"[This book] embodies the Buddhist wisdom about change, life, and the
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Robert Stone

January 2009 Archives

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January 20, 2009

PICTURE PERFECT ON INAUGURATION DAY

This week on VanityFair.com, I write about Photosynth, from Microsoft, which will electronically stitch together digital images shot by thousands of attendees at today’s Presidential Inaugural, creating a virtual 3-D panorama of the historic instant.

...And I provide a thumbnail history of the best documentary photographs of Barack Obama.

…In case you missed it: Michael Moore has been threatened with a lawsuit, accused of having “appropriated” photographer Michael Yon’s work and using it online in what Yon feels is a misleading manner.

Dramatic videotape on The New York Times Website shows reveals the story of a Gaza-based Palestinian doctor -- a longtime advocate for establishing closer ties between Israelis and Palestinians -- who lost three of his eight daughters to Israeli bombs.

…Finally, as Brian Ross reports on ABC News, why does bin Laden release only audiotape, not videotape? Does this imply that he is in failing health, as his voice suggests?

January 3, 2009

BOTH SIDES NOW

As Israeli ground troops enter Gaza, the propaganda war has heated up as well. According to this New York Post squib, YouTube has become a "battleground": footage of the conflict and of humanitarian missions, posted by Israeli intelligence, have been reportedly removed after what the Post calls complaints from pro-Hamas or pro-Palestinian or anti-Israeli groups. Then the footage was re-posted several hours later. In the mean time, Palestinian Websites and blogs are posting their own images.

I'm reminded of the "dueling" citizen-generated videos during the Hezbollah-Israel standoff in Lebanon in 2006 - taken by young people in bomb shelters on both the Lebanese and Israeli sides of the border. Seeing the war from the perspective of those caught in the crossfire helped viewers cut through the propaganda being spun by those waging the war.