This is IT.
Well… in case you have not heard the news Michael Jackson is dead. All the news channels are covering the event ad nausuem. I am certain, in short order, the news will filter to as far as Kalabahi on Alor island or to Wetar island where the Wetar Ground-dove coos way down the chain of the Malay Archipelago.
Fox News reported that:
“News of Michael Jackson’s death yesterday caused the largest spike in SMS traffic in our network history,” AT&T Wireless spokeswoman Jeannie Hornung told FoxNews.com. “Nearly 65,000 texts per second were sent as fans reached out to each other to share the sad news.”
And…
“Yahoo! News set a record in unique visitors with 16.4 million UV’s in a day,” Yahoo spokeswoman Carolyn Clark told FoxNews.com. “Our previous record was on Election Day when we had 15.1 million visitors. Yahoo! News had 4 million visitors come to the site between 3-4 p.m. [PDT Thursday], setting an hourly record.”
For sure, by this time tomorrow the news will have circled the globe hundreds of times over.
As I watched the ever continuing news coverage I was reminded by one commentator of how we are all just like Michael Jackson- from the richest potentate to the poorest kampung dweller we will all it up covered in a white sheet hauled off the whatever our final resting place is. A comforting thought indeed.
Still, while our necks which are attached to our heads are turned to look at the passing wreck in other news North Korea threatens to wipe the United States off the face of the earth in a “shower of fire”.
Do they really believe this? This come while a U.S. Navy destroyer shadows an NK cargo ship carrying small arms to the democratic loving regime of Myanmar. No doubt the NKs are dangerous but it seems an awful lot like putting a few rocks in a tin can and trying to make as much noise as possible all the time screaming out “hey, look here, we’re dangerous.”
Then there is Tehran. Ahmadinejad today compared Obama to Bush. Laughable. The man and his regime are clearly mentally ill. The world has seen the video of the tragic death of Neda Soltan. The Iranian government alternately has accused the CIA of killing her and of the British Broadcasting Company of having arranged her death so that they could film it. Currently her family is not to be found.
What is clearly remarkable about the Iranian situation is how clear the Internet and cell phones are contributing to the truth rising above the madness of the lies Iranian government is telling.
This is, apparently, where an Islamic Republic will get you. An oligarch of grey beards who value money and power above the Holy Quran.
The Internet and cell phones played an important role in the 1998 student demonstrations in Jakarta but it has been over ten years since this took place and the technology is cheaper and much more wide spread now.
As this opinion piece which appeared in the Jakarta Post recently indicates…
Iran elections, Prita Mulyasari and Internet freedom
Bonni Rambatan , Malang | Fri, 06/26/2009 1:10 PM | Opinion
On May 13 this year, Prita Mulyasari was sued by Omni International Hospital for defamation and was sent to prison for expressing her opinions online, an action many would consider stifling free speech.
Thousands of people, largely Internet-literate youth, took to Facebook and the blogosphere and rallied for her freedom, after which she was released from prison and placed instead under city arrest to await her trial.
Exactly one month later on June 13, the Islamic nation of Iran entered what has largely been called its worse period of civil unrest in over a decade following the release of election results.
Communication within the country was crippled, with phone lines and many IP addresses blocked. People worldwide signed petitions and voiced support for the protesting Iranians via cyberspace.
The protest movement in Iran have been widely dubbed a “cyberwar” as people offer support to the Iran opposition by providing new venues of free speech, including new proxies for the protesters, baiting fake Iranian identities to government authorities, leaking documents, setting up anonymous forums, and so on.
Regular updates of the situation on the ground that would never have made it to media outlets such as CNN instead emerged through grassroots sources such as Twitter.
Through this technology, people worldwide could follow the unrest virtually in real-time while on YouTube, amateur videos of the protests, complete with the shaky camera angles and sounds of violence, reached our computers.
While it is true that the significance of the Iranian election protests far dwarfs the case of Prita, one should never be so easy to dismiss one case in favor of another, as each provide insight into the current state of society.” go to article…>
Iran is a very computer literate nation. Seventy percent of the population is below the age of thirty. Iran is also a nation of bloggers, there are 60,000 in Tehran alone.
In Tehran there truly is a Twitter and a Facebook revolution. While there are those who do disparage social networks and “don’t have time for them” Iran has shown how very useful they can be. Apparently they are hard to shut down short of total electrical blackouts.
Here the immediate brutality of the police and government have been reported not in days or hours or minutes but in seconds.
Which brings me to the slow motion of the brutality of the Indonesian Police. No YouTube or Twitter moments here. Yet.
The AFP reports:
Torture ‘widespread’ in Indonesia: Amnesty
By Stephen Coates – 1 day ago
“JAKARTA (AFP) — Indonesian police commonly beat and torture people in custody and offer better treatment in exchange for money and sex, Amnesty International said in a report released.
The human rights organisation demanded the Indonesian government acknowledge the problem and end the culture of impunity that allows police to act as if they are above the law in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority country.
The report, “Unfinished Business: Police Accountability in Indonesia”, found that the police were particularly brutal to the most vulnerable and marginalised people, such as drug addicts and women.
“Amnesty International’s report shows how widespread the culture of abuse is among the Indonesian police force,” the organisation’s Asia Pacific deputy director, Donna Guest, said.
“The police’s primary role is to enforce the law and protect human rights, yet all too often many police officers behave as if they are above the law.”
The report cited the case of 21-year-old sex worker Dita, who was arrested in 2006 and described being sexually abused on the way to the police station.
“I was arrested with five or six other prostitutes. On the way to (the station) they were grabbing me and touching me saying, ‘You’re so young, why aren’t you in school?’,” she was quoted as saying.
At the station the women were told they could buy their freedom with 100 dollars or with sex.
“Three of the girls agreed to have sex with them. I point blank refused to do either. Our pimps have paid them enough already,” she said.
Abuses meted out included shootings, electric shocks and beatings, sometimes for days on end, the report said.
“The suspects often received inadequate medical care for the injuries they received as a result of torture and other ill treatment,” Amnesty said.
“In some cases detainees had to pay for treatment after police abused them, and received inadequate medical care from police medical institutions.”
The report, based on interviews in Indonesia over two years, said police frequently sought bribes from detainees in return for better treatment or lighter sentences.
“At a time when the Indonesian government and senior police figures have made the commitment to enhance trust between the police and the community, the message is not being translated into practical steps,” Guest said.
“Too many victims are left without access to real justice and reparations, thus fuelling a climate of mistrust towards the police.”
Most police do not even know of, let alone follow, the force’s code of conduct which forbids abuse, she said.
Victims’ complaints were not impartially investigated and opened the plaintiff to further abuse, especially if they were still in police custody.
Amnesty recommended the government acknowledge and condemn the problem but no police or government officials attended the launch of the 84-page report.
It is the second report from a major international rights group to condemn torture in Indonesia this month.
US-based Human Rights Watch said on June 5 that torture and abuse of prisoners in a jail in Indonesia’s sensitive Papua region is “rampant.”
The United Nations has reported that Indonesian police routinely torture and beat suspects in custody.
Indonesia is a signatory to the UN Convention Against Torture but it has no corresponding law against the practice.
The UN special rapporteur for torture visited Indonesia in 2007 and found that police used torture as a “routine practice in Jakarta and other metropolitan areas of Java”.
A decade of political and institutional reform after the fall of the military-backed Suharto regime in 1998 has not left its mark on the police and prison system, analysts say.”
I would argue that the violence on the streets of Tehran is not so much different that the violence on the streets of Jakarta.
We are caught between sensational pop news, the lies of violent governments whose only intent it to perpetuate their grip on power, and histories which we do not care to address in polite company.
Time to fire up the cell phone camera.
Shine a light.
