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give us this day our daily photograph
New York World's Fair
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gordy's image archive index
Here is a break from all that garish color of the last few daily photograph posts. This another one of my 30 year old 5x7 negatives. I'm still working on scanning these large negatives in two sections and then combining them in Photoshop. I'm getting closer to figuring out how to do it without taking too much time. Of couse I could just buy a new scanner that would scan it in one shot. That will happen but I'm not sure just when and I want to move forward with 5x7. One usually moves up to a larger negative for reasons of the sharpness and increased tonalities that the larger negative offers. I'm interested in moving up for those reasons but mostly for another reason. I'm currently using a Schneider G-Claron 210mm lens on my Burke & James, which currently has a 4x5 back. This is equivalent to a 59mm lens on a 35mm camera. A little long. Must go wide. I also have a 150mm Konica Hexanon lens waiting to be mounted on a lens board. This would be equivalent to a 42mm lens. That would be better. But I need wider. Unortunately, 150mm is about the widest the inexpensive barrel mounted process lenses go. Anything wider gets much more expensive. While this camera will take a 90mm lens (25mm equivalent) a Fujinon 105 SW f8 (30mm equivalent) makes more sense but they are still at least $350 instead of the $50 to $70 for process lenses. But the process lenses have huge coverage. If I use the 150mm lens on 5x7 it comes out to a 30mm equivalent. I can do that for a lot less money. I need to buy a 5x7 piece of ground glass and get the 150 cleaned. The rest is just labor: making a lens board, modifying the packard shutter, repairing the 5x7 back, and cleaning up my 5x7 sheet film holders. The 105mm Fujinon would be equivalent to 21mm on 5x7. Maybe someday.
all war all the time
Addicted to war
"House of War" author James Carroll says the Pentagon is out of control, the Cold War was unnecessary -- and it's good that we're failing in Iraq.
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James Carroll's "House of War" is ostensibly a history of a single American government building, that five-sided behemoth that sits across the river from Washington and is instantly recognizable to just about anyone in the world as the headquarters of the United States military. But if Carroll's book actually reads like something much bigger than that, like a story not just of the Pentagon but of the last half-century of American foreign policy, well, that's the point. "The Pentagon has been so much at the center of national life that one could write an entire history of the contemporary United States in its terms," Carroll argues in his prologue. That's just about what he does.
Carroll is a novelist, but he's best known for two massive works of nonfiction -- "Constantine's Sword," which examined the Catholic Church's troubled history with Jews, and "American Requiem," a memoir about how the Vietnam War ruined Carroll's relationship with his father. Carroll, who is a former Catholic priest, and whose father was an Air Force general who worked in the Pentagon, is thus fond of personalizing history, and "House of War" runs along the same lines. As a kid, Carroll would slide down the Pentagon's slick floors in his socks while his dad worked late in a coveted E-ring office. As an adult, he sees that something much less fun occurred in those halls -- the Pentagon's militaristic, coolly efficient bureaucracy swallowed up the American government and its people, he says, making war the constant order of our lives.
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I have Carroll's book "House of War" on hold at my local library (I am number 5 in the holds list. There is one holdable copy.) I will report on it when I get it.
book recommendation
Uncommon Places
by Stephen Shore
Street photography with a view camera. An 8x10 view camera at that. And color. Glorious color. These pictures made their first appearance in the mid 1970s. Large format photography was largely black and white (Eliot Porter not withstanding) at that time. Shooting color was pretty radical. This book has been a major influence on many photographers including yrs trly. Wonderful stuff.
iran
Turkey Refuses U.S. Request To Allow Attack On Iran From Turkish Base
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Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said Sunday that his country refused a request from the United States to attack Iran from its Air Force base in Incirlik, despite the U.S. offer of a nuclear reactor, according to a report in Al Biyan.
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Iran and America's Dangerous Brinkmanship
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Last night, I sat next to a former foreign minister of a major nation at a small dinner and discussion which focused heavily on Iran and Middle East issues.
This foreign minister stated that Iran's Supreme Religious Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei believed that western democracies would not tolerate $140 a barrel for oil -- and that would be the probable price level if Iran was attacked. This belief combined with Iran's perception of American weakness right now is driving much of Iran's brinkmanship.
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Fuzzy Strategy on Iran: America's Threat Credentials Doubted
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The toxic mix is that Iran believes that America is weak right now and will wilt when oil prices shoot higher, while on the other hand, George Bush intends to make sure that Iran and other nations don't underestimate American strength and resolve, tilting towards force when he can afford it to demonstrate power.
This mess is looking increasingly like 1914 -- when nations fell into war because of ego, attitude, poorly thought strategies regarding basic strategic interests, and miscalculation.
I will write more on this later, but what is clear is that America has a "teeth problem" in its tough diplomacy with Iran. It is using the hype and puffery of potential military action and the new moves in the UN Security Council to help transmit "resolve", but it's not enough.
As the prominent foreign minister I sat next to Sunday night said, the economic sanctions path is quite risky because it's unlikely given our track record with sanctions that we can make them work, particularly against a nation of 70 million people in addition to China and Russia opposing sanctions and high levels of direct investment in Iran from other major economies like Europe and Japan.
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Juan Cole is pissed. This is a must read:
Hitchens the Hacker; And, Hitchens the Orientalist
And, "We don't Want Your Stinking War!
Here is a footnote to this insanity. Our fearful administration outed Valerie Plame who was apparently working on Iran and it's nuclear weapons program.
MSNBC confirms: Outed CIA agent was working on Iran
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On Chris Matthews' Hardball Monday evening, just moments ago, MSNBC correspondent David Shuster confirmed what RAW STORY first reported in February: that outed CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was working on Iran at the time she was outed (Watch the video of Shuster's report here).
RAW STORY's Larisa Alexandrovna broke the story earlier this year, which went unnoticed by the mainstream media
According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.
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photography
Chip Simons Photography
[more]
thanks to Conscientious
iraq
American Hostages...
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As for news of the new Iraqi army, it isn’t going as smoothly as Bush and his crew portray. Today we watched footage of Iraqi soldiers in Anbar graduating. The whole ceremony was quite ordinary up until nearly the end- their commander announced they would be deployed to various areas and suddenly it was chaos. The soldiers began stripping their fatigues and throwing them around, verbally attacking their seniors and yelling and shoving. They were promised, when they signed up for the army in their areas, that they would be deployed inside of their own areas- which does make sense. There is news that they are currently on strike- refusing to be deployed outside of their own provinces.
One can’t help but wonder if the ‘area’ they were supposed to be deployed to was the north of Iraq? Especially with Iranian troops on the border… Talbani announced a few days ago that the protection of Kurdistan was the responsibility of Iraq and I completely agree for a change- because Kurdistan IS a part of Iraq. Before he made this statement, it was always understood that only the Peshmerga would protect Kurdistan- apparently, against Iran, they aren’t nearly enough.
The big question is- what will the US do about Iran? There are the hints of the possibility of bombings, etc. While I hate the Iranian government, the people don’t deserve the chaos and damage of air strikes and war. I don’t really worry about that though, because if you live in Iraq- you know America’s hands are tied. Just as soon as Washington makes a move against Tehran, American troops inside Iraq will come under attack. It’s that simple- Washington has big guns and planes… But Iran has 150,000 American hostages.
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Robert Fisk: Seen through a Syrian lens,
'unknown Americans' are provoking civil war in Iraq
by Robert Fisk
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In Syria, the world appears through a glass, darkly. As dark as the smoked windows of the car which takes me to a building on the western side of Damascus where a man I have known for 15 years - we shall call him a "security source", which is the name given by American correspondents to their own powerful intelligence officers - waits with his own ferocious narrative of disaster in Iraq and dangers in the Middle East.
His is a fearful portrait of an America trapped in the bloody sands of Iraq, desperately trying to provoke a civil war around Baghdad in order to reduce its own military casualties. It is a scenario in which Saddam Hussein remains Washington's best friend, in which Syria has struck at the Iraqi insurgents with a ruthlessness that the United States wilfully ignores. And in which Syria's Interior Minister, found shot dead in his office last year, committed suicide because of his own mental instability.
The Americans, my interlocutor suspected, are trying to provoke an Iraqi civil war so that Sunni Muslim insurgents spend their energies killing their Shia co-religionists rather than soldiers of the Western occupation forces. "I swear to you that we have very good information," my source says, finger stabbing the air in front of him. "One young Iraqi man told us that he was trained by the Americans as a policeman in Baghdad and he spent 70 per cent of his time learning to drive and 30 per cent in weapons training. They said to him: 'Come back in a week.' When he went back, they gave him a mobile phone and told him to drive into a crowded area near a mosque and phone them. He waited in the car but couldn't get the right mobile signal. So he got out of the car to where he received a better signal. Then his car blew up."
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The Salvador Option has been invoked in Iraq
The American public is being prepared. If the attack on Iran does come, there will be no warning, no declaration of war, no truth.
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Now that al-Zarqawi has been replaced by "sectarian violence" and "civil war", the big news is the attacks by Sunnis on Shia mosques and bazaars. The real news, which is not reported in the CNN "mainstream", is that the Salvador Option has been invoked in Iraq. This is the campaign of terror by death squads armed and trained by the US, which attack Sunnis and Shias alike. The goal is the incitement of a real civil war and the break-up of Iraq, the original war aim of Bush's administration. The ministry of the interior in Baghdad, which is run by the CIA, directs the principal death squads. Their members are not exclusively Shia, as the myth goes. The most brutal are the Sunni-led Special Police Commandos, headed by former senior officers in Saddam's Ba'ath Party. This unit was formed and trained by CIA "counter-insurgency" experts, including veterans of the CIA's terror operations in central America in the 1980s, notably El Salvador. In his new book, Empire's Workshop (Metropolitan Books), the American historian Greg Grandin describes the Salvador Option thus: "Once in office, [President] Reagan came down hard on central America, in effect letting his administration's most committed militarists set and execute policy. In El Salvador, they provided more than a million dollars a day to fund a lethal counter-insurgency campaign . . . All told, US allies in central America during Reagan's two terms killed over 300,000 people, tortured hundreds of thousands and drove millions into exile."
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"Our Descent Into Hell Has Begun"
Message from a Vet of My Lai Time
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In Iraq, our descent into hell, our "Apocalypse Now" moment, has begun. First there was Gitmo, then the global rendition program, then Abu Ghraib, then the pulverizing of Fallujah, and now trigger-happy raids that are filling multitudes of sandy graves with men, women and children. Has "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" become the mission in Babylon? Can't anyone remember Vietnam, where we left behind more than a million dead civilians? In Iraq, we've way past the half-million mark, probably the million mark, if you count the 1990s sanctions. Are the American people as blind and deaf as they seem? Don't we see ourselves walking through the gates of hell and can't we hear the doors clanging shut on our country?
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footwear
Jump Boots free style 2
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thanks to DANGEROUSMETA!
american capitalism
The Predator State
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WHAT IS THE REAL NATURE of American capitalism today? Is it a grand national adventure, as politicians and textbooks aver, in which markets provide the framework for benign competition, from which emerges the greatest good for the greatest number? Or is it the domain of class struggle, even a “global class war,” as the title of Jeff Faux’s new book would have it, in which the “party of Davos” outmaneuvers the remnants of the organized working class?
The doctrines of the “law and economics” movement, now ascendant in our courts, hold that if people are rational, if markets can be “contested,” if memory is good and information adequate, then firms will adhere on their own to norms of honorable conduct. Any public presence in the economy undermines this. Even insurance—whether deposit insurance or Social Security—is perverse, for it encourages irresponsible risktaking. Banks will lend to bad clients, workers will “live for today,” companies will speculate with their pension funds; the movement has even argued that seat belts foster reckless driving. Insurance, in other words, creates a “moral hazard” for which “market discipline” is the cure; all works for the best when thought and planning do not interfere. It’s a strange vision, and if we weren’t governed by people like John Roberts and Sam Alito, who pretend to believe it, it would scarcely be worth our attention.
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photography
Asia and the Pacific Rim in Early Prints and Photographs
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thanks to gmtPlus9
democracy
Exporting the American Model
Markets and Democracy
By Chalmers Johnson
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There is something absurd and inherently false about one country trying to impose its system of government or its economic institutions on another. Such an enterprise amounts to a dictionary definition of imperialism. When what's at issue is "democracy," you have the fallacy of using the end to justify the means (making war on those to be democratized), and in the process the leaders of the missionary country are invariably infected with the sins of hubris, racism, and arrogance.
We Americans have long been guilty of these crimes. On the eve of our entry into World War I, William Jennings Bryan, President Woodrow Wilson's first secretary of state, described the United States as "the supreme moral factor in the world's progress and the accepted arbiter of the world's disputes." If there is one historical generalization that the passage of time has validated, it is that the world could not help being better off if the American president had not believed such nonsense and if the United States had minded its own business in the war between the British and German empires. We might well have avoided Nazism, the Bolshevik Revolution, and another thirty to forty years of the exploitation of India, Indonesia, Indochina, Algeria, Korea, the Philippines, Malaya, and virtually all of Africa by European, American, and Japanese imperialists.
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photography
'Golden Age of Jazz' Photographer Bill Gottlieb
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Bill Gottlieb, 89, a self-taught jazz photographer who took some of the most indelible images of the top musicians bridging the swing and bebop jazz eras, died April 23 at his home in Great Neck, N.Y., after a stroke.
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thanks to The Online Photographer
The William P. Gottlieb Collection
Portrait of Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Brown, Milt (Milton) Jackson, and Timmie Rosenkrantz, Downbeat, New York, N.Y., ca. Sept. 1947
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we don't need no stinking laws
Bush challenges hundreds of laws
President cites powers of his office
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President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.
Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.
Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional.
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[more]
thanks to Huffington Post
Specter to hold hearings on Bush's lawbreaking powers
photography
Cosmin Bumbuţ
[more]
thanks to Coudal Partners
oil
Peak Behavior
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I try to avoid the term "peak oil" because it has cultish overtones, and this is a serious socioeconomic issue, not a belief system. But it seems to me that what we are seeing now in financial and commodity markets, and in the greater economic system itself, is exactly what we ought to expect of peak oil conditions: peak activity.
After all, peak is the point where the world is producing the most oil it will ever produce, even while it is also the inflection point where big trouble is apt to begin. And this massive quantity of oil induces a massive amount of work, land development, industrial activity, commercial production, and motor transport. So we shouldn't be surprised that there is a lot happening, that houses and highways are still being built, that TVs are pouring out of the Chinese factories, commuters are still whizzing around the DC Beltway, that obese children still have plenty of microwavable melted cheese pockets to zap for their exhausting sessions with Grand Theft Auto.
But in the peak oil situation the world is like a banquet just before the tablecloth is pulled out from under it. There is plenty on the table, but it is about to be overturned, spilled, lost, and broken. There's more oil available then ever before, but also so many people at the banquet table clamoring for it that there is barely enough to go around, and the people may knock some things over trying to get it.
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A Battle For Oil Could Set the World Aflame
International powers will do everything to protect their access to dwindling resources. We are mad not to have an alternative strategy
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The £1 litre of petrol is already a reality on some forecourts. Yet the public response has been curiously muted. No threats of national protests or blockaded tanker depots. There's an air of resignation. We've been pulverised into learning our lesson: we can't buck the market with the $70 plus barrel of oil, so there is nothing to do except pay up.
There is nothing like the same mood in the United States. There, petrol crashed through the psychological barrier of $3 a gallon; cheap gas, the sacred right of every free-born America, is no more. In Washington, Republicans and Democrats outbid each other with their respective energy plans, all distancing themselves from the energy policy-free zone of do-nothing George W Bush. The US, after all, has no commitment whatsoever to the idea that states and peoples must supinely accept market verdicts. Markets, it is well understood, are shaped by human hand.
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the last cheap lens
I had wanted a 28mm lens for the rangefinders but there reallly isn't anything for under $150 and that is if you shop very carefully. But I got a 28/3.5 Super Takumar for the Pentax bodies for $50 and it is like new. I guess I will just have to suffer using a 28mm lens on a SLR. Life is hard.
I would like to add a 20mm but those are around $200 so 28mm will be my widest for now. Anything wider or longer is going to run over $50 so that is probably it.
katrina
Keeping perspective on draft week
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I sense that we in this country have Katrina fatigue. The New York Times reported as much recently, saying that people in some of the areas that welcomed Katrina evacuees last September are sick of hearing about the hurricane, the flooding and the aftermath.
Well, my wife and I were in a car last Wednesday that toured the hardest-hit area of New Orleans, the Lower Ninth Ward. We worked a day at a nearby Habitat for Humanity site on Thursday, and we toured the Biloxi/Gulfport/Long Beach/Pass Christian gulf shore area last Friday. And let me just say this: I can absolutely guarantee you that if you'd been in the car with us, no matter how much you'd been hit over the head with the effects of this disaster, you would not have Katrina fatigue.
What I saw was a national disgrace. An inexcusable, irresponsible, borderline criminal national disgrace. I am ashamed of this country for the inaction I saw everywhere.
I mentioned my outrage to the mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, on Thursday. He shook his head and said, "Tell me about it.'' Disgust dripped from his voice.
What are we doing in this country?
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thanks to daily KOS
everything finally comes together — mostly
When I was in high school I had an English teacher who had a foolproof plan for quitting smoking. He smoked a pipe. In order to smoke the pipe he needed three things together in the same place at the same time: pipe, pipe tobacco, and something to light the pipe tobacco. His stop smoking plan was that he couldn't ask for any of those items if he should be without one of them. If he had the pipe and tobacco but no light then he wouldn't smoke. It wasn't that often that he could get all three items together at the same time. Shooting large format is kind of like that. It's taken some time to get everything togther. First I got the camera. Then I had to modify a back for 4x5. Then I had to get lenses. Then I had to rebuild a Packard shutter since the lenses were shutterless. Then I had to get film holders. Then I had to get a heavier tripod. Then I had to get a case for the tripod. Then I had to get something to carry all of this since my back would collapse if I tried to carry it.
The last piece of the puzzle was a combination step ladder / hand truck from QVC (Item V23464. They have funky links so I can't direct link.) That's it on the bottom of the pile. The tripod bag is actually for microphone stands. (The tripod bag was from 5150 enterprises on eBay. Look for "NEW HEAVY DUTY CAMERA TRIPOD EQUIPMENT BAG" for 15.95. Incredible deal!) The camera and camera stuff is in a surplus Swiss Army pack. Sure is easy to carry it all this way.
All up and ready for action.
The bag hanging from the tripod is actually a bag that attaches on top of the Swiss Army pack. It's for holding food but works great for holding film holders. With the tripod legs fully extended I need to be on the first step to focus. The top step also is great as a little table to put lenses, etc.
You can see the Packard shutter on the front of the lens. I now have five film holders (ten exposures) ready to send off Monday to Panda Lab. Also a roll of pinholes taken last Sunday on World Pinhole Day and a couple of rolls of panoramics. I will have plenty to scan in another week! Time to clean up my other 10 4x5 film holders and load them up. It's great shooting a view camera again.
give us this day our daily photograph
Green Ford
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give us this day our daily photograph
Model A Ford
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gordy's image archive index
give us this day our daily photograph
Red Chevy
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gordy's image archive index
Another car show pic. Duh!
give us this day our daily photograph
Blue Hudson
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gordy's image archive index
A couple of weeks ago I dropped Zoe of to have her hair done in Oak Harbor. It turned out that there was a car show on the street a block down the hill. Whoo hoo! I had the Zorki 3M, with the 50/2 Jupiter 8, in my coat pocket. Not the ideal camera for close work. An SLR might have been better for framing but I had the Zorki and it did pretty good. Just goes to show that the camera that you can take with you all the time since it fits in your coat pocket takes much better pictures that the camera that won't fit in your pocket and has been left home.
empire
The Best of Tomdispatch: Dower on the Occupiers, 1931/2003
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On June 20, 2003, just over two months after Baghdad fell to American troops, at a time when the Bush administration was proudly comparing its "liberation" of Iraq to the U.S. occupations of Japan and Germany after World War II, I posted a piece, "The Other Japanese Occupation," by historian John Dower. (It appeared in print in the Nation magazine.) Dower offered one of the less noticed but eerier historical analogies in that triumphalist, "mission accomplished" period. He suggested that the Japanese moment to consider was not the post-war American occupation of Japan then in such currency, but the prewar Japanese imperial occupation of the Chinese province of Manchuria (renamed Manchukuo). That analogy, as he played it out, is, if anything, even eerier in April 2006 as the Bush imperial machine seems to be sputtering toward its prolonged end-game -- without, unlike imperial Japan, a Great Power enemy in sight. At a time when observers have begun to compare devolving Iraq to civil-war torn Lebanon in the 1980s, I thought -- while still traveling on the West Coast -- that I would repost Dower's remarkable piece from that distant moment (with my intro). It deserves the sort of attention now that it couldn't possibly get then. So travel back to 2003 with me and see what you think.
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1,000 secret CIA flights revealed
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The CIA has operated more than 1,000 secret flights over EU territory in the past five years, some to transfer terror suspects in a practice known as "extraordinary rendition", an investigation by the European parliament said yesterday.
The figure is significantly higher than previously thought. EU parliamentarians who conducted the investigation concluded that incidents when terror suspects were handed over to US agents did not appear to be isolated. They said the suspects were often transported around Europe on the same planes by agents whose names repeatedly came up in their investigation.
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The World is Uniting Against the Bush Imperium
Wars, Debt and Outsourcing
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Is the United States a superpower? I think not. Consider these facts:
The financial position of the US has declined dramatically. The US is heavily indebted, both government and consumers. The US trade deficit both in absolute size and as a percentage of GDP is unprecedented, reaching more than $800 billion in 2005 and accumulating to $4.5 trillion since 1990. With US job growth falling behind population growth and with no growth in consumer real incomes, the US economy is driven by expanding consumer debt. Saving rates are low or negative.
The federal budget is deep in the red, adding to America's dependency on debt. The US cannot even go to war unless foreigners are willing to finance it.
Our biggest bankers are China and Japan, both of whom could cause the US serious financial problems if they wished. A country whose financial affairs are in the hands of foreigners is not a superpower.
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[more]
thanks to Politics in the Zeros
book recommendations
There have been a lot of book recommendations lately. It's my library's fault. I currently have 4 checked out and 10 on hold. My library's website also lets me search and save to my hard drive. I have 39 books waiting to put on hold. I can manage it all online. Books that I have been wanting to read for several years have moved from my Amazon wish list to my library hold list. (Why didn't I listen to Zoe earlier?) There have been a lot of reality based books lately but sometimes a boy's got to play and Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey Maturin Series is a whole lot of fun. A 20 volume seafairing epic during the Napoleanic wars. Two down and eighteen to go. Essential reading. Essential for mental health.
Master and Commander
by Patrick O'Brian
From Amazon:
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The opening salvo of the Aubrey-Maturin epic, in which the surgeon introduces himself to the captain by driving an elbow into his ribs during a chamber-music recital. Fortunately for millions of readers, the two quickly make up. Then they commence one of the great literary voyages of our century, set against an immaculately-detailed backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. This is the place to start--and in all likelihood, you won't be able to stop.
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Post Captain
by Patrick O'Brian
From Amazon:
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The year is 1803, and that scalawag Napoleon Bonaparte has gone to war again. For Captain Jack Aubrey, who has fled to France to escape his creditors, this is doubly alarming news. In short order the captain is interned, makes his escape across the French countryside, and leads a ship into battle. And again, his adventures are cleverly counterpointed by those of his alter ego Stephen Maturin.
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iran
Tehran insider tells of US black ops
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A former Iranian ambassador and Islamic Republic insider has provided intriguing details to Asia Times Online about US covert operations inside Iran aimed at destabilizing the country and toppling the regime - or preparing for an American attack.
"The Iranian government knows and is aware of such infiltration. It means that the Iranian government has identified them [the covert operatives] but for some reason does not want to show [this]," said the former diplomat on condition of anonymity.
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[more]
thanks to Cursor
War clouds
Russia's dangerous double game with Israel and Iran could easily spark a Middle East conflict, with dire consequences for the U.S.
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LET ME TELL YOU about the next war.
It will start sooner than you think — sometime between now and September. And it will be precipitated by the $700-million Russian deal this week to sell Tor air defense missile systems to Iran.
When the war begins, it will be between Iran and Israel. Before it ends, though, it may set the whole of the Middle East on fire, pulling in the United States, leaving a legacy of instability that will last for generations and permanently ending a century of American supremacy.
Despite the high stakes, the Bush administration seems barely to have noticed the danger posed by the Russian missile sale. But the signs are there, for those inclined to read them.
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[more]
thanks to Political Animal
bridge art
Each coast has a sublime piece of architecture in bridge design. Two years ago I saw the East Coast one: the Brooklyn Bridge. I was not dissapointed. I've traveled over the West Coast one since I was a small kid: the Golden Gate Bridge. It never, never fails to blow my mind.
Golden Gate Bridge
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thanks to plep
iraq
Mr. Fish: Prewar Intelligence
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From Iraq:
A Royal Visit...
by Riverbend
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The one unforgivable sin back then was to have loyalties to the foreign occupier. “Today, the only ones who can guarantee their survival are the ones with the loyalties to an occupier- and even they aren’t safe.” She sighed heavily as she said this, her prayer beads clicking gently in her thin hands.
“For the first time in many years, I fear death.” She said last night to no one in particular, as we sat around after dinner, sipping tea. We all objected, wishing her a longer life, telling her she had many years ahead of her, God willing. She shook her head at us like we didn’t understand- couldn’t possibly understand. “All people die eventually and I’ve had a longer life than most Iraqis- today children and young people are dying. I only fear death because I was born under a foreign occupation… I never dreamed I would die under one.”
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Turkey Masses Troops
on Iraqi Border
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Life for Kurds in northern Iraq is about to get a lot more complicated.
The Turkish army has begun massing troops on Iraq's northern border in an effort to combat the Kurdish armed group the PKK.
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War Crimes and Consequences
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This weekend I received an e-mail from a friend in Iraq. It read,
"Salam Dahr, I was in Ramadi today to ask about the situation. I was stunned for the news of a father and his three sons executed in cold blood by U.S. soldiers, then they blasted the house. The poor mother couldn't stand the shock, so she died of a heart attack."
Sounds unbelievable, until you consider this short clip from CNN, which shows a war crime being committed by U.S. troops in Iraq. In this clip, shot on Oct. 26, 2003, Marines are seen killing a wounded Iraqi who was writhing on the ground, and cheering. One of the murderers then told CNN, "These guys are dead now you know, but it was a good feeling … and afterwards you're like, hell yeah, that was awesome, let's do it again."
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Commander: Contractors violating U.S. trafficking laws
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The top U.S. commander in Iraq has ordered sweeping changes for privatized military support operations after confirming violations of human-trafficking laws and other abuses by contractors involving possibly thousands of foreign workers on American bases, according to records obtained by the Chicago Tribune.
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thanks to Antiwar.com
Rebuilding of Iraqi Pipeline as Disaster Waiting to Happen
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When Robert Sanders was sent by the Army to inspect the construction work an American company was doing on the banks of the Tigris River, 130 miles north of Baghdad, he expected to see workers drilling holes beneath the riverbed to restore a crucial set of large oil pipelines, which had been bombed during the invasion of Iraq.What he found instead that day in July 2004 looked like some gargantuan heart-bypass operation gone nightmarishly bad. A crew had bulldozed a 300-foot-long trench along a giant drill bit in their desperate attempt to yank it loose from the riverbed. A supervisor later told him that the project's crews knew that drilling the holes was not possible, but that they had been instructed by the company in charge of the project to continue anyway.
A few weeks later, after the project had burned up all of the $75.7 million allocated to it, the work came to a halt.
The project, called the Fatah pipeline crossing, had been a critical element of a $2.4 billion no-bid reconstruction contract that a Halliburton subsidiary had won from the Army in 2003. The spot where about 15 pipelines crossed the Tigris had been the main link between Iraq's rich northern oil fields and the export terminals and refineries that could generate much-needed gasoline, heating fuel and revenue for Iraqis.
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Projected Iraq War Costs Soar
Total Spending Is Likely to More Than Double, Analysis Finds
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The cost of the war in Iraq will reach $320 billion after the expected passage next month of an emergency spending bill currently before the Senate, and that total is likely to more than double before the war ends, the Congressional Research Service estimated this week.
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