Snapped Shot

Please remember that some of us — hopefully most of us — are truly, truly sorry we have such wusses living in America, much less voting in our elections.

Seriously.

No, really. If you are still undecided, is there a better reason to vote for McCain than to see another explosion of pansies writing "I'm Sorry" on a notepad and then posting their picture for the world to see?



No, but I have pictorial evidence that at least 26,000 are...

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Rep John Culberson has been a mad-man in getting the word out that the Republicans are up in arms about Rep Pelosi leaving town before a vote on the drilling bill. Continue reading »

I've finally had a chance to sit down and ponder our regular enemy-embedded fun in a little bit more depth than usual:

The idea that the press exists to cover all aspects of a war isn't new. Reporters have a history of putting their lives on the line to cover the events on the ground as they happen. And as long as we've had photojournalists, we've had daring individuals who go out of their way to get the shot less taken. But there can be a fine line between aggressively documenting events as they happen -- and actively supporting one side in a conflict.

For the rest, including a brief look at the history of activist embeds, be sure to hop on over to BlackStar!

Ok, this post may not actually be photojournalism related, but its results speak volumes for exposing fraudulent photojournalism like what goes on in Pallywood and specifically, the al-Durah event that lead many Palestinians to riot and attack Israel out of anger.

From Scott at the Power Line blog comes the news:

...the French Court of Appeals has found in favor of Philippe Karsenty, overturning a lower court decision that Karsenty had libeled France 2 and its Jerusalem correspondent Charles Enderlin when he accused them of knowingly broadcasting a false report on the death of Muhammad al-Durah in the Gaza Strip in 2000. Professor Richard Landes has relentlessly sought to expose the al-Dura affair as a hoax.

If you don't know what Pallywood is or have a clue what is meant by the al-Durah affair, then head on over here and watch the movies and see the pics of how a stage is set up like a massive Hollywood backstage.

As Scott points out, you can read the full article summarizing the case's results here.

Irena Sendler, who saved thousand of children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, dies at age 98.

Irena Sendler, aged 98, the saviour of some 2500 Jewish children during the WWII, died in a Warsaw hospital on Monday morning. She was awarded numerous honors in recognition of her activities and was one of the nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

R.I.P.

I don't know much behind this, but a photograph of World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle immediately following his death in Okinawa has been released over the past weekend. BLACKFIVE has the detailed background, in the event that you're interested in learning more about this fascinating and truly patriotic man.

Mocking Mao—Michelle asks, Snapped Shot gladly answers. And so should you!

You know all of those inspirational portraits of Chairman Mao Zedong (the brutal dictator loving patron of China) that everyone knows him for? You know, the one you see all over the communist world, Berkeley, and your local outpost of academia? (Though I do repeat myself.)

Yeah, who would've guessed that a murderous, totalitarian thug such as Chairman Mao would've had all of those glowing portraits faked:

Genuine as a $3 Bill. Or better yet, a 10 yuan Mao!

The man responsible for our image of Mao Zedong never actually took a photo of the founder of the People's Republic of China. He worked in the dark room, where he retouched the State leader's photos to create the iconic images we are familiar with today.

Chen Shilin is not as famous as those photographers who took the shots, but his influence remains, from the portrait of Mao hanging in Tian'anmen Square, to his image on 100-yuan bills.

"I can tell you one thing I never told anyone else before," the 78-year-old Chen says in his three-room apartment in Beijing. "You know the poster of Chairman Mao in a white shirt standing in a field of wheat, with a straw hat? There was someone else in the original photo.

"It was Liu Shaoqi (then vice-president of China). I removed Liu's image and drew some wheat plants in his place so the picture could be made into millions of posters. Before this, the photo had been dumped among the discarded files."

The photo was taken in 1957 and was heavily used for propaganda purposes during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76).

What is it about megalomaniacal dictators that is so endearing to the Left, anyway? From where I'm sitting, it seems that every tinpot dictator that has an extra $50 to spend on a good airbrushing job is worshipped as deity in the pantheon of global Socialism—and while the men behind the regimes are always quite detrimental to the wellbeing of just about everyone around them, there is still no degree of acknowledgement from the vast plebocracy (if I may invent a term to suit my needs) of the Left as to how ruthless these dictators were.

Then again, when your entire idea of the world is that "Something" needs to be "changed" (generally defined as taking something away from "the rich," and giving it to "the deserving"—who then blow what was given to them on $50 strip shows, thus proving once again their complete inability to accumulate "wealth," that being the accepted definition of being "rich," after all), I guess it is easy enough to believe any stupid old thing.

Now if only I could place exactly where I've seen stuff like this before...

(Almost forgot: h/t Jack Russell, who likes to cram his name all together for some reason.)

Update: How could I have forgotten my own friend Ian's contribution to this topic?

The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating article today (h/t Digg) about a Pulitzer-winning photograph from the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.

Taken seven months after Islamic radicals overthrew the U.S.-backed Shah, the photo remains one of the most famous images of Iran. It is an icon of government terror, invoked in critiques of the regime from the 1979 poem "Screaming," to the 1986 music video "Speak To Me From My Land, Iran" to the 1997 book "Kurdistan." Davood and Davar Ghassemlouie, brothers who operate a photo shop in Los Angeles, say they have made tens of thousands of reprints for demonstrators, including 200 in late September when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited the U.S.

Be sure to read the whole story—it's quite fascinating!

I used to say that I love Libya for one reason alone—"Big Mo" Khadafi. Err, make that al-Gathafi. Now, I have another reason to love it—poorly proofed protest signs custom-made for Western photographers. Case in point:


Of course, it's not a new photo, but I'm betting that you haven't seen it before, either!