This tribute by Alan Watts to Carl Jung shortly after his death focuses on a specific and core aspect of Jung’s teaching of the integration of opposites and the ‘shadow’.
Please go to: Brent DVD's
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This photo was lit by a strobe in a 27" Westcott soft-box held by Neisha's boyfriend (the soft-box was fixed to a paint pole and held directly in front of Neisha to get it high enough to cast a butterfly lighting pattern on her face with back lighting through smoke provided by a speed light, camera right, held by a friend who was smoking a nasty cigar making the smoke.
Neisha did a great job holding this very heavy Tommy Gun inside the tunnel, main light, camera left, provided by a Quadra Strobe inside a 60" Westcott Umbrella. Again, Neisha's boyfriend did a great job holding the paint pole, with the fixed 26" Westcott soft-box and speed light, way above and behind Neisha to backlight her wig and shoulder.
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Check out the link to learn more about his new music (Space Challenger) as well as his eclectic background.
https://www.osfashland.org/artist-biographies/green-show/meidoko.aspx
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Senate Torture Report Faults C.I.A. for Brutality and Deceit
By MARK MAZZETTIDEC. 9, 2014
WASHINGTON — A scathing report released by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday found that the Central Intelligence Agency routinely misled the White House and Congress about the information it obtained from the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects, and that its methods were more brutal than the C.I.A. acknowledged either to Bush administration officials or to the public.
The long-delayed report, which took five years to produce and is based on more than six million internal agency documents, is a sweeping indictment of the C.I.A.'s operation and oversight of a program carried out by agency officials and contractors in secret prisons around the world in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It also provides a macabre accounting of some of the grisliest techniques that the C.I.A. used to torture and imprison terrorism suspects.
The report from the Senate Intelligence Committee rebuts claims that torture yielded critical information that helped disrupt terrorist plots and capture terrorist leaders.Discord at C.I.A. Over Interrogation ProgramDEC. 9, 2014
George J. Tenet, center, the director of the C.I.A., in March 2003 with President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.C.I.A. Kept Bush Ill Informed on Interrogation Tactics, Torture Report Says detainees were deprived of sleep for as long as a week, and were sometimes told that they would be killed while in American custody. With the approval of the C.I.A.'s medical staff, some C.I.A. prisoners were subjected to medically unnecessary “rectal feeding” or “rectal hydration” — a technique that the C.I.A.'s chief of interrogations described as a way to exert “total control over the detainee.” C.I.A. medical staff members described the waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, as a “series of near drownings.”
The report also suggests that more prisoners were subjected to waterboarding than the three the C.I.A. has acknowledged in the past. The committee obtained a photograph of a waterboard surrounded by buckets of water at the prison in Afghanistan commonly known as the Salt Pit — a facility where the C.I.A. had claimed that waterboarding was never used. One clandestine officer described the prison as a “dungeon,” and another said that some prisoners there “literally looked like a dog that had been kenneled.”
During his administration, President George W. Bush repeatedly said that the detention and interrogation program, which President Obama dismantled when he succeeded him, was humane and legal. The intelligence gleaned during interrogations, he said, was instrumental both in thwarting terrorism plots and in capturing senior figures of Al Qaeda.
Mr. Bush, former Vice President Dick Cheney and a number of former C.I.A. officials have said more recently that the program was essential for ultimately finding Osama bin Laden, who was killed by members of the Navy SEALs in May 2011 in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
The Intelligence Committee’s report tries to refute each of these claims, using the C.I.A.'s internal records to present 20 case studies that bolster its conclusion that the most extreme interrogation methods played no role in disrupting terrorism plots, capturing terrorist leaders — even finding Bin Laden.
The report said that senior officials — including the former C.I.A. directors George J. Tenet, Porter J. Goss and Michael V. Hayden — repeatedly inflated the value of the program in secret briefings both at the White House and on Capitol Hill, and in public speeches.
Moments after the report was released Tuesday morning, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, gave a lengthy speech on the Senate floor describing the tumultuous history of her investigation and calling the C.I.A. interrogation program “a stain on our values and our history.”
“Releasing this report is an important step to restoring our values and showing the world that we are a just society,” she said.
As Ms. Feinstein was preparing to speak, the C.I.A. director, John O. Brennan, issued a response that both acknowledged mistakes in the detention and interrogation program and angrily challenged some of the findings of the Senate report as an “incomplete and selective picture of what occurred.”
The Senate report describes the waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as a "series of near drownings." Credit Associated Press
“As an agency, we have learned from these mistakes, which is why my predecessors and I have implemented various remedial measures over the years to address institutional deficiencies,” Mr. Brennan said.
But despite the mistakes, he added, “the record does not support the study’s inference that the agency systematically and intentionally misled each of these audiences on the effectiveness of the program.”
The entire report is more than 6,000 pages long, but the committee voted in April to declassify only its 524-page executive summary and a rebuttal by Republican members of the committee. The investigation was conducted by staff members working for Democratic senators on the committee.
The torture of prisoners at times was so extreme that some C.I.A. personnel tried to put a halt to the techniques, but were told by senior agency officials to continue the interrogation sessions.
The Senate report quotes a series of August 2002 cables from a C.I.A. facility in Thailand, where the agency’s first prisoner was held. Within days of the Justice Department’s approval to begin waterboarding the prisoner, Abu Zubaydah, the sessions became so extreme that some C.I.A. officers were “to the point of tears and choking up,” and several said they would elect to be transferred out of the facility if the brutal interrogations continued.
During one waterboarding session, Abu Zubaydah became “completely unresponsive with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth.” The interrogations lasted for weeks, and some C.I.A. officers began sending messages to the agency’s headquarters in Virginia questioning the utility — and the legality — of what they were doing. But such questions were rejected.
“Strongly urge that any speculative language as to the legality of given activities or, more precisely, judgment calls as to their legality vis-à-vis operational guidelines for this activity agreed upon and vetted at the most senior levels of the agency, be refrained from in written traffic (email or cable traffic),” wrote Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the head of the C.I.A.'s Counterterrorism Center.
“Such language is not helpful.”
The Senate report found that the detention and interrogation of Mr. Zubaydah and dozens of other prisoners were ineffective in giving the government “unique” intelligence information that the C.I.A. or other intelligence agencies could not get from other means.
The report also said that the C.I.A.'s leadership for years gave false information about the total number of prisoners held by the C.I.A., saying there had been 98 prisoners when C.I.A. records showed that 119 men had been held. In late 2008, according to one internal email, a C.I.A. official giving a briefing expressed concern about the discrepancy and was told by Mr. Hayden, then the agency’s director, “to keep the number at 98” and not to count any additional detainees.
“These included an ‘intellectually challenged’ man whose C.I.A. detention was used solely as leverage to get a family member to provide information, two individuals who were intelligence sources for foreign liaison services and were former C.I.A. sources, and two individuals whom the C.I.A. assessed to be connected to Al Qaeda based solely on information fabricated by a C.I.A. detainee subjected to the C.I.A.'s enhanced interrogation techniques,” the report said.
Many Republicans have said that the report is an attempt to smear both the C.I.A. and the Bush White House, and that the report cherry-picked information to support a claim that the C.I.A.'s detention program yielded no valuable information. Former C.I.A. officials have already begun a vigorous public campaign to dispute the report’s findings.
In its response to the Senate report, the C.I.A. said that to accept the Intelligence Committee’s conclusions, “there would have had to have been a yearslong conspiracy among C.I.A. leaders at all levels, supported by a large number of analysts and other line officers.
The battle over the report’s conclusions has been waged behind closed doors for years, and provided the backdrop to the more recent fight over the C.I.A.'s penetration of a computer network used by committee staff members working on the investigation. C.I.A. officers came to suspect that the staff members had improperly obtained an internal agency review of the detention program over the course of their investigation, and the officers broke into the network that had been designated for the committee’s use.
Most of the detention program’s architects have left the C.I.A., but their legacy endures inside the agency. The chief of the agency’s Counterterrorism Center said during a meeting with Mr. Brennan, the current C.I.A. director, in April that more than 200 people working for him had at one point participated in the program.
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, commended the release of the Senate torture report, saying “the truth is sometimes a hard pill to swallow,” but the American people are “entitled” to it. Video by Associated Press on Publish Date December 9, 2014.
According to the Senate report, even before the agency captured its first prisoner, C.I.A. lawyers began thinking about how to get approval for interrogation methods that might normally be considered torture. Such methods might gain wider approval, the lawyers figured, if they were proved to have saved lives.
“A policy decision must be made with regard to U.S. use of torture,” C.I.A. lawyers wrote in November 2001, in a previously undisclosed memo titled “Hostile Interrogations: Legal Considerations for C.I.A. Officers.”
The lawyers argued that “states may be very unwilling to call the U.S. to task for torture when it resulted in saving thousands of lives.”
The Intelligence Committee report describes repeated efforts by the C.I.A. to make that case, even when the facts did not support it. For example, the C.I.A. helped edit a speech by Mr. Bush in 2006 to make it seem as if key intelligence was obtained through the most brutal interrogation tactics, even when C.I.A. records suggested otherwise.
In 2002, the C.I.A. took custody of Abu Zubaydah, who was brought to Thailand. There, two C.I.A. contractors named James E. Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were in charge of the interrogation sessions, using methods that had been authorized by Justice Department lawyers. The two contractors, both psychologists, are identified in the Senate report under the pseudonyms Grayson Swigert and Hammond Dunbar.
The program expanded, with dozens of detainees taken to secret prisons in Poland, Romania, Lithuania and other countries. In September 2006, Mr. Bush ordered all of the detainees in C.I.A. custody to be transferred to the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and after that the C.I.A. held a small number of detainees in secret at a different facility for several months at a time — before they were also moved to Guantánamo Bay.
Mr. Obama spoke expansively about the Senate report in August, saying that any “fair minded” person would believe that some of the methods that the C.I.A. used against prisoners amounted to torture. He said he hoped that the report reminded people that the “character of our country has to be measured in part not by what we do when things are easy but what we do when things are hard.”
At the same time, Mr. Obama said that he understood the pressure that the C.I.A. was under after the Sept. 11 attacks, and that “it is important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had.”
Taken in its entirety, the report is a portrait of a spy agency that was wholly unprepared for its new mission as jailers and interrogators — but that embraced its assignment with vigor. The report chronicles millions of dollars in secret payments between 2002 and 2004 from the C.I.A. to foreign officials, aimed at getting other governments to agree to host secret prisons.
Cables from C.I.A. headquarters to field offices said that overseas officers should put together “wish lists” speculating about what foreign governments might want in exchange for bringing C.I.A. prisoners onto their soil.
As one 2003 cable put it, “Think big.”
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It is my great joy to announce the arrival of my son, Leo Alexander, a healthy baby boy weighing in at 6 lbs 4 oz. and born at home on August 9th, 2014. Leo came remarkably on time, just a day after his due date (much to his mama's chagrin - she had banked on a late arrival, but instead was busy getting the house ready for the homebirth between contractions during labor!). All Hail to doula Bella and midwife Augustine Colebrook and team, who were incredible and held vigil throughout the labor. The birth was amazing and gave Leo's mama infinite respect for all mothers everywhere throughout time. Mama and Baby are doing well, and slowly coming (back) into the world from the realm of childbirth and newborn-ville where time is marked by the number of minutes napped or bites of food one can catch in between nursings, diaper changings, burpings, and the oh-so-delicate process of lulling Baby to sleep. Leo's twelve days old now, and Mama's finally figured out how to type one-handed while nursing in the dark long enough to write to you all!
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So my heart quickens whenever I see two or more horses together ... amen.
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Although heavily in the midst of editing through a ton of footage (approximately a Terra-byte of video) filmed this Spring of Brent Graef in action training others on how to be with their horses, in early Fall training video downloads will be available for rental or sale via Brent's new website (yes, I am designing that too, so please be patient with me). DVD's will also be for sale, but probably not until later in the Fall or early Winter.
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Barbara signed copies of her book, Ashland, Oregon (www.barbaratricarico.com) for guests and portions of the sales went to FOTAS. Serving wine was a wonderful wedding photographer and wine server, Ellen Ahearn, and dropping in for a visit was another great, local photographer, Mary Landberg, who is both a hospice provider and author as well. (Her new photography book focuses on the hands of people in hospice (http://www.hospiceportraits.com)
Of course, the entire event was taken over by Francesca & Josh (owners of BayBerry Inn) dog, Rocky, who loves people and loves to howl in tune.
And each person got an extra bonus -- their photo taken with stars of the current Two Gentleman of Verona playing now at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival here in Ashland. Anyone donating $10 per individual got their photos taken with Picasso, a former shelter dog, playing Crab along with one of the human stars, the wonderful K.T. Vogt playing Launce or the inimitable Sara, playing Speed.
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My good friend Tedi Tate, Director of Warhorse Alliance, had invited me to photograph while she conducted a session with one of the young men, Javier along with the executive director of Ranch of 2nd Chances, Mark Adams, and his wife, Kathy. The training was based on Egala (Equine Assisted Learning) principles, which I enjoy as I love to watch and photograph the interaction of humans and horses.
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Neil DeGrasse Tyson Said What He Thinks About Race Now That He's Made It, And Almost Nobody Noticed
To set the scene, the (poorly posed) question is referring to comments made by former Treasury Security and Harvard University President Lawrence Summers, who suggested that genetic differences could explain why there are fewer girls in science. Yup, he really was Treasury secretary and president of Harvard.
Neil deGrasse Tyson's answer is, um, out of this world. There, I said it. Let me have this one.
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The following photos were taken at the April 6th de-spooking clinic held in the Rogue Valley.
Ever wish you could take your horse through the mounted police academy? Bill Richey, former mounted police officer and POST (Police Officer Standards and Training) certified mounted police instructor, showed horse owners and firefighters last night at the Hope Firehouse in Allentown, NJ just how it's done.
“The class teaches how to take charge of your horse,” explained Richey. “Participants learn how to give the horse a reason to go forward.”
During the demonstration in front of firefighters and horse owners, a volunteer held her horse while Richey set off scary smoke bombs and created a line of flames using a can of gasoline. The horse was successfully lead through the smoke and flames.
Richey’s method implements his working knowledge of techniques used in police training. Richey was instrumental in creating the mounted units for the city of Duluth, also in Forsyth and Gilmer Counties (Georgia) training officers and horses. He also worked with the Atlanta Police Mounted Unit in preparation for the 1996 Olympics and was the chief instructor for Mobile Mounted Police Mardi Gras School.
His course, entitled “Rider Empowerment and Equine Confidence,” can be a one-part, two-part or three-part series depending upon how much particpants would like to get out of it. It covers areas of horse physiology and psychology, equitation techniques, mounted drill, mounted obstacles and mounted sensory.
Richey will be on hand in Monmouth County, New Jersey for two sessions this weekend, March 30 and 31 in Manalapan and again the weekend of May 11 and 12 in Freehold. Thoroughbreds, Arabs, Warmbloods, Quarter Horses and other breeds have all been successfully trained as police horses so all type of horses may attend. Riders may also choose to attend without a horse and audit the class.
For more information contact:
National Mounted Police Services, Inc.
275 Kings Point Rd
Kings Point, NY 11024
239-214-2062 or [email protected]
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I am a Nikon shooter but Bob shoots with a Canon and the principles are the same regardless of your camera.
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A few weeks ago, I did a studio shoot for the Non GMO efforts (Friends of Family Farmers) here in Jackson County, Oregon. I thought it might be illustrative for how studio lighting can be done without a lot of expensive high end equipment. I used strobes and various shaped soft boxes to shape the light ... and explain it all in this PDF: Studio Lighting Tutorial PDF
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If you want to keep GMO's out of our food supply, please vote YES on 15-119 this May or help support the effort at www.ourFamilyFarmsCoalition.org
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This is an ebook (32 pages) of photos: no words, including some of my favorites photos of the past year. At heart I am a minimalist and prefer for a photo to stand on its own. No music, few or no words, just let the image ignite the imagination. If you love horses, I believe you will enjoy.
Cornelius Matteo
In this 1983 interview with BBC, Adams revealed all of this about himself and more, including some truly profound photography advice:
-- Rebecca Bennett
Mules can be lightweight, medium weight, or even, when produced from draught horse mares, of moderately heavy weight. It has been claimed that mules are "more patient, sure-footed, hardy and long-lived than horses, and they are considered less obstinate, faster, and more intelligent than donkeys... Wikipedia
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As Herzog says, "In one second, entire lives are either wiped out or changed forever."
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I photographed local Ashland artist Ian Thirkell last month in my friend Barbara Tricarico's home made studio (I used several speeed-lights in two large diffusers): at one point I asked Ian to just sketch something so I could catch the artist in action.
When my landlord asked me to photograph him with his cats I knew this would be a challenge -- he's had photographs taken of him with his cats through the years. Always up for a challenge, I combined his love of cooking with his even greater love of his cats -- the result was that everyone got to wear a chef's hat.
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Always before a photo-shoot I question how I can make this time special and unique and I am driven back to Cartier-Bresson's words:
“There’s no new ideas in the world. There is only new arrangement of things. Everything is new, every minute is new. The world is being created every minute, and the world is falling to pieces every minute.” -- Cartier-Bresson
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being.
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Today, for the first time, I visited Table Rock, thanks to my new friends Barb and Ellen. We all enjoyed the beautiful weather and took a lot of photos of everything except wild flowers -- there were so few wild flowers blooming, unusual for this time of year.
I love portraits and could not stop myself from asking a young family if I could take their photos. They were happy to oblige -- I asked the mother to lift up her daughter high enough in order to block the sun behind them. This gave them a lot of light to rim their hair and profiles but also enough backlight to wrap around into their faces.
But for me, it was the love shared by mother and daughter that made this my favorite photo of the day.
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“Society, by automatically stressing all the collective qualities in its individual representatives, puts a premium on mediocrity, and everything settles down to vegetate in an easy, irresponsible way. Individuality will inevitably be driven to the wall. This process begins in school, continues at the University, and rules all departments in which the state has a hand. In a small social body, the individuality of its members is better safeguarded; and the greater is their relative freedom and the possibility of conscious responsibility…. The man of today, who resembles more or less the collective ideal, has made his heart into a den of murderers … the greatest infamy on the part of his group will not disturb him, so long as the majority of his fellows steadfastly believe in the exalted morality of their social organization…..”
C.G. Jung, “The Assimilation Of The Unconscious,” in “The Relations Between The Ego And The Unconscious,”
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For me, it all started with the opening night party where we had been given a room to photograph anyone at the party who was brave enough to step before my camera. Gwenne Wilcox did a great job enticing people to get their photos taken. But since I had been told there would be no more than 300 guests making happy that night in the main ball room of the Ashland Spring Hotel, I felt secure thinking I would only need to photograph maybe 50 people. After all, most people are suppose to be camera shy
Well, from start (7pm) to finish (10pm) I photographed well over 150 people and stayed up till 7am the next morning getting less than half of the photos edited and placed online so people could view and download them (It took me the next 4 days to finish editing all the photos, since i was busy with daily photo-shoots).
This has been such a unique experience for me -- and what a joy; indeed, it seemed as if the entire town of Ashland came out to see the films and to support the festival. What a pleasure to be a part of it all.
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"He lives so much with darkness and light -- he can find both sides in each person he photographs."
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November 2011
How To Fix A Wet Camera - The Ghetto Guide to Camera Repair in The Field
I was with a workshop student recently in Bangkok when we got stuck in the rain. The temptation to shoot in the rain was too great and she pulled out the camera now and then to snap a shot (the photos did come out quite nice!) Unfortunately her camera began to malfunction and stopped working completely after a couple of minutes. Needless to say she was quite upset, but I assured her that I had a solution that would most likely solve the problem. When I told her what we would do she looked at me as if I was completely mentally ill...until the next day when her camera was snapping away as if nothing had happened to it.
Here is a bit of information on what you can do if you camera gets wet (this is probably where i should say that I am no expert on this subject and I am sure it would always be best to have a professional look at your camera if it gets wet.) However, if you are in a remote spot and and you accept the risks of trying this, it just might get you out of a bind.
This can be applied to mobile phones and many other electronic items, not just cameras.
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The first thing to do is to pop the battery out as quickly as possible (if it will take you a while to get to the battery, for instance with a phone, then make sure the power is off...even if the camera is still working for moment, shut it off immediately.
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If you are in the US or Europe, or you want to pack this in your luggage, a desiccant (a substance that soaks up moisture and humidity around it) is the ideal substance for you. Here is one from B&H Photo that is something like what you can use/have around.
Now, if you don't have the luxury of having a nice photo shop nearby, which I rarely do, here is what has worked for me and my students:
1.) Buy a large bag of rice. In Bangkok we picked up a ten pound bag at Seven Eleven for a few dollars.
2.) Get a couple of extra bags from the shop when you buy it, or swipe a few garbage bags from your hotel when you get back.
3.) Stuff some toilette paper or plastic where the battery was so that rice does not get lodged in the camera.
4.) Take about a quarter of the rice out of the bag then stick your camera in the bag.
5.) Pour back the rice you took out on top of your camera and try to have it cover the entire camera.
6.) Close the bag up tightly so no outside air can get in. Wrap the other bags around it as well, just to be sure air wont get in.
7.) Wait at least 24 hours, take our your camera, de-rice it, pop in the battery and say a prayer.
Whatever water was in your camera should now be in the rice and assuming no circuits got fried, your camera should now work. And you can now give the bag of rice to a family in need and they will get some good meals out of it!
Warning: I am not an expert, so you assume all the risk if you try this. It is something that works for me but your results may vary. I claim no liability for the advice contained in post.
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My 3rd visit to China in the last 4 years -- never boring, a country, city and people in constant motion.
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