Sunday, 27 September 2009
Back in the real world
Meanwhile 'enduring America' has a good wrap up of the rumours flowing in and around Iran today.HERE
1730 GMT: Today’s “Velvet Revolution” Showcase. It comes courtesy of the Supreme Leader’s Advisor For Military Affairs, Major General Seyed Yahiya Rahim Safavi, who said on Saturday, “The (enemies’) soft war is aimed at changing the (Iranian nation’s) culture, views, values, national beliefs and belief in values. Soft warfare is a complicated type of political, cultural, information operations launched by the world powers to create favorable changes in the target countries.”
1715 GMT: The Wall Street Journal, snarling for a confrontation with Iran, inadvertently exposes the weakness in the dramatic presentation of the second enrichment facility: “Let’s also not forget the boost Iran got in late 2007, when a U.S. national intelligence estimate concluded that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and kept it frozen. The U.S. spy agencies reached this dubious conclusion while apparently knowing about the site near Qom.”
Probably for the chest-thumpers at the WSJ is that the conclusion is not dubious at all (see the State Department’s defense of it in a separate entry). Even if the second facility had taken in shipments of uranium, which is not alleged even by the US Government, even if high-grade centrifuges had been installed, which is not established, even if those centrifuges had begun enriching uranium, which is not claimed anywhere, that would not establish a direct link with a resumed nuclear weapons program. It would merely establish that Iran now had some quantity of enriched uranium which might or might not be for military rather than civilian purposes.
However, the WSJ’s railing do not have to be logical to show the problems for the Obama Administration’s strategy. Opponents will now claim that the 2nd enrichment facility shows that all intelligence assessments from 2007 must be thrown out and will put by default the faith-based assertion that Iran is hell-bent on the Bomb and beyond diplomacy.
1650 GMT: The Institute for Science and International Security has posted images “of two possible locations of the gas centrifuge uranium enrichment facility under construction near Qom, Iran. Both are tunnel facilities located within military compounds approximately 30-40 kilometers away.”
Putting the KY back into Kentucky!
@ 'Daily Dish'
Jeez Louise!
Lynchings down south! Calls to bring back McCarthyism!
Obama banning flavoured tobacco (and pot) is "gay"!
WTF?!?
Where is an interrobang when you need one?
(My apologies to Yotte!)
Jeez Louise!
Lynchings down south! Calls to bring back McCarthyism!
Obama banning flavoured tobacco (and pot) is "gay"!
WTF?!?
Where is an interrobang when you need one?
(My apologies to Yotte!)
Bodhan (with an X)
(Click to enlarge)Somewhere along the lines in the past week or so I was talking with someone about Bodhan and I just found this over at Prehistoric Sounds.
Who knows, maybe someone's memory will get refreshed...could have been up at 'High Vibes'.
Anyway enough of this, or god forbid Bodhan will think he is having a revival.
(It's all good mate, it was mostly complimentary, I think!)
Saturday, 26 September 2009
(Sigh...again!)
Dot AllisonYou have until the end of the month to catch her recent acoustic show on Janice Long's BBC Radio 2 show
HERE
Cheating goalkeeper Kim Christensen faces fine after moving goalposts
A goalkeeper in Sweden’s top football league may be suspended and perhaps fined after being caught moving the goalposts. Literally.
Kim Christensen, a Dane who plies his trade with IFK Gothenburg, was seen on camera kicking in both sides of the goalframe to reduce the target area ever so slightly at the start of a crucial match in the Allsvenskan (All Sweden) division, the equivalent of the English Premier League.
The game between IFK, who are top of the league and on course for a lucrative place in European competition next season, and Örebro, was shown live on national television but it took the referee more than 20 minutes to spot that the posts were a few centimetres inside the guidelines marked on the pitch. He moved them back out to their correct positions but, because he was unaware that the goalkeeper was responsible, took no further action.
Faced with clear television evidence, however, Christensen later admitted that this was not the first time he had moved the goalposts — which, in the Swedish game, often rest on top of the artificial playing surface and can easily be manipulated.
“I got the tip from a goalkeeping friend a few years ago, and since then I have done it from time to time,” Christensen told a reporter.
Stefan Johansson, the referee, said: “Had I seen him do it I would have warned him. I think so, anyway — it is not easy to find that rule.”
A member of the disciplinary committee for the Swedish Football Association (SFA) said that, had the referee witnessed the incident, a penalty kick for Örebro would have been the correct response. The game ended 0-0 but Örebro came close to scoring several times, so may yet decide to appeal to the SFA. Christensen has already been reported to the body.
Jonas Nystedt, a spokesman for the SFA, said that its disciplinary committee would consider the case at its October meeting. “Since this ia a very special case we cannot say at the moment what will happen. During an investigation, we can say that a player is not allowed to play, but so far he has not been suspended.”
He said that moving the goalposts was not a specific offence in the SFA rulebook but the player could be charged with obstruction. Mr Nystedt added that the SFA would consider the mandatory fixing of goalposts securely to the ground in future. “On artifical grass it is not so easy to hold the goals in the right positions all the time.”
The Interrobang is back!?!
The interrobang was introduced in 1962 by Martin Speckter, head of a New York advertising and public relations agency and editor of a magazine called Type Talks. In a Type Talks article, Speckter declared that advertising copywriters needed a new mark to punctuate exclamatory rhetorical questions common in advertising headlines (for example: “What?! Whiter than White?!”). In this type of copy, neither an exclamation point nor a question mark (used alone) could fully convey the writer´s intent.
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