4 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, September 6, 2006 0;4 e :W tr4i tt t ttil DONN M. FRESARD Editor in Chief EMILY BEAM CHRISTOPHER ZBROZEK JEFFREY BLOOMER Editorial Page Editors Managing Editor EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 413 E. HURON ANN ARBOR, MI 48104 tothedaily@michigandaily.com OPINION NOTABLE QUOTABLE What we wanted to create is a news ticker, if you will, of the activity of people's friends in their network." - Melanie Deitch, director of marketing for Facebook. com, about the website's new "News Feed" feature, as reported yesterday by CampusProgress.org. KATIE GARLINGHOUSE HoU.E ARREST The New Orleans white-out JARED GOLDBERG n the year since Hurricane r Katrina, our true colors have come out. As we all attentively watched the news a year ago, we sat in horror at the sight of the Big Easy, the city of Mardi Gras, flood- ed and destroyed. In the following weeks, ex-presidents - specifical- ly former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton - appeared on television, urging us to give all that we could. Celebrity after celebrity joined in. U2's Bono and Mary J. Blige, among others, held a benefit con- cert. Actor Sean Penn put his money where his mouth was and actually went down to New Orleans. We all remember the pictures of him in a small boat with a red cup. These politicians and celebrities brought the same message: The people of New Orleans have lost everything. Give all you can. Now, here we are a year later. Of the nearly half a million people living in New Orleans at the time of the 2000 U.S. Census, only a fraction has returned. Areas of the city are still devastated and bodies are still being found in damaged homes. On August 15, 2006, New Orleans was dealt another crushing blow. A Missis- sippi couple sued for $130,000 in compensation from their insur- ance company for wind damage caused to their home. In a win for the insurance industry, U.S. District Court Judge L.T. Senter ruled that the couple was entitled to only just under $3,000 from their insurer, Nationwide Mutual. Senter concluded that the couple's policy did not include flood dam- age, and thus they were not cov- ered under their insurance policy. What a great precedent. I guess the next time a hurricane hits, peo- ple should stand on their roofs with a pad and paper and keep a tally of which damages to their property are caused by wind and which by floodwaters. Good luck with that one, your honor. This decision deals a crippling blow not justto the residents of New Orleans, but also to our own sense of moral duty. We were encouraged to help out the residents of Louisi- ana and Mississippi, yet the very people who should be legally obli- gated to give not only refuse to, but will not be forced to either. Senter's decision, nonetheless, has prevented the low-income residents of New Orleans, many of them black, from returning to their ruined homes. The wealthi- er, predominantly white residents, who were able to afford a more comprehensive insurance policy or to pay for repairs from their own pockets, have been much more likely to return. To pour salt on a fatal wound, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers - which has now come out and admitted that poor planning and construction on its part contrib- uted to the failure of the levees - has filed motions in federal court requesting immunity from lawsuits, including those associ- ated with the breach of the levees in New Orleans. What we are witnessing is the gradual racial and socioeconomic gentrification of New Orleans. It's happening right now. In the year since Katrina, the white, non-Lati- no population of New Orleans has grown to 68 percent of the city's population, up from 54 percent before the hurricane. While nearly everyone was forced to leave the destroyed city before and during Katrina, many of the city's poorer and primarily black residents are not coming back. To the Bush Administration and its parrots in Congress, this is progress. To the rest of us, it is injustice. Let us not forget it was Bush's incompetence and that of his own crony, Michael Brown, that exacerbated the humani- tarian disaster of Katrina. The images of mostly black residents in New Orleans stranded on their roofs, flagging passing helicop- ters for help that would not come until later, should be burnt into our memories. After the court victory for insurance companies, it will be difficult to reverse this dangerous precedent. As many have already noted, if this gentrification con- tinues, New Orleans will be New Orleans in name only. The New Orleans culture we have come to know and love will have been swept away by Katrina, replaced by a rich, white imitation. Instead of turning New Orleans into a victory for greed and capitalism, we should turn it into a victory for true American values of hard work, community and egalitarianism. This being an election year, we should be sure to elect politicians who side with people over corporations, the law over the dollar, Ameri- can ideals over politics. If we let New Orleans as we have come to know her die, a piece of the American soul dies with her. Goldberg can be reached atjaredgo@umich.edu. Send all letters to the editor to LETTERS T O THE EDITOR totedaily@michigandaiy.com. Let ResStaff or DPS i if you don't want to meet the AAPD To THE DAILY: Reading through the New Student Edition of the Daily for the 2006-2007 school year, I was disappointed to see "advice" to freshmen about the Department of Public Safety's ability to enter dorm rooms (Can I get your attention, please?, 09/05/2006). The writers advise that "DPS can- not enter your property without your consent (that means your dorm room, freshmen). Remember that, you'll thank us." As a resident advisor, I was highly disappointed to read this tip, because while it is true that DPS (and RAs for that matter) can- not enter a room, the Ann Arbor police can. If at any time someone refuses to let Restaff or DPS into the room, you can be assured the police will be called - and the consequences from the AAPD are much greater than from DPS or ResStaff. Not only are their consequences greater, but it is a waste of everyone's time to go through such has- sles. I have seen this happen many times, and every time someone refuses to let ResStaff or DPS into their room, the police get involved and it becomes a long, drawn-out, complex situation that wastes everyone's time. So before your staff gives such quality "advice" to freshman, they should really look deeper into the facts and know that they will not be thanked later after freshman get an MIP, are arrested or face other such consequences they would have never had to deal with had they let DPS or RAs into their room. Paul Gunnels Engineering senior U.S. should jettison corporate ties, act justly in Middle East To THE DAILY: The recent war fought between Israel and Hez- bollah killed more than a thousand Lebanese and more than a hundred Israelis. It led to the complete destruction of Lebanon's infrastructure and to bil- lions of dollars in damage to the Israeli economy. It caused the most moderate and pro-Western Mus- lims to become Hezbollah's most vocal supporters. And more importantly, it confirmed that the United States is willing to sacrifice as many Muslim lives as it deems necessary to establish its influence in the Middle East. While hundreds of children were being killed by the U.S.-made missiles Israel fired, President Bush was rushing the delivery of bombs and weapons to the Israeli army. While the entire world called Israel's actions disproportionately aggressive and a violation of international law, the United States labeled Hezbollah as the only prob- lem and labeled all civilian deaths as the respon- sibility of Hezbollah. While the world called for a cease-fire, the United States secretly condoned Israel's offensive. It is time for President Bush to stop listening to the "corporate-ocracy" that runs this nation. He needs to fire the members of his government who were previously CEOs of multinational cor- porations. He needs to develop a moral conscience instead of faking one. These words are probably said in vain, but they are also words of advice to fellow Americans. Look at our government and you will see politicians who were once corporate CEOs for oil companies or companies like Hali- burton. This democracy cannot and will not last long unless the people realize that the American media, the American corporations and the Ameri- can government are all run by the same people. It is our duty to change this before our democracy becomes an empire resembling the Roman Empire. Maybe it will lead to a Pax Americana much like the Pax Romana. But as a historian would tell you, the Pax Romana was full of internal oppression and frequent violence. Fahad Farugi LSA sophomore Letters Policy All readers are encouraged to submit letters to the Daily. Letters should include the writer's name, college and class standing or other Uni- versity affiliation. Letters should be no longer than 300 words. The Michigan Daily reserves the right to edit for length, clarity and accuracy. Submissions become the property of The Michigan Daily. Letters will be run according to timeliness, order received and the amount of space avail- able. Letters should be sent to tothedaily@ michigandaily.com. Editors can be reached at editpage.editors @umich.edu. VIEWPOINT Summer in Haifa BY DANIEL RATHAUSER I've now returned to the United States from Israel. When I listen to talk of UN resolutions, terror, Hez- bollah, Lebanon, "proportionality" and Israel, I can't help but think of one thing: the sound of rockets exploding outside my Haifa Univer- sity dorm room. But let's go back to the beginning, or at least the begin- ning that I experienced this summer in Israel, in Haifa. When my father and brother left the evening of the 4th of July, I was free to join my American friends - five of us studying for the summer in Haifa, and others staying in Jeru- salem two hours away. We moved into our rooms, settling into the routine of university life. The sunny southern beaches of Haifa's Medi- terranean coast, packed to capacity, swirling with beachgoers of all ages beckoned to us. People of all ages and persuasions pursued their favor- ite activities in a polyglot society of people hailing from a hundred coun- tries of the world. Such was also the makeup of my Hebrew classes at the university where 250 students came for the summer from more than 30 countries. The weather was great, the hummus even better. I was in my element. But all this soon changed. Less than a week into our pro- gram, on Wednesday, July 12, we learned that Hezbollah terrorists had crossed into Israel, killed three Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two others. Hezbollah began to fire Katyusha rockets at dozens of towns and villages north of Haifa. Still we continued to attend our classes. In the afternoon we went to the beach. As we increasingly noted military helicopters flying north and heard the sonic booms of jets flying over- head, we implicitly understood the meaning of this, though we con- tinued with the pretense of normal life. This, too, ended as we were informed that three Katyusha rock- ets had struck Haifa. We were now part of "the north." As I sat in the bomb shelter with my suitemates, we spoke with shock and fear about the rockets that landed nearby. The reports we were receiving from the international news websites showed pictures of areas that looked all too familiar to us. We spoke about the worst-case scenario of a strike on the large industrial complex in the city's port area where chemicals such as chlo- rine were manufactured. The following morning was the first time in my life I actually heard the sounds of war. On my way to class at 9:30 a.m., I heard five or six rockets explode. Due to the short distance between Haifa and Leba- non, the sirens alerting people to take cover sounded only after the rockets had landed. Within the hour we read media reports saying that eight people were killed by one of the rockets at a train repair depot in the downtown district. We could see smoke rising from areas where rockets had fallen. Even after hearing rockets exploding, virtually none of the 250 students wanted to leave the country; it was family outside of Israel who insisted that many of the program's participants return home. The university, acting in what it per- ceived to be our best interest, trans- ferred those of us who remained to the safety of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem 60 miles farther south, where we completed our courses four weeks later, As I spoke to Israeli friends, I learned that all the pictures I saw each day in the newspaper, of dead soldiers in their teens and twenties and of grieving Israeli families, were due to the fact that the soldiers had been given orders to take care to protect Lebanese civilians. I was particularly affected in learning of the death of Michael Levin, 21, of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, whose background was not dissimilar from my own. I believe the youth in Israel fight because they believe in free- dom for both themselves and their Lebanese neighbors - freedom from terrorism, freedom to live full and normal lives without war and without rockets. I heard the stories from those involved, and I saw the painful sacrifices, even as the for- eign press spun a defensive war into a war of aggression. No Israeli I spoke with want- ed this war. I saw debates raging everywhere in Israel about justice and saving Lebanese lives. I saw a society so concerned with doing the right thing that it was willing to sac- rifice its own soldiers' lives to do so. I saw proof of this each and every day. And yet I returned home and found only the reports of Israel's "aggression" on the news. I watched CNN journalists talk with Hezbol- lah press secretaries of Israeli "evil" and I wondered: Where's the story about the Israel I saw? I saw a soci- ety obsessed with justice and peace, fighting an enemy obsessed with destruction and terror. And yet,they were seen as morally equivalent in the eyes of much of the world media. Even while 250 rockets - packed to the brim with ball bearings that behave like bullets in a large area upon impact - fell on a daily basis, I saw that Israelis did not lose hope for neighbors who might one day be taught to love, not hate. As I begin my four years of uni- versity, I can't help but remember that kids my age in Israel are beginning their two to three years of military service. This summer has opened my eyes to alternate realities that exist throughout the world, in places like Haifa and Beirut. Those of us removed from these realities always have a skewed view as to what really goes on. But from personal experi- ences - rockets outside my dorm window, newspapers full of casual- ties, discussions with everyday Israe- lis about war,justice,peace,terrorists, and civilians - this summer I had, by all accounts, a definitive bird's-eye view, and I will never forget it. Rathauser is an LSA freshman.