Brought to light

We're coming up on the fifth anniversary of the terrible events of Sept. 11, 2001.

Of course, there will be all kinds of commemorative events and programming -- although I am not quite sure that some of them aren't really about capitalizing on the Oliver Stone movie hype rather than honouring the dead.

(Incidentally CBC TV and radio has a number of specials, including the North American premiere of The Falling Man, a British documentary about the unforgettable Richard Drew image of the white-coated man plummeting to his death from the North Tower of the Word Trade Center.)

Anyway, the reason I bring this up now is this, a gallery of photos taken by Bill Biggart, a shooter for an alternative New York photo agency. His pictures of the destruction of the World Trade Center are probably better than any others'. He managed to walk right up to the burning buildings, through the police lines and firefighters, and get a unique angle on the disaster.

Of course, when it all came down, it came down on him.

While he didn't survive, his images have -- and they are a remarkable testament to his courage and talent.

The President went to Baghdad and all we got was this lousy MSM propaganda

Regarding George W. Bush's surprise trip to Iraq this week, Cathie from Canada cuts to the chase -- and to the quick.

Troop Strength

MICHELE McDONALD/AP PHOTO

Medical personnel tend to patients being transported inside a C17 military aircraft during the 10-hour flight  from Ramstein Air Base in Germany to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland earlier this week. ABC anchorman Robert Woodruff, Canadian cameraman Doug Vogt, injured in a roadside blast in Iraq last week,  were also on board.

I was almost blown off my kitchen chair this morning when I opened the Star and saw this photograph by the Boston Globe's Michele McDonald dominating page A3.

Used to illustrate a Kevin Cullen report on the American C-17 hospital aircraft that transported injured ABC anchor Bob Woodruff and his Canadian-born cameraman Doug Vogt back to the U.S., the photograph was stunning. Not because of its quality so much but also because, in all my readings about the Iraq war, its dead and wounded, I had never seen anything like this before.

Never -- and the invasion occurred nearly three years ago.

Of course, during this time the Bushies have kept a tight lid on all photographs of these less-than-pleasant reminders of the sacrifices that SOME young Americans are making. Goodness knows, we wouldn't want to upset others  back home. Voters, for example.  Or those who will never join up, and are secure in the knowledge that the biggest risk they face is playing the oil stocks on the NYSE.

Somewhere in my online perambulations this week I found an interesting observation that the terrible irony in Woodruff/Vogt's Iraq assignment was that they were there to bring back the good news from the war. Instead, they became a mightily publicized symbol of the bad news.

(I wish I could remember where I read that so I can give the writer proper credit.)

One more thing about Woodruff and Vogt: While I admire their guts and respect their professionalism -- you wouldn't catch me doing anything like they did -- I am totally dismayed over how much ink and airtime their injuries are getting versus the coverage that the thousands of military casualties receive.

U.S. newspapers should be dedicating a regular and prominent space every day to the dead and wounded. That's the least they can do to both honour their sacrifice and atone for helping make the Bushite case for the war in the first place.

Indeed, the troops themselves agree.

"Why do you think this is such a huge story?" wrote an officer stationed in Baqubah, Iraq, Monday via e-mail. "It's a bit stunning to us over here how absolutely dominant the story is on every network and front page. I mean, you'd think we lost the entire 1st Marine Division or something.

"There's a lot of grumbling from guys at all ranks about it. That's a really impolite and impolitic thing to say ... but it's what you would hear over here."

At least 2,242 troops have died in Iraq since the war's start, 1,753 of them killed in action. Another 16,000 have been injured, half of them seriously enough to require evacuation from the battlefield. According to the Pentagon, 60 percent of the deaths are the result of IEDs. IEDs have injured more than 9,200 troops, nine times more than gunshots.

"The point that is currently being made (is that) that press folks are more important than mere military folks," a senior military officer told UPI Tuesday.

What else can you expect in a celebrity-crazed culture? Woodruff's life is, by definition, worth more than that of others, at least in media terms. Sick. Sad. But true.

UPPITY DATE: On a somewhat related note, Washington police have apologized to Cindy Sheehan for arresting her and leading her away in handcuffs during Tuesday's State of the Union address. She was busted for supposedly breaking the law by wearing a t-shirt asking ''2245 Dead. How many more?'' One of the fallen in Iraq was her son Casey.

Needless to say, the right-wing blogosphere was all over it and her, saying that she shouldn't have violated the rules blah blah blah and much worse. They hate her, of course, because she makes them confront the terrible sacrifice that SOME Americans are making, while others play at war, by shooting off their mouths on cable TV or at their keyboards.

Anyway, few of these bloggers who were so quick to condemn Sheehan Tuesday night have retraced or corrected their mistakes. No wonder Glenn Greenwald asks

When does the "self-correcting" blogosphere start to self-correct?

Different strokes for different folks

Catching up with non-Election 2006 news:

You know all this drama about Google going bad and capitulating to the evil Chinese empire?

It took Google Inc. more than a year to make the decision that offering a censored version of its search services in China would be a lesser evil than boycotting business in the country altogether, according to Google Inc. Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Eric Schmidt.

“We concluded that although we weren’t wild about the restrictions, it was even worse to not try to serve those users at all,” Schmidt said. “We actually did an evil scale and decided not to serve at all was worse evil,” he said, referring to the company’s famous “don’t be evil” creed.

Puh-leeze. Not-so-goody-goody Google sold out long ago, as this Wired story of 2003 spells out.

The Google strategy appeals to every engineer's sense of The Way It Should Be. Build the best entry in the science fair. Do not tart it up. Do not make it more clever than it needs to be.

But a funny thing is happening on the way to Internet adulthood - Google's awkward teen years. The company's growth spurt has spawned a host of daunting questions that no data-retrieval system can easily answer. Should Google play ball with repressive foreign governments? Refuse to link users to "hate" sites? Punish marketers who artificially inflate site rankings? Fight the Church of Scientology's attempts to silence critics? And what to do about the cache, Google's archive of previously indexed pages? In April, the German national railroad threatened legal action to remove an obsolete site containing sabotage instructions.

Anyway, if you want to see the censored Google in action, click here for a Google image search on ''Tiananmen'' for us in the free world and here for the same search in China.

One more reason why I buy NOTHING with a "Made in China'' label.

Now if only I can bypass Google ...

Hat tip to Tom Popyk!

Sinking Feeling