Robert Putnam and Jeb Bush talk sense on immigration:

Proponents and opponents of immigration agree on one thing: Learning English is crucial to success and assimilation. Yet learning a language as an adult is hard, so first-generation immigrants often use their native tongue. Historically, English has dominated by the second or third generation in all immigrant groups. Most recent immigrants recognize that they need to learn English, and about 90 percent of the second generation speak English, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Research by sociologists Claude Fischer and Michael Hout published in 2008 suggests that English acquisition among immigrants today is faster than in previous waves.

Residential integration of immigrants is even more gradual. Half a century ago, sociologist Stanley Lieberson showed that most immigrants lived in segregated enclaves, “Little Italy” or “Chinatown,” for several generations. This segregation reflected discrimination by natives and the natural desire of “strangers in a strange land” to live among familiar faces with familiar customs. Only with suburbanization, encouraged by government policy in the 1950s and 1960s, did the children and grandchildren of the immigrants of the 1890s and 1900s exit those enclaves. That many of today’s immigrants live in ethnic enclaves is thus entirely normal and reflects no ominous aim to separate themselves from the wider American community.

Immigrant intermarriage, then and now, also demonstrates steady progress over generations. In the 1960s, more than half a century after Italian immigration peaked, about 40 percent of second-generation Italians married non-Italians. This pattern characterizes today’s immigrants: 39 percent of U.S.-born Latinos marry non-Latinos, according to the Pew Research Center. Intermarriage among second-generation Asian Americans is even more common. Today’s immigrants are, on average, assimilating socially even more rapidly than earlier waves.

Unfortunately the demagogues completely ignore all this, instead choosing to spread hysteria and ignorance (which is much more profitable).

The following photos were taken in and around Siem Reap, Cambodia, during my visit (May 24-27, 2009).

The streets of Siem Reap.

A common sight in Siem Reap.

Temple ruins made famous by Tomb Raider.

Killing Fields Memorial, dedicated to the victims of the Khmer Rouge government. Note it contains the bones of victims who could not be identified.

The United States will not return North Korea to its list of state sponsors of terrorism over their role in sinking a South Korean ship:

“In our view, it was a provocative action but one taken by the military or the state against the military of another state,” U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Philip Crowley said Monday in his explanation of why the sinking didn’t constitute an act of international terrorism.

When asked if the sinking was an “act of war,” Crowley called it a “violation of the existing armistice between North and South,” adding the United States continuously evaluates information that may affect the status of nations on the terror list.

Legally, this is true: sinking a military ship does not constitute terrorism, which is defined by the deliberate targeting of civilians. For some bizarre reason, North Korea was removed from the state sponsors of terrorism list by George W. Bush in what was obviously a mistake.

The attack clearly was an act of war, however, but I can understand why Crowley, for diplomatic reasons, might not want to explicitly state this.

On May 27, 2009, while visiting Siem Reap, Cambodia, I took a short trip to the floating villages. While there I took the following photos.

Departure.

At an orphanage school in the village.

Must be rush hour.

A Catholic Church.

A crocodile. Fortunately, it is kept in a pen and not allowed to swim free in the village.

During my stay in Siem Reap, Cambodia, I was blessed to watch both a sunset and sunrise over the ancient structure. These photos were take on May 25 and May 26, 2009.

The sun is in retreat.

A rainbow in the distance.

There goes the sun…

The next morning.

Here comes the sun. On solstice, it will rise directly over the center of the structure.

On this day in 1950, Communist North Korea invaded South Korea, setting off the Korean War, which would eventually involve all the great powers of the day: the United States, Great Britain, China, and the Soviet Union, making it a major Cold War battleground. Before a ceasefire was reached in 1953, nearly 4 million Korean civilians on both sides were killed or wounded (just over 5% of the population of the Korean peninsula), in addition to almost 137,000 South Korean soldiers and almost 37,000 U.S. soldiers killed. Remembered in the U.S. as the “Forgotten War,” the Korean War was one of the most brutal wars in the world history.

Since the 1953 armistice was signed, South Korea has gone from an impoverished backwater to one of the world’s leading economic powers, with a standard of living comparable to the U.S. North Korea, on the other hand, remains impoverished, oppressed, hostile, and isolated, though nuclear-armed.

It’s worth remembering that the Korean War officially never ended; an armistice was signed, but not a formal declaration ending the war. The ironically-named Demilitarized Zone separating the two countries remains the most heavily fortified in the world. Tensions continue to flare between the countries, most recently over the sinking of a South Korean ship by a North Korean submarine. Idealists dream of someday reunifying the countries, but unfortunately the prospects aren’t good, at least not in our lifetimes.

Article: Divided Koreas commemorate start of Korean War - Yahoo News

I have lots of photos I want to post, but have fallen way behind. So now I’m going to try my best to catch up, starting with a trip to Shanghai from May 21-23, 2009.

The streets of Shanghai, China.

Entrance to the famous Yuyuan Garden.

Inside the Yuyuan Garden.

Chinese Dairy Queen. Interesting to me as my first job was at Dairy Queen.

The Shanghai skyline.

Shanghai nightlife.

A Buddhist temple.

The Oriental Pearl Tower.

The top of the Oriental Pearl Tower has a glass bottom. Those are my feet on the bottom. It’s a long way down…

View from the tower, including smog.

This is pretty cool:

Twenty-first century laser technology has opened a window into the early days of the Catholic Church, guiding researchers through the dank, musty catacombs beneath Rome to a startling find: the first known icons of the apostles Peter and Paul.

Vatican officials unveiled the paintings Tuesday, discovered along with the earliest known images of the apostles John and Andrew in an underground burial chamber beneath an office building on a busy street in a working-class Rome neighborhood.

I haven’t blogged about Haiti because I don’t really know what to say. The level of tragedy can’t be put into words, and to the extent that it can, people have already done so far better than I could hope to. All I can say we should keep the people of this unfortunate nation in our prayers, and we should help in any way we can. Even if it’s only giving a few dollars to a reputable charity, it could mean the difference between life and death for someone. Every little bit helps.

We should also be grateful to be Americans. Even with the economy in bad shape, we remain incredibly lucky. We should never forget that.

UPDATE: I should mention that Catholic Relief Services and Food for the Poor are good and reputable organizations doing great work in Haiti.

Miep Gies, the woman who helped hide Anne Frank and saved her diary, has died at 100. Gies and her husband Bep, along with a few others, hid Anne Frank, her family, and four others in a secret annex, supplying them with food, books, and news from the outside. Like most heroes, she was modest, saying she didn’t wish to be a hero and giving the credit to others. But at a pivotal time she made the decision to do the right thing, risking everything. May her deeds never be forgotten.

Read the comments on this Free Republic post and tell me certain members of the Religious Right aren’t batsh*t crazy.

Well, good:

A Russian court ruled against Josef Stalin’s grandson Tuesday in a libel suit over a newspaper article that said the Soviet dictator sent thousands of people to their deaths.

A judge at a Moscow district court rejected Yevgeny Dzhugashvili’s claim that Novaya Gazeta damaged Stalin’s honor and dignity in an April article that referred to him as a “bloodthirsty cannibal.”

I don’t think it’s possible to damage Stalin’s “honor” or “dignity.”

This is quite the head scratcher:

The bestowal of one of the world’s top accolades on a president less than nine months in office, who has yet to score a major foreign policy success, was greeted with gasps of astonishment from journalists at the announcement in Oslo.

Obama said he felt humbled and unworthy of being counted in the company of the “transformative figures” of history who had won the prize.

Reaction has ranged from outrage to befuddlement. Obama has only been in office a few months; what has he accomplished to earn such an award?

Granted the prize has gone to some rather questionable characters before, among them Jimmy Carter, Yasser Arafat, Al Gore, and Henry Kissinger, but even in those cases at least the recipient had some accomplishments.

True, Obama has helped improve America’s perception in the world, but aren’t the voters ultimately responsible for that? Or George W. Bush, who did more to ensure Obama’s election than anyone.

Obama is right to feel “humbled and unworthy.”

Incheon is a port city located about thirty miles west of Seoul near the border with North Korea. With a population of 2.5 million, Incheon would probably be a little known city outside of Korea if not for the Battle of Incheon, where General Douglas MacArthur made his famous landing in September, 1950. Considered quite the gamble at the time (MacArthur insisted on this approach, going against the advice of several advisers), the famous landing ultimately turned the tide of the Korean War and allowed for South Korea to be liberated.
On March 14, 2009, I visited Incheon.

The way to Incheon’s Freedom Park.

Overlooking Incheon.

The statue of MacArthur in Freedom Park.

Chinatown.

The entrance to Incheon Landing Operation Memorial Hall and Museum.

Lots of outrage over the arrest of Roman Polanski. I don’t get it. Anne Applebaum, commenting in the Washington Post, notes some “mitigating circumstances” we should consider when judging Polansky:

Polanski’s mother died in Auschwitz. His father survived Mauthausen. He himself survived the Krakow ghetto, and later emigrated from communist Poland. His pregnant wife, Sharon Tate, was murdered in 1969 by the followers of Charles Manson, though for a time Polanski himself was a suspect.

So if I’m reading this correctly, Applebaum is saying that if you lost family members in the Holocaust, you shouldn’t be punished for drugging and raping a 13-year-old child? Huh? Applebaum also describes Polanski’s arrest as “bizarre”. What’s bizarre is that a child rapist could have so many defenders.

Patrick Goldstein also contends:

Hugo’s story is a tragedy, as is the life story of Polanski, who was a fugitive as a boy and is now a fugitive as an old man. Whether the L.A. County district attorney office has its way or not, it is not a story that can have a happy ending. I think Polanski has already paid a horrible, soul-wrenching price for the infamy surrounding his actions. The real tragedy is that he will always, till his death, be snubbed and stalked and confronted by people who think the price he has already paid isn’t enough.

What price, exactly, has Polanski paid? Sure, he can’t return to the U.S. or Britain, but is that really punishment enough for raping a little girl? As for being ostracized, it seems to me he has done fairly well. He has continued to write and direct, and has received numerous awards. He has untold admirers and defenders, which tells us as much about them as it does about him.

Kate Harding, writing in Salon, gets it right:

Roman Polanski may be a great director, an old man, a husband, a father, a friend to many powerful people, and even the target of some questionable legal shenanigans. He may very well be no threat to society at this point. He may even be a good person on balance, whatever that means. But none of that changes the basic, undisputed fact: Roman Polanski raped a child. And rushing past that point to focus on the reasons why we should forgive him, pity him, respect him, admire him, support him, whatever, is absolutely twisted.

At the end of the day, the justice system should work to administer justice to those who commit crimes. The crime Polanski did is one of the most horrendous a man can commit. The real outrage is not that he was arrested in Switzerland, but that he has been allowed to live such a charmed life.

John Podhoretz attacks the journalists captured by North Korea:

That said, and now that they are out of jeopardy, Ling and Lee deserve to be held accountable, at least in the realm of public opinion, for the unthinkably bad judgment they displayed in their preposterous, vainglorious, and astoundingly naive venture. Possessing some fantasy about presenting an inside look at North Korea on an justifiably unwatched (because unwatchable) cable channel called Current TV, they thought they could sneak undetected into a Gulag state, film some footage with a DV camera, and then sneak back out to the hosannas of the Peabody Award committee. This is something they chose to do and were given license to attempt by their employers, and for which they paid a horrific, far too horrific, a price. That must be the case as well for Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, the co-owners of Current TV, who have doubtless existed in a state of terrible “what have I done” anxiety about this since the arrests.

What Laura Ling and Euna Lee were doing was documenting the plight of refugees fleeing the Stalinist regime in North Korea. They were risking their lives to show the world the truth about the horrors of Kim Jong Il’s government. Most people, myself included, would consider that heroic.

Everyone complain about the media–sometimes with justification–but we tend forget that there are journalists all over the world literally risking their lives every day to bring us the news. They deserve respect for this. It’s unfortunate that Podhoretz, whose own media career never puts him in any physical danger, can’t take a break from hackery for even a day and recognize that some things are bigger than partisan politics.

Donghwasa Temple is a Buddhist temple located near Daegu, South Korea. It is very ancient; a temple has existed on the site since 493 AD. It remains one of the most spectacular temples in Korea.

These photos were taken on February 28, 2009.

China trusts prostitutes more than politicians.

Good news from North Korea:

North Korean President Kim Jong Il has pardoned and ordered the release of two U.S. journalists, state-run news agency KCNA said Wednesday.

The announcement came after former U.S. President Bill Clinton met with top North Korean officials in Pyongyang to appeal for the release of Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who had been arrested while reporting from the border between North Korea and China.

Tiananmen Square, probably China’s second most well-known landmark following the Great Wall, has a long history of destruction and resurrection. Originally know as Chengtianmen, the square was first built in 1420 as a reconstruction of the imperial building at Nanjing, also called Chengtianmen. Lighting destroyed the gate in 1457. In 1465 the gate was rebuilt. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, it was again destroyed, this time by rebels. The gate was once again rebuilt in 1645, and given its current name. The gate was once again reconstructed in 1969-1970.

In the West, Tiananmen Square is most well known for the infamous massacre which occurred there in 1989.
The following photos were taken on January 26, 2009.

The Gate of Heavenly Peace, which separates the Forbidden City from Tiananmen Square.