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12:29:48 PM Interesting. I’m watching CNN International, and the shots of long lines and happy voters are almost all coming from Iraqi Kurdistan where the voters are motivated and the environment is (relatively) safe. The rub is that CNNi is not identifying the images as coming from Kurdistan; the only way I knew it was from up north was the single shot of someone waving a Kurdish flag. But if you don’t know what the flag looks like (red, white and green bars with a yellow starburst in the center), as I suspect most Americans don’t, you wouldn’t know the context of these images. Shi’ites are also coming out in droves in the south. But Sunnis are staying home. I will be surprised if the Sunni vote hits double digits at this point.

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For months on end, these seven independent photographers and filmmakers have worked exclusively in Iraq documenting US troops and Iraqi civilians, resistance fighters and child laborers, imprisoned women and incarcerated youths. Using varied media and narrative styles ranging from photojournalism to first person narratives, cinema verite and found photography, Iraq Uncensored photographers present insights and subtleties beyond what daily news reporting can provide.

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Dat onze premier Balkenende gek is op zon zee en strand wisten we al. Ziek van de Nederlandse kwakkelwinter vertrekt Jan Peter daarom vandaag voor een midweekje naar de Antillen. Volgens de RVD voor een kennismakingsbezoek, volgens GeenStijl voor een snoepreisje. Jan Peter neemt namelijk vrouw Bianca en dochter Am�lie gezellig mee. Moet die kleine dan niet gewoon naar op school deze week? Ze heeft immers haar vijfde verjaardag alweer een tijdje terug gevierd en is dus net als al haar leeftijdsgenootjes leerplichtig. En daar de voorjaarsvakantie in Capelle aan den IJssel pas vrijdag begint, vragen wij ons af welk excuus Jan Peter heeft opgevoerd bij het schoolhoofd. De premier mag weliswaar dispensatie aanvragen voor de kleine, maar dat kan slechts indien het voor ��n van de ouders niet mogelijk is tijdens de schoolvakanties met vakantie te gaan, en aangezien het kabinet tijdens schoolvakanties toch altijd met reces is, is dat het probleem dus niet. Over normen en waarden gesproken…

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A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing “sexual services” at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners � who must pay tax and employee health insurance � were granted access to official databases of jobseekers.

The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe.

She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her “profile” and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.

Under Germany’s welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job � including in the sex industry � or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990.

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De Verkeersinformatiedienst (VID) en de Federatie Autorijschool Management (FAM) vinden dat er langs de wegen te veel informatie aan de automobilist wordt gegeven. Ze vinden dat de informatie eenvoudiger en ook minder kan.

Volgens VID-voorzitter Rob Kant moeten automobilisten veel te lang naar de borden kijken. “Vooral op snelwegen leiden ze enorm af”, vindt Kant.

Wel, begin ‘s met het weghalen van alle reclameborden…

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The U.S.-led provisional government in charge of Iraq until last summer was unable to properly account for nearly $9 billion in Iraqi funds it was charged with safeguarding, according to a scathing audit report.

The Coalition Provisional Authority may have paid salaries for thousands of nonexistent employees in Iraqi ministries, issued unauthorized multimillion-dollar contracts and provided little oversight of spending in possibly corrupt ministries, according to the report by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.

“While acknowledging the extraordinarily challenging threat environment that confronted the CPA throughout its existence and the number of actions taken by CPA to improve the [interim Iraqi government's] budgeting and financial management, we believe the CPA management of Iraq’s national budget process and oversight of Iraqi funds was burdened by severe inefficiencies and poor management,” the report says in its conclusion. An advance copy of the report, scheduled for release today, was obtained by The Times.

In the mean time:

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Hundreds of soldiers on lockdown at this Army post searched Saturday for an expensive pair of night-vision goggles that disappeared two days ago.

About 400 soldiers with the 296th Brigade Support Battalion have not been allowed to leave the fort since Thursday, when the goggles were discovered missing during an inventory, base spokesman Jeff Young said.

The battalion is responsible for equipment assigned to the first Stryker Brigade and its roughly 4,000 members. Brigade members began returning from Iraq in October when a second Fort Lewis Stryker Brigade relieved them after a year of duty.

“Sensitive items” such as weapons are inventoried frequently, Young said, but conceded that he didn’t know when the goggles were last accounted for or who had them.

The lockdown means battalion members must stay in the area until the missing goggles are found, or until enough evidence is gathered to allow officials to conclude what likely happened to them.

“The person who signed for them really wants to find them,” Young said.

Night-vision goggles have a base price of about $5,000, Young said, but the issue is less about cost than the importance of the gear.

I wonder how long the administrators who “lost” the $9 billion are going to be “locked-down”. Or how about 56 airplanes, 32 tanks, and 36 Javelin missile command launch-units?

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I recently came across the picture above. It is located at a website run by artist and writer Linda Eddy. According to this site, it is their mission "[t]o hold the Democrat presidential candidates accountable for their comments & allegations against President George W. Bush, to make citizens aware of false statements or claims by the Democrat candidates, and to defend the Bush Administration and set the record straight when the Democrats make false or misleading statements about the Bush-Republican record."

When browsing Eddy’s site one inmediately notices the heavy pro-Republican stance of it. Now there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as it doesn’t distort reality. Unfortunately, that is exactly what Linda Eddy does.

Apart from the obvious fact that the picture has been photoshopped, also the familiarity of the scene depicted caught my eye. I did some Google-searches and soon came up with a non-photoshopped version of the picture:

The original picture taken by a Reuters photographer, is part of a series of pictures taken during a shooting incident in March 2003 in Central Iraq, and during which the mother of the child was killed while the sister was injured. The full series of photographs can been seen here (press Launch Showcase).

Apart from the original Reuters picture of the incident, I also came across the following picture made by another photographer who also was present during the incident.

The website where I found the photograph above included the following text below the picture: "Photo by Hayne Palmour/North County Times
Navy Corpsman Richard Barnett of Camarilo, Calif. checks the heart of a young Iraqi boy as other Navy medics treat the boy’s older sister, right, after the two children and their family were caught in a crossfire between US Marines and Iraqi soldiers just outside of a Marine encampment in central Iraq on Saturday, March 29, 2003. The boy was not injured. His sister, who received gunshot wounds, was expected to survive. The father was wounded and the mother was killed in the gun battle. If anything good comes from this nonsense, I haven’t seen it yet said Barnett after the two children and their father were taken away for a medivac helicopter."

It is really appalling that somebody would intentionally filter out the emotions of an originally already shocking picture, and to alter the image in such a way that it only serves one’s own cause. Unfortunately, that is exactly what Linda Kelly, whose essays have also appaered at Rushonline, has done.

It is really nice to see how Linda Eddy tries to bring back the ethics into the political campaigning of the Democrat presidential candidates, but perhaps she should start with herself first before blaming others. Distorting reality for one’s own cause by photoshopping pictures isn’t only extremely unethical, it is also extremely stupid to do so while the original photograph is widely available on the internet.

It reminds me of this:

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The doodles retrieved from the prime minister’s desk after last week’s Davos economic summit were said to be the mark of the man – unstable, under pressure and more like a vicar than a world leader.

But it turns out the jottings were not the work of Tony Blair but the man sitting alongside him, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft.

When the scribbles were found at the end of the summit, a gleeful press drafted in psychologists and graphologists to deconstruct the mind behind them. The author, presumed to be Mr Blair, was variously described as a spiritual person but not a natural leader, struggling to keep control of a confusing world, and a daydreamer who always hoped for the best.

But yesterday, Downing Street revealed that the doodles were not by Mr Blair but by Mr Gates, who had shared a debating platform with the prime minister and the U2 frontman, Bono.

A spokesman said the handwriting was quite different from Mr Blair’s. Officials were now waiting to hear how the comments about Mr Blair would be applied to Mr Gates.

“We look forward with amusement to explanations by a variety of psychologists and graphologists of how various characteristics ascribed to the PM on the basis of the doodles, such as ‘struggling to concentrate’, ‘not a natural leader’, ‘struggling to keep control of a confusing world’ and ‘an unstable man who is feeling under enormous pressure’, equally apply to Mr Gates,” said the spokesman.

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U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote :
Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror

by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times (9/4/1967: p. 2)

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3– United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam’s presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday.�Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete returns reaching here.

Pending more detailed reports, neither the State Department nor the White House would comment on the balloting or the victory of the military candidates, Lieut. Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu, who was running for president, and Premier Nguyen Cao Ky, the candidate for vice president.

A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson’s policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam.�The election was the culmination of a constitutional development that began in January, 1966, to which President Johnson gave his personal commitment when he met Premier Ky and General Thieu, the chief of state, in Honolulu in February.

The purpose of the voting was to give legitimacy to the Saigon Government, which has been founded only on coups and power plays since November, 1963, when President Ngo Dinh Deim was overthrown by a military junta.

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Amsterdam International Airport, Schiphol railway-station.
Now we know what’s causing the Dutch train-delay’s

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Up and down the icy spine of South America, the glaciers are melting, the white mantle of the Andes Mountains washing away at an ever faster rate. “Look. You can see. Chacaltaya has split in two,” scientist Edson Ramirez said as he led a visitor up toward a once-grand ice flow high in the thin air of the Bolivian cordillera.

In the distance below, beneath drifting clouds, sprawled 2-mile-high La Paz, a growing city that survives on the water running off the shoulders of these treeless peaks.

Chacaltaya, a frozen storehouse of such water, will be gone in seven to eight years, said Ramirez, a Bolivian glaciologist, or ice specialist.

“Some small glaciers like this have already disappeared,” he said as melting icicles dripped on nearby rock, exposed for the first time in millennia. “In the next 10 years, many more will.”

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Arabic media channel Al Jazeera has been voted the world’s fifth most influential brand in a poll of branding professionals that gave the top slot to U.S. iPod and computer icon Apple.

In the survey of almost 2,000 ad executives, brand managers and academics by online magazine Brandchannel, Apple ousted search engine Google from last year’s top spot, but the surprise to many will be Al Jazeera’s entry into the top five.

“With all the news from Iraq and Afghanistan and the ‘war on terror’, a lot of people are really tuned into the news, and the major news sources have a western bias,” Brandchannel Editor Robin Rusch said.

“I think people are tuning in to Al Jazeera and looking at its Web Site because it does offer another viewpoint. For the global community, it’s one of the few points of access we have to news from the region with a different perspective.”

The annual survey asks respondents to rate the impact of a particular brand on people’s lives, and does not attempt to quantify its financial value.

Coca-Cola, the U.S. soft drinks behemoth that regularly tops polls of brand equity value, is nowhere to be found in this year’s global or regional top five lists.

It’s good to hear actual impact in the lives of people is more important than advertising.

With tears rolling down her eyes, a veiled Iraqi woman shows off her finger stained with blue ink and a small card reading ‘Elect Iraq’ after she cast her vote in a polling station in Amman, January 30, 2005. Millions of Iraqis flocked to vote in a historic election on Sunday, defying insurgents who killed 25 people in bloody attacks aimed at wrecking the poll. REUTERS/Ali Jarekji

Two horses run through the deep snow on a meadow near Bayrischzell, Upper Bavaria, southern Germany, on Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2005. Heavy snowfalls added a thick layer of fresh snow to the Upper Bavaria region overnight. (AP Photo/Uwe Lein)

Pope John Paul II shoos away from the window of his studio white doves freed at the end of the Angelus prayer in St. Peter’s square, at the Vatican

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Mr. Poltrack of CBS said that according to his network’s research, a large number of viewers would welcome the chance to pay $1 to watch each television show, if they could do it on their own schedule and with the ability to skip commercials. With commercials, they’d be willing to pay 50 cents. And because the average viewer sees only half of a show’s episodes, he said, this on-demand viewing won’t hurt the regular showing.

Pretty much sums it up right there. Viewers want to watch it when they have time, and without advertising. Hence the success of MythTV (which is what the entire article is about..) and bittorrent.

More pictures…

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The tiny state of Qatar is a crucial American ally in the Persian Gulf, where it provides a military base and warm support for American policies. Yet relations with Qatar are also strained over an awkward issue: Qatar’s sponsorship of Al Jazeera, the provocative television station that is a big source of news in the Arab world.

Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other Bush administration officials have complained heatedly to Qatari leaders that Al Jazeera’s broadcasts have been inflammatory, misleading and occasionally false, especially on Iraq.

The pressure has been so intense, a senior Qatari official said, that the government is accelerating plans to put Al Jazeera on the market, though Bush administration officials counter that a privately owned station in the region may be no better from their point of view.

[..]

An American official noted that Al Jazeera had not only alienated the United States but had also angered officials in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt and many other countries by focusing on internal problems in those nations. “They must be doing something right,” he said.

Indeed. Exactly the kind of journalism that leaders like Mubarak, Qadafi, the Saudi royals and George Bush fear most. Exactly the kind we have far too little of. �

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The U.S. Air Force is playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse with Iran’s ayatollahs, flying American combat aircraft into Iranian airspace in an attempt to lure Tehran into turning on air defense radars, thus allowing U.S. pilots to grid the system for use in future targeting data, administration officials said.

“We have to know which targets to attack and how to attack them,” said one, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The flights, which have been going on for weeks, are being launched from sites in Afghanistan and Iraq and are part of Bush administration attempts collect badly needed intelligence on Iran’s possible nuclear weapons development sites, these sources said, speaking on condition of strict anonymity.

�”These Iranian air defense positions are not just being observed, they’re being ‘templated,’” an administration official said, explaining that the flights are part of a U.S. effort to develop “an electronic order of battle for Iran” in case of actual conflict.

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A 25-year veteran of the Tukwila Fire Department was charged yesterday with attempting to set fire to his home in Mountlake Terrace while his family was inside.

Prosecutors claim that Lt. Philip Lyons, 48, on Aug. 10 set fire to a cardboard box beneath a bay window outside his home on 72nd Place West while his wife and three children were inside.

[..]

Although Lyons said he had not bought any fire-starters, police reports show that Lyons’ Safeway Club Card had been used to purchase a fire-starter in July, charging papers say.

I’ve predicted this about loyalty cards a long, long time ago. This guy turned out to be innoccent, of course. The scenario I usually use is fairly close: “I give my card to my brother, who uses it to buy fertilizer for his garden, and fill up his diesel car. I then get arrested for planning to make a bomb, since I live in an apartment (and thus don’t need fertilizer) and drive a regular car (and this don’t need the diesel).”

Yuck.

A model presents this creation by ‘ Marie Jo’during the Salon de la Lingerie fashion show in Paris, January 28, 2005. The four-day lingerie show for the underwear market professionals runs from January 28 to 31.

The Los Angeles-class fast-attack submarine USS San Francisco (SSN 711) is in dry dock in Apra Harbor, Guam, January 27, 2005 to assess damage sustained after running aground approximately 350 miles south of Guam Jan. 8, 2005. The Navy former dry dock known as ‘Big Blue’ is capable of docking ships that weigh up to 40,000 Long Tons. The Navy certified Big Blue for the one-time docking of San Francisco. San Francisco is the second fast-attack submarine to be attached to the forward-deployed Submarine Squadron Fifteen, home ported on board Naval Base Guam.

Two Russian policemen guard the desolate Red Square with St. Basil Cathedral in the background, as heavy snowfall hit the Russian capital.

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A forgotten workshop of Leonardo da Vinci, complete with 500-year-old frescoes and a secret room for dissecting human cadavers, has been discovered in Florence, Italy, researchers said Tuesday.

The find was made in part of the Santissima Annunziata convent, which let out rooms to artists centuries ago and where the likely muse of the Renaissance artist’s masterwork, the “Mona Lisa,” may have worshiped.

“It’s a bit absurd to think that, in 2005, we have found the studio of one of history’s greatest artists. But that is what has happened,” said Roberto Manescalchi, one of three researchers who has been credited for this month’s discovery. “The proof is on the walls.”

Thanks, Michael, for some great posts while I was away!

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This image was made by compositing 2600 photographs and arranging them in a fibonacci spiral, a form commonly seen in plants, such as sunflowers and pinecones. The image was produced by Jim Bumgardner using images from the Squared Circle photo pool at Flickr, the photo-blogging website.

Here’s a close up view of all the circular shapes the spiral contains. Can you find any of your own photos in there?…

There’s a big pictue of Big Island here…

Back in 1960, the town of Hilo (on the East coast of Big Island, to the right of the upper snow capped peak in the picture) was devastated by a tsunami that killed 61 people and wrecked 540 properties.

There are some aerial pictures from 1997 here that show that the centre of town has still not been rebuilt after nearly 40 years because of the risk of a tsunami recurring.

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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay by sexual touching, wearing a miniskirt and thong underwear and in one case smearing a Saudi man’s face with fake menstrual blood, according to an insider’s written account.

A draft manuscript obtained by The Associated Press is classified as secret pending a Pentagon review for a planned book that details ways the U.S. military used women as part of tougher physical and psychological interrogation tactics to get terror suspects to talk.

It’s the most revealing account so far of interrogations at the secretive detention camp, where officials say they have halted some controversial techniques.

“I have really struggled with this because the detainees, their families and much of the world will think this is a religious war based on some of the techniques used, even though it is not the case,” the author, former Army Sgt. Erik R. Saar, 29, told AP.

Saar didn’t provide the manuscript or approach AP, but confirmed the authenticity of nine draft pages AP obtained. He requested his hometown remain private so he wouldn’t be harassed. Saar, who is neither Muslim nor of Arab descent, worked as an Arabic translator at the U.S. camp in eastern Cuba from December 2002 to June 2003. At the time, it was under the command of Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who had a mandate to get better intelligence from prisoners, including alleged al-Qaida members caught in Afghanistan.

Saar said he witnessed about 20 interrogations and about three months after his arrival at the remote U.S. base he started noticing “disturbing” practices.

One female civilian contractor used a special outfit that included a miniskirt, thong underwear and a bra during late-night interrogations with prisoners, mostly Muslim men who consider it taboo to have close contact with women who aren’t their wives.

Beginning in April 2003, “there hung a short skirt and thong underwear on the hook on the back of the door” of one interrogation team’s office, he writes. “Later I learned that this outfit was used for interrogations by one of the female civilian contractors … on a team which conducted interrogations in the middle of the night on Saudi men who were refusing to talk.”

Some Guantanamo prisoners who have been released say they were tormented by “prostitutes.”

More…

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Two boys were arrested for making pencil-and-crayon stick figure drawings depicting a 10-year-old classmate being stabbed and hung, police said. The children, charged with a felony, were taken from school in handcuffs.

The 9- and 10-year-old boys were arrested Monday and charged with making a written threat to kill or harm another person. They were also suspended from school.

One drawing showed the two boys standing on either side of the other boy and “holding knives pointed through” his body, according to a police report. The figures were identified by written names or initials.

Another drawing showed a stick figure hanging, tears falling from his eyes, with two other stick figures standing below him. Other pieces of scrap paper listed misspelled profanities and the initials of the boy who was allegedly threatened.

The boys’ parents said they thought the children should be punished by the school and families, not the legal system.