PhotoDude.com

Sat. Jan 26, 2002

QuoteLog, 1/26

QuoteLog, 1/26 – ”There is enormous cultural resistance to believing anything good about America. Some of this is deliberately fanned by the state-run press in certain Arab countries to deflect criticism from the regime. Some is revenge for America’s support for Israel, particularly at this time when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has turned into such a human meat grinder, aired every night on Arab TV. Not acknowledging America’s version of reality, or undercutting its sense of victory in Afghanistan, is a way for Arabs and Muslims to get revenge for America’s support for Israel, which they feel so powerless to affect. At the same time, there does seem to be a certain strain of self-loathing at work in parts of the Arab-Muslim world today. What else can one think when someone tells you that Arabs or Muslims could never have been clever enough to pull off Sept. 11 only the Mossad or C.I.A.? It is a sad fact that Arab self-esteem is very low these days, because of the lagging state of Arab political systems and economies, and that feeds the free-floating anger that bin Laden has been surfing on.”

Thomas Friedman, NY Times

”All the while I wondered about what I was doing. What was I after? What did this desire to snap the shutter—as uncomfortable as it was uncontrollable—mean? Why record things ourselves that have already been recorded—much better and more accurately—by the photojournalists, who since the first minutes of the September 11 attacks, had been working around the city and much closer to ground zero than anyone else can get? Well-known photographers and ordinary snapshot-takers like me have all been photographing. Within four minutes of the first impact, The New York Times had dispatched four photographers on assignment. One hundred people eventually submitted images for the front page of the September 12 edition [...] ’It’s caused a sea change,’ reported Philip Gefter, page-one-picture editor of the Times, at a panel discussion held at New York University’s Tisch School for the Arts. The Times’s editors decided that people want to see as much as they want to read, and so the paper runs more photographs, they are bigger and generally in color, and they are more creatively laid out. In Gefter’s view, ’Words are cerebral, but pictures are visceral.’ ”

Marianne Hirsch, The Chronicle Review

”Article IV of the Geneva Convention states that members of irregular militias like al Qaeda qualify for prisoner-of-war status if their military organization satisfies four criteria. The criteria are: ’(a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; (b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance; (c) that of carrying arms openly; [and] (d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.’ Al Qaeda does not satisfy these conditions. Perhaps Osama bin Laden could be considered ’a person responsible for his subordinates,’ although the cell structure of al Qaeda belies the notion of a chain of command. But in any event, al Qaeda members openly flout the remaining three conditions. Al Qaeda members deliberately attempt to blend into the civilian population – violating the requirement of having a ’fixed distinctive sign’ and ’carrying arms openly.’ Moreover, they target civilians, which violates the ’laws and customs of war.’ Thus, al Qaeda members need not be treated as prisoners of war.”

Michael Dorf, FindLaw.com

”Guantanamo is hopping and the jackals are howling [...] Amnesty International is shocked that we are using shackles. The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Mary Robinson, is disturbed that the United States might be violating the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. (Yes, the same Mary Robinson who, in the name of famine relief, made the idiotic demand for a cessation of U.S. bombing five days after it began—a demand that would have resulted in untold Afghan deaths in a famine now ended by the American victory.) The British tabloids are apoplectic, achieving full-throated silliness when the Mail on Sunday managed an allusion to slavery: ’Each man is handcuffed and wears leg irons, a term that survives from slave-trading days.’ Thanks for the etymology. No thanks for the advice. We should treat these complaints with the contempt they deserve.”

Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post