Filed at 7:10 am, Tuesday May 03rd 2011
by Arlen Parsa
Obama:
“We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority.”
McCain:
LARRY KING: If you were president and knew that bin Laden was in Pakistan, you know where, would you have U.S. forces go in after him?
MCCAIN: Larry, I’m not going to go there and here’s why, because […]
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Filed at 6:47 am, Monday May 02nd 2011
by Arlen Parsa
I’m stunned right now just like everyone else. I think most people never expected this day of closure would come. Almost a decade after the original attacks, the shock that the perpetrator has finally been killed is nearly as shocking as the initial attacks themselves.
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Filed at 8:52 am, Saturday February 12th 2011
by Arlen Parsa
So, not only do the Egyptians manage to peacefully unseat a dictator after 30 years of repressive reign, they even clean up afterwards:
As the impact of the revolution settled in, some members of the movement that toppled Mr. Mubarak vowed to continue their protest, saying that all their demands had not yet been met. In […]
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Filed at 9:02 am, Saturday January 29th 2011
by Arlen Parsa
It’s not hard to understand why the Iranian government is cheering events in Egypt. Watching what’s going on in Egypt right now must be hard for American diplomats and CIA personnel on the job long enough to remember what happened in Iran in 1979. The two situations are eerily similar in many respects, and not […]
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Filed at 9:49 pm, Tuesday January 25th 2011
by Arlen Parsa
President Obama’s State of the Union speech was pretty decent, I thought. The mixed seating certainly made it a different experience to watch, and made the constant audience cutaways feel less motivated when there wasn’t big differences in who was standing up and sitting down. I was impressed at the emphasis the president put on […]
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Filed at 1:42 pm, Monday January 17th 2011
by Arlen Parsa
Not long ago at Groundswell Educational Films (the nonprofit where I work) we paid a visit to J. Fred MacDonald’s archival film collection here in Chicago. Fred’s archive, which included millions of feet of old films was an incredible thing to see for a budding documentary-filmmaker like myself. On the day we visited him he […]
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Filed at 5:49 pm, Saturday January 15th 2011
by Arlen Parsa
This is very cool: this past week the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston announced it has become the first of the presidential libraries to put a major portion of its holdings online. This includes documents, photos, audio recordings, and (yes!) even full-length public domain video with accompanying shot lists. All four are of […]
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Filed at 8:00 am, Tuesday January 11th 2011
by Arlen Parsa
Here are some more of my entries to the National Archives photo contest.
Al Capone’s Soup Kitchen, then:
And now:
The opening of the Michigan Ave bridge over the Chicago River then:
And now:
The Wabash Ave bridge then:
And now:
Michigan Ave by the Chicago Cultural Center (then a library):
And now:
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Filed at 4:57 pm, Saturday January 08th 2011
by Arlen Parsa
Representative Gabrielle Giffords said on March 25, 2010: “Sarah Palin has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district and when people do that, they’ve gotta realize there are consequences to that action.”
Unfortunately, she was right.
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Filed at 8:55 pm, Sunday January 02nd 2011
by Arlen Parsa
So, the National Archives is having a somewhat under-publicized photo contest where the goal is to take photos in the same spot as historical photos from their holdings. The trick is, you have to hold up the old photo from their archives and align it with today’s environment.
Noticing that only a few dozen entries have […]
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Filed at 11:29 am, Thursday December 16th 2010
by Arlen Parsa
I started this blog to post my thoughts about news and politics in December 2005, about five years ago. Back then, I was in my first semester in college and almost everything I blogged about was politics-centric.
I graduated from college a year and a half ago and now work full time at a nonprofit documentary […]
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Filed at 4:27 pm, Tuesday December 07th 2010
by Arlen Parsa
Living in Chicago, I saw this ad on Facebook and thought the framing was interesting. Instead of it being a question of whether Emanuel has the right to run as mayor here, the question the ad poses is whether or not voters have the “right” to vote for him. Gee whiz, you mean our rights […]
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Filed at 8:25 am, Tuesday November 23rd 2010
by Arlen Parsa
Either this is a joke, or somebody over at the George W. Bush presidential library planning committee has a sick sense of humor:
One of the most enduring symbols of George W. Bush’s presidency may soon have a prominent new home.
USA Today reports that the “Mission Accomplished” streamer, which was displayed during a speech in 2003 […]
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Filed at 7:25 am, Tuesday November 02nd 2010
by Arlen Parsa
I’ve never had any contact with the right wing American Israel Public Affairs Committee something called the Americans In Contact PAC and yet they apparently found my cell number and have texted me– IN ALL CAPS no less– a very important unsolicited message to vote for Republican candidates.
FCC regulations clearly state:
The CAN-SPAM Act supplements some […]
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Filed at 6:28 am, Tuesday November 02nd 2010
by Arlen Parsa
Tiffany and I early-voted last Saturday (the weekend before this past Saturday). If I had to make a prediction, I’ll guess that the Republicans will take the House, but by a smaller margin than a lot of people are predicting, and that the Democrats will keep very slim control of the Senate. But who knows. […]
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