Thru Other Eyes

I don't know about you, but sometimes with everything I constantly see on the news I can often make good use of an unusual kind of feel-good moment.

Well, here's one thanks to my dear friend Simonne who tipped me to this story. It's only two and a half minutes long but the good feeling it gives you will last much longer.

This is the story of Christian the lion

Dear Thru Other Eyes Reader:

I want to introduce you to Mr. Pik Savuth. Savuth was my tuk tuk (motorbike pulled carriage) driver for six days when I visited Angkor Wat, Cambodia, in October of 2007.

He recently asked if I could help him get a web presence going to see if he could generate more business and I was more than happy to help. Not only because he was a great driver - honest, friendly, knowledgeable and open - but particularly because during that week Savuth and his family became friends.

We have put together a few things

 Two years and four days ago, on July 12, 2006, war began between Hezbollah and Israel. This afternoon I am watching live as the war comes to a close. Samir Kuntar, the most powerfully symbolic of the released prisoners, has just arrived at Beirut's airport for the second and most significant of many large-scale festive and quite clearly victorious receptions. He is working his way through the crowd, being welcomed by Lebanese politicians of every political hue and orientation, Hezbollah supporters and opponents alike. Earlier in the day, were the somber images of two black coffins, grieving families and a sad nation as the two captured Israeli soldiers were returned home.

The war in 2006 was initiated by two events. On July 12, Hezbollah conducted a cross-border raid with the goal of capturing Israeli soldiers that could then be used in forcing a prisoner exchange for four specific Lebanese prisoners being held by Israel. On July 13,

 Vincent van Gogh, the famous Duth painter, once stated a simple but profound truth: "Conscience is a man's compass." It is that inner voice of our conscience that like a compass guides us on our moral and ethical path through life. Sir Walter Scott, the Scottish novelist and poet, being quite the wordsmith, said it with more literary imagery: "A rusty nail, placed near a faithful compass, will sway it from the truth, and wreck the argosy."

Last week's bulldozer attack in Jerusalem is first and foremost a terrible personal tragedy for the families of those who were killed and wounded. Our thoughts, our prayers and when possible our aid, always need to go out to those who suffer senseless and inscrutable violence.

But the aftermath of this admittedly shocking act has shown in a very disturbing fashion what

(Reprinted from Angkor News Blog - part of my new website helping to promote a friend's business in Cambodia.)

Will Cambodia's approaching oil and natural gas boom end up being a blessing or a cursefor the Cambodian people? That is the subject of a recent article in Australia's The Age. Initial exploration, primarily by Chevron so far, has shown that there are substantial off-shore deposits of oil and natural gas.

Although the exact size of the deposits are still not known, previous World Bank estimates placed them at 2 billion barrels of oil. If that were true, the United Nations Development Program had said it could see a doubling of Cambodia's GDP.

That's a major amount of money and a major amount of temptation. That money could be used to create a significant transformation in the lives of the Cambodian people allowing for massive investment in infrastructure, health care and education. On the other hand, it could also lead to a new silver lining for the pockets of corrupt government and business officials.

A very good example of the former phenomenon is Malaysia who used it's oil and gasdiscoveries to transform the country over a 20 year period from a third world agricultural economy into a modern developing nation with massive investments in industry, education, infrastructure and health care systems.

(Reprinted from Angkor News Blog - part of my new website helping to promote a friend's business in Cambodia.)

I have been to poor countries as have many of my friends but I have never seen or heard of one from my friends' experiences that evokes as much desire to give something back as Cambodia (see my previous article - "Give and You Shall Receive"). I think it has something to do with the unbelievably friendly and indomitable spirit of the Cambodian people especially in light of the unimaginable horrors of the Pol Pot period.

In a recent article I came across, a couple from Philadelphia,

On June 8, four masked Israeli settlers attacked several members of the Nawaj’ah family from Khirbet Susiya as they were tending their sheep on Palestinian property near the West Bank settlement of Susiya. The land the Palestinian family was grazing on is owned by a Palestinian resident of nearbly Samu’ Village and has been closed by court order to Israelis since 2006.

Because the Nawaj'ah family has been the victim of repeated harassment by area settlers, the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem had provided them with a video camera as part of B'Tselem's "Shooting Back" advocacy and information program. This allowed the entire attack to be filmed by the family and was used for the first time by Israeli police in their investigation.

With the aid of the footage police have arrested two alleged suspects. Police believe however that the Palestinians themselves may have provoked the attack due to their faux couture:

As I have tried to show in this mini-series, there are many positive and hopeful things happening in the Middle East and in relations between the West and the Muslim world. We can't judge what we don't know and we can't develop informed opinions based on insufficient, skewed or deliberately distorted information. Has it become a dangerous liability that the citizens of the world's most powerful nation, one which has such an outspoken desire and track record of imposing its vision on other parts of the world, primarily see the rest of their world through the narrow tunnel of the American mainstream media?

Yesterday was the fortieth anniversary of RFK's assassination. I have taken some time this weekend to watch and read some of the historical material about his run for the presidency in 1968, the events of his turbulent times and many of his speeches. 

It was also this week that Barack Obama became the prospective Democratic nominee for the presidency. I can't escape the feeling that in many ways Obama's candidacy could be the fulfillment of the promise that RFK fought, and died, for in 1968. Although the things tearing America apart were in many ways very different in 1968, the country remains divided, often bitterly, along the fault lines of ideology, economics, lifestyle, race, gender and opportunity. RFK's message of hope and unity resounds as loudly today as it did forty years ago.

Of all RFK's speeches,

We can celebrate many things on this 60th anniversary of the founding of the modern day State of Israel. There is much to be thankful for. There is much that we have achieved. Israel has been the source of many innovations in the areas of water management and agriculture, science, medicine and technology. The country enjoys its own form of democracy and for many of its citizens it has created economic prosperity with an open and dynamic economy.

(NOTE: This article is somewhat longer than what I usually present here. For those who find it more convenient to read hard copy, you can download and print a copy at the end of the article.)

The fact that the state of Israel even exists, after thousands of years of Jewish statelessness,