This is the sensational allegation against Mike Leach, head football coach at Texas Tech University, in Lubbock: During practice, Leach ordered a team trainer to lock a player who had just suffered a concussion in a lightless electrical closet for several hours. The player, Adam James, son of former NFL player and ESPN analyst Craig James, was not allowed to sit down. A “guard” was posted outside the door. Adam James subsequently released footage of the closet interior that he took with his cell-phone camera.

Mike Leach’s account: Leach told his trainer to take Adam James to a safe, dark place, because the paramount considerations when a player suffers a concussion are light sensitivity and the risk of an additional blow to the head. The “electrical closet” was in fact a “sports medicine garage,” in which James could receive fluids and remain out of the light. The “guard” was a trainer who checked on James every fifteen minutes.

The James family filed a complaint, and with extraordinary rapidity Leach was fired “with cause,” meaning the school was not obligated to pay the remainder of his contract. Leach had secured the contract a year earlier after threatening to leave Texas Tech. In ten triumphant years there, he had gained tremendous leverage. An idiosyncratic law school graduate obsessed with pirates, Leach had lifted the school’s previously anemic football program to national prominence by using an unprecedented offensive attack that changed the way the college game was played. (Michael Lewis wrote a beautiful article about this in The New York Times Magazine.)

During the contract negotiations, Texas Tech administrators mistakenly assumed that Leach’s threat was a bluff, and were ultimately forced to accept his terms to keep him. Leach’s victory, though, engendered suffusing bitterness that only grew with time.

This past season, Leach struggled to discipline and earn the allegiance of his players. Adam James complicated the problem. He was, Leach says, a lazy kid with an outsized sense of entitlement who frequently flaunted team protocol.

Craig James, a ubiquitous presence on ESPN, apparently phoned Leach and his position coaches regularly, demanding to know why Adam’s minutes had fallen off. (The answer, Leach says, was a combination of laziness and limited ability.) James was also calling high-ranking administration officials and powerful alumni. Leach and his staff eventually stopped answering James’ calls.

Leach has filed suit against Texas Tech, which he says has chosen to “deal in lies.” Texas Tech has undertaken an accelerated search for a new coach.

Did Leach torture Adam James? The team trainer initially affirmed Leach’s story, but then criticized his conduct in an affidavit taken by Texas Tech lawyers. At least one of Leach’s assistants considered Adam James a disruptive player who undermined his coaches. Some of Leach’s current players have said that Leach behaved tyrannically this season and that his treatment of Adam James was not anomalous.

The first problem for Leach now is that his reputation has been damaged to the point of probable unhireability, and the only people with firsthand knowledge of the situation are beholden to Texas Tech. Leach’s public support will come obliquely from other head coaches and former head coaches (see Lou Holtz), former players (see Wes Welker), and fans.

Leach’s second problem is that the Jameses cannot back off their positions. They got the man who built Texas Tech football fired. They can’t equivocate now.

Finally, even if Leach clears his name through compelled legal testimony, it may not help him much professionally, because the near-grotesque allegations against him will have hung in the air of plausibility for so long.

In this miasma, it’s interesting to contrast Craig James’ ESPN interview with Mike Leach’s. One man, dispensing with politics and protocol, seems to be making a desperate, earnest attempt to convey what he knows to be true. The other, cautiously and uncomfortably evading certain questions, seems to be reciting talking points supplied by advisors.

In 2006, Afghanistan harvested a larger illegal narcotics crop than any nation in modern history. Colombia, Mexico, and Burma together issue fewer drugs than a single Afghani province (Helmand, in southern Afghanistan). The U.S. rates the heroin-stained politicians of Afghanistan on a venality scale, hoping to work with “acceptably corrupt” officials (President Hamid Karzai falls short). Like the FARC in Columbia, the Taliban participate in and extract funding from the heroin trade. As the 2009 presidential election unfolds, opium remains the overwhelming political force in Afghanistan. The value of the election results may lie in their ability to help us calibrate the magnitude of the force.

But here I’m interested in a narrower question raised by magnitude: How do Afghani drug lords spend their absurd earnings? It’s an intermittently vexing problem. Control of the heroin trade is divided among about twenty drug lords, who split an annual take of (at least) several billion dollars. Afghanistan, though, has trouble absorbing spending on this order: The country’s per-capita GDP is $429, the lowest on the Asian continent. A world-class paucity prevails there—of luxuries to buy, professionals to employ, penthouse suites to reserve. The infrastructure situation makes leisure travel incommodious. (There is  one golf course, the Kabul Golf Club, restored after the fall of the Taliban by its proprietors, who cleared landmines, Soviet tanks, and rocket launchers to make it playable. It’s a nine-holer.)

The first step in disposing of drug money is, of course, automatic: operating expenses are considerable. Afghan drug lords rule areas as big as Maryland and Switzerland. Their territories contain river systems and mountain ranges and endemic species. Drug lords maintain large private militias. Haji Jumah Khan, the now-imprisoned former overseer of Helmand Province, commanded 15,000 fighters.

Heroin producers also employ convoys of armed jeeps and SUVs and fleets of cargo ships. Interfering palms along trafficking routes must be oiled; highway robbers must be killed. And there is the pre-shipment labwork. Refineries are crude—mud huts staffed by local men, usually very high, presiding over plastic-drum vats of boiling chemical solutions—but expensive nonetheless. There has been a little cost spike recently as a result of intensifying NATO antidrug operations; producers have felt compelled to build labs into the backs of Toyota pickups for quick relocation.

Still, there is a lot of money left. Afghan drug lords sock it away in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, to which countries they travel with some regularity, for business and pleasure. They also fly to reliably corrupt regional destinations like Quetta and Kabul. But living abroad is unrealistic, even behind walls of payoffs in autocratic oil states. A drug lord is safest in his native stronghold, the best drug-empire management is on-site management, and many producers (I imagine) simply want to make their material success manifest in their homeland.

So Afghanistan’s drug lords import loaded Lexus Land Cruisers with tinted windows and video entertainment systems. They throw parties. Haji Jumah Khan’s parties were highly alcoholic, lasted all night, and featured prostitutes flown in from Russia. Mainly, though, they build stuff—they remake the country to accommodate their acquired appetites. The pioneering Khan bought a town (land, buildings) in southern Helmand Province and transformed it into a rejuvenating way-station for his drug runners, who could pause after their travails and walk, self-reflectively, along the shores of a big artificial lake.

“Narcotecture” is the term used in Afghanistan to describe what the drug lords build. The Sherpur neighborhood in Kabul has the greatest concentration of narcotecture, but the phenomenon is national. Square blocks are razed, ancient family compounds are razed, and narco-palaces, sometimes several on a single vast lot, go up. The mansions may have twelve bathrooms, four kitchens, and rooftop parking lots. Many are fenced and armored; all are guarded.

Stylistically, narcotecture is incoherent and dizzyingly busy. Residences are composed of clashing globe-spanning elements: Asian pagoda tiers and eaves curving to points, Greek temple columns, mirrored skyscraper glass, medieval-castle balustrades and parapets, Persian pillars and arches, arabesque wrought-iron balcony railings, confectionary plasterwork. Some are straight imitations: a White House is under construction in Sherpur.

Inside: three-thousand-dollar Italian chandeliers, basement swimming pools, neon lighting systems that saturate floors. One mansion, according to Monocle magazine, has neon floors in alternating colors: blue on the second floor, pink on the first floor, and a “tutti-fruiti mélange” in the basement.

These structures look down upon, usually, squalor, the condition in which most Aghans live. A private residence with fourteen bathrooms may occupy the same unpaved street as tin-sheet huts and bomb-wrecked, squatter-occupied buildings exposed to unchanneled flows of sewage.

The narco-palaces also look down upon, and displace, history. Herat, for example, features a lot of narcotecture, but also the enormous eloquent citadel built by Alexander the Great in 330 BC, a stand of minarets above the fifteenth-century tomb of Queen Gawharshad, empress of the Timurid Dynasty, and a medieval mud-brick souk whose tea shops line alleys designed for two-way camel traffic. There is talk of clearing space in central Herat for a shopping mall.

It’s hard to say how great a threat narco-culture and narcotecture pose to the cultural traditions and indigenous architectures of Afghanistan, to which every Afghan has a natural right. A few years ago, the reporter Declan Walsh interviewed a construction worker standing outside a half-built narco-palace. “The owners,” the man said, “are the ones who killed our people and drank our blood, but at least they are providing us with work.”

Another possible (if paradoxical) consolation: Narcotecture is, historically speaking, perishable. It’s hard to find good contractors and architects in Afghanistan. Out-of-plumb doors in the most princely mansions fail to close. The concrete used to make narcotecture foundations and facades is said to crack quickly, and sometimes to crumble within years of being poured. Construction quality in Herat is so anemic, one local architect recently said, that an earthquake would cause half the city to collapse.

(An excellent narcotecture photo album, with sharp commentary, by T/S contributer P.J. Tobia. Two narcotecture video tours: by Robert Greenwald, of Rethink Afghan, and Rachel Morajee, of Monocle.)

SOURCES: Monocle magazine; Declan Walsh in The Guardian; the Congressional Research Service; Gretchen Peters, author of The Seeds of Terror, on NRR’s Fresh Air; P.J. Tobia in True/Slant; Wikipedia

Below is the rest of Persiankiwi’s account of the anti-government protests in Iran, edited from his Twitter feed. The first part of his account is here.

WHAT IS A PRESIDENT WITHOUT A COUNTRY?

ordinary ppl in Iran have no reliable info – gov is trying to break all communication routes

11:41 AM Jun 17th from web

news – Mousavi & Khatami have delivered joint letter to Ministry of Justice demanding release of protestors

11:52 AM Jun 17th from web

Tomorrow March is in memory of those killed by Government – Mousavi will lead Sea of Green

1:59 PM Jun 17th from web

What is a president without a Country?

2:22 PM Jun 17th from web

THEY ARE REMOVING FROM PUBLIC PROFILE ALL PEOPLE WHO OPPOSE THEM – ARRESTING AND TORTURING

last night we had computer problems and could not give you report

12:39 AM Jun 18th from web

We have a question for Iranian State Broadcaster (IRIB.ir)?

12:43 AM Jun 18th from web

IRIB.ir – How is it possible that 2Million people march in your country and you say NOTHING?

12:48 AM Jun 18th from web

Today in Tehran & all over Iran the Sea of Green will be the biggest March in 30 years of Iranian history

1:04 AM Jun 18th from web

IRIB.ir watch – The Sea of Green is peaceful – we have no enemies

1:07 AM Jun 18th from web

IRIB.ir said that we are all violent thugs – we are showing you everyday that we are peaceful Sea of Green

1:28 AM Jun 18th from web

All the violence in Iran now is ONLY by Baseej – they are beating people walking in the street, for no reason

1:31 AM Jun 18th from web

Gov has closed Iran to all foreign communication and news coverage

1:43 AM Jun 18th from web

They are removing from public profile all people who oppose them – arresting and torturing

1:46 AM Jun 18th from web

TODAY – SEA OF GREEN – IMAM KHOMEINI SQ (S ) – 4PM – TEHRAN – ALL WEAR BLACK – WE PRAY TOGETHER

Every night in Tehran millions of people stand on their balcony and support Sea of Green by chanting ‘Allah Akbar’

1:49 AM Jun 18th from web

Today Sea of Green will wear black in respect of those who have been killed by Gov

2:10 AM Jun 18th from web

Today ALL major universities in Iran are CLOSED for Sea of Green

3:37 AM Jun 18th from web

Confirmed – Tomorrow FRIDAY prayers in Tehran will be led by Khamenei

3:39 AM Jun 18th from web

You can follow Mir Hossein MOUSAVI official updates on his own facebook page

3:41 AM Jun 18th from web

Today – Sea of Green – Imam Khomeini Sq (s) – 4pm – Tehran – All wear BLACK – we pray together

3:47 AM Jun 18th from web

MOUSAVI SAYS: I HAVE COME DUE TO CONCERNS OF CURRENT POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS – TO DEFEND THE RIGHT OF THE NATION

Baseeji – In memory of Imam show your respect – Join us to pray – wear Black

4:05 AM Jun 18th from web

Everybody is peaceful and quiet – everybody is wearing black – the number of people is unbelievable

5:48 AM Jun 18th from web

Mousavi needs your help – he needs a film sub-titled into English and emailed back to him - will send u the link

7:09 AM Jun 18th from web

Mousavi has asked for this to be subtitled for him for ALL Foreign press to show  – http://www.youtube.com/watc...

7:09 AM Jun 18th from web

MOUSAVI launches direct attack on ANejad for insulting his wife

7:16 AM Jun 18th from web

Mousavi says: I have come due to concerns of current political and social conditions – to defend the rights of the nation … I have come to improve Iran’s Intl relations … I have come to tell the world and return to Iran our pride, our dignity, our future … I have come to bring to Iran a FUTURE of FREEDOM, of HOPE, of fulfillment … I have come to represent the poor the helpless the hungry … I have come to be ACCOUNTABLE to you my people and to this world  … Iran must participate in FAIR elections, it is a matter of national importance  … I have come to you because of the corruption in Iran … 25% inflation means IGNORANCE – THIEVING – CORRUPTION – where is the wealth of my nation? … What have you done with $300 BILLION in last 4 years – where is the wealth of the nation? … The next Gov of Iran will be chosen by the people … Why do all our young want to leave this country? … I know of no creation who places HIMSELF ahead of 20 million of the nation … We are Muslims – what is happening in Iran Gov is a sin … This Gov is not what Imam Khomeini wanted for Iran  I will change all this – This is the SEA of GREEN

7:19 AM – 8:24AM Jun 18th from web

@Google – Mr Mousavi has designed for your use a new Sea of Green logo – pls see his facebook for a copy

8:26 AM Jun 18th from web

MOUSAVI asks GOOGLE to change logo to GREEN for 1 day  – to give hope to all Iran

8:26 AM Jun 18th from web

TEHRAN IS ALIVE WITH THE SOUND OF PEOPLE ON THEIR BALCONY SHOUTING ‘ALLAH AKBAR – YA HOSSEIN – MIR HOSSEIN’ … WE HAVE UNCONFIRMED REPORTS THAT THERE IS DISSENT AMONG COMMANDERS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY GUARD FORCE

Hospital source – 12 killed and 29 injured on Monday in Azadi Sq

10:41 AM Jun 18th from web

MOUSAVI : http://www.flickr.com/photo… – photo stream

11:32 AM Jun 18th from web

Hospital source – increase in admission of people injured and beaten by Baseej – all Tehran hospitals in high alert

11:44 AM Jun 18th from web

to protect us all followers pls change your twt location to IRAN GMT+3.30

11:46 AM Jun 18th from web

Tehran is alive with the sound of people on their balcony shouting ‘Allah Akbar – Ya Hossein – Mir Hossein’

11:51 AM Jun 18th from web

MOUSAVI APPEALS TO THE WORLD TO PARICIPATE IN SEA OF GREEN IN ALL CAPITAL CITIES THIS SUNDAY – confirmed

1:44 PM Jun 18th from web

Mousavi – Khatami – Karoubi – will all lead Sea of Green on Saturday at 4pm in Enghelab Sq, Tehran  – confirmed

3:32 PM Jun 18th from web

We have unconfirmed repos that there is dissent among commanders of the Revolutionary Guard Force

3:56 PM Jun 18th from web

unconfirmed reliable source – several commanders of Revolutionary Guard Force arrested today

3:58 PM Jun 18th from web

HOSPITAL SOURCE – SEVERE SHORTAGE OF BLOOD SUPPLIES ACROSS ALL IRAN HOSPITALS – PLS DONATE BLOOD

confirmed – the wife of Saeed Rajaie, a prominent Iranian waime martyr, has been arrested while praying in Qom

4:10 PM Jun 18th from web

Thursday Sea of Green was more than ONE MILLION people

4:11 PM Jun 18th from web

The security situation in Tehran is very dangerous – 100’s arrested every day

4:14 PM Jun 18th from web

CONFIRMED – MOUSAVI & KAROUBI ask suppoers NOT to attend Friday prayers inTehran

4:19 PM Jun 18th from web

hospital source – Tehran hospital doctors are on 24 hour standby

4:30 PM Jun 18th from web

hospital source – severe shoage of blood supplies accross ALL Iran hospitals – pls donate blood  -

4:32 PM Jun 18th from web

NOW IS DAWN – WE MUST GO – LOCATION NOT SAFE – THANK U FOR SUPPORTING SEA OF GREEN – PEOPLE OF IRAN NEEDS YOUR HELP

cannot reply to all our followers but pls be aware that all info we provide is 100% accurate – situation here is serious

4:52 PM Jun 18th from web

political situ in Iran is v/complex – for every decision there are reasons – some we cannot mention here

5:10 PM Jun 18th from web

Advice – travel in groups – always tell someone where u are going – dont go out unless needed

5:20 PM Jun 18th from web

Advice – NEVER log onto any proxy posted on twitter – u will be traced

5:23 PM Jun 18th from web

now is dawn – we must go – location not safe – thank u for suppoing Sea of Green  – people of Iran needs your help

5:28 PM Jun 18th from web

THE SITUATION IN IRAN IS NOW CRITICAL – THE NATION IS HEARTBROKEN – SUPPRESSION IS IMINENT

Confirmed – Saturday Sea of Green rally – Enghelab Sq – 4pm – Mousavi, Karoubi and Khatami will attend -

4:45 AM Jun 19th from web

Confirmed – Mousavi calls on people of the world to march on SUNDAY in suppo of Sea of Green -

6:03 AM Jun 19th from web

confirmed – the Gov has refused to issue a permit for Sea of Green march at 4pm on Saturday in Tehran -

6:08 AM Jun 19th from web

The situation in Iran is now CRITICAL – the nation is heartbroken – suppression is iminent -

6:16 AM Jun 19th from web

MOUSAVI – CONFIRMED – CALLS FOR ALL THE NATION TO STAND ON BALCONYS TONIGHT AND SHOW SUPPORT WITH ‘ALLAH AKBAR’

unconfirmed reports – Revolutionary Guard has been mobilised to secure Tehran -

6:24 AM Jun 19th from web

English language intro to Mir Hossein MOUSAVI – http://bit.ly/9prbq -

6:30 AM Jun 19th from web

confirmed – Shahab Talebani has been arrested today -

8:07 AM Jun 19th from web

confirmed – Ebrahim Yazdi has been released by Gov due to poor health -

8:54 AM Jun 19th from web

Mehdi Karoubi letter to National Security Council – http://www.etemademelli.ir/…

8:57 AM Jun 19th from web

confirmed – 2 student activist arrested – Alirezah Khshbakht & Zahra Toheedi -

9:01 AM Jun 19th from web

Mousavi – Confirmed – calls for ALL the nation to stand on balconys TONIGHT and show support with ‘Allah Akbar’

9:03 AM Jun 19th from web

Mousavi – confirmed – show support for Sea of Green from balcony staying 9pm to midnight tonight -

9:05 AM Jun 19th from web

OF COURSE MOUSAVI HAS BEEN SILENCED – BUT HE HAS NOT YET BEEN ARRESTED – TODAY EVERYBODY WAS SILENCED!

@mousavi1388 Please join Mousavi, Khatami and Karoubi Sat 4pm Enghelab Sq. to Azadi Sq. Tehran for a crucial green protest

11:41 AM Jun 19th from web

confirmed – IRIB.ir – HACKED – Dos Dos Dos Dos

11:54 AM Jun 19th from web

Tehran is alive with the Sea of Green

3:12 PM Jun 19th from web

Mir Hossein Mousavi is safe and well – preparing for tomorrow – Sea of Green

3:16 PM Jun 19th from web

confirmed – sms text messaging is working again in Iran after 1 week of disconnecsion

3:26 PM Jun 19th from web

Of course Mousavi has been silenced – but he has not yet been arrested – today everybody was silenced!

3:56 PM Jun 19th from web

KAROUBI: AS A FORMER POLITICAL PRISONER WHO WAS TORTURED I KNOW THAT INSULTING A NATION WILL TURN THEM INTO A RAGING FIRE

58 scholars & lawyers condemn the recent killings & arrests in Iran as illegal – http://ghalamnews.org/news-…

4:19 PM Jun 19th from web

Advice – your location can be identified from mobile signal – + delete all sms after sending in case u are arrested

4:33 PM Jun 19th from web

Advice – remove sim and use mobile to film ANY violence or attak against Sea of Green

4:38 PM Jun 19th from web

Karoubi – As a former political prisoner who was toured I know that insulting a nation will turn them into a raging fire -

4:41 PM Jun 19th from web

Karoubi – Recognize the will of the nation and void the 10th Presidential Elections to return order to the country

4:44 PM Jun 19th from web

KHATAMI: IT IS THE TIME OF TWILIGHT – BUT I LOVE THE DAWN!

Iranian scholars and uni Proffessors write joint letter to Secretary General of UN condemning violation of Iran Human Rights

4:47 PM Jun 19th from web

Hossein Obama – The world is watching

4:57 PM Jun 19th from web

Shirin Ebadi – Iranian Nobel Peace Laureate – condemns harsh treatment of protesters in Iran

5:00 PM Jun 19th from web

EU – condemns threats of Ayatollah Khamenei

5:01 PM Jun 19th from web

Khatami: It is the time of Twilight – but I LOVE THE DAWN – Sea of Green -

6:36 PM Jun 19th from web

People of the world – Today Saturday 20 June 2009 – Iran will again make HISTORY -

6:38 PM Jun 19th from web

MOUSAVI – CONFIRMED – I HAVE PREPARED FOR MARTYRDOM

confirmed – Mousavi – SATURDAY 4pm Enghelab Sq – HISTORY will be watching us -

6:40 PM Jun 19th from web

confirmed – Mousavi – SATURDAY is a big day for fighting fascism -

6:41 PM Jun 19th from web

The world must not watch us – you must all join us wherever you are

6:43 PM Jun 19th from web

Google – thank you – NOW CHANGE YOUR LOGO FOR TODAY – Sea of Green

6:49 PM Jun 19th from web

Dawn is upon us – Allah Akbar – Let us pray together today – http://bit.ly/4dKQjX

7:14 PM Jun 19th from web

today the world can see why we want our freedom from fascists -

7:37 AM Jun 20th from mobile web

tonight to the streets – for freedom -

7:41 AM Jun 20th from mobile web

Mousavi – Confirmed – I have prepared for martyrdom

8:35 AM Jun 20th from web

TEHRAN IS BURNING WITH THE BLOOD OF OUR MARTYRS – THE STREETS ARE FULL OF DEAD

Helicopters pouring acid on people from the sky

8:37 AM Jun 20th from web

Today is the day of rekoning – the day of GHIAMAAT – Allah Akbar -

8:38 AM Jun 20th from web

Mousavi declares results of 10th Presidential Election null and void

8:40 AM Jun 20th from web

Mousavi speaking to suppoers in the street NOW

8:43 AM Jun 20th from web

Tehran is burning with the blood of our Mayrs – The streets are full of dead

8:44 AM Jun 20th from web

SODIUM METABISULFITE Na2S2O5 MIXED WITH WATER (5% SOLUTION) CURES CS TEAR GAS. WASH EYES WITH SOLUTION

People of Iran – be ready to take people from the streets tonight and give protection -

8:46 AM Jun 20th from web

Unconfirmed – The Army will not follow orders to kill the people -

8:47 AM Jun 20th from web

Advice – Tear Gas – cover mouth/nose – remove gased clothes immedietly – wash face and inside mouth/eyes/nose with water fast

8:50 AM Jun 20th from web

hospital source – Tehran hospitals report hundreds of casualtys

8:50 AM Jun 20th from web

@stopahmadi #gr88  Sodium metabisulfite Na2S2O5 mixed with water (5% solution) cures CS tear gas. Wash eyes with solution

9:03 AM Jun 20th from web

Advice – Wash face/mouth/eyes/nose/ears with lemon juice if gassed - cover face

9:17 AM Jun 20th from web

MOUSAVI – CONFIRMED – IF I AM ARRESTED THE NATION IS TO STRIKE INDEFINITELY

Mousavi – tehran TODAY http://bit.ly/TgIJf -

9:18 AM Jun 20th from web

Karegar St S – Tohid sq – Arya Shahr – Azadi Sq – Valli Asr Ave/Sq – Are alive with Sea of Green and fighting -

9:22 AM Jun 20th from web

confirmed – riots in Shiraz

9:24 AM Jun 20th from web

The nation has awoken TODAY – the Sea of Green is marching

9:25 AM Jun 20th from web

confirmed – Riots in Tabriz, Mashad, Isfahan, Ahwaz – Gov using violence -

9:27 AM Jun 20th from web

Mousavi – confirmed – IF I AM ARRESTED THE NATION IS TO STRIKE INDEFINITELY

9:31 AM Jun 20th from web

WE ARE WASHED IN THE PURE WATER OF HEAVEN AND STAND BEFORE YOU ALLAH TO BE MARTYRED

Good morning people of the world - the day of the new dawn has arrived

5:04 PM Jun 20th from web

Mousavi – it is the duty of the people to keep the fire of hope burning

5:06 PM Jun 20th from web

today the world witnes this Gov burn the nation with acid from the sky -

5:07 PM Jun 20th from web

we have seen today pain and suffering like never before in Iran – our nation – our love -

5:09 PM Jun 20th from web

The magnificent nation of Iran has spoken – the Gov of Iran has reacted

5:11 PM Jun 20th from web

We are the soldiers of Allah – peace be upon him – and we shall fight until justice of God is upon this nation -

5:12 PM Jun 20th from web

We are washed in the pure water of heaven and stand before you Allah to be martyred – Allah Akbar

5:14 PM Jun 20th from web

Allah you are the creator and to you we shall return -

5:16 PM Jun 20th from web

We are of peace for all man – we are the blood of Allah – we stand for that which you Will and decide – Allah Akbar

5:20 PM Jun 20th from web

CONFIRMED – RASOUL HOSPITAL TEHRAN – AT LEAST 11 DEAD … CONFIRMED – BANK MELLI HOSPITAL TEHRAN – AT LEAST 9 DEAD

Hojateleslam bin Moslemin Rafsanjani holds the honour of the army of this great nation - Allah Akbar

5:26 PM Jun 20th from web

We have no future – no life – no hope – without you Allah – our creator – our leader Enna Allah va Analieh Rajeoon

5:30 PM Jun 20th from web

Brothers and sisters were killed before our eyes today – the innocent blood of the mayrs of Allah

5:34 PM Jun 20th from web

We are the bird of freedom of Iran – but we have no wing without you Allah – peace be upon you

5:39 PM Jun 20th from web

We know that the army is not ready to kill the people of Iran

5:46 PM Jun 20th from web

confirmed – hospital source – hundreds injured Saturday

5:48 PM Jun 20th from web

confirmed – Rasoul Hospital Tehran – at least 11 dead -

5:52 PM Jun 20th from web

confirmed – Bank Melli hospital Tehran – at least 9 dead

5:54 PM Jun 20th from web

MOUSAVI WE WILL STAND BESIDE YOU – WE WILL DIE BESIDE YOU

Mousavi calls on Sea of Green – DO NOT take act violently

6:00 PM Jun 20th from web

Rafsanjani has stayed silent until now – he has the support of the army – our hope is that the army will protect us -

6:03 PM Jun 20th from web

We must rest – Tehran is burning with the fire of freedom – but tomorow we fight again – we have injured ppl

6:08 PM Jun 20th from web

we have no confirmation of tank in Tehran – that is a rumor from Gov -

6:10 PM Jun 20th from web

Khatami – Today is the dawn – Allah Akbar

6:14 PM Jun 20th from web

Mousavi – we have gone too far to stop now

6:14 PM Jun 20th from web

Again we thank you for support – pls see our video links for violence in Tehran today -

6:18 PM Jun 20th from web

again it is dawn- we go to pray to Allah – pls people of the world pray with us – God is but one – Allah – of all creation

6:21 PM Jun 20th from web

Mousavi we will stand beside you – we will die beside you – Allah Akbar – peace be upon all man

6:26 PM Jun 20th from web

I love Twitter; I hate Twitter.

Twitter pins people to little screens, truncates thoughts and attention spans, encourages people to write stupid stuff, etc. (Also, in combination with “twitter,” the verb “tweet” suggests “weenie,” “tit,” and “twit.”)

But in the middle of a revolution, Twitter’s pretty amazing. This obviously isn’t news, but in crisis the technology functions like telegraphy in the nineteenth century, the tightness of the dispatch pressing out superfluous information and leaving the immediate and vital. Again obviously, there’s zero lag time, except when there are connectivity/censorship issues, which allows for the cool meta narrative of the intrepid reporter eluding in various technologically clever ways the government’s fat fist. (I am accessing Twitter from 148.233.239.24 Port 80 in tehran. you can avoid gov filters from here. spread to others.) Plus, there are pictures and video.

If you find a good reporter (perhaps an actual reporter using Twitter) who writes over a sustained period of time, the totality of his or her messages will be—I’m realizing, probably several years after most people—an encompassing, startlingly granular account of a set of events.

Along with about 32,000 other people, I’ve been following Persiankiwi, who started reporting during the Iranian elections and has been an amazing correspondent ever since. Almost immediately I had an urge to clean up the feed and edit out extraneous material and put it all in chronological order, so it would read like a diary or series of actual dispatches from the front.

Here’s the result. It’s a stretch to compare Persiankiwi’s Twitter stream to Hiroshima or Dispatches or Homage to Catalonia, but they’re not totally absurd comparisons. Pretty soon (I think) the messages unite themselves and become parts of a single work, and clearly Twitter feeds are going to be cited copiously in future dissertations.

There’s a lotta text down there; I’ve broken it up with headings and “continued” hyperlinks, and if you want to know what’s happening at this very moment you can of course go to Twitter. It’s interesting to go back and forth and see the two- or twelve- or thirty-hour antecedents of present circumstances. I’ll try to bring this as close as possible to the latest entries; I’m still playing a little catchup.

(Note: I tried to change as little as possible. I didn’t care much about grammar or spelling; I tried to maximize clarity and minimize visual busyness.)

Finally, to Persiankiwi (should you read this): Good luck, stay safe, and, on behalf of the world, thank you. continue »

Last Monday, a Yemeni detainee named Mohammad Ahmed Abdullah Saleh Al-Hanashi committed suicide in his Guantanamo Bay cell. Earlier this month, another Yemeni detainee tried to slit his wrists. There have been suicide attempts at Guantanamo Bay every year since the camp was built. In 2003, there were 350 incidents of “self-harm”; 120 inmates tried to hang themselves.

Al-Hanashi had apparently been suicidal for some time. He went on a hunger strike in early May. To keep him alive, guards strapped him to a chair and force-fed him. Omar Khadr also participated in a hunger strike at Guantanamo Bay, and had a similar experience. From my Rolling Stone article:

In the summer of 2005, Omar Khadr joined 200 other detainees in a hunger strike to protest prison conditions and unlimited detention without due process. Many strikers told their lawyers they were being force-fed through the nose with tubes as thick as a finger, and ended their strikes because of the consequent pain. Many said they were beaten on their way to and from forced-feeding sessions. Omar lost weight and grew ill. From the diary of Omar Deghayes, a fellow detainee who participated in the strike: Omar Khadr is very sick in our block. He is throwing [up] blood. They gave him cyrum [serum] when they found him on the floor in his cell. Omar was carried to the hospital. As he was being moved back to his cell, he collapsed, and was beaten. The resolve of the strikers deteriorated. The strike ended. No concessions were made.

Part V.
(Note: Since my article appeared, Muneer Ahmad and Rick Wilson, both professors of law at American University, have stopped representing Omar Khadr. They felt he would be better served by full-time trial lawyers.)

To see their client at Guantanamo Bay, Muneer Ahmad and Rick Wilson have to take a chartered single-prop plane from Miami to the base. It takes four hours to circumnavigate Cuban airspace. The bay itself is uncommonly beautiful. It is horseshoe-shaped, with the camps on one side and military and civilian housing on the other. Nothing ever moves quickly; multi-day waits, for unexplained security reasons, are standard. Ahmad and Wilson sometimes have to wait a week to see Omar for a few hours. To protect the Cuban iguana in accordance with the Endangered Species Act, the speed limit on the base is set at twenty-five miles an hour—a good metaphor, Ahmad says, for both the studied stalling techniques of the base’s administrators and its moral priorities. The camps are on a level piece of ground close to the sea. They come into view when the visitors’ bus rounds the final curve. From that distance, in the beauty of the setting, the prison complex appears to be a resort.

When Ahmad saw Omar Khadr for the first time, in October 2004, after the convoluted flight and the numberless delays and checkpoints and searches and phalanxes of armed soldiers, and after being told so many times how evil the detainees there were, his first thought was, “He’s just a little kid.” Khadr was seventeen but looked fourteen or fifteen. He was gaunt and pale, in a state of everlasting exhaustion, his senses starved by solitude. He had large gunshot-wound scars on his back and chest, and smaller scars over most of his body, several parts of which still held shrapnel.

It took Omar Khadr a while to accept that his lawyers were not part of the interrogation system at Guantanamo. Their initial visits were spent trying to get Omar to believe in them—legal strategy was secondary. Gradually, Omar revealed himself to be very shy and curious and, in most ways, still a child, with a child’s sweetness and credulous charm. Despite the rate at which his bones were lengthening, isolation and trauma seemed to have preserved him in emotional time. When he learned a new word—his experiences had left odd gaps in his knowledge—he tried to use it right away, and as often as possible. When Wilson and Ahmad offered to get him something to read, he asked for coloring books and car magazines and books with photographs of big animals in them. When they asked him what kind of juice he wanted them to bring back after a break during a meeting, he said, “Just something weird.”

Whenever Wilson or Ahmad left a pen on the interview table, Omar would pick it up and start taking it apart and putting it back together again. He always asked to play with Ahmad’s digital watch, which had a stopwatch function; he never tired of using it to test his reflexes. He wanted to know all about his laywers: their ages, their hometowns, their family backgrounds, why they had chosen to become lawyers.

When he discussed the United States’ case against him, he did not mention ideology or God. He was still devout, but he did not always manage to pray five times a day. He seemed to have drifted from the absolutism of his family.

Omar Khadr grasped legal concepts surprisingly quickly. When Wilson and Ahmad half-seriously told him he should study law, he showed something close to delight, and then laughed darkly: He was unable to contemplate a future so far removed from Guantanamo, a future in which an “enemy combatant” was acquitted and became a lawyer. On the advice of Wilson and Ahmad, Omar Khadr wrote a note to the presiding officer of his first military commission hearing: “With my respect to you … i’m boycotting thes persedures untel i be treated humainly and fair.”

Once Omar Khadr had allowed himself to believe that he had acquired committed advocates, his life bent itself around his meetings with them. They had brought him back into the forward-moving world and reminded him who he was. His accounts of mistreatment emerged slowly. At the very end of his first meeting with his lawyers, he mentioned, embarrassed, that he had been threatened with rape. He was convinced that Ahmad and Wilson would never return, and it suddenly occurred to him, during the interview’s final moments, that this might be his last chance to speak to the world. It was easier to reveal something shameful to confessors he would never see again.

Except for a brief hiatus, Omar Khadr has been alone in a very small cell at Guantanamo Bay for nearly four years. His daily life remains filled with menace: He is so conditioned to abuse in captivity that he is incapable of believing he will ever be free of it. He is also unable to believe that he will ever be released. The foundational distortions in his perspective are the product both of deliberate manipulation—childhood indoctrination and sustained torture—and simple chronology: Four years is nearly a quarter of Omar’s life. Since he was caught, he has grown seven inches.

(Postscript: Khadr is now twenty-two. His future depends, first, on how the Obama Administration classifies him as a detainee, and, second, on whether the Canadian government agrees to repatriate him. I explain Khadr’s current situation in more detail here.)