Satellite Images Used to Document International Atrocities

wikkedwoman wrote with a link to a Washington Post story about the use of satellite imagery to detect atrocities around the world. The story details Amnesty International's efforts to identify areas in the world that may have been subject to man-made disasters. By comparing and contrasting imagery captured over time, researchers can produce hard evidence to present to a hard-to-please international community. "Tonight, [Amnesty Researcher Jeremy] Nelson begins his work by making a copy of the [older] shot in the right-hand screen and pasting it directly over the [newer] one on the left. Then he makes the top one nearly transparent. A river that cuts through the scene becomes a marker to help him line up the two. Now he can easily flip back and forth to look for changes. Sudanese huts tend to follow a similar pattern: a solid base ring with a steep, thatched roof. In the earlier image, they show up as small circles, with a slight shading to the dome, depending on the direction of the sun. Nelson draws a small, green circle slightly larger than the area of the average hut and makes several dozen copies of it ... When he finishes, he moves the 2007 shot to the top and begins the analysis again ... parts of this region were burned so thoroughly that there's nothing left but a large black scar. If you didn't know that huts were there before, you'd have no idea they were now gone. 'Whoever did this did a good job,' he says quietly. 'Thorough, at least.'"

Comments

Re:that's fascinating

[Anonymous Coward]

how can you justify that troops are being used in Irak instead of Darfur where they most likely would have, if not done the most good, they would have prevented the most bad from happening...

If we'd have sent troops to Darfur instead of Iraq then the leftists would be whining about the atrocities that were being committed against the poor, innocent, oppressed Janjaweed militias while completely ignoring that the Janjaweed militias had been systematically slaughtering thousands of people. The leftists would probably even find a way to blame the Janjaweed militias' victims for inciting the Janjaweed militias to slaughter them.

The bottom line is that no matter where the United States sends troops there are going to be leftists who rant and whine about it.

Re:that's fascinating

[moderatorrater]

Wow, what a beautiful rant; really, it didn't sound prepared at all.

What's annoying isn't that people think it's wrong, it's that people get modded "+5 Insightful" for making an off-topic, reactionary and crowd-pandering post on an article that's about government abuses much worse than what's happening with the US. What the US government is doing is bad, but it's not on the level of Darfur, so where's your outrage over the Sudanese government?

While we're at it, where's everyone's outrage over the complete lack of military reaction of Europe? Or do the same people who hate the US government seem to believe we can send diplomats to fix Sudan?

Re:Manipulation at its finest

[The_Wilschon]

Right. Because after all, everyone knows that the cause of one fire can't also cause another fire. For instance, when Oklahoma and Texas had all those summer grass fires a couple years ago, since there were actually multiple fires, they were definitely caused by somebody setting them deliberately.

Fact is, if conditions are right for a forest or grass fire to start spontaneously, they are typically so over a fairly large area, and typically a whole lot of fires will start by the time the conditions go back to normal again.

Even if villages were the only thing burned, that wouldn't be sufficient evidence for anyone who really thinks about it. Villages tend to change the landscape of their immediate vicinity some. If nothing else, people walking around compresses the ground, making it more difficult for most plants to grow. The botanic makeup of the area immediately around a village is usually slightly different than in unpopulated areas. Perhaps it is different in such a way that fires are more likely to start in the village area.

For instance, fewer plants means fewer roots in the soil, which usually means poorer quality soil, which usually means drier land. It is not at all inconceivable that drier land would lead to more fires, many of which might not spread to areas further from the village which have more plants, better soil, and therefore more water.