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be sure to read the small print in our contract
Important Changes to Your Citizenship Agreement
Please read and retain for your records.
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IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR U.S. CITIZENS ABOUT CHANGES TO YOUR CITIZENSHIP AGREEMENT.
PLEASE READ AND RETAIN FOR YOUR RECORDS.
We would like to explain certain changes in the terms of the Citizenship Agreement for your U.S. citizenship ("Agreement"). Some of the terms in this notice may already be in effect on your account and will not change. Any terms on your account not changed here remain in effect until such time as we ("We") decide they do not.
To help you understand the changes in the terms of your Agreement, We explain the most important changes in the Summary of New Terms below. The changes described will take effect for citizenship cycles beginning Jan. 20, 2005, and will apply to all existing and future balances on your account.
SUMMARY OF NEW TERMS
SECTION 5
The Freedom of Speech section of the Agreement is amended to distinguish between Regular Preferred Speech and Non-Preferred Speech. The Non-Preferred Speech rate applies to all speech which is not in good standing as defined under the "Preferred Citizen Rate Eligibility" section of your Agreement. Both the rate and your freedom of speech may vary based on changes in the National Terror Alert Level.
SECTION 9
The Rates and Fees Table, including rates for personal and corporate income tax, estate tax, Social Security tax, and all other Federal taxes, levies, duties, and surcharges, remains unchanged, except that it is to be read while being held up to a mirror.
SECTION 11
The Rule of Law section of the Agreement remains in effect, except that it no longer applies to Us. It may also, from time to time, cease to apply to Contributors above a certain level (see Schedule G, attached).
SECTION 13
The Cruel and Unusual Punishment section of the Agreement is unchanged, except that "unusual" is amended to read "unusual in Texas."
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[more]
thanks to Madelane Coale
guerilla art
Prankster infiltrates NY museums
A British graffiti artist has managed to evade security and hang his work in four of New York's most prestigious and well-guarded museums.
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"Banksy", who has never disclosed his real identity, claims to have carried out the unusual smuggling operation on one day, during opening hours.
Some of the pieces went undetected for several days - such as a beetle with missiles attached to its body.
Banksy raided the Metropolitan Museum, but decided to spare the Guggenheim.
"I would have had to appear between two Picassos," he said.
"And I'm not good enough to get away with that."
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[more]
thanks to Steve Gilliard's News Blog
Banksy is one of the great street artists. This a good excuse to explore his site again.
CURRENT exhibitions
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iraq
Diving Into falluja
To Hell and Back with Documentary-Maker Mark Manning
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Manning is perhaps the only American citizen, outside the employ of a major news agency, to have embedded himself in Falluja for the sake of information. It’s not the sort of thing most people — crazy or not — would contemplate, but as one friend noted, Manning “is crazy brave.” One longtime diver buddy said, “Mark’s always had big ideas and big balls, but to go to Falluja, unarmed? That’s crazy.” Manning’s own assessment of his Falluja mission amounted to a shrug: “I don’t know what you know about diving for the oil industry, but sometimes it gets a little hairy down there.”
Life in Iraq, by contrast, is always hairy. Manning spent most of his time in Falluja holing up first in a vacant house formerly occupied by American snipers, then on a farm outside town with Fallujan refugees. Manning traveled to Baghdad during the country’s historic election, then spent five days in Jordan. He credits both his ability to get around the region — and his daily survival — to Zarqa, a remarkable Iraqi woman who served as Manning’s guide through the war-torn country. (For her protection, Zarqa is not her real name.) Manning was shot at three times, detained twice, nearly kidnapped once, and said he had guns pulled on him so many times he lost count. He grew a beard, dressed in a kafia, and learned to live life as an Iraqi. “You learn that when you wake up in the morning, you don’t know if you’ll live long enough to see the sun set,” he said. “I came to peace with that.” Manning decided not to carry a weapon, instead relying on Zarqa and his stated mission of relief work to see him through.
By delivering medical supplies to Iraqi refugees, Manning said he was able to conduct dozens of interviews — videotaped clandestinely — amassing some 25 hours worth of tape. Speaking with Iraqi citizens - men, women and children - who’d witnessed firsthand the fury of war, Manning asked: “What do you want to tell the American people? How can there be peace between our countries? What has your life been like since the war began?”
Their answers, Manning said, were nearly always the same: Peace was possible, the Iraqis told him, but time was running out. American citizens, said the Iraqis, need to wake up to what their government is doing. Manning was told grisly accounts of Iraqi mothers killed in front of their sons, brothers in front of sisters, all at the hands of American soldiers. He also heard allegations of wholesale rape of civilians, by both American and Iraqi troops. Manning said he heard numerous reports of the second siege of Falluja that described American forces deploying — in violation of international treaties — napalm, chemical weapons, phosphorous bombs, and “bunker-busting” shells laced with depleted uranium. Use of any of these against civilians is a violation of international law.
‘I wanted to talk to the hardest, worst-case guys. That’s why I went to Falluja.’ — Mark Manning
Shocking stuff, but Manning’s biggest surprise came after he’d returned home to the United States. Arriving in San Francisco late on the night of February 11, Manning and Natalie Kalustian, a close friend and filmmaking partner, crashed at the Oceanside Motel on 46th Avenue. The next morning, after a stroll near Baker Beach, they returned to their car to find one of the windows smashed. Expensive camera and computer equipment lay in plain view, but only Kalustian’s purse was gone. Inside the purse, Manning said, were keys to their motel room. And when Manning and Kalustian returned to the motel, he recounted, someone had broken into their room. Even though there was jewelry and more film equipment lying about, he said, none of it was touched. In fact, said Manning, none of the suitcases had even been opened. The only thing missing, Manning said, was the big bowling-ball shaped bag containing his camera — and all his taped interviews.
At that time, Manning had not been back in the United States for more than 10 hours.
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guitar art
Metalcarver
Fine Handmade Aluminum Guitars
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I use manually controlled machine tools to carve these guitars out of solid billet aluminum, hollow them out, and use ornamental engine turning to decorate the tops. They are built one at a time and hand polished to a luster and shine unique to this metal. The patterns dance and shimmer with changing light in a way that I simply cannot show with still photography.
The best part of these guitars is the sound. Regardless of the pickup configuration the tone is rich and full, with a very wide tonal palette. I wire the humbucker models with a coil tap so that you have the choice of traditional humbucker sound or that of a very wide single coil. The result is a very good balance betweein the pickups and really wide choice of tones. The single coil pickups end up being quiet and clear with what amounts to be the ultimate in shielding. Just because it's made of metal does not mean that it sounds like a resonator style guitar. It's more of a hollow body sound with much more sustain.
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 [more]
thanks to J-Walk Blog
iran
The Iranian Threat: The Bomb or the Euro?
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Iran does not pose a threat to the United State because of its nuclear projects, its WMD, or its support to "terrorists organizations" as the American administration is claiming, but in its attempt to re-shape the global economical system by converting it from a petrodollar to a petroeuro system. Such conversion is looked upon as a flagrant declaration of economical war against the US that would flatten the revenues of the American corporations and eventually might cause an economic collapse.
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[more]
paper art
the paper moon
an online gallery of cut paper collages
[more]
thanks to Coudal Partners
and we wonder why they hate us — part 439
One-Way Planet
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What actually struck me, however, were the following paragraphs which lay at the heart of the piece:
"One person who described the panel's deliberations and conclusions characterized American intelligence on Iran as ‘scandalous,' given the importance and relative openness of the country, compared with such an extreme case as North Korea.
"That person and others who have been briefed on the panel's work would not be more specific in describing the inadequacies. But former government officials who are experts on Iran say that while American intelligence agencies have devoted enormous resources to Iran since the Islamic revolution of 1979, they have had little success in the kinds of human spying necessary to understand Iranian decision-making.
"Among the major setbacks, former intelligence officials have said, was the successful penetration in the late 1980's by Iranian authorities of the principal American spy network inside the country, which was being run from a C.I.A. station in Frankfurt. The arrests of reported American spies was known at the time, but the impact on American intelligence reverberated as late as the mid-1990's."
Now, for anyone, there are moments when the norm falls away and the previously normal suddenly seems slightly absurd. Sitting over the breakfast table, pondering these paragraphs, I found myself trying to imagine what this piece would look like from an Iranian point of view; or rather, I tried to imagine the unimaginable -- an Iranian equivalent:
On the front page of the English-language Tehran Times or a major Iranian paper, two journalists report on a special commission established by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to reassess Iranian intelligence. They describe the news leaked to them: Iranian intelligence on the United States is now a hopeless scandal, the commission report will say, even though the U.S. is a reasonably "open" country. Thanks to a major setback two decades ago, the roll-up by the FBI of an Iranian spy network centered in Washington DC (but operating out of Halifax, Canada), Iranian intelligence has next to no boots on the ground at a moment when nothing is more important than grasping the contours of the U.S. nuclear program. (This is crucial, though the piece doesn't quite say so, because the government is considering an air attack on key American nuclear sites in the near future.) "It is scandalous," the Iranian reporters quote their "well briefed" sources as saying, "a genuine failure of Iranian intelligence," and given the importance of the issue, the implications are clear: It must be rectified.
Of course, were the Iranian press to publish such a piece (inconceivable for so many reasons), can you imagine the reaction here? An open discussion -- call it, from the American perspective, an admission -- on the front-page of a major paper in a hostile nation of their previous failure to sustain massive spy operations inside our country and of the obvious need to rectify that failure? Just think what Rush Limbaugh or the pundits at Fox news, no less the major TV networks, would do with that one. My guess is that it would be taken as little short of a cause for war.
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photography
Apollo Image Gallery
Armstrong's first photo after setting foot on the Moon
July 20, 1969
[more]
thanks to Coudal Partners
terri schiavo
On the face of it the Terri Schiavo mess is stupid and insane. It's worse than it might appear.
Blood Sport
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We have been used to the downward spiral of cable news networks for some time, now. As recently as two weeks ago, I posted an abridged transcript of Wolf Blitzer covering Martha Stewart's release that was so utterly, spectacularly bad that some posters were convinced it was satire.
Over the last three days or so, however, the coverage on the Little Three news networks -- Fox, CNN, MSNBC -- has ceased to be humorous. There is a difference between bad coverage and willfully irresponsible coverage, and another line between willfully irresponsible coverage and dangerously irresponsible coverage. In the last three days, those lines have been crossed. Repeatedly. And it has been absolutely, definitively intentional.
If you have been paying attention to cable coverage of the Schiavo case, you will see two major themes repeated over and over. First, the repeated bookings of and citings of "witnesses" and "experts" that have previously been debunked, claiming that among other things Ms. Schiavo is "alert and oriented". A neurologist who touts himself as a nominee for "The Nobel Peace Prize in Medicine", an utterly false claim regarding an award that does not exist, has been given apparent run of the airwaves in order to repeatedly assert that Ms. Schiavo is "not that bad", and would be able to "communicate verbally" and "use her arms and legs" under his treatment plan -- a miraculous treatment plan for which, according to Judge Greer, he has been able to offer "no names, no case studies, no videos and no test results". We have even, as many have pointed out, been treated to "psychic" John Edward asserting he was in contact with Terri Schiavo.
Against this background of exploitation and misinformation, the usual bevy of archconservative media pundits has in the last several days begun to increasingly endorse a premise that is, to any rational mind, remarkable: the notion that because the courts have ruled in this particular fashion, it is now time for individuals and government figures to disregard the courts, and take matters into their own hands.
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Going all in
by Steve Gilliard
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These are not nice people. Children are being arrested, people are talking violence. They don't care. Bobby Schindler, a teacher, walked by and patted kids on the head while they were at this volitile scene. They keep ramping up the slander. At some point, someone will get hurt. As responsible people, they need to say something to prevent violence. Jeb Bush, to be fair, has marshalled every ounce of his power behind these people and thensome. But it's not enough.
It's never going to be enough. Not after years of court decisions, and their own admissions.
This is about control. They want control at any price and they do not care who is hurt in their quest.
How far was Jeb willing to go?
[...]
Hours after a judge ordered that Terri Schiavo was not to be removed from her hospice, a team of state agents were en route to seize her and have her feeding tube reinserted -- but they stopped short when local police told them they would enforce the judge's order, The Herald has learned.
Agents of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement told police in Pinellas Park, the small town where Schiavo lies at Hospice Woodside, on Thursday that they were on the way to take her to a hospital to resume her feeding.
For a brief period, local police, who have officers at the hospice to keep protesters out, prepared for what sources called ``a showdown.''
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speed graphic project — i made a lot of progress last night
Things are going back together pretty well on my Speed Graphic. The first order of business was repairing the focal plane shutter. I removed the screw that holds on the shutter release. DO NOT DO THIS. The bottom of the screw sheared off. The upper controls are for selecting the curtain aperture. The lower controls are for setting the tension. This is really a pretty simple mechanism. Taking apart the tension setting requires a special tool but it was working fine so I left it alone. I removed the curtain aperture selection mechanism to try and repair my stupidity. I ended up using some epoxy to bond the screw back in. By selecting one of 4 curtain apertures and one of 6 tension settings you have focal plane shutter speeds between 1/10 of a second and 1/1000 of a second.
The focal plane shutter is one really long curtain with 5 curtain apertures. The largest is left open when using a leaf shutter. The other 4 come down at a speed determined by the tension setting and are each smaller than the next.
The rangefinder glass surfaces cleaned up nicely. The inner piece with all the mechanism mounts seperate from the outer shell. The viewfinder cleaned up nicely and it's starting to look like a camera again. There is a cover on top of the rangefinder. There is an attachment that shines a light down into the rangefinder and projects two beams of light for focusing in the dark. Where the two beams converge is where it is focused. Pretty neat for late 1940s technology. I need to get one of those lights. I still need to attach the strap and feet and the outside will be done.
iraq
Two Years...
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We've completed two years since the beginning of the war. These last two years have felt like two decades, but I can remember the war itself like it was yesterday.
The sky was lit with flashes of red and white and the ground rocked with explosions on March 21, 2003. The bombing had actually begun on the dawn of the 20th of March, but it got really heavy on the 21st. I remember being caught upstairs when the heavier bombing first began. I was struggling to drag down a heavy cotton mattress from my room for an aunt who was spending a couple of weeks with us and I suddenly heard a faraway ‘whiiiiiiiiiiiiiz’ that sounded like it might be getting closer.
I began to rush then- pulling and pushing at the heavy mattress; trying to half throw, half haul it down stairs. I got stuck halfway down the staircase and, at that point, the whizzing sound had grown so loud, it felt like it was coming out of my head. I shoved again at the mattress and called E.’s name to help lug the thing downstairs but E. was outside with my cousin, trying to see where the missiles were going. I repositioned and began to kick the heavy mattress, not caring how it got downstairs, just wanting to be on the ground floor when the missile hit.
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Hijacking Democracy in Iraq
By Scott Ritter
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The official results of the Jan. 30, 2005 elections are in. The Shi'a emerged as the big winners, grabbing 48 percent of the vote, followed by the Kurds who garnered 26 percent, and Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's coalition party netting a paltry 13 percent. Behind the scenes political infighting rages as the victorious political parties vie to get their candidates positioned in the new government. On the surface, this looks like the sometimes messy aftermath of democracy; squabbling, rhetoric, and posturing. The Iraqi elections have been embraced almost universally as a great victory for the forces of democracy, not only in Iraq, but throughout the entire Middle East. The fact, however, is that the Iraqi elections weren't about the free election of a government reflecting the will of the Iraqi people, but the carefully engineered selection of a government that would behave in a manner dictated by the United States. In Iraq, democracy was hijacked by the Americans.
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photography
Edmund Leveckis
[more]
thanks to orbit1.com
Photos reveal Israeli West Bank expansion
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Aerial photographs by Israel's defence ministry have provided fresh evidence that the government is continuing its rapid expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank despite public statements to the contrary.
The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz yesterday reported that the pictures, taken last summer and again this year, show extensive construction on settlements, confirming Palestinian fears that Ariel Sharon is using the upheaval around the removal of Jewish settlers from the Gaza strip as cover to grab control of more of the West Bank.
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happy birthday ed!
119 years.
Edward Weston
1886-1958
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Edward Weston was renowned as one of the masters of 20th century photography. His legacy includes several thousand carefully composed, superbly printed photographs which have influenced photographers around the world for 60 years. Photographing natural landscapes and forms such as artichoke, shells, and rocks, using large-format cameras and available light. Weston's sensuously precise images raise to the level of poetry. The subtle use of tones and the sculptural formal design of his works have become the standards by which much later photographic practice has been judged. Ansel Adams has written: "Weston is, in the real sense, one of the few creative artists of today. He has recreated the matter-forms and forces of nature; he has made these forms eloquent of the fundamental unity of the world. His work illuminates man's inner journey toward perfection of the spirit."
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Edward Weston
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Edward Weston
Photography and Modernism
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Edward Weston
Born 1886, Died 1958
Photographer
[more]
oil
Tomgram: Michael Klare on our Oil-Crunch Planet
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Data released annually at this time by the major oil companies on their prior-year performances rarely generates much interest outside the business world. With oil prices at an all-time high and Big Oil reporting record profits, however, this year has been exceptional. Many media outlets covered the announcement of mammoth profits garnered by ExxonMobil, the nation's wealthiest public corporation, and other large firms. Exxon's fourth-quarter earnings, at $8.42 billion, represented the highest quarterly income ever reported by an American firm.
"This is the most profitable company in the world," declared Nick Raich, research director of Zacks Investment Research in Chicago. But cheering as the recent announcements may have been for many on Wall Street, they also contained a less auspicious sign. Despite having spent billions of dollars on exploration, the major energy firms are reporting few new discoveries and so have been digging ever deeper into existing reserves. If this trend continues -- and there is every reason to assume it will -- the world is headed for a severe and prolonged energy crunch in the not-too-distant future.
To put this in perspective, bear in mind that the global oil industry has, until now, largely been able to increase its combined output every year in step with rising world demand. True, there have been a number of occasions when demand has outpaced supply, producing temporary shortages and high gasoline prices at the pump. But the industry has always been able been able to catch up again and so quench the world's insatiable thirst for oil. This has been possible because the big energy companies kept up a constant and successful search for new sources of oil to supplement the supplies drawn from their existing reserves. The world's known reserves still contain a lot of oil -- approximately 1.1 trillion barrels, by the estimates of experts at the oil major BP -- but they cannot satisfy rising world demand indefinitely; and so, in the absence of major new discoveries, we face a gradual contraction in the global supply of petroleum.
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flashing
My move into the past continues. I received some Press 25Bs (blue for daylight color balance) and a couple of C batteries and did some flash shots last night with the Brownie. I think it's been 45 years since I used flashbulbs. The Brownie seems to take 120 roll film fine which will make life a little easier than having to reroll 120 onto 620 spools. Thes bulbs do seem to put out some serous light. And they do smoke. More testing to ensue.
There is even older flash technology that Blaine found a site on. I'm not tempted. Flashbulbs are better, in some cases, than electronic flash. Flash powder is just too scary.
EARLY FLASH
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a country out of touch with reality
Groundhog Surfaces for Sunlight
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Call me a pessimist, a proud Eeyore, because I don't think America will smell the fine aroma of Gevalia anytime soon, if ever. This country is wearing a blindfold, staggering backwards, and slitting its own throat in slow motion. Watch the cable news, listen to our elected leaders: there's no more urgency about the economic decline in living standards dead ahead than there is about addressing global warming or loosening the chokehold of military spending. A country where "evolution" is becoming a bad word is not a country interested in facing reality. Instead, as the passage of the bankruptcy bill shows, corporate-political power is going to grind every last dollar out of the desperate and destitute rather than confront the difficult macro decisions. The elites in this country have never had it so good, and as long as they're prospering the distress will smothered under the surface, kept under a lid.
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agfa isolette ii
The Agfa Isolette II is coming along. I removed the top plate cleaned everthing up. The dial on the left top (from the back) was a funny brown. I cleaned it and it turns out to be brass. The other Isollette II is saw with a hyperfocal scale was chrome. Shiny brass is a nice touch. I picked up some leather to replace the nylon covering. I think it's nylon. Looks just like the nylon coverring on the Zorki 6. I thought that I would just peal the pieces off an used them for templates. I started removing the first piece and it was rotten and just tore. I just ended up with a bunch of little pieces. At least I have the shape of the red window to use as a template. I probably should have just left well enough alone but once I made that first tear I was committed. Oh, well.
I'm removing the old glue and then it's time to cut and glue on the leather. Then I will attack the lens which needs to be taken apart and relubed and cleaned. I got a quote from Camera Bellows for a new bellows. $51, including shipping, for leather. Black, Red, and Gray are offered. Mine will be red. Blaine knows how to make bellows but that will be more time that I think it is worth. It may wait awhile. I can do a temporary fix on the current bellows. I want to start shooting this one!
deglobalization
Sinking Globalization
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Summary: Could globalization collapse? It may seem unlikely today. Yet despite many warnings, people were shocked the last time globalization crumbled, with the onslaught of World War I. Like today, that period was marked by imperial overstretch, great-power rivalry, unstable alliances, rogue regimes, and terrorist organizations. And the world is no better prepared for calamity now.
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[more]
thanks to Brad DeLong's Website
big iron update
My Speed Graphic project slowly moves forward.The outside is pretty much refinished. The next stage will be cleaning and attaching the rangefinder, viewfinder, and strap. The strap in the bottom picture is actually for my Burke and James. One of my customers is Ace Leather Goods. They don't normally do things like camera straps but their master leather worker, Tracy, does the odd stuff. She is making one like it for the Speed graphic. A great strap. I also need to do some work on the focal plane shutter. I'll take another round of pictures when that is complete. the it will be time to install the parts that go inside like the bellows and the front lens standard.
iraq
Deconstructing Iraq: Year Three Begins
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A Little Background Music
Shakar Odai, the head of the Internal Affairs Department of the Baghdad police was recently interviewed by David Enders of Mother Jones magazine who wrote: "‘More than 98' percent of the police officers (a force known alike for its use of torture and its widespread corruption) returned to work after the war, [Odai] said, and added that the police force has been greatly expanded as well. Some of the officers definitely sympathize with the resistance, he says. As he speaks, a bomb goes off outside, rattling the windows. Odai doesn't even turn around to look. ‘That happens sometimes fifteen times a day,' he sighs before continuing. ‘Before the war, we had six months to do background checks on any police officer we hired,' he said. ‘After the war, the Americans just began appointing officers.'
"Before he refers me to the seventh floor, where the MOI [Ministry of the Interior]'s human rights department is located, he offers me a piece of wardrobe advice, specifically in regard to the powder-blue Oxford I'm wearing, the same color the police wear. ‘You should change your shirt. Someone might try to assassinate you.'"
Caryle Murphy and John Ward Anderson of the Washington Post offered the following on the opening of the Iraqi National Assembly inside "little America," also known as "the Green Zone" in a completely shut down Baghdad: "Amid tight security and the sound of explosions, Iraq's new parliament met for the first time Wednesday as Iraqi politicians and citizens alike urged lawmakers to stop bickering, form a new government and tackle the country's numerous problems, particularly the violent insurgency. The source of the blasts, which apparently came from mortars, was under investigation by the U.S. military. The explosions rattled windows in the auditorium inside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone, where lawmakers gathered… for the first meeting of a freely elected parliament in Iraq in almost 50 years. U.S. helicopters hovered overheard, and several bridges approaching the Green Zone were closed because of the threat of suicide bombings, car bomb attacks and other potential insurgent strikes."
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photography
One of my favorite sources for photography links is Joerg Colberg's Conscientious. He also has taken some very tasty pictures. And they're square!
Carnegie Library Pittsburgh
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afghanistan
'One huge US jail'
Afghanistan is the hub of a global network of detention centres, the frontline in America's 'war on terror', where arrest can be random and allegations of torture commonplace. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark investigate on the ground and talk to former prisoners
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Kabul was a grim, monastic place in the days of the Taliban; today it's a chaotic gathering point for every kind of prospector and carpetbagger. Foreign bidders vying for billions of dollars of telecoms, irrigation and construction contracts have sparked a property boom that has forced up rental prices in the Afghan capital to match those in London, Tokyo and Manhattan. Four years ago, the Ministry of Vice and Virtue in Kabul was a tool of the Taliban inquisition, a drab office building where heretics were locked up for such crimes as humming a popular love song. Now it's owned by an American entrepreneur who hopes its bitter associations won't scare away his new friends.
Outside Kabul, Afghanistan is bleaker, its provinces more inaccessible and lawless, than it was under the Taliban. If anyone leaves town, they do so in convoys. Afghanistan is a place where it is easy for people to disappear and perilous for anyone to investigate their fate. Even a seasoned aid agency such as Médécins Sans Frontières was forced to quit after five staff members were murdered last June. Only the 17,000-strong US forces, with their all-terrain Humvees and Apache attack helicopters, have the run of the land, and they have used the haze of fear and uncertainty that has engulfed the country to advance a draconian phase in the war against terror. Afghanistan has become the new Guantánamo Bay.
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street art
The Japanese make beautiful manholes.
[more]
thanks to Photoethnography
the military has gone mad
America's Agenda for Global Military Domination
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The Pentagon has released the summary of a top secret Pentagon document, which sketches America's agenda for global military domination.
This redirection of America's military strategy seems to have passed virtually unnoticed. With the exception of The Wall Street Journal (see below in annex), not a word has been mentioned in the US media.
There has been no press coverage concerning this mysterious military blueprint. The latter outlines, according to the Wall Street Journal, America's global military design which consists in "enhancing U.S. influence around the world", through increased troop deployments and a massive buildup of America's advanced weapons systems.
While the document follows in the footsteps of the administration's "preemptive" war doctrine as detailed by the Neocons' Project of the New American Century (PNAC), it goes much further in setting the contours of Washington's global military agenda.
It calls for a more "proactive" approach to warfare, beyond the weaker notion of "preemptive" and defensive actions, where military operations are launched against a "declared enemy" with a view to "preserving the peace" and "defending America".
The document explicitly acknowledges America's global military mandate, beyond regional war theaters. This mandate also includes military operations directed against countries, which are not hostile to America, but which are considered strategic from the point of view of US interests.
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photography
Hiroshi Watanabe
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thanks to Life In The Present
democracy hypocrisy
Tomgram: Dilip Hiro on Playing the Democracy Card
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The United States flaunts the banner of democracy in the Middle East only when that advances its economic, military, or strategic interests. The history of the past six decades shows that whenever there has been conflict between furthering democracy in the region and advancing American national interests, U.S. administrations have invariably opted for the latter course. Furthermore, when free and fair elections in the Middle East have produced results that run contrary to Washington's strategic interests, it has either ignored them or tried to block the recurrence of such events.
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painting
Jaques-Louis David: Empire to Exile
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Image-maker to Napoleon. Political exile. Jacques-Louis David was the most famous—and controversial—artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
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[more]
thanks to Life In The Present
everybody needs a bomb
The Great Proliferator
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From The New York Times:
But the nuclear clock is ticking, and some of Mr. Bush’s aides fear that Iran is heading the same way as North Korea did in the 1990s — playing out the negotiations while its scientists and engineers pick up skills, leaving open a withdrawal from the treaty. Alternatively, some in the C.I.A. believe that there are really two nuclear projects under way in Iran: a public one that inspectors visit, and a parallel, secret one on the country’s military reservations.
The Iranians deny that, but admit they have built huge tunnels at some crucial sites and buried other facilities altogether. Mr. Perkovich said that when Iranian officials were asked about that at the conference, they answered, “If you thought the Americans were going to bomb you, wouldn’t you bury this stuff, too?”
The answer is of course yes. The twin lessons of Iraq and North Korea are that if you don’t have an atom bomb, Bush will wage “preemptive war” on you anytime he wants. And if you do, he won’t. No better scheme for spreading nuclear bombs all over the world could be imagined.
Maybe this is all a perfectly natural geopolitical progression. There was no shortage of murderous bullies in Moscow and Washington throughout the Cold War, and the only thing that held them back from World War III was the high likelihood that they themselves, personally, were likely to die in it.
And the only thing that can protect smaller nations from future Bushes in Washington or Beijing or Moscow is an atom bomb or two tucked away somewhere. This is the calculation Castro made after Kennedy invaded Cuba, and it is the calculation being made right now, all over the world.
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photography
Here are some nice pictures taken with a variety of "obsolete" cameras and be sure to check out the links.
tanya clark photography
"Casanova"
Agfa Isolette II
Whatcom Park, WA
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china
The real 'China threat'
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I recall 40 years ago, when I was a new professor working in the field of Chinese and Japanese international relations, that Edwin O Reischauer once commented, "The great payoff from our victory of 1945 was a permanently disarmed Japan." Born in Japan and a Japanese historian at Harvard, Reischauer served as US ambassador to Tokyo in the administrations of presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Strange to say, since the end of the Cold War in 1991 and particularly under the administration of George W Bush, the United States has been doing everything in its power to encourage and even accelerate Japanese rearmament.
Such a development promotes hostility between China and Japan, the two superpowers of East Asia, sabotages possible peaceful solutions in those two problem areas, Taiwan and North Korea, left over from the Chinese and Korean civil wars, and lays the foundation for a possible future Sino-American conflict that the United States would almost surely lose. It is unclear whether the ideologues and war lovers of Washington understand what they are unleashing - a possible confrontation between the world's fastest-growing industrial economy, China, and the world's second-most-productive, albeit declining, economy, Japan; a confrontation that the United States would have caused and in which it might well be consumed.
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let there be light or forward! into the past -- a rant
When I bought my FED 2 I did so because I couldn't afford to rebuild my Leica IIIc but I needed a Leica like camera. I took what I felt to be the bottom feeder route. What using the FED and hanging out at the Rangefinder forum has taught me is that these bottom feeders, and I include all the other "obsolete" rangefinders and cameras of all sizes, are no slouches. Progress has marched on but progress has not always been an improvement. The latest whiz-bang film or digital camera can do all sorts of things but all you really need to do is to focus the camera, adjust the aperture and shutter speed (but not always), and fire the shutter. So much of what is called progress has gone to automate these functions. I'm not sure that is really moving forward. Looking at the Classic Camera Contest and the pictures taken with "obsolete" cameras (I first saw mentioned at the RFF) should dispel any doubts that old cameras can still take fine pictures.
Recently, one of the tinkerers at the Rangefinder forum, greyhoundman, took a Brownie Hawkeye Flash Model and converted (at great physical danger to himself) it to electronic flash.
Progress. An improvement over the old fashioned and primitive flashbulb. Or maybe not. I just received my own Brownie Hawkeye Flash Model with 10 #5 flashbulbs.
I've been searching the web for information on these archaic devices. What I found is that progress in electronic flash has simplifed the use of flash for the user. It has made it convient. It has also made it a lot more expensive for a lot less light. J and C photo sells Press 25 bulbs for $1. Shop around on eBay and you can get them a lot cheaper than that. You can get a Kodak B-C flashholder, with a 5 inch reflector, for a couple of bucks on eBay. These look similar to the Hawkeye flash but it has a bracket and synch cord. The guide number for a Press 25 bulb in one of these flasholders, at ASA 100, is 280 feet. Looking at B&H I see that the Metz 70 MZ-5 goes for $789 and has a guide number of 164 feet at ISO 100. Hmmmm. Where is the progress?
Check out some of these links:
Flashbulbs
Dark Light Imagery
Underground Photographer Flashbulb Resource
Cress Photo
And then look at what a real Flashman could do with bulbs -- the late and great O. Winston Link.
I've got some Press 25s coming for the Brownie and there are some Kodak B-C flasholders in my future. I'm looking at all my lenses to see if they are M synched for bulbs. The 100mm on my Mamiya Universal has an M synch, although you can X synch them under 1/30 sec. You can gang these these flasholders together and get some *real* light.
Let there be light!
Forward! Into the past!
these are the actions of a hardcore junkie needing a fix
David Horsey
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The oil under this wilderness will last the US six months. But soon the drilling will begin
Senate backs exploitation of Alaskan wildlife refuge
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It is described as the last great American wilderness and has been the battle ground between America's most powerful oil interests and environmentalists for more than two decades. But yesterday the giants of the energy industry were celebrating a significant victory and looking forward to the chance to move into one of the most lucrative oil fields left in the US, following the Senate's narrow 51-49 decision to open up the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northern Alaska.
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Senate Nod to Arctic Oil Drilling Stiffens Opposition
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Environmental and public interest groups are girding for renewed battle over oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge after the Senate endorsed the idea, handing a key victory to President George W. Bush and proponents of exploration.
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I was locked out
Very early Sunday morning I started making changes and my blogging software died on me. I think it happened at the same time a power outage at my ISP occured. The result was that the password file was emptied. It's a mystery how that would happen but it did so I couldn't get back in. It's all fixed now and I will be posting much linky goodness this evening.
new camera
My new early 1950s Agfa Isolette II arrived. It's a jewel. A tarnished jewel, but a jewel none the less.
It isn't that much bigger than the 35mm Zorki 6 behind it. And the Zorki is small. It came with all the problems a camera like this is expected to have. There are pinholes in the bellows, the focus ring is frozen, and the slow shutter speeds are s...l...o...w. And it's pretty dirty. But the lens, while dusty, doesn't seem to have any scratches and all the other items can be fixed by me thanks to the instructions on several websites. The bellows can be repaired by application of a number of concoctions, such as black silicone gasket goo, to the corners of the bellows where the pinholes are. I've asked for a quote at Camera Bellows for a new bellows. They do synthetic and leather in black or red. I'm thinking of recovering the black plastic with leather. It really is a pocket camera and I'm looking forward to those 6x6 negatives!
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