It's raining again...

...

...

Moonwalker, rest in peace.

michael

No words right now. Later.

michael

Neda is her name.

neda

Neda Agha-Soltan (Persian: ندا آقا سلطان - Nedā Āġā-Soltān; born 1982, died June 20, 2009)

The images of Neda's murder are still on my mind. I believe they always will be. Like the image of Mohammed al-Durrah, the 12 years old boy shot with his father during the 2000 intifada in Gaza. Unlike the tank man image taken by Jeff Widener in Tiananmen square in 1989, Neda and Mohammed's images show the death of completely innocent people, that were killed just because they were there. They were not standing in front of a tank. They were just on the street, the day they died.

Neda Agha-Soltan was not throwing rocks at the Basiji or shouting against the Ayatollahs' regime; she wasn't even near a group of protesters doing those things. She was a woman walking on the street, coming from or going to a demonstration against the government that oppresses her people, a right granted to citizens by the Iranian constitution. Yet, she was singled out and shot in cold blood as she was walking peacefully, in what is a clear sign of the true nature of the Iranian regime: fascism.

She was a woman in Iran. A woman that like so many others in so many different ways aspired for change. She, like so many other women in Iran, was given new hope by the movement on the streets of Tehran, Esfahan, Tabriz, Kerman, spreading like fire through dry grassland. This makes her death a much greater symbol for those seeking freedom, for true freedom means human dignity and you can't have human dignity when basic human rights are being suppressed. She became a martyr in a greater cause, much greater than other causes that feed from martyrdom. She died not on the barricades, not on the front lines of this struggle, but peacefully walking the street; she died because she dared not being free but dream of freedom.

The fascist beasts that murdered Neda, like all fascist beasts everywhere, have not learnt that dreams are impossible to kill. But they try. They try with all their might and all their means. They shall not succeed. And yet, even as I write these words, outside of Iran the fear of this spreading fire grows. The role of Twitter, YouTube and Facebook in the Iranian revolt is downplayed more and more; the control freaks in power try to adjust, to understand how this is possible and how to manipulate and block the truth in this new age of information; the opinion makers desperately gasp in a world where opinion is no longer exclusive and at long last the word came to triumph over the sword; the false prophets of democracy shout and spout their bile without shame to try and stop this debacle looking as if they cherish the very things they despise; now they shed fake tears for Neda, when the world knows how many innocents like her they killed before. To free them, of course. Shameless.

I truly hope, like many many others, that Neda's death, and the deaths of hundreds of other Iranians, was not in vain. I truly hope the people of Iran can at long last win their freedom and embrace true democracy, parting ways with religion as a society and entering the modern world, keeping their true faith an individual right. I truly hope the rest of us finally learn how to respect them and help them achieve these goals, and at last stop thinking how this change can be made profitable and serve interests other than those of the Iranian people. In a world in turmoil, the revolting Iranians are heroes. Lets us always remember Neda, but let us never forget those left fighting for what she hoped for and will never have. And above all, let us make sure they will have it. For themselves.

Inch'Allah.

My thanks to Navid Aghabakhshi for helping me with the correct Farsi spelling of Neda shown in the image above. Khayli mamnoon.

[simulpost001/09: here in portuguese (in A Sombra)]
neda

Hope.

line

[simulpost003/09: here (in A Sombra)]

Poem for the rooftops of Tehran.

Bliss of another kind...

Today I had (yet another) nice surprise from my wife. (*)
I was immerse in the real-time Twitter hash feed #iranelection when I noticed a direct message from here - DMs are a private message system between twitters that follow each other. It only contained a link and the exclamation "Taaaa Daaaa!".

Following the link I found a new blog she authors! I still have a smile stamped on my face. Here's the link to it and, of course, Histerycal Roots is now on J&H's Blogosphere watch.
Welcome to the blogosphere, my darling.
May the hysterical roots grow and prosper!


Tori Amos . Bliss . Best Of Tori Amos

* The image is a sketch from my 2007 Moleskine diary. Easy to figure out who it is.
[simulpost002/09: here in portuguese (in A Sombra)]

Power to the Twitter.

Yes, I know I am spoiled, coming from an European country where world news are a fundamental and significant part of every day news cycle, on television, radio and newspapers. Even so, I always relied on the Internet sources to complement information and always paid close attention to what the blogosphere and other social networks were saying about it. Now that I live in the United States, what I already knew became certain: there is extremely little information on every day world news and very poor coverage of on going international events. The latest DC gossip or political pseudo-scandal takes on whole news cycles, leaving little room for anything else. And on weekends, just forget it - endless repetitions of old reports and prerecorded programs, hardly any space for live news. Well guess what happened this weekend...

The world had it's eyes on the Iranian elections and was expecting a dramatic turn of events; Ahmadinejad faced some real competition from Mousavi and the turnout was fantastic. Then, two hours after over 40 million votes were cast, came the official announcement that Ahmadinejad won with more than 60% of the votes. Knowing the votes were on paper and had to be manually counted, this alone indicated something had gone terribly wrong. Pretty soon, Iranians took to the street, shouting "Fraud!" in indignation. The blogosphere exploded and accessing information from Tehran became more and more difficult; phones, electricity and web servers were being shut down. The main television networks with dedicated news channels in the States, CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC, were in weekend automatic pilot and kept on happily transmitting old news or prerecorded shows. At the height of tension, as police searched door to door for satellite dishes and students were trapped inside their campus, Larry King was interviewing a biker on CNN (prerecorded, of course). Without the Internet, knowing about the events taking place in Iran would be impossible. The reporters from all networks in Iran were (and still are) having a very hard time doing their job and very little was known about what was happening... Then, the Iranian people took upon themselves to let the world know what was going on. With all conventional channels severed or censored by the Iranian government, one new communication platform proved efficient in dodging the communications black out, resisting still countless attempts to shut it down. Twitter.

Iranians with a Twitter account, which they have already used to organize the electoral campaign, started pouring out information, organizing threads and collective accounts and telling the world in real time what they were going through. The rest of us picked it up very fast and the information flow in the main threads, or Trending Topics, was huge. Of course the sources are many and many are unreliable and even compromised, but for people used to parsing web flows it's relatively easy to figure out who's real and who's not.
Threads like #iranelection became the main source of news from Tehran and from all over the world, with real time updates on what was happening on the ground and what was being confirmed by reliable sources; from the student in a Tehran rooftop to the latest Al Arabiya breaking news we were watching history unfold before our eyes like never before and, what is more important, we were participating in it actively, by posting our own findings or relaying (retwitting - RT) important information or adding a personal note, a message or a comment.

Here is a sample of what's on Twitter as I write this post:

@persiankiwi confirmed - there is shooting in Azadi sq. protesters wounded and shot, no numbers yet, still hearing gunfire. #Iranelection
MarjonRostami: Thanks to everyone updating #IranElection. You are making a difference. Time to focus on work. I'll update as I get calls from Iran.
iran09 RT @PouyanA: CONF! there is #shooting in #Azadi sq. protesters wounded and shot, no numbers yet, still hearing gunfire. #Iranelection
jimsciuttoABC #iranelection sev reports of pro-govt militia firing on protesters, AP photog reports one protester dead
dailydish More Video Of The Crowds: CNN gets some video, finally. But then you hear a simple statement from the anchor tha.. http://tinyurl.com/l6tvrw
RuiSemblano RT @LaraABCNews: Iranian State TV reports gun shots at Mousavi rally; AP photog sees govt militia fire at protesters #Iranelection

Last tweet (twitter post) was mine... Government militia shooting protesters in Azadi Square, Tehran. One of the tweets this weekend reflected a sentiment that's been around for a long time, that should an American journalist be killed in Tehran we would have 24 hours news coverage. This is a cynical world. Today we have our eyes set on Iran, but for how long? Well, lets make the most of it while it lasts and make sure the Iranians get the support they need - not sending tanks and bombs, but sending word that they are not alone and letting their voices be heard.
Mousavi is no Obama, that's for sure. His past shows clearly what he stands for as far as foreign relations are concerned, but his views on what should change in Iranian society would make a great difference and, perhaps, be a decisive step towards a better life for Iranians and a more honest approach to the world at large. Iran will change at his own pace and from within, just as Iraq would have. If we'd let it. The only way democracy comes to be in a country is through the will and sacrifice of it's people. Maybe the "democracy export" apologizers should learn this fact today, only I don't believe they will for the simple reason they are quite aware of what they are defending and why - and it is surely not the exportation of democracy. Like the nice looking country club that is nothing more than a brothel, the front must remain intact for public relations purposes so the real business can go on inside.

What I came to realize this weekend, is that there is hope for those who love freedom and fear the ever growing control of society by interest groups and governments alike, especially communication and information control. There is always a way to let the truth be known and in today's world a tool emerged that shows how inevitable that is, even through the thickest darkness. So lets Twitter on and get it out there.


[simulpost001/09: here in portuguese (in A Sombra)]


post(erior) note:
The power of twitters:

[quote]

Monday, June 15, 2009

Down Time Rescheduled

A critical network upgrade must be performed to ensure continued operation of Twitter. In coordination with Twitter, our network host had planned this upgrade for tonight. However, our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran. Tonight's planned maintenance has been rescheduled to tomorrow between 2-3p PST (1:30a in Iran).

Our partners are taking a huge risk not just for Twitter but also the other services they support worldwide—we commend them for being flexible in what is essentially an inflexible situation. We chose NTT America Enterprise Hosting Services early last year specifically because of their impeccable history of reliability and global perspective. Today's decision and actions continue to prove why NTT America is such a powerful partner for Twitter.
posted by @Biz at 4:17 PM

[unquote]

from Twitter

Health and Wealth - capital mistake?

Capital (letter)
an upper-case letter in a writing system.
Capital (financial)
any form of wealth capable of being employed in the production of more wealth.
Health
a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being
and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
Wealth
an abundance of valuable material possessions or resources.

Health Care reform is a dear subject to me. Each day I am confronted with it's effects and I realise the intricacies that compose it and it's many facets. Unfortunately, my wife's medical bills often reach 5 digits. Coming from Europe, where not only Health Care but Health Care rights are, for now, granted as social benefits, backed by private insurance when so desired, I landed in a very strange place. A place where people without health insurance are driven out of hospitals and left to their own fortune in the middle of the street. Literally. A place where being sick is not just a health condition, it is a social stigma. Of course I had knowledge of this sad reality in the United States, but having knowledge of it from 4000 miles away is one thing, being in the eye of the storm is another. To me, Health Care is one of the cornerstones of a civilized society and one of it's fundamental indicators. The more advanced the society, the more quality Health Care it provides. In Europe, still very far from a real Union in the sense of Federation, the quality of Health Care is variable from country to country, but within the EU the common perception is Health is a common good and should therefore be every one's responsibility. As there is no quantifiable value attributed to human life, Health Care is not viewed as a profit driven activity. So far. There have been - and still are - attempts to privatize Health Care in several EU countries (namely in Portugal, my country), but they are invariably met with understandable concern and rejection from the people. In fact, even when the public Health Care system is not working at it's best it still provides millions of people the help they would never get otherwise. Otherwise, of course, being Wealth Care.

Health Care, from the business point of view, is a disaster. On the pure entrepreneurial side, no one in their right mind would expect to profit largely from an activity that can be so costly and unpredictable. On the pure moral side, no one with a basic set of moral values would seek profit as the ultimate goal of providing health assistance to other human beings. These are the core values, then come the nuances. Is Health insurance a bad deal? No. Should Health Care professionals work for free? No. Like in many other aspects of life, one must have the freedom and the right to obtain better conditions even when it comes to basic common needs. It is accepted that we all have the need to have a roof over our heads, but the fact that some of us can afford a million dollar roof does not mean everyone should. However, everyone should have basic fundamental housing, and that is an aim for civilized societies. It is one of the aspects of what is known as the fight against poverty. Basic global Health Care is much more complex than global housing, and more expensive, but it is a goal much easily achieved for the simple reason that we all need basic houses to live in but not all of us need the same basic Health Care. The basic expensive Health Care that we all should have access to will never be used by everyone for the simple fact that we are not all unhealthy. If you couple this reality with another indisputable one, that global Health Care equals global preventive medicine, then the number of people that will ever need serious and expensive basic Health Care drops dramatically. And here is the catch: so do costs. Catch, you wonder? Well, it's a very big catch if you have a Wealth Care system. You see, reducing costs by diminishing the number of payers/clients is a very bad thing if you have a profit based system. Very bad. One would think that healthier clients would bring much profit to health insurance companies, the only problem is healthy people don't really need health insurance - not the expensive kind that is so common today in the United States, anyway. A general costs breakdown in Health Care would also steal away the health insurance companies excuse for the outrageous premiums they charge. So even if health insurance can survive and has indeed a market within a public Health Care system the profit margins would be substantially smaller, as in billions of dollars smaller. Why would a company, any company, wish for a system in which it's activity profit is reduced so significantly? None would and none does. The word "health" in health insurance is not misplaced but it is seriously mistaken for something it is not: a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being. The main concern of a profitable enterprise is how to make profit while providing the best possible service, that is why Health Care can never achieve significant return since the better the service, the less profit and this does mean what you are thinking. The ideal Health Care system - the one we will never achieve but must live trying to - is the one that pays for itself, which simply means it's cost would be neutralized by it's revenue, the definition of non-profitable. Do you know any businessman in his right mind that would aim for such a thing? That is a Social aim. It's a society's aspiration, not a business goal.

Health Care should not be a business. It concerns us all and affects us all, no matter how healthy or wealthy we are. Saying any different is excusing the fact that wealth, not health, is really what we are talking about.