Al Jazeera releases Gaza videos

Al Jazeera has released its video repository on a Creative Commons license. In their site, they say

We have made available our exclusive Arabic and English video footage from the Gaza Strip produced by our correspondents and crews. The ongoing war and crisis in Gaza, together with the scarcity of news footage available, make this repository a key resource for anyone producing content on the current situation.

The video below is titled War on Gaza Day 19:



The following are notes on the video, as written in the Al Jazeera website:

Segment I:

• Aftermath of Israeli bombing. Homes in rubbles.
• Residents and children in rubbles.
• More of damage to homes caused by Israeli bombing.
• Residents watching rubbles of their homes.
• Bulldozer clearing debris.
• Damaged houses with broken windows and residents collecting their belongings and leaving
• SOT Abu Antar, one of the resident of the bombed building

Segment II:

• House of Umm Rami, which is damaged by Israeli bombing.
• Small children running around
• CU small girl.
• Interior of house showing damaged caused by Israeli bombing.
• Broken asbestos sheets, which were the roof of the house.
• Small children clearing debris of the house and salvaging their belongings.
• Mother and children inside damaged house.
• CU two babies in their mother's lap.
• Mother (Umm Rami) crying and talking to Jazeera reporter about their plight.

Segment III:

• Ambulance arriving at Shifa Hospital.
• Medics moving injured Palestinians to hospital.
• Private car bringing injured to hospital
• Small baby on hospital bed with burned face and chest caused by white phosphorus.
• Mother and child with burns.
• Severely injured boy on hospital bed, being fed by family.
• Boy with severe facial burns and body injuries.
• Sabah Abu Haleema, another victim on hospital bed crying in pain.
• Family members of the injured in despair.
• Sabah Abu Haleema, who lost her sons in bombing of their house, talking to Al Jazeera reporter.

Segment IV:

• Sheikh Ridwan Graveyard which was bombed by Israelis.
• People in graveyard watching damaged caused to graves by the bombing.
• People in graveyard covering graves with soil.
• View of crater in the graveyard caused by Israeli bomb.
• People repairing graves.
• Various of damaged caused to graves by Israeli bombing.
• Interview with a resident living near the bombed cemetery.

Segment V:

• Warehouse of electricity distribution /transmission company in Gaza.
• Bomblets still burning.
• Various of Electrical transformers inside the warehouse.
• Damaged electrical cables and transformers.
• Engineers of the electrical department explaining the damaged.
• Interview with Engineer Majdi Yagi, Incharge of the Electrical store which was targeted.

Israel's Holocaust

There seems to be no end to the violence that the Israeli nation can wreak on its Palestinian neighbors. This picture of an injured Palestinian child comes from the BBC news website.

Is this the way Israel wants us to remember them by? This singular nation, specific victims of the Holocaust, targeting innocent children, creating orphans out of hundreds of Palestinians?

I whole-heartedly agree with the assertion of journalist Len Olea that Israel is clearly a war criminal, together with its ally, the United States, in destroying the lives and property of Palestinians in Gaza City.

The way Israel treats Palestine civilians is no more different from the way the Nazis treated Jews during World War II. However flimsy my argument may be, there is still no reason to justify all this mindless violence against women and children.

Monday take on the Thursday stand-off

Several days have passed now since that fateful Thursday stand-off at the Manila Peninsula. That very day, as I monitored newsfeeds from the boobtube, the radio, and the Web, I also looked around Technorati to see what bloggers were saying about the mutiny.

Many were still holding their voices on what was happening, but I was already seeing various vicious comments about Philippine Senator Antonio Trillanes IV and Brigadier General Danilo Lim, former commander of the country's elite First Scout Ranger Regiment.

This is saddening to note, that these commenters have access and all to the web but can't seem to see the bigger picture into which the puzzle of the failed mutiny of Trillanes et al. fits in.

Let me share anyway what my fellow blogger Paeng had also shared -- a much better explanation of what had transpired, courtesy of the much-admired sociologist, Professor Randy David. Don't forget to visit, too, the renegade soldiers' instant website.

Banners high for the Saguisag family

Tragedy has befallen the Saguisag family.

Being a family man myself, the accident that cost Atty. Saguisag the life of his wife made me think about my own relationship with my wife, and how things would be darkly different if all of a sudden she were to go Dulce Saguisag's way.

Life is short, and always we are reminded by the daily deaths that go on public record. However, it is painful to account (an understatement) that many deaths are caused by another man's irresponsibility -- violent deaths due to crime or worse, simple idiocy.

Dulce Saguisag died because of a driver who thought his vehicle of a dump truck was as light as a go-kart and could be stopped immediately by lightly pressing the brakes.

Dulce Saguisag died because of a driver who thought the meaning of traffic lights going from green to red still meant "go."

Dulce Saguisag died because of a driver who the Land Transportation Office (LTO) thought was responsible, intelligent enough to be given a professional driver's license.

I am seething with anger not because it was Atty. Saguisag who lost his wife, but because what happened to him can also happen to me, and I don't want to lie on a hospital bed, to the point of dying, ignorant of the fact that my wife, my lifetime partner, is already gone.

Lest we forget

The Palace spin doctors are working overtime. We have seen information overload, and even a humongous fart that had claimed precious lives.

However, in the midst of all these issues, we should never forget that Malacañang tried to bribe our local officials. We should never forget that Malacañang tried to ram down our throats as taxpayers a very costly (ahhh... it is still an understatement) project that our telcos can do for us at lower prices. We should never forget that Malacañang, through the AFP, murdered journalists, priests, and activists in their pursuit of dictatorship, deftly disguised as the "strong republic."

The damned must be damned.

We should never forget. We must not forget.

It is all a big fart, says the PNP

Based from what our national security agencies believe (the Philippine National Police and even the National Bureau of Investigation), what happened at Glorietta 2 can happen at our very own primitive homes.

Imagine heeding the call of Mother Nature, then suddenly a huge explosion rips you apart, rips your whole toilet apart, rips your whole house apart, because of the methane buildup in your humble poso negro.

Considering that most of us do not even install wastewater treatment facilities at the municipal and city levels, imagine the number of explosions that would tear the metropolis apart, all from the humongous methane buildup that will catch all of us unaware.

And I am very sure that with the PNP's pronouncement, the Malabanan empire will have its hands full (eewwww!) sucking and draining all the poso negro facilities in the metropolis to avert the inevitable mind-numbing fart bombs, the lethal methane explosions that will tear all our Mariwasa-branded thrones apart.

So, after all the drama and the weeping, is the government saying that it was just a very, very, very big FART that had caused all of those deaths, physical and otherwise?

How intelligent.