And that's the way it is, July 17th 2009

Goodbye Walter.

	Abulsme - Sat, 18 Jul 2009, 00:36:26 UTC - News
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Hermano Juancito

I promised in the podcast that I'd post a link to this right after I posted the podcast, but then I had to run to work so didn't get to it until now, many hours later. I should have actually posted it days ago, but I didn't. Such is life.

This link is to the blog of John Donaghy, a cousin of Brandy's. (Technically he is a "first cousin once removed" for those who like getting those things straight.) From his blog's profile: "I am a lay volunteer with the Catholic diocese of Santa Rosa de Copán, Honduras. I help in the rural parish of Dulce Nombre de María and serve as associate director of Caritas of the diocese."

He has been blogging recently about the situation there in Honduras.

The link to the blog: HermanoJuancito.

The beginning of a recent post:

Golpe de estado – day three
(John Donaghy, Hermano Juancito, 30 Jun 2009)

For a few minutes the quiet of the streets of Santa Rosa was broken by the shouts of people marching in support of the ousted president, Mel Zelaya. There were over 200 on foot followed by at least twenty cars with at least 100 people. They had blocked the highway near Santa Rosa since early this morning, joining with roadblocks in other parts of Honduras of people against the coup.

The mainstream press, mostly owned by the economic elite, largely downplayed these protests and claimed that they were controlled and guided by Venezuelans and Nicaraguans. However the well attended rallies in support of the coup in San Pedro Sula and the capital city of Tegucigalpa were well covered here.

...

I also sent the link to Andrew Sullivan last night, and he of course linked it before I did myself. Sullivan did get one thing wrong though (even though I mentioned it in my email to him), he is blogging from Honduras, but he is an American expat, not a Honduran.

	Abulsme - Wed, 1 Jul 2009, 02:04:41 UTC - News
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Slower Day

So last night I decided to actually sleep, and ended up having a nice long sleep in contrast to the one hour the night before. Since getting up in addition to normal morning routine things (Eggo's... yum!) I've spent time catching up on what all has happened in Iran since I went to sleep. Bottom line, a less eventful day than yesterday. There have been reports of some protests today, but mainly they stayed peaceful it seems. Is it petering out and winding down? Is this done? Or are people just taking a breath to prepare for more in the coming days? Who knows. We'll see how it plays out.

In the meantime, two Iran related items...

niacINsight posts this correspondance from someone in Iran describing their personal experience on Saturday:

A Day in the Life
(niacINsight, 21 Jun 2009)

...

Then at Towhid Square the scene changes drastically. The streets to Azadi are blocked. But this time, people don’t change their path. They fight for it. There’s a shower of stones. Tear gas. Fire. People jam the sidewalks. The battle scene is huge. We cannot see the limits but it extends to nearby street. My student is keener to go forward than I am. Her mother could persuade her to stay home for two days, but now allows her to go out on the most dangerous day. The people shout, ‘Down with the dictator’. The anti-riot police are also throwing stones. People don’t run back anymore. I grab a broken brick and throw. I’m amazed. I never thought I’d do it. I should practice. It was a very bad shot. I grab another one, the size of a pomegranate and keep it with me, hiding it behind my back. My feeling is a mixture of a university teacher and a hooligan.

...

Read the whole thing. As usual with these types of things, it is just a slice, not a way to understand the whole situation. But stories like this give a different human sort of view into what is going on.

Second, while I was driving around town yesterday, I was listening to the most recent episode of Dan Carlin's podcast Common Sense titled "The Persian Rapprochement". It was recorded BEFORE the events in Iran over the last week, but for the first part of this episode Dan talks a lot about Iran and the possibilities for change in Iran, and the potential American approaches to Iran. It was a good discussion, and in many ways as he was speaking, I thought how nicely some of what was being said foreshadowed and gave at least some insight into what is going on today. It is worth taking a little time and listening to it.

Anyway, I'm still tracking the various sources I've been tracking over the past few days in order to pay attention to what is happening in Iran. But it is already near midnight there, and I am just doing things a little more slowly than yesterday, and spending a bit more time doing other things. But I'm still watching. We'll see how things play out.

	Abulsme - Sun, 21 Jun 2009, 19:09:01 UTC - News
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A Thought on the Actual Election Results

It seems like the evidence is pretty strong (although not beyond any doubt) that the election results were tampered with to inflate the Ahmadinejad totals. It is however nowhere near as clear that Ahmadinejad didn't actually win. It may well be that even if the results hadn't been cooked, he would have still won, just by a much narrower margin. Or maybe he lost. My expectation at this point is that this is actually now a completely unknowable question. The relevant evidence that would be needed to decide such a thing is probably long gone.

At this point the events in Iran have moved beyond the just this particular election and the results thereof. Who will actually be Iran's President over the next few years... and who will be in charge in a broader sense, will be determined by many things... but who got the most votes last week is no longer one of those things.

	Abulsme - Sun, 21 Jun 2009, 08:47:57 UTC - News
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Being Careful

A note from a reader, responding to my previous post:

"Meanwhile, anybody who had remotely been paying attention online had, like I had, within the previous hour watched a vivid and explicit high resolution video of a teenage girl who had just been shot bleeding out and dying in her father's arms.

And yes, while technically speaking the video was not authenticated with a chain of custody and an exact knowledge of exactly when and where it came from and what the situation was surrounding it. But in addition to the video itself, there were multiple reports from people claiming to have witnessed that event from different perspectives.."

- believing everything you see leaves you open to be mislead. That video and the eye-witness accounts could be from anywhere. I agree that Iran could be in the midst of an almost Berlin Wall moment but truth must tell us this, not random internet downloads.

Our views of Iran will now shrink. Iran knows the eyes of the world are upon them and they will shut out the light. We need the truth. Your page looks for the truth. Please find it.

As I mentioned later in that same paragraph:

And yes, everybody knows the way in which anecdotal stories and pictures can show something that is not actually representative of the wider situation. Duh. That doesn't mean we have to be protected from them. Things don't need to be beyond any reasonable doubt to be reported.

My entire point here is that everybody KNOWS that initial reports of the sort you get when you are looking at "raw" stuff coming from tweets and blogs and youtube and the like is chaotic, without full context, and subject to massive grains of salt. And yes, it is easy to manipulate opinion if you can decide which of these things gets seen and which does not, in order to show a few of the world that helps your own cause and hurts your opponents. The responsible reader sifts through the things that come in, cross references between what is heard from different places, learns what sources to trust and which not to, etc. Some of this becomes clear almost immediately. In other cases it may be days, weeks, months, years... or never... before one truly sorts out things. And one will never truly *know* what happened in some sort of absolute way... even the people directly involved will never have that whole picture.

Would having it known that the video was taken by a particular person in a particular place in an authenticated way make it more trustworthy? Maybe. When this video first came out, was there any way to really know that it wasn't completely manufactured (unlikely) or that it wasn't actually old footage from some previous conflict in some different place, unrelated to the events of the day (more possible), or that what you saw was real, but the context was different and who committed the act was not who you would assume it to be, but was something else (maybe). If any of those things were true, evidence to that effect would probably surface before too long.

In the mean time though, you must interpret things with the information you have, and with a healthy use of Occam's Razor. Is it possible this wasn't what it seemed? Certainly. And there have definitely been reports of various things over the last week that have turned out to not be true, or to not be what they initially seemed to be. To even know this means that in relatively short order, evidence surfaced contradicting the original reports and convincing people of the original error. Some other things that have been coming out will probably also turn out to be false, but it may be a lot longer before that is known. But that is what you expect out of news coming out of a chaotic situation. You get a perception of "truth" that is fluid and changes and moves as more information surfaces, and as you interpret that information using more and more inputs and you hear what other people think about the same information and you hear and evaluate their arguments. That is normal and to be expected. And is a positive feature, not something to be avoided. You make the best judgements based on the information you have, when you have it at any given moment. When you get more information, your judgements and perceptions of reality may often change. And that is OK.

A media that does not believe that anything can be reported until it is "known" with almost metaphysical certainty, is not an information source worth paying attention to, at least for this kind of news in the short term. By the time things are in that state, the world has moved on and the information is perhaps useful for historical curiosity, but it is often no longer relevant in the moment. But the person paying attention to such chaotic sources does indeed have to be very aware of the nature of these reports and evaluate them accordingly, and be open and willing to adjust perceptions based on new information that comes in. For those who do not have the time or inclination to do so... not only shouldn't they not pay attention to these sorts of moment by moment first hand accounts, they should probably not even read a daily paper or a news weekly, they should wait a few years until some nice well researched histories come out on the topic. And even then, they shouldn't fool themselves into thinking that what they are seeing represents any sort of pure "truth". In all of these time scales you have the same difficulties, just to different degrees and manifested in different ways.

And not to mention that any reasonably intelligent person with some critical reasoning skills and the ability to do some of their own research could make judgements on the credibility of some of these sources at least as well as the crowd doing it (badly) on TV. The bias in the major media that something is more likely to be "true" if it comes from an official source, or from someone with a title, or from someone they know and therefore "trust" is just as much a narrow and partial view of what is going on than is looking at these other direct sources and evaluating them one by one based on partial information. And most likely just as likely to be proved "wrong" in the long run.

In the case of this particular girl, if there are significant doubts that it actually happened yesterday, that she was not actually on the periphery, shot most likely by basij militia, but possibly by other pro-regime elements, has not yet been disputed. Meanwhile more about who she was has surfaced... or, to add the appropriate caveats, unverified reports have surfaced with claims about who she was that may or may not bear out to be true as additional information becomes available in the future. But it seems... for the moment... that this was what it seemed it was.

Oh, and as for our views shrinking... it was already harder to get information out on Saturday than it was on previous days. It will probably be even harder Monday. But it will be very very difficult to shut off the information flow completely. And it may be too late. Even if all contact with the outside world were cut off, the events that have been put in motion may already be unstoppable.

Or it may be able to be stopped easily by cutting off communication and then cracking down even harder.

I was speaking to someone in person about this earlier tonight. They mentioned my post where I said: "I hope for something like the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. I fear that it will be more like Tiananmen in 1989." They thought that it was looking more like Tianamen and getting worse by the hour. My response... the situation sits on a knife's edge. It could still go either way. Every moment and every confrontation that happens, every decision made by the leaders and even by individual protestors and police officers, could push it over onto one side or another. The next hours and days will be critical.

[8:42 and 9:01 UTC - I made minor edits after posting to correct a couple of small errors on my part.]

	Abulsme - Sun, 21 Jun 2009, 07:41:43 UTC - News
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Saturday in Iran

It is now Sunday in Iran, having just passed midnight about 15 minutes ago as I start to write this post. So I thought after 8 hours of almost continuously reading Iran coverage, I'd post a few thoughts.

First of all, even here, from many thousands of miles away, the day has been an emotional roller coaster, with almost every 15 minutes bringing new developments that grab you and toss you between hope and fear and sadness and anger. I can't even imagine what it would be like to actually be present in the middle of such events.

Second, despite of, or perhaps even because of, the regime's attempts to squelch the dissent, the moment seems if anything to be gaining momentum. Now, I admit, the views into this we get are almost certainly biased toward the protesters, but it certainly seems that despite not being able to congregate in one big mass as planned, vibrant displays of dissent still happened all over Tehran, and there have been reports of similar activities in other cities. And the violence perpetrated against the originally peaceful protesters seem to have just made them angry, and steeled their resolve... and caused them to start fighting violence with violence. This is not over, and it is likely to get worse before it gets better.

Third, I did eventually turn on TV News when I saw a number of reports that there might actually be something to watch. Fox and CNN have both had wall to wall coverage all day long. (MSNBC is completely absent.) Now, the coverage is still pretty horrible compared to online sources... they suck... but they are at least trying, which is more than could be said last Saturday when this was starting to break.

One of the many ways in which the coverage has been subpar has been the extreme reluctance to say anything definitive. As an example, there was a period of time where the anchors were over and over describing the techniques being employed against the demonstrators and saying things along the lines of how the regime was being fairly restrained, using non-lethal techniques, etc, although there were "some unconfirmed reports" that there may have been some use of gunfire.

Meanwhile, anybody who had remotely been paying attention online had, like I had, within the previous hour watched a vivid and explicit high resolution video of a teenage girl who had just been shot bleeding out and dying in her father's arms.

And yes, while technically speaking the video was not authenticated with a chain of custody and an exact knowledge of exactly when and where it came from and what the situation was surrounding it. But in addition to the video itself, there were multiple reports from people claiming to have witnessed that event from different perspectives. Can we dispense with the hedging and refusing to state plainly what is almost definitely happening? Sure, in some cases things will turn out to have been wrong in retrospect, but so be it. I don't care that you can't confirm it directly through a reporter talking to a known source that they trust. Screw that. There are other ways to know things. (And yes, everybody knows the way in which anecdotal stories and pictures can show something that is not actually representative of the wider situation. Duh. That doesn't mean we have to be protected from them.) Things don't need to be beyond any reasonable doubt to be reported. Say what it seems pretty clear is happening. Clean up the inaccuracies later.

Also, please, please... especially if you are going to put thousands of caveats on any of the thousands of direct reports from the scene... don't in the same breath accept at face value and report as fact things being said by the Iranian government controlled television station. I mean, really?

They are trying though. And I note although I did not see it, I have read reports that CNN actually aired the video of that girl dying at least once unedited. I don't know if they did it on purpose or by mistake, but I give them credit for that. It may be incredibly disturbing, and it may be anecdotal, but it is an invaluable part of understanding what is really happening. And these direct pictures and videos from people who are actually involved, do that in a way that could never be captured in any other way, even if there were live international network coverage still present.

Overall though, while there have been compelling and shocking reports of violence and loss, the overall feeling is that people are not backing down. That there is a real movement here for change. It may well still be put down. But not yet. There will be more of this tomorrow, if not overnight.

Also, there has been another thread with people going after Obama for not being aggressive enough in supporting the protestors. Give me a break. That would be the worst thing he could possibly do. He has slowly ramped up his statements, and that is probably appropriate. And I'm sure additional things are being done behind the scenes as well. But being bellicose would not help things here, it would make them worse.

For those who have not been riveted to this all day long like I have been, the best single place to catch up would be the Daily Dish Day 8 Liveblog. Be warned though, it does include the vivid pictures and videos of people injured, dying or dead.

	Abulsme - Sat, 20 Jun 2009, 20:44:58 UTC - News
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Iran Sources

What I'm monitoring this morning:

• Twitterfall
• Andrew Sullivan
• Guardian Liveblog
• Nico Pitney Liveblog
• niacINsight
• TehranBureau Twitterfeed
• Robert Mackey Liveblog

And adding more occasionally when I notice several other people linking to them as sources.

	Abulsme - Sat, 20 Jun 2009, 14:20:22 UTC - News
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Iran Video

The first video is starting to make it out. From BBC Persian and from a seemingly random YouTube user linked from Twitter.

Small peeks, but consistent with the other news filtering out. Looks like a lot of chaos, with authorities getting violent. We have yet to understand how widespread this kind of thing is.

New news is sporadic, unreliable, contradictory... it will take awhile to understand what is really going on.

	Abulsme - Sat, 20 Jun 2009, 14:04:49 UTC - News
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Conflicting

Just smatterings of conflicting reports on what is going on so far. Urgh!

Anyway, awake and watching.

	Abulsme - Sat, 20 Jun 2009, 12:41:22 UTC - News
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The Day of the Green

It is just under four hours until the scheduled Saturday rally in Tehran. The expectations seem to be strong that today may be a decisive day given the Supreme Leader's statements Friday. It is the middle of the night here in Seattle. It will still be hours before sunrise here when things will happen... if they happen... perhaps things will just dissipate without a major event... but that seems increasingly unlikely. Despite the time of day in my part of the world, I find myself compelled to try to watch as close to real time as I can. I may nap some, but my alarm is set just in case I fall asleep. Watching Twiterfall, there is not much new at the moment, and not much on other sources. Everybody is just waiting for 4 PM Tehran time (12:30 UTC). I've given up on TV news. I won't even turn it on unless I hear from other sources that there is something worth watching. I have BBC World Service radio on... but they have something non-live and not about Iran at the moment. I suspect even if things start happening, I'll hear more faster online.

In the meantime, I just spent some time scanning through Andrew Sullivan's latest Live-Tweeting The Revolution post. Of course all the usual caveats about interpreting raw information of this sort apply in spades. You need to be have a bit of healthy skepticism. And of course I know that if I were to discuss specific issues and ideas with the people demonstrating, I'd almost certainly disagree with them strongly on more issues than I agreed with them. Never the less, what has been visible over the last week has been moving and inspiring. It is worth reading all of the tweets Sullivan has collected. You also see other moving things in other places which are reposting things written by people on the scene.

One particularly memorable example, from an Iranian blogger at balatarin.com translated by NIACBlog and linked from Sullivan:

I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It’s worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again. All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I’m two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children…

I hope for something like the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. I fear that it will be more like Tiananmen in 1989.

We shall see.

In the mean time, my thoughts and attention are with the sea of green in Tehran and elsewhere in Iran.

	Abulsme - Sat, 20 Jun 2009, 08:37:05 UTC - News
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