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From the NY Times:

Hussein has been held by the U.S. military since being detained by Marines on April 12, 2006, in Ramadi, about 70 miles west of Baghdad. Throughout his incarceration, he has maintained he is innocent and was only doing the work of a professional news photographer in a war zone. […]

The AP said a review of Hussein’s work and contacts also found no evidence of any activities beyond the normal role of a news photographer. Hussein was a member of an AP team that won a Pulitzer Prize for photography in 2005, and his detention has drawn protests from rights groups and press freedom advocates such as the Committee to Protect Journalists.

”The Amnesty Committee took only a few days to determine what we have been saying for two years. Bilal Hussein must be freed immediately,” said Curley, the AP’s president.

”The U.S. military has said the Iraqi process should be allowed to work. It has, and the military must finally do the right thing by ending its detention of a journalist who did nothing more than his job. Bilal’s imprisonment stands as a sad black mark on American values of justice and fairness,” Curley added.

It’s a great thing when a wrongly imprisoned man is set free. Of course he hasn’t been freed yet, he’s just been granted amnesty. The US is still holding him. But it’s a great thing he’s been exonerated. The question this raises, of course, is what has become of America that a prisoner we hold for 2 years can be rightly cleared of wrong-doing in a fraction the time from the courts of a barely functioning government.

Have you seen a truly awful piece of Photoshop work? Clumsy manipulation, senseless comping, lazy cloning and thoughtless retouching are our bread and butter. And yes, deep down, we love Photoshop.

Photoshop Disasters seems like a great repository of terrible Photoshop work. I love it, especially since many of the images are the result of terrible and obvious visual mistakes executed with reasonable Photoshop talent. To me, that’s the real definition of a Photoshop Disaster.

Flickr just launched a micro-video service last night, allowing users to post short, small video alongside their photos. Their focus is presumably on short notes that would naturally fit the consumption patterns of the photo-surfing world.

It’s a smart strategic move to pick a niche video market, since there’s little point in trying to recreate Youtube. All credit to them for picking a smart market to focus on.

However, less smart was their decision to completely rip the interface Vimeo has used for their videos. Sure there’s so little to the interface, but that’s part of the genius of Vimeo’s work. There is surely more than one way to skin a video player, and Flickr has failed mightily in taking such a cheap route (or perhaps in so poorly vetting the solution their executives accepted).

People have long said Vimeo was Flickr for videos, presumably because both recognized the importance of user interface and ease-of-use. In fact, that comparison should have been considered an honor. But now we can say that Flickr is like Vimeo for videos, which should be noted is far less complementary.

It’s wonderful when small innovations make big differences, like the ability to post via email for instance.

From the NY Times:

What was supposed to be a majestic procession for the Olympic torch through the French capital turned into chaos Monday as thousands of people from around Europe, many with Tibetan flags, massed to protest the passage of the flame. The torch went out several times, and police officers had to put it onto a bus to try to protect it as demonstrators swarmed the security detail. In the end, organizers canceled the final leg of the procession.

And from Time:

“The Chinese have made sure that for a few hours, Paris will look like Tiananmen Square,” noted Robert Menard, head of the Reporters Without Frontiers group, before the Paris protests he helped organize. “I think it’s shameful.”

And back to the Times:

A Chinese spokesman, Qu Yingpu, said Chinese officials were grateful to the police “for their efforts to keep order.” He added: “This is not the right time, the right platform, for any people to voice their political views.”

I think the belief that a public space is an inappropriate platform for public expression is precisely the issue so many people are taking with China right now. I can’t think of a more appropriate time to protest than during China’s crackdown on Tibet, leading up to the first Olympics held in a non-democratic society.

Street art, Munich by jacobssalon at Flickr

I can’t believe Chris Dodd, the senator from Connecticut, is in this. Genius.

Hulu gets a few more passes before the intro animation and intolerable 15-second pre-roll ad drive me back to youtube for posting these clips.

Update: NBC provides a commercial free embed. Sweet.

81% of Americans believe we’re going in the wrong direction. It’s bad that we’re so lost, but great that nearly everyone recognizes that fact.

Part of the vintage ads contest at worth 1000.

Yesterday, the memos written by John Yoo that became the executive branch’s rationalization for torture, among other things, became public. The 81 page brief provides the rationale the executive branch employed (provided by a junior lawyer at the justice department) for unsettling scores of years of established law and engaging in torture. Commentary abounds.

Vanity Fair has written a breath-taking account of America’s role in torture. In 2006 Bush signed the Military Commissions Act, protecting the leaders involved from any future criminal prosecution. The VF article concludes with the consideration that blanket immunity exposes these government leaders and lawyers to war crimes prosecution internationally. One of the stipulations for international prosecution of war crimes is that the country of residence of the alleged law-breakers would not prosecute on their own. So by providing absolution from American prosecution, Rumsfeld, Bush, Yoo, etc are now exposed to prosecution by the world.

I can’t say whether the American government would ever allow high ranking administration officials to be prosecuted for such heinous acts. Then again, under Nixon’s presidency high ranking officials were prosecuted for Whitewater, his vice president resigned amidst bribery and tax evasion charges and ultimately Nixon himself stepped down.

At present no ranking officials have been held accountable for any actions ranging from gross intelligence failures leading up to 9/11, the complete mischaracterization of Iraq’s involvement to generate a war, or the American sponsored torture of prisoners.

I almost long for the days of our more moral corruption.

WHY IS THE BOOK RELEVANT?
37signals used the unconventional Getting Real process to launch five successful web-based applications (Basecamp, Campfire, Backpack, Writeboard, Ta-da List), and Ruby on Rails, an open-source web application framework, in just two years with no funding, no debt, and only 7 people.

It’s easy for me to forget how staggering the success of 37signals has been. Do yourself a favor and check out Getting Real, now available for free online. Regardless of whether you’re building a web app or not, the principles are useful in virtually any context (which is why they’re now shopping for a publisher to turn out a more generic business book version).

(The Elephant in the Room photo courtesy BitBoy on Flickr)