Hero Throws Shoe At Ahmadinejad

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Mar 062009
 

I declare the shoe thrower a natural-born world-shaking Hero!

Shoe reportedly thrown at Iranian president Ahmadinejad

When the Iraqi journalist, Muntazar al-Zaidi, hurled his shoes at the then-US president, George Bush, in December, Iranian officials declared him a hero and hailed his gesture as a mark of Islamic courage.

They were presumably less impressed this week when Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was similarly targeted during a visit to the north-western city of Urumiye.

Ahmadinejad found the shoe on the other foot as he waved to the crowd from an open-top car on his way to give a speech at a local stadium.

An Iranian website, Urumiye News, reported that a shoe was hurled at the president as his convoy drove through a central square. Security guards waded into the crowds but failed to find the culprit.

A hat was also thrown in Ahmadinejad’s direction before his car sped away.

The event went unreported on mainstream Iranian news outlets but has been hotly discussed on the country’s highly active blogosphere. Some pro-Ahmadinejad bloggers have dismissed the reports as rumours spread by “royalists” and “counter-revolutionaries”.

However, Ahmadinejad has been on the receiving end of flying footwear before. A shoe was thrown at him during a students’ demonstration at Tehran’s Amir Kabir university in December 2006.

Urumiye News said the latest protest came when a disturbance broke out after a vehicle in the presidential convoy struck an elderly man who walked onto the road to try and hand Ahmadinejad a letter. People became angry when the driver failed to stop to attend to the injured man. Eventually an ambulance in the motorcade was forced to take him to hospital after jeering crowds blocked its path.

Ahmadinejad travels frequently to Iran’s provinces in a bid to boost his popularity. He commonly receives large numbers of letters requesting financial assistance and other help during such trips.

After Zaidi’s protest in Baghdad, Iranian officials paid tribute by holding several public shoe-throwing competitions in which contestants threw footwear at caricatures of Bush. Iran’s main shoemaking federation also offered to supply a lifetime of shoes to Zaidi, who remains in a Baghdad jail awaiting trial.

United Nations: Iran Has Enough Enriched Uranium For a Nuclear Bomb

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Feb 202009
 

Gird your loins! Obama is about to grow up.

Iran holds enough uranium for bomb

Iran has built up a stockpile of enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb, United Nations officials acknowledged on Thursday.

In a development that comes as the Obama administration is drawing up its policy on negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear programme, UN officials said Iran had produced more nuclear material than previously thought.

They said Iran had accumulated more than one tonne of low enriched uranium hexafluoride at a facility in Natanz.

If such a quantity were further enriched it could produce more than 20kg of fissile material – enough for a bomb.

“It appears that Iran has walked right up to the threshold of having enough low enriched uranium to provide enough raw material for a single bomb,” said Peter Zimmerman, a former chief scientist of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

The new figures come in a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, released on Thursday. This revealed that Iran’s production of low enriched uranium had previously been underestimated.

When the agency carried out an annual stocktaking of Natanz in mid-November Iran had produced 839kg of low enriched uranium hexafluoride – more than 200kg more than previously thought. Tehran produced an additional 171kg by the end of January.

“It’s sure certain that if they didn’t have it [enough] when the IAEA took these measurements, they will have it in a matter of weeks,” Mr Zimmerman said.

Iran’s success in reaching such a “breakout capacity” – a stage that would allow it to produce enough fissile material for a bomb in a matter of months – crosses a “red line” that for years Israel has said it would not accept.

UN officials emphasise that to produce fissile material Iran would have to reconfigure its Natanz plant to produce high enriched uranium rather than low enriched uranium – a highly visible step that would take months – or to shift its stockpile to a clandestine site.

No such sites have been proved to exist, although for decades Iran concealed evidence of its nuclear programme.

A senior UN official added that countries usually waited until they had an enriched uranium stockpile sufficient for several bombs before proceeding to develop fissile material. He conceded that Iran now had enough enriched uranium for one bomb.

“Do they have enough low enriched uranium to produce a significant quantity [enough high enriched uranium for a bomb]?” he said. “In theory this is possible, [although] with the present configuration at Natanz it isn’t.”

David Albright, the head of the Institute for Science and International Security, said: “If Iran did decide to build nuclear weapons, it’s entering an era in which it could do so quickly.”

The World’s Oldest Artificial Eye Found In Iran

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Jan 032009
 

I couldn’t pass this one up. Don’t ask me why! It reminded me of that old joke:

A man needs to get an artificial eye due to a work injury.

The eye doctor shows him a glass eye and a wooden eye. He can only afford the wooden eye so he buys it.

He is embarassed to have a wooden eye and doesn’t socialize.

He hears of a handicap dance and desides that he would risk going, thinking that no one would make fun of him at the dance since they have disabilities too.

When he gets to the dance he sees a beautiful young lady with a peg leg that no one has asked to dance.

He walks up to her and says, “Would you like to dance?” She says, “Would I?!” He yells back at her, “PEG LEG!!!”

Iran publishes bulletin on ancient artificial eye found in Burnt City

Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan Province has published a bulletin about the artificial eye, unearthed in the historical Burnt City site.

“Published by Sistan-Baluchestan cultural heritage office, the bulletin contains information about the results of the tests performed on the eye,” said head of the Burnt City archeology team, Seyyed Mansour Seyyed Sajjadi.

The Persian-English bulletin was published at the start of the 12th phase of Burnt City archeological excavations.

The 5,000 year-old eye was unearthed two years ago and is believed to be the oldest prosthetic in the world.

Made of natural tar and animal fat, the eye was placed inside the left eye socket of a 28- to 32-year-old woman.

A leather pouch was also found beside the female skeleton appears to have been used to keep the eye when it was removed.

The 5000-year-old Burnt City is located near the northeastern city of Zabol and spans an area of over 300,000 hectares.

Four civilizations have lived in the city which was burnt down three times and not rebuilt after the last fire.

The world’s oldest animated picture, dice and backgammon set, and caraway seed has been found in Burnt City.

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