1/26/06 11:46 AM- Palestinians Elect Hamas

In yesterday's Palestinian parliamentary elections, Hamas claimed a majority of seats, leading the more moderate prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, and his cabinet to resign. According to John O'Neil of the New York Times, President Bush, whose Middle East strategy has relied on the idea that democracy leads to peace,

...brushed off suggestions that the results marked a setback to his policy of lessening conflict in the Middle East by promoting democracy. In the last year, Iran has voted in a hard-line Islamic government, Iraq has given religious Shiite parties a dominant place in its new government and Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood have done well in elections in Lebanon and Egypt.

"We're watching liberty spread across the Middle East," he said.

At least someone can bring a sense of irony to this sad situation.

1/25/06 6:00 PM- Announcing www.francisbartus.com

Today I am exceptionally proud to announce the replacement of the old Photography Emporium with a new, flash-based, slideshow-oriented website with its very own URL: francisbartus.com. The newest photos will still be listed here, and the links above will still lead to the Photography Emporium.

Also, for the first time ever, you can purchase prints of any of the photos on the Photography Emporium. Simply click the 'Buy Prints' link at the bottom of the page. It's fast, easy, and secure thanks to Paypal's secure servers.

1/1/06 7:47 PM- Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone. Today I've added a whole slew of new content coupled with a new layout that should scale to fit the horizontal dimensions of your monitor. With the new site comes a new set of recommended requirements: this site is best viewed with Mozilla Firefox (IE messes up the iframes) with a screen resolution of 1024x768 or higher. Photo galleries require Macromedia Flash Player 8; they will display improperly with Flash Player 7.

From now on, the front page will display the newest articles and photo galleries in the two scrollable boxes above.

I have posted nine new essays under the Academic Writing section; they were written throughout my first semester at Columbia and cover topics ranging from the decay of Detroit to the moral responsilities of photographers. As always, your feedback is welcomed and appreciated.

11/19/05 10:35 PM-

As many of you may already know, I am forever indebted to my personal friend and benefactor, Lowell Boileau, who provides the hosting for this site. He is a painter, a photographer, and a historian, and he created the incredible website, DetroitYES. He was recently interviewed by WJR radio. You can listen to the podcast here (the interview starts around the 3 minute mark.)

11/8/05 8:32 PM-

Lisa Hoffman of the Scripps Howard News Service published two of my photographs with her article 'Restauraunt is haven for wounded war vets.' The article has appeared in several newspapers since. Please check it out: Restauraunt is haven for wounded war vets. You can see my entire gallery of photos from the event here: Wounded veterans dinner.

11/01/2005 11:24 PM- Massive Update: Photography Emporium.

Well, despite the fact that I have produced absolutely zero content for this site since January, I have managed to make a tremendous update to the Photography Emporium. I have added four brand-new galleries shot for the Columbia Daily Spectator, and I will doubtlessly add more as time progresses. Moreoever, I plan to post a few papers I have written for several of my classes. I promise they are more interesting than they will sound. Or at least you might humor me and pretend. Regardless, head on over to the Photography Emporium; oh, and by the way, the galleries now require Macromedia Flash Player 8. The galleries will display with Flash Player 7, but not properly. More coming soon.

4/23/05 1:28 PM- Update: Photography Emporium.

Today I have added two large galleries containing 54 brand-new photos from my trip to Belize. The first gallery contains shots from the mainland, including our lodgings at Caves Branch Jungle Lodge as well as the surrounding landscape and jungle. The second gallery contains shots from San Pedro, a city on the Ambergis Caye, on of the many Cayes east of the Belize mainland. The Photography Emporium.

2/21/05 4:05 PM- Gonzo Journalism, Rest in Peace.

Famed gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson shot himself in the head this past Sunday at his 'fortified compound' outside Aspen, Colorado. Notable for such works as The Rum Diaries, Hell's Angels, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Thompson pioneered the genre of gonzo journalism, chronicling events in a novelized--sometimes fictionalized--way. He covered Nixon's 1972 presidential campaign for Rolling Stone, and his work was later published as Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. Perhaps the wittiest, most scathingly honest journalist of our generation, his contribution to journalism will be greatly missed.

Read the CNN article / Watch the AP Video / Read the New York Times article

2/19/05 2:39 PM- Inside the Lee Plaza Hotel

Hey everyone--just posted a brand-new 27-picture gallery, accompanied by a story about my recent expedition inside Detroit's abandoned 18-story Lee Plaza Hotel. Check it out!

2/15/05 3:57 PM- Update: Photography Emporium

Just a medium-sized update to the Photography Emporium today. Next Monday or Tuesday, I will be posting a gallery of photos taken inside Detroit's abandoned Lee Plaza hotel; stay tuned.

1/24/05 9:44 PM-

Well, here I am. Six months since my last update, in the aftermath of a staggering and disappointing election, I have finally taken the time to update. Unfortunately, the time to discuss the weaknesses of the Democrats and the strengths of the Republicans has passed, and I would hate to bore you with my dissertation on what has gone before. Essentially, the Democrats ran a candidate with no grander message than "I can do better than Bush," while the Republicans cashed in on Bush's character wherever his policy was found wanting. It was an exciting race, and many of us—thrilled with the ultimate opportunity to bring about concrete policy change—poured countless hours into the Kerry campaign. Alas, if only the Democrats will learn their lesson from the failed campaign and run a candidate whose unifying moral message ties up the loose ends of liberal policy into a package that can break the Republican strangehold on middle-class morality. The Democrats used to do it, and they can do it again.

But enough about the election; this past Thursday, Bush was sworn in for his second-term in office. The following is my reaction to his address.

P.S. I also updated the Photography Emporium; I essentially took all my crummy images out of the main galleries and on to the "additional galleries" page, expanded the color portraits section and added a few new pics elsewhere. Check it out.

On the Inaguaral

Freedom. Liberty. Two powerful words spoken by a powerful man. Standing above a massive and diverse crowd of spectators, President Bush delivered his second inaguaral address to the nation that re-elected him. Rather than focusing on the deep rifts that continue to divide our country or his ambitious second-term domestic agenda, the President talked his favorite subject: foreign policy. Abandoning the simple, direct style of his campaign speeches, President Bush spoke like a fiery southern preacher, invoking the “fire” of freedom:

“By our efforts, we have lit a fire as well, - a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world.”

It is difficult to ignore the expansionist undertones in the President’s speech, in which he plainly stated that “the best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.”

So where exactly does our President plan to foster freedom? Presumably, he refers in part to our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. With Iraqi elections looming on the horizon, it would have been foolish not to indulge in a little Iraq-braggadocio—the President was careful, however, never to mention Iraq by name. Such a loaded term could have landed him in a great deal of trouble, especially with pre-election violence heating up and several entire provinces of Iraq unable to vote in the coming election. Undoubtedly, the results of Iraq’s elections will be hotly contested, and the new government will have to struggle to maintain order and make peace with the radical terrorist elements within their borders. Our “democratization” of Afghanistan, too, lay at the heart of Bush’s speech—but it was mostly a forward-looking address; beyond the positive spin he implicitly placed on our past two endeavors, he spoke of a continuing crusade of liberation.

This is the part of the speech that worries me. Firstly, might we spread this fire of freedom elsewhere in the Middle East? Could Iran or Syria be the next in line for the President’s ambitious campaign to end tyranny and grant peace and freedom to the entire world? He certainly seems to have convinced the American people to trust his idealism and vigor—and nothing is more idealistic than his foreign policy. Unfortunately, should we continue on the road to spreading freedom, I fear we might abandon the newly-liberated people of Iraq just as we abandoned Afghanistan. Already, our armed forces are stretched remarkably thin across the Middle East, and reservists have found themselves re-entering Iraq for second, even third tours of duty. In fact, the situation has declined the to point that a few Vietnam Veterans have been called to arms in the service of our country.

Before we look ahead—to the broader, grander vision of democratizing the Middle East—it is best we look behind. This past year, Afghan drug lords, who operated with impunity after the collapse of the Taliban, nearly exceeded the country’s all-time record for poppy production. Indeed, the sale of opium—estimated at $1.3 billion—accounted for nearly a quarter of the nation’s GDP. In his address, the President spoke freely and pertinently about the wonders of economic freedom. For Americans, who enjoy the wealth of the world’s most powerful nation, this notion plays a central role in day-to-day life. But in the aftermath of Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan, reconstruction efforts have uniformly failed to rescue Afghanistan’s economy from its deadly opium addiction. And what of Iraq? Should we—Iraq’s liberators and benefactors—acknowledge our limited resources and shift them to a newer, greater endeavor? Or should we heed the call to responsibility and—acknowledging the lessons of Afghanistan—do our best to ensure Iraq’s long-term stability?

Driving concern over the President’s lofty agenda, the ballooning federal deficit casts a dark shadow over future plans. Even the President’s domestic drive to reform social security—estimated to cost $2 trillion over the next 10 years—has fallen under criticism for this very reason. Our nation’s slow-to-grow economy simply does not have the resources to support another of the President’s foreign endeavors. And besides, I find it difficult to abide by the word of a President who proclaims his world-vision to be the liberation of the oppressed and the spread of freedom everywhere in the world. Not until we begin to pressure Saudi Arabia and Pakistan—long-time allies and clear-cut enemies of freedom—will I take the President’s claim seriously.

But beyond the foreign agenda, the President claims he will push freedom back home. Focusing on economic freedom, he invoked the ownership society—a familiar vestige of his campaign rhetoric. Yet he spoke nothing of the essential drive for human freedom within our nation—freedom from fundamentalism and discrimination. Unsurprisingly, when the President mentioned minority rights and the destruction of “slavery,” minorities were visibly unimpressed. How can a man who so fervently wishes to rob same-sex couples of the freedom to pursue their own happiness speak so eloquently and passionately about freedom? Can he really be so naïve as to believe that his narrow definition of freedom is the only one?

Unfortunately, as we mark the official half-way point of the Bush administration, we must reflect on the experiences of the past four years. Our nation is now rife with responsibility—to the people of Iraq, to our nation’s elderly, and to our troops. We must balance the task of stabilizing a nation with meeting the needs of the baby-boomers as they near retirement—all on an ever-tightening budget. Hopefully, the President will see the wisdom of a more conservative foreign policy, lest the mistakes of these past four years continue to plague us in the next four.

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