Go read this.

NYTimes:

TEHRAN — Police officers used sticks and tear gas to force back thousands of demonstrators under plumes of black smoke in the capital on Saturday, a day after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said there would be “bloodshed” if street protests continued over the disputed presidential election. [...]

Iran’s divisions played out on the streets. Regular security forces stood back and urged protesters to go home to avoid bloodshed, while the feared pro-government militia, the Basij, beat protesters with clubs and, witnesses said, electric prods.

In some places, the protesters pushed back, rushing the militia in teams of hundreds: At least three Basijis were pitched from their motorcycles, which were then set on fire. The protesters included many women, some of whom berated as “cowards” men who fled the Basijis. There appeared to be tens of thousands of protesters in Tehran, far fewer than the mass demonstrations early last week, likely because of intimidation.

The street violence appeared to grow more intense as night fell, and there were unconfirmed reports of multiple deaths. A BBC journalist at Enghelab (Revolution) Square reported seeing one person shot by security forces. An amateur video posted on YouTube showed a woman bleeding to death after being shot by a Basiji, the text posted with the video said.

The video is here.

It seems the Iranian government has held back from a wholesale massacre, and, instead, attempting to strike fear through much smaller attacks.

President Obama released a statement today:

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said – “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

Yes we will.

Yeah, mostly it’s because I’m a nerd, but I think that means all of you will like it too. I think he gave an excellent speech. Great humor and an excellent ending point.

So I was going to post some sweet blues I discovered while riding my bike yesterday, but someone requested some funk, and one name came to mind. That’s right… Ryan Shaw. He’s real talented, and could have easily became a hip hop / new-school R&B singer, but instead, he writes and sings what he likes the best, which happens to be Funk and Motown.

For those that went on the Mayercraft, you’ll agree that Ryan was by far the most entertaining artist on the boat (yes, more than Jay May). The two songs below show both sides of his music. The first is pure dance funk. The second resembles old school doo-op, kinda like Gene Chandler, The Chevrons, Frank Zappa, etc.
When you hear doo-op, you expect bad quality recordings. When you hear someone like Ryan do it, it’s real rare and refreshing to listen to. Kinda like drinking a nice tall glass of Joe’s homemade orange juice.

I got a juicer by the way…

I was going to post some videos of his performances on the boat, especially the one with his bass player going all nuts, but it’s shitty with embarrassing dancing and drunkenness. I’ll think it over. In the meantime, enjoy.

Ryan Shaw – Do the 45

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Ryan Shaw – I’ll be Satisfied

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I was saying to a co-worker a couple months ago, during the most recent round of violence in Gaza, that the Palestinians needed some sort of Muslim Gandhi; someone to lead a non-violent opposition to Israeli occupation.

Could the latest events in Iran spark a non-violent Palestinian movement?  It’s impossible to tell at this point, and I think it will depend a large part on the success of the current “Green” movement in Iran.

A reader writes to Sullivan with similar thoughts:

I had a conversation at lunch yesterday with a friend, a neocon Jewish American, that fascinated me.  We were getting ready to get up from the table when he said, “Hey, wait a minute, do you want to talk politics for a minute?”  We proceeded to discuss the events in Iran and at one point I brought up my amazement at the protesters’ embrace of non-violence and their courage in the face of aggression.  I said, “I wonder if this will be a lesson to the Palestinians.  That perhaps if they renounce violence and embrace peaceful resistance they too could garner more international support for their cause, a la Gandhi.”  His reaction fascinated me.  He got this very serious, dour look on his face and replied, “That’s what worries me.  The biggest existential threat to Israel is that the Palestinians will realize the potential for non-violence and embrace it.”

I finally understood why some of the more cynical neocons cannot stand the Green Revolution.  Without a conflict, without a bogey man to demonize, they are scared to death.  In their minds their legitimacy comes from the fact that they are better than the bogey man, that they are necessary to keep the bogey man at bay.  I don’t think that the nation of Israel is so fragile that it could not come to terms with a peaceful movement for Palestinian statehood.

As soon as the Palestinians realize the power of a non-violent approach, the two-state solution will materialize in a flash.

NYTimes:

In his first public response to days of mass protests, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sternly warned opposition supporters on Friday to stay off the streets and raised the prospect of violence if the defiant, vast demonstrations continued.

Opposition leaders, he said, will be “responsible for bloodshed and chaos” if they do not call stop further rallies.

He said he would never give in to “illegal pressures” and denied their accusations that last week’s presidential election was rigged, praising the officially declared landslide for the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as an “epic moment that became a historic moment.” He spoke somberly for more than an hour and a half at Friday prayers to tens of thousands of people at Tehran University, with Mr. Ahmadinejad in attendance. His sermon was broadcast over loudspeakers to throngs in the adjoining streets, and the crowds erupted repeatedly in roars of support. Opposition supporters had spread the word among themselves not to attend.

This is upsetting. Not that I really expected an embrace of the protests, but this is clearly hostile, and points to a severe and violent crackdown is on the way.

An email sent to Nico Pitney:

I am in Sweden and have so many iranian students around me. Today everybody was desperate after hearing Khamenei’s speach. They didn’t expect the leader to come to their side, but to search for a little more time and give a more ambiguous speach to the country. Now nobody knows what will happen, but they know that it will be bloody: either people will stop the uprising, in which case there there will be so much violence and arrests towards the people, or they will try to overthrow all the system, in which case there will be a bloody revolution, successful or unsuccessful. It is not so clear what people want to do now. My girlfriends’ parents in Tehran say they think people will give up. Nobody wants to die, with families still remembering the 1979 revolution and the Iran-Iraq war. But it all depends also on Moussavi-Kathami-Karroubi-Rafsanjani and what they will say. Are they ready to wage war to the country? The hope of everybody is in an internal split in the leadership, the deposition of Khamenei, or at least some big sectors of army joining the people, but everybody agrees this will be very difficult to realize.

There are multiple rallies being organized tomorrow.  Go out and show your support.  It’s the least you can do.

I was making a joke the other day in the kitchen when I was telling Jackie about the use of proxies to access Twitter in Iran, and I basically said, “It’s like the Iranian government vs. The World.  Guess who’s winning.”  Which is basically what this guy said, and CNN reported:

“To the Iranian government hackers who keep attacking the places they see as a threat, you are wasting your time,” wrote one anonymous poster to a message board loaded with eyewitness accounts of violence, plans for protests and notices about people reported missing or dead.

“You are completely outnumbered. There are thousands of Iranians who want to be free and people who support them for every one of you there is.”

The Boomers had rock ‘n roll.  We’ve got the internet.

We win.

Another day, another gigantic crowd of Iranians demanding democracy.  We seem to be stuck in some sort of staring contest, both sides waiting for the other to blink.  The showdown may come tomorrow, when Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei will be leading the nation in prayers, which may provide fodder for a confrontation, although Moussavi appears to be trying to avoid the confrontation.  The protesters in Iran have been amazingly well-disciplined so far, showing no signs of non-instigated violence.  This is more than can be said about the Iranian parliament, apparently:

After Ansari, Abutorabi took the floor again and continued questioning the plainclothes security forces once again. At this point Hosseinian, Koochakzadeh, and resaee, the three biggest supporters of Ahmadinejad in the parliament, started a verbal argument which ended with a number of physical fights. As a result a number of pro and ant Ahmadinejad members of the parliament join the fight and start slapping and pushing each other.

In the end, the anti Ahmadinejad block claims that they will expose the identities of those behind the plainclothes security forces.

Keep in mind that the pro and anti Ahmadinejad blocks belong to the same political party! I think the government is starting to crack up from the inside.

Rafsanjani is still quiet, with no news about the unconfirmed emergency meeting of the Assembly of Experts.  Meanwhile, state run news agencies are trying to undercut his legitimacy by attacking his character, and making sure his relatives are displayed prominently in their coverage of rallies.

A new video out shows some of the violence that occurred at Tehran University a few days ago:

Meanwhile, in Washington, Barack Obama is still being attacked for not vocally backing the protesters in a significant way, even though Bush’s former negotiator on Iran is apparently on Obama’s side:

“President Ahmadinejad would like nothing better than to see an aggressive series of statements from the United States that would put the U.S. in the center of this, and I think President Obama is avoiding that quite rightly,” Burns said.

Obama said he respects Iran’s sovereignty and that “this is not a dispute for the U.S. to be the center of. It’s up to Iranians to decide who Iran’s future leaders will be,” Burns said.

Obama “demonstrated clear sympathy for the reformers,” the former ambassador said. “I think the fact that he’s been low-key about it and the fact that he is saying denial of rights and violence are of a concern to him, and that he was inspired by the reformers, is, I think, the right thing to say.”

I’ll end with another dispatch from Lindsey Hilsum at Channel 4 News:

I rarely enjoy political cartoons, mostly because they usually try too hard, or they’re old news by the time I see them. Here’s one that particularly tickled my fancy.

(via John Cole)

Augmented reality is a rapidly growing trend in the gaming / graphics industry and I love seeing people push the limits of the technology. I’ve posted once or twice before about some basic prototypes that are out there, but this is really cool.

ARhrrr is a prototype game from the Georgia Tech Augmented Environments Lab and the Savannah College of Art and Design. The game requires a hand held device equipped with a new graphics processing unit called the Nvidia Tegra and a tabletop map.

Once you start the game, the buildings pop up on the screen and zombies start to flood out of them into the streets, terrorizing innocent civilians that you need to rescue. You point the camera on the device towards the zombies using the on-screen crosshair and tap anywhere on the screen to shoot. The game incorporates the use of real-world objects, skittles in this case, as game elements such as bombs.

I love seeing the AR games, but what I find the most interesting is what’s coming in the future. Augmenting reality to the point where we see a Tom Tom arrow through our contact lenses while we’re hiking in the woods, or being able to look at a building and get the contact information for the businesses inside based on GPS location. Yeah, it’s going to be real sweet.

Dammit, if I can’t get Hall and Oates out of my head, neither will you. (Just stick around till 1:40)

Barack Obama swats a fly, with Presidential style.

Amazing sight from today’s protest in Iran:

via guardian:

The man who leaked the real election results from the Interior Ministry – the ones showing Ahmadinejad coming third – was killed in a suspicious car accident, according to unconfirmed reports, writes Saeed Kamali Dehghan in Tehran.

This is the type of information that really disturbs me. There’s bound to be violence when two sides collide on such a powerful issue, but this is downright evil.

Following the growing trend of showing support for the Iranians, Juice The Blog is going green for a while. Enjoy!