Thursday, March 08, 2012
Mark Focus Presents his work to Putney Swope
This goes to show you that photographers should not shoot for free. Photographers, please don't shoot for free....you are killing us!
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
Jewish Guy Attacked By Zionist Police
If we are not careful as Americans, the same thing will start to happen to us more and more...a police state. Already so many protesters have been arrested, journalist arrested for covering the protests in our own country. In Israel, all they do is take them to the airport and ship them off.
Jewish activist to AIPAC: Stop Silencing Dissent!
I know, people get mad at me for my Israeli/Palestinian views...but I support this organization called the "other" Jewish Voice.
They are doing good work.
Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Sunday, March 04, 2012
الجيش السوري اقتحام بابا عمرو 1-3-Entering into Baba Amr2012
(translated) according to a security source in Damascus today, the source said "This area is under control, the army operation cleansing of the neighborhood, building after building, and house after house. " 03/01/2012
"The soldiers searched all the cellars and tunnels in search of weapons and terrorists."
He continued, "there are still some spots that must be curtailed."
Announced the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights For his part, said in a statement that "the clashes taking place in the vicinity of neighborhood Pope AMR, between the regular army and Syrian dissident groups prevent the attempt to break into the neighborhood, at a time when you hear the sound of explosions and shootings in the neighborhoods of the other city." Is under Baba Amr and other neighborhoods in the city , came under artillery and rocket three weeks ago, hundreds of sign Alguetlymusdr Syrian security confirms the army to storm the district Baba Amr in Homs and activists deny
An official security source in Damascus that the Syrian army stormed the neighborhood of Baba Amr in the city of Homs center of the country on Wednesday, February 29 and is now the process of cleansing it.
Syrian security forces take Baba Amr
After 27 days of bombardment, Syrian security forces loyal to President Bashar al-Asad now claim they have retaken full control of the rebel-held Baba Amr neighbourhood of Homs.
تنسيقية الرستن : مجزرة الرستن 2 - 3 جمعة تسليح الجيش الحرMar3-12 Rastan, Syria
Rastan massacre 2-3 Fri arming the army free. (Free Army...translated direct)
Mortar shells down on peaceful demonstrators in Rastan and kill and injure. This is the reality of war folks...these videos do not spare the realities
Le spettacolari immagini dell'Etna, un misto di lava e neve
Volcano Etna, in Southern Italy, where I offer Photo Workshops is bubbling! Activity of the new crater southeast, lasted a few hours, but the images are spectacular, paerchè the lava meets the snow and the result is all to watch.
Edith Bouvier Escapes from Homs
by: Damien Pearse and agencies
Journalist was left taped to a stretcher inside the tunnel rebels had dung to smuggle her out when Syrian forces bombed it
The French journalist Edith Bouvier feared her escape from the besieged Syrian city of Homs had come to an end after the tunnel through which she was smuggled came under bombardment from Assad's forces.
Her leg broken by a shell, which killed the Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Rémi Ochlik days earlier, Bouvier was abandoned, taped to a makeshift stretcher, as rebels and dozens of wounded fled the explosions and headed back to Baba Amr district.
"One of them placed his Kalashnikov on me. He put his hand on my head and said a prayer. It wasn't very reassuring. Then he left," Bouvier told Le Figaro newspaper, for which she was working in Syria.
"I didn't know what was going to happen. Was the exit blocked? Were Syrian soldiers going to enter? I wanted to run away before remembering that I was taped to a stretcher."
Bouvier and the French photographer William Daniels, who stayed with her throughout, were finally rescued by a rebel who drove down the 1.6-metre high tunnel on a motorbike and carried them back to Baba Amr.
With the tunnel blocked and Baba Amr close to falling to the army, the two journalists, the objects of a manhunt after their faces were broadcast on Syrian television, decided to risk everything by slipping out of the city in a vehicle under cover of darkness.
"We were exhausted, physically and mentally. We had to get out of there," Bouvier said. Details of their escape route were not published by the newspaper to protect those who helped them.
Moving from safe house to safe house, changing vehicles frequently and taking rocky mountain roads amid a snowstorm, it took the journalists and their rebel escort four days to travel the 25 miles to the Lebanese border. Everywhere strangers greeted them by name, welcoming them warmly.
"They really put themselves in danger for us. They did everything for us," said Bouvier, who called her parents as soon as she crossed into Lebanon under cover of darkness. "I didn't tell them where I was, just that I was safe and sound."
Guardian
How I Escaped Homs Syria.
Javier Espinosa
Guardian
Sunday 4 March 2012
The motley procession seemed like something out of the 17th-century Spain described by the writer Francisco de Quevedo. One injured man was in his underwear, with his legs, head and arms bandaged up, using his working hand to grasp his drip. He could barely walk. Then came a limping man, wounded in his foot, who hopped or was carried on a friend's back. Another young man, his leg shattered by shrapnel, was transported on a blanket held by others.
Ahmed, his arm and leg lacerated by shrapnel from a rocket, leaned on Mohamed, who struggled onwards with a sniper's bullet in his back. Journalists Paul Conroy and Edith Bouvier, both wounded, were part of the same strange troop, along with two other correspondents, including me.
Even the vehicles we travelled in seemed more ready for the scrapyard than this insane venture. The lorries were peppered with bullet holes and shrapnel. One jolted along on a flat tyre.
Fifty or more of us – many disabled by their wounds – were trying to break out of the besieged neighbourhood of Baba Amr, in Homs, fleeing the final attack unleashed by the Syrian regime. It was to be a risky night-time dash through Syrian army lines, which would prove just how desperate these people, abandoned to their luck, had become.
The journey started at 9pm. Lorries full of those trying to flee navigated the deserted, pitch-dark streets at high speed. We drove without headlights, trying not to alert snipers.
The people of Baba Amr have suffered so monstrously that for some of those who found a seat it seemed almost funny. They giggled at the sight of a journalist protecting their head with a laptop. "Silence! Please!" a militiaman ordered. One man was only too aware of the danger; he prayed continuously.
Only part of the journey could be travelled by vehicle. The rest was to be done on foot. Suddenly the sky lit up. Government troops must have heard the noise and begun to fire off flares.
"Get down! Get down! Snipers!"
The group began to splinter. Most went to hide in ruined buildings. The seriously injured could do no more than throw themselves to the ground. On this occasion, the flares lit up an area away from where we were. But it was a taste of the chaos to come.
"Mummy! Mummy!" Terrified children called out as they walked. The Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters tried to quieten them. But it was too late. The firing started as suddenly as the flares. Bullets ricocheted around us. A burst of gunfire forced us to hide in the scrub. Then a hail of bullets broke up the group.
We ran across fields. Bullets whistled past. I followed Mohamed and Ahmed, who seemed to have forgotten the shrapnel in his leg. He hopped and trotted at an incredible speed. Later he would joke about it: "How on earth could I run like that, when I can't even walk?"
The three of us hid in a copse of trees, cowering there for more than an hour as shots continued to ring out nearby.
Ahmed is a 23-year-old Palestinian, born in the refugee camp in Hama. He joined the uprising at the start, fighting with the FSA. He boasted of having destroyed 17 armoured vehicles before he was wounded. Now he hoped to get to Lebanon and find a hospital to treat him. Mohamed was his comrade from the same katiba, or unit. He also wanted to get to Lebanon.
"What shall we do? Which direction do we go?" The three of us were lost. After the firefight, the countryside fell back into silence. The absence of noise was almost as startling as the gunfire.
Sometimes life is ruled by logic. I could just recall that this was the route I had used to get into Baba Amr, so they asked me to lead them. Little by little the muddy paths began to seem familiar. We walked in single file, slowed down by fear and the others' injuries. Mohamed had to prop himself on our shoulders.
Finally we made it to a cluster of houses. The rebellion is widespread in Homs. All Ahmed had to do was knock on a door and immediately a group of youths set about finding us somewhere to hide. Minutes later we were escaping again, four of us on a single motorbike.
The night belongs to the rebels. The motorbike was stopped by an FSA patrol that had blocked the road. They took charge of getting the three of us to a village far from Bashar al-Assad's troops.
Baba Amr's destiny has been decided. The rebellion there appears to have been quashed, but it will continue in many other places. South of Homs, in Qusair, the rebels boast that they control half of the town. People there walk in daylight whenever the bombardments die down. You can even buy falafel.
"They have 70 tanks and 5,000 soldiers surrounding the town, but they don't dare go in," said a member of the FSA's Farouk Brigade – which controls the farming region around Homs and had been in charge of Baba Amr.
That did not mean, however, that one entered the town at less than a crazy speed. It was a wise strategy. A car hit earlier was still burning on the road.
There is no method to war. Nothing you have learned helps you predict who will live and who will join the statistics. On the day I escaped Homs, the rebels said some 64 other people had died trying the same thing. They claim they were women and children.
For Assem, a 36-year-old labourer who has joined the rebels, the defeat of Baba Amr – still not certain when we spoke – would not end the uprising.
"Bashar has not got the message. I, for example, loved him when he took over. I thought he would be different to his father," he said. He pointed to a part of his little finger. "If he had just given us this little bit of freedom, we would have remained quiet. But whenever he slaughters someone from our families he simply increases our desire to kill him."
Guardian
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