Stuart Isett

I first saw the work of photojournalist Stuart Isett in a December, 2004 The New York Times article about the Millau Bridge in France. Like most newspaper photographs, the image was meant to illustrate the story, but this one overwhelmed it. My eyes were drawn again and again to Isett’s image of a bridge that is “higher than the Eiffel Tower, longer than the Champs-Élysées”:

Strangely, however, this image of the monstrous bridge floating amid layers of thick, cottony clouds — a picture that seemed to place the bridge not in France, but rather in a vast, fantastical realm of mist and myth — was not representative of Isett’s work as I would later find it on the photo-sharing site Flickr. There, I would see most often among Isett’s photographs not towering shots of massive architectural objects, but rather street-level images of everyday life in Asia — images such as this one, which Isett took in Nanjie, a model Communist village in China:

As I combed through Isett’s work on flickr, I began to trace the outlines of the man behind the camera. Isett’s work is dominated by a strong social, empirical vision that manages to be both empathetic and investigative at the same time. His captions disclose the political and humanitarian interests that underpin his photography.

I wanted to know more about Isett, and to find out why this man, who had the ability to publish his photographs in the pages of The New York Times and on the cover of Time magazine, felt a need to publish his work on Flickr. I contacted Stuart and asked him for an interview; he gracefully acceded to my request.

on your formative years as a photographer

Q. When did you first become interested in photography?

A. When I was about 13. My Grandfather was a hobby photographer and he let me use one of his old 35mm, Zeiss cameras from the 1940s. With such a simple camera, I was really forced to learn quickly about camera basics which helped spark my interest in photography.

Q. What was the first photograph that you remember making an impression on you?

A. I think was amazed at all my first photos. Not amazed because they were great photos, but amazed by the mechanics of capturing the world and then having that world permanently stored onto paper. I like photos because of their sense of time and place, how they remind me of the time I took them.

Q. Can you describe the first photograph you took that made you, or someone else, think that you might have a calling as a photographer?

A. The first photo that made me think I wanted to do this as a professional was taken at the Statue Of Liberty of all places. I was 19 at the time and taking a intro photo class at university. I was looking for a different angle on the statue so I stood underneath and shot up.

It taught me early on to try and look at the world differently, see beyond what is normal, what is standard and what is expected.

Q. Do you feel that your identity changes when you lift the camera to your eye? Do you act differently?

A. I’ve always felt that being a documentary photographer requires that you ‘act’ to a certain amount. Whether I’m with gang bangers in Chicago, Yakuza in Japan or Khmer Rouge guerillas in Cambodia, you have to take on a certain personality that helps you to blend in and work. Maybe it’s being quiet and discreet, maybe I’ll be in your face and more aggressive. I’ve also described the process as being like dancing—sometimes you lead, sometimes you’re led, but you always have to be aware of the rhythm, tempo and form of the music. I’m a lousy dancer but when I photograph, I try to keep a finely tuned sense of what is going on around me at all times.

Q. Which photographers have influenced you most?

A. Too many to list and every week I’m influenced by someone new. Early influences were Eugene Richards, Philip Jones Griffiths and David Douglas Duncan. More recent influences have been Philip Blenkinsop, Weegee.

on photojournalism

Q. When you’re on assignment, and have submitted shots to an editor, do you find that you have differences of opinion over which shots should run in the paper? Or is it usually pretty easy to agree on the strongest images?

A. It’s never easy and deadline pressure often makes it impossible to have much say. Depends on whether I’m working with newspaper editors or magazine editors. The latter give you more time to have input. My editors at The New York Times are good and often go with my lead image when I file. When shooting, though, ultimately I photograph for myself. If an editor butchers the work there’s not much I can do besides look at the work myself and find its strengths and weaknesses.

Q. What’s the wildest thing you’ve done to gain better access for a shot?

A. Well, I’m not paparazzi so when I climb walls or take motorcycle taxis to a war zone, it’s usually to cross a simple physical barrier. I find talking is the best way to get any kind of access and sometimes that requires a certain ‘creativity’.

Q. What types of assignments attract you most?

A. Long term, documentary projects. The ones that sadly don’t exist much these days so I usually self finance them. I enjoy working at night, with shady characters in dingy cities. Something about Weegee’s style of work, showing the dark underbelly of life appeals to me.

A Manila policeman points to a man arrested after a drug raid.

Q. Have you ever not taken a photograph because you didn’t want to embarrass the person in front of you? Have you ever destroyed any of your shots for similar reasons? Has anyone else sought to destroy or confiscate them (or your camera) because they didn’t like the shots you took?

A. I’ve been detained and questioned a few times (China, Burma and in Cambodia) and have been forced to hide film in a few situations. Again, if there’s a problem I often try to politely talk my way out of it. Plenty of times I’ve not taken images because I could tell the subject did not want their photo taken. When people are in a tough situation I always make it clear what I’m doing—I will never just jump in, snap a shot and then take off.

Q. Recently, conservative blogs have criticized a New York Times photojournalist, Joao Silva, for his photograph of a Mahidi Army sniper. They imply that, by spending time with Iraqi insurgents, and by photographing them instead of relaying their locations to the U.S. Army, Silva was “sleeping with the enemy.” As a photojournalist, how do you respond to these accusations?

A. Nonsense. Trying to blame the press for failed policies never works for any government but we make a handy scapegoat. Joao’s doing his job, showing us the reality of what is happening in Iraq. People who want to hide this kind of information are simply divorcing themselves from reality, an attitude which seems to sum up pretty well our failed policies in Iraq.

on flickr

Q. The first time I viewed your flickrstream, I was amazed by your photos. But my incredulity doubled when I saw that you had taken a photo that I had noticed in The New York Times. Why post your photos on flickr when you’re already reaching such a wide audience?

A. Two reasons. I never get any feed back from my work in the New York Times. People rarely write letters to the editor about the images!! Also, I don’t even get much feed back from my editors beyond a ‘great’ or ‘thanks’ so it’s nice to here from people to hear what they think of my work. I’ve always preferred that kind of one on one feedback, shooting for a newspaper is a way to make a career but personally I sometimes don’t find it satisfying for the very reason that I don’t learn how my images affect people.

A surgeon at Sisophon Hospital prepares to amputate the leg of a soldier who stepped on a landmine.

Q. What do you think of Flickr? What are some of the good and bad things about it? What have you gotten out of posting your work there?

A. Well, what’s good and bad about the Flickr is the same as what’s good and bad about any public space. You get clowns but you also get people passionate about photography and passionate about the subjects I shoot. People use it for different reasons, for me it’s to see which of my images are affecting people and in what ways. I hope it helps my work.

Q. Can you name some photographers you’ve encountered on flickr who deserve a wider audience?

A. Tokyo Danz. Great work from Japan.

on the stories you’ve told

Japan’s Far Right

Q. Two of your photo sets on flickr are particularly stunning. Let’s start with Japan’s Far Right.

My sense is that many Americans don’t know much about his movement. Can you tell us a little about it, and what led you to cover it?

A. Americans don’t know much about what happened in Japan after the war and complicity of the US government in resurrecting many of the same war criminals who started the war. The uyoko are an ever present force in Japan and are very effective at limiting democracy and debate in Japan. Opponents to the Imperial Family, apologists for the war, union leaders, pacifists, ethnic minorities, all kinds of ordinary Japanese have been attacked and murdered (and many more silenced) by the right-wing extremists in Japan.

Q. Why do you think young people, like those pictured here are drawn to the Uyoko?

Young right wingers harass opponents on the streets of Tokyo.

A. For many it’s simply a job. For many, it’s also a place to find a home. Many come from broken homes and tough backgrounds so the uyoko can provide them with a sense of importance and power that they feel they lack. It’s why young people do stupid things in many countries and it’s how older people manipulate young people to do stupid things for them.

Q. Were you in physical danger while taking these shots?

A. None at all. They were actually quite nice. Being a foreigner helps, you’re kind of an oddity so they enjoyed having me around, if only to watch my odd foreign ways. I obliged them by playing the role of the dumb ‘baka na gaijin’ or foreigner. I generally find that people in any society or situation are usually motivated by the same things. Show some kindness, be genuine and polite and there’s rarely a problem. I often find humor is the best way to disarm people in difficult situations.

A Japanese yakuza gangster in the door of an extremist’s group sound truck.

Q. I found this photograph to be amazingly striking. The man’s style seems to come right out of Dick Tracy. He’s obviously posing for you, which leads me to wonder whether or not he saw you as a vehicle for promoting his message. Would it bother you if one of the effects of this photograph was to spread that message?

A. Actually he wasn’t posing but he briefly froze in the door when he saw me.

Easter Crucifixions

Q. First, I just want to say, “Wow.” This is quite an impressive set of photographs. What led you to take them?

A. For the same reason you said ‘wow’. It’s actually a well photographed event but something I wanted to try. It wasn’t easy. It was extremely hot and there was lots of blood flying around from the whips. By the time I got to the crucifixions I was so exhausted I don’t think I even noticed the nails being pounded in. The crowds and the crush were crazy so getting up front for to photograph required a lot of shoving. It’s not something for the faint of heart.

Q. As I look at shots like this, I wonder what you were thinking as you stood so close to someone about to have a nail driven through his hand. So . . . what was going through your mind when you took this shot?

Annual crucifixions are held by devout Filipino Catholics to celebrate Easter in San Fernando, north of Manila. Before being crucified participants whip themselves, or are whipped by locals, for penance.

A. I swear, I was so tired I didn’t notice until I got the film back that I caught that moment. It happened very quickly and I only got 2-3 frames. This one just worked out perfectly.

Q. Was this man aware of you when you took this shot? How did he react to you?

A. There were all in a trance basically so I’m sure they didn’t notice us.

Q. What was the toughest part about taking these pictures?

A. Heat, blood, dust, crowds. I’d never do it again.

on the profession

Q. What do you wish you’d known about the profession before you entered it?

A. I’d never get rich. Just kidding. I wish I had some staff work at a paper somewhere, I think it would have taught me more discipline. I’ve always freelanced so had to learn a lot of things the hard way.

Q. Do you enjoy your work? What are the best and worst things about it?

A. Enjoy isn’t a strong enough word. I’m lucky to do what I do and know there’s not much else I can do at this point.

Q. What techniques do you use to photograph people on the street without making them aware that you are shooting them?

A. I don’t sneak up on people or use long lenses. Quite often I enjoy the reaction I get with the camera but most often if I want a more unaffected scene I simply wait and shoot slowly until the people get bored of me and carry on doing what they do.

Q. What cameras and lenses do you use most often?

A. Nikon F100 35mm, small and compact, and a Nikon D2X for digital assignment work. I have all the Nikon F1.4 lenses so can never really leave Nikon, I love these lenses so much.

Q. What’s the most important quality a photographer needs to have?

A. Perseverance.

Q. What goes into a good crop?

A. I rarely crop my images so can’t really say. I have no problem with slight crops (less than 10%) to clean up an image a little, maybe clear off the edges but never more than that.

Q. What books do you recommend to people hoping to learn more about photography?

A. Actually I think the best way to be a good photographer is to have interests other than photography so I’d recommend reading anything other than photo books but about subjects you want to photograph. You have to be careful to see that photos are simply a means to an end, not an end in themselves.

I’d like to thank Stuart for taking the time to answer my questions. You can find his work in the pages of The New York Times, on Flickr, and on his portfolio site.

Related: Previous Interviews on The Tattered Coat

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“9th ward diagonal car 1″
Matt Cohen, August 26, 2006

Last year, I posted the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s “Everything is Broken,” and linked various phrases to images from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The degree to which Dylan’s words fit the events unfolding before us was uncanny.

A year later, New Orleans remains a city crippled not only by a natural disaster, but by a man-made one: a Republican administration that sat on its ass and ate birthday cake while a city drowned has compounded that frightening lack of human decency by breaking promise after promise to those in the region.

Of course, only a fool would think that that has been an accident. Bush put Karl Rove in charge of the administration’s post-Katrina strategy, an act of bad faith of such magnitude that one recoils from the sheer monstrosity of it. As Dan Froomkin noted at the time:

And that is exactly what has come to pass: a bungled recovery process that has allowed the wreckage of the storm to fester under the hot Louisiana sun. And it’s all being done with political objectives in mind, as Frank Rich noted in the The New York Times this past Sunday:

All across the media landscape, the Bush administration is being shown for what it is: a callous political machine that cares only for its own survival.

That is going to be brought home over the next two days, as President Bush attempts to whitewash his response to the storm with a series of PR stunts. After all, you don’t introduce new products in August: you just shine up the old lies and put them out on the shelf in some new packaging.

As noted here a few days ago, Matt Cohen, who blogs at 1115.org, decided to take a first-hand look behind the Bush administration’s spin. Traveling down to New Orleans with his camera, Matt has posted a powerful set of pictures on flickr that document the all-too-slow recovery of New Orleans (I thank him for granting me permission to use a few of his images here), and he has just written a searing account of his trip through the 9th Ward.

It’s called A Victory Lap for Broken Promises:

It’s an amazing post that showcases the best of what blogs can do. Please go and read it.

Of all of the images that Matt has posted, the one below struck me most deeply:

9th ward this was home, Matt Cohen, August 26, 2006

“HOME This was HOME,” the spray-painted eulogy reads. The house still stands, but the home inside it is gone, for now. It will be vanquished permanently, if the Bush administration has its way.

And that is something that we will never forget.

Update: Please visit Shakespeare’s Sister for many more perspectives on the first anniversary of Hurrican Katrina. In her post, Shakes argues convincingly that “Katrina was the inevitable failure in the wake of Bush Conservatism’s success.”

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Months ago, in response to a post I wrote about the military blogger Colby Buzzell, Kate of Broken Windows told me to pay attention to Daniel Goetz, a soldier writing a blog called All the King’s Horses.

Regrettably, I never followed her advice. And now, as Lizzy, Fred, and Navyswan tell us, it is too late.

It is too late because Daniel has been silenced, against his will. And not only has he been silenced — he has been forced to publicly declare himself “a supporter of the administration and of her policies.”

A stop-lossed soldier angry that he is still serving in Iraq, seven months beyond his original enlistment agreement, Daniel is no longer free to post on his blog. Though he had taken care to adhere to the code of conduct to which he is bound, it is likely that a post of his on the Operation Truth website brought his views to the attention of military officials.

Daniel’s final post is heart-breaking; the single most chilling thing about it, if you know your Orwell, is its title: Double Plus Ungood.

Daniel remembers now: Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

It’s one thing when a civilian blogger like me uses Orwellian language to describe the current administration and its policies. It’s something else, entirely, when someone feeling the brunt force of authoritarian rule pulls out his copy of

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Rick Bowmer/AP

Some will see these photographs as an exploitation of tragedy; others will see them as unduly macabre;

and some will recognize that only when we are willing to look at what our nation has wrought can it be saved, if it still can be saved.

Found via Talk Left and Pam’s House Blend, they are graphic and disturbing. Click on them at your own risk:

Ogrish.com: Pictures of the New Orleans dead 1
Ogrish.com: Pictures of the New Orleans dead 2
Stern.de Photographs of New Orleans

Avoid them at your nation’s risk.

In an essay that appeared in an 1863 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote about Matthew Brady’s photographs of the Civil War dead — the first wartime photographs that brought the reality of war to American breakfast tables. Holmes wrote:

We cannot allow the dead of New Orleans to be locked in a secret drawer or buried in the recesses of our cabinet. Not if we want our republic to rise from its knees and live again. Not while these people hold the reins of power.

There are too many stories yet to be told. We need to hear them. We need to see them.

But even that is not enough.

Clearly, the federal officials purportedly in charge of the disaster recovery efforts bear the heaviest burden for these deaths. The President who appointed them, and those who continue to support him, have revealed themselves for the callous, inhumane, immoral creatures that they are.

But I can’t help feeling that we are part of the problem, too. By continuing to participate in this corrupt and morally bankrupt society, we all bear some measure of the burden.

We live in a country whose President openly wonders “what didn’t go right?” as FEMA orders 25,000 body bags.

He will never know, because he will never face these dead.

But we can, and we must.

The last five posts I’ve written, and then deleted, have all been titled “What’s the Point?” In the face of our failed efforts to make a change before this disaster, I’m still trying to figure out the answer to that question, but the one thing I do know is that everything is different now. After Katrina, things cannot continue to go on as they did before. Something has to change. Everything has to change.

We need action. We need to open the doors of this cabinet of horrors, this grotesque nation of repulsive privilege and old bigotry.

We need a revolution.

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Compiled after reading this.

Bob Dylan, Everything is Broken

Broken lines, broken strings,
Broken threads, broken springs,
Broken idols, broken heads,
People sleeping in broken beds.
Ain’t no use jiving
Ain’t no use joking
Everything is broken.

Broken bottles, broken plates,
Broken switches, broken gates,
Broken dishes, broken parts,
Streets are filled with broken hearts.
Broken words never meant to be spoken,
Everything is broken.

Seem like every time you stop and turn around
Something else just hit the ground.

Broken cutters, broken saws,
Broken buckles, broken laws,
Broken bodies, broken bones,
Broken voices on broken phones.
Take a deep breath, feel like you’re chokin’,
Everything is broken.

Every time you leave and go off someplace
Things fall to pieces in my face.

Broken hands on broken ploughs,
Broken treaties, broken vows,
Broken pipes, broken tools,
People bending broken rules.
Hound dog howling, bull frog croaking,
Everything is broken.

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Take a good look at the image above. Note the date it was signed: October 18, 2001 — five weeks after September 11th.

If any event showed the importance of having well-funded municipal, state, and federal governments, it was 9/11. When the shit hit the fan, we, as citizens of this country, looked to our government to serve and protect us. Whether it was firefighters risking their lives to run into burning buildings, police officers maintaining the rule of law, or disaster-relief agencies providing food and water, we expected that the system we support with our tax dollars would help us in our times of need.

Only four years later, we are faced with another catastrophe. In the Gulf Coast, anguished Americans have waited four long days for their government to kick into action as thousands of people languished in the streets, desperate for food and water. FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security, the Senate, Congress, and President Bush have all shown an appalling lack of leadership, an appalling reluctance to take immediate and decisive action to aid the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

But the story goes deeper than that, and it goes to the heart of the modern conservative movement, which is based upon a systematic program of tax cuts meant to starve the federal system of funding.

The man many consider to be the founder of that movement, Grover Norquist, famously said that “My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”

Daily Kos has just posted a graphic that illustrates the tragic consequences of that conservative strategy. And Shakespeare’s Sister has further thoughts on the subject.

When you cut government in half, you cut funding for federal agencies such as FEMA. You cut funding for vital projects such as flood-control and hurricane-protection in New Orleans. You cut social services — the same social services that victims of Hurricane Katrina so desperately need.

You even become so obsessed with cutting taxes that you discuss cutting the estate tax while a city drowns.

I’ll never forget something I read last November. It was a post-mortem of the 2004 Presidential election written by Christopher Hayes that appeared in The New Republic (summarized here by Paul Waldman). Hayes spent time before the election trying to convince undecided voters in Wisconsin to vote for Kerry. Many of the people he spoke to did not understand, on the most basic level, how their votes would affect their own lives:

I think that this kind of disconnect between voters and the issues that affect them most has exacerbated the situation in the Gulf Coast. When people cast votes for a party that is determined to “put more money back in your pocket” by cutting taxes, they have to realize that those tax cuts will have an effect on the ability of the government to provide vital services in times of need.

Those shocked by the similarities between our government’s response to Hurricane Katrina and the situations in many third-world countries should be anything but shocked: you get what you pay for, and we, as a nation, have made a conscious decision to pay for a third-rate government.

The irony, of course, is that most of us have donated to charity as much as, or more than the amount of money that Bush’s tax cuts gave us in the first place.

And while it’s great that so many people have donated so generously to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, it would have been even better if we could have given that money before the disaster to an umbrella organization that would have been charged with protecting us all. An organization that we could have depended on in a time of crisis. An organization that could have taken quick action to prevent so much needless death.

We could have done it. But when we went to the ballot box, fifty-one percent of us chose not to.

And for that, we are shamed.

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I’ve continued to think about Suzy Shedd’s comments about Cindy Sheehan, and wanted to explain a little more fully why I think she hit the nail on the head, and why her comments resonated so strongly with me.

I’ve long thought that cognitive dissonance was a major reason why the American public was so slow to turn against the War in Iraq (and I’m using the past tense there, since an overwhelming majority of Americans have finally come to their senses). While it’s true that suppression and distortion of information slowed the long march towards truth, it’s also clear that the American people continued to support the war in the face of increasing evidence that the Bush Administration lied the country into war.

The psychological concept of cognitive dissonance helps reveal why it took so long for so many Americans to realize that President Bush has been leading the country in the wrong direction. Here is one explanation of the term:

The parallels, I hope, are clear: many Americans voted for George Bush in good faith; they believed that he would take his office seriously, that he would not lie to the American people, or be so callous as to send America’s sons and daughters into harm’s way without good cause.

As the evidence has mounted that Bush lied to the American people during the build-up to war, Americans who were duped tended to ignore or explain away that evidence. Cognitive dissonance helps reveal why the right wing noise machine has had so much success over the past few years — it tells the American people what they want to hear: that everything is on track, that the war is going well, that democracy in Iraq is just around the corner, that the Administration is doing everything it can to protect our soldiers, that President Bush knows what he is doing.

American supporters of the President, in other words, wanted to be duped. The alternative would have resulted in a painful shattering of illusions. Any glimpse of the plain truth staring them in the face would have led to cognitive dissonance, to the jarring recognition that not only were they lied to, but that they themselves bore responsibility for allowing themselves to be conned.

And so, like pottery in a kiln, their belief in the President set and hardened. They looked to right-wing commentators for comfort, and found it. All of the damaging news could be discounted, if only it was viewed from the proper angle. Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter, and others provided the glaze that would keep America’s citizens in a daze.

The lack of planning for post-war Iraq? Just inter-departmental bickering. Abu Ghraib? Just a few out-of-control grunts. The Downing Street Memo? Just old news, promoted by those with a grudge against the president. Valerie Plame? She had it coming. The scarcity of proper humvee armor? Not the administration’s fault. Richard Clark, Paul O’Neill, and Larry Johnson? All disgruntled employees badmouthing the old boss.

When those American citizens are the mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters of soldiers who have died in the war, cognitive dissonance multiplies exponentially. It’s one thing to try to accept that a President lied the country into war. It’s something else entirely to try to accept that one’s child died not for a noble cause, but for a lie.

This, then, is Cindy Sheehan’s bravery: she has had the courage to look the facts in the face, and to understand that though her son died honorably, fighting in a war for which he volunteered, he was betrayed by the commander-in-chief who sent him into battle.

Or, as Suzy put it:

President Bush finds it hard to meet with Cindy Sheehan because he knows that the eyes that will meet his gaze have been emptied of sympathy, emptied of friendship, emptied of lies. In the face of her painful truth, Bush withers and runs like a creature whose ugliness is revealed in the bright light of day.

Cindy Sheehan stands bereft of the child she birthed so long ago, filled with sorrow, but lit with the hard wisdom that comes from sacrifice.

Bush cowers in the shadows of his Crawford manse, surrounded by the fears he has stoked, knowing that a step into the light would expose what the shadows have hidden from view for far too long .

And the American people, watching this epic encounter, are slowly waking from slumber, slowly realizing that those sharp tinglings on their skin, while painful, remind them that they are alive, and that they can still make a choice between darkness and light.

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It doesn’t take long for the GOP to disseminate its talking points among the blogerati.

Witness this take on the Plame affair, from Philly’s own blonde sagacity. In an email correspondence that ensued after she commented on one of my earlier posts, ALa showed that a good, if misguided, heart lies beneath the vile Republican spin. So, if you decide to comment on this post or on hers, please refrain from personal insults.

As for the arguments? Well, let’s tear those to shreds.

Here is what ALa wrote about Rove:

I’m going to respond to these assertions point-by-point. In doing this, I have been helped by these excellent sources: The Left Coaster, TPM Cafe, David Corn, and Kevin Drum.

Unlike ALa and her commenters, I’m going to source every point I make.

I challenge them to do the same.

Read the rest of this entry »

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I watched an excellent Frontline documentary last night: Al-Qaeda’s New Front. The show examines the changing nature of the al-Qaeda threat over the past few years, and includes some chilling footage of training videos and surveillance tapes.

Midway through the broadcast — which is available online — the producers played an audio tape of two young al-Qaeda recruits watching the tape of Nicholas Berg’s beheading.

Unlike many Americans, I had no interest in going anywhere near that video when it was released.

I have no interest in it now, either. The snippet that I heard on Frontline sent chills down my spine and an ache to my heart– I have never heard screams like that, and I hope that I never will hear such screams again. I hope against hope that no one will ever have reason to scream like that in the future.

The screams, and the accompanying Islamic chants of “God is Great,” brought all of the death and destruction that occurred yesterday in London into sharp focus, and made me question, again, how anyone can commit such disgusting acts of violence.

We are a horrible, horrible species to be capable of such things. I’m trying to be optimistic, and to remember that humans also do good, but I’m having a hard time. I can only imagine what sights and sounds haunt the dreams of our young soldiers.

But at the same time, I wonder whether our leaders understand the sights and sounds that haunt the dreams of our enemies.

Four years after September 11th, one day after July 7, are we any closer to understanding what motivates al-Qaeda?

Read the rest of this entry »

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The Big Brass Alliance and the Awaken the Mainstream Media campaigns have already begun to taste the fruits of success. Stories about The Downing Street Memo and related documents have finally begun to appear in America’s newspapers and television news programs.

But even a cursory look through the list of sites in the Big Brass Alliance reveals the fact that some very prominent liberal blogs have not yet signed up for what may turn out to be a historic campaign against the Bush administration. A look through the top liberal blogs themselves reveals that few, if any, of them are actively urging their readers to join the BBA, participate in the AMM campaign, or sign Representative Conyers’ letter. Until a few days ago, it was hard to even find a mention of the Downing Street Memo on such sites.

For a while now, I’ve been trying to figure out the roots of that curious silence, that reluctance to support the work that so many of us are trying to do. And I’ve been wondering whether it’s time to re-title our campaign “Awaken the A-List Liberal Bloggers.”

The biggest problem, first and foremost, seems to be pessimism. Pessimism about the possibility of any scandal to do damage to Bush at this point, and pessimism about the ability of a rag-tag group of bloggers and U.S. Representatives to change the minds of the editors of America’s newspapers, once those editors have decided, in their infinite wisdom, that a story about a President lying our country into war is not worth a single investigative report.

It’s easy to understand why those writers, who have spent so much time discussing the outrages that this administration has perpetrated upon our nation, think that one more scandal can inflict no more damage than the last ten scandals have inflicted. After all, as the well-known saying goes, those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. And it’s quite likely that liberal bloggers, having pinned their hopes on a Kerry victory in November, are loathe to throw themselves behind what might seem like yet another hopeless cause.

Bloggers caught in that pessimistic loop would do well to follow Billmon’s example. In recent days, Billmon has posted numerous articles on the DSM. In some of them, he reveals his doubts about the efficacy of the DSM hearings; but at the same time, in posts like this, he encourages other bloggers to keep the story alive, and to follow new paths of inquiry. Most importantly, he is posting often on the DSM, acknowledging its growing importance.

It’s possible that some A-List bloggers consider their blogs tools of analysis rather than vehicles for action campaigns. And that, of course, would be fine — if only they would spend as much time using their analytical powers to blow fresh holes in the right’s laughable attacks on the DSM as they have defending Howard Dean.

The fact is that we are at a crossroads right now. For the first time in a long time, we have momentum. The DSM is important because it gives us — the collective U.S. — a chance to demand answers. To draw a line in the sand, to say that we, as a nation, no longer find the lies of this administration acceptable. And that we will not stand silent and watch as the corporate media slides yet another steaming pile of bullshit under its collective rug. That we will no longer be content with itemizing on our blogs the wrongs done to us by the Bush administration. That we want action, and we want it now.

And if our best and brightest bloggers are not willing to stand with us on this issue, perhaps it is time to reconsider whether they really are our best and brightest. Because when we visit their sites, when we donate money to keep them blogging, we do so in the hope that they will take strong stands on issues like this. That they will use the power we have helped give them wisely, yes, but above all, that they will use it, when appropriate, to trumpet our causes from the rooftops.

It is time — it is past time, really — for the liberal blogosphere to unite as one in support of John Conyers’ Downing Street Memo hearings this Thursday. To demand, as one, that our newspapers cover this news. To call, as one, for a national reckoning with a war that was based on a documented series of lies.

Opportunities for actions like this do not come often. But when they come, we must seize them and not let go.

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