(ندا آقا سلطان ( بهمن ۱۳۶۱-۳۰ خرداد ۱۳۸۸

• Who was she?

Nedā Soltān (her name is sometimes romanised as Soltani) was the second child of three who grew up in the middle-class Tehranpars neighbourhood. She studied Islamic philosophy at Azad University and worked part-time as a travel agent, following her dream to lead Iranians on tours abroad one day. In her short life, she had already gone on trips to Dubai, Turkey and Thailand, and she was taking classes to learn Turkish.

She loved music, but couldn’t decide on an instrument: she had taken violin lessons, but then she decided she’d rather learn piano, so she gave up violin. The piano she bought hadn’t been delivered yet when she was killed.

• What happened?

She was headed with her friend and music teacher Hamid Panahi to Azadi Square (with the iconic tower) for a protest march. Stuck in traffic, she and Hamid got out of the car to try and get a look around and to get some relief from the late-afternoon heat of Tehran in June. She walked along Kargar Street, talking on her cell phone. A shot rang out, probably from a nearby rooftop. She fell before Hamid knew what had happened. People rushed to help, including another man named Hamed, who recorded her death with a video-enabled cell phone.

Passersby headed in the other direction shouted at them to put her in their car. They raced down the busy streets of Tehran in the midst of a protest, with people trying to clear traffic ahead of them. As they made a wrong turn down a dead end street, Nedā was carried into another car. Doctors at Shariati Hospital tried to revive her, but it was too late.

Meanwhile, Hamed had sent his cellphone video to a friend in the UK, who posted it on YouTube and Facebook. Within hours, millions of people had watched Nedā die.

• Who killed Nedā?

We’ll probably never know. The most likely possibility is that it was a member of the baseej, the volunteer militia that takes its orders from the Pásdárán (known as the Revolutionary Guard in English). Since she was talking on her cell when she was shot, she may have been a target because cell phones are the primary method for getting information out of Iran. The government speculated that she was shot by members of the left-wing Mojāhedin-e Khalq in order to outrage the protesters, which is certainly possible… though it’s reasonable to be suspicious of anything the Iranian government might have to say.

• Is it ghoulish or exploitative to watch the video?

For some people, certainly, the only motivation to watch the YouTube of Nedā’s death is the same reason why they slow down at the scenes of traffic accidents: to see blood and gore. Most people have some combination of fascination with and repulsion from death and injury. This is pretty common, and it’s not bizarre in my opinion unless it turns into a mania where you actively seek such videos out.

Nedā was not an activist before the election. Her fiancé says she did not have a preferred candidate. She was an ordinary human being caught up in events. There are almost certainly many more deaths in Iran than we know about… certainly more than the government is admitting the outside world. And while Iran’s struggle is particularly heralded in the West because of our conflicted relationship with that country, it’s not at all uncommon in the world. Many have been killed in protests against unfair elections, and many will continue to.

Nedā Āġā-Soltān is no longer with us, and her image will be used for different purposes by many people in the days and months to come. If the death of a pretty young woman whose life is cut short gives you even a little sense of the pain experienced by many who are fighting, then I can’t see how that’s anything but positive. No one should be under any sort of illusion, though, that the situation in Iran is in any way unusual.

People are probably being killed in Iran as you’re reading this. They’re being killed in Pakistan, and in Zimbabwe, and in Serbia, and in Mexico. Each one of them has a family, and people who love them. Remember that when you look at Nedā.

What we won’t hear a lot about, I’m guessing, is the story itself. So I’ll jump into that one with both feet, cause what the hell.

The fire department of New Haven has an exam they give to determine who gets promoted to Lieutenant and Captain. 68 whites (including one Frank Ricci), 27 blacks and 23 Latinos took the test. There were seven Captain vacancies and eight Lieutenant vacancies. The top nineteen scorers were seventeen whites and two Hispanics… no blacks.

This was an unexpected result. Minority firefighters had done much better on previous exams, and the fact that no blacks would get a promotion led the City of New Haven to hold hearings on whether the test violated the Civil Rights Act. In the end, no one was promoted: no whites, no blacks, no Latinos. Nobody.

Ricci and seventeen others decided to sue. They lost in District Court, they lost on appeal in Circuit Court and are now taking their case before the Supreme Court.

Fundamentally, the City of New Haven chose not to certify the test results because they believed the results were bogus, not because they wanted to push unqualified firefighters of color ahead of others. As the New Haven Corporation Counsel said:

…results of previous exams in this department and in other departments have not had this kind of a result, which is one of the reasons why these results were so startling when they came down. These results were different.

I’d actually recommend reading the original District Court decision, which is surprisingly well-written and interesting.

The reason that this is coming to a head is because President Obama is nominating Sonia Sotomayor, who has sat on the Second Circuit Court since 1998. Sotomayor, who was named to the New York District Court by George H. W. Bush, is by any reasonable analysis a moderate, but Obama’s political opponents want to paint her as a dangerous liberal.

Ultimately, the question was not one of fairness per se, of course, but of law. If one disagrees with the decision, then one has to look at changing the law. And if we’re going to reopen Title VII – or indeed the whole Civil Rights Act – then I fear for our future. Because I don’t see a thoughtfulness in my fellow citizens on this issue. I see gut-reasoning and a rush to reimpose an ugly racism with a reasonable new “level playing field” face.

And if that’s what America wants, then so be it. But we should be prepared to acknowledge it openly.

I found an interview with Dennis “Genpo Roshi” Merzel that Bill Harris did as a part of his series on Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now. Pop-cultural enlightenment gurus like Tolle and Deepak Chopra always trigger my gag reflex.. especially when, as in this case, they’re heavily promoted by both Harris and, Buddha help us, Oprah. At the same time, these people are often learned and experienced: it’s just that they’ve chosen to make a grab at the incredibly lucrative self-help market. Hard to blame them, with all that money lying around.

Merzel himself is in Maezumi Roshi‘s dharma lineage (as is one of my favorite teachers, Charlotte Beck) and has been studying and teaching for many years. He’s put a fair amount of energy of late into promoting his Big Mind practice, which purportedly allows you to achieve enlightenment in a day. Which, I should note, reeks heavily of bullshit, and the $150 fee doesn’t help with its credibility as an authentic spiritual practice. But, I take what wisdom I can find wherever I can get it. You can make up your own mind.

What I found useful in Merzel’s talk was his approach to balancing out ego and non-dualistic awareness. Ego, in a lot of spiritual traditions, is something to be eliminated, cut out like a tumor. While I think that egoic thought is at the root of most or not all of our problems – as people and as a species – I don’t see a solution in forcing people to somehow eliminate their ego.

First off, getting rid of the ego is an enormously difficult task that even enlightened masters struggle with. But secondly – and more significantly in my opinion – ego is a part of who we are as human beings. And I can’t see the value in denying part of our humanness in pursuit of an abstract goal. The task, it seems to me, is to put the ego and the Buddhamind in harmony. Merzel has a way of presenting this which I found valuable.

He presents a triangle, with egoic thought or “everyday mind” on the left and non-dual awareness or (retching a little) “the power of now” on the right. Ego mind he calls, with some validity, “human.” We need our egos to move through the day, to make decisions about what’s better or worse, and to provide that striving for excellence that’s needed to develop on a spiritual path. Nondual awareness is referred to as “being,” and it’s the consciousness of the Eternal that guides the ego mind in making its choices.

He brings the two together at the apex of the triangle and calls it (retching again) “Human Being” – placing ego as a tool of non-dual awareness, rather than excluding it altogether:

the triangle described by Merzel

There’s a very interesting story I’ve thought a lot about lately. It was written by a neuroanatomist who suffered a stroke and observed the effect it had on her consciousness, from the point of view of someone who understands how the different parts of the brain work. She had a golf-ball-sized blood clot that put pressure on her brain’s left hemisphere, rendering her unable to walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life. She describes this experience in terms that resemble those used by people who have had glimpses of true enlightenment: a sense of oneness with the Universe, freed from any sense of being a separate self. When the blood clot was removed, she resumed being able to use language, study… and communicate her experience to others.

It seems to me that we, as humans, have the incredible gift of being able to experience ourselves as both individuals (left hemisphere) and as part of Oneness (right hemisphere). I have a suspicion that we are Evolution’s way of becoming aware of itself, and that it is this element of our nature that makes so many people drawn to religion and spirituality. However you choose to view it, though, I think it is hard to make the case that either ego or non-dual, Universal consciousness should be allowed to completely eclipse the other half of our natures.

We are all of a piece. We diminish ourselves by denying any part of ourselves. And I believe that the path to reaching our true potential is in accepting the totality of what we are. The story of driving Lucifer out of Heaven is re-enacted constantly in our culture: from faith-healers driving out demons to New Agers doggedly sitting on their meditation cushions trying to eliminate their egos.

Lucifer isn’t bad. Just misunderstood.

no, I don't get it either

Clue 1: The original plan sucked ass

The $700 billion bailout plan became known as TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program). The goal was to buy up a lot of crappy loans that the financial institutions were holding, with the idea being that it would create confidence that they weren’t about to go under, and so lenders would loosen up credit.

Yeah. Not so much. Actually, that didn’t work at all.

Clue 2: The next plan blew chunks

On Oct. 14, the Treasury set aside $250 billion of the program to buy stock in banks and other financial institutions.

Didn’t work. Nope.

Clue 3: The current plan…? Take a guess

Last week, Treasury floated a new new plan to give $50 billion to credit card companies, as well as institutions that offer student loans and car financing.

Clue 4: More money has already been spent than you probably realize

The Fed refuses to say who received $2 trillion in emergency loans it’s already given out. And it won’t say what it took as collateral for those loans. Bloomberg News filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act against the Fed after the central bank refused to answer any questions.

2 trillion dollars.

That’s a two. Followed by eleven zeroes.

Dollars.

$2,000,000,000,000.

Gone. Without a trace.

And for some unknown reason, the blood of capitalists and central bankers is not flowing in the street. What a racket these guys have.

Clue 5: We have “receipts” for about $200 billion of the drunken spree:

• AIG: $40 billion (that is, $40,000,000,000)
• JPMorgan: $25 billion
• Citigroup: $25 billion
• Wells Fargo: $25 billion
• Bank of America: $15 billion
• Merrill Lynch: $10 billion
• Goldman Sachs: $10 billion
• Morgan Stanley: $10 billion
• PNC Financial Services: $7.7 billion
• US Bancorp: $6.6 billion
• Bank of New York Mellon: $3 billion
• State Street Corp: $2 billion
• Capital One Financial: $3.55 billion
• Fifth Third Bancorp: $3.45 billion
• Regions Financial: $3.5 billion
• SunTrust Banks: $3.5 billion
• BB&T Corp: $3.1 billion
• KeyCorp: $2.5 billion
• Comerica: $2.25 billion
• Marshall & Ilsley Corp: $1.7 billion
• Northern Trust Corp: $1.5 billion
• Huntington Bancshares: $1.4 billion
• Zions Bancorp: $1.4 billion
• Synovus: $973 million
• First Horizon National: $866 million
• City National Corp: $395 million
• South Financial Group: $347 million
• Valley National Bancorp: $300 million
• Citizens Rep Bancorp: $300 million
• UCBH Holdings Inc: $298 million
• FirstMerit Corp: $248 million
• Umpqua Holdings Corp: $214 million
• Washington Federal: $200 million
• First Niagara Financial: $186 million
• Peoples Bancorp: $39 million
• Encore Bancshares: $34 million
• HF Financial Corp: $25 million
• Bank of Commerce: $17 million
• Broadway Financial Corp: $9 million

Your kids will be paying off this orgy. Your grand-kids will.

And we’ll probably all still be wearing the barrels.

A unit that has spent “35 of the last 60 months in Iraq,” with a full complement of battle-stressed warfighters, some suffering from PTSD, is now potentially to be deployed into some future, undefined imaginary tense situations in our major cities in full battle gear, including “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded… nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.”

Oh yeah. Nothing to be worried about here. How ’bout them Phils, huh?

Clue one: the stated mission literally makes no sense

I can’t remember ever seeing a “crowd” that needed a military combat team to “control” it. Especially now that our urban police forces are so helpfully kitted out with rubber bullets, tear gas and Tasers.

We have National Guardsmen, many of whom have similar wartime experience as the First of the Third, whose legally-defined role it is to perform these functions under the command of the state governors. There has not yet been any justification presented for the assertion that suddenly what is needed is a Federal military presence under command of the President.

Clue number two: it’s illegal… or it used to be

The Posse Comitatus Act, in 1878, made it a crime for the military to perform civilian functions inside the US. The one exception to this was spelled out in the 1807 Insurrection Act. In the 2006 Defense Authorization Act, that exception was broadened to include “natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition.” It was, helpfully, left up to the President, and the President alone, to define what that last part means.

Clue the third: martial law has already been held out as a threat

U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman of California spoke before Congress (this actually happened, it’s in the Congressional Record and viewable on YouTube), that unnamed Administration officials threatened to declare martial law if the $700 billion bailout bill wasn’t passed:

“The only way they can pass this bill is by creating and sustaining a panic atmosphere. … Many of us were told in private conversations that if we voted against this bill on Monday that the sky would fall, the market would drop two or three thousand points the first day and a couple of thousand on the second day, and a few members were even told that there would be martial law in America if we voted no.”

I mean, it’s certainly in the realm of possibility that a United States Congressman is either lying or bugshit insane. Given the bullying style of this Administration, though, Occam’s Razor kind of pushes me in the direction of taking him at face value.

So, if they threatened martial law if the market crashed…. and if the market is now crashing or teetering on the edge of a crash… do I gotta draw you guys a map?

Clue IV: Chekhov’s gun

Russian playwright Anton Chekhov once said “if in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there.” Why would the Bush Administration arrogate this enormous power to itself if it didn’t intend to use it? Why did they deploy 5,000 battle-hardened soldiers inside this country now: a month before bitterly-contested national elections – almost certainly to be lost in a big way by the ruling party – and at a time of national anxiety about the economy?

I’m not seriously advocating panic or hyper-dramatizing the situation. But even under the most optimistic assumptions about the goals and potential outcomes of this deployment… wouldn’t prudence sort of demand that people ask some fucking questions of their government? Isn’t that just common sense?

Or is it just me?

It’s clear now that they’re gonna run with the “voter fraud” defense when their dude loses in November. Problem is: there is no such thing as voter fraud in this country. Unless you think six cases of fraud a year – out of 178 million registered voters – is a major threat to the future of the Republic.

The fearmongering about voter fraud, of course, allows the Republicans to disenfranchise millions a year. If you want to believe it’s motivated by a concern for the democratic process… it’d be like using a thermonuclear warhead to disinfect your bathroom. Former Bush U.S. Attorney David Iglesias – who was fired because he refused play along with the charade – says of voter fraud: “It’s like the boogeyman parents use to scare their children. It’s very frightening, and it doesn’t exist.” The fear is useful, however, if you want to prevent certain people – who have an annoying tendency to support the folks with the (D) after their names – from being able to vote.

Here’s the Clue-by-four Guide to Stealing Elections, just in time to stop Scary Barry Osama Obama from keeping Grandpa Crankypants and Sarah the Snowbilly out of the White House:

Clue 1: restrictive voting laws overwhelmingly affect the poor and minorities

Restrictive registration laws remain in place in many states, including early closing dates for registration, purging of registration rolls, and the limiting of voter registration to specific times and places – according to one study, only 71.7% of otherwise eligible African American voters in Indiana, compared to 83.2% of white voters, meet Indiana’s Voter ID requirements.

Clue 2: intimidating grassroots voter registration organizations works, too

ACORN is demonized as being like the return of the Black Panthers, but they’re not the only target. A recent Florida law fined every registration worker $5,000 for any lost application, which would have wiped out the entire budget of the state League of Women Voters if just 14 forms were lost. The group stopped registering voters for the first time in over 70 years.

Clue 3: when they ARE actually able to register, purge ‘em

Greg Palast showed (pages 6-44) how approximately 92,000 voters, most of them Black (54%) and Democratic (90%), were illegally and purposely disenfranchised for the Florida 2000 election, thereby enabling Bush to win Florida and the general election by 537 votes. Charlie Crist says that ex-felons will be allowed to vote this year. Yeah. Uh-huh. Right.

Clue 4: if all else fails, pull out the black bag of dirty tricks

After the 2004 Ohio election debacles, the House Judiciary Committee released a report entitled “Preserving Democracy: What Went Wrong in Ohio.” The report detailed a number of tricks pulled by the Republican government of the Buckeye State, including the withholding of voting machines for Democratic precincts in Franklin County, resulting in voting lines up to eleven hours long and a net loss of Kerry votes calculated at about 7,000. They pulled some other cute tricks, such as widespread distribution of false information regarding the date and place for voting, and telling people they could go to jail if they showed up to vote.

“Voter caging” is another, powerful tool used in Ohio and in other states. Basically this amounts to election officials sending “return to sender” mail to voters, and then challenging every voter whose mail gets returned… with the rationale that the returned mail is evidence of “voter fraud.” Even though the National Voter Registration Act prohibits the cancelling of a voter’s registration based merely on the return of a single piece of mail, the resulting caging lists are used to mount massive challenges of minority voter eligibility at the polls on Election Day. More than half a million “caged” votes were challenged in 2004.

So, if you think Obama has this one in the bag… wait until after the polls close. I expect them to litigate this one well past January 20, no matter how big they lose. And unlike Al Gore… these guys are coming loaded for bear.

Or, you know, moose.

On Cluesdays, I want to try and explain complicated things in a readable, non-geeky way that busy people can read and understand in a few minutes. This week I’m trying my hand at the so-called credit crisis, which supposedly affects everybody but few people really seem to understand.

Clue 1: your money’s not in the bank

Most people know that the money they have on deposit isn’t sitting as a stack of cash in a vault somewhere. It’s invested, along with everybody else’s savings. That’s how banks make money. OK, you say, but where does the money come from, like when I get a big loan? Well, the bank borrows it, usually from other banks, based on the value of all their investments.

Clue 2: everybody who’s got cash is holding onto it

The problem now is, banks don’t want to lend to each other. Why? Because nobody knows what all their stuff is worth – especially the ones that are holding mortgages. The collapse of the well-known “housing bubble” (where the value of your house was supposed to go up and up and up forever, world without end, amen) has led to house prices going down the tubes. People can’t make their payments and the banks are left holding bad paper. So why do I want to loan you money if I don’t know you can pay me back?

Clue 3: When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail

The lack of cash – liquidity as it’s called on Wall Street – in the system is at the root of the problem. The government’s solution: soak the Street with a firehose of money! And thus, the $700 billion bailout. The idea being: if banks feel a little more confident that the investments have value (since the government promises to pay you good money for your crap) they’ll feel better about lending.

Clue 4: Whenever a salesman wants to close the deal today, be very suspicious

These conditions have been developing for some time. No one on Wall Street was surprised when investment banks began to totter. The White House admitted that the bailout plan had actually been drawn up months ago. It was sprung on the public at a time of maximum tension in hopes that it would go through quickly. It hasn’t yet, but it probably will, maybe as soon as tomorrow.

Clue 5: it’s usually a good idea to ask the smart guys their advice

Professor Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at the Stern School of Business at NYU, asked and answered a pertinent question in the title of a recent blog post: “Is Purchasing $700 billion of Toxic Assets the Best Way to Recapitalize the Financial System? No! It is Rather a Disgrace and Rip-Off Benefitting only the Shareholders and Unsecured Creditors of Banks.” Over 180 economists recently wrote a letter to Congress telling them that the plan is unfair, ambiguous, and will weaken the capital markets.

Clue 6: Check the three Cs of Congress

The Congress can be characterized as controlled by collusion, cowardice and corruption. (Yes, that’s cutesy and stupid, but fuck it, I’m tired.) So why is this plan going through anyway, even though the people hate it and the economists think it’s stupid? Check the three Cs. Your Congresscritter is probably bought and paid for by the financial/real-estate complex, scared of what they might do to her or him, or else totally in league with them… or some combination of all three.

If you think I’m full of shit, I definitely urge you to challenge me in comments, or learn more about this on your own. Read the news critically, and learn some of the depth of the issue through intelligent people online. Resources I like are the Calculated Risk blog and Professor Roubini’s RGE Monitor.

Ignorance serves no one except those in power. Educate yourself – your right to bear clues is as important in the 21st Century – if not more so – than your right to bear arms.

UPDATE: Here is a really good explanation of the subprime mortgage mess (which, again, is not the SAME as the credit crisis but played a role in it)… in layman’s terms. With stick figures!