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Archives
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Saturday February 28 2004
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photography
I have another of my school series up. Still a couple more to do,
School #6
School #6
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Thursday February 26 2004
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peak oil
There are many links, in this blog, below these links on peak oil. None of the other links, and I mean *none* of them, are going to affect you like this one. And if you think that there is any way you are going to get out of the way of this oncoming freight or that somehow a miracle is going to come along to save our sorry asses — well, you're seriously deluding yourself.
Forecast of Rising Oil Demand Challenges Tired Saudi Fields
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When visitors tour the headquarters of Saudi Arabia's oil empire — a sleek glass building rising from the desert in Dhahran near the Persian Gulf — they are reminded of its mission in a film projected on a giant screen. "We supply what the world demands every day," it declares.
For decades, that has largely been true. Ever since its rich reserves were discovered more than a half-century ago, Saudi Arabia has pumped the oil needed to keep pace with rising needs, becoming the mainstay of the global energy markets.
But the country's oil fields now are in decline, prompting industry and government officials to raise serious questions about whether the kingdom will be able to satisfy the world's thirst for oil in coming years.
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Feeling peaky
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What will happen when the oil runs out?
It's a question that you don't hear asked very often but the more you think about it the more you realise it's a rather pressing issue.
Oil and gas drive our transport systems; heat our homes; help generate our electricity; are used in the manufacture of many important chemicals and medicines; they even help in food production.
How will we fare when the nice, cheap oil on which our society is built runs out? And when will this happen?
An adviser to the Bush administration on energy matters, Matthew Simmons, has described the problem of cheap oil running out (known as "peak oil") as "the world's biggest serious question". He also fears that the moment of crisis is "at hand".
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thanks to DANGEROUSMETA!
Life After The Oil Crash
"Deal with Reality, or Reality will Deal with You."
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Civilization as we know it is coming to an end soon. This is not the wacky conclusion of a religious cult, but rather the result of diligent analysis sourced by hard data and the scientists who study global “Peak Oil” and related geo-political events.
So who are these nay-sayers who claim the sky is falling? Conspiracy fanatics? Apocalypse Bible prophesy readers? To the contrary, they are some of the most respected, highest paid geologists and experts in the world. And this is what's so scary.
The situation is so dire that even George W. Bush's Energy Adviser, Matthew Simmons, has acknowledged that "The situation is desperate. This is the world's biggest serious question."
According to Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, "America faces a major energy supply crisis over the next two decades. The failure to meet this challenge will threaten our nation's economic prosperity, compromise our national security, and literally alter the way we lead our lives."
If you are like 99% of the people reading this letter, you have never heard of the term "Peak Oil." I had not heard the term until a few months ago. Since learning about Peak Oil, I have had my world view, and basic assumptions about my own individual future turned completely upside down.
A little about myself: A few months ago, I was a 25 year old law school graduate who found out he had just passed the California Bar Exam. I was excited about a potentially long and prosperous career in the legal profession, getting married, having kids, contributing to my community, and living the "American Dream."
Peak Oil has caused me to seriously question how realistic this vision of my life is.
Whether you're 25 or 75, an attorney or an auto mechanic, what you are about to read may shake the foundations of your life.
In the pages that follow, you will find a brief explanation of Peak Oil, the ramifications, and what we can do about it. I have designed this site with somebody new to the issue of oil depletion in mind. If you would like more in depth explanations with graphs, charts, and the like, please consult the extensive interviews, articles and sites I have linked to throughout this site.
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art and society
An Open Letter to the Arts Community
by Guillermo Gómez Peña
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Since 9/11, I have had this reoccurring dream. I dream of a faraway country in which artists are respected in the same way pop celebrities, military men and sportsmen are respected in our country. Artists perceive a decent salary, own their homes and cars, enjoy vacations, and have medical insurance. The media and the political class value their opinions. They perform multiple social roles as social critics and chroniclers, advisers, intercultural diplomats, community brokers, and spiritual leaders. In this sui generis society, we can actually purchase poetry books and art magazines in convenience stores. Writers, philosophers, and performance artists appear daily on national television and radio. Museums are free and every neighborhood has a cultural center. In this most unusual society, even corporations, city councils, school districts and hospitals hire artists as advisers, and animators. In this imaginary society, artists don't have to write texts like this one
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Helena Cobban is starting a series on the subject of Palestinian suicide bombers. As usual, she brings an interesting perspective. A perspective that deserves consideration.
Hard thinking about suicide bombings
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Yesterday, in West Jerusalem, a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated his bomb on a crowded early-morning bus. Eight people--actually nine, including the bomber himself-- were killed, and scores injured. What a tragedy. Here are some details about seven of these people.
I was in West Jerusalem exactly two weeks ago. When I visited Israel in 2002, I was glad to have the opportunity to take a few bus-rides, as I hoped it would show some sort of solidarity with my many friends in Israel who, I know, live with a constant level of dread that something like this may happen. On my most recent visit to Jerusalem, just two weeks ago, I didn't ride a bus. But I made a point of spending an evening walking over to Ben Yehuda Street and eating in a nice, popular restaurant there. The same sort of (perhaps ill-focused) "solidarity" at work.
The Israeli government and, it seems, many people in Israel are vocal in making the case that the fear they suffer from the suicide bombers justifies many of the policies their government has adopted taken and continues to adopt toward (or against) the Palestinians. That includes the policy of not negotiating with Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority--on the grounds that the extremely hard-pressed PA is "not tough enough" on the militant organizations that organize the missions of the suicide bombers. It also, more currently, includes the government's pursuit of its present wall-building project in the West Bank.
I think I understand a little about how terrible it must feel to live in a country that is subject to periodic suicide-bomb assaults, many of them detonated in places filled with civilians. I have only spent a little time in Israel. But back when I was in Lebanon in the late 1970s, car-bomb attacks against "soft", civilian-packed targets were certainly one of the many tactics used by the (Israeli-backed) Maronite extremist organizations against the people of mainly-Muslim West Beirut. Like most of the other western journalists working in Lebanon at that time, I lived in West Beirut. I also had my children there. Yes, we were living within the bounds of an always unpredictable civil war (which was why I left the city, with my children, in 1981). Many horrendous things happened while I was there-- and of course, many even worse things, in 1982, after I was gone. But one of the things that happened periodically in West Beirut was certainly car-bombs.
[...]
However, it is also quite appropriate to start asking some realistic questions about this whole phenomenon of Palestinian suicide-bombings of Israeli civilians that are, it seems to me, too seldom asked in most western media. Questions like these:
- Is there something about these types of attack that makes them uniquely different from any other form of assault against a society, and if so, what is it?
- Do the "special" attributes of this form of attack justify "special" forms of response against those judged responsible for such attacks?
- How broadly or narrowly should such "responsibility" be ascribed?
- Given that during the current Palestinian intifada more than four times as many Palestinian minors as Israeli minors have been killed (and we might assume that the proportion of "civilians" of all ages killed on each side is roughly similar) can we say that Israel's actions against the Palestinians--inasmuch as they are claimed to be "in response to" Palestinian violence against Israelis--have actually been proportionate?
- And, given that the cycle of violence between the two peoples, with its terrible attendant casualty toll, shows no sign of abating, can we say that Israel's policies toward the Palestinians have actually been effective in achieving the claimed goal of ending the violence?
These are not small questions, I know. But they have been weighing on me a lot in the wake of my latest visit to Israel/Palestine, and I hope to be able to start exploring them in some posts over the days ahead.
Today, I'll start with Question 1 above, and hope to make a bit of headway.
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Palestinian suicide bombings: another explanation
Suicide bombings, contd.
photography and the digital divide
Thoughts on Digital Photography
by Bruce Barnbaum
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There has been a great deal written about digital photography over the past several years. It’s time to step back from all the hype for a more grounded assessment. Because this assessment comes from me, a photographer who has done no digital work, it may appear negatively biased. In my defense, I will note that I feel digital approaches are perfectly legitimate, I regularly invite and work with digital practitioners as co-instructors with me on my workshop program, and I have not hesitated to judge digital images as "best in show" when I have been invited to jury exhibits. So while I don’t do it myself, I’m not biased against it.
There are two basic points I wish to emphasize in this article. The first is that traditional photography carries a host of powerful tools in its tool chest that are neither diminished nor superseded by the advent of digital. Second, there are problems with digital methods that are ignored or glossed over regularly, and these probems should be recognized and openly discussed along with digital’s many attributes.
Digital photography is new, yet some fine work has already been produced. Traditional photography has been around for more than 150 years, and extraordinary work has been produced by hundreds of greats, including Kertesz, Adams Weston (both Brett and Edward), Cunningham, Emerson, Sudek, Mark, Uelsmann, Salgado, Porter, Haas, Caponigro, Cartier-Bresson, Riis, and many, many others. We can expect fine work in the future from either approach.
Unfortunately, we can also expect a plethora of bad work from either approach, which brings me to my starting points about digital. A computer is a tool, nothing more, nothing less. A camera is a tool. A darkroom is a tool. A paintbrush is an artistic tool. A pencil is one, too. A computer will not turn the average person into an artist any more than any of the other tools will do so. It’s the mind behind the tool that creates art, not the tool. Those who think they will make an artistic breakthrough by approaching photography through digital methods, are in for a tremendous surprise. It would be like thinking that by going to a pen you’ll become a better writer than you have been with the use of a pencil.
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After you read his essay, you might want to stick around a look at some of his images.
Bruce Barnbaum
Corridors, 1994
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iraq — vietnam on internet time
The military thinks they are going to be in Iraq for a long time. Now that we've been kicked out of Saudi Arabia, Iraq is to be our center for Middle East basing.
Former Iraq administrator sees decades-long U.S. military presence
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Retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, the former interim administrator of post-conflict reconstruction efforts in Iraq, said Thursday that a U.S. military presence in Iraq should last "the next few decades," but questioned the mix of forces already there and current plans to reconfigure the armed forces as a whole.
Echoing concerns raised by lawmakers at this week's defense budget hearings, Garner said in an interview with National Journal Group reporters and editors that the size of the Army and Marine Corps should be increased by enlarging the infantry or ground forces. And he warned that the current strain on National Guard and Reserve forces deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan could cripple efforts to retain experienced soldiers.
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thanks to This Modern World
The Iraqi's don't seem to be so sure about that...
Iraqis Say Deal on U.S. Troops Must Be Put Off
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Iraq's interim leaders said Sunday that they could not negotiate a formal agreement with the American military on maintaining troops in Iraq, and that the task must await the next sovereign Iraqi government.
The delay could put the Americans in the position of negotiating an agreement with leaders they did not appoint on such sensitive issues as when the use of force would be allowed.
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Helena Cobban has some interesting thoughts on this issue. A must read.
Pentagon's Iraqi SOFA collapses
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Can you hear it? Clunk, clunk, clunk. That's the sound of the Bushies' latest hastily-cobbled-together "plan" for post-Saddam Iraq falling apart, one major portion at a time.
The latest part of the Pentagon's (shockingly misnamed) "plan" to collapse is the part known as a "Status of Forces Agreement", or SOFA.
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Here are three links on the effects this is having on our troops.
The unseen cost of the war in Iraq
The true extent of US casualties in Iraq are still unknown. This has fuelled suspicion that the administration may be hiding the true human cost of the war and its aftermath. Channel Four News has been allowed a rare opportunity to meet some of America's wounded soldiers.
thanks to Whole Wheat Radio
Saddam in the Slammer, so why are we on Orange?
By David H. Hackworth
AFTER STOP-LOSS.
And what about those pesky elections in Iraq? Here are three links, one by Juan Cole (who you should be reading every day if you want the best coverage and commentary on this clusterfuck......there, I took my medication and I'm feeling much better now) and two by the ever thoughtful Helena Cobban...
UN: No Early Elections in Iraq
Brahimi report: a realistic way forward
Cole on Sistani and Mudarrisi
photoethnography
This is a wonderful source of photoethnography links courtesy of Karen Nakamura at Photoethnography.com.
Fixing Shadows
Still Photography
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Fixing shadows consists of a set of pages devoted to photographic topics including the work of individual photographers and photographs of historical and ethnographic interest and value. We also want to develop pages devoted to family photography and to miscellaneous "found" photographs that catch our fancy.
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Here is an example of what can be found Fixing Shadows...
Marion Post Wolcott
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When I took the FSA job, I already had battle scars. I had weathered…the first weeks as a female full-time staff photographer on the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin…The ten male photographers with whom I was to work, immediately put out their cigarette butts in my developer, spit in and hypoed it, probably peed in it; threw spit balls into my cubby-hole darkroom until my aim and speed became better than theirs. Finally, I exploded—telling them I was there to stay…I told them how and when I could be very useful to them, and that I needed their help in return; that they could teach me about a Speed Graphic and how to develop and print for a newspaper, that they could openly use their accustomed language and the four-letter words which I’d heard and used, and would welcome the opportunity to feel free to use them myself, again. That did it; we reached a truce…soon each one confidentially telling me that the others were wolves and he was going to be my protector.
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On Assignment up South Fork of Kentucky River, Breathitt County,
MPW's Borrowed Car in Creek, Pulled up by Mule. Kentucky, September, 1940
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fundamentalism
Discovering Fundamentalism
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Fundamentalists are fundamentally paranoid. They are control freaks who sense that they cannot actually control. They are just as mad about this as any pathologically paranoid person would be. And they will always respond against those who do not share their own imagined threats as somehow "real". They will respond with exactly as we are seeing today; a vitriolic hatred of everyone who questions their percieved fear. The exact definition of pathological paranoia.
This is what we have leading our nation now. The pathologically paranoid. This is why we pathologically exaggerate our national threats. This is why we cannot spend too much on a military that is already so far in advance of any of our competitior's.
Because we are ruled by the insane.
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thanks to wood s lot
photography
like a man, as a man
16 polaroids
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theocracy
The theocrats' stealth attack on the courts
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What do the Ten Commandments, gay marriage and Janet Jackson all have in common?
All three are symbols, for the religious right, of "everything that is wrong with America." The fact that a judge was prevented from having the Ten Commandments placed in an Alabama courthouse; that a Massachusetts court legalized gay marriage, followed by the civil-disobedience action by San Francisco authorities in similarly recognizing such unions; and that Jackson was able to "shock" Super Bowl audiences long ago jaded by half-naked cheerleaders and beer commercials by briefly baring her breast -- all these, according to the folks who want to remake America as a "Christian nation," are clear signs that the nation's moral depravity has gone too far.
And as a troika, they are playing a central role in the campaign by this same faction of the right to radically recast the nation's political landscape, primarily by attacking the power of the courts to shape public policy. They are the noisy cover, as it were, for a stealth attack on the judiciary.
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book art
Dime Novel Cover Art Gallery
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thanks to The Cartoonist
vietnam
Joseph Duemer strikes again. A must read.
War Stories
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Forgive me, friends, I've been a little obsessive about politics lately. I lived through the Nixon & Reagan administrations, but I have never felt as much despair about American national life--political, social & cultural--as I do right now. When Nixon & Kissinger were bombing Cambodia (to select just one example) & I went out into the streets with thousands of others, I felt personally imperiled, but my sense of the country was that if we could just end that terrible, worthless war in Southeast Asia, I would have my country back. These days, I have the sense that even if the Bush administration manages to wind down the Iraq adventure, nothing decisive will occur. The country will continue its slide toward oligarchy if Bush is elected in 2004. The war in Iraq will be the least of our problems. Funny how politics becomes history & an obsession with politics becomes an obsession with history.
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graphic design
Dr Leslie & The Composing Room
1934 - 1942, An Important Time In The Development Of American Graphic Design
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Founded in 1927 by Sol Cantor and Dr. Robert L. Leslie, The Composing Room set out to be the cream of the crop in typesetting firms. Described in a promotional piece as "a shop where type is set intelligently for intelligent clients. Also promptly, reasonably, and with true professional enthusiasm. An outfit which plays up the art in every particular, and doesn't miss the fun in fundamentals either."
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thanks to Junior Bonner
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Wednesday February 25 2004
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here is where the rich screw the rest of america
Greenspan: Deal with deficit by cutting future Social Security benefits
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Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan urged Congress today to deal with the country's escalating budget deficit by cutting benefits for future Social Security retirees. Without action, he warned, long-term interest rates would rise, seriously harming the economy.
In testimony before the House Budget Committee, Greenspan said the current deficit situation, with a projected record red ink of $521 billion this year, will worsen dramatically once the baby boom generation starts becoming eligible for Social Security benefits in just four years.
He said the prospect of the retirement of 77 million baby boomers will radically change the mix of people working and paying into the Social Security retirement fund and those drawing benefits from the fund.
"This dramatic demographic change is certain to place enormous demands on our nation's resources — demands we will almost surely be unable to meet unless action is taken," Greenspan said. "For a variety of reasons, that action is better taken as soon as possible."
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I've been waiting for this. Now the cat is out of the bag. We have deficits because the rich and the corporations aren't paying taxes anymore, so now the poor will will just have to suffer in their retirement. Fuckheads. That doesn't include just the rich, it includes every deluded Republican that is going to need every cent of that Social Security when they retire. The rich aren't looking out after America, folks, they are only looking out for themselves. Remember, they won't be needing Social Security. I'm so fucking furious over this latest rape of America, I'd better stop now.
bush
W's Reality Gap
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First, George W. Bush begins any policy consideration with three fundamental questions: What does the religious right want? What does big business want? What do the neo-conservatives want? If he has stood up to any of these core supporters in the past three years, examples don't come readily to mind. Convinced by political advisor Karl Rove that the way to a second term is to "activate the base," his policy process is more catechismic than empiric – instead of facts leading to conclusions, conclusions lead to "facts."
Second, he is openly uninterested in learning and reading – the Bushes "aren't serious, studious readers" he has said, also admitting that he now reads headlines, not articles. The point is not that he's stupid, only that he knew less about policy and the world as a presidential candidate than the average graduate student in government. Lacking Eisenhower's worldliness or JFK's intellect, however, Bush is prone to grab onto a politically useful intellectual framework like a life preserver and then not let go – whether it's Myron Magnet's sour interpretation of the 60s in "The Dream and the Nightmare" or Paul Wolfowitz's Pollyannaish analysis of the likely consequences of an American invasion of Iraq.
The result: the most radical, messianic and misleading presidency of modern times. Frankly, no one else comes close. It has gotten to the point that President Bush appears to believe that he can do almost anything if he says the opposite: hence "no child left behind," "clean skies law," "healthy forests," and "love the poor" are mantras repeated in the hope that he can bend reality to his will. Arthur Miller calls it "the power of audacity.">
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panos
The panorama bug bit me in the early 90s. I bought a panorama head for my medium format Mamiya Universal in order to do panel panoramas. (It rotates the camera around the lens nodal point.) Making all those prints and mounting them together never happened. But now we have stitching software! Except not all stitching software is the same. This summer I got out my old panorama head and made three overlapping images. (Actually, I did four but the fourth's exposure was bad.) I bought a copy of PanaVue's ImageAssembler. It had seemed to work OK on other tests I had done, but it just couldn't handle the three images from the Mamiya. I kept getting ghosts. I tried Panorama Tools with both the PTAssembler and PTgui interfaces, but things just didn't line up quite right. Then I read about The Panorama Factory and checked it out at panoguide. I was encouraged to download the demo and — WOW! It nailed it.
Summer Morning at Honeymoon Lake
(677KB)
The demo is fully functional but puts text in the middle of the picture. I did this using the wizard, but it also seems to have a lot tweaking capability if things don't line up. Now I need to find $60 to register it.
Snow at Honeymoon Lake
(420KB)
This picture was taken with my antique digital Olympus D-600L, hand held. There is a little ghosting but it did an amazing job for hand held and I was not even begining to rotate it around the lens nodal point.
Now to start planning some panorams...
iraq — vietnam on internet time
I've read some of Karen Kwiatkowski's excellent pieces before. She had an inside view to the run up to the Iraq war. A must read
Soldier for the Truth
Exposing Bush’s talking-points war
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So you don’t think there was a genuine interest as to whether or not there really were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
It’s not about interest. We knew. We knew from many years of both high-level surveillance and other types of shared intelligence, not to mention the information from the U.N., we knew, we knew what was left [from the Gulf War] and the viability of any of that. Bush said he didn’t know.
The truth is, we know [Saddam] didn’t have these things. Almost a billion dollars has been spent — a billion dollars! — by David Kay’s group to search for these WMD, a total whitewash effort. They didn’t find anything, they didn’t expect to find anything.
So if, as you argue, they knew there weren’t any of these WMD, then what exactly drove the neoconservatives to war?
The neoconservatives pride themselves on having a global vision, a long-term strategic perspective. And there were three reasons why they felt the U.S. needed to topple Saddam, put in a friendly government and occupy Iraq.
One of those reasons is that sanctions and containment were working and everybody pretty much knew it. Many companies around the world were preparing to do business with Iraq in anticipation of a lifting of sanctions. But the U.S. and the U.K. had been bombing northern and southern Iraq since 1991. So it was very unlikely that we would be in any kind of position to gain significant contracts in any post-sanctions Iraq. And those sanctions were going to be lifted soon, Saddam would still be in place, and we would get no financial benefit.
The second reason has to do with our military-basing posture in the region. We had been very dissatisfied with our relations with Saudi Arabia, particularly the restrictions on our basing. And also there was dissatisfaction from the people of Saudi Arabia. So we were looking for alternate strategic locations beyond Kuwait, beyond Qatar, to secure something we had been searching for since the days of Carter — to secure the energy lines of communication in the region. Bases in Iraq, then, were very important — that is, if you hold that is America’s role in the world. Saddam Hussein was not about to invite us in.
The last reason is the conversion, the switch Saddam Hussein made in the Food for Oil program, from the dollar to the euro. He did this, by the way, long before 9/11, in November 2000 — selling his oil for euros. The oil sales permitted in that program aren’t very much. But when the sanctions would be lifted, the sales from the country with the second largest oil reserves on the planet would have been moving to the euro.
The U.S. dollar is in a sensitive period because we are a debtor nation now. Our currency is still popular, but it’s not backed up like it used to be. If oil, a very solid commodity, is traded on the euro, that could cause massive, almost glacial, shifts in confidence in trading on the dollar. So one of the first executive orders that Bush signed in May [2003] switched trading on Iraq’s oil back to the dollar.
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thanks to Yolanda Flanagan
Plan for Caucuses In Iraq Is Dropped
U.S. to Seek New Transition Process
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The Bush administration is abandoning the core idea of its plan to hold regional caucuses for an Iraqi provisional government and will instead work with the United Nations and Iraqis to develop yet another plan for the transfer of political power by June 30, U.N. and U.S. officials said yesterday.
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Al-Hakim to US: Stop Stalling on Elections
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AP reports that Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), has demanded that the US stop "stalling" a national election in Iraq. Al-Hakim has been willing to cooperate with the Americans, but is impatient with Paul Bremer's repeated assertions that the country is more than a year away from direct elections. Al-Hakim's diction echoes that of Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, to whom he is close.
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Kurds Reject Key Parts of Proposed Iraq Constitution
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Kurdish leaders are refusing to accept key provisions of an interim Iraqi constitution drafted by the Bush administration and instead are demanding far broader autonomy, including the right to control military forces in Kurdish areas and the freedom to reject laws passed by the national government, Kurdish officials said Friday.
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Why They Wouldn't Wait
Iraq Was Surviving the Sanctions
photography
Doing Photography and Social Research in the Allied Occupation of Japan, 1948-1951:
A Personal and Professional Memoir
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Photographs taken by anthropologist John W. Bennett in occupied Japan, 1948-1951, (a few were made in the 1960's during his term at Waseda University), with comments on the photos by Bennett. Also included are extensive selections from Bennett's professional journal of the period, and other documents. Consisting of a personal and professional memoir, this site is also a record of a unique experiment in social analysis and research that focuses on a period of particular significance in the development of Japanese and international history, politics, economics, and culture.
23. Firing up a Bus in Sapporo
Firing up the charcoal burner in the early morning, in the dead of winter in Sapporo, on the island of Hokkaido. During the war, most vehicles--or at least the public and private vehicles that were allowed to operate--were powered by fumes from charcoal burning in a stove attached to the rear. Gasoline was reserved for the military and other essential activities. The outdoor temperature when this picture was taken was ten degrees below zero Fahrenheit.
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This site is totally amazing. Incredible pictures and text about Japan in another time. It has another meaning for me. I moved to Japan in 1957. My dad was a transport pilot in the Air Force. The Japan in these pictures is not that far removed from the one I lived in. My dad first went Tokyo in 1952 on the way to Korea and I remember him telling me about these buses running on charcoal fumes. He also remembered bombed out blocks that were all built up by the time we moved there. Of course the charcoal buses were gone too.
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35. The Toy Shop
Another shopping scene. Note the youth facing the camera: he is wearing the standard public secondary school uniform. The stall is selling children's books and toys including toy samurai swords.
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I was twelve when we moved to Japan. I was the oldest of six. I remember those little toy shops and toy samurai swords. My brothers had them. We lived in a Japanese house with the sliding shoji screens covered in rice paper. The rice paper didn't do well with samurai swords flying around. My dad became very adept at repairing holes in rice paper but eventually he gave up and covered them in plywood.
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thanks to Photoethnography.com
I have slides that I took when we were in Japan. I need to put them up with some of the things I remember. Yet another project!
Who's in charge in the territories?
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In the past three years, Israel has played a double game: on the one hand, it has removed the PA from any position of power and decision making, destroyed its infrastructure of security and civilian control, reoccupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and blocked any attempt to advance a political process. On the other hand, Israel has continued to insist that the PA is exclusively responsible for everything that happens, has depicted it as a terrorist organization and has ruled out every official Palestinian representation.
The concept that underlay this policy, and continues to underlie it, is the illusion that delegitimizing the PA, and, at the personal level, Yasser Arafat, will in the best case bring about the emergence of a different Palestinian leadership, with which Israel will be able to conduct negotiations, and in the worst case will allow Israel to go on occupying the territories without interference. Neither scenario was fulfilled. Arafat continues to lead the PA and no alternative leadership has sprung up. At the same time, the Israeli occupation of the territories is confined to the security aspect alone and is incapable of providing solutions for the population's civil needs
The result is that the terrorist organizations are in control and are competing among themselves over the quality of the attacks against Israel, relying on a sympathetic Palestinian population that has accumulated enough reasons to abhor Israeli rule. This is a public that does not ask itself whether it is against one political plan or another, but which organization it supports.
Israel is rapidly approaching the stage in which it will no longer have even the option of offering the Palestinians a political plan, as it will have to offer them to the heads of organizations and not to a central governing institution. Yet Israel will also be unable to implement Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan, because even if he does actually intend to go ahead with it, it is too thin, doesn't address the Palestinians' national aspirations and creates a prison of poverty and violence, without getting the IDF out of the territories.
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Sharon is not the Problem
It's the Nature of Zionist Ideology
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The Zionist idea has lost none of its force today; it is deeply implanted in the hearts of most Jews, whether Israelis or not. No one should be under any illusion that it is a spent force, no matter what the currently fashionable discourse about 'post-Zionism' or 'cultural Zionism' may be. No region on earth should have been required to give this ideology houseroom, let alone the backward and ill-equipped Arab world. Nevertheless, we owe a debt of gratitude to Benny Morris for disabusing us of such notions. But a project that is morally one-sided and can only survive through force and xenophobia has no long-term future. The fact that it has got this far is remarkable but that holds out no guarantee of survival. As he himself says, "Destruction could be the end of this process."
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When soldiers become bullies
By Gideon Levy
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In the last three years, an atmosphere of anything goes has taken root in the IDF in the territories. Any soldier can do whatever he feels like to any Palestinian - the incident won't be investigated, the soldier won't be punished.
The disintegration of the rule of law does not stop with the soldiers. Brothers Naim and Ayad Murar, who organized nonviolent demonstrations against the separation fence in Budrus, were arrested a month ago with the intention of throwing them into long months of administrative detention without trial. At the last minute, Ayad was freed by a judge who ruled that nonviolent demonstrations are no cause for administrative detention. But his brother Naim was sent to four months of administrative detention for his "terror-supporting activity." Only due to the intervention of attorneys Tamar Peleg and Yal Barda, and the courageous position taken by Lieutenant Colonel Shlomi Kochav, was Naim freed on the weekend after a month in detention, thus preventing a further disgrace. Serious questions are raised by the arrogance of security officials who wanted to lock people up for attempting to organize nonviolent demonstrations against a fence being built on their property.
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junkhenge
I have another photograph from Junkhenge...
Terraplane
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afghanistan
Operation Enduring Misery
The Afghanistan Debacle
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If we want to understand the Bush Foreign policy in Iraq, we only have to look at Afghanistan. The basic principles are identical.
There are approximately 11,000 American servicemen currently in Afghanistan, most of whom are stationed at military facilities, and most of whom contribute nothing to the overall stability or reconstruction of the country. Some are involved in the ongoing campaign against the resurgent Taliban in the south, although this has been mainly limited to bombing missions and special-ops (paramilitary raids). There has been no expanded effort to normalize life outside of Kabul, and the warlords and drug traffickers are basically left alone to carry on as they please.
An 11,000 man army is minuscule when it comes to meeting the obligations of restoring security to a country the size of Afghanistan. The Bush Administration knows it cannot be done with a force this size, and so should we. The notion of democratizing Afghanistan is a carefully nurtured illusion whose only reality is in the speeches of George Bush. There are no plans for rebuilding or unifying Afghanistan, the limited presence of the military proves that point.
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photography
Photoethnography.com
by Karen Nakamura
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Photoethnography is the art and science of representing other cultures visually.
Father and Son, Penang Botanical Garden
Penang has a very wonderful botanical garden that is free and open to the public. While wandering about the garden, I met this father and son who kindly agreed to let me take their portrait. The love between the two is obvious.
We live in a day and age where American political leaders often portray Muslims as fanatics who are ready to sacrifice their own lives or their lives of their children. This photo reminds us that all lives are precious and cherished.
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Be sure to check out her links.
the purloined letters
Bad Counsel?
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As you know, there's a been a scandal bubbling in the Senate Judiciary Committee since late last year over whether Republican staffers stole Democratic staff memos covering judicial appointment strategy. Now, for some time, this whole matter has been a sort of side light to the bigger stuff going on in politics. In fact, Republicans in government and out came up with a whole series of theories to explain why this theft really wasn't a problem. Most came down to the argument that the Dems didn't have sufficient security on their computers to keep the GOP staffers out -- sorta like how if there's no lock on my pocket you're allowed to steal my wallet so long as I don't notice.
In any case, outside of most people's notice, this has all changed of late. Senate Sergeant-at-Arms William H. Pickle has been conducting an investigation into the matter. And a few weeks ago it emerged that the infiltration had been far more extensive than earlier believed. For at least a year, and probably more like eighteen months, GOP staffers accessed the Democrats confidential files. And they snatched approximately 5,000 of them, give or take.
But the big change came last Thursday at an open hearing of the Judiciary Committee. Faced with the new evidence, pretty much every Republican on the committee gave up on offering any justifications or excuses for what had happened. And even those who had been most aggressive in fighting off Democratic attacks conceded that what had happened was quite possibly criminal and should be pursued by law enforcement authorities.
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poor man's cowhorns
I feel like I've gone over to the dark side. My first bike without drop bars since my first 10-speed in 1967. I've been looking at the bikes over at the fixed gear gallery. A number of them have alternate bars and it was Dave Marquez's DeRosa that caused something in me to snap. I've been wanting to put cowhorn bars on my fixie project bike and Dave had some poor man's cowhorns on his fixie. He took a set of drop bars, turned them upside down, and cut them off. So I got a hacksaw blade and some bar tape and cut of a set of drop bars and put them on my road bike. I went riding today and the bars work quite well. Regular cowhorns are a little longer and that's needed for climbing out of the saddle. Not that my wimpy legs are up to that. I did a little riding two summers ago and that's been it for about 5 or 6 years. It's nice to be riding again. It will be even nicer when my legs stop hurting.
I go over to Blaine's tomorrow to remove the brazed on cable stops on my fixie project frame. He has a torch and knows how to use it on bicycle frames. Then I will start painting it.
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