Lament for a Dying Field: Photojournalism
August 10th, 2009Wow. I’ve made some boneheaded decisions in my life, but the decision to not stick with photojournalism wasn’t one of them.
When I was involved in the 1990s, it seemed grim, in terms of income. It’s obviously much worse now.
To those of you who are making it work, I salute you.
To those of you who do it because you can’t help it… I know. I’ve been there.
Via: New York Times:
When photojournalists and their admirers gather in southern France at the end of August for Visa pour l’Image, the annual celebration of their craft, many practitioners may well be wondering how much longer they can scrape by.
Newspapers and magazines are cutting back sharply on picture budgets or going out of business altogether, and television stations have cut back on news coverage in favor of less-costly fare. Pictures and video snapped by amateurs on cellphones are posted to Web sites minutes after events have occurred. Photographers trying to make a living from shooting the news call it a crisis.
In the latest sign of distress, the company that owns the photo agency Gamma sought protection from creditors on July 28 after a loss of €3 million, or $4.2 million, in the first half of the year as sales fell by nearly a third.
Gamma was founded in 1966 by the photographers Raymond Depardon and Gilles Caron. With Sygma, Sipa and, earlier, Magnum, it was one of the independent agencies that helped make Paris a world capital for photojournalism, attracting some of the best photographers the field has produced.
A Paris commercial court gave Gamma’s owner, Eyedea Presse, six months to reorganize itself. The company employs 56 people in its Paris headquarters, 14 of them photographers.
Olivia Riant, a spokeswoman for Eyedea, said there would “inevitably” be job cuts to make the agency viable.
“The business model is not working today,” she said. “So without some changes, it won’t work tomorrow.”
“The problem is that news photography is finished,” Ms. Riant said. “Gamma wants to go back to magazines and newsmagazines. We will stop covering daily news events to more deeply cover issues.”
…
“Photojournalism means the photographers can tell the story themselves in pictures, and there were places where they could publish those photos,” Mr. Klein said. “In the print world, many, if not most, of those places have since disappeared.”
Still, he said, there are reasons to be optimistic, because “thanks to the Web, there are now billions of pages for photographers to show their work,” he added. “That’s led to more photos being used, but at a lower price point.”
Jean-François Leroy, organizer of the Visa pour l’Image photojournalism festival, which runs in Perpignan for two weeks beginning Aug. 29, pointed to a declining emphasis in the media on serious subjects — what he called the “disease of the press” — as another problem.
“Photographers are producing plenty of great stuff, but now the media seem interested only in celebrities,” he said. When Michael Jackson died, it wasn’t part of the news, it was the news. How many photographs of his funeral did we really need?”
Mr. Leroy said he would advise budding photojournalists to think very carefully about their commitment to the calling. Twenty years ago, a photojournalist made enough money to live on, he said. “I’m not pretending you would get rich, but you were able to live decently,” he said. “That is not the case now.”
The Hank Paulson Goldman Sachs Party Line
August 10th, 2009Via: New York Times:
Before he became President George W. Bush’s Treasury secretary in 2006, Henry M. Paulson Jr. agreed to hold himself to a higher ethical standard than his predecessors. He not only sold all his holdings in Goldman Sachs, the investment bank he had run, but also specifically said that he would avoid any substantive interaction with Goldman executives for his entire term unless he first obtained an ethics waiver from the government.
But today, seven months after Mr. Paulson left office, questions are still being asked about his part in decisions last fall to prop up the teetering financial system with tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, including aid that directly benefited his former firm. Testifying on Capitol Hill last month, he was grilled about his relationship with Goldman.
“Is it possible that there’s so much conflict of interest here that all you folks don’t even realize that you’re helping people that you’re associated with?” Representative Cliff Stearns, Republican of Florida, asked Mr. Paulson at the July 16 hearing.
“I operated very consistently within the ethic guidelines I had as secretary of the Treasury,” Mr. Paulson responded, adding that he asked for an ethics waiver for his interactions with his old firm “when it became clear that we had some very significant issues with Goldman Sachs.”
Mr. Paulson did not say when he received a waiver, but copies of two waivers he received — from the White House counsel’s office and the Treasury Department — show they were issued on the afternoon of Sept. 17, 2008.
That date was in the middle of the most perilous week of the financial crisis and a day after the government agreed to lend $85 billion to the American International Group, which used the money to pay off Goldman and other big banks that were financially threatened by A.I.G.’s potential collapse.
It is common, of course, for regulators to be in contact with market participants to gather valuable industry intelligence, and financial regulators had to scramble very quickly last fall to address an unprecedented crisis. In those circumstances it would have been difficult for anyone to follow routine guidelines.
While Mr. Paulson spoke to many Wall Street executives during that period, he was in very frequent contact with Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman’s chief executive, according to a copy of Mr. Paulson’s calendars acquired by The New York Times through a Freedom of Information Act request.
During the week of the A.I.G. bailout alone, Mr. Paulson and Mr. Blankfein spoke two dozen times, the calendars show, far more frequently than Mr. Paulson did with other Wall Street executives.
On Sept. 17, the day Mr. Paulson secured his waivers, he and Mr. Blankfein spoke five times. Two of the calls occurred before Mr. Paulson’s waivers were granted.
Michele Davis, a spokeswoman for Mr. Paulson, said that the former Treasury secretary was busy writing his memoirs and that his publisher had barred him from granting interviews until his manuscript was done.
Pentagon Puts Afghan Drug-Traffickers on Hitlist
August 10th, 2009I wonder how many of the people on the hit list were present at the MI6 meetings with the Taliban? Also, remember the opium bridge that the U.S. built at great expense? Has that been blown up yet? Where’s the 4,200 tons stockpile of opium (or has that been converted into 600 tons of heroin by now)?
Questions, questions.
Here’s on thing that’s clear: Beware of British and American spooks who will use you for their drug business for awhile, and then call in NATO to cut you out of the deal.
Via: Guardian:
Fifty Afghans who are suspected of drug trafficking and have ties with the Taliban have been placed on a Pentagon target list to be captured or killed, according to a congressional study to be released this week, the New York Times reported yesterday .
The move, reflecting a shift in US counter-narcotics strategy in Afghanistan, is certain to provoke controversy.
US commanders, who described it an essential part of a plan to disrupt the flow of drug money helping to finance the Taliban insurgency, are reported to have told Congress they are convinced that the policy is legal under the military’s rules of engagement and international law.
However, targeting individuals in a deliberate assassination policy is regarded by many Nato countries, and by many lawyers and military advisers in Britain, as unlawful.
“This was a hard sell in Nato,” said retired General John Craddock, Nato’s supreme allied commander until he retired in July, the New York Times reported.
In interviews with the Senate foreign relations committee, two US generals serving in Afghanistan said major traffickers with known links to the insurgency had been put on the “joint integrated prioritised target list”. That means they have been given the same target status as insurgent leaders, and can be captured or killed at any time.
Currently, they said, there were about 50 major traffickers who contribute money to the Taliban on the list.
“We have a list of 367 ‘kill or capture’ targets, including 50 nexus targets who link drugs and the insurgency,” one of the generals told the committee staff.
The question of how to deal with the opium poppy harvest and drug trade in Afghanistan, the source of 90% of the world’s heroin, has been a highly controversial issue for years. European allies, and Britain in particular, opposed America’s initial plan to destroy poppy crops – a policy British military commanders argued would simply drive more Afghan farmers into the hands of the Taliban.
Donald Rumsfeld, then US defence secretary, was opposed to targeting drug barons on the grounds that it would anger warlords he wanted as allies.
More recently, the US and Britain have come round to the view that their special forces and intelligence agencies should target drug barons and their laboratories.
Several individuals suspected of ties to drug trafficking have already been apprehended, and others have been killed by the US military since the new policy went into effect earlier this year, a senior military official told the New York Times.
Research Credit: ltcolonelnemo
Japan Core Machinery Orders up 9.7 Percent in June
August 10th, 2009* raised eyebrow *
Via: AP:
Japan’s core machinery orders, a closely watched indicator of corporate capital spending, jumped in June for the first time in four months, the government said Monday.
Core private sector machinery orders in June surged 9.7 percent from a month earlier to 732.8 billion yen ($7.5 billion), according to the Cabinet Office report. The figure excludes often volatile orders from shipbuilders and electric power firms.
The result offers further evidence of an emerging recovery for the world’s No. 2 economy, marking a major improvement from a 3 percent decline recorded in May. It also beat a 3.1 percent rise forecast in a Kyodo news agency market survey.
But Yuichiro Nagai, an economist at Barclays Capital in Tokyo, cautioned against getting too excited about the latest numbers.
June’s sharp rise stems in large part from a big one-time jump in orders from the nonferrous metals industry. Excluding this factor, core orders were generally in line with forecasts, he said.
Large gains from steelmakers and transport equipment companies also contributed to June’s jump.
Like its Asian neighbors, Japan was battered by the plunge in global demand triggered by the U.S. financial crisis last year. The country’s marquee brands, including Toyota and Sony, have been among the hardest hit, posting massive losses, cutting jobs and slashing production.
An uptick in global demand, particularly from China, has breathed some life back into Japanese manufacturers recently. Factory output rose 2.4 percent in June for the fourth monthly climb.
Karzai Family’s Wealth ‘Fuelling Insurgency’
August 10th, 2009Via: Telegraph:
Persistent allegations of corruption aimed at Hamid Karzai’s family are undermining Western efforts in Afghanistan and feeding the Taliban-led insurgency, Washington policy-makers have warned.
The president’s brothers, Mahmoud and Ahmed Wali, are accused of having amassed millions of pounds since Mr Karzai took office even as most of Afghanistan remains poverty stricken. The development has fuelled a popular disillusionment and anger with the leadership that the Taliban has exploited.
Ahmed Wali Karzai has been dogged by allegations, which he denies, of involvement in the country’s $3 billion opium trade, while Mahmoud Karzai has been accused of using his brother’s influence to build a business empire that has made him one of the country’s wealthiest men.
Britain: A Request to Snoop on Public Every 60 Seconds
August 10th, 2009Via: Telegraph:
Councils, police and other public bodies are seeking access to people’s private telephone and email records almost 1,400 times a day, new figures have disclosed.
The authorities made more than 500,000 requests for confidential communications data last year, equivalent to spying on one in every 78 adults, leading to claims that Britain had “sleepwalked into a surveillance society”.
An official report also disclosed that hundreds of errors had been made in these “interception” operations, with the wrong phone numbers or emails being monitored.
The figures will fuel concerns over the use of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act by public bodies.
The Act gives authorities – including councils, the police and intelligence agencies – the power to request access to confidential communications data, including lists of telephone numbers dialled and email addresses to which messages have been sent.
Councils have been accused of using the powers, which were originally intended to tackle terrorism and organised crime, for trivial matters such as littering and dog fouling. Only last month, it emerged that councils and other official bodies had used hidden tracking devices to spy on members of the public.
The latest figures were compiled by Sir Paul Kennedy, the interception of communications commissioner, who reviews requests made under the Act. They relate to monitoring communication “traffic” – such as who is contacting whom, when and where and which websites are visited, but not the content of conversations or messages themselves.
Sir Paul found that last year a total of 504,073 such requests were made. The vast majority were made by the police and security services but 123 local councils made a total of 1,553 requests for communications data. Some councils sought lists of the telephone numbers that people had dialled.
Unemployed? Work to Pass Obamacare, $9 to $14 per Hour
August 10th, 2009The organization behind this is called Fund for Public Interest Research.
Via: Craigslist:
Aug 7 – Make social change – Help Pass Obama’s Health Care Reform!!! – (Sacramento)
Jul 31 – Help Pass Obama’s Health Care Reform! Earn $325-550 per week! – (Sacramento)
Jul 29 – Work to Pass Obama’s Plans this Summer! Earn $9-14/hr! – (Sacramento)
Jul 28 – Build Support for Obama’s Plans!!! Earn $325-550 a Week! – (Sacramento)
Jul 27 – HELP PASS OBAMA’S PLANS AND EARN $325-550 A WEEK!!! – (Berkeley)
Jul 27 – HELP PASS OBAMA’S PLANS AND EARN $325-550 A WEEK!!! – (Sacramento)
Jul 23 – HELP PASS OBAMA’S PLAN TO FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING! EARN $9-14/HOUR!!! – (Sacramento)
Jul 21 – BUILD PUBLIC SUPPORT FOR OBAMA’S PLAN & EARN $9-14 AN HOUR!!! – (Sacramento)
Jul 15 – Make $350-550 per Week Working for OBAMA’s PROGRESSIVE AGENDA!!! – (Sacramento)
Do Americans Need a Health Care Equivalent of Kiwibank?
August 10th, 2009A lot of people are submitting stories about the health care issue that’s boiling over in the U.S. at the moment. As you guys have obviously noticed, I’m not paying attention to most of it because the conventional medical industrial complex is the last place that I would turn for any health related issue; I don’t care who’s paying for it. (I live in New Zealand where conventional health care is almost totally publicly funded.)
I’m not saying that you should go to a naturopath if you have been in a severe car crash. Of course, in an immediate, life threatening emergency, a hospital is the place to go. However, the conventional medical responses to chronic, degenerative diseases are insane at best and atrocities for profit at worst. I wouldn’t put most pharmaceutical drugs into a landfill, much less into my body. (In practice, they are put into drinking water.)
I’ve come up with a term for people who are routinely involved with prescription drugs: Homoallopathicus. Toxic drug people. The toxic drug people I’ve known want their toxic drugs. They need their toxic drugs. They’re prescribed more drugs to deal with the symptoms caused by the previous batch of drugs. I’ve seen this with close family members, friends, friends of friends, ex-girlfriends, workmates, etc. It’s just f*&%$# nuts.
So, is it ridiculous that Americans are routinely winding up in bankruptcy as a result of seeking dangerous treatments to address conditions caused by decades of exposure to toxic work, food, air, water, etc? Yes, definitely. Is it ridiculous that the government now wants to make the toxic drug religion compulsory for everyone? Yes, definitely.
What you’ve got there in America is a massive shit sandwich. There’s going to be no pleasant way to choke that thing down. On the one hand, you have the diabolical medical industrial complex buying off every breathing politician, writing the text books used in medical schools, running full time PSYOP against providers of viable alternatives (this list could go on forever), and on the other hand, you have millions of morbidly obese zombies looking for a pill to make it all better.
I know. It sounds harsh. But do you ever notice what “normal” people eat? Go to a big box store and look in the shopping carts. Here are the major food groups: Genetically engineered corn and soybeans, liquor, sugar and carcinogens. If you don’t know what’s actually made out of genetically engineered corn, you’re in for the shock of your life if you look into it. That’s why I didn’t mention meat; see genetically engineered corn. Now, the government is going to tax the living shit out of everyone and borrow even further into oblivion in order to patch up the zombies so that they can keep eating their DingDongs and breakfast sticks?
It’s an open air nut house. It’s beyond nuts. It’s Steve-O-on-Jack-Ass-launching-sky-rockets-out-of-his-butt nuts! (You can find your own links to that, if necessary.)
It’s sad that medical science is so badly compromised, but now the plan is to expand that system by borrowing money from other countries! I don’t see how mixing that grim situation up with a steaming heap of Hope and Change is going to improve anything.
All of that said, there are definitely times when “the market” fails. The market has failed, in terms of health care in the U.S. Call it over regulation. Call it collusion. Call it anything your want. Brother, that thing is screwed.
I see failures of the market all the time in New Zealand. While it’s nothing like the terrifying state of health care in the U.S., maybe there’s something to be learned here for Americans.
In 2005, the World Bank called New Zealand the most business friendly country in the world. What does that mean?
In practice, what that means is that instead of the state controlling the show, a handful of crooked private companies run things. In New Zealand, this mostly means Fonterra, and lots of Australian companies, but Telecom New Zealand is the one people love to hate.
Let’s look at banking.
The Aussie banks that dominate the scene in New Zealand all got together and decided to charge everyone absurd fees for routine banking services. Of course, I can’t point to names and dates where this agreement happened, but that’s definitely what happened. The situation that the alleged “market” produced sucked for everyone, except the Aussie banks.
In 2002, a Labour and Alliance Party coalition formed Kiwibank, a bank that is wholly owned by the New Zealand government. When National Bank (One of the Aussie banks) was constantly screwing up and charging us ridiculous fees for the privilege, Becky and I decided that enough was enough. We shopped around and compared the fees. Kiwibank was, by far, the best option. We think Kiwibank is excellent and we’re not alone. About 300 New Zealanders move their accounts to Kiwibank each day.
Kiwibank is a case that demonstrates how the state can set up an enterprise and compete with private corporations and be incredibly successful at it.
The New Zealand government should do more of that kind of thing in areas that are deeply and profoundly screwed, such as with rural Internet pit of despair. I’ve never been bent over a barrel the way I am right now to have a usable Internet connection. The market has failed in a spectacular manner out here in rural New Zealand.
I know, the rah rah free market heads will say that the market didn’t fail, but simply that it’s not in any company’s financial interest to provide any sort of terrestrial broadband Internet connection out here. The only alternative is to pay 3X more for a substandard satellite connection.
In other words, the market can and does fail to provide people with critical services at affordable prices.
Here’s another example of how the market failed in New Zealand: Pre-paid mobile phone service. Up until a couple of days ago, Telecom and Vodaphone colluded competed in providing pre-paid mobile phone service in New Zealand. Vodaphone charges NZ$.89 per minute. Telecom charges NZ$.89 per minute. Fascinating coincidence. Maybe that’s just what it costs in New Zealand. Right? (New Zealand has some of the highest voice and data costs in the developed world.)
2degrees went live on August 5th offering prepaid mobile for NZ$.44 per minute.
Half.
It’s a free market, anyone is can start up a business to compete and 2degrees eventually did. But it took nine years to launch 2degrees Mobile. NINE YEARS. Nine. Is there a functioning market in place when two different private companies are able to price gouge like this for so long? No. Not in my opinion.
With health care, there are private hospitals in New Zealand. I don’t know who uses them, but people do or they wouldn’t be here. They obviously provide a compelling service that people are willing to pay for.
If the U.S. government thinks that it can provide health care at a more affordable price, why doesn’t it try to compete with the private health care sector the way Kiwibank competes with the big Aussie banks?
Yes, the health care system in the U.S. is broken. However, the quasi fascist urges of the Obama regime and its collusion with the pharmaceutical industry are breathtaking.
Perhaps the Kiwibank example offers another path. When private corporations created a system as corrupt and sloppy as the Aussie banks created in New Zealand, it took a 100% NZ government owned bank to demonstrate to everyone how crooked the situation was. Rather than trying to legislate the Aussie banks into behaving, the government just met them eye to eye in the marketplace and went for it. Kiwibank beats all of the Aussie owned banks in customer satisfaction.
Maybe a similar type of thing can be tried with health care in the U.S.
The BushObama Banner Image
August 10th, 2009The current image has generated the most interest than any other image that I’ve posted in the past. I don’t know who created it. I found it at a site called dotgiri.com and the full size image is here.
Criminal Investigation Into CIA Treatment of Detainees Expected
August 9th, 2009Unless Cheney and Bush are prosecuted, this is just another bullshit distraction.
Via: Los Angeles Times:
U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. is poised to appoint a criminal prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA abuses committed during the interrogation of terrorism suspects, current and former U.S. government officials said.
A senior Justice Department official said that Holder envisioned an inquiry that would be narrow in scope, focusing on “whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized” in Bush administration memos that liberally interpreted anti-torture laws.
Current and former CIA and Justice Department officials who have firsthand knowledge of the interrogation files contend that criminal convictions will be difficult to obtain because the quality of evidence is poor and the legal underpinnings have never been tested.
Some cases have not previously been disclosed, including an instance in which a CIA operative brought a gun into an interrogation booth to force a detainee to talk, officials said.
Other potentially criminal abuses have already come to light, including the waterboarding of prisoners in excess of Justice Department guidelines, and the deaths of detainees in CIA custody in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2002 and 2003.
Opening a criminal investigation is something Holder “has come reluctantly to consider,” the Justice Department official said, emphasizing that Holder had not reached a final decision but noting that, “as attorney general, he has the obligation to follow the law.”
Others familiar with Holder’s thinking say that such an investigation seems all but certain, and that a prosecutor will probably be selected from a short list that Holder asked subordinates to assemble.
Such a prosecutor would examine cases that are generally at least five years old, and probably some that were previously reviewed by career prosecutors who concluded that they could not be pursued.
