Results tagged “iran”

He says it was "a long-shot," but Berkeley professor Ken Light was hoping Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would take a moment out from invoking Allah and predicting the downfall of global capitalism at the U.N. General Assembly to mention the fates of three former Berkeley students who have been sitting in an Iranian jail since July. Shane Bauer, Josh Fattal and Sarah Shourd were, for reasons that the more sedentary and warzone-averse among us cannot understand, hiking in the mountainous Kurdistan region of Iraq when they wandered mistakenly over the border into Iran. They got arrested, and now they're being used as political pawns, much like Laura Ling and Euna Lee were in North Korea.

Three hikers (Shane Bauer, Sarah Shourd and Joshua Fattal) were captured by Iranian authorities last week, "after they strayed across the border while hiking in Northern Iraq in a tourist area." Two of the three hikers placed under arrested in Iran have Bay Area connections. Bauer and Shourd are both UC Berkeley graduates who worked as freelance journos with New American Media. According to Bauer's website, he is a freelance journalist and photographer based in the Middle East." Bauer was "born in Minnesota and graduated with honors from UC Berkeley with a degree in Peace and Conflict Studies." Shourd was an English major and describes herself as a "teacher-activist-writer." Former First Lady and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is now on the case. According to Associated Press, "Clinton said that Swiss diplomats who represent U.S. interests in Iran are asking officials from the Iranian Foreign Ministry for details but have not yet gotten official confirmation of the trio's arrest. She asked that Iran determine the facts of the case and to 'return them as quickly as possible.'"

              

Rumor has it there's more you can do to voice your support for Iranians protesting a fraudulent election than turning your Twitter avatar green. Take, for example, participating in a protest or a rally, like yesterday's event at the UN Plaza. (An aside: we love the color palate popping up at these protests. Green, white and red -- so bold and vibrant without overpowering the eye. Just lovely, really.)

           

Thanks to loyal SFist contributing photog Steve Rhodes, we have these pictures of the sizable protest that went down in Union Square last night, in which activists, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi and local Iranian-Americans gathered to voice their support for the post-election protests in Tehran and to ask President Obama to support reform leader Mir Hussein Moussavi.

Hey there, did you know Iran is having some sort of brouhaha, and Twitter will single-handedly bring democracy, sunshine and gumdrops to the nation? Or something like that? Anyway, reader and activist Michael Petrelis writes SFist to ask the following. Ahem:

Marine biologists, nature spiritualists, and media hounds are concerned after this morning's reports from a fishing boat that they saw the body of a dead whale floating just outside the Golden Gate Bridge around 5:30 a.m. Could it be Delta or Dawn?

Now hating the war isn't just the domain of tree hugging hippies and the Defeatocrats-- it's the entire state of California. Today, State Senator Don Perata announced that he wants the entire state to vote on a referendum on pulling troops out of Iraq. Perata might be announcing it, but we see the evil workings of Barbara Streisand behind all this, probably in cahoots with David Geffen and Michael Moore. And even if Rosie lives on the East Coast, she probably has something to do with all of this too

Here's todays wrap up of the news

-Last night, a vigil for the slain officer, Bryan Tuvera, was held at St. Mary's. There will be a funeral procession today which will affect traffic as Geary will be closed.

A few interesting tech stories have come out recently. Hey, we can't do Gavin all day. The Washington Post is reporting today that the State Department has come up with a new, super technologically advanced way of spying on Iran, mainly Googling people. Aahh...Google, is there anything you can't do? The hope, we guess, is that they'll stumble on some Iranian's nuclear scientist’s MySpace page and hope it mentions under their likes "developing nuclear bomb to fend off the Great Satan." The CIA, however, says that this is probably not a good way to look for intelligence and then fell over in laughter. There's actually a lot more to the story, mainly involving turf wars between the State Department and the CIA (again) over sharing information and the meaning of it all.

Two Marin county activists have announced that December 22nd will be the ""First Annual Solstice Synchronized Global Orgasm for Peace" day. In short, it's Orgasm for Peace Day. The gist-- if everyone has an orgasm that day, war will be over. It's just that easy. Talk about thinking locally to act globally. Or, as the site says, to: "effect change in the energy field of the Earth through input of the largest possible surge of human energy." To be more specific, to somehow have just enough sex to make all those battleships lining up outside Iran to turn around immediately upon the wave of human sexual energy hitting upon it like that wave hitting the S.S. Poseidon (the original, not the sequel). Although, according to the Chron in a nice, dryly written article, the Navy has actually never seen anything like that happen.

It looks like Larry & Sergey have themselves a nice new pet as they went and bought YouTube today for $1.65 billion in stock. And it's even housebroken too. You could look at it a couple of ways-- two great tastes in one or the Borg about to assimilate somebody. All this for a company that has yet to turn a profit.

If you happen to be walking down the street this week and hear this sonic boom over your head and the street rumble, it's not the Kin Jong Il finally launching one of his Dong Rockets, it's just that time of the year again, Fleet Week. This year featuring, once again, the Blue Angels.

Okay, so hopefully we got you into the idea of watching games. Now what? How do you know whom to root for? And most importantly, how can you pretend that you know what's going on? After all, you don't want to walk into a pub full of drunken Swedes and come off looking like you just wandered in by accident. That would make you look like the worst of the worst-- an Ugly American. You don't want to look like an Ugly American, now do you?

Yesterday, the Board of Supes approved by a 7-4 vote a measure to close off part of Kennedy Drive on Saturdays just as it is on Sundays. Well, for a "six-month" trail run at least. The measure was passed without rancor, with serious intellectual debate, and a strict adherence to democratic principles. Nah, not really. It actually involved dueling rallies, people shouting each other down with bullhorns and the use of fresh-faced children and decrepit old people in wheel chairs as props.

When it comes to getting a graduation speaker for UC Santa Cruz, we don't think it'll be Michelle "Interment Forevah" Malkin. Not that she would, anyways, but her chances went from "not ever" to "no way in frickin' hell" after she published the names and phone numbers of student protestors on her Web site. Hilarity, of course, ensued and by "hilarity" we mean death threats, harassing e-mails, and all sorts of nastiness. See, that's what you get when you hate Freedom.

Just as the rain stopped, everyone has a new favorite blog topic--it's earthquake centennial madness! Eric over at and the Family Buick has a fairly lengthy write-up of the event, while Rangelife has a fever, and the only cure is--more cowbell. Sorry, wrong pop culture reference. We're still on the earthquake. Your favorite ex-bathroom attendant has a write-up on the plucky fire hydrant that saved so many, while sfdx has a different drink in mind. Mona has a beautiful pic of one of the survivors up on her blog. Some others, though, are more concerned about the effects of the next big one. Jennifer admits that she's been rattled by all the voice of doom coverage, and Jamison gets snarky over what he feels is unfair proactive re-distribution of blame. Maybe he should keep the turtle he found, a pet might make him feel better. Art makes us feel better. We love that we live in a town where art thrives. The Painted Ground of San Jose Avenue posts protest art this week, while the California Department of Corrections went big time and Kvatch takes over Market Street. This poster--literally--thinks locally. VJ Culture isn't protesting anything, but we do lament the fact we'll never be as cool and smart--at the same time--as he is. On the other hand, we have jerks here, too, as chronicled this week by Ed, in addition to Thomas Hawk's ongoing struggles with building security guards. So is it any wonder that sometimes we just go a little goofy? And sometimes, when the stars are aligned correctly, we have smart, goofy Newsom protest blogs that makes milk come out our noses. You suck! Have a nice day! Picture from If I Ran The Zoo. SFist Jacob, contributing.

The language of Wednesdays is universal. Tonight: Blame it on the bossanova -- Brazilian singer Luciana Souza kicks off her yearlong residency as San Francisco Performances' jazz artist in residence with a performance at the Hotel Rex salon. If you miss her at the Rex tonight, she's performing in a variety of other (free) venues throughout this week. 6:30 p.m. at 562 Sutter (between Powell and Mason). We'd give you pricing info but we can't find it anywhere online.

Reacting to criticism that the State Department voted against letting two gay rights groups into a United Nations panel, the State Department issued a statement last Friday denying that the vote was due to any sort of anti-gay bias. Instead, they did it because of a concern over pedophilia.

Last week's winner, the SF Weekly: Tommy Craggs, like Tony Toni Tone, has done it again! This week, he uses the Microsoft Word auto-summarizer to read last week's interminable Sean Penn in Iran articles from the Chron! Could it be that Mr. Craggs heard our desperate cries for help? In other news, Matt Smith hates on Chris Daly's Rincon Hill deal, the Infiltrator pretends to Christian rock, and the cover article's about heavy metal Thor. Savage Love: you know, if you start a letter to Dan with "I'm straight, I'm smart, I'm funny, and I'm hot," you kind of get what you deserve. Next: the Metro! RIP, Bob Moog. The war on terror seemed a little overblown in Lodi. Spongebob Squarepants at Great America! Cover: San Jose gang war. And Secret Asian Man eats your hate up like love. The Guardian and the East Bay Express after the jump, plus the pick of the week!

Look, you've probably noticed lots of other people talking about this, and look, it's not like we don't care about the Middle East or Iran or anything (hey, we read both Persepolises, we'll have you know -- and Reading Lolita in Tehran.) But -- well, look. We've tried. Good Lord, we've tried. But we just cannot get through these Letters From Iran by Sean Penn that the Chronicle Datebook is faithfully publishing. Not even to mock. We just can't get through them. We can't even scroll through them online, they tire us out so much. We like Mr. Penn fine, don't get us wrong -- he seems like a nice and thoughtful man and a good actor and all that. Just -- well, he's not really a writer, now, is he? A history of US-Iran relations? Iran's ambivalence about the US? Please, Datebook, please -- make it stop! We were wrong -- we would prefer some more articles about how to play Sudoku, or lengthier Jon Carroll colummns. Picture of S. Penn by Robin Weiner, from the Chron