Man with a cat on his head feeding pigeons

A Banksy Christmas

Sunspot 1123 Hurls Filament toward Earth

Source.

Richard Dawkins - Author of Confusion

Even if this isn't real ... lol.

Big government

Mont Tremblant in October

See more from this album, here.

Awesome!

September in California

The business trip last month, in California (Los Angeles, Santa Monica and San Diego, were visited). The full album is here.

Photos from recent Asia travel

The entire album can be found here.

WHAT!

Sky over Toronto

Out with friends for dinner tonight, and the sky was dramatic.

Luthor and Lex

Source: The High Definite

Prayer

Escape!

Move on, nothing to look at here ... ... just a cat riding a turtle.

Clouds

Shot taken from the street outside my office, last week.

Ideology

Sunset couch

Took this photo tonight, when my daughter and I were out for a driving lesson. We were going in circles until I decided to take the shot.

Zombie love

Source

Click for awesomeness

The world is meaningless ...

... you are free!

How the Wikileaks video release was reported in the news

So, after posting the Wikileaks video of Namir Noor-Eldeen getting blown to bits by an Apache helicopter in 2007, I thought to myself, the world must be enraged by this -- especially Americans, who're now seeing what their military's up to in foreign parts. So I started surfing some news sites.


ABC News is all concerned about Tiger Woods. Of all the things that should be prominent on their news website -- it's Tiger Woods ...??? What?


Over in the UK, the top news is the US Consulate attack in Pakistan -- but there is Tiger again. WTF? Why? BBC only manages to reference the Wikileaks video as the fourth bullet under their More Top Stories section, where it's titled, "Wikileaks posts video from Iraq." That doesn't tell you anything.


How about the CBC? Nada. No reference at all on its front page.


CNN Arabic? Nope. While I can't read Arabic, and I can tell just from the photos that there's nothing newsworthy happening to Arabs in the world. According to CNN, anyway.


On the international front however, CNN doesn't disappoint. They've got a photo, titled, "Video shows journalists' deaths in Iraq," with the following byline:

Newly released video shows a 2007 attach by a U.S. Apache helicopter in Iraq. Several people were killed in the attach, two of them journalists. The helicopter crew members believed they were firing on armed insurgents.

Oh, wait, they do disappoint. They continue to tow the US military line that the helicopter crew thought they were firing on insurgents -- and in their report, publish the claim that the crew thought the cameras were guns. It's also interesting to note that CNN refers to Wikileaks as, "a site that publishes anonymously submitted documents, video and other sensitive materials" -- missing the point completely.


And the US homepage of CNN News references the story in the second bullet, under their Latest News section.


While I don't consider anything Fox News does as worthy of reading, I thought I'd check anyway, since many Americans consider the pabulum they publish as news. They did reference the Wikileaks release as follows:

Army Accused of 'Video Game' Killings -- Wikileaks releases video it says shows U.S. forces firing on and killing as many as 25 civilians in Baghdad.

Which is fair and balanced -- especially since WIkileaks didn't make the claim of "25 civilians" -- but did accuse the military of playing video games with civilians.


How about Reuters itself? After all, two of its people was killed in the incident. Well, in Canada, right under the Tiger Woods admits he lied and deceived headline (really people, who gives a fuck?), they have the following:

Leaked U.S. video shows deaths of Reuters' Iraqi staffers
8:11pm EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Classified U.S. military video showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters that killed a dozen people in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff, was released on Monday by a group that promotes leaking to fight government and corporate corruption.
Full Article

However ...


Reuters US has decided to spare the American general public any consternation over their military downing a couple of journalists.


Over at Google News, where more and more people flock for their news, much to the dismay of a purple-faced Murdoch, the Wikileaks story was number 5 on their world news view.


The Guardian UK also presented the Wikileaks story on their front page. While you had to drop down below some UK political news, it was there with a photo of Noor-Eldeen. The Guardian presented the news as follows:

Wikileaks releases Iraqi deaths video
Pentagon angered by secret footage of American air crew gunning down 12 civilians in July 2007.

Now that, was "fair and balanced."


MSNBC presented the news on its front page with a lot of emphasis:

Video shows U.S. firing on civilians in Iraq
A Reuters photographer is said to be among the dead in 2007 Baghdad incident seen in footage posted online.

But the only thing I didn't like about that presentation, was the the inference, however minor, that a Reuters photographer may not have actually died in the incident.


And on Al Jazeera, where all wars on Arabs are fought, it was the biggest thing going.

Video shows 'US attack' on Iraqis
Wikileaks footage believed to show US military shooting on crowded Baghdad square in 2007.

Of course, everyone's got their spin, and Al Jazeera doesn't fail to disappoint either. Eight people in the square may constitute a crowd for some people, but I think that is a little bit of a stretch.

And there you have. How the Wikileaks news did, and didn't make the news.

Namir Noor-Eldeen however, is still dead.

Project 903 Lun Missile Launcher Ekranoplane

Source: http://igor113.livejournal.com/51213.html

It's a plane! It's a boat! It's a tank! No, it's the Project 903 Lun Missile Launcher Ekranoplane!

in reference to:

"In 1989, after the tragic accident on nuclear submarine "Komsomolets" where 42 mariners died, the decision was made to re-equipment the second "Lun", being at that time under construction, into a search-and-rescue maritime ekranoplane "Spasatel". The second copy of "Lun" had 6 engines, instead of 8. A considerable part of the work had already been accomplished by the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union, followin which there was a drastic reduction of the budget of the Russian Navy."
- Lun Class Ekranoplane - Project 903 (view on Google Sidewiki)

The basement

Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata

Unstable intruder

Al-Qaeda, USA and Iraq