Happy Festivus!

Today is Festivus, so after you've decorated your aluminum pole, be sure to proceed to the airing of the grievances and finish with the feats of strength. If Festivus isn't your thing, then Merry Christmas. I hope it's the best ever for you and your families. Last year, my friend Erich wrote a truly great post on the Christmas Truce of WW1. Now would be a great time to read it.

HDV...I'm impressed

I've been digitizing footage from a shoot in Puerto Rico and one in India, shot with JVC's new HDV camera. It shoots 24 frames per second, just like film, but we shot it in 30 frame per second mode, progressive scan (which means each frame is a complete image, unlike your standard tv picture, which breaks the frame down into 2 separate images and "interlaces" them together).

That short lesson is important because the old rules of video said that screen grabs were difficult, and virtually unusable. HDV is not the resolution that you could get with a digital camera, so this picture wouldn't do well for an enlargement at all, but it's downright good for many other purposes. I'm just really pleased with the results, especially since it's a $6000 camera, separate HD lens included. It's a brave new world we're living in.

India

OK, I guess I should start posting some images from my trip to India. India was a photographer's paradise. I took 2000 pictures, and could've taken 10 times that many, but at some point you just have to stop and say, "OK, I've probably got enough." We were shooting in HD video, so we came back with lots of great shots. I'll post some of the better ones here as I have time. Here are 2 of my favorites.

She turned me into a newt!

An anonymous poster asked for more photos, and included a special request:

I for one would like to see a photo of a lizard - I guess a newt would do, as long as it is a close-up and you can see the flecks of water on its translucent skin.

Since this is a reader-responsive blog, I searched far and wide, as newts are not native to Texas, but imagine my surprise when I happened to see one in the median as I was driving along the freeway. I checked my Audubon Society field guide that I always carry with me, and confirmed that it is, indeed, a newt. So enjoy. If there are any other anonymous requests for specific photos, I'll do my best to accommodate.

Saying it ain't so don't make it not so.

This compelling Reuters article popped up on the wire today.

"Bush momentarily switched the names of his two greatest nemeses in a news conference at the White House where he was defending his decision to authorize eavesdropping on Americans suspected of links with al Qaeda and other organizations in the U.S. war on terrorism.

First of all, Reuters, those two people are not George Bush's personal nemeses. They are America's. It is incredibly irresponsible to reduce Osama Bin Laden to such a trivial level of dialogue in the name of presenting a "gotcha" to President Bush. Bush said the following:

In the late 1990s, our government was following Osama bin Laden because he was using a certain type of telephone and then the fact that we were following Osama bin Laden because he was using a certain type of telephone made it into the press as the result of a leak," Bush said.

And guess what happened. Saddam ...Osama bin Laden changed his behavior. He began to change how he communicated. We're at war. And we must protect America's secrets."

So why is this news? I've heard plenty of people mix up the names. The names are ubiquitous in our national consciousness, he had been mentioning Saddam in the press conference already. It's not a far stretch for anyone to get the names mixed up in an hour long nationally televised presser. The final sentence of this comedic piece clears up the reason for it's existence.

The Bush administration sought to convince Americans before the invasion of Iraq that Saddam Hussein's government had links to bin Laden's al Qaeda. No such links have been proven.

So this article's sole purpose was to ridicule the President, trivialize the dangers we face, and lastly, to advance the New History as Reuters sees it. To say that "no such links" have been found is a blatant falsehood, and Reuters knows it. Saddam offered asylum to Osama, Saddam paid suicide bombers, Saddam had a known terrorist training camp at Salman Pak complete with a fuselage of a 727 aircraft. These details are not new, but the media has conveniently forgotten what many of them reported in 1999, as documented by this article by Michael Reagan in Front Page Magazine:

Here’s what ABC News reported on January 14, 1999: Citing an alleged key military adviser and a man believed to be "privy to bin Laden’s most secret projects" who had been apprehended, ABC News said: "The U.S. government alleges he was under secret orders to procure enriched uranium for the purpose of developing nuclear weapons. These are allegations bin Laden does not now deny. ‘It would be a sin for Muslims not to try to possess the weapons,' bin Laden told ABC. 'But how we could use these weapons if we possessed them is up to us.’"

Commented ABC: "With an American price on his head there weren’t many places bin Laden could go unless he teamed up with another international pariah, one also with an interest in weapons of mass destruction. ‘Osama believed in the enemy of my enemy is my friend and is someone I should cooperate with. That’s certainly the current case with Iraq,' " an ABC reporter involved with the bin Laden interview said.

And the ABC narrator added, "Saddam Hussein has a long history of harboring terrorists, Carlos the Jackal, Abu Nidal, Abu Abas – the most notorious terrorists of their era all found shelter and support at one time in Baghdad.

"Intelligence sources say bin Laden’s long relationship with the Iraqis began as he helped Sudan’s fundamentalist government in their efforts to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Three weeks after (Clinton’s bombing of a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory) on August 31st, bin Laden reaches out to his friends in Iraq and Sudan. Iraq’s Vice President arrives in Khartoum to show his support for the Sudanese after the U.S. attack.

"ABC News has learned that during these meetings senior Sudanese officials acting on behalf of bin Laden asked if Saddam Hussein would grant him asylum. Iraq was indeed interested. ABC News has learned that in December an Iraqi intelligence chief … (who in 1999 was Iraq’s ambassador to Turkey) made a secret trip to Afghanistan to meet with bin Laden." During the meeting, ABC says their sources reported that "bin Laden was told be would be welcome in Baghdad."

ABC News was not alone in revealing this trip. In 1999, The Guardian, a British newspaper, reported that Farouk Hijazi, a senior officer in Iraq's mukhabarat (Iraq's intelligence service), had journeyed deep into the icy mountains near Kandahar, Afghanistan, in December 1998 to meet with al-Qaeda men. Mr. Hijazi is "thought to have offered bin Laden asylum in Iraq," The Guardian reported.

ABC News continued: "Intelligence sources say they can only speculate on the purpose of an (Iraqi-bin Laden) alliance. What could bin Laden offer Saddam? Only days after he meets Iraqi officials, bin Laden tells ABC that his network is wide and there are people prepared to commit terror in his name that he does not even control."

Here’s what bin Laden told ABC News: "It is our job to incite and to instigate. By the grace of God we did that."

Further, Bill Clinton also spoke of this connection. The media knows it. But it seems to have forgotten what happened 9/11 because they hate Bush so much. If you yourself doubt it, just do a google search for Saddam Al qaeda connection and read articles like this. The media hopes you won't, and will just continue to believe their "truth".

UPDATE: Of course, I find one MSM mention of Ted Kennedy mistakenly referring to the newly elected Senator from Illinois "Osama Bin...Osama...Obama." But you have to look at the very end of a glowing article about the rest of his speech to get there. No ridiculous article, no accusations that it's a slip of the freudian nature, no suggestions that Kennedy actually thinks black people are terrorists. Yet Bush does it, and it proves a nefarious plot to mislead the American people. Sheesh.

Another Lame Apology

Sorry for not posting.