techno picture torrent and the cloud contact sheet

There is a terrifyng torrent of photographs  that newer technologies are now enabling .  Everywhere.   

Taking off from a the military /security/  Google Streetview   surveillance strategies,  the new uses of the technologies  have their own problems with people's right to privacy.  Though that right is increasingly being forsaken for the sake of  a little bit of fame the new framing might bring.   

A technology called the Autographer shoots 2000 photographs every day.  The Memeto shoots  2 every minute.  The photographs are shot automatically and uploaded into your personal cloud complete with geotags.  Your life is blogged without  any effort.  

And the technology is spreading to  even street corners where cameras look at you  and upload your image for wot they call 'street style' they do without permission, ofcourse.  Not that too many people really care. 

It’s no news at this point to say that technology is transforming photography in unpredictable ways. By now, in fact, it's hard enough just to try to keep track of every new variation on how this is happening. So here are two recent examples of technology as photographer.

The first is a site called Styleblaster. Basically, its creators have set up a camera on Bedford in Williamsburg that snaps images of everyone who walks by. This is postioned as a “live fashion blog, documenting the style of today.” You’re supposed to click on a top hat icon if you judge a specific pedestrian “stylin’.”

Perhaps we’re all getting used to the (potentially) surveiled life, or maybe it’s nothing new. But both of these instances follow Google Street View, security cameras, and drones into the category of system-as-photographer. 

This isn’t just prevalent, it’s influential. Increasingly, picture-taking people behave like systems: Capture tons of images, upload them all, expect that plenty will be seen no more, and quite possibly less, than once. The cloud is a contact sheet. 

http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/system-as-photographer/37008/

“As far as privacy goes, we count on people to be dressed well when they go out in public–especially on a brisk fall day,” he said. “Don’t expect the pictures to hang around, though. Fashion gets stale after a couple of days, so we don’t see a point in constructing an endless archive. This is really about the moment.”

http://betabeat.com/2012/10/designers-behind-williamsburg-spycam-styleblaster-insist-its-not-the-hipster-creepshots/

It’s difficult to ignore the themes of class and race that emerge among all of these sites, each of which relies on user submissions. Styleblaster, however, is theoretically setting itself up to document a place and a culture rather than rely on the subjective whims of observers to photograph the most outlandish and bizarre of Williamsburg's inhabitants.

But is it ethical?

It’s clear that none of the subjects of the photos are aware they’re being photographed. In essence, the Styleblaster camera works as a real-time webcam that the user can pause, ogle, and comment on via the voting system.  And while other websites put their victims at the mercy of individuals with cameras, Styleblaster is betting on its well-known vantage point to catch on quickly and send people parading by on purpose: “It will quickly become a destination for New York City peacocks to traipse by and show off what makes the neighborhood hop.”

Still, that dawning awareness on the part of Williamsburg’s oblivious residents can’t come fast enough. We’ve already been treated to things we wish we could unsee

http://www.dailydot.com/culture/styleblaster-hidden-camera-brooklyn-bedford-photos/

from digital distribution to pigeon post.

"whoever publishes the photos first wins over the public opinion,"   senior IDF officer

Photos matter.  And getting them out or preventing their distribution is a serious matter in our contemporary wars. Digital distribution makes their quick dispersal easier and quicker  It also makes  control easier.  The use of jamming devices that can jam digital media and prevent the electronic broadcast of images  is  leading to inventive ways  of countering that control.  Ways that hark back to older systems  of communication.  Pigeon post, for example. 

A shipload of medicine riled up the Israeli government enough. The discovery that the activists on board the Estelle included carrier pigeons, which were prepared to deliver photographic evidence of Israeli attacks on the passengers, has them downright livid.

http://news.antiwar.com/2012/10/29/israel-bashes-provocation-of-carrier-pigeons-on-gaza-flotilla/




According to IDF assessments, the pigeons carried digital tags, which were attached around their legs, containing photos of Israeli soldiers as they seized the ship. It is believed the photos were aimed for global media distribution.

Pro-Palestinian Israeli activist Yonatan Shapira, who was on board the ship, confirmed the IDF assessment, saying: "We tagged some of the carrier pigeons with digital memory cards containing photos showing IDF soldiers using taser guns.

"We must to be creative when fighting the battle over the public image," Shapira added.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4298439,00.html

Photoshop zindabad! Frankenstorm Sandy sends Photojournalism to a digital death

Fake photos are not just the preserve of war zones. Frankenstorm Sandy  is filling cyberspace with its  own not so fair share of  'shopped' photos.  Photoshop zindabad ! Photojournalism is heading  for a  sure, photoshopped, digital death.

If you are following real-time images of  Post-Tropical Cyclone Sandy on sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Tumblr, don't believe everything you see.

From images of completely different storms to the downright unbelievable Hollywood photoshop treatment, hundreds of fake photos purporting to be Sandy are circulating the internet.

There is even a website called Instacane, which is collating all storm-related photos that are tagged with terms such as "Sandy" and "hurricane". While many of these are indeed legitimate, others should be taken with a grain of salt.

Advertisement

On photo-sharing app Instagram, 10 photos are being uploaded of the storm every second, according to The New York Times.

A dramatic looking Statue of Liberty is seen in this image claiming to be from Sandy:

But, according to snopes.com, a website that verifies images, it's photoshopped from a tornado in Nebraska in May 2004. The originals can be seen at Extreme Instability.

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/technology/technology-news/the-sandy-photos-that-werent-20121030-28gx7.html

wild west's land grabs... continued.

It was with the land and resources grab of the West's  earlier private investors and their private trading companies, that colonialism began. 

The  British and Dutch East India companies come to mind, as the earlier purloining pioneers. 

 This latest  land grab that the  UN  admits it can do nothing about, is just a continued colonialism.  

The colonial caper was just too good a game for the west to give up. It never really did. 


"I don't see that it's possible to stop it. They are private investors," said Graziano da Silva in a telephone interview. "We do not have the tools and instruments to stop big companies buying land. Land acquisitions are a reality. We can't wish them away, but we have to find a proper way of limiting them. It appears to be like the wild west and we need a sheriff and law in place."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/oct/29/land-deals-africa-wild-west-fao

Land eight times the size of the UK was sold off globally in the last decade, enough to grow food for a billion people Land eight times the size of the UK was sold off globally in the last decade, enough to grow food for a billion people Land eight times the size of the UK was sold off globally in the last decade, enough to grow food for a billion people 
 andLand eight times the size of the UK was sold off globally in the last decade, enough to grow food for a billion people Land eight times the size of the UK was sold off globally in the last decade, enough to grow food for a billion people Land eight times the size of the UK was sold off globally in the last decade, enough to grow food for a billion people 

http://www.oxfam.org/en/grow/pressroom/pressrelease/2012-10-04/land-sold-last-decade-could-grow-enough-food-feed-billion-people


And its not just in the third world's "developing" societies that this is happening. The private interest of  privateers remain the same . Everywhere . All the time.


Read between the lines, however, and the predatory nature of his vision becomes evident. Essentially, the plan is intended to remove most impediments to the exploitation by US energy firms of untapped oil, gas and coal fields in the United States, Canada and Mexico, regardless of the consequences for national health, safety or the environment. In particular, the plan has five key objectives: eliminating federal oversight of oil and gas drilling on federal lands; eviscerating all environmental restraints on domestic oil, gas and coal operations; eliminating curbs on drilling in waters off Florida and the east and west coasts of the United States; removing all obstacles to the importation of Canadian tar sands; and creating an energy consortium with Canada and Mexico allowing for increased US corporate involvement in—and control over—their oil and gas production.



http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/10/29-6

money and the unmaking of the art world . quit it.

The power of money suppresses debate and growth. In politics and, yes, the Art world too.

Dave Hickey, a curator, professor and author known for a passionate defence of beauty in his collection of essays The Invisible Dragon and his wide-ranging cultural criticism, is walking away from a world he says is calcified, self-reverential and a hostage to rich collectors who have no respect for what they are doing.

"They're in the hedge fund business, so they drop their windfall profits into art. It's just not serious," he told the Observer. "Art editors and critics – people like me – have become a courtier class. All we do is wander around the palace and advise very rich people. It's not worth my time."

"Money and celebrity has cast a shadow over the art world which is prohibiting ideas and debate from coming to the fore," he said yesterday, adding that the current system of collectors, galleries, museums and art dealers colluding to maintain the value and status of artists quashed open debate on art.

"I hope this is the start of something that breaks the system. At the moment it feels like the Paris salon of the 19th century, where bureaucrats and conservatives combined to stifle the field of work. It was the Impressionists who forced a new system, led by the artists themselves. It created modern art and a whole new way of looking at things.

"Lord knows we need that now more than anything. We need artists to work outside the establishment and start looking at the world in a different way – to start challenging preconceptions instead of reinforcing them."

It is the job of a cultural commentator to make waves but Hickey is adamant he wants out of the business. "What can I tell you? It's nasty and it's stupid. I'm an intellectual and I don't care if I'm not invited to the party. I quit."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/oct/28/art-critic-dave-hickey-quits-art-world

democracy and freedom to question. updated

Something I wrote a decade ago,   about the post Sept 11th world, came back to me as I read this article in the Guardian . A question that I had asked then, has taken on a new meaning.

"I wonder if , in the post September world , I am even allowed to  write and publish what I think and feel. Can I be what I am or want to be - culturally or individually? Or will that be against "them"? Them that one is either "for, or against".

I was reacting against the plans for 'Full Spectrum Domination' in the New American Century.  Domination that would not allow any challenges - "military,economic or cultural" . Domination that would seek control of all international commons - including Space and Cyberspace. Culture not excluded.

At risk is, today, is more than just the Culture I had in mind,then.What is now at risk is the very questioning culture that underwrites the  idea of the Democracy. Democracy that is sought to be imposed on the world at war point. Democracy that is now under serious threat by (and in)  the very cultures and countries that want to impose it on others.

Imran Khan is, according to numerous polls, the most popular politician inPakistan and may very well be that country's next Prime Minister. He is also a vehement critic of US drone attacks on his country, vowing toorder them shot down if he is Prime Minister and leading an anti-drone protest march last month.

On Saturday, Khan boarded a flight from Canada to New York in order to appear at a fundraising lunch and other events. But before the flight could take off, US immigration officials removed him from the plane and detained him for two hours, causing him to miss the flight. On Twitter, Khan reported that he was "interrogated on [his] views on drones" and then added: "My stance is known. Drone attacks must stop." He thendefiantly noted: "Missed flight and sad to miss the Fundraising lunch in NY but nothing will change my stance."

But the most important point here is that Khan's detention is part of a clear trend by the Obama administration to harass and intimidate critics of its drone attacks. As Marcy Wheeler notes, "this is at least the third time this year that the US has delayed or denied entry to the US for Pakistani drone critics."

There are two clear dynamics driving this. First, the US is eager to impose a price for effectively challenging its policies and to prevent the public - the domestic public, that is - from hearing critics with first-hand knowledge of the impact of those policies. As Wheeler asks, "Why is the government so afraid of Pakistanis explaining to Americans what the drone attacks look like from a Pakistani perspective?"

What makes this most ironic is that the US loves to sermonize to the world about the need for open ideas and political debate. In April, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lectured the planet on how "those societies that believe they can be closed to change, to ideas, cultures, and beliefs that are different from theirs, will find quickly that in our internet world they will be left behind,"

That she is part of the same government that seeks to punish and exclude filmmakers, students, lawyers, activists and politicians for the crime of opposing US policy is noticed and remarked upon everywhere in the world other than in the US. That demonstrates the success of these efforts: they are designed, above all else, to ensure that the American citizenry does not become exposed to effective critics of what the US is doing in the world.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/28/detention-imran-khan-drones

Behind Imran’s Hounding

by craig on October 28, 2012 10:03 am in Uncategorized

Pulling Imran Khan off a plane in Canada, and making him miss his Eid fundraising lunch in New York, is pretty crass of the United States, a country that claims its foreign policy is motivated by freedom. The idea that low level US immigration operatives needed clarificiation on Khan’s well-known views on killings by US drones in Pakistan is plainly nonsense. But this wasn’t routine or an error; Khan wasn’t questioned at a desk on arrival in New York, he was pulled off a plane by US operatives in Canada. It was an exercise in humiliation.

But if you look under this event you find some interesting, creepy crawly creatures.

http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2012/10/behind-imrans-hounding/

the democracy battleground.

Painting was a particularly important battleground, and throughout the 1950s the CIA sponsored exhibitions of American abstract expressionist painters, the most important of whom were Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Robert Motherwell. The young Nelson Rockefeller, who helped organize many of these exhibitions through the Museum of Modern Art in New York, all but gave the game away when he called abstract expressionism “free enterprise painting.” And Tom Braden, head of the CIA’s International Organizations Division at the time, later recalled:

We wanted to unite all the people who were writers, who were musicians, who were artists, to demonstrate that the West and the United States was devoted to freedom of expression and to intellectual achievement, without any rigid barriers as to what you must write, and what you must say, and what you must do, and what you must paint, which was what was going on in the Soviet Union. I think it was the most important division that the agency had.

Most American policy makers and human-rights activists may believe that history is on their side, but for the first time since the Soviet collapse their efforts are encountering serious resistance not only from resurgent states such as Russia and emergent powers such as China but also from many nations in the Global South. For these countries, the democracy promoters’ claims sound more like moral flags of convenience to further U.S. interests than disinterested efforts in the name of the global public good.

After all, the George W. Bush administration used the democracy agenda to justify its Iraq invasion and the global prosecution of its long war against jihadis. 

The U.S. State Department’s outraged reaction to the news was a case study in the hypocrisy and confusion that have attended post–Cold War democracy promotion from the start. Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland declared that the United States remained “committed to supporting democracy, human rights, and the development of a more robust civil society in Russia.” She added defiantly that Washington looked forward to “continuing our close cooperation with Russian non-governmental organizations.”

It is perfectly legitimate for the Obama administration to oppose the Putin government and to favor dissident groups like Memorial, the election-monitoring NGO Golos and other organizations that oppose the Putin regime. But it is absurd to pretend that, in doing so, Washington is not meddling in Russia’s internal affairs. Vladimir Putin may be everything his adversaries in the democratic Russian opposition say he is, but the fact that he is bad does not mean he is wrong. USAID has been funding groups that would like to see a different and more democratic government in the Kremlin. For Washington to express indignation that this dictatorship is not prepared to let America continue underwriting its enemies really tells you all you need to know about the self-delusional sense of arrogant entitlement that pervades the democracy-building project.

During the Cold War, the utility of democracy promotion was clear: it was a weapon in that conflict. In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, it was possible to believe a new world order curated by the United States might actually come into being. Then, pursuing democracy promotion was an entirely rational decision for policy makers, for it would have strengthened that world order. But now, when the new world order has turned out to be a chimera, why continue to pursue a policy configured for other times and other conditions? 

http://nationalinterest.org/article/evangelists-democracy-7625?page=show

why white is wicked. under the fabric of the fashion industry

it took 700 gallons of fresh water to make my cotton t-shirt;

it’s partly down to me that 85% of the Aral Sea In Uzbekistan has disappeared because its water was used to grow cotton in the desert;

a quarter of all the insecticides in the world are used on cotton crops;

buckets of hazardous sludge are generated during the coating process of the metal buttons on my jeans;

white is energy-intensive because of all the bleaching;

being clean, and wearing white to prove it, has weakened my immune system;

I‘ll use six times more energy washing my favourite shirt than was needed to make it;

nearly all the textiles in my life will end up in landfill – garments, household textiles, carpets, the lot.

The book from which I took these offcuts is neither alarmist, nor moralizing. On the contrary: Fashion and Sustainability: Design for Change, by Kate Fletcher and Lynda Grose, examines the environmental and social impacts of fashion system calmly. This matter-of-fact tone – together with its masses of well-selected examples – make the book impossible to dismiss as mere advocacy.





Kate Fletcher’s ‘map’, below, charts the types of fibre that had the greatest potential to the produced in a sustainable way.






“many fashion designers find the technical complexity of textile processing to be bewildering”. As Paul Hawken writes in his introduction, although designers are incredibly knowledgeable about style, cut, fabric, colour, and design – “they know far less about back story of fashion – the technology behind the cut, the fibre behind the fabric, the land behind the fibre, of the person on the land”.

The significance of this important book is that fashion’s back story can no longer be ignored. It marks the transition from years of awareness-raising, until now, to years of remedial action to come. It will no longer be an option to plead ignorance, or feign surprise, at the fact that design decisions impact on watercourses, air quality, soil toxicity, and human and ecosystem health, in other parts of the world.


http://observatory.designobserver.com/feature/why-white-is-wicked/34618/

towards a critical 'history' of photography and its uses.

The art of the past no longer exists as it once did. It's authority is lost. In its place there is a language of images. What matters now is who uses that language for what purpose." ~ John Berger


The image supplies little in itself. What counts is its use and the power to fix a particular interpretation of the events, objects or people depicted. Some people, and especially some institutions, have much more clout in this process than others do." ~ Steve Edwards


Getting way from a "history" of photography that is based on a traditional idea of  the History of Art    ( as a sequence of styles and artists)  is increasingly becoming a must for photography.  I see and read photo graphy as a 'writing with light' and not as a 'drawing with light  .It is, for me, a language  that has much more power than any language ever had. Its veracity, its roots in Reality, just invite uses as pure propaganda. 

 It is  the way Photography is used/misused that needs to be the focus of our understanding of the History of Photography. 

Its increasing  misuse in the increasing number of  wars  around the world is something that I have been noticing a lot more.  From big Mainstream media, like the British propaganda arm - the BBC, to small newspapers in the Middle East,  the misuse of pictures shot somewhere else  has become much more frequent and, thanks to the Net,  much more visible. 

Here is the latest in photographic  hasbara-the Israeli form of propaganda. 

The Israeli military’s decision to use foreign photos to illustrate attacks in the West Bank as part of its propaganda efforts (without indicating that the image is only an illustration) may raise some interesting questions about its own ethical perception and standards.

This is not the first time the army has faced this particular criticism. In June, the army marked gay pride month by posting a photograph of two male Israeli soldiers holding hands. It waslater revealed that the two soldiers are not a couple and only one of them is gay.

The use of a photo unrelated to the incident it purports to be illustrating was also more striking given the recent Israeli reaction to another alleged misuse of photographs.

Last March, Israeli military and political figures demanded the United Nation’s OCHA office in Jerusalem fire a staff member after she tweeted a photograph of a fatally wounded girl, whom she indicated had just been killed by Israeli fire in Gaza.

Pro-Israel activists and government officials maintained that the photograph had been published by Reuters in 2006 and a veritable campaign was launched besmirching the OCHA employee. Beyond the hypocrisy inherent in doing something that you had only just condemned others for doing, we should remember a key distinction between the two incidents: While the OCHA employee published the concerned photograph on her private Twitter account, as a private citizen, the Israel Defense Force is an official body and its Facebook page is an official government channel.

http://972mag.com/on-facebook-idf-illustrates-palestinian-violence-with-photo-from-bahrain/58550/

beyond mass media and narcissism a media by and for the masses

Mass media aimed at the masses produces  the narcissism of the new  I, Me  generation. But beyond that  lies a new  technology enabled media of the masses, for the masses    - where "Each receiver is a potential transmitter".A message multiplier with a message that matters beyond the self projection of  I and Me. .  

Documenting your entire existence might turn out to be useful for future historians, but it's a somewhat unnerving hobby. The processes started by Myspace, then Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, YouTube and YouPorn, ever more aided by technologies like the iPhone, perhaps reach their consummation in Memoto: a wearable camera, clipped to clothes or worn as jewellery, able to record practically every detail of the wearer's life, linked via the internet for instant public self-presentation.

Memoto is merely a reductio ad absurdum of something that has been continuing for some time: the extension of media production so that something that was once tightly controlled by conglomerates is now produced en masse by millions of people. As we concentrate on the worrying results of this, we forget that we are seeing the fulfilment of a dream that leftwing media theorists have had since the 1920s. They imagined that when media – text, photo, film, radio – was able to be produced by many rather than few, huge political changes could be possible.

In the Soviet Union at the same time, "two-way newspapers" in factories, claimed Brecht's friend Sergei Tretiakov, were doing just this. In both countries, the "worker photography" movement was bringing working conditions and ordinary lives to prominence, and were featured regularly in the mass-circulation German communist weekly Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung, due to its enthusiastic take-up by the Comintern's media mogul, Willi Münzenberg. Those who advocated the comprehensive documentation of everyday life did so because they wanted to comprehensively transform it.

 "Each receiver is a potential transmitter", wrote Enzensberger, and so it is. They would have relished, for instance, the way that the cameraphones of both demonstrators and passers-by recorded the killing of Ian Tomlinson, instantly disproving the police's hasty, centralised statements; although their use by all sides during the August 2011 riots showed that this footage could be just as easily used by the courts.

Much of the left, especially its anarchistic and autonomist fringes, has long been comfortable with new media. It was the original Autonomia in 1970s Bologna that appropriated the new apparatus, in the form of the pirate station Radio Alice. What is missing, perhaps, is organisation that could focus these media into something strong enough to shout down the internet's ever-present narcissistic babble; maybe "autonomy needs its Willi Münzenberg", as the critic Steve Edwards has claimed. Inanity still dominates the new media technologies. But what the left could be focusing on is what they make possible.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/25/memoto-camera

The tiny device is designed to be clipped to clothes or worn on a necklace. As well as a five megapixel digital camera, it will feature a GPS chip to keep track of owners' locations and automatically log and organise pictures via a specially-created iPhone and Android apps. Memoto claims the battery will last two days.

"Many fantastic and special moments become blurred together after a while and it feels like life just rushes by, too fast for us to grasp," said the Swedish start-up behind the project.

"We at Memoto wanted to find a way to relive more of our lives in the future - and enjoy the present as it happens."

Memoto describes the project as "lifelogging" technology and plans to ship its first finished cameras in February next year.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/9627426/Wearable-camera-encourages-owners-to-record-entire-lives.html

more on the matrix. the disposition matrix. the kill list

Lots of links to follow in this blog.  . Read and think.



Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the “disposition matrix.”

The matrix contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an accounting of the resources being marshaled to track them down, including sealed indictments and clandestine operations. U.S. officials said the database is designed to go beyond existing kill lists, mapping plans for the “disposition” of suspects beyond the reach of American drones.

Although the matrix is a work in progress, the effort to create it reflects a reality setting in among the nation’s counterterrorism ranks: The United States’ conventional wars are winding down, but the government expects to continue adding names to kill or capture lists for years.

Among senior Obama administration officials, there is a broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade. Given the way al-Qaeda continues to metastasize, some officials said no clear end is in sight.

“We can’t possibly kill everyone who wants to harm us,” a senior administration official said. “It’s a necessary part of what we do. . . . We’re not going to wind up in 10 years in a world of everybody holding hands and saying, ‘We love America.'"





These opening paragraphs, and the article in its totality, describe what we might term the bureaucratization of terror,the phenomenon that Hannah Arendt wrote about extensively. Always remember that what these "U.S. officials" and "senior Obama administration officials" are discussing isthe murder of human beings, including the murder of entirelyinnocent human beings. But they speak of a "disposition matrix," and the "accounting of the resources being marshaled," in the manner that might be used to discuss office supplies. "Oh, dear, we need more paperclips. Staplers, too." "Hmm. This group of men -- there seem to be about ten or twelve of them -- seems to be engaged in a 'suspicious pattern of activity.' We'd better dispose of them."




In addition to pursuing its goal of global hegemony, the United States government uses foreign countries as a lethal laboratory in which to practice the techniques it intends to use domestically, at home within U.S. borders.

Yet most Americans refuse to identify the meaning of the government's actions. If they are aware of these horrors at all, they tell themselves that the government would never practice these horrors here at home, and certainly not against people like them.

These, too, are transparent and pathetic lies. I shall discuss these lies and related ones next time, when I will also turn to the nature and forms of resistance that are possible to us. For now, I emphasize the critical point: If the future should bring what are now unimaginable horrors, let no American ever be heard to say that he "never knew it would come to that." They know. They know about the horrors in detail; they are told about them repeatedly. They refuse to admit the meaning of what they know. If they did, they might feel they should resist the horrors -- and that is the one outcome they fear more than any other. Whatever may come, they do not want to have to take a stand. They do not want to haveto choose.

http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/paths-of-resistance-i-refusal-to.htm

enlightenment. so needed in these dark days.

                               from the land of the Buddha's birth.  lotus in my garden. 

“Wow, that’s some camera.” the google trekker

I  have always seen photography as a mapping. But photography with these Google cameras is taking  photography and the whole debate around it to another level .  15 lenses shooting at 2.5 frames per second  and controlled by a handheld phone  is taking photography into dimensions  far beyond the flat surface  that photos have normally been about. 

And  the  fact that the Trekker is only taken out on sunny days and shows, like a sundial,  just the sunny hours is an echo of what  most photography shows and what most people want to see. 


 The 75-megapixel camera is mounted in an aluminum baffle, resembling a massive soccer ball, and with the rig on a guy's back, you can get close enough to look into one of the 15 lenses that capture a brisk 2.5 frames per second. The lenses are bespoke, like almost everything on the trekker, and specifically designed to reduce flare from the sun. The whole system is controlled by an Android phone, which monitors the navigational system and allows the user to look at photos from the camera as they're being taken.




The removable hard drive and eight-hour rechargable batteries are protected by a door with a waterproof O-ring seal. The Trekker can be submerged for 10 minutes under one meter of water and withstand temperatures ranging from -15 to 115 degrees Fahrenheit.



Google has created the Trekker as a tool whose full utility isn’t yet known. The team says they’d like to form as many partnerships as possible all over the globe. This year, Google teamed up withCatlin Seaview Survey to design a modified panoramic rig that could be used underwater to help monitor coral reefs. There's also potential for the maps to assist in search and rescue, identifying areas where a lost party might have made a wrong turn or run into trouble.




She's hoping that visitors won't rely on being able to use Street View to help them navigate on trail. Cell phone reception drops off dramatically as you dip below the rim. The Trekker is also only dispatched on good weather days, to prevent precipitation from spoiling the picture. As a result, Street View is likely to show more bluebird days and won't necessarily be representative of actual conditions on the trail.


ttp://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/hiking-and-backpacking/Google-Trekker-Hikes-Street-View-into-the-Backcountry.html?page=all

Bumping off leaders , war crimes then and now.

The British had it right, it seems. Bumping off, 'summarily executing people' and holding others without  trial , is now the way of the American Empire the British  are now a minor partner in.

The Nuremberg principles will never be applied again. Principles under which  (in all fairness) the Allied Leaders should also have stood trial for war crimes they committed when they firebombed or nuked civilians. Principles under which the present leaders of the free world would easily be convicted for 21st century war crimes they are still committing.

The British government opposed the establishment of the Nuremberg war crimes tribunals at the end of the second world war because it wanted selected Nazi leaders to be summarily executed and others to be imprisoned without trial, according to a contemporary account that is declassifiedon Friday.

Winston Churchill made the proposal at the "Big Three" conference at Yalta in February 1945, according to the account, but was overruled by Franklin D Roosevelt, who believed the US public would demand proper trials, and Joseph Stalin, who argued that public trials possessed excellent propaganda value.

The British eventually agreed to the war crimes trials despite the misgivings of some senior government officials who believed the decision to prosecute the surviving Nazi leadership for waging a war of aggression would set a dangerous precedent. They also feared the prosecutions would be on a par with the high-profile show trials in Stalin's Russia

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/26/britain-execution-nuremberg-nazi-leaders

death of a real performance artist. jaspal bhatti passes away

Jaspal Bhatti's  death in a car accident comes as a real shock.  Looking at all the news coverage I am not at all surprised to see  that he is not seen  as what he really was. A real Performance Artist. One of the earliest in the  Indian Art Scene. Someone not confined to the closed spaces of the Art World.

 His 'performances'  were events to remember and  they made an impression  on the Street. He connected  to the common admi - the Mango people as they are now being called. And he did it through humour they could connect to. Humour that he used  in all the mediums  he worked with. Mediums that are being used to define him within their own fields. TV star, Film maker. etc.

It was his politics that I admired. A politics that he used humour to project.A politics that took on the politics of the professional politicians.

I doff my pagri .


Popular comedian and film director Jaspal Bhatti, who touched a chord with the masses with his humorous take on problems plaguing the common man, died when his car rammed into a roadside tree in the wee hours of Thursday.


http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/comedian-jaspal-bhatti-dies-in-road-accident/article4030079.ece?homepage=true

Bhatti was known for floating his political parties during elections to highlight the problems faced by the general public.

In 1995, he floated the 'Hawala Party' delighting passers by with his original poker faced takeoff on growing political corruption in the country which was already a hotly discussed topic in the context of the Jain-Hawala Diaries.^[8]

In 2002, Bhatti announced that he is starting the "Suitcase Party" & released his manifesto alloting 5 seats to his family & more seats to be decided based on the suitcase size of the prospective candidates^[9]

In 2009, the comedian announced that he is floating the "Recession Party" & Bhajna Amli, alias Gurdev Dhillon, as his party's face from the Ludhiana. In his trademark satirical style, he kept his party's symbol as opium, drugs and alcohol for which he claimed that there will be no shortage of supply if his party is voted to power.^[10]

India’s leading media critic Amita Malik says of him: "Bhatti has the correct style for TV, an understated, quiet humour which sinks in without shouting, and which mercilessly exposes both corruption in our every day life and the typical people, who thrive on it. The grim fact and the hard truths of our society so bitter otherwise are made so funny through the adept handling of Bhatti, that cleansing laughter is created out of common malpractices."^[11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaspal_Bhatti