Bloody hell!
You laughed about Australia being called the Socceroos the other day and yet I have just discovered that yr team is called the Man Shaft!!!
Hmmm...
Monday, 14 June 2010
Sunday, 13 June 2010
Politicians set to tackle Liverpool FC ownership issue in Parliament
A proposal by Steve Rotherham (Walton), Alison McGovern (Wirral South), Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood), Dave Watts (St Helens North) and Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) has been backed by several politicians, including recently-elected Wavertree MP Luciana Berger.
Cllr Rotheram replaced Peter Kilfoyle in May as the MP for the Walton constituency where the club's Anfield stadium is located and was highly supportive of the commemorations for last year's 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster in his role as Lord Mayor of Liverpool.
Kilfoyle, who retired after 19 years as the area's representative, supported an Early Day Motion in 2008 which called on the then Government to prevent RBS. who are 60% state-owned, extending their loan agreement with Gillett and Hicks.
The latest EDM encourages discussion with supporter organisations such as Spirit of Shankly and ShareLiverpoolFC about how politicians can help steer the club in the right direction with the Americans' promises of a new stadium in Stanley Park showing no signs of being fulfilled.
It states: "This House expresses its dismay at the failure of the American owners of Liverpool Football Club to exercise responsible stewardship of the club; notes the departure of the outgoing manager Rafael Benitez; regrets the failure to fulfil promises of a new stadium; supports consultation and engagement with supporters' groups; and looks to an early change of ownership and a positive strategy to take the club forward."
This week it emerged that Hicks' refusal to lower his valuation of £800million for the club scuppered two potential sales to investors described by sources at Barclays Capital, who are aiding the search for new owners, as "perfect fit".
Richard Buxton @'Click Liverpool'
billybragg Okay England fans - post-mortem time: who wasn't wearing their lucky shirt/shorts/skirt/undies last night? Apart from poor old Rob Green?
Apocalypse in the Gulf
Now Oil, Next Nukes
As BP's ghastly gusher assaults the Gulf of Mexico and so much more, a tornado has forced shut the Fermi2 atomic reactor at the site of a 1966 melt-down that nearly irradiated the entire Great Lakes region.
If the White House has a reliable plan for deploying and funding a credible response to a disaster at a reactor that's superior to the one we've seen at the Deepwater Horizon, we'd sure like to see it.
Meanwhile it wants us to fund two more reactors on the Gulf and another one 40 miles from Washington DC. And that's just for starters.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has warned that at least one new design proposed for federal funding cannot withstand tornadoes, earthquakes or hurricanes.
But the administration has slipped $9 billion for nuclear loan guarantees into an emergency military funding bill, in addition to the $8.33 it's already approved for two new nukes in Georgia.
Unless we do something about it, the House Appropriations Committee may begin the process next week.
Like Deepwater Horizon and Fermi, these new nukes could ignite disasters beyond our technological control---and our worst nightmares. 
Like BP, their builders would enjoy financial liability limits dwarfed by damage they could do.
Two of the new reactors are proposed for South Texas, where two others have already been leaking radiation into the Gulf. Ironically, oil pouring into the Gulf could make the waters unusable for cooling existing and future nukes and coal burners.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu recently admitted to Rachel Maddow he has no firm plans for the radioactive wastes created by the proposed new reactors, or by the 104 currently licensed.
That would include Vermont Yankee, where strontium, cesium, tritium and more are leaking into the Connecticut River. VY's rotted underground pipes may have leaking counterparts at every other US reactor.
After 50 years, this industry can't get private financing, can't get private liability insurance and has no solution for its wastes.
The Gulf gusher bears the simple lesson that technologies that require liability limits will rapidly exceed them, and must not be deployed.
No US nuclear utility has sufficient capital resources to cover the damages from a reactor disaster, which is one reason taxpayers are targeted as the ultimate underwriters.
On May 27, the House Appropriations Committee was scheduled to vote on new nuke loan guarantees, which had been attached to an emergency military spending bill. Amidst a flood of grassroots opposition, the vote was postponed.
But it could return as early as June 15. We can and must stop these new guarantees, which would feed the gusher of nuke power hand-outs being dumped into new climate/energy legislation.
By all accounts, despite the horrors of the Gulf, the administration still wants legislation that will expand deepwater drilling and atomic technologies that are simply beyond our control…but that fund apparently unstoppable dividends for corporations like BP.
It's our vital responsibility to transform this crisis into a definitive shift to a totally green-powered earth, based solely on renewables and efficiency. We have a full array of Solartopian technologies that are proven, profitable, insurable and manageable. They are the core of our necessary transition to a prosperous, sustainable future.
As our planet dies around us, truly green climate/energy legislation must come...NOW! The next key vote may come when the Appropriations Committee reconvenes.
Just when it still isn't safe to go into the water, the nuclear energy industry with all its technological difficulties/deficiencies wants to come to the party and add its name to the list of industries hell-bent on eco-cide, safe in the knowledge that any future costs due to calamities will be borne not by themselves but rather the tax-payer. Is this really what people want their tax dollars working for, another "careless" business payout? There is NO safe nuclear solution, it is a finite resource, and the waste problems of the industry have yet to be resolved 50 years down the track. - Beeden
Bruce Sterling on SLR
I'm in Phoenix, Arizona - not for the Superbowl, like the 100,000 other people who flew in this weekend, but I've got my reasons - and I'm paging through the latest issue of The Arizona Republic. The paper's a lot like the community it serves: glossy, nuttily conservative, and oddly punch-drunk.
Friday, January 26, 1996, an article on page B2:
Culprits in Rock Barrage Elude Chandler Police Surveillance
Rocks and chunks of concrete larger than softballs have been raining on a Chandler neighborhood, pounding roofs and smashing into cars. Police have posted surveillance and have increased patrols, but the rain of rocks
continues. Neighborhood Block Watches have been able to do nothing more than collect the rocks - as many as 30 after an attack Tuesday night. Residents believe some device is being used to hurl the missiles.
But here's the coverage I'm looking for, on page D7:
Rampaging Robots Ready to Wreak Havoc Downtown
Some 30 tons of crashing, fire-spitting robotic machinery will perform at 11 PM Saturday at the Icehouse, 429 West Jackson Street, Phoenix. Survival Research Laboratories (SRL) of San Francisco will present its "Million Inconsiderate Experiments," with machine art tromping, stomping and shooting flames. The show, under the direction of artist Mark Pauline, has toured Europe and has been performed in Los Angeles, New York, and Seattle.
I'm pretty sure I can solve this mystery in Chandler, if the authorities are interested. Put out an APB for a scruffy male adolescent, a bright kid who sits at the family table sullenly radiating poltergeist vibrations and bending fork tines with his molars. He has a deep, secret interest in junkyards, whence he found those hinges, bolts, one-by-twelves, bungee cords, and powerful springs. Look for this kid, and while you're at it, look for his prankster friends.
In the meantime, SRL capo Mark Pauline, the 42-year-old adult upgrade of a deeply alienated teenage techie, stands in an abandoned Phoenix railway yard. I watch as Pauline checks a soldered connection, taps at a pressure gauge, steps back, confers with an associate in a set of coveralls even filthier and more tattered than his own, then presses a handheld switch.
A couple feet away, one of the few V-1 jet engines in private ownership comes to sudden life. FWOOOOOOM! A dragon tongue of misappropriated Nazi vengeance licks the desert sky. A pause, a few words of consultation, Mark couldn't be more blasé.
FWOOOM!!! BLADDABLODDABLADDABLODDA - KA-BLAM! Waves of heat kick up spinning torrents of yellow dust. Half-combusted fuel explodes deep within the iron throat of the jet, producing a fiery belch that is not merely loud but insanely loud, industrial-accident loud. The temperature in the freight yard, somewhere in the low 40s, soars at once to a toasty 90 degrees...
Continue reading
Suspected Mossad agent arrested over Dubai assassination
An alleged Mossad spy from Israel wanted in connection with the hit-squad slaying of a Hamas agent in Dubai has been arrested in Poland, officials said Saturday.
The man, using the name Uri Brodsky, is suspected of working for Mossad in Germany and helping to issue a fake German passport to a member of the Mossad operation that allegedly killed Hamas agent Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January, a spokesman for the German federal prosecutor's office told The Associated Press.
Brodsky was arrested in early June upon his arrival in Poland because of a European arrest warrant issued by Germany which is now seeking his extradition, the spokesman said, declining to be named in line with department policy.
The spokesman had no estimate of how long it could take for Brodsky to be extradited from Poland to Germany, saying the matter is now in the hands of the Polish authorities. "If Brodsky agrees, the extradition could take a few days, but that isn't likely," the spokesman said.
In Warsaw, Monika Lewandowska, a spokeswoman for Polish prosecutors, confirmed that the suspect, identified only as Uri B., was arrested at the city's international airport on June 4. She told the AP that the arrest warrant was made in connection with the murder of a Hamas member in Dubai.
"The suspect appeared before a Polish court on June 6, and was ordered to remain in temporary arrest for up to 40 days," she said. Lewandowska had no information on his possible extradition.
In Israel, the Foreign Ministry said without elaborating that it was aware of the man's fate. "At the moment, we're looking into that like any other Israeli who has been arrested, and he's getting consular treatment," spokesman Andy David said.
Police in the United Arab Emirates said the elaborate hit squad linked to the Jan. 19 slaying in Dubai of al-Mabhouh - one of the founders of Hamas' military wing - involved some 25 suspects, most of them carrying fake passports from European nations.
Brodsky was arrested in early June upon his arrival in Poland because of a European arrest warrant issued by Germany which is now seeking his extradition, the spokesman said, declining to be named in line with department policy.
The spokesman had no estimate of how long it could take for Brodsky to be extradited from Poland to Germany, saying the matter is now in the hands of the Polish authorities. "If Brodsky agrees, the extradition could take a few days, but that isn't likely," the spokesman said.
In Warsaw, Monika Lewandowska, a spokeswoman for Polish prosecutors, confirmed that the suspect, identified only as Uri B., was arrested at the city's international airport on June 4. She told the AP that the arrest warrant was made in connection with the murder of a Hamas member in Dubai.
"The suspect appeared before a Polish court on June 6, and was ordered to remain in temporary arrest for up to 40 days," she said. Lewandowska had no information on his possible extradition.
In Israel, the Foreign Ministry said without elaborating that it was aware of the man's fate. "At the moment, we're looking into that like any other Israeli who has been arrested, and he's getting consular treatment," spokesman Andy David said.
Police in the United Arab Emirates said the elaborate hit squad linked to the Jan. 19 slaying in Dubai of al-Mabhouh - one of the founders of Hamas' military wing - involved some 25 suspects, most of them carrying fake passports from European nations.
Dubai's police chief, Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, has said he is nearly 100 percent certain that Mossad, Israel's spy agency, masterminded the killing.
The brazen assault in a luxury hotel and its alleged perpetrators were widely captured by security cameras. Some footage, released by Dubai's police, showed alleged members of the hit squad disguised as tourists, wearing baggy shorts, sneakers and baseball caps, and carrying tennis rackets.
At the time, Israel said it didn't know who was responsible for the killing but welcomed it, claiming al-Mabhouh was a key link in smuggling weapons to Gaza and a possible middleman with Israel's archenemy, Iran.
The German news weekly Der Spiegel reported that the arrest in Poland already has led to some diplomatic friction. The Israeli Embassy has urged Polish authorities not to extradite Brodsky, the magazine reports in its issue to be published Monday.
Germany's Foreign Ministry had no comment on the case and referred to an ongoing judicial investigation by the federal prosecutor's office. The country's top investigating unit deals with all cases affecting internal or external security, including terrorism or espionage.
After a German passport was used by a person linked to the Dubai slaying, the prosecutor's office in February started investigating a possible connection to a foreign intelligence agency.
Authorities in the western city of Cologne had issued a passport to a man named Michael Bodenheimer. "A man using that name was among the assassins who killed the Hamas operative," according to Dubai police.
In February, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle urged a thorough investigation and said German authorities would do everything possible to support their counterparts in the U.A.E.
If Brodsky's extradition goes through, however, it could put the government in Berlin - a staunch Israeli ally - in a difficult diplomatic position.
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