Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a stern warning to opponents today to stay off the streets as he denied claims that last week's elections had been rigged.

In an uncompromising address at Friday prayers, Khamenei claimed that the high turnout at the elections showed how much the Iranian people supported the regime, and blamed western powers for interfering in Iranian politics

The speech now creates a clear dilemma for Mousavi and his supporters: do they return to the streets in open defiance of Khamenei or drop their demands? Prior to today's speech, Mousavi had called on the opposition movement to gather in Tehran tomorrow afternoon for a rally, but many may now feel too fearful of a crackdown by the authorities.

Burma's detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi celebrated her 64th birthday Friday as world leaders once more called for her release.

The statement comes as the latest step in a global internet-based campaign to highlight the Nobel Peace Prize winner's plight and honor her birthday with a 64-word message.    

Campaign calls for 64 words for Suu Kyi

First, the police fire tear gas, then rubber bullets. As protesters flee, they move on to live rounds. One man, wearing only a pair of shorts, stops to raise his hands in surrender. He is knocked to the ground and given an extended beating by eight policemen in black body-armour and helmets.

Demonstrators getting worked-over by the rifle butts and truncheons of Peru's security forces turn out to be the lucky ones, though. Dozens more were shot as they fled. You can see their bullet-ridden bodies, charred by a fire that swept through the scene of the incident, which has since been dubbed "the Amazon's Tiananmen".

Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. We've all heard about the cyber-battle between the Iranian government and opposition protestors, with a flood of information coming from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social media sources, despite the efforts of the authorities to block web access. But this image - in a blog by the security firm Arbor Networks - really tells the story of the Iranian regime's strategy:

"The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson

It was also a period of Teamsters Union corruption, replete with criminal moguls such as Dave Beck, George Meany and Jimmy Hoffa. Yet the history of the few top lizards on the national rock of greed is not the history of the people.

If a few pricks and gangsters have occasionally seized power over the dignity of labor, countless more calculating, bloodless and malevolent pricks -- the capitalist elites -- have always held most of the card -- which is why in 1886 railroad and financial baron Jay Gould could sneer, "I can always hire one half of the working class to kill the other half." And why a speaker at the U.S. Business Conference Board in 1974 could arrogantly declare, "One man, one vote has undermined the power of business in all capitalist countries since World War II."  And why that same year Business Week magazine said, "It will be a hard pill for many Americans to swallow -- the idea of doing with less so that big business can have more. Nothing in modern economic history compares with the selling job that must now be done to make people accept this new reality."

The new reality is here, and has been since 1973, the last year American workers made a wage gain in real dollars. Hell, it's been here so long we accept it as part of America's cultural furniture.

it had no name....(spooky music)...

now they call it.... the anglo disease...

go read the while thing, it's priceless history, studs terkel style. joe is a national treasure.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty