Excerpt: ‘How I fought to survive Guantanamo‘ (Guardian, UK)
I don’t want to give the impression I dislike Obama. I think he has toiled strenuously against many idiots this past twelve months. I think he’s carried a nation-sized curse of rhetoric and is subject to a Bush-beaten electorate hoping for more than neglect and dis-empowerment. However, I am disappointed he hasn’t yet been able to close Guantanamo, especially as it seemed like one of his easier-to-achieve promises.
Friend, Steve Silberman, pointed out Ezra Klein‘s WaPo article about where Obama has gone wrong this past year. Obama tried to get stuff done in a congenial manner but it was just not sexy enough for the American public. He never even tried to sell it;
A crowd of people look at two men who were caught stealing and were bound and shot on Delmas Road in Port au Prince, Haiti 17 January 2010. The man in the yellow shirt was still alive after being shot through the head but neither the Haitian national Police nor the general public expressed any concern. EPA / Shawn Thew
Chay soti sout tet, tonbe sou zepol.
The load goes from the head to the shoulder.
(Problems go from bad to worse.)
Haitian Proverb.
DISCLAIMER: THERE ARE MANY LINKS HERE, BUT I HAVE CHOSEN THEM CAREFULLY AND ASSEMBLED SOME ORDER
First things first …
100Eyes
My early enthusiasm for Andy Levin’s proposed wider view of Haiti is now thoroughly tempered. In 100Eyes first statement, Andy made no mention of money. I presumed he was redirecting already committed attendees and resources, but he has extended the venture to new takers and at $1,500, the issue of money-flows (not to mention the obvious dangers and liabilities) makes it seem and sound like a bad idea … for reasons mentioned here and here.
Immediately, let’s us not confuse our value. We know it sits in our wallets and purses. GIVE.
Here is a list of organizations which have been highly rated by the American Institute of Philanthropy through which you can aid those in need in Haiti:
I also want to add that Paul Farmer’s Partner’s in Health has been doing increible work in Haiti for more than two decades. Money donated to his organization will be very well spent. http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti (Thanks Chris)
Possibly the most important and startling initiatives I have found all week …
Aline brought to our attention a new Flickr Charity Print Auction. It isn’t exclusively for Haiti, but no doubt, Haiti will dominate current donations.
And, of course there is the Onè Respe Magazine at MagCloud with photos by Chet Gordon, Kari Hartmann, Mary Ellen Mark, Peter Pereira, Lindsay Stark.
@jeffantebi has made limited editions from Haiti available stolen space to benefit Oxfam and MSF.
Singular pieces of photography coming out of Haiti
Not photography, possibly more important than photography, worth reading
“Stop treating these people like savages” by Andy Kershaw of The Independent, “An unbelievable 10,000 charities were already working in Haiti when the earthquake rocked the island, most of them tiny independent organisations. Humanitarian aid is, almost by definition, never where it is needed when natural disasters strike. But, in Haiti, what’s needed has been flown in with impressive speed. Yet the combined concern of all those organisations – many of them regarding fellow charities as professional rivals – has so far been unable to get that assistance a ride from the airport. Too much energy in the last week has been expended on bickering about procedure and the fetish about “security”.”
Philip Gourevitch makes a modest proposal; “Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase should give a billion dollars apiece to Haiti relief and reconstruction efforts—and they should do it swiftly and without hesitation.”
Also, from the New Yorker, Earthquakes and JournalismSteve Coll offers some insight, “I learned something about journalism while covering my first earthquake, in northwest Iran, in June, 1990.”
The Wall Street Journal has led the charge with mammoth galleries daily, ominously titled WSJ Photographers Document Chaos. Here’s the last three days, they go back further:
The Sacramento Bee has also been offering the large scrolling wide web galleries. They used images by Logan Abassi and The Red Cross to take an aerial view. Here’s the SacBee’s latest, Haiti One Week Later.
How many photographers does it take to photograph a humanitarian disaster?
Juan Barreto / AFP / Getty Images
Bruno Stevens / Cosmos
John W. Poole / NPR
David Gilkey / NPR
Ramon Espinosa / AP
Luis Acosta / AFP / Getty Images
Jae C. Hong / AP
Minustah / Logan Abassi / AP
Julie Jacobson / AP
Francois Mori / AP
Chris Hondros / Getty Images
Win McNamee / Getty Images
Ariana Cubillos / AP
Ricardo Arduengo / AP
Olivier Laban Mattei / AFP / Getty Images
Sophia Paris / Getty Images / UN / Minustah
Gerald Herbert / AP
Uriel Sinai / Getty Images
Patrick Farrell / AP / The Miami Herald
Peter Andrew Bosch / Miami Herald / MCT
Carl Juste / AP / The Miami Herald
Melissa Lyttle / St. Petersburg Times
Dominic Nahr / The Wall Street Journal
Julie Platner / The Wall Street Journal
Ron Haviv / New York Times / VII
Heather L Rohan / NJ Star & Ledger
Nicholas Kamm / Getty Images
Gregory Bull / AP
Michael S. Wirtz / Philadelphia Inquirer
Federico Gambarini / EPA
Orlando Barria / EPA
David Fernandez / EPA
Juan Barreto / AFP Getty Images
Shawn Thew / EPA
Thomas Coex / AFP / Getty
Thony Belizaire / AFP / Getty
Julie Remy / AP / MSF
Julien Tack / AFP / Getty
Michael Laughlin, Sun-Sentinel / AP
Francois Mori / AP
Julie Jacobson / AP
Jewel Samad / Getty Images
Paul J. Richards / Getty Images
Joe Raedle / Getty Images
Mario Tama / Getty Images
Martin Oeser / Getty Images
Jody Amiet / AFP / Getty
Logan Abassi / AFP / Getty
Marco Dormino / AP / United Nations Frederic Dupoux / Getty Images
Eduardo Munoz / Reuters
Cris Bierrenbach / AP
Jorge Cruz / AP
Maggie Steber / The New York Times
Tequila Minsky / The New York Times
Damon Winter / New York Times
Michael Appleton / The New York Times
Erika Santelices / Getty Images
Jonathan Torgovnik
Boots Levinson
Alvaro Ybarra Zavala / Getty
Jan Grarup / Time
Jeroen Oerlemans / Panos
Moises Saman / Panos
Zoriah
Carolyn Cole / LA Times
Rick Loomis / LA Times
Brian Vander Brug / LA Times
Nick Kozak
Jason Henry / Wall Street Journal
David Levene / Guardian
Francesco Giusti / prospekt
Samuele Pellecchia / prospekt
Emiliano Larizza / Contrasto / Redux
Carol Guzy / Washington Post
Lisandro Suero / AFP / Getty
Clarens Renois / AFP / Getty Images
Kena Betancur / Reuters
Ivanoh Demers / AP / Montreal La Presse
Sam Yeh / AFP / Getty
Gus Ruelas / Reuters
Carlos Barria / Reuters
Jess Hurd
Axel Oberg
Jorge Silva / Reuters
Carlos Garcia-Rawlins
Andy Levin
Robert Larson
(List not exhaustive)
AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST
Special mention must go to Daniel Morel (AFP / Getty Images) who has photographed Haiti all his working life and holds the nation and its people close to his heart.
In November, I interviewed Damon Winter for Too Much Chocolate. He is calm, modest and (quite frankly) not the best interviewee because he still feels he is too young in the career to make bold statements … you know the sound-bites from photojournalists we all crave … the ones about adventure or celebrity subjects.
His skills were proven when he raked in the Pulitzer for A Vision Of History his coverage of Obama (it was his first time covering a political campaign!)
Damon attested to the fact he has always learnt on the job. He did not train formally as photojournalist per se; he studied environmental science at college. He even admits that since his job is so time-consuming he feels somewhat detached from the talk and over-talk (my term) within the industry.
To cut a long intro short, I have a lot of respect for Damon.
Damon’s visit to Haiti has been his first coverage of a disaster area. His dispatches have been well received; most likely because he has put sensitive words (here and here) out there as well as his photographs.
Who were the [prisoners]? Were they among the machete-wielding pillagers who made their way along the Boulevard Jean-Jacques Dessalines on Saturday afternoon? (The account in The Times, “Looting Flares Where Authority Breaks Down,” said no one could answer with certainty.) Did their numbers include political prisoners? In “Disaster Imperialism in Haiti” on MRZine, a Socialist Web site, Shirley Pate wrote: “Who knows how many of the dead or escaped prisoners there were those who were incarcerated without cause over the course of the two years that followed Aristide’s departure?”
Damon Winter’s photographs answer none of these questions. They don’t mean to. But they do begin to paint a picture of life inside a Haitian prison; a picture that few people have ever seen before.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., jailed in Birmingham, Alabama for protesting injustice.
Because I just read this, I wince a little as I repost thoughts via the indubitable Jim, but time is of a premium today. Please excuse me.
Martin vs. Barack
Why is it some American’s “mythologize and sanitize” MLK – a man that called for a national guaranteed income – but as quickly abase and demonize Obama who, by the way, is a pithy moderate by comparison?
In other words, why is the socialist agenda of one leader ignored and – worse still – why is a socialist agenda fabricated and super-imposed on another?
Oh, and also, actual functioning democratic socialism (even in its sputtering form under New Labour) is a pretty good ticket.
Men rummage through the remains at the Haitian National Penitentiary that stands burnt and empty after a 7.0 magnitude quake rocked Port-au-Prince, in this United Nations handout photo taken and released on January 14. Photo Credit: United Nations, Reuters.
The Port-au-Prince slum Cite Soleil was renowned for extreme violence and as stronghold for gang activity. Recently, activities there had calmed – as Reuters notes, “The pacification of Cite Soleil had been one of President Rene Preval’s few undisputed achievements since taking office in 2006, until the quake devastated Port-au-Prince.”
The National Penitentiary served to incapacitate the capital’s violent gang members and leaders. Between 3,000 and 4,000 former-inmates are now on the streets. The remains and records amid the rubble of the Ministry of Justice have been torched destroying the information needed to track down the former prison population. Law and order are fragile now, but still, violent incidents are few.
Haiti’s National Penitentiary became an essential apparatus in Preval’s abatement of gang command in Port-au-Prince’s poorer neighbourhoods. In 2004, it is alleged prison administration put down a non-violent protest with lethal force. President Rene Preval’s office argued that they used acceptable force in the interest of self-defense.
But the problem’s in Haiti’s prisons existed long before Preval’s insertion into power in 2004 and even before Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s third stint as president (2001 – 2004).
In 1997, Donna DeCesare won the Alicia Patterson Fellowship and, in 2000, used the opportunity to examine the links between criminal activity, US deportees and gang structure in Haiti.
From looking at her essay I can only presume Preval’s strategic battle with the gangs compounded problems of overcrowding. DeCesare’s essay touches necessarily upon issues of poverty, services, police shortcomings and judicial corruption … all the while following the fortunes of Touchè Caman, U.S. deportee and organizer for Chans Altenativ, an organisation to help Haitian deportees.
Dvafoto just got a redesign too, bringing all their commentaries of the past up to the surface again. Well worth swimming about in the visual archive for a while.
Just two weeks ago 100Eyes launched a new issue Gade, Haiti. Who at that time would have knwon that the world’s attention would sear down upon that previously abused, cliched far away nation?
The situation in Haiti has brought a tremendous many talented photographers to Haiti, with many more on the way. We would like to find a way to broaden the picture of Haiti that is currently in the news, by combining work with the disaster area with work from the rest of the nation.
If you are going to Haiti and will be there in February, I am asking photographers to spread out around the country and to spend day or two photographing something other than the earthquake ravaged area, to be included in a special issue of 100Eyes on Haiti.
I am hopeful that photographers can use the same resourcefulness in getting around Haiti as they have in getting to the disaster area … and I know that there are many stories to be told beyond what we are currently seeing, many struggles that happen on a daily basis. There is beauty, there is laughter as well.
We believe that the effort made by photographers in doing this would more than make up for the relative small resources going into the project, by helping to create a broader picture of Haitian life, and to put the horrific, and important, images that are currently being taken in Port au Prince in context.
As part of the project we will be having Haitian children and students take pictures to show the events through their own eyes, an effort that was planned before the tragedy. In addition we ask that each photographer try and bring a compact digital camera and find a Haitian child to work with in whatever area of the country that you are working in.
Depending on the amount of work received we may have needs for volunteer editors and coordinators as well. For those more interested in a structured environment I am going be extending the 100Eyes Workshop in Haiti through the end of the month and possibly beyond.
For details on this please contact me through our workshop page for Haiti, here.”
If I was a photographer I’d be anxiously looking for an avenue to broaden the media coverage away from only disaster consumption. This seems like the best opportunity; Structured, purposeful and community based.
UPDATED: SARAH SHOURD WAS RELEASED FROM EVIN PRISON ON 14TH SEPTEMBER, 2010. SHANE BAUER WAS RELEASED ON SEPTEMBER 21ST, 2011
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Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Joshua Fattal are imprisoned in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison. They are not spies; they are principled activists, valued journalists and now political pawns.
I’d like to summarise their situation and then focus on Bauer’s ongoing work in Sudan.
HIKING, CROSSING, LANGUISHING
Earlier this week I met Shon Meckfessel, one-time Cake band-member, occasional anarchist, and long-time writer for literary, political periodicals.
Shon has been known most recently as the fourth member of the hiking party on the Iraqi Kurdistan/Iran border. Shon is not in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison because he – due to illness – delayed the start of his hike by 24 hours.
The day after his three friends Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Joshua Fattal had set out, Shon got on a bus headed to the same trail-head with the intention of catching up. While on the bus, he received a call from Shane telling him that the three of them had just been detained by Iranian border patrol. That was on the 31st July, 2009.
Most US mainstream media coverage has been neutral presentation of the known facts, sometimes peppered with confusion and incredulity. It has focused on the absurdity of the situation instead of the integrity of the writing, teaching and activism of the three members of the party.
To answer briefly the questions of how and why a party of Americans were hiking near the Iranian border, Iraqi Kurdistan has been peaceful for nearly twenty years since the close of the first Gulf war.
Shane, Sarah and Joshua were all seasoned travellers and they had been advised that the mountains and waterfalls of Ahmad Awah in the North East were well worth a visit. Shon and his friends travelled to As Sulaymaniyah together. When they took the two hour bus ride from the city they thought it headed northwest, not eastward. No locals they spoke to mentioned the proximity of the Iranian border.
Shon, Shane, Sarah and Joshua stayed in As Sulaymaniyah (bottom left) for a night. The bus ride they thought went north west in fact headed east to Ahmad Awah (top right).
As Sulaymaniyah and Ahmad Awah are in Kurdistan, North Eastern Iraq. The areas marked Kordestan and Kermanshah are in Iran.
I had hoped that the misunderstanding would be resolved quickly. Three months have now passed, and I cannot imagine what more the Iranian authorities might have to learn about my friends or what they were doing in the area. … Mr. President, by continuing to deprive Shane, Sarah, and Josh of their liberty, Iran is working against some of the very causes it supports. Each of these three has a long and public record of contesting injustice in the world and addressing some of the inequities between rich and poor which you have spoken about through their humanitarian work in their own country and overseas.
Shon goes on to describe their various work and causes. Read the letter in full. Also on November 2nd, Shon appeared on Democracy Now! to reassert his position that the Iranian authorities can have no illusions as to their characters.
Of the three, Shane Bauer has written and published the most. Most recently his article, Sheikh Down (Mother Jones) described how the ‘Pentagon bought stability in Iraq by funneling billions of taxpayer dollars to the country’s next generation of strongmen’.
Shon notes, “As a fluent speaker of Arabic, Shane has focused on injustices in the Arab world, in Iraq and Palestine in particular. The Christian Science Monitor published Shane’s January 7th interview with Musa Abu Marzook, the only English-language interview with a Hamas leader during Israel’s attack on Gaza.”
SHANE BAUER’S DARFUR PHOTOGRAPHY
I could have as easily featured the publicly available works of Josh or Sarah; each of the three illustrate their non-spy credentials through their past writings and journalism. That said, neither Josh or Sarah are involved in photojournalism or multimedia journalism as Shane is.
As Shane’s AP editor said in the clip atop this post, there are not many twenty somethings in Darfur freelancing and living with Sudanese rebels.
I have picked out five images from Shane’s Darfur series, but he also has produced two multimedia pieces One Day with the S.L.A. and Darfur: Rebellion from the Margins. In both stills and video he is trying to offer a context for the rebels bearing arms. The equation is simple: without a fight they would have “been run into the desert, where there is no water and left to die”.
The stills and video are a privileged view of existence for the Sudanese Liberation Army and the civilians they protect, but it is also a view that has dated. Shane continues to work on a feature length film about these same civilians, the S.L.A. and their continued struggle. Time ticks on.
Given that Shane is an accomplished photographer, I was a little surprised that his cause hasn’t been forwarded much in photographic circles, or more specifically the photoblogosphere. Jack Kurtz picked up on the story and posted it to Lightstalkers but it got no takers. Shane is a member.
Tewfic liked Shane’s Darfur multimedia but missed the story of his and his friends capture … as many of us did.
And, of course, we only anticipate Shane’s release in the context of all three’s release.
Shane Bauer received 1st place for independent audio slideshow features in the 2008 NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism contest. In 2007, he was a national finalist for photojournalism in the Harry Chapin Media Awards as well as a national finalist for feature photography for the Society of Professional Journalists’ 2007 Mark of Excellence Awards. He also received the Lyon Prize in photography that year. (Source)
Sarah Shourd, 31, is an English teacher in Damascus and is learning Arabic. She previously taught as part of the Iraqi Student Project, a program which gives Iraqi students living in Damascus the skills to continue their education in US schools. Sarah has written articles on travel and social issues reflecting her time in Syria, Ethiopia, Yemen and Mexico (Escape From Iraq: A Muslim Family Finds Solace in Ramadan, Brave Eyes, Laughing Hearts: My First Encounter with Yemen, Families Shout Their Love Across Minefields in Golan Heights). She attended UC Berkeley in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she lived after graduating until moving to Damascus with Shane. (Source)
Joshua Fattal began undergraduate work at UC Santa Barbara and graduated from UC Berkeley (2004). For three years after college he was invested in the Aprovecho Research Center, a sustainable living project in Oregon. In 2009, Josh was on a years travel partly independently and partly as a teaching assistant for the International Honours Program ‘Health and Community’ semester. (Source)
Prison Photography 