Stig Östlund

lördag, augusti 31, 2013

Obama Wants Military Strike Against Syria, But Will Seek Congressional Approval






BREAKING NEWSSaturday, August 31, 2013 2:02 PM EDT





President Obama, with Vice President
Joseph R. Biden Jr., spoke Saturday
on Syria at the White House.

 
 


President Obama said Saturday that he had decided that the United States should take military action against Syria in response to a deadly chemical weapons attack, but that he would seek Congressional authorization for the use of force.
Mr. Obama said the Congressional leadership planned to hold a debate and a vote as soon as both houses come back in September.
He said he had the authority to act on his own, but believed it is important for the country to have a debate.

READ MORE »

 
The Football Association of Ireland today (Friday) confirmed that Giovanni Trapattoni has finalised his 23 man squad for Ireland’s World Cup Qualifiers against Sweden next Friday September 6 in Aviva Stadium, and Austria on Tuesday September 10 in Ernst Happel Stadion, Vienna.
 
The squad will assemble in Malahide ahead of training on Monday at 11am.
 
NameClub
  1. 1.David Forde
Millwall FC
  1. 2.Keiren Westwood
Sunderland AFC
  1. 3.Darren Randolph
Birmingham City FC
  1. 4.John O’Shea
Sunderland AFC
  1. 5.Marc Wilson
Stoke City FC
  1. 6.Seamus Coleman
Everton FC
  1. 7.Stephen Kelly
Reading FC
  1. 8.Darren O’Dea
FC Metalurh Donetsk
  1. 9.Ciaran Clark
Aston Villa FC
  1. 10.Richard Dunne
QPR FC
  1. 11.Paul McShane
Hull City FC
  1. 12.Glenn Whelan
Stoke City FC
  1. 13.James McCarthy
Wigan Athletic FC
  1. 14.Paul Green
Leeds Utd FC
  1. 15.Anthony Pilkington
Norwich City FC
  1. 16.James McClean
Wigan Athletic FC
  1. 17.Robbie Brady
Hull City FC
  1. 18.Wes Hoolahan
Norwich City FC
  1. 19.Shane Long
West Bromwich Albion FC
  1. 20.Robbie Keane
LA Galaxy
  1. 21.Conor Sammon
Derby County FC
  1. 22.Jon Walters
Stoke City FC
  1. 23.Simon Cox
Nottingham Forest FC
 
Please note:
  • David Meyler has been placed on standby, and has been contacted by the manager.
 
  • Paddy Madden has picked up a knee injury and is unavailable for selection.
 
*Clarification on Joey O’Brien:
Our medical teams were speaking prior to Joey’s withdrawal from the Irish squad. A decision was reached based on Joey’s serious knee injury sustained two years ago, and he requires treatment during the international window next week after a patellar tendon flare up. The manager has given his blessing to this as we have sufficient cover on this occasion. He may feature for his club tomorrow.

Syria looms as Sweden readies for Obama

 

Free trade and climate police are at the top of the agenda for Barack Obama's visit to Sweden next week, a trip meant to symbolize the strength of US-Swedish relations, but which is overshadowed by speculation about imminent military strikes in Syria
Rysslands president Vladimir Putin
uppmanar USA att lägga fram bevis för
att regimen i Syrien använt kemiska
vapen.

Just det!

La Liga


Österrikaren Ivanschitz
gjrde segermålet för
Levante idag 













Omgång  3
 
Rayo - Levante1-2 
Almería - Elche2-2 Elche kvitterade i 94e minuten

Celta - Granada idag kl19:00
 
-
Valladolid - Getafe idag kl 21:00
 
-
Osasuna - Villarreal i dag kl 23:00
 
-
R. Madrid - Athletic i morgon kl 12:00
 
-
Espanyol - Betis  i morgon kl 17:00
 
-
R. Sociedad - Atlético  i morgon kl 19:00
 
-
Valencia - Barcelona i morgon kl 21:00
 
-
Sevilla - Málaga  i morgon kl 21:00
 

40 Maps They Didn’t Teach You In School

http://www.boredpanda.com/fun-maps-they-didnt-teach-you-in-school/

Sundsvallsbron


Det imponerande brobygget över Sundsvallsfjärden fortsätter.  I dag lyftes det fjärde brospannet på pelarna. Bilder från omkr. kl 10:00 idag (som jag fotograferat utan tanke på fototeknik vilket torde märkas ganska lätt):





Fotografens "fordon" har
också hamnat på bilden.
Fotografen var f.ö. ensam person
på den här platsen (man kan
inte komma närmare)




Denna bild gllr jag vad gäller motivval. Pekar
på aktivitet i Sudsvall en lördag-FM.
Tll höger en relativt stor oljetanker lämnar
området med hjälp av en bogserbåt; i bakgrunden ett
pappersbruk som det ryker om och i
förgrunden ettimponerande brobygge.











July 18, 2013. Learners from the Melpark Primary School in Johannesburg listen to the history of former president Nelson Mandela as they celebrate the 95th birthday of Mandela during their school assembly in South Africa.

>> http://lightbox.time.com/2013/07/19/pictures-of-the-week-july-12-july-19/#end


Obama vs. Kerry on Syria


 

As President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry made the case for United States military action against the Syrian government on Friday, each carried his arguments with a different tone. /N Y Times
 
Man kan dock gissa att beslut om ett ingripande redan har gjorts i Washington. Hur som helst, vilket dilemma för president Obama som många har sett som en fredspresident. För att inte tala om miljoner av krigströtta amerikanare. 
De närmaste dagarna blir spännande.

Seamus Heaney dead: Poet's 1995 Nobel Lecture


The Irish poet gave an extraordinary insight into
his work upon winning the Nobel Prize for Literature

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/seamus-heaney-dead-poets-1995-nobel-lecture-8791520.html

fredag, augusti 30, 2013

TRANSCRIPT: Secretary of State Kerry’s remarks on Syria on Aug. 30


Protests and preparations as Western powers stand on the brink of attacking Syria: The United States forged ahead with preparations for a military strike against Syria in response to what it alleges was a chemical weapons attack last week by the government against a rebel-occupied area. The situation has sparked protests against both Syria and the United States and its allies, and Syria’s neighbors are preparing for a possible conflict




KERRY: President Obama has spent many days now consulting with Congress and talking with leaders around the world about the situation in Syria.

And last night the president asked all of us on his national security team to consult with the leaders of Congress, as well, including the leadership of the congressional national security committees. And he asked us to consult about what we know regarding the horrific chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs last week.

I will tell you that as someone who spent nearly three decades in the United States Congress, I know that that consultation is the right way for a president to approach a decision of when and how and if to use military force. And it's important to ask the tough questions and get the tough answers before taking action, not just afterward.

And I believe, as President Obama does, that it is also important to discuss this directly with the American people. That's our responsibility, to talk with the citizens who have entrusted all of us in the administration and Congress with responsibility for their security.

That's why this morning's release of our government's unclassified estimate of what took place in Syria is so important. Its findings are as clear as they are compelling. I'm not asking you to take my word for it. Read for yourself, everyone, those listening, all of you, read for yourselves the evidence from thousands of sources, evidence that is already publicly available.

And read for yourselves the verdict, reached by our intelligence community about the chemical weapons attack the Assad regime inflicted on the opposition and on opposition controlled or contested neighborhoods in the Damascus suburbs on the early morning of August 21st.

Our intelligence community has carefully reviewed and re-reviewed information regarding this attack. And I will tell you it has done so more than mindful of the Iraq experience. We will not repeat that moment. Accordingly, we have taken unprecedented steps to declassify and make facts available to people who can judge for themselves.

But still, in order to protect sources and methods, some of what we know will only be released to members of Congress, the representatives of the American people. That means that some things we do know, we can't talk about publicly.


So what do we really know that we can talk about?


Well, we know that the Assad regime has the largest chemical weapons programs in the entire Middle East. We know that the regime has used those weapons multiple times this year, and has used them on a smaller scale but still it has used them against its own people, including not very far from where last Wednesday’s attack happened.


We know that the regime was specifically determined to rid the Damascus suburbs of the opposition, and it was frustrated that it hadn’t succeeded in doing so.

We know that for three days before the attack, the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons personnel were on the ground in the area, making preparations.



And we know that the Syrian regime elements were told to prepare for the attack by putting on gas masks and taking precautions associated with chemical weapons.

We know that these were specific instructions.

We know where the rockets were launched from, and at what time. We know where they landed, and when. We know rockets came only from regime-controlled areas and went only to opposition-controlled or contested neighborhoods.

And we know, as does the world, that just 90 minutes later all hell broke loose in the social media. With our own eyes we have seen the thousands of reports from 11 separate sites in the Damascus suburbs. All of them show and report victims with breathing difficulties, people twitching with spasms, coughing, rapid heartbeats, foaming at the mouth, unconsciousness, and death. And we know it was ordinary Syrian citizens who reported all of these horrors.

And just as important, we know what the doctors and the nurses who treated them didn’t report -- not a scratch, not a shrapnel wound, not a cut, not a gunshot sound. We saw rows of dead lined up in burial shrouds, the white linen unstained by a single drop of blood.

Instead of being tucked safely in their beds at home, we saw rows of children lying side by side, sprawled on a hospital floor, all of them dead from Assad’s gas and surrounded by parents and grandparents who had suffered the same fate.

The United States government now knows that at least 1,429 Syrians were killed in this attack, including at least 426 children. Even the first-responders, the doctors, nurses and medics who tried to save them, they became victims themselves. We saw them gasping for air, terrified that their own lives were in danger.

This is the indiscriminate, inconceivable horror of chemical weapons. This is what Assad did to his own people.

We also know many disturbing details about the aftermath. We know that a senior regime official who knew about the attack confirmed that chemical weapons were used by the regime, reviewed the impact, and actually was afraid that they would be discovered.

We know this.

And we know what they did next. I personally called the foreign minister of Syria, and I said to him, “If, as you say, your nation has nothing to hide then let the United Nations in immediately and give the inspectors the unfettered access, so they have the opportunity to tell your story.”

Instead, for four days, they shelled the neighborhood in order to destroy evidence, bombarding block after black at a rate four times higher than they had over the previous 10 days. And, when the U.N. inspectors finally gained access, that access -- as we now know -- was restricted and controlled.

In all of these things that I have listed, in all of these things that we know -- all of them -- the American intelligence community has high confidence, high confidence. This is common sense. This is evidence. These are facts.

So the primary question is really no longer, what do we know. The question is, what are we -- we collectively -- what are we in the world gonna do about it.

As previous storms in history have gathered, when unspeakable crimes were within our power to stop them, we have been warned against the temptations of looking the other way. History is full of leaders who have warned against inaction, indifference and especially against silence when it mattered most.

Our choices then, in history, had great consequences. And our choice today has great consequences. It matters that nearly 100 years ago in direct response to the utter horror and inhumanity of World War I that the civilized world agreed that chemical weapons should never be used again. That was the world’s resolve then. And that began nearly a century of effort to create a clear red line for the international community.

It matters today that we are working as an international community to rid the world of the worst weapons. That’s why we signed agreements like the START Treaty, the New START Treaty, the Chemical Weapons Convention, which more than 180 countries, including Iran, Iraq and Lebanon, have signed on to.

It matters to our security and the security of our allies. It matters to Israel. It matters to our close friends Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon, all of whom live just a stiff breeze away from Damascus. It matters to all of them where the Syrian chemical weapons are -- and if unchecked they can cause even greater death and destruction to those friends.

And it matters deeply to the credibility and the future interests of the United States of America and our allies. It matters because a lot of other countries, whose policy has challenged these international norms, are watching. They are watching. They want to see whether the United States and our friends mean what we say.

It is directly related to our credibility and whether countries still believe the United States when it says something. They are watching to see if Syria can get away with it, because then maybe they too can put the world at greater risk.

And make no mistake, in an increasingly complicated world of sectarian and religious extremist violence, what we choose to do or not do matters in real ways to our own security. Some site the risk of doing things. But we need to ask, “What is the risk of doing nothing?”

It matters because if we choose to live in the world where a thug and a murderer like Bashar al-Assad can gas thousands of his own people with impunity, even after the United States and our allies said no, and then the world does nothing about it, there will be no end to the test of our resolve and the dangers that will flow from those others who believe that they can do as they will.

This matters also beyond the limits of Syria’s borders. It is about whether Iran, which itself has been a victim of chemical weapons’ attacks, will now feel emboldened in the absence of action to obtain nuclear weapons.

It is about Hezbollah and North Korea and every other terrorist group or dictator that might ever again contemplate the use of weapons of mass destruction. Will they remember that the Assad regime was stopped from those weapons’ current or future use? Or will they remember that the world stood aside and created impunity?

So our concern is not just about some far-off land oceans away. That’s not what this is about. Our concern with the cause of the defenseless people of Syria is about choices that will directly affect our role in the world and our interests in the World.

It is also profoundly about who we are. We are the United States of America. We are the country that has tried, not always successfully, but always tried to honor a set of universal values around which we have organized our lives and our aspirations.

This crime against conscience, this crime against humanity, this crime against the most fundamental principles of international community, against the norm of the international community, this matters to us.

And it matters to who we are. And it matters to leadership and to our credibility in the world.

My friends, it matters here if nothing is done. It matters if the world speaks out in condemnation and then nothing happens.

America should feel confident and gratified that we are not alone in our condemnation and we are not alone in our will to do something about it and to act.

The world is speaking out. And many friends stand ready to respond. The Arab League pledged, quote, “to hold the Syrian regime fully responsible for this crime.” The Organization for Islamic Cooperation condemned the regime and said we needed, quote, “to hold the Syrian government legally and morally accountable for this heinous crime.”

Turkey said there is no doubt that the regime is responsible.

Our oldest ally, the French, said the regime, quote, “committed this vile action, and it is an outrage to use weapons that the community has banned for the last 90 years in all international conventions.”

The Australian prime minister said he didn’t want history to record that we were, quote, “a party to turning such a blind eye.”

So now that we know what we know, the question we must all be asking is: What will we do? Let me emphasize, President Obama, we in the United States, we believe in the United Nations. And we have great respect for the brave inspectors who endured regime gunfire and obstructions to their investigation.

But as Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general, has said again and again, the U.N. investigation will not affirm who used these chemical weapons. That is not the mandate of the U.N. investigation. They will only affirm whether such weapons were used. By the definition of their own mandate, the U.N. can’t tell us anything that we haven’t shared with you this afternoon or that we don’t already know.

And because of the guaranteed Russian obstructionism of any action through the U.N. Security Council, the U.N. cannot galvanize the world to act as it should. So let me be clear. We will continue talking to the Congress, talking to our allies, and most importantly, talking to the American people.

President Obama will ensure that the United States of America makes our own decisions on our own timelines, based on our values and our interests. Now, we know that after a decade of conflict, the American people are tired of war. Believe me, I am, too.

But fatigue does not absolve us of our responsibility. Just longing for peace does not necessarily bring it about. And history would judge us all extraordinarily harshly if we turned a blind eye to a dictator’s wanton use of weapons of mass destruction against all warnings, against all common understanding of decency, these things we do know.

We also know that we have a president that does what he says that he will do. And he has said, very clearly, that whatever decision he makes in Syria it will bear no resemblance to Afghanistan, Iraq or even Libya. It will not involve any boots on the ground. It will not be open ended. And it will not assume responsibility for a civil war that is already well underway.

The president has been clear: Any action that he might decide to take will be limited and (sic) tailored response to ensure that, a despots brutal and flagrant use of chemical weapons is held accountable. And ultimately, ultimately we are committed -- we remain committed, we believe it’s -- the primary objective is (sic) to have a diplomatic process that can resolve this through negotiation, because we know there is no ultimate military solution.

It has to be political.

It has to happen at the negotiating table.

And we are deeply committed to getting there.

So that is what we know. That is what the leaders of Congress now know. And that’s what the American people need to know. And that is, at the core of the decisions that must now be made for the security of our country, and for the promise of a planet, where the world’s most heinous weapons must never again be used against the world’s most vulnerable people.

Thank you, very much.


 


 


Seamus Heaney, Nobel Prize-Winning Irish Poet, Dies at 74




       
Seamus Heaney, a widely celebrated Irish poet who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995, died at a hospital in Dublin on Friday after a short illness, according to a statement issued on behalf of his family. He was 74.
Mr. Heaney, who was born in Northern Ireland but moved to Dublin in his later years, is recognized as one of the major poets of the 20th century.
He is survived by his wife, Marie, and his children, Christopher, Michael and Catherine Ann.


http://www.linkagenet.com/reviews/heaneypoemcriticism.htm#ministry

 

Tema diabetes

Dagens Medicin Tema Nyhetsbrev

Hej! Här kommer våra senaste nyheter om diabetes. Trevlig läsning!
 
Mejla Carl-Magnus Hake, redaktör
 
     Nyhetsbrev 2013-08-30


Vill ha överviktsoperationer
utan BMI-styrning

KIRURGVECKAN. Diabeteskirurgin har gått framåt och blir allt viktigare. Det förmedlades av två föreläsare som redogjorde för de metoder som har växt fram för att operera vid diabetes.         Läs mer
 

Högt blodsocker kopplas
till ökad risk för demens

Det är tidigare känt att patienter med diabetes oftare får demens. En ny studie i New England Journal of Medicine pekar på att även personer utan diabetes men med förhöjt blodsocker kan vara i farozonen.
Läs mer
 

Ny ledtråd i gåta om viktoperation

Forskare kan vara närmare svaret på frågan varför gastric bypass sänker blodsockervärdet hos överviktiga patienter med diabetes. Läs mer
 

Hur blir diabetesvården bättre?

Politikern Marie Morell (M) och Anders Lönnberg (S) ordförande i Stockholms diabetesförening diskuterar diabetesvård. Läs mer
 

Hur ska framtidens diabetesvård se ut?

Professor Mona Landin Olsson vill centralisera diabetesvården. Läs mer
 

”Omvänt vaccin” skyddade betaceller

Ett vaccin som minskar immunförsvarets angrepp mot de langerhanska öarna i bukspottkörteln kan göra att insulinproduktionen bättre bevaras vid typ 1-diabetes, enligt en ny pilotstudie i Science Translational Medicine.
Läs mer

Astra Zeneca och KI i samarbete

Astra Zeneca och Karolinska institutet, KI, startar ett gemensamt forskningscenter för kardiovaskulära och metabola sjukdomar. Läs mer
 

Look ahead-studien nu publicerad

En högre användning av statiner i kontrollgruppen kan vara en orsak till att intensiv livsstilsintervention inte visade effekt på hjärthälsan i en omdiskuterad diabetesstudie.
Läs mer

Forxiga in i förmånen

Nu är det möjligt att skriva ut det nya diabetesläkemedlet Forxiga med rabatt, enligt beslut av Tandvårds- och läkemedelsförmånsverket, TLV. Läs mer



Nytt mål för högt blodtryck

Blodtrycket för riskpatienter behöver inte sänkas lika mycket som man tidigare har gjort, enligt nya europeiska riktlinjer. Läs mer
 


Onglyza minskade inte hjärtsjukdom

Diabetesläkemedlet Onglyza hjälpte inte för att förebygga hjärt-kärlsjukdom hos personer med diabetes. Läs mer

Sundsvall stenstaden, arkitekturens pärlor

För glada amatörfotografer och andra

http://www.fotosidan.se/

Mega-Canyon Discovered Beneath Greenland Ice




August 29, 2013:  Data from a NASA airborne science mission has revealed an immense and previously unknown canyon hidden under a mile of Greenland ice. 
"One might assume that the landscape of the Earth has been fully explored and mapped," said Jonathan Bamber, professor of physical geography at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, and lead author of the study published in today's issue of Science. "Our research shows there's still a lot left to discover."

Play the Video:



Hidden for all of human history, a 460 mile long canyon has been discovered below Greenland's ice sheet. Using radar data from NASA's Operation IceBridge, scientists found the canyon runs from near the center of the island northward to the fjord of the Petermann Glacier.


The canyon has the characteristics of a winding river channel and is at least 460 miles (750 kilometers) long, making it longer than the Grand Canyon. In some places, it is as deep as 2,600 feet (800 meters), on scale with segments of the Grand Canyon. This immense feature is thought to predate the ice sheet that has covered Greenland for the last few million years.

The scientists used thousands of miles of airborne radar data, collected by NASA and researchers from the United Kingdom and Germany over several decades, to piece together the landscape lying beneath the Greenland ice sheet.

Auroras Underfoot (signup)

A large portion of this data was collected from 2009 through 2012 by NASA's Operation IceBridge, an airborne science campaign that studies polar ice. One of IceBridge's scientific instruments, the Multichannel Coherent Radar Depth Sounder, can see through vast layers of ice to measure its thickness and the shape of bedrock below.

In their analysis of the radar data, the team discovered a continuous bedrock canyon that extends from almost the center of the island and ends beneath the Petermann Glacier fjord in northern Greenland.

At certain frequencies, radio waves can travel through the ice and bounce off the bedrock underneath. The amount of times the radio waves took to bounce back helped researchers determine the depth of the canyon. The longer it took, the deeper the bedrock feature.

Comet ISON orbit
An Operation Icebridge P-3B research plane in Greenland. More

"Two things helped lead to this discovery," said Michael Studinger, IceBridge project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "It was the enormous amount of data collected by IceBridge and the work of combining it with other datasets into a Greenland-wide compilation of all existing data that makes this feature appear in front of our eyes."

The researchers believe the canyon plays an important role in transporting sub-glacial meltwater from the interior of Greenland to the edge of the ice sheet into the ocean. Evidence suggests that before the presence of the ice sheet, as much as 4 million years ago, water flowed in the canyon from the interior to the coast and was a major river system.

"It is quite remarkable that a channel the size of the Grand Canyon is discovered in the 21st century below the Greenland ice sheet," said Studinger. "It shows how little we still know about the bedrock below large continental ice sheets."

The IceBridge campaign will return to Greenland in March 2014 to continue collecting data on land and sea ice in the Arctic using a suite of instruments that includes ice-penetrating radar.

Credits:

 Production editor: Dr. Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA

Related Links:

Operation Icebridge  -- home page


Champions League
















Första omgången spelas 17-18 september.

A

Manchester United
FC Shakhtar Donetsk
Bayer Leverkusen
Real Sociedad


B


Real Madrid
Juventus
Galatsaray
FC Köpenhamn


 
C

Benfica
PSG

Olympiakos
Anderlecht


D


Bayern München
CSKA Moskva

Manchester City
Viktoria Pilzen


E


Chelsea
FC Schalke 04
Basel

Steua Bukarest

F


Arsenal
Marseille
Dortmund
Napoli


G


Porto
Atletico Madrid
Zenit St Petersburg
Austria Wien


H


Barcelona
Milan
Ajax

Celtic

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