Modesty Forbids

We have seen Iranians complaining that Western women's dress appearances are too rude for Iranian male religious sensibilities on a number of occasions, mostly around sports such as the Winter Olympics, and the World Cup. We have even seen them altering pictures that showed too much contact between an Iranian male, and the non Muslim widow of a family friend, when he offered the simple hand of comfort during her grieving.

However what I hadn't realised until recently, was that there is in fact apparently an entire industry in many arenas of the Iranian media for photo-shop experts, whose sole task is to carefully censor pictures of non Muslim women that have to be shown in the Iranian media, to make them look like Muslims ... or rather, to make them appear to conform to the dress codes of a Muslim woman.

Examples exposed by the press have ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous with the modest Michelle Obama getting the treatment .....

Mrs Obama Before and After the Censorship

Then there was the even more modest and matronly European Union foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton who also offended their dress sensibilities.

Catherine Ashton Before and After Press Censorship

Oh and in case you were wondering how they deal with these issues on TV .... well they either just pan away from shots of Western women (and even their own females in the case of coverage of the country's successful female volleyball team, with complaints over the "un-Islamic" clothes worn by women, in the crowd of a tournament held in Sardinia .... although this probably means the non-muslim women), or they simply blur them out .... Mrs Ashton gets the treatment again.

Mrs Ashton Blurred From History ....

I don't think I really have to add a comment to all of this abnormal behaviour ..... there are almost times when I actually feel sorry for them to live in such a world and with such a sad world view of half of the human race  .... but only almost.

Watch This Space

The Russian Orthodox leader Patriarch Kirill has been caught doing a 'no no' .... having his photo's airbrushed to hide the fact that he wears a $30,000 (£19,000) gold Breguet watch. Not the sort of item that a simple man of the cloth normally wears .... I doubt if the late Pope John Paul II's entire possessions throughout his entire lifetime came to much more than $30,000.

However times have changed, and the Russian Orthodox Patriarch is part of the establishment .... so maybe a $30,000 (£19,000) gold Breguet watch is part of the kit .... or maybe not, as he (or someone) tried to hide it. They were caught out by the fact that they forgot to clear the table reflection of the watch.

Russian Orthodox leader Patriarch Kirill - watch this space

They have now apologised for the doctored photo and, after a bit of 'toing and froing' have restored the proper photograph to archives. All I can say is that standards are slipping since Uncle Joe's day .....people were shot for this kind of cock up ...... first you see him.

 

Then you don't ....

Now that's how you do a cover up!!

Mammoth News

In one of those stories that any reader of this blog will know that I can't resist, there have been reports that a 'Woolly Mammoth' has been filmed in Siberia ..... and here's what's causing the stir

Siberian Mammoth 2012

Superficially this picture and the accompanying, but strangely short video (... less than 10 seconds long), appear to be proof positive that Mammoths survived in Siberia from the Pleistocene. But there are in fact several issues with this story that show it to be possibly not quite what it seems.

Billy The Kid Gets $2.3m

In his biggest ever score, 'Billy The Kid' finally made a big hit of $2.3m .... many times more than all the money he took by crime (which was probably only a few thousand dollars in total).

Sadly for him, this wasn't in his lifetime, and it was only when his likeness on a tintype photograph taken in 1879/80 at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, was sold at the specialist Brian Lebel's Annual Old West Show & Auction that such a large sum was realised.


Billy The Kidd 1879

 Better late than never, eh, Billy?

For the purposes of this blog I tidied up the picture, which in truth is actually rather tatty, but in case you want to see the original and the full story of the sale its on this link.

NB: That's not a 'gunman's stare', its a result of the magnesium powder (flash powder) used to light the subject when taking their pictures in those days.

Photo Editing .....

I have been reading XPD by thriller writer Len Deighton as my train book .... 

 

XPD Thriller By Len Deighton

 

..... the premise is that in June 1940, Hitler and Churchill met up near the Belgium border to discuss British surrender terms .... the Nazi papers which described the meeting are on the loose, and the British, Soviets, CIA and a German group are all after them for different reasons.