ONE LINER 0009 - America, you should know better…

I am a ‘news junkie’. 

A long time ago I realized, that taking your news from one source (however trustworthy it is) leads to loosing perspective.  What’s more:  if, for any reason your source of information gets manipulated by the government, or other groups of interest, you get ‘skewed’ information, or information missing some, important parts.

That is why I watch, or listen to (beside our, available in America, networks), original AlJazeera English (which is often skewed as well, but in different direction), or Italian RAINews24 - directly from Milano. 

I saw recently the ceremony of swearing in of the new President of the Republic - Sergio Mattarella.

And, at that moment I had an epiphany… I will explain in a moment what caused it.

Most of ‘thinking’ Americans consider the USA the secular country.  Apparently our forefathers thought about the newly formed USA as a secular country.  Otherwise we wouldn’t have the FIRST AMENDMENT in our US Constitution.  This Amendment guarantees the separation of the State and Church.  This is what constitutes the secular, modern country, as opposed to the countries, which are run along the religious law, however you call it.  It’s not only Islamic ‘SHARIA’ which we should be afraid of - any religion imposed on the policy of any country makes it ’non-modern’ (let’s say it: BACKWARD) country…

You would think that Italians are, as a nation, deeply religious people.  You wouldn’t think it about Americans…  Yes, the whole South is deeply religious, but that’s it… Our Nation is not religious… Or is it?

So, I watched the ceremony of swearing in of the new (XII-th in the short history of the modern Italian Republic) President of the Republic - Sergio Mattarella.

I was expecting some convoluted and referring to the glorious history and the God, line.  And what I heard?  Here we go: « Giuro di essere fedele alla Repubblica e di osservarne lealmente la Costituzione » what translates in simple:

‘I swear to be faithful to the Republic and to uphold loyally the Constitution’.

At the same time every politician in the secular US of A swears on the Bible, finishing his or hers oath uttering: ‘…so help mi God’.

Helloooooooooooo!

Maybe it’s time to revise these oaths.  Maybe it’s time to enter the Modern World, a world where the European Countries already found themselves…

Instead, we allow the people like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, and others, to express the total disregard to the Constitution of the USA and run their campaigns on the fundamentally religious agenda.

It’s unbelievable, when a US Senator (Rand Paul) says openly, that:

‘the United States are in the religious war with Islam’.

What ???!!! … we are in war with the ‘religious extremists’ (whose religion is, in their minds, Islam), but we do not fight religious wars (at least now - the last Crusade ended in 1444 what led to fall of Constantinople in 1453).  No matter what side the religious extremists are on - all of them pull their countries back into the Middle Ages.

America, you should know better…

ONE LINER 0008 - Pope’s Gaffe, or back to the ‘hard lines’?

I have been called by the term ‘infidel’ by the members of all the religions.  It’s offensive, it may hurt… but I do not give it a thought! (of course I had a stronger expression on my mind - self ‘censorship’).
I am an atheist, have been for a long time.  
And yet, I thought that I would, maybe, have a positive opinion about the current Pontiff, since he seemed to open up on the possibility of the major changes in the rules imposed on the believers by the Church.

Well, until today.  Today the Pope responded to some of the journalists questions during a short Press Conference on board of his plane flying toward Philippines.
Of course some questions asked the Pope for his opinion (or the opinion of the church) on what happened in Paris to the journalists of Charlie Hebdo.  And then the Pope, who right after the terrorist attack condemned it strongly, this time stated:
“(…) We all have the obligation to speak openly.  Have this liberty, but without offending.  It’s truth that one can’t react violently, but if Mr. Gassbarri, who is my friend, says a bad word against my mother, he should expect a punch! And this is normal!  One can’t provoke.  One can’t insult the believes of others. One can’t make jokes about believes.(…)”(*1)

Oh really!?  And I can’t say a bad words about your mother (=Church) even though ‘she’ is filled with the convicted pedophiles, and abusive-slave-running nuns (in Ireland in the 40-ties to 60-ties), and ‘she’ prefers to have millions of new AIDS infection instead of letting people in Africa use condoms… 

Yeah, according to the Pope, you can’t offend anybody’s feelings, even though that person might be worst person on the planet.  
You can’t offend the religion, even though it’s responsible for millions and millions of killed in it’s name?!  And I am not talking about the Islam - I am talking about Pope’s religion, and not that far ago, just a few hundred years ago.  
Are we forgetting about the Crusades?, Inquisition? - and other bright moments in the history of that religion?  
Every Religion imposes on it’s believers it’s dogma, without questioning, without the right to express any free thought by anybody.  And every religion punishes for any attempt to contradict it

Answering to a journalist’s question, the Pope confirmed that the Church (or/and himself) stands still for the censorship, and not the free expression.  
Any form of censorship, political correctness (which is simply self-censorship) is harmful to the society as whole.  Any form of that censorship allows the bullies to triumph.  Any form of the censorship makes the truth vacant from the every day life of the people, replaced by the dogma, and the official, approved political line.

Do we want to live in the Orwellian 1984?  No - the Pope is wrong.  Je Suis Charlie.


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ad *1:  http://www.corriere.it/esteri/15_gennaio_15/intervista-papa-bergoglio-filippine-sri-lanka-624f6434-9cab-11e4-8bf6-694fc7ea2d25.shtml

ONE LINER 0007 - War with Terrorism - and the role of Russia

On January 7, 2015 the Paris headquarters of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were attacked by 2 well armed terrorists. 10 journalists and 2 policemen were slaughtered… A same night another terrorist killed a police-woman and a day later barricaded himself with hostages in a kosher supermarket at the outskirts of Paris.  He killed 4 Jewish customers of this market before being killed by police.
We all know about it.  We all felt shocked and revolted by this heinous, barbaric attack on the French democracy, and all the principles of the modern, democratic civilization.  We all joined the millions of other people in the peaceful protest, posting “Je Suit Charlie”, or “Je Suit Juif” - filling for the victims. And the victims are not limited to these 17 who lost their lives, but we all, without exception.

I discussed these events with my friends.  2 days after the terrorists were eliminated by the French special forces (about 88 thousands of the officers were called for this man hunt), I had a talk with one of my friends, who lives in Paris.  He is of Jewish origins and lives in predominantly Muslim neighborhood of Paris.  He has the best appreciation of the French society changing toward less and less tolerance.  He has an appreciation of the loss of civil liberties, as governments react to stop the terrorist attacks.  France had a very tumultuous period when the Algeria was fighting for their independence.  The bombs were blown, people died, there was no peace on the streets of Paris in the 70-ties.  
Now, when the terrorism incited by the misguided religious fanatics hits Europe again, the result is very easily predicted.  The anti-terrorist squads in the Police, and the Army grow in numbers and in strength.  The terrorism has to be stopped, or at least impeded as much as possible, and if in the process some civil liberties become extinct… It’s the cost everyone agrees on.

So, when I discussed this topic with my friend from Paris, he said something, what I initially discarded completely, as sounding preposterous.  He said: ‘and now we can say “Good Bye” to the free Ukraine.  It will be sacrificed in the war with terrorism’.

After a while it dawned on me - Putin, however crazy, imperialistic, and ruthless he is - has been quite successful in the fight with his domestic, terrorist threat coming from Chechen Republic, and other predominately Muslim territories.  His hands are not tied up by the Democratic Virtues with which the powers of the West have to deal with.  While we, in the West, realize, that the war with the terrorism coming from the Middle East, and Northern Africa is the most dangerous and destructive threat she have ever encountered, ANY ally in this fight is and will be welcomed.  
This is why we never criticized the ruthless dictator of Egypt who kept everything ‘in check’…  This is why we accept the completely anti-democratic government of Turkey…  This is why we will give Putin what he really wants, to make him the active member of anti-terrorist coalition.  
And what does he want?  Ukraine.  All other ‘former republics’ to the West from Russia are already the members of NATO, but Ukraine…

Europe has never been as decisive as the US in making the Russia suffer for his annexation of Crimea and the obvious invasion of the Eastern Ukraine.  They do not want the war, even if it’s not bullets, but money, what is used as a weapon.  It doesn’t make anybody in Europe sleep well.  The specter of the ’long, cold winter’ without the Russian oil and gas is not easily acceptable by the Europeans.  And now we have the next argument against ostracizing the re-born Russian Empire.

A few weeks ago Premier Renzi (of Italy) said: “La Russia che e’ debole, non serve nessuno” (Weak Russia is not useful to anybody).  

I would like to be mistaken about that, but I am afraid, that it’s only matter of time (a short time), before we accept another change in the Ukraine government - the change for the pro-Russian stooge.  Ukraine will be sacrificed, like Poland and part of Germany were at Yalta Conference, (February 4–11, 1945) - for the GREATER GOOD.

JE SUIS CHARLIE

Private note - 30th Anniversary

It’s 8:00 PM in New York City.  October 4, 2014.
Almost exactly 30 years ago (around 2:00 AM in Cairo on October 5, 1984), an old, Russian built Tupolev TU-134 jet landed on the extremely dirty and disorganized Cairo International airport.  The flight brought from Warsaw, to Cairo some tourists, some fresh, and some seasoned archaeologists, and a new photographer of Polish Center Archaeology in Cairo - on 2 year contract.  
This photographer was me.  
At this very moment my completely New Life began.   
For someone like me, who is not a trained archaeologist, participating in countless excavations all around Egypt, in Cyprus, and In the Northern Province of Sudan, was a life changing experience.  What most of the people read about, or see in the museums around the World, I saw and touched…
Exposure to archaeology and the wonders of the Ancient Civilizations had a profound effect on the way I saw the World.  This ‘private’ exploration coincided with meeting and listening to the Great Luminaries of the Mediterranean Archaeology.  Nothing is the same afterwards…
The list of the people to whom I have been always deeply indebted for that reason is long, I can’t list them all here.  However, I have to express my deep gratitude to a few made my new and improved life possible.  
Let me start from Professor Karol Mysliwiec (since 1982 - director of the Institute of Mediterranean Archeology at the Polish Academy of Sciences) who saw my photographic portfolio right after I graduated from college, and incited me to take part in a competition for the position of a photographer of Polish Center of Archaeology in Cairo.  Later on, he let me believe, that I proved to be the best in this contest.  Also, my deep apologies to him for making a lot of mistakes when I was covering his excavations in Tell-Atrib.  In 2005 I visited his extraordinary excavations in Saqqara where he was working on the tomb of Imhotep.
And then Professor Wiktor Andrzej Daszewski (at that time the Director of Polish Center of Archaeology in Cairo - my boss), who showed me ‘how Paradise looks’… when I took part in his excavations in Nea Paphos in Cyprus.  For a young photographer like me, who lost his father quite early - he became almost a father figure.  We (at the excavations) were all his family, so it was quite natural.  
And then Professor Wlodzimierz Godlewski (Warsaw University) and Dr. Stefan Jakobielski (Warsaw University) - thanks to whom I had a chance to feel like a real explorer driving a bit-up Land Rover at their excavations in Old Dongola - Northern province of Sudan - after a 26-hours truck trip across the desert from Khartoum.  Surrounded by the desert for 6 weeks at a time (twice) one develops either a profound love, or a profound hatred to the desert.  I fell in love…  
During my contract in Egypt I met many wonderful colleagues, young and aspiring archaeologists, who in these 30 years have become important figures of Mediterranean Archaeology.  Alas, after moving to America I lost active contact with most of them.  Let me name at least a few, who were really good friends:  
Dr. Stanislaw Medeksza (at that time the architect of the Polish Center of Archaeology in Cairo),
Dr. Ewdoksia Papuci-Władyka (Nea Paphos, Cyprus)
Dr. Grzegorz Majcherek (Kom el-Dikka, Alexandria, Egypt), 
Dr. Iwona Zych (currently involved in Berenice Project in Egypt), 
Dr. Krzysztof Babraj - thanks to whom I returned to Egypt in 2004 to participate in his excavations in Marea (close to Alexandria) - where from 2005 to 2008 together with my wife Barbara - Architect, were running a preservation mission within the current excavations.
Dr. Zbigniew Szafranski (head of Polish Center of Archaeology in Cairo) with whom I spent many weeks photographing the reliefs on the wall of the Hatshepsut Temple in Deir-el-Bahari (Luxor).
Dr. Anna Poludnikiewicz (Tell-Atrib, Benha),
Dr. Michal Neska - who moved to Ethiopia to run his own excavations (unfortunately died in a very young age).
Barbara Wronska-Kucy - whom I met in Egypt in 1985, where she held a scholarship and as an architect was documenting the excavations and their architectural elements (currently an architect at Bone/Levine Architects in New York City - and my wife).

What the archaeology awakened in a young photographer was the craving for contact with art, with monuments, with the interested people involved in preserving art, and artifacts, or any other way involved in creative processes.  Archaeological contact in the Middle east gave me also the necessary experience.
Hence my 10 years contract at Sotheby’s New York, between 1989 to 1999, what gave me opportunity to have close contact with the most important examples of art beginning from the ancient art to the most contemporary.  The thrill of having in my hands an unframed pastel by Degas, was incomparable with anything else.
In 1999 I made a faithful decision, to proceed on my own from that time.  I started working with the architectural companies and designers shooting the architecture and the interiors.  The experience in still life photography shooting for Sotheby’s came useful.  
I cater mostly to New York architectural and design companies.  All projects are different, all produce their own challenges.  There is no routine elements in any of these projects.  

Both archaeology and Sotheby’s job sparked the drive to broadening the knowledge, discovering areas, which in normal situations would be ‘off course’.
In my case this led to web design.  I started learning that when still at Sotheby’s, but since then I designed many websites.  Starting from my own (jmk-gallery.com) I expanded providing websites to the architects, artists, commercial on-line stores.  Working with one of them - Creel and Gow (Creelandgow.com) since the Sotheby’s years, became a long lasting professional relationship - I provide both photography as well as web design to this client.

All of that in the last thirty years - today.  It’s been an exciting ride.  What will ‘tomorrow’ bring?

ONE-LINER 0006 - Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

When talking about the Israeli Palestinian conflict, which every few months brings another thousand or so of Palestinian, civilian casualties (as Israeli call it: ‘mowing the lawn’), every one, including the Israelis, loose completely in their minds, the ‘cause and result’ chain of events.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? 

Bibi Netanyahu - Israeli Prime Minister, has had a lot of air time on CNN and other channels of the American Television recently.  Every time he complains about Hamas threatening the normality of life of the Israeli citizens, with their rockets, and promising the escalation of campaign to rid Gaza of the Hamas, its militants, and its arsenal.  
We hear about thousands of the crude rockets sent into the Israel by Hamas, and we sympathize with the people, who are subjected to such a thread.  It’s inhumane.  That’s right.  
But we, and even the UN, center on the recent action-reaction cycle.  We have been manipulated by said Bibi Netanyahu into forgetting, that the recent rockets sent to Israel, and more than thousand of dead on the side of Palestinians is just the recent manifestation of the conflict - the recent reminder of the underlying issues.

The issue is that Israeli have converted the Gaza Strip into the OPEN AIR PRISON decades ago.

The Hamas was born to give some organized form to the resistance of the Palestinians - after the Second Intifada (1987).  However despicable practices they may employ, they are just the Israeli creation.

As a result of the Olso Accords (*) in 1993/1995 the borders of Gaza strip were closed.  The Palestinians who lived within these borders lost the main source of their income - day jobs in Israel.  The whole generation or 2 generations of young Palestinians never held a normal job, never had a normal life, never had the hope…

Let me repeat - as much as Hamas is wrong and their practices despicable - Israel is on the wrong side of HISTORY.  There is no way of wining with the ‘oppressed nation’.  Israeli may kill as many Palestinians as they succeed, and the remaining population just gets stronger.  

Hamas has to accept that Israel is there to stay.  Created in 1948 as a result of a real, and overdue need of the ‘homeless nation’ - is there to stay.  But all have to remember, and constantly bear in mind, that to create this state, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have been removed from their (for centuries) land and packed into a small strip of land called Gaza.  As if it, alone, was not enough, Israeli occupation and later the complete ‘blockade’ ruined the life of many generations of people whose only guilt was, being Palestinians.

When a couple of days ago, secretary Kerry on a ‘hot mike’ stated “Hell of the Pinpoint Operation…” the whole conservative media in the States, and Israeli press exploded.  But let’s look at it as it is: When 90% of the dead and wounded are civilians, and the number of the dead exceeded already 1100, it is a heavy handed, vicious attack on the population - and not a Pinpoint Operation.

The artillery rounds which fell on the courtyard of the UN led school, and today on the playground of the refugee camp, killed people, but almost didn’t make any dent in the pavement.  These rounds weren’t designed to destroy hard targets - infrastructure or tunnels, stockpiles of weapons - they were designed as ANTIPERSONNEL weapons.  This is why the only effect was thousands pieces of shrapnel flying around any killing people who tried to find some haven under the roof of the school.

Let’s face it.  Using the anti-personnell on a civilian population is not a legal form of the war conduct.

The UN is creating another fact-finding commission, to determine the abuses of the rules of war, on both sides.  Until the United States accepts that the findings may be quite damaging to the image of the occupant, there is no possible solution to this conflict.  After the ‘Cast Lead’ campaign the findings of the Goldstone Report was rejected by the US congress, although it accused both sides, not only Israelis, of the atrocities.  

We went too far already with the unfeathered support for the punishing campaigns of the IDF, instead of trying to influence our best Middle East friend to ease the blockade, and start building the conditions for the normal (as close to normal as possible) coexistence of the two peoples - within the same borders, or accepting two state solution.  

Something has to be done.   Something has to be done NOW.  And our country - the USA - the leader of the Free World, has the moral obligation to lead this process, and finally bring the PEACE to the tormented people.


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* - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_Accords

ONE-LINER 0005 - Access to Information

One of the basic, and the most important tenets of democracy is ‘CRITICAL THINKING’.

Let me quote after one of our most influential (internationally) former US Presidents Jimmy Carter:

“Critical thinking is thinking that proceeds on the basis of careful evaluation of premises and evidence and comes to conclusions as objectively as possible through the consideration of all pertinent factors and the use of valid procedures from logic (Carter, 1973 - 1*).

In order to be able to perform these mental processes, one has to have enough of information on the subject.  ‘Enough of information’ doesn’t mean that the information coming from one source, no matter how extensively it may cover the subject, is sufficient.  A single source is doomed to have the non-objective fact references, and opinions. 

This is why in the Western Democracies the information flows freely, and all citizens have the same, non-impeded access to the various sources of information.

Contrary to the totalitarian systems (based on communism, or any other Orwellian society), where the information is censored, and the citizens are prohibited to access the information they seek - but they are fed with the government approved opinions, removing the critical thinking from the equation - we, in the Western democracies are free to seek, and examine the information, no matter where it comes from - and make our own determination as to what the truth really is.

I grew up in a country, where the government minders, for decades, were letting in, only a small amount of the Western information, so the population might have been fooled in believing in their truthful approach.  It was the communist Poland.  Not like in Russia (then USSR), some of the information was getting through.  The proximity of the West, and the active informational campaign by the US, undeniably made an impact on the level of political education in the general population.  So, the ‘critical thinking’ had some real basis, although manipulated by both sides of the political barricade.  We all know the history - in the early nineties, the country which tried to control the information the most, fell apart.  The USSR was no more, and a host of the new ‘democratically minded’ new countries came into being, and some others (like Poland, or East Germany) removed the shackles put on them by the USSR as a result of the WWII.

With a few instances of the modern history where even in the States, some critical thinking was strictly prohibited (McCarthyism of the fifties) - Americans enjoyed completely free and not-impeded

access to various sources of the news, limited only by the languages they were transmitted.

Although the majority of the Americans have been completely disinterested in the World’s affairs, and the un-impeded access to the knowledge hasn’t translated itself in the political knowledge of the most of the US population, some cherish the possibilities, and use them to better their ability to have the well-balanced and just opinion on the events which force themselves into our lives.

No matter how isolationist one may be - there is no denying - that the events, like the Putin’s annexation of Crimea, or Israeli incursion into Gaza, affect all of us, directly or indirectly.

I have always searched for the different news sources.  It is BBC, which for years has been a great source of slightly alternative point of view form the American media.  There is French24, another great source of the alternative views…  There is RAI – the Italian TV Channel with their excellent news segments (only in Italian).  Since 2003, there was another player on the information market - AlJazeera English.  The news organization founded and owned by the ruling family of Qatar.

We all have been very skeptical of the possibly biased and skewed picture coming from this network…  And then, in time the AlJazeera English has proven indispensable to create the full picture of the events.  It brought to the computer screen the most prominent journalists from various countries of the World.  We all admire Sir David Frost (2*)- the author of the incredibly blunt and probing series of interviews with former President Nixon.  This giant of the journalism run in AlJazeera English a segment airing the interviews with many great, and sometimes controversial figures of the world’s politics, and culture.  ‘Frost all over the World’ was the program I tried never to miss… 

This network brought a number of the world renowned journalist to our computers.  A Palestinian born Marwan Bishara with his ‘Empire’ - often controversial program dissecting the current affairs.

Many field reporters I grew to like and appreciate - like an Australian Peter Greste, who provided great reporting from the crisis stricken areas of the world - until was imprisoned by Egyptian Regime on false charges of ‘aiding and abetting the terrorist organization - Muslim Brotherhood’.

For years while working on my computer, a small window with the AlJazeera live stream was a part of my MO.

However everything ended in 2013, when Qatar based AlJazeera network bought Al Gore’s Current Network (*3).

When it was announced, I couldn’t understand why anyone would allow for such deal.  One thing was to listen, and watch AlJazeera English as an alternative news station - from the outside of the US, completely another was to allow a foreign forces broadcast from our soil.  It was, in my opinion, unwise, and simply dangerous, because of the possible wrong message…  For many, the information coming from the outside sources is scrutinized much more than from the American Network.  And so, it happened.  AlJazeera America was created and became carried by the most of the Cable companies in the country.

However, the thing which I haven’t anticipated was that at that same time the original AlJazeera English live stream became UNAVAILABLE IN THE USA.  Anybody trying to dial on their computers http://www.aljazeera.com/watch_now/ receives in the middle of the screen a black-boxed message: ‘THE VIDEO YOU ARE TRYING TO WATCH CANNOT BE VIEWED FROM YOUR CURRENT LOCATION.  VISIT ALJAZEERA.COM/AMERICA TO VIEW CONTENT AVAILABLE IN THE USA’.

Unfortunately, the Aljazeera America is a boring, digested, resembling-other-american-channels news station.  No controversy, no deeply probing editorials - it smells censorship.

I would never thing that I would be limited in my news sources in America.  Access to the information, and the critical thinking are the basis of the Democracy.

And yet - someone decided, that American Public is NOT AUTHORIZED to make a choice to watch the AlJezeera English and its stream and videos.  You can access the Internet channel, but all the videos bear the same censorship message.

So, what is the difference between the Internet blocking in China, and Internet blocking in America?

This incident (and I hope it is isolated incident) is at least worrying.  What is the state of our Democracy if the News are government minded?  It was explained that the stream is limited (prohibited) because of the licensing limitations - after inception of the American based AlJazeera America.  But is it a commercial, or political decision?  Or a political usage of the commercial regulation…

Can anybody answer these questions?

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*1 - http://www.intime.uni.edu/model/democracy/crit.html

*2 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Frost

*3 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_TV

farther reading: http://www.intime.uni.edu/model/democracy/demo.html