BAGnewsNotes

The Zen Of Midgets

The Japan G-8 summit photos offer a stunningly incongruous portrait of politics and nature.

One way to read the group shot involves the miniscule leadership displayed by world leaders just at the point the environment and climate change has moved to the forefront of the world agenda.  To appreciate the larger tension in the photo, also consider that the leaders are actually sandwiched between the rock garden and Toyaka's massive Windsor hotel, this resort emblematic of the highest levels of consumption and wealth.  (And, also notice how all of the male leaders except one thought to wear black this day.)

Similar to the first image, it is ironic to the point of blasphemy to see "W" -- someone so profoundly out of touch and detached from any true rhythm -- in such a blissfully meditative setting.

(image 1: Jim Young/Retuers.  July 2008. Hokkaido Toyako Summit, Northern Japan.  (L to R) IEA head Nobuo Tanaka, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula Da Silva, South African President Thabo Mbeki, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, U.S. President George W. Bush, Chinese President Hu Jintao, Mexican President Felipe Calderon, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, World Bank President Robert Zoellick and OECD Secretary-General Jose Angel Gurria Trevino.  image 2: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images.)

Your Turn: Seeds Of Iwo Jima

Iraq misdirection play?
Cruel joke on New Orleans?
Time for sacrifice yet?
Have a little war with your nostalgia.
It's always about winning, isn't it.
Flag fatigue.
Green movement on Viagra.
Why does America always have to plant things full grown?
Still running interference for Bush-Cheney-Rove global war paradigm.

Your thoughts?

How to Win the War on Global Warming (TIME)

(photo-illustration: Arthur Hochstein.  photo: Joe Rosenthal/AP.  TIME cover: Apr. 28, 2008)

Grayed Out Mao

This shot -- from this morning's Reuters Editor's Choice -- seems a particularly eloquent visual commentary on how environmental crisis has begun to supersede (blanket?) other political concerns.  Weird twist, too, the photographer's name is Gray.

Reuters Editor's Choice (March 10, 2008)

(image: David Gray/Reuters. reuters.com. Caption: Pollution haze is seen behind a paramilitary policeman standing in Beijing's Tiananmen Square March 10, 2008.)

Gore's Climate Problems

How outrageous Gore should be visually called out for harshly pointing fingers in a pic that was widely  published on-line ...

... while Bush, the legislation killer, sits beside the fireplace, amidst the pine cones, under George  Washington (for the millionth time)  with this sh*t eating grin on his face (visual link),  while earning notoriety for his ability to deal with nobody, and get  away with it.

Mark Sobel, a long time reader who keeps me up on such things, offered these possible captions:

Uncle Al Wants You.

Still Shrill After All These Years.

Fat Man Wary of Heat Stays Out of Kitchen.

Yes, Antonin, You Have a Question?

There, That Burning Bush.

President Vetoes Second Measure to Expand Children’s Health Program
US Democrats compromise to get support for energy bill
Democrats bow to Bush spending limit Iraq War Funding Imminent,Timeline Absent
Bush threatens to veto anti-torture Bill

(image: Xinhua/AFP Photo.  December 12, 2007 via chinaview.cn)

Saving Planets Earth

Bush Outlines Proposal on Climate Change - link.

(image: Chris Greenberg/White House.  Washington. September 28, 2007.  whitehouse.gov)

If Climate Change Politics Keeps Up This Face, We're All Going To Burn

(click for full sense of some cheap  dynamics)

Props to ThinkProgress for observing how the U.S. media was completely steamrollered last week by the Administration's "non-shift" on climate change.  Now, regarding this morning's G-8 preview, could someone please send a search party to LA Times H.Q. to find some kind of backbone?

Bush seeks to mediate on climate change
Ahead of G-8 summit, he says U.S. can be a bridge between states who want action now and nations that need persuading.

... I mean, did Karl himself write this headline and subhead?

What was more perplexing, however, was the lead-off image accompanying the lead-off G-8 piece at today's NYT.  If the headline ("At Group of 8 Meeting, Bush Rebuffs Germany on Cutting Emissions") hews closer to reality, what's going on with that picture?

Fortunately, we run into one of those cases where the article speaks directly to the pic.  Here's the clip:

The theme of the meeting is “growth and responsibility in the global economy,” but by Wednesday, it was apparent that the biggest rift will revolve around climate change.

After lunch with Mr. Bush, Mrs. Merkel seemed to concede — without explicitly saying so — that her plan was off the table.

“There are a few areas here and there we will continue to work on,” she said, standing side by side with the president outside an elegant white castle on the grounds of the Kempinski Grand Hotel. When Mr. Bush turned to her and said he has “a strong desire to work with you” on the issue, the chancellor pursed her lips.

Say what?

Do you see any protest, resistance or even reservation here?  What I read, and it's essentially the same damn gesture the submissive media continues to signal to the suave and charming natural successor to Ronald Reagan Bush, is:

Sure honey, whatever you want."

(image: Jim Young/Reuters.  Rostock, Germany, June 6, 2007.  nytimes.com.  caption:  President Bush with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday in the German town of Heiligendamm, at the start of the Group of 8 meeting)

Looking For Cover As Warming-Mania Sprouts

         

Well, shoot.  I was just thinking about the season's hot new (spin) color.  (As The Economist alleges: These days businesspeople are falling over each other to prove their greenness.)

(credits:  The Rob Esmay cartoon is from the May 14, 2007 issue of The New Yorker.  The Economist cover, June 2nd 2007, is the latest. Why they can't give a photo or photo-illustration credit, as good as their stuff is, I can't tell you.)

Will Ferrell Shows Bush The Greenhouse

Nobody objectifies GWB better than WF.

And if you just have to see how pathetically close the Ferrell piece compares to the real thing, check out this AP video of Bush's  bumbling, sight-read, so-called "green awakening" yesterday.

(video: youtube via TBS comedy special "Earth to America")

Al's Big Room, Nancy's Glacier, And All That Green Cred

(Most definitely, click for full size)

(Also expands)

Yeah, Gore is happening right now, and I'm interested in your take on Steve Pyke's photo.  I think it's a really interesting combo publicity shot/ character study.

What I'm particularly interested in, however, is the growing buzz around eco-politics.  As usual, I'm thinking about "the look of it" with the attendant rewards and pitfalls.

With Gore's high visibility right now, and the perception he's way down the road on the issue, I'm struggling with the visuals of Pelosi's weekend mission to Greenland. Especially with Gore in mind, Pelosi's snaps make it seem like she's a little desperate (to catch up? to build up her green cred?).  (As further evidence of the strain on the PR hand, check out this shot on Nancy's blog with her husband and Anderson Cooper.)

I'm also wondering about the whole issue of "visual politics" when we're talking green.  My sense is that ecology, as ideological subject matter, somehow pulls for a more genuineness.  Perhaps that's why Rove placed Bush in a policy forum yesterday for his nominal jump onto the global warming bandwagon instead of in front of a polar bear.

(Case in point, that's why I posted Will Ferrell's piece on "Green Dubya" -- with a link to Bush's particularly lame speech yesterday -- just above.)

(h/t: David, Jamie. image 1: Steve Pyke for TIME. May 2007. time.com. Photo is part of a recent TIME slideshow, Al Gore's American Life and accompanies the article,  The Last Temptation of Al Gore.  image 2: unattributed.  speaker.gov/blog/)

Post-GWOT Recruiting Poster?

Did you catch this image in the NYT Mag piece on actor and eco-activist Ed Begley?

The most likely gestural explanation is that Ed is shielding the sun.  The pose, along with the first paragraph reference to Begley having been a boy scout, however, seems to pull for more timely symbolism.

As another building block in the shift to a post-GWOT era, the "get natural" portrait might be read as part of a larger patriotic make-over.  With BushCo. in its last moral throes, perhaps the next war is going to be a green one.

(image:  Jeff Minton.  published. May 20, 2007. Los Angeles. nytimes.com)