BAGnewsNotes

Obama, Ghana, Shouting From The Rooftops

There are a lot of compelling images from the Obama visit to Ghana....

We have Obama atop the Cape Coast Castle, a former holding facility for slaves.

We see the language of Obama's campaign serve as an extended model as he addresses the Ghanaian Parliament.

Obama reviews the troops as first U.S. African-American C.I.C.

In another powerful juxtaposition, we see Obama singing our anthem in front of their flag. And a variant.

Most moving, though, was the outpouring of pride and affection from Ghanians in the streets, those above just catching sight of Obama's convoy. At the same time, the flag seems to highlight the striking difference in attitude toward the U.S. now that Bush is out of the picture.

(Revised: 3:00 pm PST)

(image: Finbarr O'Reilly/Reuters. Ghana, July 11, 2009)

Iran Again: New Pictures ... And Echoes

I'm going through the new and sudden burst of images from today's Tehran unrest. Tell me this doesn't resonate because the woman/the photo evokes Neda Agha-Soltan, the woman and martyr of the contested-election demonstrations who died with her eyes open?

...In this photo from Turkey, we see that the analogy and the identification is more than incidental.

(image: labeled "Getty Images."caption: An Iranian woman holds her hands in the air and makes V signs as she protests in the streets on July 9, 2009 in Tehran, Iran. Following the recently disputed presidential elections demonstrators were met by force and tear gas rounds fired by Iranian police and Basij as they defyied government warnings to stage a march in commeration of the anniversary of bloody student unrest in 1999 at Tehran University.)

The Third Crusade

by contributer John Lucaites

The “Summer Surge” has begun in Afghanistan, though more with a whimper than a bang if we measure it in terms of media attention. The death toll creeps higher each day, but one has to search hard to find any mention of it. The stories that do appear on a war that is now eight years old (and counting) tend not to be headline fare in most U.S. news outlets, and those stories that do appear exude something of an everyday, taken-for-granted quality about the whole matter.

While news stories seem lacking, there have nevertheless been a small number of slide shows cropping up at various news outlets (here and here, for example) over the past several weeks.

What marks these slide shows is their almost singular banality as they repeat over and again the same, tired, visual clichés for representing war that we have become accustomed to in recent times: tight close-ups of marines—in many cases young boys trying to appear like hardened veterans—expressing intense and stern determination; images of U.S. troops preparing to do battle or returning from battle or approaching and searching what appear to be empty villages or fighting the boredom of war or playing games with local children; photographs that feature the advanced technology of U.S. warfare, including weaponry, night vision capabilities, and so on.

Rarely and only occasionally do we see some actual fighting—and perhaps for good reasons—but on the whole what we are shown are stock pictures we have seen before and but for the fact that they emphasize a desert locale, there is nothing particularly distinctive about them. In short, there would appear to be no news here.

L'Aquila: The Woe Summit

Or is that, whew!

With all the hype, distraction and showmanship inflicted on poor earthquake ravaged L'Aquila, Wednesday's stroll by G-8 summiteers comes off no better than disaster tourism. (And then, all hail the dramatic and fun-loving Berlusconi.)

Tent city that awaits the G8 (The Independent)

(image: Jim Young/Reuters. The ruined city of Onna near L'Aquila, central Italy, July 8, 2009. Onna was almost totally destroyed in the April 6, 2009 earthquake in which some 300 people died.)

Obama You're Not, Sir!

I absolutely couldn't resist this. To appreciate the hilarity, read the backstory at The Lede.

(Is it possible Ahmadinejad -- with help from the bug -- may have done to himself what it took someone like Ferrell to do to Bush early on?)

Obama - Putin Not in Love!

Apparently prompted by the eager Condi Rice (see paragraph 22), Dubya convinced himself before they had even met that Putin would become a best friend for life.

Of course, the quote from the first engagement at the Slovenian Summit in June of '01 at the Brdo Castle in Slovenia is famous by now:

"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue. "I was able to get a sense of his soul. "

It was in that very first meeting Bush decided Putin had to come down to the ranch, leading to an intimate three day visit which included that famous pickup truck ride.

But that was then and this is now. This week, we saw a return to a more unremarkable get-acquainted process marked by the mundane realities of healthy distance; feeling other people other out; and, yes, skepticism for gamesmanship and power-tripping. Perhaps that's why, as the NYT reported, Obama slipped not once, but twice, in referring to Putin, the enduring heavy in Russia, as (still) the country's President.

The image above -- one of dozens and dozens, I might add, that captures Bush and Putin (only too happy to indulge Bush's fantasy) in an intimate grip -- is the parting photo from that first Slovenia summit. The second image, as Obama engages the hard-nosed Putin, captures Barack at Putin's dacha outside Moscow doing what Bush never did, which was start by breaking the ice.

(revised 4:20 pm PST)

(image 1: George Herbert/A.P. IMAGE 2: Novo-Ogarevo, July 7, 2009. ALEXEY DRUZHININ/AFP/Getty Images. linked pickup image: Crawford, Texas, Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2001. Either AP Photo/Doug Mills or REUTERS/Win McNamee.)

Our Man in Xinjiang

BAGnewsNotes contributer Alan Chin, who has been in China for the past month, filed these photos and brief report this afternoon on the ethnic violence in Xinjiang.

Urumqi, Xinjiang, China

7/7/09 AM

I caught up with a government press tour this morning at the same time a group of several hundred Uighur women were protesting against their men being detained. It was a tense scene with the women screaming and yelling and the police deploying in force. It seemed to disperse peacefully but it was unclear what would happen next as we were herded away.

The amount of property damage and destroyed vehicles seems very small compared to the government claim of 150+ dead and 800+ wounded. Of course there may be worse areas that I haven't been able to access. But compared to aftermath of other riots (with much less loss of life), the destruction here seems slight.

Saw some young men being searched and ID'd outside Xinjiang University where there were apparently many arrests.

7/7/09 PM

The sense of almost-normalcy disappeared by afternoon as thousands of Han Chinese with metal and wood sticks and clubs headed to attack the Uighur neighborhood.

I could only get as far as the edge of the Muslim Quarter where the PAP and police turned the crowd pack with tear gas, truncheons, and somewhat friendly entreaties to go home. General Secretary of the Urumqi Communist Party Li Zhi spoke with a loudspeaker to the mob standing on top of a SUV, blaming the crisis on exiled Uighur activists and stressing Chinese unity.

Some of the crowd had gotten into the Uighur area before though; unknown how much damage they were able to cause before police dealt with them. I did not see police arrest or disarm anybody; they just wanted to disperse the crowd.

What was odd about the crowd was that it included young women as well as young men, brandishing makeshift weapons.

Don't know what tomorrow will be like; night curfew is about to start soon.
(images: Alan Chin 2009, Xinjiang, China. See photo gallery for captions.)

Robo-Iran

After a two day gap in his Iran coverage, Toronto tweeter faramarz posted this shot on his flickr site. His caption:

"...calmly walking away after they break into your home and do as much damage as possible."

What's instructive about this photo -- besides the tension and robo-intimidation in it -- is that it's necessarily clandestine. Did the photographer dare take this from his or her apartment?

(image: undisclosed. via Faramarz Hashemi)

Entrance of the Presidential House

Maybe the Honduran military coup represents the greater evil, but I'm wondering how much our support for Zelaya -- who pushed to abrogate the constitution to remain in power -- somehow isn't just good for business.

The caption certainly leaves one a little dislocated.

(image: Oswaldo Rivas/Reuters. caption: Soldiers guard the entrance of the Presidential House in Tegucigalpa June 30, 2009. Honduras' interim government battled on Tuesday against a tide of international support for ousted President Manuel Zelaya who vowed to return home after troops toppled and exiled him in a coup.)

Iran Update: "Can You Hear Me Now? ...Hello?" (...Crackle...)

Are you still in withdrawal over the Iranian suppression of the post-election protests?

At this point, the kind and degree of visual coverage still making it West is telling in itself. For example, this report from CNN yesterday shows people using the commemoration of the martyrdom of a former chief justice as an excuse to silently march through the streets again. Unfortunately, the length and sweep of the video is so limited, there's no way to get a sense of scope, mood, anything.

More depressingly, the report offers a short and rather futile clip -- vividly captured in the citizen photo above, distributed by Reuters -- in which Alireza Beheshti, a close assistant of Mousavi, holds a cell phone to a megaphone to allow the leader to address his followers.

If you can't tell just from Beheshti's face, however, the CNN reporter informs us the technique worked so poorly, the candidate couldn't be understood.

(image: unattributed. Via Reuters. Near Ghoba mosque in northern Tehran. June 28, 2009)