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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.'"
That's only proof if you actually know there's been a massacre there. Otherwise it can mean anything, including a forest fire.
Before fire retardants (which I doubt that a thatched hut would use), fires were a major problem in most of the world. E.g., take the Great Fire Of London, and England was a pretty advanced country at that time. Is that one some atrocity? Nope, it's just a fire that ran out of control, and a bit of inept management.
Or you could use the same technique on New Orleans. Just show some satellite pics from before and after the flood. Lookit all that devastation. Whoever did that atrocity was very thorough.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
4Z5TX
...there are all kinds of atrocities going on internationally and domestically (for you /.'ers here in the US) that you don't need more than a pair of eyes to see. How many times a day do people just blow off the homeless and starving people of their own country.
Yes there are problems like Gitmo, Darfar and Sudan. Hell there is most of a continent that is what I consider an international atrocity because of starvation, disease, and corruption.
What about all the homeless people here in the US, the overrun VA hospitals with deplorable conditions and the Katrina victims still waiting for FEMA--things we can see without Satellite Imagery?
Maybe we should handle those problems first before we spend the big bucks on the technology to look for more problems we can't afford? And for fscks sake, no, I'm not saying that any atrocities found with this tech are of any less importance than the ones found without it. Human suffering is human suffering--it all sucks. But that money AI used for the satellite images could have been feeding people in Africa and the US and elsewhere... ~sigh~
I guess I'm just not as excited about technology as I am about humanitarianism. I feel like this is getting ahead of ourselves.
~WBGG~ "And I'm so sad like a good book I can't put this Day Back a sorta fairytale with you" ~Tori Amos
Oh Christ, you condescending twatwaffle. Those are some interesting points about Western civilization, to be sure, but you really don't have the first clue about the Sudanese conflict, do you?
And I'd try to explain, but I rather doubt the capacity of an arrogant prick lacking the self-awareness to spout off the type of uninformed and borderline racist drivel we see above to benefit from any sort of instruction, let alone on a subject in which he clearly has no interest in learning.
Maybe so, but 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...
www.aleo.no
It's not because of the oil in darfur. It's not. There isn't enough oil. There is no stability and it's too hard to get oil out of darfur. It will take decades before the infrastructure is up to speed and by then oil will probably be a very very cheap liquid.
...) and Saudi Arabia are helping them. In short it would bring the reality of the war of civilizations, and the massacres that the other side commits in the spotlight
...
r fur-jihad-on-horseback.html
Why is this kept silent ? Because it's muslims carrying out jihad. Because it would bring up questions that have "unsatisfactory" answers :
1) muslims here know very well that it's mass-murder and that it's jihad, yet they're HELPING these people commit them. WHY ? (because this is islam : massacring anyone who thinks different)
2) it's the (muslim) government of the country that is carrying out the jihad. They do this in the name of allah. Iran (and Saddam, before
3) these are muslims, they're not like the american government. If we don't go there and kill a number of them, they won't stop. They won't accept arbitration, they won't accept peace forces. It's kill or be killed.
4) fair reporting of the darfur crisis would make it painfully obvious what islam is.
Quran 9:111 - all muslims fight and kill for allah, or they don't go to heaven
Quran 2:216 - all muslims must fight, even if they think it's stupid, because allah knows better
http://coalitionfordarfur.blogspot.com/2007/05/da
You see, you think they'd just randomly attack anyone (and sometimes they do that, too), but islam is organized.
Will you keep denying if I provide you with a statement from the Sudanese government that it is indeed a jihad ? They actually released an official statement on that you know. So, will you ?
guess again mate... there's plenty of reports of atrocities being carried out by US troops in Iraq - the funny thing is, the orders seem to be coming from the top.
Come back and say what you said when you're parents are dead from US bombs, your brothers are in Abu Graib, and your sister was raped and shot by US soldiers.
unless it's in Europe.
Germany? Genocide.
Serbia? Genocide.
Some village full of uncivilized savages? Nah, that's just them being normal.