When The Net Burped (2#) -

:
Google CEO Eric Schmidt told an interviewer Friday that dictatorships and governments of closed societies who try to shut down communications over the Internet in order to suppress people's speech will not succeed.

"Citizens can no longer be restricted by
the kind of strategies evil dictatorships do."

Except maybe when a big celebrity dies . . .

The protesters in Iran using Twitter to communicate were unable to get online at times because of all the Michael Jackson RIP traffic.

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The Atomic Ayatollah (8#) -

:
Is Khamenei radioactive or what?

Which candidate is more likely to give the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei his nuclear bomb? I suspect that would be Ahmadinejad.

But who is the real power behind the alleged "theft" of the Iranian election? According to an analysis by Muhammad Sahimi, the one to watch is Ayatollah Mesbah. And the writer elaborates on some of the dynamics of power behind public view.

# Meanwhile, NIAC reports that there may be
a Rafsanjani plan to replace Khamenei with a council.

"The first step in any crackdown
is to eliminate potential witnesses."

# Among those reported to be detained are:

- Iason Athanasiadis (Nieman Class of 2008),
- Newsweek's Maziar Bahari, and
- Blogger Karim Arghandehpour of the Futurama Blog.

# Blogger Karim Arghandehpour was transferred yesterday from Sepah Baghiatollah Hospital to Evin Prison where he is being held incommunicado.

# FYI: France24 is still getting
comments from inside Iran on their articles.

# Also see: The Guardian's
:: Live Blog :: on The Iran Crisis.

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Blocking Out The Birds (4#) -

:
The regime's jamming campaign to isolate their
public from the outside world is creating harmful
interference with the rights of other countries.

# Protests crushed by brutal force.

# Claims that people were thrown off a bridge.

# Caveat! Graphic violence:

People were allegedly chopped with axes.

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Blogger Goes Mainstream (5#) -

:
Sina Moutalebi, former blogger,
is now working for the BBC Persian service.

Neda Soltan's family
has been evicted from their home.

Reported clashes taking place
at Baharestan Square near the
Parliament building in Tehran.

:: guard :: - - ::cnn:: - ::engineer::

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SoFlo: Down These Mean Straits (3#) -

:
In the much under-rated 1993 movie Scam . . .

a female grifter working Miami Beach is picked up by a very enigmatic guy who blackmails her into working for him.

The movie brings Neo-Noir to South Florida with all the reversals and betrayals we've come to expect from the tradition of that genre. Featuring Christopher Walken and Lorraine Bracco as the male and female leads, it was adapted from the novel Ladystinger by Craig Smith III. I've seen it twice and liked it.

Local Public Radio series Under the Sun has won a grant to produce a program about the contemporary South Florida literary scene. It will air on Saturday, June 27 at noon and Sunday, June 28 at 7 pm on Public Radio WLRN 91.3 FM.

On the basis of their Blog, which looks woefully inadequate, I'm not very optimistic. This kind of project is like herding cats, then add a big dose of suburban sprawl. Well, good luck anyway, I guess.

:: Scam :: - - - :: Grant ::

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Mez: Nothing Missing (3#) -

Meredith Kercher Murder Case -

narrative chains and scenario patterns . . .

I think I finally figured out what's been bothering me so much in the narrative chain covered by the initial series of phone calls from Amanda Knox to her mother Edda Mellas and the events that immediately followed.

You come home to find the front door open and go to your bedroom where you discover that someone has moved your stuff. You then take off all your clothes and shower. Would you take off all your clothes if you discovered something in your bedroom was missing?

The natural reaction would be to feel violated. If you felt violated, you wouldn't be apt to take off all your clothes.

I now suspect that Filomena's room may have been tossed in order to establish the false premise that nothing was missing. In fact, something conspicuous was missing: Amanda's lamp. It is my understanding that the police eventually located it inside Meredith's locked room. The staged pseudo-burglary in Filomena's room established that nothing was missing there, possibly, as a distraction to Knox's lamp missing from her bedroom.

* * * * * * * * * *
There is an established pattern of crime associated with depraved homicides exhibiting features of torture or ritual occult practices which links them to illegal drugs. One example of this pattern can be found in the Matamoros Cult Murder Case. True, it is an extreme case. And not all crimes conform to already established patterns.

In March of 1989, Texas college student Mark J Kilroy disappeared while visiting Matamoros, Mexico. His murder was eventually attributed to a group involved in ritual killing and illegal drug dealing. Although this was an extreme case, it highlights a known pattern of crime linking depraved homicide incorporating torture or ritualized occult practices with illegal drugs.

If we use this pattern as a template and try to construct a hypothetical scenario based on that pattern, we might come up with something like this:

The perpetrators went to the cottage on a lark to get the key to the illegal grow house which was somewhere on the premises. Meredith had the key to the boys' quarters downstairs through which one might have been able to gain entrance to the grow house facility. They tried to get the key from Meredith, but she refused to hand it over to them. Then they began threatening her with a knife. The situation may have escalated from there and then spiraled out of control. Meredith, in this type of scenario, could have been killed over the key she possessed.

To date, the locations of all the keys
for that address have not been made public.

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