A Damnned Shame

This year has been a monumental learning experience, and sometimes I must stress "experience" over the "learning" aspects. I do not understand most of what I see here, from a boy herding pigs through trash-filled streets to government ministers zipping through town in their chic SUVs. I cannot explain it fully, and sometimes as a reporter of sorts, I feel I can only point the camera and click. A picture tells a thousand words, few of which can actually be articulated.

I write this as I see the images of the conflict in Lebanon go on and on, growing worse and worse. I can sympathize and strangely admire the reporters there. As our president nobly uses his FIRST VETO EVER against stem-cell research, presumably in an effort to save the lives of embryos, he is turning around to allow (if not encourage) Israel to 'finish its work' destroying Hezbollah, and with it hundreds of Lebanese lives.


Utter Annihilation (Source: BBC)
Are we as a nation saying an American embryo is more valuable than a Lebanese citizen? What rights are inherent to "us" and not "them"?

It is time we have a consistent ethic that values ALL human life. There is an overwhelming since of powerlessness as I view these images. Yet we are human, too. We have voices. And it's time we spoke up for the voiceless.