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Landscape Photo
In a jet-black El Toro hangar, six photographers unveiled their dream for the world's largest photo.
The crew used the ancient technique of camera obscura 'C "dark room" in English 'C to project the outdoor landscape of rolling hills, a control tower and a solitary palm tree onto a canvas longer than a basketball court.
"This far outstrips anything that's been done," said Clayton Spada, who conceived the idea that is now being monitored by Guinness World Records.
Beginning today, the group will let the light shine in on several strips of canvas, trying to gauge the exposure time needed to produce the full image.
Within two weeks, they plan to slather a 108-foot-long canvas with silver emulsion, then sit back and pray the summer sun leaves a record-setting mark.
The size isn't the only thing that matters. The six-man team has been clicking its shutters for four years, taking 80,000 portraits in a case study of the closing and evolution of the former Marine Corps Air Station, future site of the Great Park.
They hope this will be an early crowning achievement for the effort, which is expected to last 15 years.
"It's a large image in two basic ways," said Douglas McCulloh, one of the six photographers. "Sure, it's huge. But it's also very big in significance, capturing a major change in California history."
There's no listing in Guinness for either of the group's goals - world's largest photo and world's largest camera - which may be little surprise given the idea's origin.
While teaching photography in China last year, Spada used a makeshift camera obscura to create 20-foot-long prints.
On the flight home, in a "half-awake, half-asleep stupor," Spada remembers thinking, "Well, that wasn't big enough."
His colleagues agreed. They set to work sealing light from the hangar with foam, tape and spray paint. They found a three-story-tall sheet of seamless canvas and had it shipped from Germany.
The sheet will be exposed during the day, then left in darkness overnight to shield "light pollution" from the nearby Irvine Spectrum.
Some of the hardest work awaits them after the exposure, however, when the darkroom process of "fixing" the print begins.
They plan to roll up the image and truck it to Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino. Once there, they'll dunk it in a trio of chemicals poured in a custom tank.
"We've calculated everything. This is too big to leave to chance," Spada says. "But in the end, it still is really a leap of faith."
There's no place locally that can house it, and it's even too big for most museums.
For now, they're content to stare at the fuzzy image of El Toro's runways and hills projected large as life before them.
"Isn't that nuts?" McCulloh said, pointing at the mammoth canvas. "I mean, it is truly nuts."
Volunteers are needed to help process the giant photo at Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino once it is completed next month. To apply, go to www.legacyphotoproject.com, click on 'Contact' and submit your contact information.
Landscape Photo
Patios are great areas for entertaining friends and family, and with the decorative concrete applications available today, they can now enhance the surrounding landscape of your home. Browse through The Concrete Network's online patio photo gallery and find the perfect fit for your home.
Yucaipa, CA (PRWEB) June 2, 2006 'C- The Concrete Network, the largest and most comprehensive source for concrete information, offers an online decorative concrete patio photo gallery filled with a collection of photos offering a multitude of design ideas on enhancing your patio from ordinary to extraordinary using decorative concrete techniques.
The process of choosing the perfect concrete patio to accent your home and landscape is often time consuming and tedious. Several factors come into play including choosing a style, size, building material, and much more. For these reasons it is important to explore all of the choices available when it comes time to build. Today, the concrete choice has expanded to include a wide variety of decorative concrete options, some of which are sure to fit your needs.
The decorative options for concrete patios are no doubt endless, and can be designed to be great entertaining areas. With the simple addition of a stamp pattern, resembling expensive stone, brick, tile, flagstone or slate patterns, the patio is transformed into a beautiful work of art. Custom colors and stains can also be applied to add character and complement the exterior stucco and other elements of the home.
Concrete patios offer long lasting durability, are versatile and require low maintenance and are the perfect option for withstanding outdoor weather. Many of the works in these photos can be replicated and/or tailored to meet the needs of the individual, the home, and space restrictions.
The concrete photo gallery is updated every Friday offering new photos of custom and unique designs and applications. Photos for the photo gallery have been collected from contractors around the country and are for design idea purposes only.
Established in 1999, The Concrete Network's purpose is to educate consumers, builders, and contractors on popular decorative techniques and applications including stamped concrete, stained concrete floors, concrete countertops, polished concrete, and much more. Over 750,000 visitors research The Concrete Network Web site each month.
The site excels at connecting buyers with local contractors in their area through its Find-A-Contractor service. The service provides visitors with a list of decorative concrete contractors throughout the U.S. and Canada, and is fully searchable by 22 types of decorative concrete work and 198 metropolitan areas throughout North America.
News release image courtesy of Stecker Construction LLC. Photos courtesy of Brickform Rafco Products and L.L. Geans Construction Co.
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Landscape Photo
Landscapes were the first human texts, says Anne Whiston Spirn. "If I know the language of landscapes, I can read the world." Yet this world is in constant flux. Sometimes the evolution is a millennium-long affair, spewing volcanic rock into alien spaces; sometimes it's a few short hours, cracking ice on a frozen pond; sometimes it's an urban revival after decades of decay.
In an exhibition at Harvard University's Museum of Natural History in Cambridge, Mass., Ms. Spirn, a landscape architect, and two other professionals explore this transforming ebb and flow of landscapes and the patterns of human intervention ("Looking at Landscape - Environmental Puzzles From Three Photographers" runs through Jan. 7). All three, none professionally trained as photographers, come at their subject from freshly different standpoints.
Spirn is a philosopher artist and looks for metaphor and idea in her images of the natural environment. There are no humans in her shots, only traces of their presence: a rugged stone wall in the Scottish Highlands, a rotting barn spilling sand from its cavernous mouth. Each tells a story. It's "a condensed telling," as she puts it, like poetry. And each image, she says, poses questions: How did it get this way, and what might it become?
This element of time passing is particularly vivid in the photographs of Alex MacLean, an architect. For decades he has been documenting America's lands from the seat of his Cessna airplane. "[Stories] not told from the ground" is how he describes these aerial images.
Some of these patterns offer a stark view of sprawl around the country as new housing developments bite further into agricultural lands and wilderness. One in Las Vegas looks like Legoland from the air - row after row of tiny box houses in various stages of construction, and smooth, empty plots stretching out of the photo's frame.
Other MacLean photos show softer patterns - irrigation circles and tractor trails on farmland; lime-green algae aesthetically trapped between logs on a river; channels in a wetland that splay out from a central corridor into a filigree of green and black. What might seem random from the ground takes on unexpected symmetries from the air. His macro views also offer a unique survey of where and how Americans choose to live. "Housing says a lot about individual and cultural values," MacLean notes. And in this age of sprawl, what he notices is the apparent absence of the public domain, even though the housing boom "is fueled by government policies," he says.
The public domain is the subject of one of Camilo Jos' Vergara's photos. The shot inside an abandoned library in Camden, N.J., shows three young saplings taking root among the fallen rafters and plaster. It's urban revival of an unconventional kind.
Mr. Vergara, a sociologist, has spent more than 30 years recording decaying cityscapes - minority neighborhoods far removed from the American dream. Yet even in these crumbling sections of a city, there's an ebb and flow of renewal that sometimes stalls the longer-term decline. One of several paired housing photos shows a well-tended, bright-red row house next to a boarded-up dwelling whose front door is scrawled with graffiti. The juxtaposition is startling. It's a landscape of opposites that raises the question: Which will win out? Vergara notes that in these poor neighborhoods the "official response was that recovery was just around the corner."
His most striking photos are a series of shots of the same street taken over several decades. In one series, an intact line of row houses gradually thins out as tenements succumb to fire and collapse. By the final shot, any fragile sense of community has vanished, and demolition signs dot the remaining buildings. Sometimes Vergara's photos are a record of what's missing.
Beyond documentation, however, photography is also a form of inquiry, Spirn says. And these three photographers raise new perspectives and questions about the interaction of people and their environment. It's a fluid dynamic that presents as many puzzles as it does clues to the future.
Landscape Photo
Now, instead of swimming laps, the McGehees dip their feet into their ankle-deep free-form pool with its cascading waterfall.
'As long as you don't mind fish nipping at your toes,' says Dana McGehee with a laugh. After all, the pond is filled with friendly, algae-eating orange koi. Surrounded by rocks and lush grass, with canna lilies growing from the center, hummingbirds and dragonflies are daily guests at the pond.
Its other visitors ' large, rescued tortoises (Timmie McGehee is a wildlife manager with the Arizona Game and Fish Department) ' wander sleepily around the flowering plants in their yard.
The landscaper who helped create the McGehees' backyard paradise, Lenny Clark, says the couple's no-pool-backyard request is a growing trend. Despite the idea that you can't walk 5 feet in Arizona without falling into a swimming pool, Clark estimates that at least half his Valley clients don't have pools in their backyards. Be it the expense, the upkeep or no desire to swim, many of his clients are asking Clark to make their backyard tropical, but to skip the pool.
'Most people want paradise in their backyard,' says Clark, owner of Kona Land and Water Escapes in Tempe. 'They want to get away, they want a serene atmosphere and they want to cool off.' After all, he says, 'we can't go to Hawaii or San Diego every time we want to cool off.'
For the McGehees, who are empty-nesters, there was no need to build something they wouldn't use.
'Our kids are grown. I knew we wouldn't use it,' says Dana McGehee, who adds that she and her husband wanted a water element. 'But we wanted it naturally occurring.'
So the couple laid out their ideal pond, and Clark constructed it, complete with a cascading waterfall that recirculates water 24 hours a day to give continuous oxygen to the pond's residents. Still, the couple agree that the cost and upkeep of their small pond is less than what it would take to maintain a swimming pool.
The backyard is expanded with huge wooden-lattice shade structure in the center of their yard that Timmie McGehee built with the help of his son. Seeing a photo of one he liked, the crafty handyman copied the design from scratch.
'I wouldn't say it was easy,' says Timmie McGehee. The structure provides a lighter, more intimate alternative to the backyard's main patio. At night, strings of lights illuminate the crisscrossing beams and the pond, creating an ambiance the couple say makes them feel like they're at a swanky resort. Their lush backyard was used for son Cory's wedding rehearsal dinner two weeks ago, including about 80 people who wined and dined under the desert sky.
The plants that Clark helped the couple choose include sissoo (a wavy, light-branched tree that sways nicely in the wind), orchid trees, hibiscus, bougainvillea and queen palms. Since the couple live in one of Mesa's orange-grove neighborhoods, they also have the requisite citrus trees near the back of the yard. Together, the plants achieve a color palette of bright pinks, reds and oranges for a tropical flair the McGehees love.
'The idea of this was lush and colorful,' says Clark. 'So we put in a lot of plants.'
A large part of the backyard is covered in grass, but they agree that the maintenance is worth it. 'The grass helps keep things cool,' she says.
Landscape Photo
A couple years studying Spanish in high school and another year of learning French in college may have helped Laurie adjust to picking up another language. Before he was placed in a Guatemalan village, he went through Peace Corps training. However, he still found it hard to communicate and resorted to using hand signals combined with words to converse with the family he initially stayed with for a few weeks. Three months of culture shock followed.
For the past two-and-a-half years, Laurie has worked and lived in a small village called Salacuim. His house consists of wood walls, a tin roof and concrete floor. Laurie's focus is helping villagers to learn and carry out basic science principles that are lacking in their educational system. He was assigned to train teachers in 45 different schools on how to use and implement an environmental education guide that would allow them to use hands-on learning in their classrooms.
'The teachers aren't familiar with basic science principles,' Laurie said. 'For them, it's hard because they're taught to stay in their classroom and not waste time.'
The program encouraged teachers to take their students outside the classroom and to teach children by way of hands-on experiences. For example, Laurie said he would show students how to plant trees or he would take them to the river to study fish. And, although the program was exciting, it also was sad, because not every teacher followed through with the guide.
Even though there was some heartache and disappointment, there was great joy in helping the villagers of Salacium. In one instance, Laurie was approached by a group of males between the ages of 15 and 25 who wanted to build a library. He began hosting meetings in his home and helped the group to sell things like bananas covered in chocolate to help raise money. After about a year, the group had received enough money and support from the community that construction began on a small library. Books were donated from organizations and people including Laurie's parents, Scott and Kathy, and West Salem High School.
'It wasn't just a building with books, it was a higher meaning,' Laurie said.
Many children in Guatemala have influenced Laurie's life, but eighteen-year-old Carlos is especially unforgettable. The intelligent young man has been supporting his family since his father left five years ago. The teenager is looking for a way to further his education.
'It's tough. There's no such thing as Stafford loans in Guatemala,' Laurie said. 'These kids have no way to go to school. They stay home and work in the fields. They only raise corn, beans and cattle. When market prices go down, they're on the edge.'
Children are very open to education, Laurie explained, but their parents are still stuck in the mentality of the Civil War of the 1980s. The adults are reserved and don't talk much. But thanks to a new job, Laurie hopes to open the doors for education and self-development in Guatemala.
When Laurie's time was up with the Peace Corps he didn't feel like he saw the fruit of his labor. As the next round of volunteers started arriving to replace Laurie, he started to feel like he was leaving loose ends. His experience with the Peace Corps led him to another opportunity --n development promoter for Project Laguna Lachua, an organization that promotes conservation, development, ecotourism and education.
The goal is to train locals to be stewards of their environment while preserving Laguna Lachua National Park with the participation of the various communities of indigenous Q' eck' chi. Laurie is building the organization's Web site, www.lachua.org.
In a two-story ranch-style house with a satellite dish to power the Internet and a roof made of palm leaves that require staff to cover all equipment during rain storms, he will begin putting his other skills learned from the Peace Corps to use. Laurie will be responsible for promoting the area through eco-tourism, getting agencies to buy easements along the edge of the park and trying to get a beer company to put up a sign encouraging water protection.
Laurie said he hopes to raise awareness about the importance of the Guatemalan National Park Laguna Lachua to not only the local economy, but to the earth as well.
With the cooperation of staff at West Salem High School, Laurie will be able to give students and interested residents the opportunity to experience his project first-hand through a cross-cultural program stationed at the high school. Through a display of photographs and local crafts like weavings or food to reflect the Guatemalan culture, Laurie hopes to relay the lifestyle of the indigenous tribes in Latin America.
The local man also plans to develop a newsletter for visitors to access on the Project Laguna Lachua Web site, although it's still in the works. In addition, there will be the option for people to donate toward the project or to help a child. Laurie stresses that the program is completely optional and is only meant to bring the culture and lifestyle of Guatemalans to light in his hometown.
Laurie's opportunity with the Peace Corps and his experience with Project Laguna Lachua has led him to several observations about himself. After living in Guatemala for a couple years, he can now say that, 'No matter where I go in the world, all humans have the same emotions, the same feelings.'
Laurie said he is unsure when he'll move back to the U.S. to live permanently, but said he is open to the idea.
Landscape Photo
A business degree didn't sway Teri Saa's love for art, but the entrepreneurial skills she learned have helped her turn her artwork into a one-of-a-kind business.
'I come from a family of artists,' Saa said. 'I have loved art since I was very young. I got a business degree to follow my father, then he retired to become an artist.'
Saa said she always saw herself as an artist first.
'From the time I was really little, I could see myself as an artist,' she said. 'I always had an aptitude for it.'
Still, Saa pursued many different business ideas, including a hand-painted clothing business and'most recently'a life coach business, before moving to Cedar City.
'Most of my businesses have been related to art, except the life coach business,' she said. 'When we moved (to Cedar City) from Denver, I just didn't want to start that up again.'
Then, while doing housework in her Cedar City-area home, a new idea came to Saa.
'I just had this idea,' she said. 'It was like this vision.'
Saa's new idea combined photography, computer rendering and sculpture. Using these techniques, she began creating unique three-dimensional photo sculptures.
The pieces are constructed of layers, which give the images a feeling of depth. Many of Saa's pieces depict panoramic landscapes, such as a sunrise over Cedar Mountain or Zion National Park.
'What I am trying to do' is draw you right into the piece,' Saa said. 'I want you feel like you can walk around in it, to feel like you are actually right in the middle of it.'
Saa's entrepreneurial spirit kicked in, and she soon saw the possibilities of the new art.
'I thought 'This is exciting,' she said. 'This is my new business. It incorporates my artistic ability and it incorporates my business sense.'
Saa began experimenting and researching for the artwork in January. The idea grew to include two facets, a fine art side and a corporate gift side.
The fine art pieces would continue to include the landscape pieces, and would remain comparatively large.
The corporate gift pieces were initially much smaller, usually eight inches by 10 inches, and would feature easily repeatable three-layer images. For example, a real estate company could give a client a piece that depicted the client's new home.
The idea didn't stop there, and soon Saa was experimenting with ways to turn regular photos into 3D photo sculptures. Her business now includes creating sculptures from digital photos taken by others, including classic cars, family portraits and bridal pictures.
'I've never seen anything like this before,' Saa said. 'What you envision and what you come out with are two different things. You just have to work with it and work with it until you get it right.'
Saa said the artwork and the new business fit together perfectly.
'I have finally found what I've been looking for,' she said. 'There is just a really nice balance of art and business.'
Saa said she hopes, in the future, to build a small production center for the artwork that would employ Cedar City-area women.
'I love to be able to hire women, like single mothers or others, who just don't seem to have self-confidence of other skills,' she said. 'That way I could also incorporate the life coaching aspect into it as well. That is my ultimate goal.'
Anyone who would like more information about Teri Saa's artwork, including pricing, can visit her Web site, www.dimensionsinphotoart.com.
Landscape Photo
"You must understand," the man said, "a drop of water is a mockery to a thirsty horse. To an ant it is enough to swim in." He was attempting to explain to me the importance of Japan's Overseas Development Aid programme to the small island states of the Eastern Caribbean, which are, as I write, expected to be an integral component of Japan's attempt to take control of the International Whaling Commission (IWC).
Here in Frigate Bay, in St Kitts, at the very grand marble and concrete extravaganza called the Marriott Resort and Casino it is possible to imagine oneself almost anywhere but in a poor, tropical Caribbean island. Waterfalls cascade, rocks emit Bob Marley's music and there is a Jacuzzi in my suite.
Power is the motif here and this place is power-intensive.
Japan is well represented here. No one knows how many, but there are lots of them. Greenpeace is not so well represented. Their presence has been deemed a threat to the national security of St Kitts.
The Greenpeace ship was denied free passage into the waters of St Kitts, largely, one assumes, because of the fact that it was used to harass and embarrass Japanese whaling ships in the Southern Ocean during the last whaling season.
Japan and Greenpeace represent two poles of the increasingly acrimonious argument about commercial whaling.
The Japanese want to legalise commercial whaling 20 years after it was banned by the IWC. The Japanese population is the main market for whale meat, and they objected to the 'indefinite moratorium' on whale killing and decided to continue harvesting whales through what the Japanese government called "scientific whaling" for research into the effect of whales on the life of the ocean.
The Japanese have since come up with the novel idea that whales are competing with humans for fish and that competition should be eliminated or reduced. There is unfortunately, a lamentable lack of evidence to support the Japanese viewpoint and most reputable scientists are of the view that scientific whaling is not science.
A group of eminent lawyers consulted by the International Fund for Animal Welfare concluded that "scientific whaling" is a subterfuge for commercial whaling and is an illegal enterprise under international law, specifically against the Law of the Sea, the Biodiversity Convention and the Convention Against Trade in Endangered Species, CITES.
Against these opinions, the Japanese are joined by a motley collection of mainly small island developing countries, but also including developing countries in Africa, and surprisingly, Outer Mongolia - which is completely landlocked and with no readily apparent interest in whaling.
Six of these countries are from the Caribbean: Antigua/Barbuda, Grenada, Dominica, St Kitts/Nevis, St Lucia, and St Vincent and the Grenadines.
The world's largest environmental NGO is the Worldwide Fund for Nature (formerly the World Wildlife Fund). In May this year, the WWF sponsored public opinion surveys in five states of the Caribbean and five from the Pacific to find out what the people of these islands really think about whaling.
The results were surprising. Of the 10 populations surveyed, at opposite ends of the world, nine were opposed to their government's stance on whaling. Only in Grenada did the pro-whaling viewpoint prevail over the anti-whaling element, and even there there was no absolute majority. In Grenada sentiment was almost equally balanced - 40-39 per cent.
Strangest of all, Antigua and Barbuda, the Caribbean bellwether for whaling, was overwhelmingly opposed to whaling, with nearly eight in 10 people against (79 per cent). There were absolute majorities against whaling in St Kitts and St Lucia while in the others, anti-whaling sentiment prevailed. In the Pacific islands, the results were even more dramatic:
In reply to the question: "Do you think your country should vote for or against a return to commercial whaling?" the populations were almost uniformly anti-whaling, with 76 per cent in Palau, 72 per cent in the Solomon Islands, 64 per cent in the Marshall Islands, 64 per cent in Tuvalu, while in Kiribati the vote against was 47 per cent against to 40 per cent pro.
It is difficult to make sense of the Eastern Caribbean position. Their representatives repeat well-rehearsed lines about the sustainable development of marine resources, but are unable or unwilling to provide any evidence of any programme of work in this direction.
What there is plenty of is the opposition of Caribbean conservationists and tourism and allied interests to the legalisation of whaling. They appear to reflect the opinions of the population better than the politicians.
In a statement called "The declaration of St Kitts", Caribbean stakeholders urged Caribbean politicians to "Vote for the Caribbean", to vote for the interest of their own people instead of the interest of Japan.
In support of their position, the stakeholders brought witnesses from the whale watching industry to make the point that whales were more profitable to the Caribbean alive than dead. As some people say, Whales should be seen, not hurt.
A stakeholder from the Dominican Republic related how in one locality, Samana, whale watching, in an annual 65-day season, brings in more than US$15 million in direct and indirect revenue.
And half of the whale watching operators are former fishermen. The DR has created a whale sanctuary in 20,000 sq km of its exclusive economic zone - effectively forbidding whaling. The French in Martinique and Guadeloupe are expected to announce, as I write, sanctuaries around Martinique and Guadeloupe, which will certainly make life difficult for the pro-legalisation forces.
The IWC is one stepping stone for Japan on its way to a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. They are quite open about it.
The Japanese Foreign Ministry's Fourth Consultation with their Caribbean clients in Barbados in 1996 concluded that Japan clearly recognised the importance of bagging the then 13-member Caricom bloc "and are determined to court that vote, especially in relation to the long-term goal of securing permanent membership of the UN Security Council".
We in Jamaica can recall the building of a fishery facility in Prime Minister P J Patterson's constituency a few years ago. As the Japanese proverb says: "Charity is a good investment."
What is seriously missing from all these development projects, often placed in Prime Ministerial Constituencies in the Caribbean, is any record of how they have helped local fishermen or the local economy.
Several years ago, Japanese long line fishermen did a very effective job of denuding the Caribbean of its pelagic fish. When I was last in Grenada the long line fishing vessel donated by the Japanese had not been to sea for years.
There were no fish to catch. Other Japanese facilities are being used, according to my informants, as community cold stores for beer and other perishable goods. This, I reiterate, is second-hand information, and if it is not correct I would like to know.
In a way it is appropriate that the IWC meeting is taking place in this Marriott palace. It is a vast pleasure dome, lavishly caparisoned in marble and stone. The painful realities of whaling seem as far away as St Kitts itself seems from the room in which I write.
The hotel, like those Spanish monstrosities on the Jamaican north coast, are emphatic statements of the power of capitalism, imposing its personality on the landscape regardless of the beauty it disfigures.
Landscape Photo
His first public proclamation to this effect also came on a Friday - April 21. Four days later, Gyanendra made another proclamation leaving himself at the mercy of a parliament he himself had revived after a gap of four years. Very swiftly it stripped him of all powers, perks and privileges and converted him into a person whose property and income are taxable. Observers had to wait until last Friday to find out whether or not Gyanendra even retained the status of Nepal's head of state when he was allowed to receive credentials from newly arrived ambassadors from Thailand and South Korea.
But last Friday's extraordinary spectacle was witnessed elsewhere in Kathmandu - at Baluwatar, the official residence of the prime minister, 2 kilometers from the royal palace. And the host of the show, considered providential by mainstream leaders, was none other than the octogenarian Koirala. Despite frail health, he received the top Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, also known as Prachanda, and held "summit-level" talks with him for more than an hour.
The news that the man who has commanded the bloody insurgency in the country for 10 years had entered Baluwatar spread like a wildfire. Some of the local radio stations interrupted regular programs to churn out whatever they could gather from reporters who had braved summer heat standing outside the main entrance to the prime minister's residence. They were part of a 300-strong crowd of fellow reporters and photographers, both Nepalis and foreigners, who remained more interested in "Comrade Prachanda" than in the possible outcome of parleys being held inside the residence compound.
The reason was obvious - he was somebody who had led a "People's War" that claimed more than 13,000 lives and made tens of thousands invalids, several hundred thousand displaced and a large number of children orphaned. Destruction of public and private property worth billions of rupees is something that needs to be calculated separately.
A formal meeting between Koirala and Prachanda was not unexpected, but few had any idea that such an event could be organized suddenly, and without public knowledge. As it became clear within hours, Krishna Prasad Sitaula, the interior minister, had picked up Prachanda in the early morning hours from the outskirts of Pokhara, a tourist town in the west, and brought him to the capital using a chartered helicopter. Sitaula then escorted him from the airport to the place where Koirala greeted him, his wife and his comrade-in-arms, Baburam Bhattarai. It indeed was a sensational development. (Sitaula once again extended the same courtesy to Prachanda the following morning by accompanying him to an undisclosed location in the far-western hill district of Doti.)
At the end of day, the elusive Maoist leader finally appeared before the media. His appearance displayed an aura of confidence and his expressions conveyed a message that this could be a person who believes in action.
"He appeared like a leader with vision, and a person who is highly unlikely to deceive the peace-seeking people of Nepal," Sundarmani Dixit, a medical doctor and civil-society activist, told a radio interviewer after a short, separate meeting with Prachanda.
What came out at the press conference, attended by all important personalities except Prime Minister Koirala (for health reasons), has now become a matter of intense political debate. While there is unanimity of view that a joint statement would send a strong message to the public that the country is heading toward a democratic process that is irreversible, murmurs of discontent and disgruntlement over the eight-point agreement signed by the leaders of the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) and the top rebel leader is getting louder day by day.
A perception is developing in the Nepalese political landscape that SPA leaders yielded too much to the Maoists without obtaining even an assurance that they would renounce violence or hand in weapons before they could be invited to join a new interim government. The Friday agreement stipulates that the present interim government would be replaced by another interim setup; the parliament that was restored at the end of April would be dissolved, and the present constitution (promulgated in 1990 and substantially altered through parliamentary declaration of May 18, 2006, on provisions relating to the monarchy) be scrapped to make room for an interim constitution to be announced in a month.
These arrangements, argue some dissenting leaders, make all the changes announced after the April 24 proclamation meaningless. Their contention is that while the Maoists' support during the pro-democracy movement this year was crucial, they should not have been allowed to dictate the terms. Does one Maoist party carry weight equal to the weight of seven other parties combined?
In reciprocation, the Maoists have consented to dismantle what they have been calling "people's governments" at all levels - central, district and village. The other Maoist concession is for placing their weapons and fighters under United Nations supervision. But these are not substantial gestures. Local Maoist governments are very much similar to local units of other political parties. And the issue of UN supervision of weapons and fighters is irrelevant, if not outright objectionable.
"How convincing is the contention of assigning the legal status the state army enjoys to a band of fighters who were terrorists until cases against them were withdrawn recently?" asked Govinda Raj Joshi, a central committee member of the Nepali Congress, the political party headed by Prime Minister Koirala, when approached for his reaction. Joshi was once minister of home affairs.
Joshi is one of those politicians who tend to think that the entry of Prachanda and his comrades into state power through the upcoming interim government amounts in essence to a Maoist takeover of Nepal. Western diplomats also see these prospects as worrying. Neighbors and Nepal's influential friends abroad do not see any sense in dissolving the existing parliament without a ready-made substitute for it. That Maoists openly espouse a republican agenda has also become a matter of concern to those who are in favor of retaining monarchy in a "ceremonial form". Then there is the Nepali intelligentsia, which refuses to accept a Maoist dictatorship in the place of an autocratic monarchy.
To the Maoist leadership, this is an alarmist view. And Prachanda used his maiden press conference to assure the public that he and members of the party he heads, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), have come out in the open for good. They do not intend to return to the jungle. They have begun opening offices in different districts and areas across the country, with women's and students' wings providing an additional support base to the party, which plans to run a campaign aggressively ahead of the polls for a Constituent Assembly (CA). That the CA is needed to draw a new constitution for Nepal has already been agreed upon. Once the new constitution, to be written and issued by the people's representatives, is ready the country is to hold new parliamentary elections.
In an interview with Asia Times Online, Dev Gurung, a senior central committee member of the CPN (Maoist), contended that the Maoists' decision to join competitive politics in a peaceful manner is genuine and irrevocable. When asked about the basis to believe that the current round of negotiations with the government would not fail like two previous rounds (in 2001 and 2003), Gurung, who is one of three members of the Maoist team holding talks with the government team led by Sitaula, offered this explanation: "There were royal governments in the past, and their representatives always rejected our proposition for a Constituent Assembly. The atmosphere has undergone a sea change now, with the SPA agreeing to elections for a Constituent Assembly. In fact, there is no competition between us and SPA now, as both sides are working to make the current transition phase as smooth as possible. Competition and rivalry may come once the country gets a new constitution and a new parliament.
"We are committed to retain and respect full democratic rights," Gurung said.
According to Gurung, his party would tolerate public criticism, including those made against the party supremo, Prachanda. In reply to a question about an incident in which the head of an association of Maoist victims was shot dead in cold blood when he led a demonstration that burned an effigy of Prachanda, Gurung expressed regrets over such incidents and also for the death of innocent civilians, and said incidents that happened during the insurgency would not be repeated.
What do the Maoists want in the new political configuration? According to Gurung, his party's objective is to make Nepal a democratic country with a civilized society. It should have room for all of Nepal's ethnic and regional groups, developing a federal structure if necessary.
All the things that make Nepal a semi-feudal and semi-colonial country should be done away with. The institution of monarchy and the unequal treaty of 1950 between India and Nepal are examples of such a legacy. In addition to this, the 1,800km border between Nepal and India should not be left "open" (unregulated) forever.
Maoists are critical of those democracies, particularly the United States and India, that did not extend their support to Nepal's pro-democratic movement. Gurung expressed surprise about the pro-king policy followed by them in the initial phase. And he singled out US Ambassador James Moriarty for his meddlesome role. India's policy remained ambivalent up to a point, as some of the politicians in New Delhi found the status quo expedient compared with a setup formed and owned by the people of Nepal. China, he said, at least remained neutral. The Chinese media refrain from using the word "Maoist"; they usually allude to "anti-government guerrillas".
If elected to power, according to Gurung, his party would adopt an economic policy that could transform the present subsistence-level agricultural economy into an industrial one. Nepal must not be allowed to remain a captive market for Indian products. Gurung said there was absolutely no truth to the rumor that his party's policy is to end private ownership of land and other properties. What the party seeks, he clarified, is to remove grounds for the exploitation of poor and marginalized communities by affluent and influential groups.
Outwardly, despite differences in their approach to some of the issues at hand, Maoists and SPA partners are committed to work for democracy and the democratic process. But elements of mutual suspicion lurk just beneath the surface. At the press conference on Friday, the Maoist supremo said he was not out of woods yet, as far as conspiracies are concerned. He criticized the Nepalese army, which remained loyal to the king with a "royal" tag attached to its name until recently; he also cited a road accident resulting in the death of a charismatic communist leader, Madan Bhandari, 13 years ago.
Bhandari, a firebrand nationalist, was general secretary of a mainline but moderate communist party, and he and his traveling colleague died when their jeep skidded down a mountainous highway and plunged into the Narayani River in the central hills. At first, it was accepted as a road accident, but the incident later attracted a conspiratorial dimension. The jeep driver, who survived the accident, was shot dead in broad daylight in a Kathmandu suburb by unidentified gunmen. The case remains unsolved.
Political parties associated with the SPA too have their doubts about Maoists and their maneuvers. From the SPA's standpoint, the Maoists still are not a trustworthy, responsible political party. Their whole exercise could be a window-dressing, in essence a move to buy time to regroup so that they could launch another phase of guerrilla warfare to accomplish their goal of one-party rule in Nepal.
Their cadres, particularly in the countryside, have not stopped killings, abductions and extortions. Nobody knows for sure whether they have indeed closed their training camps and shelters in far-flung, isolated districts. They have not made any pledge to respond to public complaints about hundreds of people who have disappeared in Maoist camps. What about the state of relationship Prachanda conceded Maoists had with the palace? The press conference was told that all channels of contacts and communications were severed after Gyanendra imposed direct rule on Nepal on February 1, 2005. But can his words be taken at their face value? Doubts persist, at least among political analysts.
Kathmandu is in a state of flux, and New Delhi and Washington are watchful. A Maoist takeover of Nepal, a buffer zone between two Asian giants, could be destabilizing for the whole of South Asia. In spite of their growing contacts and the resultant thaw with China and Pakistan, Indians are quite unlikely to see Nepali Maoists in power as anyone other than China's friendly forces at their doorstep. Conversely, China would be highly sensitive to prospects of an Indian military presence in Nepal, which shares borders with Tibet. Chinese reactions to activities associated with "Free Tibet" campaigns, inspired and often funded by Western powers, have always been strong. A Chinese response to extreme situations remains unpredictable.
What is the way out, then? A viable course is to let Nepal grow as a democratic country with a vibrant civil society. No country with a competitive political process and with a government adopting policies and programs that are transparent can be a security threat to its neighbors or world peace.
If left-wing parties in India can take part in competitive politics, take power in some states and be an influential factor in the national parliament in New Delhi, why can't their Nepalese counterparts be encouraged to synchronize their activities to emerging trends and aspirations?
Nepal's chances of coming out of present phase uncertainty largely depend on the help it receives from its immediate neighbors and friends. And this help has to be in the form of helping Nepalis to help themselves.
"Keeping in view ... experiences with Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, it is better that we keep away from the internal affairs of that country," said S Sudhakar Reddy, a member of the Indian parliament, after a visit to Nepal last month.
Hindu nationalists in secular India, too, need to realize that while Nepalis might remain keen to retain the character of a religion followed by the majority, they definitely are not in favor of giving Nepal the look of a theocratic state. The king of Nepal, even if he survives the ongoing whirlwind, cannot be a pope for Hindus.
Dhruba Adhikary, who has been a Dag Hammarskjold fellow, currently heads the Nepal Press Institute. This article has been reproduced here courtesy www.atimes.com
(Editor's Note: Nepalis, wherever they live, as well as friends of Nepal around the globe are requested to contribute their views/opinions/recollections etc. on issues concerning present day Nepal to the Guest Column of Nepalnews. Length of the article should not be more than 1,000 words and may be edited for the purpose of clarity and space. Relevant photos as well as photo of the author may also be sent along with the article. Please send your write-ups to editors@mos.com.np)
Landscape Photo
We have begun shredding documents that show local staff surnames. In March, a few members approached us to ask what provisions we would make for them if we evacuate.' Zalmay Khalizad 'Baghdad-memo leaked to Washington Post'
The prospect of an American defeat in Iraq grows greater with every passing day. A memo which was leaked to the Washington Post depicts a situation on the ground which is steadily deteriorating into chaos. The memo, which was written by Iraqi ambassador Zalmay Khalizad, contrasts dramatically with the confident 'happy talk' of high-ranking officials in the Bush administration. It offers a bleak 'insiders-view' of a society that is progressively crumbling from the nonstop violence and lack of security.
President Bush's surprise appearance in Baghdad was supposed to shore up support for the flagging mission in Iraq, but according to the memo, even the Green Zone, that one safe-haven in an ocean of resistance, could come under attack in the very near future.
Clearly, if the militia violence and infighting increase much more, American troops will be forced to withdraw quicker than planned. In practical terms, the country is already ungovernable and the newly-elected regime is merely a face to show-off to the anxious American public.
There's considerable disagreement among critics of the war about how we got to this point. Some believe that Iraq was never going to submit to occupation regardless of how it was carried out. Others argue that the resistance only emerged in reaction to a poorly planned occupation that was unable to provide even minimal security for Iraqi civilians. Most of the criticism has been directed at Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a man of limited abilities who is incapable of learning from his mistakes. The most scathing rebuke of Rumsfeld came from his own Major General John Batiste in his article 'Root Causes of Haditha' which outlines the many grievous tactical and strategic errors Rumsfeld made following the fall of Baghdad. Batiste says:
'America went to war in Iraq with the secretary of defense's plan. He ignored the U.S. Central Command's deliberate planning and strategy, dismissed honest dissent, and browbeat subordinates to build his plan, which did not address the hard work to crush the insurgency, secure a post-Saddam Iraq, build the peace and set Iraq up for self-reliance. He refused to acknowledge and even ignored the potential for the insurgency....Bottom line, his plan allowed the insurgency to take root and grow to where it is today. Our great military lost a critical window of opportunity to secure Iraq because of inadequate troop levels and the decision to stand down the Iraqi security forces.'
Most of what Batiste says squares with the facts as we now know them. There was no plan for occupation and Dick Cheney later admitted on FOX TV that they were frankly surprised at the amount of violence they encountered. The fantasists in the White House expected that the Saddam regime would fall like a house of cards and that the people would greet them as liberators. Contingency plans from the Pentagon and the State Dept were ignored in a breathtaking display of hubris. Even so, Iraqis seemed to take a 'wait and see' attitude and it was almost a full year before the resistance was up and running at full speed. If the civilian leadership at the Pentagon had taken the mounting attacks on coalition troops seriously, they may have reversed their strategy and not brushed aside the perpetrators as 'dead-enders and ex-Ba'athists'.
Then there was Falluja. After the killing and desecrating of the 4 Blackwater agents in Falluja, Rumsfeld decided to exact punishment by reducing a city of 250,000 to rubble. Nearly two years later, independent photographers and journalists are still banned from photographing the wreckage.
Many believe that Falluja and Abu Ghraib made the war 'unwinnable'; that the 'hearts and minds' part of occupation was no longer feasible. Now, American forces must depend on brute force and counterinsurgency operations to pacify an increasingly suspicious and hostile public. That project is failing and mayhem is spreading across the Sunni heartland making occupation more and more untenable.
But the Bush administration faces another dilemma that is even more basic than beating the resistance. They desperately need a strategy for victory and they have no idea of what that might be. There's no way that Bush can achieve his goals without knowing what those goals are. It seems obvious, but the administration is utterly clueless. Up to now, the strategy has been to simply ensure that 'we kill more of them than they do of us', but that, of course, does not provide a political solution and an end to the conflict.
Representative John Murtha keeps harping away at this one point but, no one in the Congress seems to grasp what he's talking about. They look at him like a madman while they continue to dawdle on meaningless resolutions that merely extend the war into perpetuity.
'There's no plan!' Murtha said on Meet the Press. 'You open up this plan for victory. There's no plan there. It's just, 'Stay the course.' That doesn't solve the problem. It's worse today than it was six months ago when I spoke out initially. When I spoke out, the garbage wasn't being collected, oil production below pre-War level -- all those things indicated to me we weren't winning this, and it's the same today, if not worse.'
Murtha's frustration is palpable. He's the only man in Congress who seems to have a grip on the calamity that looms ahead. The rest don't understand that the United States is losing this war and that a defeat in Iraq will precipitate a seismic shift in the lives of every American.
'The war in Iraq is not going as advertised' Murtha said. 'It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion'.It is time for a change in direction'. Our military has done its duty. They've been fighting a war in Iraq for over two and a half years and now the Administration agrees, Iraq can not be won 'militarily.'. We can not continue on the present course. The future of our country is at risk."
Murtha's pleas have had little effect on the political landscape. Bush still totters from one photo-op to the next, the media keeps fear-mongering on Al Qaida, and the Congress continues to regurgitate Rove's silly 'cut and run' mantra.
In 3 years of unrelenting bloodshed, the Bush administration has never pursued a political solution. No dialogue, no diplomacy, no negotiations. There's still the na?ve belief that violence alone can achieve their objectives and that America will prevail in any conflict. The administration's arrogance has set them up for a crushing defeat.
Author Sidney Blumenthal says this about the administration's approach,
'The Bush way of war has been ahistorical and apolitical, and therefore warped strategically, putting absolute pressure on the military to provide an outcome it cannot provide 'C 'victory.'"
As the situation in Iraq continues to worsen, Bush refuses to make any adjustments to his approach; insisting that success is just a matter of 'staying the course'. But 'victory' is not achievable by perseverance alone; there must be intelligence and concrete objectives. An army of 130,000 will not overcome a population of 25 million without tangible goals and a realistic plan for providing security.
Bush ignores military strategist Carl von Clausewitz axiom that 'War is politics by other means' Von Clausewitz added, 'Subordinating the political point of view to the military would be absurd; for it is policy that creates war. Policy is the guiding intelligence and war only the instrument, not vice versa.' (Thomas Barton)
Bush confuses missiles with foresight, and tanks with political acumen. The results are predictably disastrous.
For Bush, war is a self-ennobling activity that demonstrates the grandiose power of the aggressor but precludes any final resolution. It is merely mindless, indiscriminate violence directed outwards.
After 3 years, the administration still knows next to nothing about its adversary. So far, the resistance has succeeded in all its main aims; frustrating every attempt to establish security, rebuild infrastructure, or to transport oil. The administration has strengthened the resistances' resolve and swelled their ranks by torturing prisoners, killing civilians, and decimating towns and cities. The vast majority of Iraqis now want the occupation to end and 46% believe that fighters are justified in killing American soldiers.
The United States is now fighting battle-hardened Iraqi nationalists who will not give up or give in until America is compelled to withdraw its troops. But, that is only a small part of the problem. As Khalilzad's memo indicates, the society has broken down into tribal units forming vast, fully-armed militias which have stepped up to fill the security vacuum. The militias have wormed there way into every area of Iraqi society and, now, are active even in the Green Zone; creating a viable threat to the American stronghold.
In a USA Today article about the memo, the editor says, (The memo) 'underscores the uphill battle faced by the fledgling Iraqi government and US forces, the limited time they have to assert control, and even whether that is still possible. 'The fundamentalists and militias are fast obtaining the kind of power that destroys governments. To whit: 'The central government, our staff says, is not relevant.'
The country is controlled by the militias and the resistance. The United States controls nothing beyond the block-walls and gun-towers of the besieged Green Zone, and now, even that may be in jeopardy. As Patrick Cockburn presciently noted, the memo 'portrays a society in the state of collapse.'
Months ago, author Robert Fisk said that he could foresee a dramatic event taking place in Iraq that would reshape the public's attitude towards the war; something comparable to the TET Offensive in Vietnam, which was the turning point for America's fortunes in that war.
Could the disparate Iraqi resistance actually mount an attack on the Green Zone, the last refuge for America's puppet regime?
'Sometimes I wonder if there will be a moment when reality and myth, truth and lies, will actually collide. When will the detonation come? When the insurgents wipe out an entire US base? When they pour over the walls of the Green Zone and turn it into the same trashed blocks as the rest of Baghdad? Or will we then be told'as we have been in the past'that this just shows the 'desperation' of the insurgents, that these terrible acts only prove that the 'terrorist' know they are losing?' (Robert Fisk, 'What does Democracy really mean in the Middle East' Aug, 2005).
Khalizad's frantic memo seems to indicate that such an assault is possible and that the occupants should prepare accordingly.
Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak anticipated the Iraqi debacle nearly two years ago when he cautioned Dick Cheney, 'There's no way to win an occupation. It's just a matter of choosing the size of your humiliation.'
That was good advice, but it was ignored.
Bush was also warned strenuously before he began his Iraqi crusade. He was told that he would be 'kicking open the gates of hell'.
We'll soon find out whether he's prepared to deal with the trouble inside.
Landscape Photo
When New York photographer Kipp Wettstein couldn't find a camera suited to his needs 'C one that would provide large format resolution with the mobility of a 35mm 'C he decide to take matters into his own hands, literally.
Starting with solid blocks of aerospace-grade aluminum and a Schneider 72mm XL lens, Wettstein hand-machined a lightweight 4x5 view camera that allowed him to ditch the tripod and go mobile with fantastic detail and color fidelity.
Wettstein, 26, admits he started with no training in building his own cameras, but he's become so successful in the machine shop that his photographer friends Robert Polidori and Martin Schoeller commissioned him to make large-format versions for them.
Wettstein says the idea to build his own cameras first arose while he was working in the photo department of the New Yorker magazine and yearning to shoot more of his own photography. "I felt anchored by my Linhof on a tripod, so it was more just kind of a pursuit of mobility and size than anything," he says. "I knew I wanted to shoot big film and so I started thinking about how to shave down my kit and become more mobile. I butchered an old Toyo 4x5 [view camera] and did some test shoots, then decided to do something more serious."
On his website, www.kippwettstein.com, Wettstein describes the process and shows a series of photos documenting the making of his first three models from start to finish, including a time when he cut his finger on the sharp metal shavings.
"The beauty of the design is that it is built around the elegant form of the image cone produced by the lens," Wettstein explains on his site. "Not only does this design yield an attractive camera but it is extremely accurate. The lens and film planes have a parallel accuracy within the fractions of a millimeter. The designs have no perspective-controlling movements. They are small, lightweight and extremely accurate."
Wettstein says the cameras cost between $5,000 and $9,000 to build, although Polidori, who outfitted his with a gyroscope to take aerial photographs, spent about $12,000. Wettstein says he's open to orders, but he views his role in the process as more of a consultant than a manufacturer. "It's more like having your kitchen remodeled than buying a dishwasher," he says.
Having since given up his job at the New Yorker , Wettstein is now working as a full-time freelancer. When not in the machine shop, Wettstein puts his camera to good use photographing landscapes and man's impact on the environment.
"My motivations are studying our imprint on the landscape ' what cultural values come through as we stake our claim," Wettstein says when asked to explain his photography.
Wettstein plans to spend the summer in Colorado manufacturing a few more cameras.
"The one I did for Martin [Schoeller] we jokingly call a 4x5 point-and-shoot, but it quickly became the most complicated camera I've built because he wanted to focus down to portraits. That presented a lot of technical challenges," Wettstein says, before admitting that his skills are improving with each new model he makes.
His first camera weighed six pounds. Schoeller's weighed just three pounds. An 8x10 point-and-shoot may not be far behind.
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