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The young Iranian woman eyed the crowd and pondered the possibility that the rest of her life might be different from her mother's. She could see glimmers of a future free from discrimination -- and all the symbols of it, including the head-covering the government requires her to wear every day.
I've just been reminded of one of the most remarkable case studies in the psychiatric literature, of a patient who believed he had two heads and who seriously injured himself with a gunshot wound trying to remove the 'second' head.
He described a second head on his shoulder. He believed that the head belonged to his wife's gynaecologist, and described previously having felt that his wife was having an affair with this gynaecologist, prior to her death. He described being able to see the second head when he went to bed at night, and stated that it had been trying to dominate his normal head.
He also stated that he was hearing voices, including the voice of his wife's gynaecologist from the second head, as well as the voices of Jesus and Abraham around him, conversing with each other. All the voices were confirming that he had two heads; the voice from the second head had been telling him that it was the 'king pin', and would also say to him that it was going to take his wife away. He did not describe any other hallucinatory or delusional experiences.
"The other head kept trying to dominate my normal head, and I would not let it. It kept trying to say to me I would lose, and I said bull-shit." "I am the king pin here" it said and it kept going on like that for about three weeks and finally I got jack of it, and I decided to shoot my other head off."
He stated that he fired six shots, the first at the second head, which he then decided was hanging by a thread, and then another one through the roof of his mouth. He then fired four more shots, one of which appeared to have gone through the roof of his mouth and three of which missed. He said that he felt good at that stage, and that the other head was not felt any more. Then he passed out. Prior to shooting himself, he had considered using an axe to remove the phantom head.
John Webster writes:
Think back 10 years ago today. eBay outages were in the news on an almost daily basis and Sun Microsystems wound up wearing the blame. Yes eBay was charting territory in a brave new world and therefore offered no service or availability guarantees. And yes there were more vendors in the mix at the time (Oracle and Veritas to name two). But the outages were very visible and Sun's image suffered disproportionately. While not explicitly stated, eBay users nonetheless had an implicit expectation of quality of service from eBay, a level that was never formally agreed to, but understood and expected.
Fast forward 10 years. Twitter is in uncharted territory, too. The temporary and periodic "system busy" messages are tolerated by users, but not without complaint. Jokes about Twitter's Fail Whale are common. Hey, it's not a critical app. We're all just having fun here, right? However, the elections in Iran have changed that perception. Twitter and other social-networking sites have become windows on a pivotal event with worldwide implications. The world wants to watch. Indeed, what the State Department's request says is that the whole world needs to watch. As a infrastructure vendor in this new and uncharted environment, do you now want to be blamed for an outage? For data loss? For a security breach?
This all adds up to the Twitter Conundrum. The owners of Twitter and other social-networking sites aren't likely to buy highly available, highly secure, redundant systems and storage of the type common to 24 by 7 production data centers. Their business models simply won't support big enterprise gear. But does that stop the federal government from stepping in and saying "sorry, you can't go down right now, not even for a few hours?" No. Twitter, YouTube, and FaceBook have created windows on the world, windows that could in fact change the world for the better. You can't fail (whale).
Here's the conundrum: No one presently pays a fee for posting to these sites. You get what you pay for or, in this case, you don't get what you don't pay for. You don't pay for and therefore don't get guaranteed availability or data integrity. Is the federal government now willing to subsidize Twitter so that it can function like a production data center? Probably not. Are users willing to pay a fee to get a guaranteed level of service? Again, probably not, at least not in the near future.
link: CNET News
Think Progress reports:
Last month in the Washington Examiner, former House speaker Newt Gingrich denounced President Obama’s supposed plot to “release trained terrorists currently held at Guantanamo Bay into American suburbs.” The men he was so afraid of are innocent Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs, who have since been released in Bermuda after spending seven years locked up in Guantanamo. According to 2008 State Department Human Rights report, these men faced “severe cultural and religious repression” at the hands of the Chinese government. In 2001, they stayed in a Uighur camp in Afghanistan and “were later turned in to the authorities by Pakistani villagers in return for an American bounty,” even though werenever a security threat.
However, in his column, Gingrich said they posed a “paramount threat and “have been allied with and trained by al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups.” In an interview with Fox News, Gingrich added that the United States should just send them back to China.
One of Gingrich’s Republican colleagues is now calling out his ignorance. At a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on Human Rights on Tuesday, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) said that Gingrich belongs in the “hall of shame” for fear-mongering about the Uighurs. He also said that the Bush administration unjustly detained these men at the bidding of the Chinese government in a “pathetic” attempt to gain the country’s support for the Iraq war.
From The Associated Press:
"The Basij began as cannon fodder for the Revolutionary Guard during the war with Iraq. Now, they are there to do the dirty work for them: breaking up parties, hassling women about their hijab (head covering) and much more violent acts," said Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-born independent analyst living in Israel.
The Basij has leaders based in mosques in every village and city throughout Iran, giving it the widest security network in the country, said Mehdi Khalaji, a senior fellow with The Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a specialist in Iranian politics.
So far, the Basij has refrained from widespread attacks on demonstrators. But witnesses say the militiamen took part in a police raid on Tehran University dormitories on Sunday night after students hurled stones, bricks and firebombs at police — one of the few violent episodes during this week's rallies.
Basij members used axes, sticks and daggers to ransack student rooms and smash computers and furniture, wounding many students, according to witnesses.
A day later, students attacked a compound used by the Basij and tried to set it on fire. Gunmen on the roof fired on the crowd and killed seven people, according to state media.
link: The Associated Press: Feared Basij militia could transform Iran showdown
Women, regarded as second-class citizens under Iranian law, have been noticeably front and center of the massive demonstrations that have unfolded since the presidential election a week ago. Iranians are protesting what they consider a fraudulent vote count favoring hardline incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but for many women like Parisa, the demonstrations are just as much about taking Iran one step closer to democracy. "Women have become primary agents of change in Iran," said Nayereh Tohidi, chairwoman of the Gender and Women's Studies Department at California State University, Northridge.
Iranian scholars and uni Professors write joint letter to Secretary General of UN condemning violation of Iran Human Rights - #Iranelection 7 minutes ago from web
Karoubi - Recognize the will of the nation and void the 10th Presidential Elections to return order to the country - #Iranelection 10 minutes ago from web
Karoubi - As a former political prisoner who was tortured I know that insulting a nation will turn them into a raging fire - #Iranelection 13 minutes ago from web
Advice - remove sim and use mobile to film ANY violence or attak against Sea of Green - #Iranelection 16 minutes ago from web
Advice - your location can be identified from mobile signal - + delete all sms after sending in case u are arrested - #Iranelection 21 minutes ago from web
