Here is the story of Sean Baker, who was a soldier at Guantanamo, until the faithful day in January 2003, when he had to wear a prisoner overall as part of a training exercise in the camp. He got handed over to four soldiers who did not know his identity and who immediately started to [...]
I just heard the president’s speech about the US plans for the transition of power to a Iraqi government after June 30th. He badly mis-pronounces the name of the Abu Ghraib prison camp 3 times in one minute. In three different ways! It sounds like he has never heard that name before. Don’t believe me? [...]
via the Daily Kos: 1999 US Report to UN Committee Against Torture: Every act constituting torture under the Convention constitutes a criminal offense under the law of the United States. No official of the Government, federal, state or local, civilian or military, is authorized to commit or to instruct anyone else to commit torture. The [...]
Last week I took one of my vintage Kodak Brownie Bull’s Eye cameras up for a hike into the Marin Headlands above the Bay of San Francisco. The latest addition to my collection is a small macro lens made by Kodak that fits on the front of the Bull’s Eye – you are seeing the [...]
As I’ve mentioned before, the US has pretty much destroyed its credibility, and the US administration is already facing the results of that. Last week the Sudanese, of all people, criticized the United States for the torture of Iraqi prisoners. This was in response to the protest of the US against the re-election of Sudan [...]
Well… I kinda thought I’m not doing another rant for a while after my little explosion over the Iraqi prison scandal… but after reading this today I just can’t help myself. Stuff like this has to get linked until there is no excuse for not knowing. Sy Hersh, the journalist who published the original allegations [...]
While re-googling some of the search words that bring visitors to this site, I noticed that many people are looking for images of Buddhist art in Asian countries. Here is a small collection of Buddhist Art Of China, which is part of the Huntington Archive of Buddhist and Related Art. I’ve visited both the Longmen [...]
After my little rant yesterday, here another piece on the situation in Iraq… I found this very interesting article on the current situation, “Whose Chaos Is This Anyway?” by Mark LeVine who recently visited the country and had a chance to talk to many Iraqis and also to some of the US bureaucrats who are [...]
For more than a year now we had to watch a once great country bang its collective head against an immovable object. Thousands had to die and billions were wasted on a misconceived project of improving the world by force – as if such a thing had ever worked before. Even before the war, all [...]
While googling around for something completely different, I stumbled over this little site: Color Matters. This is a collection of essays and about colors, how the brain processes them and how they are used in our modern world. It’s a small enough collection to go through during a lunch break, but filled with startling little [...]