MD4 Gallery

Jewish memorial__Berlin__2009

Palestinian woman__2009

Rachida Dati__France__2009

Athens demonstrator__2009

Iceland__Apr.10

Tehran__Jul.09

Monk's Saviour

Baroness Kathleen Annie Pannonica Rothschild de Koenigswarter, aka "Nica"


+Monk and the Baroness: An Interview with Documentarian Hannah Rothschild
One of the most effective things done in the film was drawing the parallels between Nica's and Monk's lives before they met.
I wanted to try and work out what it was that attracted them to each other when they met. We all meet lots of people on a daily basis, and yet we don't always connect [in a deep way] with these people. The two of them clearly got on very very well. I decided to celebrate the similarities rather than the differences.

+The Bebop Baroness
_____________________________________________

Two Tiers

Hurricane Katrina survivors_Aug. 05
(nationalgeographic.com)


My White Privilege by Naomi Klein
NOW Magazine - Dec. 06
(Excerpt)

I get sent to a ritzy hospital with no patients while poor New Orleans is left to die

I was in New Orleans during the flood with Avi Lewis, my husband, and my friend Andrew Stern. We were driving in a rental car, and we kept getting lost because all the streets were flooded. Andy started thinking he was in a video game, a post-apocalyptic environment, weaving the car around the debris. Then we realized it was five minutes to 6, and 6 o'clock was curfew.

We got into a collision. We spun out and drove right through the stoplight, which wasn't working because there was no electricity. We went through a wrought iron gate and landed in an independent coffee store, kitty-corner to a Starbucks. And someone said, "Did you want to hit the Starbucks?"

The other car was a cop car, and that's how we found out we were in the South. Andy was arrested, Avi was face down on the ground, being warned what happens when you hit a cop in the state of Louisiana.

I was strapped to a gurney in an ambulance, trying to convince the driver to please not take me to a hospital, because I'd been watching the news and seeing these images of what hospitals were like during the flood.

Charity Hospital had no electricity, and incredibly courageous health care workers were trying to keep their patients alive, watching helicopters airlift everybody but them. It's the only hospital that provides emergency services to the poor in New Orleans - or provided. They haven't reopened Charity Hospital, along with many public schools.

I'd seen the awful images and actually gone to one of these clinics where it was like Dante's Inferno, with elderly people falling out of wheelchairs and no one helping them. I was terrified about where they were going to take me.

So I was negotiating with the ambulance driver. I had a concussion and kept slipping in and out of consciousness. "Just drop me off at a corner - you know, I'll walk. No problem."

The next thing I knew, I was at, from what I could tell, a spa. Called the Ochsner Hospital, it's apparently quite a famous private hospital. That's where they decided to take us because we're white. I was in a private room in three minutes flat.

I was cared for by three nurses, a senior doctor and a medical intern. I have never in my life received such attentive care, nor have I seen anyone in my family get such attentive health care. This was in the middle of the largest natural and humanitarian disaster in American history.

The doctors were playing cards in the middle of this hospital, protected by an army of private security who were there, as they said, to keep the junkies out. I couldn't get out because it was past curfew, so after I got a few stitches I tried to interview the staff. I asked my intern, this young guy in his 20s, if he worked the hurricane, and he said, "No, thank god, I wasn't on duty. I actually live in the suburbs."
"Did you go to any of the shelters?" I wasn't trying to be a bitch, I just assumed that someone who'd just learned how to be a doctor would want to help.
He looked at me, confused. It actually hadn't even occurred to him to go to one of the shelters. Just as it hadn't occurred to any of the doctors and nurses in the hospital that, instead of staying in their fortress, dealing with three or four patients, they could be out there.

What we saw with Katrina was an apartheid state where the wealthy unite, where those with credit cards got into cars, drove and checked themselves into motels. This is a two-tier system. They had already accepted the idea that some lives are worth more. And once you do that in your health care system, you are mentally prepared to do that in a major disaster.

It's a heardening of hearts that's required on a daily basis to run a luxury hospital in a city like New Orleans. It's the same heardening of hearts that let people be abandoned on their rooftops by their country.

State Sanctioned Pedophilia

8-Year-Old Girl Not Old Enough to Divorce Husband, 58

A Saudi court has ruled that an 8-year-old girl who is married to a 58-year-old man cannot divorce her husband until she is older.
After the girl's father married her off for a £5,000 dowry, the girl's mother, who is separated from her husband, filed for divorce on behalf of her daughter. "The judge has dismissed the plea because she does not have the right to file such a case, and ordered that the plea should be filed by the girl herself when she reaches puberty," said lawyer Abdullah Jtili. Relatives say the father and husband have a verbal agreement that the marriage will not be consummated until the girl turns 18, and she still lives with her mother.

COMMENT: I'm glad she lives with mom, and it's oh-so-nice that dad and the husband have a verbal agreement, but I suspect when push-come-to-shove, if the hubby wants that marriage consummated, he'll do it, verbal agreement or no. This stinks. -NefariousNewt

8-Year-Old...

"She doesn't know yet that she has been married," lawyer Jtili said then of the girl who was about to begin her fourth year at primary school.
Saudi Court...

Dear friends, our lives are too dark for you to even imagine. Scores of young girls are too timid to deny the wishes of their parents and too often marry men who are of an advanced age to be grandfathers. Once legally bound, these young girls feel as though they have no choice but to do this man’s bidding. They leap to fulfil his every wish. In the dark of their bedrooms, they have sexual intercourse with men whom they fear! The thought of such pitiful lives lived in perpetual dread is too much to even imagine. The physical attacks women in Arabia endure are accompanied by mental abuse.

From an early age, female children come to realize that their lives pale in comparison with that of male children. This is a cruel existence, even if there is no physical abuse. To always feel that your status is undesirable creates a distressing sadness in our young women. If you ever have occasion to witness the behavior of an Arab women, most likely you will notice that they will respond in a bashful, hesitate manner. This is a direct result from their childhood lessons that their thoughts, dreams and wishes do not matter.

Even in my own family, a family that rules the land, there are women who are beaten and sexually assaulted by the men who are responsible for their well-being. This happens frequently, even though in my religion it is forbidden for a man to behave in the manner too many Saudi men believe is their God given right. Letter from a Saudi Princess

People Power (part 3)

Depth of Field

Featured: Samantha Appleton, documentary photographer

"If I could have any superpower," says Samantha Appleton, "I would be invisible." For Appleton, a 32-year-old photojournalist who has covered the war in Iraq off & on, this is not just an idle wish - it's a professional necessity. And in this, she has a distinct advantage over her male colleagues. When Appleton wants to disappear into the crowd, she dons an abaya, the long, black garment worn by women in Muslim countries. Most men ignore her; in conservative areas, they won't even make eye contact with her - a dream come true for a documentary photographer.

Though she's been at it for only seven years, Appleton's lush, visceral style has won her commissions from Time, The New Yorker, & The New York Times. She got her start in 2000 as an assistant to the acclaimed war photographer James Nachtwey, who cites her bravery in making "powerful, resonant photographs of issues that need to be in the public eye." But she soon began to generate her own stories, traveling alone to global hot spots, usually without a set assignment. Her big break came in April 2003, when she drove from Amman, Jordan, into Iraq just after the fall of Baghdad. At that point, most foreign journalists were exhausted & heading home, which left Appleton with a windfall of plum assignments that might otherwise have gone to more experienced photographers.

The pictures she shot that spring - & on five subsequent trips to Iraq - capture the brutality & chaos of war in swarming, off-kilter compositions packed with humanizing details. Although she's interested above all in documenting the effect of war on civilians, Appleton has also been embedded with U.S. military units. On these missions, there's tons of downtime. "Then all of a sudden," she says, "you're out on patrol & you spend 20 minutes terrified out of your mind."

At least since the 1930s, women have covered wars alongside men - Margaret Bourke-White & Lee Miller are renowned for their work in Europe during World War II - but war photography remains a chiefly male domain. "People always ask if there's a boys' club," says Appleton, "but I've never experienced it on the ground, not once." Men may still outnumber women on the front lines, but the common conception of war photography as a testosterone-fueled floating frat party is more fantasy than reality. "The thing you need in this job is a certain capacity for stress," she explains. "You either have it or you don't. And once you prove you're capable of doing the job, people want to work with you." Of course, it probably doesn't hurt that Appleton, a petite, striking brunette, grew up playing sports in rural Maine with her three brothers. "I'm used to being with groups of men," she confesses. "Nothing fazes me. Growing up with brothers, I've already seen the worst."

Depth of Field
Featured: Samantha Appleton
by Mia Fineman
Men's Vogue
May 07

People Power (part 4)

Queen of Green
Interview with Adria Vasil - Ecoholic columnist for NOW Magazine
(Excerpt)

As Adria Vasil reminisces about designing & selling sweatshop-free T-shirts, I'm thinking she might be the Martha Stewart of the eco set - chic, arty & rigorous.
She protests loudly, "Oh no, she's way too uptight. Don't categorize me that way, whatever you do."
Okay, then I'll categorize her as Canada's foremost expert on how to live your life, 24 hours a day, with complete environmental awareness. She does it without the hippie tinge thing that stereotypically accompanies that consciousness.

Her book, Ecoholic, takes the same name as her weekly column in NOW, which answers readers' questions with counsel on how to think about the issue & how to shop organically & locally to solve the problem. It makes eco living seem manageable, a major accomplishment when dealing with a vast set of issues that can be overwhelming.
Vasil says the key is to avoid thinking you can do everything at once.
"Let's face it. You can't achieve environmental purity unless you're Woody Harrelson & you have millions of dollars," she says.
Take things one issue at a time, she advises. Most people can't afford to overhaul their whole house at once, so if you're in the market for a new item, choose organic.
Not that it's always easy.
"The high-end items are a real problem. You can buy an eco-friendly couch made of latex in California, but then you have to ship it thousands of miles in a gas-guzzling truck. Believe it or not, Ikea is not a bad option. They don't use formaldehyde & stopped persistent fire retardants on their couches in 2002."

When NOW launched the Ecoholic column in 2004, even Vasil wasn't sure it would fly. Shortly after it debuted, she wrote an article proclaiming that environmental consciousness was dead, & a quick poll she conducted of activists in the field suggested they were prepared to say the same thing.
Nevertheless, Random House put out feelers a year later, suggesting there might be a book there. Nothing came of it at first.
"A sales guy told me there was no market," she says with a small smile.
But then the publisher came knocking again - loudly - when the world's collective consciousness seemed to turn on a dime.
More like millions of dollars, says Vasil.
"The first & most important factor was the rise in the price of oil in late 2004," she says. "When people have to pay, they'll consider change. I always applaud when the price of gas goes up, because people start making the connections.
"Then," she revs up again, "the tsunami happened, & Hurricane Katrina showed people what happens when storms get freaky. When whole cities are swallowed up in these situations, people start to believe that climate change is a problem."
There was also more science, she says, & it was growing more convincing. Polar bears starving in the Arctic & seals looking for an ice floe to birth their pups on - those images are powerful.

Though she insists that conservation is a money-saving strategy, she insists that people shouldn't be moved purely by financial factors.
"When people complain about the cost of organic food, for example, they have to be made aware that that is the real cost of food. Given what we put on our tables on a daily basis, food is ridiculously cheap in Canada.
"I'm always suspicious when someone promises cheap organics. When organic milk comes cheap in the U.S. you can be sure the cows are being rounded up & kept indoors - because that's the least expensive way of producing milk. Do we really want that?"

Adria Vasil was reading Noam Chomsky at 16 & that same year, she began volunteering at a women's shelter & getting active in the East Timor Alert Network.
She went into journalism because she was tired of sitting on the other side begging to get coverage for the issues that mattered to her, & came to NOW after graduating from Ryerson.
The Ecoholic column was the perfect fusion of her two major interests: corporate practice & the environment. When she began the project she was hurting for ideas, but NOW readers have flooded her inbox with questions, creating a backlog guaranteed to keep her busy for months.

But don't, whatever you do, consider her an eco ideal - she even has a bona fide eco vice: she loves travel, & takes those toxin-spewing planes.
"I really believe that seeing the planet helps drive our love for it & our passion to save it. I wouldn't be who I am without having had the experiences I've had camping through South America. Should we be flying twice weekly for business? No. Should we be flying to Montreal (from Toronto) for a vacation? No, but I still think a carefully chosen vacation - that is, not to a giant, all-inclusive resort that swallows the environment & culture around it - is not to be discounted entirely."
It's typical of Vasil's never-holier-than-anybody way of talking about the issue.
"Environmentalism can't be furthered by an elite club that knows the secret handshake & won't let you in if you're not doing the 150 different things you need to do to enter the club.
"I take a more welcoming approach."

Queen of Green: Interview with Adria Vasil
Conducted by Susan G. Cole
NOW Magazine
Apr.07

Fear of Fake Breasts

(Excerpt)

Until a man has made love to a woman with fake breasts, he cannot really comprehend their true horror.

For no matter how good they look, the spell is broken the moment they are touched by human hands. The real things manage to be both firm & soft, they feel undeniably human, they move, they are alive.
In comparison, counterfeit breasts feel as though they have been stolen from the morgue.

They (fake breasts) are not there to be fondled, kissed or felt, they are there to be admired, discussed, lusted after & photographed.

Why aren't there armies of thinking women protesting about the grotesquely booming trade in bogus breasts? Why don't women's magazines stop slavishly printing pictures of pumped-up stars with their pathetic plastic tits sticking out?
Is it because to really & truly know how rotten fake breasts are, you have to be a heterosexual man?

I can understand a woman wanting breast augmentation if she has a genetic defect or if she has had a mastectomy. But the overwhelming majority of operations are done for vanity.

They all (the incisions) hurt like hell.
I have never met a woman who did not find breast enlargement the most painful experience of their life.
But this initial pain is likely to be just the start of her problems.
Those silicon shells can break, leak or slip.
Breast sensitivity often goes out the window. The pain she feels after the op can endure for years - perhaps forever. And breast implants can make the detection of cancer far harder.

But last year in America alone, nearly 400,000 women had breast-enlargement surgery.

And speaking from the male perspective - sex with a woman wearing replicant breasts is no fun. That's the murderous irony - there's this mirage of perfection, this pert promise of ultimate pleasure, & the vision fades the moment you reach out to touch it.
Fake breasts are the cock-tease from hell.

There is an old Zen puzzle. If you have a sword & you first replace the handle, & then replace the blade - is it still the same sword? A woman can have so much work done that she is no longer the same woman.

Don't do it, girls. It should not take a man to tell you: learn to love yourself. Love what God gave you, no matter how much or how double-A little. Little can be fun. Little can be lovely.

Fake breasts look bad, feel bad & will one day make you feel bad.
If a woman wants to keep her health, her man & her self-respect, then she should always keep them real.

Fear of Fake Breasts
Tony Parsons
British GQ
Aug.08