So by now (2013; second term), these mean nothing. Agree or disagree?

Backstory at TIME.

(photo: Kelli Allman/Contact Press Images. caption: From left: Greg Orme, Kelli Allman, Barack Obama and Megan Hughes at Allman’s parents’ house in Honolulu.)

“I have never seen anything like this before, or even heard of it happening before. For two suspects to carry out a brutal attack like this then stand around in plain sight waiting for the police is crazy.”

– Former Detective Chief Inspector Peter Kirkham (Guardian)

Are they or aren’t they terrorists? Were they or weren’t they seeking publicity? Instead of arguing “no” and “no,” I’ll just say that both questions confuse and obscure how unique the event in Woolwich was in the annals of political violence and the lens. (Whether it also signals a new paradigm is impossible to know.)

This attack in Woolwich, though, seemed to break the rules on four scores. One involved time. One, identifiability. Another, evacuation strategy. And still another, “sociability,” if you can believe that.

The episode seemed to demonstrate the absence of haste. When do you remember an act of violence in which the perpetrator is not pushing on the clock to either escape or to somehow meet the 40 virgins? The killer on video seemed to also have little instinct for personal attention or self-aggrandizement as much as his encounter with the camera had the quality of an impromptu man-on-the-street interview. And then, I know many will feel I’m out of my mind to ascribe sociability to a guy who just hacked another man to death. What was so extremely odd, outside the extreme prejudice toward the soldier, is how Mr. Adebolajo did not present as particularly antagonistic at all. This was evidenced in speaking to this citizen with the camera, and in his chat with the citizen who approached him after getting off the bus. (The media is attributed the uniqueness of the encounter to Ms. Loyau-Kennett’s temperament, but my sense is that it wasn’t just her.)

His sidewalk comments on video and the way this attacker approached the situation would be easy to write off if he was either a dyed-in-the-wool sociopath or simply delusional. All that psychological profiling goes out the window, however, seeing Mr. Adebolajo as himself a soldier.

What’s so novel and unique about the footage is how this man looked and sounded so rational, even deferential and slightly apologetic after butchering the British soldier. Could it be that we’re entering a post-9/11 or 7/7 era of jihad/war on Muslim extremism in which both sides have transitioned from shock-and-awe to a more targeted, methodical and pragmatic attitude? Is a smart guy like Mr. Adebolajo simply exhibiting the cool and detached, but not quite robotic lethality of the workaday drone operator?

(screenshots: ITV.)

Talking about the military’s latest sexual harassment black eye, I was wondering what you thought of the photo accompanying yesterday’s NYT story about female cadets at West Point being taped surreptitiously in the shower? I guess someone could argue it’s an effective one, the skirt view with the heads cut off framing the issue through a furtive approach, an almost bodily sense of invasion and defense (ankles crossed) amidst all those male crotches.

In the current atmosphere, however — the topper being the arrest of the Air Force’s top sexual assault prevention officer a couple weeks ago for sexual assault, I look at this image (admittedly, a tiny pebble in the news cycle’s daily meteor shower) as too alluring itself in terms of women as skirts and where the male gaze and imagination can go.

By the way, I think I’d be remiss if I didn’t also post that photo of Air Force Sexual Assault Prevention Officer, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski, after he attacked that woman in that parking lot in Arlington County (and got more back then he bargained for).

(photo: Luke Sharrett/The New York Times. caption: About 15 percent of West Point’s 4,500 cadets are women. A sergeant assigned to the elite military academy has been accused of taping female cadets without their consent. photo 2: MACDILL AFB FL photo 3: Arlington County Police Department.)

Briarwood Elementary, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Monday, May 20, 2013.

Sandy Hook Elementary, Newtown, CT. December 14, 2012

First of all, let me apologize for being so analytical about images fresh after a horrible event like the lethal tornadoes in Oklahoma and the Midwest. I am sorry for the loss and the pain they have caused.

One would almost swear, however, there are more tragedies coming more frequently these days. But I doubt that’s the case. Instead, I think tragedy or horror has become a much more immediate, powerful and collective experience by way of the ready imagery on all of our networks and screens. Having a more visceral front row seat to tragedy, we can’t help but be converted from consumers of information into witnesses — shared witnesses. Unless OKC was just strangely synchronistic with recent traumas though, perhaps a concerning side-effect of this sensational steady diet of disaster is that all the imagery starts to run together.

Along those lines….

Oklahoma or Long Island after Sandy?

Oklahoma or Japan after the tsunami?

Briarwood Elementary in Oklahoma or dazed and bloody in Boston?

Oklahoma or the Jersey Shore?

Oklahoma or West after the fertilizer explosion?

Oklahoma meets Bangladesh?

Besides raising questions about the effect this deluge is having on specificity, empathy and attention span, I’m wondering how much meaning we draw and retain from this continuous string of disaster episodes.

(photo 1: Paul Hellstern/The Oklahoman/AP caption: Children wait for their parents to arrive at Briarwood Elementary school after a tornado destroyed the school in south Oklahoma City, Okla, Monday, May 20, 2013. Near SW 149th and Hudson.photo 2: MICHELLE MCLOUGHLIN/REUTERScaption: A boy and girl react outside Sandy Hook Elementary School after a gunman opened fire on Friday, killing 27 inside, including children.Sandy Hook Elementary, Newtown, CT. photo 3: Nick Oxford | The New York Timescaption: Dustin Weher, left, his sister-in-law Kelcy Trowbridge and her three children are amid the remains of Trowbridge’s house near Moore, Okla. They survived by piling into a neighbor’s cellar. When they emerged, the body of a young child was found in the ruins of their home. photo 4: Brett Deering – Getty Images caption: Getty Images MOORE, OK – MAY 20: A vehicle lies upside down in the road after a powerful tornado ripped through the area on May 20, 2013 in Moore, Oklahoma. The tornado, reported to be at least EF4 strength and two miles wide, touched down in the Oklahoma City area on Monday killing at least 51 people. photo 5: Paul Hellstern/The Oklahoman/AP caption: A teachers leads away a child fromt he wreckage of Briarwood Elementary school. photo 6: Steve Gooch/AP caption: This aerial photo shows the remains of homes, after being flattened by a massive tornado in Moore, Oklahoma, on May 20, 2013.photo 7: Andrew Mills/The Star-Ledger caption: Widespread devastation along Brook (top) and Prospect Avenues in Union Beach after Hurricane Sandy destroyed areas of the Jersey Shore. 11/1/12. photo 8: Alonzo Adams/AP caption: The Moore Medical Center and vehicles lay damaged after a tornado moves through Moore, Okla. on Monday, May 20, 2013. photo 9: LM Otero/AP caption: Firefighter conduct search and rescue of an apartment destroyed by an explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, Thursday, April 18, 2013. A massive explosion at the plant killed as many as 15 people and injured more than 160, officials said overnight. photo 10: Sue Ogrocki/AP caption: A child is pulled from the rubble of the Plaza Towers Elementary School in Moore and passed along to rescuers. photo 11: A.M. Ahad/AP caption: Reshma Begum, centre, the 19-year-old seamstress who spent 17 days trapped in the rubble of a collapsed factory building, sitting in a wheelchair, meets the media at a hospital in Savar, near Dhaka, Bangladesh, Monday, May 13, 2013.)

…It’s why you also see so many pics of Old Glory in US disaster photos.

(photo: Jim Beckel/he Oklahoman/AP caption: Two men attempt to pry open a door on this car to check for victims in a business parking lot west of I-35 south of 4th Street in Moore, on Monday, May 20, 2013.A monstrous tornado roared through the Oklahoma City suburbs, flattening entire neighborhoods with winds up to 200 mph, setting buildings on fire and landing a direct blow on an elementary school.)

Hapsa Hama Faraj clutches the purse her daughter was carrying the day the bombs landed on Halabja. She said the purse was found not far from her daughter’s body.

I must admit I knew nothing about the existence of Kurdistan before arriving at Sulaimaniyah for a film and video workshop. My only knowledge of the Kurdish people was through scathing adjectives used to describe the armed struggle of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party. After my first workshop day at the American University in Iraq, I googled “Kurdistan” to find that the organization’s core group at its inception was made up largely of students. Then there was the talk of Halabja and its importance to the Kurds.

Halabja felt like both a coat and an armour. It spoke of the pride, the music, language and culture of a forgotten people, and on the other hand, it conjured up an intense and torrid struggle of a people seeking nationalism. It is the tale a nation can never forget.

As the Kurdish students who attended the American University of Iraq in Sulaimani spoke to me, one after the other, slowly, and with painstaking attention to details, it was apparent that  March 16, 1988 was just as fresh in their minds as if it had happened yesterday. Some of them were not even born, but the images that they described reeked of horror and anger.

A father walks his son to see the tanks that were used to help to destroy the remaining houses in the city of Halabja after the airplanes had stopped the bombing. “The tanks have become a part of Halabja’s history,” said Afan Osman a student at the American University of Iraq Sulaiman.

“We learn about the horrors of the day from everybody, everywhere and every time. They are told in stories and memorials. Whenever we get together as a family, sometimes watching old footage, we would talk about that day. I remember stories of how the people ran to escape the chemical bombs, and how some died because they were exposed.  It’s usually our relatives who talk about their experience, but we are inundated with images and videos of that day so we will never forget,” explained Nuha Othman Hussein, after I questioned her about the place where she grew up as a child.

We were loading up a bus early in the morning for a trip to the Kurdish town of Halabja which Saddam Hussein’s forces had bombed with chemical weapons and napalm. There was much apprehension, mingled with excitement. We were warned to bring our passports for the two hour drive. We were told to expect eight to nine check points, but after the first one, where we were instructed to leave the vehicle with passport in hand, it was smooth driving the rest of the way.

The road meandered through dry rocky hills that pointed their fists in defiance at the blue sky. It was almost the dry season and the dust was already beginning to spread its sheets of brown over the green grass. While toddler shepherds fanned little sticks at their bleating herd, my eyes followed each rugged mountain as it stood majestically towards the elusive heavens, then fall and disappear again into the arms of the next lush green valley.

Teenagers sit around discussing the event of March 16, 1988 when Iraqi forces bombed the city of Halabja. The Museum hosts daily tours with the hope that no one forgets that over 5,000 innocent people perished that day.

Haji Hama Sdiq and his wife Fat’ha Ali sit in their favourite place on their lawn directly facing one of the cemeteries in Halabja where the bodies of those who died on March 16, 1988 were buried. The couple lost 22 members of their family when aircraft bombed the town with chemical weapons and napalm.

We arrived at the Halabja Memorial Museum around lunchtime and after passing our last check point, we met our guide. Zmnako Ali was only three months old when Saddam’s bombs broke the evening’s tea time. According to eyewitness reports, Iraqi aircraft conducted up to fourteen chemical bombings on Halabja’s residential areas using seven to eight planes each, with helicopters coordinating the operation. Eyewitnesses reports also described clouds of smoke billowing upward “white, black and then yellow,” rising as a column about one hundred and fifty feet in the air. Survivors said the gas at first smelled like sweet apples. They reported also that people died in a number of ways, which suggested that a combination of toxic chemicals were used. Some died instantaneously while others died while laughing.

Zmnako’s rugged voice broke many times, but rose slowly, pushing past the rush of tears that streamed from his eyes. He lifted his head ever so often as if to point to the firmly etched name circled in green on the majestic black marble monument that rose up to the draped colors of red, white and green.

I walked the slow dirge with him, stopping only as if to pause, like a funeral procession, taking time to rest the shoulders of the pall bearers or to give the dead one last look on their way to the grave. We finally reached his name and he slowly raised his right hand and followed the green border encircling the marble etchings that announced his death. The green borders made him into a Lazarus, an instant celebrity to the young Kurdish students who hung on his every word.

At the beginning of the bombings, his mother lifted him from the bed, placed him under a row of stairs, and raced towards his brother. But as she sped to help his brother, an explosion threw her into the air and she fell unconscious. Zmnako awoke the next day in an Iranian hospital. After weeks, without hearing any word about his mother or the rest of his family, he was adopted by a widowed nurse, a volunteer at the hospital. He lived with her for sixteen years before a car accident took her away from him. The bombing survivor said that he lived alone for another five years in Iran, but without citizenship he found it difficult to make ends meet. He could neither work or go to college, so through a friend attached to an NGO he decided to make his way back to Kurdistan.

One of the few survivors of the devastating and horrific bombing of Halabja on March 16, 1988, Zmnako Ali looks up at his name etched on black marble among the names of the dead from that day.

The Halabja monument carried the sound of shuffling feet as each tour made its way around the circular building. Each room depicted a different record of the horrible event that took place on March 16, 1988. Each tour moved with funeral like precision. People huddled together so as not to disturb the historical photographs in one room, the model dummies strewn purposefully across the model street in the next, and moved straight past the marble faces of 5000 names yelling silently. As some of the visitors posed for pictures, sometimes with the names of their dead relatives, I followed a small group as they scurried into the room where the horror of the event was about to be projected on a flat screen.

Zmnako continued recounting his way back to Halabja. Discovering there was a list of children who had survived the bombing and whose parents were looking for them, he planned to visit the memorial the next anniversary. Just as soon as he arrived that day, some 18 years after being torn from his mother’s life, he saw her standing in a crowd of other mothers waiting at the memorial where he was listed as dead…. He had come home.

PHOTOGRAPHS by Ruddy Roye

So WPIX is calling Arne Svenson “the peeping Tom artist photographing neighbors”? That’s what you get, I guess, for surreptitiously photographing peeps in a Tribeca luxury apartment building across the way, then turning around and selling those prints (to the equally well-heeled) as voyeuristic fantasies in an exhibition at an exclusive Chelsea gallery.

Clearly, the hostility directed at Svenson by his unwitting subjects is a class issue. This would be clear had Svenson been shooting through the windows of a tenement, or even a building full of middle-class folk … though, try finding such a swank building in Manhattan occupied by the middle class! And then, how is it Svenson didn’t know that, in a city build on wealth and status, money — floating glass boxes or not — also buys you transparency? And how dare Mr. Svenson presume to gaze on his economic superiors unawares – especially when they might be picking their noses? Privacy might be something bestowed on all Americans by the Constitution as a legal right, but it — like much else — goes doubly for the rich.

And then, I’m also wondering how much the offense was compounded by Svenson framing one of these sky box residents as if down on her knees cleaning the floor in her lovely skirt? (Looking at the photo, by the way, that’s not what it looks like she’s doing. It’s not surprising the media would suggest such a reading, however, to stoke the  degradation — far worse, of course, than napping in the afternoon while all the wage slaves are toiling away out there.

At the same time — not just based on the selection of images published at PetaPixel, the NY Post and the Daily Mail, but the images in the exhibition — it seems the brouhaha has been horribly overblown. Frankly, how scandalous is the back of somebody sleeping, or how pervish, even, is the back of a teen sitting in a chair? I mean, talk about pulling your punches.

(photos: Arne Svenson/Julie Saul Gallery)

A U.S. soldier arrived to the scene where a suicide car bomber attacked a NATO convoy in Kabul on Thursday. Afghan insurgent group Hezb-e-Islami killed at least 15 people, including six Americans, in a suicide bombing in Kabul that the militants said was in reaction to President Hamid Karzai’s recent offer of long-term bases to the U.S.

Just like the Reuters photos by Andrew Burton we discussed a few months back (1, 2), the visuals of the war effort have descended largely into parody. In this case, the degree of muscle and resolve of the American serves mostly (in contrast to this) as a counterpoint to how impotent the mission has become.

Known for playing some variant of the straight, ruthless, corporate Gordon Gecko type, its clearly got punch. But is there any more to it than that?

(photo: Martin Schoeller)

Anyway, those were the days (1, 2).

UPDATE:

And it keeps getting better: The Daily Caller Accuses Obama Of Breaching ‘Marine Umbrella Protocol’

(photo: Charles Dharapak/AP caption: President Barack Obama looks to see if it is still raining as a Marine holds an umbrella for him during his joint news conference with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, not pictured, Thursday, May 16, 2013, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington.)