n: vb: the spice of imagination
via Ellen Datlow:
A court case brought against Jackson Memorial Hospital in Florida for denying a dying woman’s same sex partner and their children access to her in the hospital has found for the hospital.
Nicola Griffith urges us all to do something so that this outrage won’t happen again, in her post Trembling with Rage.
From Mike:
But I’m also encouraged. Tactics like the Iranian government’s would have worked just fine 20 years ago. (Chile comes to mind.) Locking down the networks and cutting off the professional journalists would have had the effect that they intend – without the world watching, the worst of the protestors could be dealt with ruthlessly, and the rest intimidated into submission. But not now. Using one pesky little network protocol, the people on the ground in this insurgency have managed to circumvent the information wall, and force their way into the public eye.
The government’s response now will have to be carefully measured against this unprecedented new level of visibility. They will have to quell the protests peacefully somehow, or else they’ll have to resort to acts of mass violence on YouTube.
(note: Violence has already happened in many places.)
If you want to chip in your network resources for this underground news conduit, they could sure use your help. All the major IM networks are now blocked for Iranian users, as well as services like Blogger and Twitter. Getting news, photos and footage out through this network is risky business for the people providing them, and there is a frantic cat-and-mouse proxy server game going on between the censors and the bloggers. You can put your own machine to work in this infowar, and better their chances of evading capture.
First, rock a Twitter account, and make it look Iranian. GMT+3:30. (Think, ‘I’m Spartacus.’) Cruise over here and learn how to set up a proxy server on your machine. Once you’ve done that, DO NOT TWEET ABOUT IT IN PUBLIC. The censors are watching Twitter closely, and the moment they see someone post a new proxy for Iran, it goes on the block list and becomes useless. Instead, send it privately to @stopAhmadi or @iran09 and they’ll distribute it discreetly to bloggers.
This is the first time that tools like this have been used on this scale. Here’s hoping that Twitter can give us a new and ubiquitous form of political accountability. All eyes are on Ahmadinejad, and I sure hope he can feel them.
I tie our hair together in looping knots, gold twined with red and purple, my hair wrapped in his like set gemstones. We match our garnet earrings, I think, we match and are beautiful, here in this place, this tent of our tangled hair, in this moment where we’ve erased the entire world but ourselves.
I think of the violence in Iran, the students shot for protesting, the plain clothes agitators hired by the police state to enact violence in the name of the wronged, and I am especially glad for this small green hill, our hair braided together, our eyes shining together like light. Such perspective is deeply important to me. There are no fires here, no government shootings, no rigged elections for despots. We are not threatened here in Canada, the country we’ve made of a million languages, stronger together, we are safe here, and no matter how complex or stressful our lives might be, we will not die from politics. We are not persecuted and can help those that are.
How to fight from afar: seemingly levelheaded advice on aiding the protests online #iranelection via Eliza
#iranelection cyberwar guide for beginners
The purpose of this guide is to help you participate constructively in the Iranian election protests through twitter.
1. Do NOT publicise proxy IP’s over twitter, and especially not using the #iranelection hashtag. Security forces are monitoring this hashtag, and the moment they identify a proxy IP they will block it in Iran. If you are creating new proxies for the Iranian bloggers, DM them to @stopAhmadi or @iran09 and they will distributed them discretely to bloggers in Iran.
2. Hashtags, the only two legitimate hashtags being used by bloggers in Iran are #iranelection and #gr88, other hashtag ideas run the risk of diluting the conversation.
3. Keep you bull$hit filter up! Security forces are now setting up twitter accounts to spread disinformation by posing as Iranian protesters. Please don’t retweet impetuosly, try to confirm information with reliable sources before retweeting. The legitimate sources are not hard to find and follow.
4. Help cover the bloggers: change your twitter settings so that your location is TEHRAN and your time zone is GMT +3.30. Security forces are hunting for bloggers using location and timezone searches. If we all become ‘Iranians’ it becomes much harder to find them.
5. Don’t blow their cover! If you discover a genuine source, please don’t publicise their name or location on a website. These bloggers are in REAL danger. Spread the word discretely through your own networks but don’t signpost them to the security forces. People are dying there, for real, please keep that in mind.
6. Denial of Service attacks. If you don’t know what you are doing, stay out of this game. Only target those sites the legitimate Iranian bloggers are designating. Be aware that these attacks can have detrimental effects to the network the protesters are relying on. Keep monitoring their traffic to note when you should turn the taps on or off.
7. Do spread the (legitimate) word, it works! When the bloggers asked for twitter maintenance to be postponed using the #nomaintenance tag, it had the desired effect. As long as we spread good information, provide moral support to the protesters, and take our lead from the legitimate bloggers, we can make a constructive contribution.
Please remember that this is about the future of the Iranian people, while it might be exciting to get caught up in the flow of participating in a new meme, do not lose sight of what this is really about.
via jwz:
You are being lied to about pirates
In 1991, the government of Somalia collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.
Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.
Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply.
At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by overexploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m-worth of tuna, shrimp, and lobster are being stolen every year by illegal trawlers. The local fishermen are now starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won’t be much fish left in our coastal waters."
This is the context in which the "pirates" have emerged. Somalian fishermen took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least levy a "tax" on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – and ordinary Somalis agree. The independent Somalian news site WardheerNews found 70 per cent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence".
written and presented by Winston Rowntree of Virus Comix
Spectators in Times Square watch President Barack Obama take the oath of office during his inauguration
Residents of Kibera, one of the poorest quarters in Nairobi gather to watch the inauguration ceremony
President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama attend the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball at the Washington Convention Center
Guests at the “Biden Home States Ball” record the moment as President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama dance
Today I felt it was more important to watch Obama’s inauguration through the magic of live streaming video from my bed than to get up get to work on time. (Oh future, you are so magical.)
My early morning head muzzy on time differences, I missed most of the show, but as the speech drew to a close, I could feel my eyes stinging with a rich mix of emotions. Pride, wonder, worry… but most of all relief.
Congratulations on your recent transformation, U.S.A. On your recent return to morality, decency, and fair play.
We’ve been waiting for you. It’s going to be a good day.
Copied from spiderfarmer via James Grant:
If you cannot see the subtitles do the following:
1. Play the video
2. Click the triangle button at the bottom-right corner of the video
3. Click the Turn on captions button that looks like the letters CC.
Israeli TV broadcast a father’s heartbreak Friday night when a Palestinian doctor living in Gaza made a frantic phone call to a newscaster saying an Israeli tank had shelled his home, killing three of his daughters and injuring other family members.
Izz el-Deen Aboul Aish, who speaks Hebrew, worked as a gynecologist in an Israeli hospital. Even as the crossings between the Gaza Strip and Israel had largely been closed in recent months, he had traveled frequently from one place to the other. But he had remained in Gaza since the Israeli offensive began 21 days ago. He gave frequent interviews to the Israeli media on living conditions in the seaside enclave. He spoke of having tanks around his house and of passing through checkpoints; he told Israelis what it was like to be Palestinian.
Minutes away from a scheduled phone interview on Israeli TV 10 with newscaster Shlomi Eldar, Aboul Aish called Eldar’s cellphone, screaming and weeping in Arabic and Hebrew. The doctor’s home had been struck by a shell:
“Oh God, oh my God, my daughters have been killed. They’ve killed my children. . . . Could somebody please come to us?”
Sitting at his news desk for one of Israel’s main evening news broadcasts, Eldar held his phone up. For three minutes and 26 seconds, Aboul Aish’s wailing was broadcast across the country.
Eldar welled up. He put his head down. He looked at the camera. He looked at his phone. He made pleas for helpfor the family, but the doctor kept crying, his voice scratchy, like sand on paper, until Eldar took out his earpiece and walked off the set to try to arrange for help. The newscaster’s bewildered face seemed to capture a bit of pause in a nation that has largely supported its military campaign and prefers not to question its course.
News reports said there had been shooting in the area of the doctor’s house before the shelling. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.
Israeli officials permitted ambulances carrying members of the doctor’s family to cross the border to a hospital.
Aboul Aish was a single father. His wife had died of cancer. He made his daughters sleep close to the walls of their home in hopes that would keep them safe if airstrikes or artillery collapsed the ceiling.
“I don’t know how this man will stand on his feet again after this tragedy,” Dr. Liat Lerner-Geya, an Israeli who worked with Aboul Aish, told the Hebrew-language news website Ynet. “He would come to Israel and sleep at friends’ houses for three nights. Even though he had all the necessary permits, they always gave him trouble at the crossings. But he believed there should be coexistence and practiced this in his work.”
After the newscast, Eldar met with reporters. He said the doctor told him that evening “that since his wife’s passing, the girls had been his entire life. He said his eldest daughter wanted to study at Haifa University. Just today another one of his daughters had told him she had gotten her period. ‘In the middle of a war you get your period. You are a woman now.’ ”
She and her sisters are dead. The news spread across Israel’s websites; the video of the doctor’s broadcast quickly made it to YouTube.
Eldar said of Aboul Aish: “It is simply surreal. He is part of this place yet not of it, belonging and not belonging.”
Even so, across Israel the doctor’s anguished voice kept playing over and over.
jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com Sobelman works in The Times’ Jerusalem Bureau.
Photo from BBC News, Gaza, Early January 2009, via Warren:
Watch out for the Lipstick Pigs!