Anchor’s A Sway
A few days ago, I warned of the Administration starting to visually mimic the militarist BushCo. out of concern for its image on national security and the Afghan war....
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The Effect Of Withholding Terror Photos: The Front Man
One problem for Obama -- in refusing to release pictorial documentation of torture from the Bush "terror war" era (after having committed to doing so) -- is that, visually, it is not a zero-sum game.
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Lara Logan And The Predator
What better way for 60 Minutes to shill for the military -- in this exclusive, suddenly-declassified look at the all-too-surreal Predator technology (the week after we blew away a bunch of Afghan civilians) -- than to soften the reality of hell-from-the-sky by focusing on the lovely Laura Logan from...
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The Economist: A World Without Nuclear Weapons
The Economist cover: A World Without Nuclear Weapons. (Where can I get the poster?)
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First Returns On Obama, C.I.C.
Looking at the first photos of Obama as C.I.C., in front of a large audience of soldiers at Camp Lejeune, the question, from a media standpoint, is: how well did he wear?
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Arms And Arms
I can't help thinking the sight of Gates's injury, although completely incidental to his testimony yesterday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, is almost painfully suggestive.
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Picks of the Year
To the extent the Afghan War draws heightened attention in the coming year (replacing Iraq as our "A" war), territorial stalemate and signification of futility will have much greater impact.
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The Anti-Terrorism PR
After years of unrelenting censorship and propaganda from the military, a good deal of it cushioned by the process of embedding, it's no longer possible to take a picture of the U.S. military in action on its face. ...But the great photographers also know that.
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Shinseki And His Charges
This image of General Shinseki, from the December 1, 2001 Army-Navy game, almost reads like a popular endorsement for his return.
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Homeland: Lambs Eat Oats and Does Eat Oats and Little Goats Eat K-Rations
Welcome to the Iraq training simulation at Fort Polk, where -- in an thoroughly obsessive, if totally misbegotten notion about authenticity -- it completely matters to American national security whether exactly six, rather than eight, as opposed to ten goats should be let loose to roam around.
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Let’s Unroll
“You always hope that you don’t have to use it, but this is becoming a fact of life,” SWAT commander Lt. Joel Preston said.... Beyond the show room details, this stands as a visual evidence of the disaster capitalism and terror war culture we now must reverse.
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GWOOT (Global War On … Olympic Terrorism)
What I'm seeing in these terrorism preparation drills -- held on the actual field of Olympic competition, employing finely-hone physical skill and and precise group co-ordination, the point being public display -- is an almost complete blurring of the lines between athletic and military competition.
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Numbing Down The War
Given the difficulty even I'm finding covering Iraq, and the fact that the pharmaceutical industry has largely had its way with the FCC and direct-to-consumer advertising, I'm wondering if this elephant-sized Prozac pill, half-dressed in cammo on the cover of TIME, doesn't actually help boost the drug ads inside.
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Arlington West
The Los Angeles chapter of Veterans for Peace is just one of at least twenty groups around the country that has adopted the Arlington West concept. Every Sunday since February 15th, 2004, the group has erected one cross for each soldier killed in Iraq near the Santa Monica pier.
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Serpentine Days
I found yesterday's "last visual word" on the Petraeus testimony a really telling image. It was paired with a headline dealing with the bleakness of the General's testimony. In the dead-tree version, you can see all the shoes on the the floor, prompting John Lucaites, a BAG contributer to...
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The Coming Of Age Of The Blast Wall
Doesn't this image start to locate McCain character on the shadow side of the "uniter or divider" question in a way that seems larger than just one issue or one snapshot?
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The Petraeus Insurgency
What became codified as "the surge," having evaded Congress, appears to have morphed into a large-scale insurgent force within our own military.
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"Newsweek Doesn't Hate Clinton" – Part 1: Girls Cheating On Hillary
I'm not sure why Jessica Bennett's article in the latest Newsweek is titled "Am I Betraying the ‘Sisterhood’?" In light of the rhetorical question, the last line of the piece speaks of her "womanly satisfaction" with each Hillary victory.
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