Wider Angle

Reccommended Reading

2007-07-17T09:22:00.000-07:00

I'm just scratching the surface of this article from The Nation about their interviews with American Iraq War veterans. These veterans are giving their souls to a war that is soulless. This is a look inside the war you won't see on television.

We are spending billions of dollars a week in Iraq, but I think the real price of this war cannot be measured. You can't put a price on the broken lives on both sides of this occupation.

2007-07-06T12:07:00.000-07:00

Israeli military says cameramen "legitimate targets," just for embedding themselves with Isreali military's enemies.

I doubt US policy is much different. Article from USA Today, 2005, describes a few early instances of US military targeting and killing journalists. Reporters Without Borders reports 191 journalists have been killed in Iraq since March 2003. These are overwhelmingly Iraqi journalists. RSF provides names and brief descriptions of the circumstances under which the journalists were killed.

On Feb. 13, 2006, RSF reported the US military detained two Iraqi journalists at Guantanamo Bay without charge.

The 2006 RSF Press Freedom Index ranked the US 53rd in the world for press freedom, nine places lower than in 2005.

Of course, no military these days would feel too compelled to protect journalists, especialy if they are waging a war of aggression. Fighting an aggressive war requires one side to dehumanize the other, and reporting on those "others" is a humanizing process. If too much complexity gets in the way of waging a war, the pro-war parties will have to make concessions about the humanity of the "others," or they will have to deny, lie, and stonewall to protect their own interests. Hence, a journalist covering the "other side" becomes the same as those others, therefore a legitimate target.

These are polarizing times we live in, people forget there are more than two sides to every story. War never was a clear-cut evil vs. good struggle, to describe it as such is to ignore the reality of the conflict. People fight wars, and people are complicated. That global militaries/militants are targeting journalists means no side wants the others' story to get out, probably meaning none of these conflicts are justifiable any more.

MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski shreds celeb gossip story on air, defies producers.

2007-06-29T09:01:00.000-07:00

This is a good sign. I agree with Ms. Brzezinski, a story about Paris Hilton should never be the lead story of a newscast. Every time you see a story about a celebrity behaving badly, it's not news, it's PR. It's fake and it's wasteful and it makes us all dumber for sitting through it. Especially when it comes to somebody as deplorable as Hilton. She can say she's turned over a new leaf, but the real story will be if she actually stops being selfish and starts doing something good with her wealth. Whether she does that or not remains to be seen...

Say ya to da Yeti, eh?

2007-06-28T07:28:00.000-07:00

My friend, Ben, believes in Bigfoot. So I had to tell him about a cnn.com brief I read about the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization's plan to search for the elusive creature in eastern Marquette County this July.

Ben has a lot of ideas about how to find the cryptozoological Holy Grail that is Sasquatch, which I won't go into here because the SPCA might have some problems with it. Suffice it to say, he went a little ape over the prospect of a Bigfoot search in his own state. (Yoopers might dispute whether we "trolls" are really part of their state) So I found a number he could call to contact the BFRO, so he can get out in the wilderness and live his dream of finding Bigfoot.

The BFRO does an extensive job cataloguing eyewitness reports of hairy bigfooted apes (other than yours truly). Apparently, Bigfoot or something like it has been spotted right here in Isabella County twice: Once in the fall of 1974 by six Boy Scouts on Rolland Road north of M-20, and the latest sighting in 1990 by a family in a car, in the area around Soaring Eagle Casino.

If Bigfoot still uses the lesser-tamed parts of Isabella County as his stomping grounds, his greatest fan is just a stone's throw away.

Newfangled moving pictures.

2007-06-18T20:28:00.001-07:00

Newspapers are fast adapting to the broadband multimedia world we inhabit, and the Sun is no exception. We recently acquired a little camcorder, so I spent the weekend learning how to shoot footage and edit. Behold, my first experiment with moving pictures: it's just a little home movie of my friends and I goofing off on a Sunday afternoon. More newsy stuff will surely follow.

Pond Life

2007-06-10T11:43:00.001-07:00

A big world fits into a small pond.

Xplicit dragonfly-on-dragonfly action.

I find the pond at Millpond Park endlessly interesting. Minnows and small bluegill shimmer under the water. There is a family of turtles that, if you approach slowly enough, you can sometimes see sunning on a partially submerged tree limb. I have also seen a heron there on a few occasions, perched far away from the bridges and trails. Muskrat that live along the river visit the pond sometimes... maybe they live near the pond but travel up and down the river. They are shy creatures, and flee from sight. Dragonflies skim the surface of the water and stop to rest on lilypads and tall waving grass and reeds. The largest dragonflies control the airpsace over the center of the pond and partrol in graceful arcs and they're startlingly large insects, but they are astoundingly graceful. The fertile smell of algae and stagnant water, the call of red-winged blackbirds.

Welcome to Wider Angle!

2007-05-25T12:39:00.000-07:00

Wider Angle is the blog of the Morning Sun photogs. Our goal here will be to provide content that doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the newsprint. Think of it as a slightly expanded view: a little more detail around the periphery, some extra bits and pieces of the stories we cover that are pared off in editing.

Certainly, we won't keep it serious all the time. I'm sure there will be posts to this blog that will be downright silly and frivolous. But, if I've learned anything about he internet, it is THE place for silly and frivolous content. So keep your eyes open for some of that to follow.

In fact, I'll share with you some of my favorite frivolous websites for this first post, feel free to share yours, too!

Sinfest Comics.
White Ninja Comics.
Fark.
BoingBoing.

...and, a couple not-so-frivolous blogs...

Informed Comment with Juan Cole.
BAG News Notes
This Modern World with Tom Tomorrow and friends.