The Latest from Boing Boing

One month to go until the next total solar eclipse
Iran: Neda Soltani (warning: graphic video)
Iran Election Crisis: 10 Significant Web Videos
Roger Cohen in Tehran: "I don't know where this uprising is leading."
Social Media in Iran: Lessons Learned (Ethan Zuckerman)
Vintage Tech archives in Bay Area seeks moving volunteers Sun 6/21, Mon 6/22.
Super-filtered #IranElection info for the easily overwhelmed
Jasmina Tesanovic: Less Than Human

One month to go until the next total solar eclipse

Posted: 21 Jun 2009 05:34 PM PDT

Joshua Foer is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. Joshua is a freelance science journalist and the co-founder of the Atlas Obscura: A Compendium of the World's Wonders, Curiosities, and Esoterica, with Dylan Thuras.

Last summer, I read Roberto Casati's wonderful, lyrical book Shadows: Unlocking their Secrets, from Plato to Our Time, and was struck by a passage in which Casati describes how his addiction to total solar eclipses (TSEs) has carried him to the middle of the Black Sea and to Zambia:

A total eclipse is by far the most impressive natural phenomenon that we terrestrials can witness. The staging doesn't lessen its brutal effects. The temperature drops. A mysterious cold wind starts blowing. The shadow comes running up like a hurricane on the sea. The light collapses, and in just a few seconds, a metallic night falls--it comes on so fast the mind is not ready for it. On the horizon, unreachably far away, are the vestiges of daytime: an orangy twilight all around, as if a set designer made a mistake in projecting a sunset. In the midst of all this is a sun that's no longer a furnace but just an unlucky rock: its shining fringe is like the silver mane of hair of some aged celestial divinity; and stars glitter again, caught out of place in this out-of-joint nighttime.

Sounds like an almost religious experience, doesn't it?

TSEs happen about once every other year, and are only visible in a narrow band of the earth's surface. When I first read Casati's book, I vowed that I would try to see one as soon as possible.

I had high hopes of being in the Siberian town of Nadym for the last TSE, on August 1, 2008, but another commitment kept me in another hemisphere. Alas, I'm also going to be glued to my desk for the next TSE, which is exactly a month away, on July 22. Since it's going to pass over major populated areas in India and China, it may end up being witnessed by more human beings than any other TSE in history. It's also going to be the longest of the 21st century, lasting 6 minutes and 39 seconds at its point of maximum eclipse.

The next four TSEs--in 2010, 2012, 2015, and 2016--will barely cross dry land. So unless you want to join a cruise expedition or do some airborne eclipse chasing, you'll have to wait for the 2017 eclipse, which is going to carve a big fat path across the American heartland. For more info, check out Totality: The Digital Magazine for Eclipse Chasers.

Iran: Neda Soltani (warning: graphic video)

Posted: 21 Jun 2009 07:07 PM PDT

WARNING: GRAPHIC VIDEO / DEPICTS DEATH.

Via Andrew Sullivan, who is doing some of the best coverage of the Iran story online:

"At 19:05 June 20th Place: Karekar Ave., at the corner crossing Khosravi St. and Salehi st. A young woman who was standing aside with her father watching the protests was shot by a basij member hiding on the rooftop of a civilian house. He had clear shot at the girl and could not miss her. However, he aimed straight her heart.
I am a doctor, so I rushed to try to save her. But the impact of the gunshot was so fierce that the bullet had blasted inside the victim's chest, and she died in less than 2 minutes. The protests were going on about 1 kilometers away in the main street and some of the protesting crowd were running from tear gass used among them, towards Salehi St.

The film is shot by my friend who was standing beside me. Please let the world know."

Confirming The Basij Murder Of Neda (Daily Dish)

There is another video of the same scene, taken from a different angle, here.

Boing Boing reader S.R. Hadden explains in the discussion thread below that an unidentified man kneeling next to her

...is crying out, in Farsi: "My Neda, don't be afraid, please don't go, please don't go, please stay..."

Previously:

Iran Election Crisis: 10 Significant Web Videos

Posted: 21 Jun 2009 12:01 PM PDT

Over at Mashable, Ben Parr has compiled a post with 10 of the most-viewed, and most significant, "citizen videos" to have emerged from the ongoing turmoil in Iran. A snip from his postscript, appended to the post today:

As I built this post, I saw a progression of events through the video. Unfortunately, it wasn't a good one. It puts on display escalating violence, mayhem, and turmoil. Iran is a nation in chaos, and as we monitor the situation, we must realize that social tools provide us with unfettered access to the situation. Sometimes, that access can be disturbing. The flip side though is that we can truly know what's going on in Iran.

Video above: Militia firing into crowds of protesters yesterday in Tehran.

Iran Election Crisis: 10 Incredible YouTube Videos (Mashable, via Raymond Leon Roker)

Previously:

Roger Cohen in Tehran: "I don't know where this uprising is leading."

Posted: 21 Jun 2009 12:00 PM PDT

Snip from a New York Times op-ed by Roger Cohen, who is in Tehran.

The Iranian police commander, in green uniform, walked up Komak Hospital Alley with arms raised and his small unit at his side. "I swear to God," he shouted at the protesters facing him, "I have children, I have a wife, I don't want to beat people. Please go home."
A man at my side threw a rock at him. The commander, unflinching, continued to plead. There were chants of "Join us! Join us!" The unit retreated toward Revolution Street, where vast crowds eddied back and forth confronted by baton-wielding Basij militia and black-clad riot police officers on motorbikes.
Dark smoke billowed over this vast city in the late afternoon. Motorbikes were set on fire, sending bursts of bright flame skyward. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, had used his Friday sermon to declare high noon in Tehran, warning of "bloodshed and chaos" if protests over a disputed election persisted.
He got both on Saturday -- and saw the hitherto sacrosanct authority of his office challenged as never before since the 1979 revolution birthed the Islamic Republic and conceived for it a leadership post standing at the very flank of the Prophet.

A Supreme Leader Loses His Aura as Iranians Flock to the Streets (NYT, via Mitch Kapor)

Previously:

Social Media in Iran: Lessons Learned (Ethan Zuckerman)

Posted: 21 Jun 2009 11:36 AM PDT

Here's a snip from a blog post by Ethan Zuckerman about lessons learned from many hours on the phone with reporters doing "social media in Iran" stories:

It's been an interesting few days for people who study social media. As the protests over election results have continued in Iran, and Iranian authorities have prevented most mainstream journalists from reporting on events, there's been a great deal of focus on social media tools, which have become very important for sharing events on the ground in Iran with audiences around the world. I, like many of my friends at the Berkman Center and Global Voices, have spent much of the past two days on the phone with reporters, fielding questions about:
- Whether social media is enabling, causing or otherwise driving the protests in Iran
- How Iranian users are managing to access the internet despite widespread filtering
- The ethics (and practice) of distributed denial of service attacks as a form of information warfare
- Whether such online activities are unprecedented
Rather than tell you what I and colleagues have been saying to reporters, I'll point you to one of the better stories, by Anne-Marie Corley in MIT's Technology Review - she interviews several of my Berkman and Open Net Initiative colleagues and outlines the argument many of us are making:
- Social media is probably more important as a tool to share the protests with the rest of the world than it is as an organizing tool on the ground.
- Iranians have been accessing social networking sites and blogging platforms despite years of filtering - there's a cadre of folks who understand how to get around these blocks and are probably teaching others.
- Because so many Iranians use social media tools - often to talk about topics other than politics - they're a "latent community" that can come to life and have political influence when events on the ground dictate.

Iran, citizen media and media attention (Via Jay Rosen)

Previously:

Vintage Tech archives in Bay Area seeks moving volunteers Sun 6/21, Mon 6/22.

Posted: 21 Jun 2009 12:51 PM PDT

Phil Lapsley, vintage computing history buff, writes:

VintageTech, the organizers of the Vintage Computer Festival, are moving their warehouse of historical computers, equipment, software, and documentation from Livremore, CA to Stockton, CA. Volunteers are needed today (Sunday) and tomorrow (Monday) in Livermore to help pack and palletize all their wonderful machines and related ephemera. It is an amazing chance to help a good cause and get up close and personal with a bunch of interesting historical stuff. I have posted a set of photos of some of their wonders at this Flickr link. If you can spare some time, even an hour or two, please contact Sellam Ismail at sellam@vintagetech.com.

Previously:

Super-filtered #IranElection info for the easily overwhelmed

Posted: 21 Jun 2009 10:42 PM PDT

I am blogging this from a wifi-enabled plane somewhere above a square state in the USA. The passenger sitting next to me is frustrated that no cable news is shown on the plane -- she wanted to keep up with the turmoil in Iran during this 6-hour flight. Several fellow passengers agreed that one of the feelings shared around the Iran story is the sense that so much information from new, unfamiliar sources seems to be flooding us, without good filters, or many trusted, authoritative guides.

And overall, cable news is doing a lousy job anyway. Blowhard anchors reading random tweets, and logging on to Facebook groups? Thanks, but I can do that myself -- without the theatrics.

Over email, John Perry Barlow echoed this: "It's happening so fast I can't digest it. I feel I've stuck a probe into the stream of metaconscious."

With that ambient chaos in mind, Current TV's Robin Sloan has compiled a very useful tool: "Super-filtered #IranElection info for the easily overwhelmed." Go have a look.

Update: Here's another helpful resource from Robin: Persian tweets translated to English.

Previously:

Jasmina Tesanovic: Less Than Human

Posted: 21 Jun 2009 11:09 AM PDT

(Ed. Note: The following guest essay was written by Jasmina Tešanović. Full text of essay continues after the jump, along with links to previous works by her shared on Boing Boing.)

Less than Human

(Video Link) Last week the Bosnian TV screened a set of private videos of the most wanted war criminal in the world, the Bosnian Serb Ratko Mladic. The video scandalized the world, and even us, those few in Serbia who don't live in denial.

We are those who believe their eyes more than their officials, who believe in facts more than in ideology, who believe that peace can come only through justice. And when I say us few, I refer to the activists, human rights lawyers, the families of Mladic's victims, and those people who, unwillingly, in one way or another, crossed the hidden path of the hidden General.

I remember, some years ago, a young human rights activist whose daily job was to hunt for war criminals. He met Mladic regularly while Mladic shopped in a bakery. My young friend gave up his job. The impotence of the law and the nonsense of politics made his life senseless.

The war criminal was frequently quoted as a hero of the Serbian people. Political rallies featured T-shirts with Mladic' s face. He was a a mythical figure, the Serbian hero sworn to kill himself rather than surrender to the Hague tribunal.

Was he hiding in the mountains, was he hiding in his Bosnian woods and caves, was he hiding in the dungeons of the Serbian army in Belgrade? Was he hiding at all? A couple of years ago two soldiers on duty close to these secret military dungeons were found dead. The official explanation was dubious: they either killed each other in a fight or committed suicide. What came out soon after was that they were allegedly witnesses of Mladic's hideout. This case is still a very suspicious mystery, since the parents and human rights activists are pursuing it relentlessly. Some time ago, the indicted private persons who supposedly helped Mladic in his hiding in Belgrade were let off the hook in a Serbian court, officially because of lack of evidence. I saw them leave the courtroom, boisterous and loud, while the witnesses were intimated and threatened. And now these home videos appear: Mladic is elderly, yet obviously not in hiding. He is our contemporary, living a normal life in recognizable neighborhood of Belgrade. He doesn't not seem hunted but protected.

Less than a year ago another war criminal Radovan Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade: disguised as a mystic alternative medicine guru Dragan Dabic. After his arrest many photos and clues circled in Belgrade: that Mladic might be disguised as a street seller, as a simple retired person in the park, even as a woman. But these videos disperse these rumors: the very last video shows Mladic with a cane, playing joyfully with snowballs. This shot confirms the rumors that he had a recent stroke, and that the footage is as recent as winter 2008.

Looking at this home movies, as boring and innocent as all family private movies are, something felt deeply wrong about them. We are looking at the world's most wanted war criminal, who executed in cold blood, in three days, 8000 people just because they were ethnic Muslims in the wrong place: cattle, less than human, as his soldiers called them.

In the gaze of the camera, he behaves as if nothing has happened. He is a simple family man. Mladic cuddles his newborn grandson with words of endearment. He hugs his always present loving wife and his devoted son. He weeps over the coffin of his daughter, who shot herself dead with his favorite gun. The horror of the vast crime he committed becomes even more gigantic. This man with emotions and ideas had no doubts about liquidating populations, without explanation, without hesitation. Mladic was considered a hero for that. From the home videos, you see this faith about his heroic deeds. He is surrounded by family friends, and even some politicians of his regime.

These people speak my language, they have the body language of my relatives from Herzegovina, but they don't speak my mind. Sincerely, they seem crazy to me. But in the real everyday politics, their presence is a shadow over Serbia. It makes everyday Serbian life seem insane.

These days, the European Community is strongly promising Serbia a new visa regime. One of the main conditions for Serbia's integration into te European Community was the arrest of Ratko Mladic. The public screening of these videos coincides with these new policy talks. It's hard to believe that timing is an accident.

Maybe we are closing in, maybe there is no other way to tell the Serbian people that Mladic is not a a superhuman hero of Serbian people, but a tottering old man, a character whose banality is classically evil.

Jasmina Tešanović is an author, filmmaker, and wandering thinker who shares her thoughts with BoingBoing from time to time. Email: politicalidiot at yahoo dot com. Her blog is here.

Previous essays by Jasmina Tešanović on BoingBoing:

- Earthquake in Italy
- 10 years after NATO bombings of Serbia
- Made in Catalunya / Lou and Laurie
- Dragan Dabic Defeats Radovan Karadzic
- Who was Dragan David Dabic?
- My neighbor Radovan Karadzic
- The Day After / Kosovo
- State of Emergency
- Kosovo
- Christmas in Serbia
- Neonazism in Serbia
- Korea - South, not North.
- "I heard they are making a movie on her life."
- Serbia and the Flames
- Return to Srebenica
- Sagmeister in Belgrade
- What About the Russians?
- Milan Martic sentenced in Hague
- Mothers of Mass Graves
- Hope for Serbia
- Stelarc in Ritopek
- Sarajevo Mon Amour
- MBOs
- Killing Journalists
- Where Did Our History Go?
- Serbia Not Guilty of Genocide
- Carnival of Ruritania
- "Good Morning, Fascist Serbia!"
- Faking Bombings
- Dispatch from Amsterdam
- Where are your Americans now?
- Anna Politkovskaya Silenced
- Slaughter in the Monastery
- Mermaid's Trail
- A Burial in Srebenica
- Report from a concert by a Serbian war criminal
- To Hague, to Hague
- Preachers and Fascists, Out of My Panties
- Floods and Bombs
- Scorpions Trial, April 13
- The Muslim Women
- Belgrade: New Normality
- Serbia: An Underworld Journey
- Scorpions Trial, Day Three: March 15, 2006
- Scorpions Trial, Day Two: March 14, 2006
- Scorpions Trial, Day One: March 13, 2006
- The Long Goodbye
- Milosevic Arrives in Belgrade
- Slobodan Milosevic Died
- Milosevic Funeral