles after that, and every one was the same. The town had many little nooks and crannies that delighted her, but she found just as many littered with discarded refuse. After a while, my wife asked me, "Why don't these slobs just pick up after themselves?" \nI gave her the only answer I could. "I have no idea."\nTake a stroll around the downtown area. See how much trash you can spot cast casually about. You can even make a game of it if you like. First one to find five beer bottles wins. You might be surprised at how many rounds of the game you can get in before you get home.\nI have been taken aback by the casual mistreatment with which our city streets are treated. I have seen trash casually tossed about. I have seen it neatly piled into corners on the sidewalk. I have seen it wedged into cracks in the wall. I have often seen it decorating shrubs or intermingled with ivy. It could almost be artistic in a way, if it weren't so juvenile and annoying.\nMy wife and I are trying to do our little bit. We try to pick up at least a few pieces of trash every time we head out and throw them into one of the many rubbish bins our city has provided for us. We are, in the end, but two people. Though I have no concrete evidence to back this up, I'm fairly certain there are more than two people who contribute to our litter problem. \nPart of the issue might be our youthfulness -- according to recent U.S. Census population numbers, 55 percent of our city's population is 24 or younger. It's a commonly held perception that younger folks are not considered or expected to be as "responsible" to the greater civic community. That does not excuse it, though. Even a three-year-old knows you're not supposed to leave your messes behind you. \nAs college students, we are expected to act with at least a modicum of awareness for the greater community. Taking responsibility for the space in front of your place would be an excellent first step for those guilty of contributing to the mess.\nBloomington, my friends, is a nice town. It is not a landfill. So throw your damn trash in the can, not on the street.
(09/06/05 5:47am)
Rubble in the streets, corpses casually strewn about, armed looters taking whatever they need or want. That was Baghdad in 2003. Just add water, and you have New Orleans today.\nThe devastation in New Orleans following the breaking of the levees had a horrible human cost. The death toll has not been tallied, but it is certainly in the thousands. Hundreds of thousands more are marked by injury, mental anguish, fear and loss. They are American refugees, fleeing an American disaster and now living in American refugee camps.\nBack in 2003, when Baghdad was being looted, the soldiers looked the other way, but they protected the oil ministry and oil drilling equipment. They did not lift a finger to prevent the stealing of cultural artifacts, radios, grenades or assault weapons. When asked about their lack of preparation in the face of looting, the Bush administration responded with a lackadaisical, "Stuff happens." \nThe Bush administration's response to looting in New Orleans, though painfully sluggish, is not as understanding this time around. Its utter lack of preparation for what happened is very similar to Iraq. Before the Iraq war, many experts publicly predicted the looting; Bush said afterwards that nobody could have predicted it. Last year, the Army Corps of Engineers ran a drill where it predicted exactly what happened in New Orleans last week would happen if the levees were not shored up; Bush said after Katrina, nobody could have predicted the situation. \nIn Baghdad, war planners assumed that we would be greeted with flowers and that the invasion would pay for itself. They did not think -- and were indeed insulted -- by the suggestion that the occupation and rebuilding of Iraq would cost the American people more than pocket change. When they were wrong, they tapped any source of revenue they could, save wealthy Americans who had just received tax cuts. One of those sources was money that had previously been earmarked for shoring up the levees in New Orleans.\nIn Baghdad, it was poor Arabs who paid the price for Bush's lack of planning. They were abandoned in a ruined city, without power or much water, and surrounded by armed thieves. In New Orleans, it was primarily poor blacks who paid the price. They were abandoned in a drowning city, surrounded by armed thieves (some of whom were allegedly cops), and left without food, water and electricity.\nDavid Brooks has called the New Orleans flood our "anti-9/11." By that, he means that this catastrophe and our government's incompetent response will destroy public confidence in the exact opposite way that Sept. 11 built it up. During Katrina, the government has seemed indifferent. The government seemed indifferent to the suffering of fellow Americans. \nThe flood has nakedly exposed huge fault lines in American society. Money meant to help the poor and, yes, mostly blacks, went instead to the rich and mostly whites, or to a war that had nothing to do with either of them. This is a national shame. I cannot think of it without growing angry. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
(09/01/05 4:55am)
When I first started middle school, my dad gave me a piece of advice. He told me to never pick fights and peacefully settle problems others might have with me. If, however, a fight could not be avoided, he said that my only goal should be to put down my opponent so brutally that he would neither want nor be able to get up and continue the disagreement. \nI now offer this same advice to my countrymen. Al-Qaida is not some two-bit crime ring. It is a broad and increasingly popular insurgency, inspired by American actions and focused against American global interests. We are at war. The sooner we accept this, the better off we'll be.\nWe never should have gone into Iraq. It wasn't a threat when we invaded in March 2003. Now, it is. We need to put the jinn we released back into the bottle. We also need to stop underestimating the Taliban and make a real commitment in Afghanistan. We need to fully commit to victory. Otherwise, we only strengthen our enemy by providing it with further grievances to rally behind while we are slowly bled dry. A full commitment probably means increasing the size of our army and could also mean a draft, if other options fail. War is a costly thing.\nWe need more money to accomplish this. Wars fought on the cheap are wars nations lose. Our soldiers also deserve only the best equipment. That means, at a minimum, repealing the Bush tax cuts. Bush's wealthy supporters might not like it, but the customary sacrifice made by the wealthy in times of war is a treasure. War is a costly thing.\nWe need to destroy our enemy's safe havens. If our enemy hides among civilians and makes them targets, we cannot refrain from doing what we must do to win. We'll kill civilians if we fight like that. Killing civilians will make their families hate us, but many likely hate us for our actions already. War is a bloody thing. \nWe need to crush the enemy. To do so, we need to put our professional soldiers at risk, which will probably get more of our own men killed. I take no pleasure in that idea, particularly since I have a little brother in Iraq. Casualties are a fact of war. If we are unwilling to pay the price in blood that victory demands, then we should just accede to al-Qaida's demands now. War is a bloody thing.\nWe need to fight the war we are in, not the one we wish we had. We need to elect competent leadership, rather than the ship of fools that has diverted us from the course of victory and foolishly squandered opportunities. We need to follow Theodore Roosevelt's advice to speak softly and carry a big stick. But most of all, we need to shed the arrogance that has led many Americans to believe we are truly the masters of the world. Pride is a deadly thing.
(08/26/05 4:07am)
I have taken quite an interest in the story of two Iranian teens executed for homosexuality and assorted other sundry (and sordid) crimes. For those unfamiliar with the incident, two teenage boys were executed in Iran in July. They were executed for a number of crimes. One of the crimes considered worthy of death: homosexuality. The other: participating in the gang rape of a 13-year-old boy.\nHaving read a handful of the English commentaries, most of which dwelled on the boys being executed for being gay and neglected any other crimes they might have committed, I feel compelled to concur with the opinion of the Brooding Persian (http://broodingpersian.blogspot.com) that one must take a full measure of the crimes being punished when discussing the issue.\nI'm not saying that these boys deserved what happened to them. I hold a blanket opposition to all execution on practical, religious and ethical grounds. But I also think there are those in the United States who would not hesitate to support the execution of two American boys accused of a similar crime.\nWhile I add my voice to those expressing outrage at the executions, in part because of their sexual orientation, I think it disingenuous for Americans to pretend this sort of savagery is something that could only happen "over there." \nI don't have the slightest doubt there are certain states (particularly those of a more ruddy complexion, but also more true in blue states) where the revelation that the accused was a homosexual would bias a good number of jurors in favor of conviction regardless of the actual guilt of the defendant. The fact that there are American political leaders who have advocated juvenile execution ultimately gives us little room to wag a finger.\nFor example, a bill was introduced in Texas by Republican Rep. Jim Pitts to set the death penalty at age 11 following the Jonesboro, Ark., school shootings.\nI also think that this is ultimately an issue over which little can be done. The Mullahs of Iran are not in power solely to execute young gay rapists (something, I think, that Messrs. Falwell and Pat Robertson here in the United States would approve of). Rather, they are in power in order to preserve their power. \nThere is an ideology that fuels their claim on power, and there are likely hundreds in government and millions in the country that believe in that ideology. But, there are also those enmeshed in the system that use the ideology for their own ends. Iran is also not the only country that has people in political power manipulating religious sentiment. It is something many fear in our own country. \nA genuine faith will always have a place at the table when we begin to discuss politics. But the shameful misuse of faith for selfish ends needs to be halted, for it is corrosive and corrupts both politics and faith. It is this corruption that Iranians know they must address. And so must the United States.