I am Spartacus

MoveOn can be pretty slick.

Can't quite put my finger on it

but I saw this film tonight, and while I can't quite explain why I enjoyed it, particularly the last minute, I think it is a work of genius.

Gestation Periods, UR doing it wrong...

via Huffpo, by way of Buzzfeed:

WTF? No Raccoon Suit?

Everybody's Skinny Dippin' da Da duh...

Last Time I went to Church...

I felt as if I'd landed on an Alien planet, had established rapport with the local indigenous fauna, and then, having been invited to their weekly gathering, had been completely shocked from the ridiculousness and utter lack of reason inherent in their kooky, and otherwise meaningless rituals and sermons:













from Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot:

Consider again that pale blue dot. Take a good long look at it. ["That's us. That's Earth."] Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn't strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?

Do some "Big Think", and doesn't every resulting religion or ideology resemble or become a self parody of this?

Okay, we poppin champagne like we won tha championship game*

Wayback Machine set to Feb 19th, 2009:

Under Mr. Steele's helm, the “old” may seem inappropriate in the Grand Old Party's affectionate nickname. He said he is putting a new public relations team into place to update the party's image.

“It will be avant garde, technically,” he said. “It will come to table with things that will surprise everyone - off the hook.”

Does that mean cutting-edge?

“I don't do 'cutting-edge,' “ he said. “That's what Democrats are doing. We're going beyond cutting-edge.”

Okay, all together now, let's go Back to the Future:






I love the 80's.




*

United States of Jesustan

Now, with no Executive Branch!



Will update with more details later, but for now, read the descriptions of the people depicted and an interview with the artist here.

So far, my favorite mouseover descriptions:
****
UPDATE:
Reagan as “a true patriot of freedom”. WTF does that even mean?

Thomas “Payne” appearing in this painting, even though he wrote a whole book ridiculing organized religion.

The Schoolteacher looks like Sarah Palin.

The “College Student” is holding a copy of “The Five Thousand Year Leap.” A book by a notorious Mormon Crank about how America is awesome because God is an American. (Seriously)

No executive branch depicted, because Jesus IS the Executive Branch.

Dolly Madison looks like Ally Sheedy.

the Fifty Stars and that they stand for the fifty states? Some stars burn more brightly than others. “Real American” states like Texas and Georgia as opposed to elitist, faggy states like California and New York.

And the only two people without description are “Satan” and the “Business Woman”. I guess the nature of those two abominations to American Culture speak for themselves.

UPDATE: Presented without Comment.

Keith channels his inner Steve Martin...

...and tries to out-batshit Glenn Beck...

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...and inevitably fails. Gloriously. You can't out crazy Glenn Beck. So Awesome.

Bring on the Apocalypse. We are all Mayans now.

Also, in a totally unrelated thing, I came across this quote from one of the classics of American Literature.

“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which one is true.”
-Nathaniel Hawthorne

Abandoning Journalism is an anagram for OLIGARH

Technically, today is Sunday. Praise be to Allah.

What you are about to watch occurred on Thursday:



As of 72 hours later, this individual is neither in a straight-jacket or a padded cell, nor is he unemployed.

Self-described conservative Andrew Sullivan's terse comment:

This Is On National Television:

What else is there to say?

80% Glibertarian, Reason.com editor, and Randian prick in general, Radley Balko, reacts to this vid thusly:

Is that Darrell Hammond?

I haven’t watched Saturday Night Live in a long time, but this parody of Glenn Beck was perfectly executed.

Now I know why Bill Hicks prayed for Nuclear Holocaust within 5 minutes even if out of spite.

Evil people pass away...

Via Radley Balko:

The remaining half of America’s great freedom-loving couple has passed away.

Yeah not so much.

Again, between the stark dichotomy of free markets vs. free people, you need to define "freedom" for clarity's sake...

After right-wing “free market” economist and longtime University of Chicago professor Milton Friedman dropped dead in 2006, it did not take long for the U of C administration to spark a minor firestorm on campus by proposing to name an economic research institute in his honor. In the 1970s Friedman and his “Chicago Boys” notoriously served as economic advisers to the bloody CIA-backed Chilean dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet that massacred 30,000 workers, peasants and leftists and imprisoned and tortured thousands more. Last year, in response to the U of C proposal to launch a Milton Friedman Institute, faculty formed the Committee for Open Research on Economy and Society (CORES), which initiated an online petition against the Institute and held a number of well-attended campus events. Over 100 professors signed a letter of protest to the administration, and the full Faculty Senate convened for the first time in a decade to debate the proposal.

It is truly an affront to working people and the oppressed around the planet that the University would attempt to honor the legacy of this man. It would be utopian to think that bourgeois universities would not name buildings in honor of sundry capitalist moguls and their academic mouthpieces. But Friedman was not simply a reactionary ideologue; his hands were drenched in the blood of the Chilean masses. In 1975, the New York Times accurately labeled him “the guiding light of the junta’s economic policy” (21 September 1975). The CIA funded a 300-page Friedmanite blueprint given to the leaders of the junta in preparation for the coup. In March 1975 Friedman himself, accompanied by his U of C cohort Arnold Harberger, flew to Chile for high-level talks with the regime to outline the economic “shock treatment” that led to the mass starvation of those who had survived the initial phase of bloodletting.

If there's an afterlife, and any justice in the Universe, Rose Friedman now joins her husband in Hell where they are eternally drowning in fire ants, 1 for every victim of the dictatorships they supported and whose life they otherwise destroyed.

Cynicism, followed by Dismissal is the correct approach here.

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CNBC goes looking for Town Hall Anger

From TPM:

CNBC approached Tea Party activists, looking for angry protest events that would make good television, according to a leaked email from a Tea Party discussion group. And one Tea Bagger responded by flagging an upcoming event that, he said, "should be a riot ... literally."

Yesterday, Tea Party Patriots national coordinator Jenny Beth Martin sent an email, obtained by TPMmuckraker, to a Tea Party google group. Martin told the group: "We have a media request for an event this week that will have lots of energy and lots of anger. This is for CNBC."

She then asked: "So, where are the big events this week and where can TPP best be represented on the news?"

Later that day, a Tea Bagger named Pat Wayman responded with a suggestion, also obtained by TPMmuckraker: "This one should be a riot! literally...." he wrote.

*UPDATE*: Moron acts Moronic, gets to be interviewed on TV so we can see how much of a dope she is.

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Sigh, I liked this better when it wasn't purportedly "Serious" news, and it was called "Jaywalking".


*UPDATE II*:



Okay, Gray Hair, you feel free to sign a waiver rescinding your Medicare benefits, which are paid for by the taxes on our hard-earned labor. If not, STFD & STFU, you're wrong. And even though you lose, you win.

I mean, if the one of the claims of the website called "StopMedicare" is that "Anyone that has ever used Medicare has died or will die.", then what else can be said?

Everyone that has ever been attracted to another man or another woman has died or will die.

Anyone that has ever used a toothbrush has died or will die.

Okay, you don't want to change the companies dictating policy at all, we get that. What are you for? What do you propose?

Toby: You think we should run a counter ad.

Will: We have to.

Toby: Saying what?

Will: Oh. I don't know.

Toby: What do you mean?

Will: What do you mean?

Toby: We've been sitting here for twenty minutes.

Will: I came in to show you the spots and to tell you I think we should run a counter ad. I don't have an idea for one.

Toby: Well get one. Have an idea! Don't come in here with half a thing and not be able to – you know, after you've walked me to the brink, and say "We've got to do this, it's important, though I have no earthly idea how"! Like one of those guys who buys a big new thing but doesn't really know how to get the most out of it!

Update on Blackwater

If you think HBO was degenerate in any way for airing programming with such amoral characters as The Sopranos, then exactly what does that make of the very voters that approved of government officials that granted companies like Blackwater no-bid contracts, no oversight, and billions of dollars?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

What matters is the actual visual, in your mind. A person who voted for Bush in 2004 would rather read about an Iraqi child killed as collateral damage in a firefight between Marines and Sunnis, or an enlisted Airman killed driving a Humvee in print, than watch James Gandolfini act at fucking the actress playing his Russian mistress.

One of these things is make-believe. One of these things is horrible. One of these things is entertaining. You draw your own Venn diagram.

America's Finest

There's soldiering: Engaging and defeating an enemy through use of military force, and then occupying his territory.


And then there's Policing. Somebody needs to inform police in this country that there's a difference.

"The patrolling officer on his beat is the one true dictatorship in America, we can lock a guy up on the humble, lock him up for real, or say fuck it and drink ourselves to death under the expressway and our side partners will cover us, No one - I mean no one - tells us how to waste our shift!"

-McNulty

03/05/09: Police assault a 22-year old man in an elevator, charge him with assaulting a police officer, and he's only cleared when the elevator's surveillance video comes forward.

03/22/09: Police perform a traffic stop, and without cause, sieze $26,000 in cash.

03/25/09: Detective perjuring herself in front of a grand jury gets nailed when surveillance video proves she lied her ass off.

04/01/09: Phoenix blogger who's highly critical of the Phoenix PD and has sources inside the dept helping him to expose high-level corruption, has his house raided by PPD SWAT, wherein they sieze his personal documents, computers, and business plans. The warrant being served listed "Petty Theft" and "Computer tampering with the intent to harrass" as the Probable Cause.

04/09/09: Police gets misdemeanor charge in the shooting of a college student during a 5-officer police raid over Pot Possession. Not distribution, possession.

04/09/09: City of Chicago pays out over $280,000, over a 2004 special ops police raid on a bar executed under false pretenses and arrests made subsequently with false statements.

04/20/09: 11 Oakland officers the OPD had been planning to terminate for falsifying affidavits to secure search warrants on small-time drug suspects, and now returned to duty:

Allegations that officers falsified search-warrant affidavits arose in September. After the department's acknowledgment that some officers made misstatements to judges, dozens of criminal cases have been placed in question, and criminal charges against 12 defendants have been dropped.

04/29/09: An anonymous blogger writing critically about the ethical practices of a local megachurch has sued his sheriff and D.A.'s offices for revealing his identity to the church even though he had done nothing illegal.

05/06/09: A Grandmother files suit against two Pennsylvania police departments, after a Walmart Photo employee develops pictures of her 3 year old granddaughter getting out of the tub, the police charged her with producing child pornography.

05/21/09: Police Officer driving 109mph without his lights flashing or sirens on, plows into a pickup making a legal left turn in the middle of an intersection. Cop dies, accident victim charged with DUI even though his Blood/Alcohol level is half the legal limit.

06/06/09: New Jersey Police assault a 29-year old schizophrenic man for the crime of standing on a corner.


07/20/09: Cop's son rear-ends a young woman. He drives off. She pulls into a gas station. The son goes to the precinct, gets his dad, they both go back to the scene of the accident, and then the gas station. The officer draws his weapon, grabs the girl from behind and points the gun at her head. She's startled and swings her arm back. He arrests her friends and charges her with assault on a police officer. He then returns three times to the gas station to try and intimidate the clerk and the owner to destroy the surveillance tape of the incident. The owner relents, the tape was shown in court, and the charges against the young woman were dropped. The officer was returned to full duty 8 days after the IID hearing, and the D.A. and the police both declined to pursue any criminal or disciplinary charges.



And then there's Shem Walker.

These are just a very select few in the last couple months of a prolonged systemic failure of law enforcement to see itself as a policing agency, and not as a militaristic institution. Not all cops are bad, many or most of them are quite admirable and do a tough job for below average pay, for which they deserve our thanks.
However, my disdain at an institutional brotherhood expands to include all its members when a reasonable moderate contingent cannot or will not disown it's unstable, poisonous elements.

For more, read Radley Balko's excellent coverage at his site, "The Agitator" under the tags Police Militarization and Police Professionalism.

UPDATE: Boston Cop suspended for racist email over Gatesgate:

"Your defense of Gates while he is on the phone while being confronted [INDEED] with a police officer is assuming he has rights when considered a suspect. He is a suspect and always will be a suspect. His first priority of concern should be to get off the phone and comply with police, for if I was the officer he verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC deserving of his belligerent non-compliance." [my emphasis]

This smug, ID-driven prick and every Cop that shares his attitude should be purged from the force. Unamerican authorities like this should not have the power of life and death over anyone.

Add 'Tin-Foil Hat wearing' to the running list of Chest-thumping, Bed-wetting, Cynical, Rabble-rousing, and oh yeah, Accessories to murder

Digby from earlier this month:

In case you were wondering what Glenn Beck thinks about all this right wing violence (and who doesn't?) here it is:

The pot is boiling and this is a warning to all Americans of things to come.

It looks like this was the work of a lone gunman, nut-job, who once wrote an article titled "Hitler's Worst Mistake: He Didn't Gas the Jews." But you're going to see a lot of nut-jobs coming out of the woodwork.

Two very important things are happening here: First, the go-go-go mentality of our enemies. Our country is vulnerable; our enemies know it as much as we do and groups like Al Qaeda are even planning to work with white supremacists (which police say this guy might be), coming through our southern border.

I showed you this scary video last week.

By the way, that was one of not just some average radical teacher, but one of Usama bin Laden's close friends. Does that seem much more relevant in light of what's just happened? We're under attack, America, and we need to look out for enemies foreign and domestic.

Second, there's going to be a witch-hunt for two groups: the Jews and conservatives. Two years ago, I spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu and I told him to look out, because Israel is being set up. Iran's goal of nuclear weapons is putting Israel in the crosshairs.

Those who have read history know that when things go bad, the Jews become scapegoats; and it's happening again.

Meanwhile, there have been Department of Homeland Security reports about right-wing extremists. And left-wing bloggers and others have blamed conservative talk radio hosts like me for stirring the pot, even though we're just pointing out that it's boiling.

Common sense tells you this is not the work of conservatives, but rather the work of someone who is possibly racist or crazy, or most likely both. Common sense also tells you there are very hateful people on the left as well.

The world will use any excuse to come after unpopular groups. Whether you choose to ignore it or not, there's no longer a question of if the pot is boiling. We can all see the pot is boiling.

It doesn't have to make sense, folks. It just has to hit a certain emotional truth. And his audience's "truth" is that al Qaeda is in cahoots with lone nuts to kill Jews and blame it on conservatives --- and they are sneaking in from Mexico with "illegals" to do it. This makes perfect sense to them.

"TYING IT ALL TOGETHER", Today from Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly website:

We learned yesterday, by way of Rush Limbaugh, that Mark Sanford's sex scandal was President Obama's fault. If it weren't for the administration's economic policies, the argument goes, Sanford would have been more optimistic about the future, wouldn't have cheated on his wife, and wouldn't have secretly left the country to see his mistress.

Who can argue with air-tight logic like this?

Today, Limbaugh's right-wing colleague, Michael Savage, takes this one step further. Obama didn't just inspire Sanford to betray his family; the White House conspired to make this scandal happen in the first place.

"The fact is, Obama's team is taking out potential [2012] rivals, one after another," Savage argued. "Just last week, the media jumped on the story of Sen. John Ensign (R) of Nevada and his infidelity. He was considered to be a possible Republican presidential candidate in '12. Now Sanford, who had similar ambitions, caught in a similar situation.

"This is politics at its worst, brought to us by the worst administration, the meanest administration, the most closed administration, the most incompetent administration in American history."

Now, listening to the clip, it's a little unclear to me whether Savage thinks Obama made Sanford and Ensign have sex with these other women, or whether Obama was spying on Sanford and Ensign, learned of their adultery, and brought it to public attention.

Sure, either way, this is all painfully stupid, and not to be taken seriously. But even from the perspective of a twisted right-wing worldview, I'm curious about one thing: how does an incompetent administration pull off a feat like this? Wouldn't it take an enormous amount of competence to secretly hatch such an elaborate conspiracy?

10 characteristics of conspiracy theorists
A useful guide by Donna Ferentes

1. Arrogance. They are always fact-seekers, questioners, people who are trying
to discover the truth: sceptics are always "sheep", patsies for Messrs Bush and
Blair etc.

2. Relentlessness. They will always go on and on about a conspiracy no matter how little evidence they have to go on or how much of what they have is simply discredited. (Moreover, as per 1. above, even if you listen to them ninety-eight times, the ninety-ninth time, when you say "no thanks", you'll be called a "sheep" again.) Additionally, they have no capacity for precis whatsoever. They go on and on at enormous length.

3. Inability to answer questions. For people who loudly advertise their determination to the principle of questioning everything, they're pretty poor at answering direct questions from sceptics about the claims that they make.

4. Fondness for certain stock phrases. These include Cicero's "cui bono?" (of which it can be said that Cicero understood the importance of having evidence to back it up) and Conan Doyle's "once we have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however unlikely, must be the truth". What these phrases have in common is that they are attempts to absolve themselves from any responsibility to produce positive, hard evidence themselves: you simply "eliminate the impossible" (i.e. say the official account can't stand scrutiny) which means that the wild allegation of your choice, based on "cui bono?" (which is always the government) is therefore the truth.

5. Inability to employ or understand Occam's Razor. Aided by the principle in 4. above, conspiracy theorists never notice that the small inconsistencies in the accounts which they reject are dwarfed by the enormous, gaping holes in logic, likelihood and evidence in any alternative account.

6. Inability to tell good evidence from bad. Conspiracy theorists have no place for peer-review, for scientific knowledge, for the respectability of sources. The fact that a claim has been made by anybody, anywhere, is enough for them to reproduce it and demand that the questions it raises be answered, as if intellectual enquiry were a matter of responding to every rumour. While they do this, of course, they will claim to have "open minds" and abuse the sceptics for apparently lacking same.

7. Inability to withdraw. It's a rare day indeed when a conspiracy theorist admits that a claim they have made has turned out to be without foundation, whether it be the overall claim itself or any of the evidence produced to support it. Moreover they have a liking (see 3. above) for the technique of avoiding discussion of their claims by "swamping" - piling on a whole lot more material rather than respond to the objections sceptics make to the previous lot.

8. Leaping to conclusions. Conspiracy theorists are very keen indeed to declare the "official" account totally discredited without having remotely enough cause so to do. Of course this enables them to wheel on the Conan Doyle quote as in 4. above. Small inconsistencies in the account of an event, small unanswered questions, small problems in timing of differences in procedure from previous events of the same kind are all more than adequate to declare the "official" account clearly and definitively discredited. It goes without saying that it is not necessary to prove that these inconsistencies are either relevant, or that they even definitely exist.

9. Using previous conspiracies as evidence to support their claims. This argument invokes scandals like the Birmingham Six, the Bologna station bombings, the Zinoviev letter and so on in order to try and demonstrate that their conspiracy theory should be accorded some weight (because it's “happened before”.) They do not pause to reflect that the conspiracies they are touting are almost always far more unlikely and complicated than the real-life conspiracies with which they make comparison, or that the fact that something might potentially happen does not, in and of itself, make it anything other than extremely unlikely.

10.
It's always a conspiracy. And it is, isn't it? No sooner has the body been discovered, the bomb gone off, than the same people are producing the same old stuff, demanding that there are questions which need to be answered, at the same
unbearable length. Because the most important thing about these people is that they are people entirely lacking in discrimination. They cannot tell a good theory from a bad one, they cannot tell good evidence from bad evidence and they cannot tell a good source from a bad one. And for that reason, they always come up with the same answer when they ask the same question. A person who always says the same thing, and says it over and over again is, of course, commonly considered to be, if not a monomaniac, then at very least, a bore.

SMBC:



Even our Dread Pirate Roberts Hero, Westley spent a forgettable chunk of his weekends, after fending off R.O.U.S.'s, scrubbing the toilet with bleach at Buttercup's insistance; and not to belabor the point, but again, "A person who always says the same thing, and says it over and over again is, of course, commonly considered to be, if not a monomaniac, then at very least, a bore."

The Modern State of the National Republican Party, See also "fascism, authoritarianism, totalitariansim, dictatorships"

Also, "It's NOT FAIR!" and "Where's the birth certificate?!"



Also, I might add, I'm glad YouTube, and Web 2.0 was in it's infancy during the many turmoils of my own white adolescence.

Iran Pt. III, The Green Revolution via Twitter and it gets real.

Parts I and II.


Iranian Gov't executing Denial of Service Internet Attacks to shut down media:

problem w/ site pinpointed: webmaster says the Iranian govt is overloading us with requests to disable our site: "denial of service attack"
6 minutes ago from web

No coincidence that these are the first to be fortified because of the fear that those regions would secede." end quote
about 4 hours ago from web

Note the areas that the gov't was quick to fortify: Tabriz and Kermanshah.
about 4 hours ago from web They are camped at every major street-corner, with electric batons.
about 4 hours ago from web

has trucked in what may be Lebanese, but definitely non-Iranian and non-Persian speaking, militia to patrol the streets.
about 4 hours ago from web

quote: "credible news from Kermanshah that the gov't has trucked in what may be Lebanese,
about 4 hours ago from web

I had heard this before from several sources, but since I thought it was a rumor I didn't publish it, but now it appears there is credible
about 4 hours ago from web

Via Sullivan:

My Father has a truck load of ballot boxes that were to be burned in the back of his truck.

i eats some pills and wanna sleep and i scared that if they can find me ...i going...thx for your supports....

typing as fastest as I can in bth English&Farsi,Still we need outside help,I really don't want to be captured by Ansar

Once again I thank everyone in the world. No matter if Ahmadi stays or not, I'm proud to have clasped such supportive hands.

URGENT JUST IN, there r TANKS in front of the interior ministry of tehran in valiasr st. & fatemi CAREFUL

I can't find my friends on streets.

Rasht, glass splinters on the streets, riot police not hesitating to beat men, women and even kids

From Enghelab Sq friend just call me, Police & unknown forces beating everybody for no apparent reason!

Correction, no bus burned, but three cars.

dawn is breaking. can hear prayers from mosques.


cousin in tehran is traumatized by the club and baton beatings on tehran streets. eyewitness report of a girl beaten to death.

IRG's helicopter flying low on yousefabadad Amirabad Gisha right now creating a devastating sound and making windows shake

sources from Tehran: ppl are killed, ppl are in blood, tehran is hell.

We witnessed police spraying pepper gas into the eyes of peaceful female protesters

We are here in the dark, all kinds of rumors fly by; nothing is sure.

IRIB TV warned people seriously about going to tomorrow's rally, mobile network might be down for tomorrow's rally.

Student and Twitterer Change for Iran:

to other sources: this isn't the police! police is still outside! we're under attack by Ansar-Hezbolah. #iranelection

unfortunately the entrance door is completely destroyed and there is no way of barricading it. #iranelection

typing as fastest as I can in both English & Farsi, Still we need outside help, I really don't want to be captured by Ansar #iranelection

Masood is going outside & I'm shaking & feeling useless #iranelection

5:26AM I'm praying to GOD they leave us be! we should get Reza to a hospital Asap, he has some bad wounds. #iranelections

CNN Interview with Student Journalist in Tehran:

Just one additional thing, this is very interesting. A number of students came up to me today and said that they want to appeal to President Obama. They said, 'is he going to accept this result? Because if he does, then we are doomed.' So I heard a lot about appeals to Obama and the international community today from university students.

Email to an Iranian-American advocacy group in Washington:

“[We] are still safe, but to tell you the truth, all of us are feeling sick of what we have to see on streets these days. This afternoon, [we] saw five policemen attack a middle age lady. They beat her brutally, with no mercy. She tried to escape with her young daughter but they got her. I stopped and tried to help her, but three men in civilian clothes attacked my car, and I had to drive away because [my daughter] was with me. Tonight, people shouted “Allah o Akabar” from their roof tops, but hundreds of police forces on bikes swept the streets and marked houses from which they could hear voices."

IranianElection09:

Hospitals around Tehran surrounded by secret police who refuse to let people with injuries get through, humanity at its worst #iranelection

Friend: 17 y/o killed infront of me couldn't get to him in time guards beating us up went to hospital but he stopped moving #iranelection

Is this hopeless? We're up against a vicious enemy that has no boundaries, that has weaponry and intent to harm God help us #iranelection

Ex-pats protesting around the globe, (Via a Mousavi Supporter's Flickr account):

London


Sydney


Paris
UPDATE: Washington, D. C.




UPDATE II: Opposition Leader, and probable duly elected President Mousawi issues a statement via Twitter:

I AM UNDER EXTREME PRESSURE TO ACCEPT THE RESULTS OF THE SHAM ELECTION. THEY HAVE CUT ME OFF FROM ANY COMMUNICATION WITH PEOPLE AND AM UNDER SURVEILLANCE. I ASK THE PEOPLE TO STAY IN THE STREETS BUT AVOID VIOLENCE

Another email from NIAC:

WE NEED HELP. WE NEED SUPPORT. Time is not on our side, waiting and making sure means more casualties, more disappointment, more brutality.

The most essential need of young Iranians is to be recognized by US government. They need them not to accept the results and do not talk to A.N government as an official, approved one. They need help by sending true information. All the medias are under arrest or close control. Help them have the information.

They only try to show the fraud to the world. Help them please. You can not imagine the level of brutality we saw these two awful days.

UPDATE III: (via twitter'd IranElection09 and the BBC):

Mousawi has called off the protesters' rally for today after the Iranian Government and the police informed him that the Police in charge of crowd control would be carrying live rounds for their weapons.

Iran's defeated moderate candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi has cancelled a big rally, amid growing unrest over last week's presidential poll.

The government had declared planned protests against the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad illegal.

Mr Mousavi called off the rally after being warned militias would be equiped with live rounds, the BBC understands.

Mr Mousavi wants election results annulled, alleging widespread fraud. Mr Ahmadinejad says the vote was fair.

Tens of thousands rallied in Tehran on Sunday to celebrate his victory.

'Death to the dictator'

There were clashes between the police and anti-Ahmadinejad protesters in several parts of the city for a second day on Sunday.

“ I urge you, Iranian nation, to continue your nationwide protests in a peaceful and legal way ”
Mir Hossein Mousavi

Police hit protesters with batons and charged them on motorbikes.

Mousavi supporters cried "death to the dictator" into the evening. Scores of people are reported to have been arrested.

There have been reports of tear gas being fired and rooms being searched at Tehran University.

The BBC's Jon Leyne in Tehran says the rapidly spreading protests are a challenge not just to the election result, not just to President Ahmadinejad, but to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself.

That means it is, he says, a challenge to the whole basis of the Islamic Republic.

Mr Ahmadinejad dismissed the unrest as "passions after a soccer match".

International concern

Mr Mousavi's website carried a statement saying he had formally called on
which must certify the counting, to annul the election.

He added: "I urge you, Iranian nation, to continue your nationwide protests in a peaceful and legal way."

But on Monday, the interior ministry said: "Some seditious elements had planned to hold a rally."

It added: "Any disrupter of public security would be dealt with according to the law."

A supporter of Mr Mousavi, Shahab Tabatabaei, told the Associated Press news agency the candidate had met Ayatollah Khamenei to press his call.

But the BBC's John Simpson in Tehran says the call is almost certain to fail.

One of the country's leading dissidents, Ibrahim Yazdi, told the BBC there had been clear signs of fraud in the poll, with detailed results being withheld.

More foreign powers are also expressing concern about the election.

In an interview on US television, Vice-President Joe Biden said: "It sure looks like the way they're suppressing speech, the way they're suppressing crowds, the way in which people are being treated, that there's some real doubt."

Iran immolates

There's something happening here
What it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
There's battle lines being drawn
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speaking their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
I think it's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side
It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away
We better stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, now, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down
Stop, children, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down






Twitter:
ALL internet & mobile networks are cut. We ask everyone in Tehran to go onto their rooftops and shout ALAHO AKBAR in protest #IranElection







But Know Hope.





LGM:

So, I'm trying to find out something about what's going on in Iran, and on CNN I can watch a rerun of Larry King interviewing several gentlemen without shirtsleeves who apparently assemble choppers. On Fox Mike Huckabee is trying to explain why Jesus hates credit card relief. MSNBC is rerunning something about a prison in New Mexico. CNBC is evaluating whether college students should be able to afford Chanel tote bags.

Media fail.

Andrew Sullivan:

A reader writes:

So all day long, I'm glued to your blog, Juan Cole's blog, Josh Marshall's blog, and a couple others reading as much as I can about the (stolen) Iranian election.

I turned on CNN, and they were going three rounds about some idiot Republican operative in South Carolina who called Michelle Obama an ape. Nothing on Iran.

MSNBC was in the middle of one of its hour-long crime documentaries.

FNC was showing a pre-taped piece on Bernie Madoff.

And I realize that it's the weekend and they usually take the weekend off, but over at NRO, the only thing they've managed to post about Iran today is a link to Daniel Pipes' piece cheering on an Ahmadinejad victory because otherwise his dream of a massive Israeli air assault would be dashed. That's it...a staff of 10+ regular bloggers, and all they can come up with in the midst of an Iranian revolution is a single piece cheering for the status quo?

Thank God that you, Juan, and Josh are on the story.

There's a reason the MSM is in trouble.

and

Allah O Akbar!

God is Great, indeed...




UPDATE: June 14th, 2009. Dawn Protests:

Believe in something, even if it's WRONG, BELIEVE IT!

Your homework for today:

Go. Read. Dave. Neiwert.

"Beck offered the following rationale on his Fox News show tonight:

Beck: What they're missing is: The pot in America is boiling. And this is just yet another warning to all Americans of things to come.

Actually, Beck has this exactly right. But frankly, it's boiling because of people like Glenn Beck, ranting hysterically every night about impending apocalypses of various forms -- looming "liberal fascism," the "economic meltdown," the "New World Order," violence spilling over the Mexican border, even FEMA concentration camps.

As I tried to explain in the case of the shooting of Dr. George Tiller, when you spread far-right conspiracy theories through mainstream channels the way Beck does with such abandon, it not only validates their beliefs, it rather hyper-validates them: It tells these people -- who see the Becks and O'Reillys as part of the "liberal media" -- that things are even worse than they thought, and it often spurs them into action."

Fox News' conscience.

Quote of the Day, from Lawyers, Guns, and Money:

If radical Muslims had carried out terrorist attacks in Kansas and Washington DC over the past five days, we might be trying to pass legislation giving the president the legal authority to place people in preventive detention, and Daniel Pipes would be implying that we need to round up Arab-Americans (correction: Muslims) and put them in relocation camps.

But it was only a couple of old white guys, so our civil liberties remain unthreatened.