Sunday Scan

Foreign Aid

A lot of my friends oppose foreign aid, and there are plenty of reasons to feel that way. Not resonate with me, however, is the complaint that we should spend it here instead of there; God knows we spend too much here on swollen entitlement programs as it is, and we have so much plenty that we can afford to give some there.

So I just want to register my sense of pride as President Bush tours Africa to create political support for his President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief funding request of $30 billion. The Dems don't like the requirement that a third be spent on abstinence education and are threatening to hold up the funds.

Why? What harm would a bit more abstinence to for Africa? What complaints are there that there aren't enough condoms and medications in the $30 billion? And in this aid there is a lesson in Democracy and good governance that Africa desperately needs. As Bush told a crowd in Tanzania:

"I'll just put it bluntly, America doesn't want to spend money on people who steal the money from the people. We like dealing with honest people, and compassionate people. We want our money to go to help human condition and to lift human lives as well as fighting corruption in marketplace economies." (AP)

China is spending billions to woo Africa, but they're not showing compassion at this fundamental level that turns human hearts. Bush's proposal is for money that would be well spent, strategically and compassionately.

Friends Of Barack

The new FOB's -- socialists? Steve Bartin at Newsalert conjures up this passage, from pages 100-101 of Obama's Dreams of My Father:

To avoid being mistaken for a sellout,I chose my friends carefully.The more politically active black students.The foreign students.The Chicanos.The Marxist Professors and the structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets.We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets.At night,in the dorms,we discussed neocolonialism,Franz Fanon,Eurocentrism,and patriarchy.When we ground out our cigarettes in the hallway carpet or set our stereos so loud that the walls began to shake,we were resisting bourgeois society's stifling constraints.We weren't indifferent or careless or insecure.We were alienated.

Funny, I don't hear "bourgeois" very often in his speeches nowadays.

San Diego Tax Dollars At Work

If you saw city fire fighters on a city fire truck in a gay pride parade, would it ever cross your mind that they were straight, on-duty and required by the city to ride in the parade to represent the city's position, not theirs?

It's true. In San Diego, a group of straight fire fighters is suing the city under sexual harassment laws for requiring them to ride in a Gay Pride parade. San Diego Union Trib columnist Gerry Braun writes,

I've read a few sexual-harassment suits in my time, and I find this one credible. The remarks directed at the firefighters – “You're making me hot!” “You can put out my fire!” “Show me your fire hose!” “I can't breathe, give me mouth to mouth!” “Pull out your hose!” – have been confirmed even by their critics.

How is the gay community, concerned as they are that we all be tolerant, responding to the lawsuit? If you guessed intolerantly, you'd be right. Braun:

An editorial in the Gay & Lesbian Times called the firefighters “sissies” and “wimps” before laying it on thick: “As far as we can tell, you are weak-wristed, unstable, unsuited, incapable little mama's boys.”

Caution: If you think that makes it OK to call a gay a sissy, wimp, weak-wristed or a mama's boy ... prepare to be sued.

Movie Break

Just watched a movie with Incredible Wife ... Saving Sarah Cain. It was a bit Lifetime-ish, but still a nice turn on the Amish in the city story, made by Michael Landon Jr. and other people with deep faith.

Red Hot And Green

Myself, I don't even want to know, but in case you're losing ... er, sleep ... over whether your sexual activity is appropriately green, you'll find ways to green-up your red hot sessions here. Here's an excerpt:

Sure, you love that hot-pink plastic [sex toy], but have you ever thought about what is in it? That item you’re hiding in the nightstand might contain phthalates, a chemical used to soften rigid plastics. Though nobody knows for certain if phthalates are harmful to human health, studies have linked ... blah, blah blah.

Greenies ... they can take the fun out of anything.

Extreme Bad Taste Case OK'd

Close to home, some good news: A judge is allowing the family of Nikki Catsouras to move forward with their lawsuit against a California Highway Patrol dispatcher who made gory photos from Nikki's fatal car crash public.

Attorneys for CHP dispatch supervisor Thomas O'Donnell, accused of releasing the photos, argued that it was his first amendment right to release the photos. As if.

What happened to the Catsouras family is a case of the worst sort of bad taste that grows out of the anonymity of the Internet, as photos of their beloved daughter's and sister's decapitated body appeared on numerous Web sites with insulting comments.

The Catsouras family has been able to shame many of the sites into removing the photos, but their only possible legal action is against O'Donnell for his scummy (alleged) action of releasing the photos.

One Web site I won't link to that includes links to the photos also includes a reader poll with these results:

Do the parents deserve to win their lawsuit? Yes, 57%, no 43%.

Should Web sites be allowed to show the graphic photos of Nikki Catsouras? Yes, 33%, no 32%

Obviously, people who visit these sites are a schitzy bunch: Rooting for the parents, while a significant amount of them root against them, too.

A Big 'Heh!' On Biofuels

What's wrong with me? Why do I get such glee from environmentalism gone bad? Especially when environmentalism and Congressional eagerness to score greenie points -- and get votes -- coincide?

With corn and soy prices both at or near record highs, the article tries to handicap which crop farmers will plant more of in the coming growing season. Impossible to tell, it concludes. Nevertheless:

Fertilizer producers benefit either way. Corn demands more fertilizer than soy or wheat. But price competition among the grains, stoked largely by federal supports for ethanol production, has bled generously into fertilizer markets.

That's boilerplate. Anyone who's checked out the stock chart of Mosaic -- the fertilizer giant, two-thirds owned by agribiz behemoth Cargill, recently profiled here -- knows that the fertilizer industry has been essentially printing money. (source)

Fertilizer, of course, is hated by the greens ... it's a chemical, for cryin' out loud, and its production produces gasp! greenhouse gases!

And every gallon of biofuels produced drives up fertilizer sales.

If anyone who says there are easy solutions to global warming that won't wreck our economy and negatively impact our health and well-being, their heads are full of greenhouse gases.

Hijacked

I'm travelling and logged on remote via Golden Tree Hotel High-Speed Internet Systems from my hotel room -- and got hijacked!

No matter what address I type into my browers, or what links in my blogroll or favorites I click, I'm directed to a phoney Web site with links to some crappy service or another. I was able to skirt this attack by using my Verizon internet card, but it's much slower, limiting what I can accomplish.

I've been on hold with Golden Tree tech support for about a half hour, so I don't think I'm the only one this happened to.

I'll give my vote to whatever prez candidate who advocates a new "hackers will be shot on sight" law.

Shanxi: China's Corruption Meets Internet's Power

The illegal Shanxi brick kilns in Northern China were that -- illegal. But they were also flourishing under the eyes of local Commie leaders, as part of centuries-old Chinese tradition of slavery and thuggery that continues to this day.

Here's a description of Shanxi from the blog RFA (Radio Free Asia) Unplugged, which has a panel discussion on Shanxi:

In these illegal brick kilns, abducted child laborers and peasant workers are in living hell. They are forced to work as long as 19 hours everyday. They live in shanties that stink up to high heaven. They have not been allowed to wash themselves for a long time, and all appear unkempt and unwashed. They are frequently beaten by the labor contractors and are buried alive when they become more dead than alive from the beating. The First Financial Daily reported that the local government has long known about the situation in these black brick kilns. The problems that it reflects are worth pondering.

Hundreds of laborers were kept as slaves in Shanxi, with the knowledge, cooperation and even participation of local Chinese Commie bosses. Children, hundreds of children, were kidnapped and forced into slave labor at the kilns. Parents searched desperately for their children, and government officials found nothing wrong, found no children.

Of course, now that it's been brought into the light, the Commies are calling it horrible and are prosecuting those involved ... but they weren't involved in bringing the Shanxi slave labor camps to light.

A reporter for a TV station, Fu Zhenzhong, did some investigative reporting first, but the hero of this story goes to a 32-year-old mother named Xin Yanhua, who broke the story on the internet, according to East South West North:

Compared to those parents who are at a loss and have no documentary material about their missing children, Xin Yanhua (辛艳华) had received an excellent education and she writes wonderfully. More importantly, she was familiar with the Internet as her husband had started a website with others.

On June 5, 2007, Xin Yanhua wrote The blood-and-tears appeal from 400 fathers: Who will save our children? and published it at Dahe Net. Afterwards, she vanished from view. "I made a post as a family member of a victim. I did not participation in the liberation, and I did not conduct any investigation at the scene. I should not be the principal player," she said.

But there came a day when she could no longer hide herself.

Without her, the Shanxi illegal brick kilns affair may never be uncovered.

On the evening of June 6, 2007, The blood-and-tears appeal from 400 fathers: Who will save our children? appeared at Dahe net. The author of this post which gathered several hundred thousand page views signed as "Central Plain Old Pi."

Fourteen days later, "Central Plain Old Pi" posted again with the second public letter of appeal, Failing to find their children, 400 parents petition again. The post asked: The rescue work has almost reached an end, but where are the children?

Xin Yanhua got into the story because a nephew had been kidnapped. Imagine this happening in America:

In early April 2007, the nephew of Xin Yanhua -- a sixteen-year-old boy -- walked out of his home in Zhoukou in Henan and then disappeared in the vicinity of the Zhengzhou train station. It would turn out that he was sold by a slave trader to an illegal brick kiln in Yongji county, Shanxi province.

In early May, Xin Yanhua's elder brother had no luck in finding his son and therefore sought the help of his sister, because she was more experienced with the ways of the world and may be able to help. ...

On May 26, Xin's nephew and two other kiln workers were rescued and taken back to Zhengzhou by the parents with missing children. Xin Yanhua could barely recognize her nephew: he had long hair and glazed eyes, and his body was covered with bruises and wounds oozing with pus. That night, Xin heard the shocking details of what happened at the illegal brick kiln from the narration of her nephew.

She offered to pay those parents, but they turned her down. They said, "This is not about the money. This is about the wretched children." In her gratitude, she dragged her nephew over and told him, "Please make a bow to these parents to show your gratitude." The child broke out in tears instead, and all the parents were crying as well.

"I did this out of gratitude, and also because of the conscience of a mother." Xin Yanhua felt that she should contribute her meager efforts to help those parents.

Initial efforts to help failed. Bureaucrats excused themselves from the issue because they had no authority to cross provincial lines to save children. The media interest failed to spark a fire. So Xin Yanhua turned to the Internet.

Her first couple efforts to post as a comment failed because on-line editors thought it too controversial, but the editors at Dahe played it prominently, resulting in 580,000 page views.

The raging storm of Internet opinion directly triggered the follow-up by the traditional media. The Southern Weekend reporter rushed to the scene immediately as a result of the Internet forum post. Afterwards, the state leaders issued directives, and the Shanxi and Henan provincial government reacted in a timely manner to initiate an unprecedented campaign against the illegal brick kilns.

This is exactly what I wrote about Saturday, saying "This is why blogs give us hope," about the story of Lian Yue, the Chinese blogger who alerted his community to the health risks of a paraxylene (PX) chemical factory planned for their town.

The Internet is putting pressure on a Chinese government that is not used to being pressured. They have responded with a "Great Firewall" that's designed to keep the Internet purged of criticism, but the wall is no more effective than the Great Wall was at keeping out Mongols.

Xin Yanhua's stories led to raids on the kiln and 12 children were among those liberated. It's alleged that labor bosses moved hundreds of other children to other slave labor camps in advance of the raides, so Xin Yanhua is keeping the pressure up.

When only 12 children ("only?!") were found in the camps, she was criticized for inflating the problem with her stories of 400 children, so she did what bloggers do: She published the truth, working with parents of missing children to compile a list ... a list that ended up including nearly 400 names.

China today. Iran tomorrow. The Internet has given those who pursue justice from unjust governments and freedom in unfree societies a tool of magnificent power and persuasiveness. That it can work against the entrenched power of the Chinese Commies is a sign of its ability to weaken the facades of power the corrupt megalomaniacs of the world build as Great Walls to protect their regimes.

25 Web SitesTo Watch

The amazing inventiveness explosion set off by the Internet -- unmatched in human history since the electricity revolution of a century ago -- continues in awe-inspiring depth and speed.

Yahoo just posted a PC World list of 25 Web sites that are very worthy of your attention. Some do things I can't even comprehend; others are delightfully simple and compelling. A few examples:

Popfly

Popfly provides a friendly, visual way to build your own mashups.If you haven't already discovered the world of mashups, Microsoft's Popfly is a good place to start. Mashups combine multiple Web-based sites or applications to produce all sorts of useful things, such as an overlay of traffic information over Google Maps. With Popfly, you can create your own mashups--and you don't have to know a lick of code to do it. Just drag prefab building blocks, connect them, and you have an instant mashup that you can add to an existing Web page or turn into its own site. For example, you can easily produce a mashup that grabs pictures from a site like Flickr and then displays them in a rotating cube.

Pageflakes

Using Pageflakes, you can customize a Web site with just the news and information you want.The Web is just as chaotic as the world--but Pageflakes can organize both of them for you. This super-customizable version of a home page enables you to pick the news and information feeds you want to read, and to specify the "flakes," or applets, you want to include. Flakes let you add all sorts of cool stuff to your page--movie times, to-do lists, a notepad, e-mail, a horoscope--even sudoku or a personal blog. If you're looking for one-stop browsing, this is it.

Swivel

Swivel charts everything from crime statistics to American Idol contestant popularity.Data and graph fanatics, you have a home. Swivel, holds a mind-boggling array of charts and graphs--from a line graph illustrating the relationship between wine consumption and crime in the United States over the past 30 years to a pie chart showing the percentage breakdown of bird flu cases in 14 Asian countries. But the site's most outstanding feature is its ability to integrate different charts containing seemingly unrelated data. Want to compare the national murder rate to the cost of a first-class stamp, or to total hours of media use in U.S. households, over the same period of time? Now you can.

PopURLs

Forget site hopping. Head to PopURLs, and scan all your headlines in one place.If you're an information hound, you probably spend lots of time jumping from Digg to Del.icio.us to YouTube to Fark to Google News to anything-dot-com. With PopURLs, you no longer need to waste time hopping around the Internet. An aggregator of all things informative, PopURLs features massive lists of headlines, videos, blogs, and content from all of those sites, as well as plenty of others.

One nice bonus is that you can search some of the sites--Del.icio.us, Flickr, and Wikipedia, among others--straight from PopURLs. It's also easy to tweak the way PopURLs looks and works, too, including customizing the layout of the feeds so you can put the ones you view most regularly on top. The scrapbook is a particularly useful feature; just click the 'Add to Scrapbook' button next to any headline, and PopURLs will save it (and up to 19 other favorite items).

Bloggers, here's one you really must consider. Because consider the nightmares if you don't:

BlogBackupOnline

If you have a blog and you aren't sure that your blog provider will always have a backup in case of a crash, head over to BlogBackupOnline pronto. The site is straightforward: Log in, enter information about your blog, and the site diligently backs it up every day (provided that you use one of the 11 supported blogging services--Blogger, Friendster, LiveJournal, Movable Type, Multiply, Serendipity, Terapad, TypePad, Vox, Windows Live Space, or WordPress). The site is also a great tool if you ever decide to move your blog from one platform to another. After you've backed up your blog, BlogBackupOnline can bring all of your old entries into a new service.

And finally, a site that's just got a wee bit of description hints at the potential to fritter away hours by the boatload. It's a subset of Trulia, a real estate site, and this is the enticing blurb from PC World: To view some cool time-lapse maps showing how an area (such as Las Vegas) has developed over time, hop to Trulia Hindsight.