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Archives
More links on Israel. The Middle East is exploding and things are happening very fast so I will be posting regular links on this. The potential for a complete disaster is too great. Israel's actions are extreme and if they get more extrmeme, such as bombing Syria or Iran, our soldiers in Iraq can kiss their collective ass goodbye. Something to watch and something to think about.
What Are They Fighting For
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Whatever may be the fate of the captive soldier Gilad Shalit, the Israeli army’s war in Gaza is not about him. As senior security analyst Alex Fishman widely reported, the army was preparing for an attack months earlier and was constantly pushing for it, with the goal of destroying the Hamas infrastructure and its government. The army initiated an escalation on 8 June when it assassinated Abu Samhadana, a senior appointee of the Hamas government, and intensified its shelling of civilians in the Gaza Strip. Governmental authorization for action on a larger scale was already given by 12 June, but it was postponed in the wake of the global reverberation caused by the killing of civilians in the air force bombing the next day. The abduction of the soldier released the safety-catch, and the operation began on 28 June with the destruction of infrastructure in Gaza and the mass detention of the Hamas leadership in the West Bank, which was also planned weeks in advance.
In Israeli discourse, Israel ended the occupation in Gaza when it evacuated its settlers from the Strip, and the Palestinians’ behavior therefore constitutes ingratitude. But there is nothing further from reality than this description. In fact, as was already stipulated in the Disengagement Plan, Gaza remained under complete Israeli military control, operating from outside. Israel prevented any possibility of economic independence for the Strip and from the very beginning, Israel did not implement a single one of the clauses of the agreement on border-crossings of November 2005. Israel simply substituted the expensive occupation of Gaza with a cheap occupation, one which in Israel’s view exempts it from the occupier’s responsibility to maintain the Strip, and from concern for the welfare and the lives of its million and a half residents, as determined in the fourth Geneva convention.
Israel does not need this piece of land, one of the most densely populated in the world, and lacking any natural resources. The problem is that one cannot let Gaza free, if one wants to keep the West Bank. A third of the occupied Palestinians live in the Gaza strip. If they are given freedom, they would become the center of Palestinian struggle for liberation, with free access to the Western and Arab world. To control the West Bank, Israel needs full control Gaza. The new form of control Israel has developed is turning the whole of the Strip into a prison camp completely sealed from the world.
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Here is a good collector of links for what is happening in the Middle East.
Middle East Crisis Open Thread
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This is the Middle East Crisis open-thread. We all hope this doesn't turn into the July War, but these days? Please post all developments, news stories, comments, links, theories, ideas, etc. here in this thread.
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Lebanon pays for Hezbollah's sins
A report from Lebanon's south, ravaged by retaliatory Israeli strikes.
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Beirutis expected the worst when word came Wednesday that Hezbollah, the militant group based in south Lebanon, had killed eight Israeli soldiers near the border and seized two more. The region was already on edge, with the Israeli siege of Gaza in its 18th day following the Palestinian kidnapping of an Israel Defense Forces soldier. Everyone knew that Israeli retaliation would be severe. The only question was whether Israel would confine itself to attacks on Hezbollah, or if it would hold Lebanon responsible and launch attacks across the board. Israel chose the latter course and has meted out savage punishment to this small country.
On Wednesday, IDF strikes destroyed the bridges connecting south Lebanon to the rest of the country. By nightfall, Israeli fighters had blasted the major highways, essentially sealing off the southern third from the center of the country. Early morning Thursday, warplanes bombed Rafiq Hariri Beirut International Airport, knocking out the runways. Minutes later, an Israeli rocket struck Hezbollah's television station, al-Manar, wounding one person and sending local media into a frenzy over access to the scene that dispersed only when an IDF fighter screamed overhead and people ran for cover.
And so it continued all day.
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July 13, 2006
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A source who runs a Beirut-based dialogue with groups including Hezbollah says that the timing of the abduction yesterday was not planned in advance, but was more a target of opportunity. "It is not as if they chose today to do it," emailed Mark Perry, of Conflicts Forum. "Hezballah continually monitors the Israeli border to determine Israeli vulnerabilities. This morning, Israel's guard was down, and Hezballah moved. Why this morning? It would be better to ask Israel. The internal Israeli debate on this is not about Hezballah, but why was it that this morning, of all mornings, they screwed up. It is just the way it turned out... If it had been the case four weeks ago, they would have done it four weeks ago."
"God help us," he adds.
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Lebanon Seeks Cease-Fire; Bush Refuses to Press Israel
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Israel extended punishing airstrikes deeper inside Lebanon today, as President Bush rebuffed a Lebanese request that he push Israel for a cease-fire.
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Beirut waits as Syrian masters send Hezbollah allies into battle
By Robert Fisk
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It's about Syria. That was the frightening message delivered by Damascus yesterday when it allowed its Hizbollah allies to cross the UN Blue Line in southern Lebanon, kill three Israeli soldiers, capture two others and demand the release of Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails.
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Middle East Moves Closer to Brink: Israel Postures for Potential Expansion of Conflict to Syria and Iran
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ABC News is reporting that Palestinian Gunmen have blown a hole through an Egypt border wall and a flood of people crossed into Gaza. One can only speculate why anyone would rush into Gaza unless preparing to fight the Israeli incursion. My own speculation is that this may be a bunch of Muslim Brotherhood empathizers. Not good.
Yesterday, Israel Ambassador to the U.S. Daniel Ayalon said that the "masterminds" behind the Hezbollah attacks from Lebanon are in Damascus and Tehran, but refused to provide details of potential Iranian or Syrian involvement. But the mention of these two capital cities may reflect posturing for a serious broadening of Israel's engagement against states in the region. Not good.
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It's war by any other name
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Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert described what is happening in Lebanon as saying. "This is an act of war." Olmert is correct. This is war. It has been war, non-stop, since 1948. What is happening in Lebanon today is yet another chapter of bloody Middle East events that will last for generations to come, because it is impossible, after so many years of conflict, for the Israelis and Arabs to forgive and forget.
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Israel's monstrous legacy brings tumult a step closer
Overnight Lebanon has been plunged into a role it endured for 25 years - that of a hapless arena for other people's wars
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The Lebanese people, habitues as few people are of the lethal, violent and unexpected, yesterday awoke to the kind of news they thought they had put behind them. Their brand-new airport, the pride of their postwar reconstruction, had been bombarded by Israeli war planes along with a host of other infrastructure projects, bringing death and devastation on a more than Gazan scale.
For some it inevitably brought to mind a bleak winter day in 1968 when, out of the blue, helicopter-borne Israeli commandos landed on the old airport and blew up 13 passenger jets, almost the entire fleet of the national carrier. The pretext: of two Palestinians who killed an Israeli at Athens airport, one came from a refugee camp in Lebanon, then an entirely peaceable country. The significance of this most spectacularly disproportionate reprisal was something the Lebanese could hardly even have guessed at then. But it was a very early portent of the long nightmare to come: military conflict with Israel, eventually to be compounded with an atrocious civil war that it did much to engender.
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The Myth of Lebanon
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Remember, the reason "Lebanon" hasn't disarmed Hezbollah, is that the Lebanese army would lose a confrontation against Hezbollah. If the other Lebanese factions cooperate with Israel in breaking Hezbollah, they'll start another 20 year internicine civil war in Lebanon. It's not possible to stop weapons from getting into Southern Lebanon from Syria (and thus Iran), the Shia are outbreeding the Lebanese Christians and Sunni, and they are poor and tough. They don't have nearly as much to lose as the northern Lebanese and they have no real liking for the rich Christians who abandoned them to Israel last time around. They know they won against Israel, they know it took a long time, and while weary, they probably think they can do it again.
And they're probably right.
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The Neocons and Israel
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The Neocons have strong Likud ties. Extremely strong.
The Neocons want a war with Iran. They always have and they know time is running out for them. They have to create facts on the ground.
The Neocons believe that the problem is that the US hasn't really taken the gloves off (ie. they haven't used their full power - like calling in carpet bombing by B52's and other such fun stuff). If Iran reacts to this, the US will be in full overreach - they will have no choice but to go to full air war to protect their troops in Iraq - it is the only way the US will be able to have a chance of winning the ensuing conflict.
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political beverages
Impeachment Tea
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thanks to Bad Attitudes
soft focus
Pinkham-Smith, Cooke Pinkham, Vesta, Imagon, Verito, Petzval, modified Petzval, Heliar, Dagor, Apo-Lanthar, Velostigmat, Rapid Rectillinear. These are names of lens types and lens brands. Old lenses. I've been wanting a soft focus portrait lens for my 4x5 Graflex and these are some of the names I've come across in my search. Yesterday I was actually bidding on a Wollensak Vesta Portrait, F5, for a short period hoping to get it cheap. My hopes were dashed. But I spent some time googling for information on portrait lenses and I've decided the 5x7 Verito Diffused Focus, F4, is the lens I want. They are soft through the miracle of sperical aberration. As the are closed down, they sharpen up until, at F8, they are reasonably sharp. At F4 they are pretty fuzzy but the trick is to stop them down until you get the level of not sharp that you want. It was a Verito that George Hurrell used for many of his classic Hollywood portraits. However, I really need to test out the lens that is already on the Graflex: a Carl Zeiss Jena Tessar 210/3.5. It may be that, wide open, it will soften up. If it's still too sharp I will need to search for a Verito. I don't want real fuzzy, just a little smoothing.
The mail just came. First was a used copy of Ruth Harriet Louise and Hollywood Glamour Photography. She preceded George Hurrell. Some studying of pictures to do. The second was my 5x7 black and white film. Now I really need to get those 5x7 film holders cleaned up. I still need to relube those Jupiter 8s first.
I don't even know where to begin on this one. Israel is running amok and doesn't care who it kills or destroys. I have way more links on this than I can deal with. Here are a few.
Israel's failed-state strategy
Olmert's smashing of Gaza reveals his greatest fear: A viable Palestinian government he'd have to negotiate with.
by Juan Cole
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On Thursday, Israeli tanks and troops invaded northern Gaza, encountering fierce small-arms fire and some rocket attacks from armed Gazans. Twenty-one Palestinians, mostly militants, and an Israeli soldier were killed. It was the largest Israeli troop presence in the territory since the unilateral Israeli withdrawal of August 2005. Late Thursday, Palestinian Interior Minister Said Siam called on Gazans to "prepare to repel the Israeli attack" -- the first time a Palestinian governmental official has called Palestinians to arms since the crisis erupted.
The day's battles continued the cycle of violence between the Israelis and the Palestinians that has simmered for months but exploded during the past two weeks. Israel's grossly disproportionate response to a tit-for-tat Palestinian guerrilla raid during which two Israeli soldiers were killed and a third abducted has pushed the impoverished Gaza Strip to the edge of a humanitarian crisis, smashed the barely functioning Palestinian Authority, and threatened the Middle East's fragile peace. The actions of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seem intended to create a failed state in Gaza and the West Bank, thus rendering the Israeli claim that "we have no one to talk to" a self-fulfilling prophecy and allowing Israel to continue with its unilateral, annexationist policies, free of the need to even pretend to negotiate.
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Tomgram: Sandy Tolan, Déjà Vu in Gaza
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Under the pretext of forcing the release of a single soldier "kidnapped by terrorists" (or, if you prefer, "captured by the resistance"), Israel has done the following: seized members of a democratically elected government; bombed its interior ministry, the prime minister's offices, and a school; threatened another sovereign state (Syria) with a menacing overflight; dropped leaflets from the air, warning of harm to the civilian population if it does not "follow all orders of the IDF" (Israel Defense Forces); loosed nocturnal "sound bombs" under orders from the Israeli prime minister to "make sure no one sleeps at night in Gaza"; fired missiles into residential areas, killing children; and demolished a power station that was the sole generator of electricity and running water for hundreds of thousands of Gazans.
Besieged Palestinian families, trapped in a locked-up Gaza, are in many cases down to one meal a day, eaten in candlelight. Yet their desperate conditions go largely ignored by a world accustomed to extreme Israeli measures in the name of security: nearly 10,000 Palestinians locked in Israeli jails, many without charge; 4,000 Gaza and West Bank homes demolished since 2000 and hundreds of acres of olive groves plowed under; three times as many civilians killed as in Israel, many due to "collateral damage" in operations involving the assassination of suspected militants.
"Wake up!" shouted the young Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer from Gaza on San Francisco's "Arab Talk" radio in late June. "The Gaza people are starving. There is a real humanitarian crisis. Our children are born to live. Don't these people have any heart? No feelings at all? The world is silent!"
For the Palestinians, Omer's cry speaks to a collective understanding: That the world sees the life of an Arab as infinitely less valuable than that of an Israeli; that no amount of suffering by innocent Palestinians is too much to justify the return of a single Jewish soldier. This understanding, and the rage and humiliation it fuels, has been driven home again and again through decades of shellings, wars, and uprisings past. Indeed Omer's plaintive words form a mantra, echoing all the way back to the first war between the Arabs and the Jews, and especially to 5 searing mid-July days 58 years ago.
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12 July 06
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RIGHT NOW: Israeli tanks and bulldozers are in the Middle of the Gaza Strip, no movement is allowed. In theose first few minutes tanks and bulldozers pushed into the middle of Gaza controlling Salah Al Deen St. which is Gaza's main street. Five people have been killed and many others injured. This is the first time that Israeli tanks and bulldozers reached into the middle of Gaza, reoccupying the former Jewish settlements and carrying military attacks since the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, or what is known as the "Gaza disengagement plan". Gaza is under occupation. There is no electricity, no water and everything is obviously under Israeli control and now it's time for Israeli soldiers to control wether to let this ambulance go to the hospital to rescue victims, or to keep them waiting until they die bleeding. This has been happening all day today!
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A wounded child in the hospital in Gaza
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thanks to Yolanda Flanagan
My life in Gaza
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I am already starting to lose track of days and nights, of how many bombs have dropped. Since the main power plant was destroyed, we have had to live with no electricity. What we do get is patchy, and barely enough to recharge our mobile phones and our laptops so that we do not lose all touch with each other and with the outside world.
As a physician, I fear for our patients. Twenty-two hospitals have no electricity. They have to rely on generators, but the generators need fuel. We have enough fuel to last a few days at most, because the borders are sealed so no fuel can get in. The shortage of power threatens the lives of patients on life-support machines and children in intensive care, as well as renal dialysis patients and others. Hundreds of operations have been postponed. The pharmacies were already nearly empty because of Israeli border closures and the cutoff of international aid. What little supplies were left have gone bad in the absence of refrigeration.
Food too is spoiling without refrigeration, and food supplies are low. West Bank farmers threw away truckloads of spoiled fruit after sitting for days and then being denied Israeli permission to enter Gaza. Children grow hungry as we watch the food that could nourish them thrown into the garbage instead. More than 30,000 children suffer from malnutrition, and this number will increase as diarrhea spreads because of the limited supply of clean water and food contamination.
As a mother, I fear for the children. I see the effects of the relentless sonic booms and artillery shelling on my 13-year-old daughter. She is restless, panicked, and afraid to go out, yet frustrated because she can't see her friends. When Israeli fighter planes fly by day and night, the sound is terrifying. My daughter usually jumps into bed with me, shivering with fear. Then both of us end up crouching on the floor. My heart races, yet I try to pacify my daughter, to make her feel safe. But when the bombs sound, I flinch and scream. My daughter feels my fear and knows that we need to pacify each other. I am a doctor, a mature, middle-aged woman. But with the sonic booming, I become hysterical.
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Morning Came
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Morning came and we found that 90 of the nation's best men were captured by Israel from their homes in the night. Our mayor, who was released from four years in prison just a month ago. Someone for whom I have the utmost respect and admiration, as do his people here, political allies and opponents alike. And our vice mayor, too. The last time I talked with him, earlier this week, he was struggling a lot with chronic back pain. I wonder where they are now. If they have been fed today, or tortured. If they will sleep on beds tonight, or not at all. If they will be home tomorrow. If we will never see some of them again alive.
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Israel’s Infrastructure Warfare
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Israel is now openly engaged in infrastructure warfare, the wanton destruction of the basic platforms of human survival. The bombing of the electric power plant has thrust the world’s most densely populated area into darkness; cutting off the vital flow of energy to hospitals, assistance centers, and the pumping stations which provide the city’s water. At the same time, Israel has bombed large sections of the main roads, government buildings, water lines and bridges. The Associated Press said, “Israeli tanks and bulldozers crossed the Gaza Strip and began razing farmland east of Khan Younis”.
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Analysis: Health care crisis in Palestine
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Mired in political and economic turmoil, the Palestinian healthcare system is in a grave state of crisis ill-equipped to absorb the latest spasms of violence in the territories.
Even the most basic medications are hard to come by and become scarcer as time goes on, Dr. Rasmi Abu-Helu, assistant professor of medical technology at Al-Quds University, pointed out in a recent presentation. The crux of the problem is financial, he said, noting that much of the international community has cut aid to the Hamas-led Palestinian government since its election victory in January.
"It's not only Israel, but the entire Western world," he said. "Nowadays I don't think there's any international aid getting inside."
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thanks to Juan Cole
Israeli army in for the long haul in Gaza Strip
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Israel faces the prospect of a long-term reoccupation of parts of the Gaza Strip after Palestinian rockets for the first time struck a major Israeli city, escalating a crisis that began with the capture of a single soldier.
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An Experiment in Human Despair
The Real Reasons for Israel's Invasion of Gaza
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First, Israel is determined to continue its campaign of impairing the Palestinian Authority's ability to govern. This has nothing to do with the recent election of Hamas to run the Palestinian Authority. Israel's official policy of unilateralism -- ignoring the wishes of the Palestinian people -- began long before, when Yasser Arafat was in charge. It has continued through the presidency of Mahmoud Abbas, a leader who is about as close to a quisling as Israel is likely to find.
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Now Israel is attacking Lebanon. How far will this escalate?
Israel Hits Lebanon After Troops Snatched
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Israel bombed and shelled southern Lebanon and sent ground troops over the border for the first time in six years Wednesday after Hezbollah guerrillas captured two Israeli soldiers. The fighting killed eight Israeli soldiers and three Lebanese.
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Hizbullah ups the ante
by Helena Cobban
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So today, Lebanon's Hizbullah raised the stakes in the rapidly evolving confrontation between Israel and the militant Arab organizations on its borders-- and it also demonstrated its own continuing operational prowess, daring, and inventiveness-- when it sent a squad into action against an Israeli tank operating apparently just inside Israel, killing three of the tank's crew members and snatching two others into captivity. When the Israeli military responded by sending other tanks into Lebanon, one hit a landmine killing four more soldiers inside it.
Hizbullah's capture of two Israeli soldiers comes, of course, a couple of weeks into the crisis Israeli society is already facing as a result of Hamas's capture of an IDF soldier in Gaza. I can easily imagine that many Israelis are in a turmoil of emotion. Though their army has killed around 70 or so Palestinians-- many of them civilians-- in the past two weeks of military actions, Palestinian society shows few signs of "cracking" politically, in terms of backing down on the demand of the PA government leaders that Israel agree to a widespread release of Palestinian detainees in return to the safe release of Gilad Shalit. (This is, of course, very similar to the "sumoud" shown by the Lebanese public when Israel tried to bomb it into political submission back in April 1996. Other people might recall the response of Londoners to the Blitz.)
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1 killed, dozens hurt as Katyushas fall in north; Israel imposes sea and air blockade on Lebanon
Hezbollah: We'll strike Haifa if IAF attacks Beirut
Lebanon asks U.N. to broker cease-fire
Guerrillas’ rockets hit Haifa; Iran denies role in Israeli soldiers’ capture
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Israel has hit hundreds of targets in Lebanon as part of its effort to force the release of two soldiers captured by Hezbollah guerrillas, a top Israeli general said Thursday.
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photography
Michael Bath's Lightining Photography
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thanks to Magpie
iraq
Lots of links on Iraq but there is only one that should not be missed. Riverbend is a young woman living in Baghdad.
Atrocities...
by Riverbend
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Rape. The latest of American atrocities. Though it's not really the latest- it's just the one that's being publicized the most. The poor girl Abeer was neither the first to be raped by American troops, nor will she be the last. The only reason this rape was brought to light and publicized is that her whole immediate family were killed along with her. Rape is a taboo subject in Iraq. Families don't report rapes here, they avenge them. We've been hearing whisperings about rapes in American-controlled prisons and during sieges of towns like Haditha and Samarra for the last three years. The naiveté of Americans who can't believe their 'heroes' are committing such atrocities is ridiculous. Who ever heard of an occupying army committing rape??? You raped the country, why not the people?
In the news they're estimating her age to be around 24, but Iraqis from the area say she was only 14. Fourteen. Imagine your 14-year-old sister or your 14-year-old daughter. Imagine her being gang-raped by a group of psychopaths and then the girl was killed and her body burned to cover up the rape. Finally, her parents and her five-year-old sister were also killed. Hail the American heroes... Raise your heads high supporters of the 'liberation' - your troops have made you proud today. I don't believe the troops should be tried in American courts. I believe they should be handed over to the people in the area and only then will justice be properly served. And our ass of a PM, Nouri Al-Maliki, is requesting an 'independent investigation', ensconced safely in his American guarded compound because it wasn't his daughter or sister who was raped, probably tortured and killed. His family is abroad safe from the hands of furious Iraqis and psychotic American troops.
It fills me with rage to hear about it and read about it. The pity I once had for foreign troops in Iraq is gone. It's been eradicated by the atrocities in Abu Ghraib, the deaths in Haditha and the latest news of rapes and killings. I look at them in their armored vehicles and to be honest- I can't bring myself to care whether they are 19 or 39. I can't bring myself to care if they make it back home alive. I can't bring myself to care anymore about the wife or parents or children they left behind. I can't bring myself to care because it's difficult to see beyond the horrors. I look at them and wonder just how many innocents they killed and how many more they'll kill before they go home. How many more young Iraqi girls will they rape?
Why don't the Americans just go home? They've done enough damage and we hear talk of how things will fall apart in Iraq if they 'cut and run', but the fact is that they aren't doing anything right now. How much worse can it get? People are being killed in the streets and in their own homes- what's being done about it? Nothing. It's convenient for them- Iraqis can kill each other and they can sit by and watch the bloodshed- unless they want to join in with murder and rape.
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photography
kevin tiell
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thanks to Coudal Partners
slacking again
Didn't post any links yesterday either. I did get a couple of new customers, though. Of course one doesn't really count new customers until you see the signature on the check. I met one of them for lunch and he brought an artist friend that was interested in a web site for herself. I need to get a proposal out today but will get a couple of important posts up that have been bothering me.
slow going
The links keep piling up and the time to post them decreases. Yesterday Zoe and I went up to Sedro-Wooley, at United General Hospital, to visit her mom. 3 hours drive up and back. We visited for almost 3 hours. That pretty much took up the day. Zoe will be calling around to find another place for Gerry to live when she gets out of the hospital. She could go back to where she had been living, for a short time, but they don't want her and we don't want her to be where she is not welcome. We need to find a place that cares for Alzheimer's victims and can give more one on one care than HomePlace can give. We will probably be checking some of these places out over the next week.
I did finish up one of my website projects and I'm off soon to meet a prospective new customer. Nothing much new on the photography front other than I've ordered some black and white 5x7 film. If the 5x7 back and film holders all work then I will order some color film. So I had better clean up some of my 5x7 film holders. Before that, though, I've got to relube a couple of Jupiter 8 lenses before this weekend.
I will be posting some more this afternoon or evening but it will probably be slow going around here for the next week, so bear with me. All will be revealed.
give us this day our daily photograph
Mike
bigger
gordy's image archive index
My grandson Mike.
gerry
I gave a brief description of Saturday night's stay in the Emergency Room with Zoe's mom, Gerry. Zoe has more on her blog. Much more.
ken lay is dead
A Meditation on Corporate Strategy Development
By Al Swearengen
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Greetin's, friend! If you're looking for Ned, he's in Room Four working out a serious case of the writer's block with a ball of dope and the two new girls in from fuckin' Chicago. To judge from the screeching comin' out of there, the fuckin' dam is being breached admirably, and the cocksucker'll be back to his old ways, haranguing the citizenry in the public fuckin' thoroughfare, in a trice.
Before he retired to ease his tribulation and rest his worried mind, he pulled out his magic-lantern contraption and showed me a missive he'd received from something pleased to call itself the fuckin' Lockheed Martin Corporation, which he referred to as "the guns-and-bombs-and-rockets crowd." Cocksuckers were trying to poach his loyalty to his current employers, painting castles in the air, raising hosannahs to the riches and pelf he'd gain by switching fuckin' loyalties. Having once long ago toiled for a Govvie contractor, Ned allowed Lockheed a puking Chinaman's chance of a successful recruitment, laughing till he choked at the thought of once again working in a place where TQM, the last refuge of the charlatan, holds management in thrall.
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thanks to By Neddie Jingo!
photography
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Wallace R. MacAskill is one of Nova Scotia's best-known photographers, valued especially for his seascapes and images of sailing vessels. To provide researchers with access to this significant photo archive, we have created a searchable database with 4600 digitized images and accompanying item descriptions. Almost all of the image captions were created by MacAskill or his wife, Elva, as part of their photographic record.
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thanks to The Online Photographer
religion
The disbeliever
Sam Harris, author of "The End of Faith," on why religious moderates are worse than fundamentalists, 9/11 led us into a deranged holy war, and believers should be treated like alien-abduction kooks.
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Three-quarters of all Americans believe the Bible is God's word, according to a recent Pew poll. Numbers like that make an outspoken atheist like Sam Harris seem either foolhardy or uncommonly brave.
Two years ago, when the 39-year-old launched a full-scale attack on religious belief in his provocative book "The End of Faith," he was an unknown. That changed overnight when his book shot up the New York Times bestseller list and later went on to win the 2005 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction. Since then, "The End of Faith" has earned an avid following among atheists and lapsed churchgoers; it's the kind of book that gets passed around from one friend to another to another. Here, finally, was someone willing to do the unthinkable: to denounce religious faith as irrational -- murderous, even.
The heart of Harris' book is a frontal assault on Islam and Christianity, carrying both pages and pages of quotations from the Quran imploring the faithful to kill infidels, and a chilling history of how Christian leaders have brutally punished heretics. Harris argues that much of the violence in today's world stems directly from people willing to live and die by these sacred texts.
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bigger is better
This is my Burke & James. Up till now I've had a 4x5 back on it but I've wanted to go bigger with 5x7. I have a 5x7 back for it but it was glassless and need a lot of cleaning.
My Satin Snow 5x7 ground glass finally arrived and it was worth the wait. He even ground the edges and put a cute little radius on each corner. I cleaned up my 5x7 back and installed the ground glass.
I took it outside and focused on my neighborhood. Oh, my! It sure is big. The glass is the size of the negative. And the ground glass is quite wonderful to focus on.
One problem I've been having is with the back attachment system. It uses a spring with a slot in it that receives pins in the back. Trying to get the pins in the new back to line up has been a pain. And to remove the back you have to pull the back away from the spring before you can lift it ouf of the clips on the bottom of the camera. It's real hard to get it off. This has caused some of the joints in the back to start coming apart. One of the great things about the Burke & James is that it is not a high end camera with all sorts of highly finished expensive wood. It's not a fine Cabernet. It's a cold Pabst Blue Ribbon. I can drill all the holes I want without remorse.
I removed the spring and drilled a hole just a little smaller that a 10-24 pan head machine screw. I screwd the machine screw in and then cut it off with my Dremel tool.
I bought a pair of Ace Hardware angles, 1/2 inch wide by 3/4 inch. I hack sawed one end off leaving just a short piece. I used the Dremel tool to elongate the hole to make give it some movement.
Push the angle in with your thumb and tighten the wing nut. Much easier.
The next part was not planned for but I will take credit for it. I had envisioned removing the wing nuts and angles to remove the back for rotating. It turns out that I can just loosen the wing nut and rotate the angle. No loose pieces!
I wasn't all that smart. When I rotated the back it turned out that the angle needs to be located a little more towards the edge. It still works but it doesn't look good.
I located the other side nearer the edge and it works fine.
I will probably leave it as is for now but I will have to come back and fill the mislocated hole and redrill it. Then, if I want to keep it this way, I will make some threaded posts a little longer, install them with a little epoxy, and use lock washers. Then fill the holes with a little bondo and put on a fresh coat of grey paint. For now, I need to clean up my 5x7 film holders and order some film.
the t in t-shirt stands for terrorist
Has This Country Gone Completely Insane?
Getting Busted for Wearing a Peace T-Shirt
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Yesterday afternoon, drinking a cup of coffee while sitting in the Jesse Brown V.A. Medical Center on Chicago's south side, a Veterans Administration cop walked up to me and said, "OK, you've had your 15 minutes, it's time to go."
"Huh?", I asked intelligently, not quite sure what he was talking about.
"You can't be in here protesting," Officer Adkins said, pointing to my Veterans For Peace shirt.
"Well, I'm not protesting, I'm having a cup of coffee," I returned, thinking that logic would convince Adkins to go back to his earlier duties of guarding against serious terrorists.
Flipping his badge open, he said, "No, not with that shirt. You're protesting and you have to go."
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thanks to Yolanda Flanagan
digital upgrade
I've been using the same digital camera for over eight years — an Olympus D-600L.
I paid $1,000 for it in February, 1998. 1.4 megapixels was pretty hot then. I was starting up my web design business and needed a way to get customer's product onto their websites. Scanners were very expensive then. After three years I knew I needed to upgrade but I realized I was on a pretty expensive merry-go-round. Spending another $1,000 every two to three years was more than I could afford. Fortunately, in 2002 Epson came out with their 2450 scanner which did a fine job of scanning medium format negatives and I resurrected my medium format Mamiya Universal for product photography. I returned to film in a big way. The Olympus was still used when I needed a quick shot for my weblog. It's not that a new digital camera wouldn't be useful, it's just that they are a lot of money for a limited use. My wonderful half, Zoe, is disabled (fibromyalgia) and has a hard time getting out for things like shopping so she does most of her shopping online. QVC is her favorite. A few weeks ago she was watching it and they were having a special anniversary deal where everything in their catalog was available on a 5 Easy Pay plan. I looked to see if they had something I've been wanting and lo and behold! The digital camera I've been looking at was available.
The Pentax *ist DL. It has, IMHO, the best value for the money. At $600, with lens, it's a great value and a very good digital SLR. Zoe had been looking at replacing her aging Olympus C3030 so she ordered it. QVC has this great policy of being able to return anything within 30 days. So we had a month to check the little sucker out. It checks out very nicely so we've decided to keep it and split the cost and share the camera. Zoe likes to carry it around and shoot it on automatic. I plan on using it for product photography, for my websites, on a tripod in manual mode. The photographs it makes are not in the same league as those with my medium format Salut-S. but for the web the Salut-S is overkill. The Pentax is more than fine. The Pentax, with a $30 adapter, will take all my Super Takumar prime lenses for my film Pentaxes as well as the lens from my Salut-S. There is a 1.5 scale factor for 35mm lenses on this Pentax so my 28mm on the Spotmatic would be equivalent to 42mm on the digital Pentax, the 35mm equivalent to a 53mm, 55mm to an 83mm, 90mm to a 135mm, and 135mm to a 202mm. They should be sharper. I'm interested in trying them out. I see the digital Pentax being used for ephemeral photographs. Stuff like product photography which I don't need to keep around for a long time. There is no archival long term storage solution for digital images. If the image is important to keep, I will do it on film. And, while the digital Pentax is close enough to 35mm, it doesn't have the quality of medium format film, not to mention large format. People get caught up with not having to pay for film and think they are saving money. I pay less than $2 for a roll of 24 exposure Fuji Superia 500 and B&H. Development and prints is around $4. Thats around 25 cents a print. You can spend a couple of hundred dollars for a dedicated inkjet printer for printing 4x5 prints that will run you 29 cents a print. It takes two days to get my prints. I drop them off and pick them up. I spend zero time loading files and manipulating them for printing. All that being said, the digital Pentax does work great for pictures that need a quick turn around. The photograph of the Olympus was done with the Pentax. The Pentax stops down to f32 so everything is in focus and that is with manual focus. It doesn't have a cable release but it does have a 2 second self-timer mode that locks up the mirror and then, after two seconds, takes the picture. With my lighting it's a 2 second exposure at ISO 200. The Pentax was taken with the Olympus. Auto focus and auto exposure means it's not all in focus. The digital Pentax will be a worthy addition to my film cameras. And the faithful Olympus will be retired to a spot of honor.
women
Minimum Security: Women's health
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where are the links!?
The promise of more links got broken pretty quickly. As I mentioned yesterday, I was heading for Oak Harbor. That was just past noon. Oak Harbor is about 40 minutes north of us. (Whidbey Island is a long island.) Picked up a prescription for Zoe that we forgot to pick up when we visited her mom, Gerry, the day before. Gerry's Alzheimer's has been making her pretty fearful and leaving her is traumatic. We always forget what else we were supposed to do. Stopped by at Kneed and Feed in Coupeville to pick up a Nuts to You salad. (Kneed and Feed is great for sandwiches and soup.) Dropped that off and then wrestled with the pharmacy over Zoe's meds. I got home at 4:00. At 4:15 we got a call from HomePlace, where Gerry lives, that Gerry was being very disruptive. Zoe called back 15 minutes later and Gerry had calmed down somewhat but the nurse thought it would be good for us to come up. So it was back up to Oak Harbor. We got there to find out that Gerry had gotten worse and they couldn't control her so they sent her to the Emergence Room at Whidbey General in Coupeville. We had seen a little of it on Friday. Something was bothering Gerry and she got up, went over to another resident and started talking to her. Her Alzheimer's has progressed to the point that, although she still recognizes us, her conversations are pretty much not intelligible. The other resident wasn't responding which made Gerry more intent on trying to communicate with her. It's common for Alzheimer's patients to be afraid and also to lash out. Yesterday's incident happened at shift change and it apparently upset the other residents. When we arrived at the ER Gerry was fine. They ran some tests to make sure there wasn't anything physically wrong, which there wasn't, so the called in someone from the State to evalute her mentally. The end of the story is that she has been sent back up to the Senior Behavorial Center at Sedro-Wooley to evaluate her and see if they can adjust her meds. We waited until the ambulance came to take her, which was after 1 in the morning. We finally got home around 2 in the morning. It was a looooong day. at first we were told that HomePlace wouldn't taker her back but the mental health person told us they couldn't do that which took some pressure off. But it looks like we will have to find somewhere else for her to be cared for. She will probably be up at Sedro-Wooley for 1 to 2 weeks. Alzheimer's sucks.
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