godard

[godard]

The myth of domestic besiegement

I haven't written anything extensive for a few years now, but it feels encumbent to speak now. Loudly.

Back in July, i posted the following on twitter, because it was something i inherently felt for many months, but was waiting for someone else to say it out loud so i didn't have to. I waited. And no one did.

"I'm not sure if i've said this before, but the source of all of Trump's power is his ability to make the US believe in the fiction they are a besieged nation." https://x.com/godard/status/1814204310848495800

Unfortunately, it seems i'm alone in perceiving how Trump's 'besiegement' rhetoric is actually a policy, mirroring a major part of history. These disparate fascist talking points have a confluence with fascist leaders in Germany and Italy in the 20th Century to make their nation's believe they were being besieged internally, and their leadership would galvanise the nation by destroying dissent.

In the case of the US, my belief is that part of this racism and besiegement is tied with white nationalism.

Let's break it down.

Trump has been clear that immigrants are a danger to the security of the United States, and should be deported. Excluded from this is any discussion, and the imaginary proposal that immigrants could be white. I have never heard Trump discuss a threat of Swedish immigrants. When was the last time you heard of his opposition to white European immigrants in his discourse?

The bigger question is what makes you think you are living in a besieged nation? What makes you feel like you're being besieged? I'm going to try and break down not only how Trump has achieved his power by making the US people believe they are besieged, but how he has made them believe they are, and how he has made the panacea for their besiegement is himself.

Crises

'If you don't have one, make one.'

Trump and Vance are professional alarmists. They largely rely on gender to make their points as divisive as possible. In the last week i have witnessed men accusing women of misrepresenting and lying about their gender; and blanket, unrelenting accusations that 'Women' are responsible for male loneliness. I cannot describe how many faux-intellectual talking points i have seen shoved at women in this last week, having to defend themselves against misogynist men proclaiming if only women could be more obeisant and more compliant, might make the possibility of their misogyny stop. No. These 'men' are prematurely celebrating being politically validated. They feel emboldened their misogynist god will be elected.

*Vance in the last week said that his wife has children. *Generals say the man they worked along side with is a fascist. *The public needs to know Arnold Palmer had a large penis. *It's more important to know how big or small Arnold Palmer's penis size is than the overwhelming majority of economists disagreeing with my plan that would tank the economy.

I have a lot to say about the Harris foreign policy campaign, but it's not predicated, domestically, on a new golden age of misogyny.

[godard]

To my former step daughter, the wonderful Li, on the eve of her sixth birthday

Hello sweetheart. It’s a little weird writing this because i don’t know at the moment whether we will ever see each other again. Maybe when you read this, you will be the amazing woman i know you will have become. If the language i use sounds like i’m talking to both you as a six year-old, and a grown woman, i apologise, i think i am talking to you both. I’m very sorry i won’t be there for your sixth birthday. I loved meeting you as an adorable and imaginative 3 year-old, watching you turn into a caring and precocious four year-old, and a kind and very funny 5 year-old who has grown up so much this year, and learning to read so well, so quickly, that has made your mother and i very proud of you.

There are a lot of things i wanted to write to you about, but i think i will leave most of them all for another day. I wanted to tell you about when i was six, and when my little sister was six. I wanted to talk about your beautiful mother who i love, your grandparents who love you very much, and how i still love the way Meg follows you around like a puppy even when she was bigger than you. I’m just going to talk about some sad stuff for a little while (I hope you don’t mind) and then i’m going to talk about nice things.

When i left in July, it was one of the hardest things i have ever done and i regret it very deeply, but as i said to you in October when you asked about it, i just got so sad about everything, and i got very worried that the sadness i was always feeling might make you sad as well. When you sat on my lap in the fish and chip shop in August, it broke my heart when you asked if i was coming home now. I desperately wanted it to be true that i would be coming home.

I’ve thought a lot about the email i sent to your mother in July over the last few months, and i have a slightly better perspective as i’ve tried to work out how i got so wrong. I read what i wrote now and see myself asking questions rather than making statements, and i also see me asking for help and reassurance. But the insight i have now is better, i think. In 2015 and 2016, it looked like it was just the three of us and Meg living together, but i kept seeing the invisible people in the house, all of the time (maybe your mother saw them too?). They weren’t imaginary people, they were people who had recently caused great pain and suffering in the life of your mother, and i very often felt powerless to help her. I’ll always regret that i couldn’t help more. I’ll call them the Big ugly man, the skinny fraudster, and the two bad sheriffs of Nottingham. I think it will be fine to ask your mother about them when you read this. In fact, i hope they will be a distant memory for her by the end of this year.

I’m also going to add your father to the list of invisible people, who i don’t think is a bad person at all, but after his visit in February, i found myself noticing him in my thoughts more and more so that he often seemed present with the other invisible people.

When you and your mother went to Brazil, i really didn’t want you both to go without me, but i didn’t say anything to your mother until much later. I wasn’t invited to go with you both, and that hurt. I think i just wanted us to go together as a family, but i also didn’t want to be left alone with the invisible people either. They were there every day while you were both away, and i think i just couldn’t fight them anymore. They won, they made me feel like there was no room for me, and i had to go.

When i saw you in October, you told me i could come home, but only if i loved Chomp. Chomp might only be a dinosaur puppet sweetheart, but he’s very bad tempered and very ill mannered too. He could be very mean to the other animals in your bedroom. Please tell him for me that the other animals are Friends, not food, Chomp. I saw this dinosaur bag in a shop window as i was leaving Wellington, and straight away thought, it’s Chomp! But the shop had closed and i couldn’t buy him for you. I’m sorry. 

I heard you liked the Christmas presents i got for you. Did you like the animals? Did you draw any of the pictures in the Miro book? I heard you like the little black sheep i got for your mother. I think the card said, ‘From a black sheep boy to his black sheep girl’. Thank you for looking after the little sheep for me.

To happy stuff, and why i love you and miss you.

I miss hanging out with you during bath time when you would wet my hair and give me hairstyles like animals. I still think the shark hairstyle was my favourite, but the pelican, giraffe, and turtle were wonderful too. I miss using all the plastic animals in the bath to make up stories, Star Wars-related or otherwise.

I loved playing ‘animals’ with you, and i hope Dr Monkey and Tuatara are looking after you sweetheart.

I miss pretending to be a zombie and chasing you down the hallway and eating your delicious brains.

I miss holding you upside down, whether we were pretending to sweep the kitchen floor with your hair or just being silly.

I miss sitting on the deck with you while you made stone soup and made me drink it while i pretended to be different monsters.

I loved it when i could put you on my shoulders and go for a walk up Jackson Street. And i miss it when we used to take Meg for a walk to the little bar up the road and we’d drink too much apple juice and do colouring in.

One of my proudest moments was to play The Clash and The Descendants for you REALLY loudly and dance like crazy people with you. Both of us loving it. Playing you David Bowie for the first time and you asking for more of it when the album finished, and then asking to see all of his music videos.

How funny, kind, cute and amazing you were when i visited in October. You made it very clear i had a lot of playing to catch up on. And i loved how you leaned hard up against me in a hug when your mother and i read you stories.

All of the crazy emoji combinations and loving voice messages you ever sent to me.

You getting me giant yeti feet slippers, and you wearing your giant panther feet slippers in Winter.

You and i taking Meg for a walk in stormy weather and yelling into the wind.

All of these things and so much more. I love you sweetheart, it’s been a privilege to be your step father, and i hope this birthday is the best ever.

Gary

[godard]

Responses

A Washington Post journalist asked me about my petition.

Here's my questions: Many people in the Idaho community are out raged about this case, but as far as I know you're the only one that has created an online petition.

Me: There are two other petitions that i have linked to in one of the updates i sent to the petition signatories. The one hosted at MoveOn has, i think, almost 200,000 signatories.

Question: What would you say to people who are outraged that I've done nothing?

Me: Every day we read, hear or see a litany of injustices that often overwhelm us and makes us feel as if it’s all too much. Inaction is sometimes only a reflection of people having competing demands on their time, energy, and sometimes doing their utmost to get by. I’ve spent time in California, but nowhere else. I don’t know the people or culture of Idaho, and i would never judge them. But this particular case reveals that the institutions of Idaho, the school and justice systems in particular, have failed McDaniel and have irreparably changed his life. For the benefit of all of its citizens, the people of Idaho should be asking significant questions of its school and judicial system to insure this doesn’t happen again.

Question: The family of the victim told me that today recently relocated to a new town because of poor treatment from the community following the lawsuits and charges. What would you like to say to them?

Me: In the Māori language the expression is Kia Kaha (Be Strong). I know it must have been hard to make the decision to leave, and just as hard to do the leaving. I hope your new community embraces you for the love you obviously offer. I was adopted and raised by a very racist father who only found out i was of mixed ethnicity in my late thirties. My father and i did not get along for the majority of my life. When i told him i had found out i was half Māori, he said, “Why am i not surprised”.

I think you are amazing people who obviously care very deeply about people and community. I hope all of your family will be treated with the kindness and respect they deserve, and you are loved in your new home.

Question: What would you like to say to the victim? What would you like to say to the judge? What would you like to say to the teens charged?

Me: To Antwon McDaniel, i would like to say that i am sorry so many people have let you down. And that i hope you get the help and love to see the world anew. To know that the world is a big place and Dietrich, like many places, is a place to escape from. I know, i left one just like it and will never go back. Hopefully one day we'll meet, but in the meantime, i'll be cheering for you over here.

I’m not sure the judge in this case had any great authority. My reading of the events in this trial have led me to believe the prosecution in this case have made a succession of plea deals, essentially negating any authority the judge had. If this is not the case, then the judge too has failed in his responsibility to the victim.

I have nothing to say to the teens charged. From what i have read, they are of a privileged background. Bullies and their acolytes usually are, they rely on their power and privilege to guard against any fallout they may receive from their hate. In time they may become good people, but they deserve to be punished for their actions.

Question: And finally, did you know much about Idaho before you read about this case in the news? What do you think of Idaho, or this Idaho community and its institutions now?

Me: As i mentioned, i spent time in California some years ago, but haven’t been anywhere else in the US. I know very little of Idaho or it’s people. But in this case, i believe, Idaho needs to investigate its District Attorney’s Office and the Dietrich School responsible. A child has been sexually assaulted and no one wants to take professional responsibility or be accountable for a hate crime they have allowed to happen. That is unconscionable.

[godard]

The McDaniel Case

I recently started a petition because of the horrifying mistreatment of a young disabled black teen. I was asked by a journalist in the US why a white-looking guy in New Zealand wanted to be involved in this case. Here is why, and here is the petition.

I first found out about this case in May of 2016 when it was included as one of the stories of the day featured in an email I receive from Daily Kos. I was completely shocked that such cruelty and exploitation within a High School can still exist today. I know how naive that must sound, but the willing participation and encouragement that the adult teachers of the school had in this case is, I believe, antithetical to any notion of fairness or basic human compassion. They should not be fired – if they were of any human worth, they should have resigned in shame by now.

I am also outraged. McDaniel has been victimised multiple times. He has been victimised by the Idaho school system who have the responsibility to protect him. He has been victimised by the adult teachers, who not only did not protect him, they encouraged his teammate, John R.K. Howard, to beat the teen into unconsciousness. The legal system has now victimised him by allowing the perpetrators to not only escape prison, but to also not have records of conviction. If John R.K. Howard completes his two to three years of probation without fault, his conviction will be erased.

Why does a white-looking guy from New Zealand get involved in this case and create a petition?

I’m bi-racial, I am half Pākehā and half Māori. But I don’t believe my ethnicity has anything to do with this. And certainly my nationality has little bearing on how concepts of natural justice are formed. I’m well-travelled, and have deep respect for cultures that are not my own, but so do lots of folks, right?

The answer is quite simple. Basic. Human. Empathy. And an antipathy for bullies. With the exception of his parents, everyone and every system has failed McDaniel. His peers have failed him, and the adults in his world have failed to defend and protect not just him, but his dignity. Three very real concepts – Violence, Racism, and Negligence run through the McDaniel case.

He has been subject to great violence – physically, mentally and sexually. The prosecution have not only been negligent, they have meted out further violence against McDaniel by appearing to actively undermine their own prosecution for the benefit of the three teens who sexually assaulted McDaniel. This was also very distinctly a racist hate crime. In previous weeks before the rape (yes, I believe this is rape, a sexual assault) McDaniel had been subject to a volume of racist epithets. And although I cannot prove this, and I would doubt anyone else can without a full investigation, it calls into question whether the educational and judicial system, in this case, has been racist.

The hopelessness you feel in this case is immeasurable. The case is now over and McDaniel will not receive any justice. The only experience that he might have is of individuals who might resign or be forced to resign their current roles because of their failure to protect him. Even those who support McDaniel will not see John R.K. Howard fulfil his Community Service in Idaho. He has moved back to Texas and will complete any punishment there.

But we can ask the actors in this story to look at themselves, to truly see how they failed at doing the one thing they are there to do. No one should be punished for their mistakes. But they should be punished for their failing to even basically protect our most vulnerable.

[godard]

Kampong Cham

I’m speaking with Mr Dave O’Brien at UX New Zealand in October. We were asked to write a blog post, this is what i have without Dave’s almighty contribution.

We did our user testing at a primary school in Kampong Cham City which has a comparable population to that of Dunedin. Although you’d never know it had a population anywhere close to that. Chunks of the city are a hive, and others feel like everyone is inside asleep, or warding off the heat with bucket-sized glasses of sugarcane juice with ice cubes the size of shoes.

Large parts of the city have a feeling of a place like a busy Te Awamutu, and the Mekong in this part kind of feels a little bit like parts of the Whanganui river would have in the late 1800’s with traffic moving things up and down the river at scale. But that’s really where the crude New Zealand comparisons have to end. Cambodia is not New Zealand. The Mekong really isn’t the Whanganui, and Kampong Cham city is really a hub for the rest of the province which is enormous and bustling.

We recently thought it would be fun to see what Google thought the estimated drive time from Phnom Penh to Kampong Cham is. Google reckons 2h 24m. That’s a good day. By good, we mean bending time and space, gravity, and other physical laws of science we all usually intuitively live by. Depending on the time of day you travel, the trip can be, or feel a lot more like 3 - 4 hours. Because you have to factor two things: People leaving or coming into Phnom Penh in the morning and evening, and also their cars dying in the middle of the road from an overheating radiator, an exploded oil hose, or they ran out of fuel because of the few and far between places you can buy fuel.

And sweltering heat. You remembered the minimum 50 litres of water you’ll need for this drive, because air-con doesn’t stop the sun, right?

The trip out of Phnom Penh is a lesson, building by building, of a city, not just becoming rural, but becoming older and older as well. But not like here. Here we have housing on the outskirts between the edges of our towns and cities. In Phnom Penh, it’s commercial buildings from brand new in the centre, and then they gradually age and become smaller, claustrophobically so, as you get further out, until you hit the flat, seemingly infinite rural horizon of brown.

Gary says: “The overwhelming sense of expanse; the high-tension powerlines scarring the landscape. Bone-dry dirt contrasting with houses on stilts over rice paddies and murky water that looked like nothing could grow or live in it but dynastic lineages of mosquitoes. Little hamlets selling fruit and vegetables by the side of the road. And all the time you think of the millions of people who were driven from their homes to live or die out here, by chance. And that evil, long-lived fucking history teacher – who rendered millions dead or homeless – would later live comfortably under house-arrest into old age, and couldn’t comprehend humanity, let alone history.”

Checking into our hotel we were greeted by these guys at the entrance.

(Picture: Kampong Cham Hotel entrance. Copyright. Gary Elshaw). 

Although the elements have eaten away at these guys, considerably, they were happy to see us. Why there’s a freaking rabbit on top of the elephant and not another animal of some sort, or no animal at all, we don’t know. It kind of looked like the rabbit might have originally been somewhere else, but some local vandal stole it from a local garden and thought it would look cool on the elephant. And now they’re stuck with each other, best buddies, making the most of it. Somewhat like Dave getting stuck with Gary.

Gary in particular fell in love with the rabbit, “Is that a friendly wave or a high-five, Dave? The left arm looks like it might be a fist bump”. But the elephant and the rabbit looked happy enough standing outside a dilapidated 1950’s hotel that would have been grand in it’s day.

When we say grand, we mean Grand. It has the air of having once been the most majestic building in all of Kampong Cham City. It’s large staircase, it’s very familiar and large western-styled, belle époque replica lobby. A lobby that probably would have seen bustling business people before the rise of the Khmer Rouge. It smells like 70 years of nicotine-stimulated people, used to sitting in it’s greeting area with cigarette holders made of ivory, holding a gin and tonic and watching the specks of dust dance in the giant shafts of light that fill the entrance.

The reception area has one part that looks like you once would have stood patiently in line to send or receive your telegram.

Up two broad flights of marble stairs is this hallway. 

(Picture: Kampong Cham Hotel hallway. Copyright. Gary Elshaw)

Nothing on earth can prepare you for this hallway. This is no regular hallway, it’s an ice-rink-sized map of cool white tiles stretching off into infinity. It’s lifeless. Nothing stirs and there’s no sound. It’s a vacuum of another era that probably didn’t ever exist here, and that downstairs certainly didn’t prepare you for. The phrasing of the doorways on the sides are odd, they make no sense for what might be behind them. The doors jammed together and the spaces are all opposed. A ballroom with the doors and rooms marginalised to inconsequence.

And when you open the door to your room?

Gary says: “1970. Small. Candlewick. Worn brown. Hostile green. A rusty rosette, stale air, and a dripping tap. Perfect.”

[godard]

Some of you know i’ve been unwell for some time now

And i guess some of you now know i am.

This is what my depression used to look like. http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.co.nz/2013/05/depression-part-two.html If you haven’t seen it before, you should go and have a look, it’s great. I’ll wait.

A few months ago, suddenly, while i was at work, i lost my mojo. And i knew i had lost it. I even joked with a colleague that i must have left it in the conference room we had just been in, because how else do you lose something, like your shadow, so suddenly with no apparent reason? But it was gone, and i had that terrible feeling of knowing it was gone and wouldn’t be back until it felt like it.

I should try and explain what my mojo is. We all have one to one degree or another. For me it’s that core part of you who has that innate sense of what you’re doing in life is right, or at least on the right track. The people in your life that you love love you back (to a certain degree, or as much as they can). If you have a job that you think is worth doing, the value of that job to you rewards you in ways that money doesn’t entirely have to pay you for. You can do amazing things on 3 hours sleep, because, why not? You can leave the house knowing that you’ll be coming home in a few hours and the time in between doesn’t really matter too much, because we all have to work. You’re usually a champ when it comes to getting things done. You consider yourself to be neither a genius or an idiot, and emotionally you’re reasonably sure that you’re empathetic and understanding. You enjoy people’s company, you like hearing their stories and experiences, their ideas and things they’re passionate about, even if you don’t necessarily agree with their politics. When you do disagree with their politics, you grin at them and shrug. Because we should all be able to antagonise people we care about over politics.

As soon as i knew my mojo was gone, i knew what was coming next. It’s a slow incremental slide. You’re in a car that was doing a bit over the speed limit and then someone pulls on the hand brake and you’re in a long, slow-motion, inexorable skid not knowing where the car is going to land, but you know it’s going to be ugly, messy and painful.

Before long - i started imploding. I now sleep anywhere from 12 - 14 hours a day, if I can get to sleep. I sometimes go to work, and other days i don’t. I would like it if the people i love loved me back, but it doesn’t matter. I drink a lot. It’s kind of a placebo mojo, i can talk to people about stuff that isn’t, ‘Can you please pass the salt?’. Or when 3 people in 5 minutes say ‘There’s a printer jam.’ And you finally realise, ‘Oh, is there a printer jam, i can take care of that if you want guys?’ Genius, idiot, empathy, compassion? How would i know? I’ve left my partner and step-kid to live in a half-way house in a 1.5 x 3 metre room, eating noodles or not eating at all because it all hurts so much. Your upper-C conservative, National-voting politics? Fuck you, i want homeless people housed and i don’t give a fuck about your bourgeois ideas of whether homes are affordable to the middle classes.

Anhedonia. Anhedonia. Anhedonia. Anhedonia, my love, i will marry you.

When i was doing my Masters, i used to sit in a meat-locker (really!) in the basement of the British Film Institute in London on a Steenbeck with a dictaphone doing a frame-by-frame analysis of some of Jean-Luc Godard’s 16mm films from 1968. If you’ve never seen a Steenbeck, this is what they look like.

http://www.steenbeck.com/16mm.php

Two reels, and you can run the film backwards and forwards watching the little screen, and there’s usually a little editing station attached to cut and paste the footage. We’ll come back to this.

I’ve had the depression where you would be happy for someone to hold a gun to your head, and say to the person holding the gun the great Greg Dulli line, “Go ahead, i said, erase”. This current one’s different, a bit sneakier and also a bit meaner. It’s like your head is constantly inventing new ways to fuck with you (shakes fist at sky, god, brain chemistry). I call them loops.

For the last 3 weeks my loops have gotten worse. They’re a film nightmare, they’re audio nightmares, they’re patterns of thought you can’t escape. They’re one sentence thoughts that loop over and over and sometimes they’re angry thoughts you hate, but can’t stop. They’re things you desperately want to say to people, but can’t. And they’re angry (which i’m usually not, it’s out of character). And sometimes you revise them. Something i want to say but can’t. And it gets louder and angrier. Add your own all-caps. They’re snippets of things you wish you had said to people at the time. They’re 30 second little films/dreams that repeat 4 or 5 times in a night. Believe me, it’s hell.

Word to the wise: “ Eckhart saw Hell too. He said: The only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won’t let go of life, your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away. But they’re not punishing you, he said. They’re freeing your soul. So the way he sees it, if you’re frightened of dying and… and you’re holding on, you’ll see devils tearing your life away. But if you’ve made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth. It’s just a matter of how you look at it, that’s all. So don’t worry, okay? Okay?”

[godard]

John Key’s not sorry for what he said, and he’s not listening to us when we tell him we’re angry.

[godard]

I have killed thousands

I have killed thousands.

It started with only one or two who had particularly annoyed me, and then after a while another one or two would come too close and I felt like I had to do something. I didn’t think I was capable, but things changed after their numbers grew. If there were only a hundred and they stuck to their routes and I stuck to mine, it seemed like co-existence would be fine, but they didn’t.

I mean, when you’re in another country, there are certain things you have to adapt to, and i’m definitely adaptable. I’m really only intolerant of intolerance. But what can you do when a population grows and represents a threat, even if that threat can’t really be identified. You can’t just let it stand when what started as a trickle becomes a flood and you can see them everywhere. They do keep themselves in line most of the time, but I can’t be the one who should be accountable for their intrusion.

For a while they stuck to their side of the objects I put in their way, they would mostly stick to their side of the barriers, but after a while they just found ways around them, or started new routes that I couldn’t control without intentionally or unintentionally killing them. They’re the aggressor in this situation, i’m just defending myself and what is my territory.

When their numbers grew I started protecting my possessions to stop them, they would have devoured everything and there’s only so much to go around. They still found ways, and I ended up killing another 50 or so just to stop the continual poking around for scraps of food they do around here. If I can take away the food, I thought they might disappear, but they stay anyway.

After a while it seemed like no matter what I did to them they would always find a way to disrupt what I was doing. Instead of keeping themselves to one place, they started taking over other places and I need all of my space. If anything, I’d like more space. When I first came here there were already quite a few of them and I had to get them to move, this is rightfully my place.

Last night, i’d had enough. I killed at least a thousand of them. The artillery lays a trail that means they won’t be able to follow the lines they used before. But when I woke up this morning, they had established new paths, coming even further into my view, and many of those that had lived the night before were drowned. The path had been broken and with no where else to go, they had drowned to keep away from the old lines they had previously used.

It’s their fault.

* Any similarity between the ants in my kitchen in Samoa and the Palestinian people is entirely coincidental.

[godard]

Unmanned Drones

Every now and again you actually get to see a narrative get changed over a single news cycle. Twitter is an excellent medium for watching this in action and i would love to have had this available when i used to teach media.

It's no secret that in the last few months Israel has openly threatened to attack and bomb Iran, the only thing missing from the story has been whether the US would support this attack, endorse the attack, or simply try and look the other way. There also doesn't seem to be much of a secret that they have been doing intelligence gathering for the Israeli government since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad managed to get himself on George Bush's 'Axis of Evil' list, and the Bush government leaked that they had a plan to pre-emptively strike Iran if they felt the need.

A few hours ago, Associated Press released the following news alert on Twitter:

9 hours AP: Fars news agency says Iran's armed forces have possession of U.S. unmanned drone that violated airspace: http://t.co/2yP6ndCc -RJJ

I've included the timestamps so you can see how quickly this story emerged and how the details radically change over a relatively short amount of time.

The story doesn't change radically initially, but certainly the headlines do. Within the hour, instead of a drone being in possession, a more inflammatory headline emerges

8 hours MaanNewsAgency: #mideast TV: Iran military shoots down US drone http://t.co/VJ9FAzoE

8 hours AlArabiya_Eng: Iranian military forces down a U.S. drone in Iran’s eastern province. http://t.co/xPAEbJQM

The second headline also specifies where the Drone was shot down, and a number of Individual journalists and Think Tanks start contributing and providing context to the story outside of the news agencies.

8 hours marcambinder: The main purpose of the Sentinel (RQ-170)  is to keep tabs on Iran/DPRK nuclear programs. NSC approves every orbit.

Marc Ambinder is a White House correspondent for the National Journal.

2 hours later Micah Zenko, a fellow at the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations Think Tank says:

6 hours MicahZenko: Of course US drones fly over Iran to collect intelll across entire electromagnetic spectrum + for tell-tale nuclear clues like krypton-85.

Then someone in the White House wakes up, and the narrative takes a turn. Jake Tapper is an ABC News senior correspondent in Washington and the larger global news organisations pick up this version of the story hereafter.

6 hours jaketapper: ISAF says shot-down drone Iranians are referring to "may" be one that 'had been flying a mission over western Afghanistan late last week."

All of a sudden this "may" be a drone that was flying over Afghanistan last week.

This might be a Drone

It could be one from Afghanistan

Implicitly - it might be one of ours, how did it get to Iran?

At the moment no one wants to admit they might be missing a drone, but if we are, it might be from Afghanistan, implying that either the Iranians shot it across the border and brought it back or it somehow went rogue and flew into Iranian airspace. They have a problem and start going into damage control and also start trying to work out whether they've been duped, whether they want to deny, or, in this case, whether they can kill this thing in a news cycle. In less than an hour the story starts changing.

6 hours Reuters: NATO-led force says operators lost control of surveillance drone over Afghanistan last week, may be same one Iran said it shot down

6 hours AlArabiya_Eng: #BreakingNews: NATO-led force in Afghanistan ISAF says drone shot down by Iran may be unarmed aircraft flying over Afghanistan

6 hours BreakingNews: Drone shot down by Iran may be unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying over western Afghanistan, NATO-led force says - @Reuters

6 hours AJELive: NATO says drone shot down by Iran may be an unarmed reconnaissance aircraft that had been flying over western Afghanistan – Reuters

NATO has now made a statement, and Reuters, Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera all now start regurgitating the report that this may be a drone from Afghanistan. The inverted commas around "may" have been dropped and weaken the strength of the original statement from the Fars news agency and the conjecture that Jake Tapper initially reported. The story has been completely reframed, it is no longer a Drone in Iran, it is a Drone from Afghanistan.

Within an hour the ISAF says they lost a drone in Afghanistan. Of course, they don't have to say it's the same drone that's been reportedly shot down in Iran.

5 hours Reuters: ISAF says drone lost over Afghanistan late last week http://t.co/8R4vIZhT

Less than an hour later, it might have just fallen out of the sky with no Iranian involvement whatsoever.

5 hours BreakingNews: US official says 'absolutely no indication' up to this point that drone that crashed in Iran was shot down - @Reuters

It just crashed. Wait. It might not even be ours.

5 hours AJEnglish: Drone shot down in Iran 'may' belong to US http://t.co/HZYJu3g3

It 'may' be the one from Afghanistan, and now it 'may' or may not be ours. Nek minnit, it might have been magically transported ala a time vortex, because it's unlikely Iran is capable of shooting anything down.

Also note Al Jazeera, linking to the same article previously linked seem to be sceptical this is a US drone at all, and that it was shot down.

4 hours AJEnglish: Drone 'shot down' in Iran may belong to US http://t.co/HZYJu3g3

And the US government, who is obviously excellent at keeping an eye on it's drones, says finally

3 hours MaanNewsAgency: #mideast US official says no sign Iran shot down drone http://t.co/XG1n9g0d

That vortex theory is looking good now eh.

Not necessarily related, but the US doesn't seem to want to tangle with Iran today.

2 hours MaanNewsAgency: Netanyahu hints ready to go it alone on Iran http://t.co/UbxWAoCl #palestine

And then Blake Hounshell from Foreign Policy magazine links to a Wired story that suggests the Iranians haven't jammed a drone at all, not that they said they jammed it, they said they shot it down.

0 hours blakehounshell: Press TV ran a story with a pic of an entirely different drone than the one Iran claimed to have shot down http://t.co/2imqldV4

24 hours later: Tehran Bureau Chief for the Washington Post confirms

ThomasErdbrink: #Iran US military sources say to FOX news that Iran indeed has the high tech RQ-170 sentinel #drone in its possession http://t.co/8bNlyFuS