Legal experts say that, in the event that the United States did prosecute him, it would be easier to extradite him from Britain — which has a fast-track extradition treaty with Washington — than from Sweden.

If Assange was extradited to Sweden on the sex crime allegations, Sweden could not then extradite him to the United States to face hypothetical charges over the leak of classified information without getting Britain’s permission, Geoff Gilbert, a law professor at the University of Essex, told Reuters.

So why doesn’t he go back to Sweden voluntarily?

“In a meeting with our investigators puppet-master Majeed:

• BRAGGED that the scam is rife and future games against England this summer are already earmarked for cheating.
• CONFESSED his match-fixing round the world had netted customers MILLIONS.
• REVEALED how he oversees cheating by using no-balls, specifying how many runs will be scored or conceded in certain overs, with signals such as changing gloves to confirm the fix is on.
• ADMITTED he abuses his position as owner of non-league Croydon Athletic FC to launder his illicit gains.”

A response on a forum:

“Something I have never quite got my head around – how can you launder money through a loss-making enterprise? I’m assuming a club like Croydon Athletic is a money pit. You might get the supposed glory of funding a successful team in effect at no cost to yourself if the funding is the proceeds of crime (allegedly), but hasn’t the money just vanished into a black hole? I suppose it’s always possible that if you pay a player more than he could get at a slightly higher level he might look so good that someone from an even higher level will pay a fee for him, but that sounds like a bit of a punt as a means of laundering serious money.”

Every business has expenses and revenue. Let’s say the owners of a legitimate business put in £100,000 obtained from other criminal activity unrelated to the business, and earn £70,000 revenue from the legitimate business, they may have lost £30,000, but now have £70,000 in clean money instead of £100,000 in “dirty” money.

£30,000 is the “laundry bill” [:)]

Sports clubs are just one way of laundering money.

Property is another popular asset. If say a property worth £100,000 is bought for £150,000 with dirty money. If the property is sold a few years down the road for £120,000, that’s £120,000 of clean money as opposed to £100,000 of dirty money.

However, a lot of dirty money coming into a property market has the effect of pushing up prices, so it may well be that a few years down the road, the property is sold for £200,000, so even better, £200,000 of clean money rather than £100,000 of dirty money.

Many asset classes can be used to launder money, as can the financial markets and betting/gambling.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there is more dirty money flowing through the global financial system than clean money.

An article from a 1994 issue of Newsweek. Has anything really changed?

“He should turn it down”.  That was my first reaction when my wife, watching the news break, shouted out to me that Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Nobel Committee must take the blame for this farce.

Several people pointed to an article by Robert Krebs in Foreign Policy magazine last July, in which he argued that the Nobel peace committee’s intentions are always partisan:

And for good reason: The Nobel Peace Prize’s aims are expressly political. The Nobel committee seeks to change the world through the prize’s very conferral, and, unlike its fellow prizes, the peace prize goes well beyond recognizing past accomplishments. As Francis Sejersted, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee in the 1990s, once proudly admitted, “The prize … is not only for past achievement. … The committee also takes the possible positive effects of its choices into account [because] … Nobel wanted the prize to have political effects. Awarding a peace prize is, to put it bluntly, a political act.”

How true.

Revert is given the following meanings in the Free Online Dictionary:

1. To return to a former condition, practice, subject, or belief.
2. Law To return to the former owner or to the former owner’s heirs. Used of money or property.
3. Genetics To undergo reversion.

The use of “revert” in statements such as “I will revert with the information requested” or “Please revert on your availability” is regarded as incorrect.

If “revert” is used to mean “reply” or “respond”, then the usage is clearly wrong, and it would suffice to use the words “reply” or “respond” instead of “revert.

However, “revert” is often used to mean “get back”.  On the other hand, “get back” sounds colloquial when used in more  formal contexts, while using “reply” or “respond” as a substitute may not be an elegant way of expressing the intended meaning, for example:

• In the first example above – although I am replying to you now, I will get back to the particular information you requested.
• In the second example above – I am addressing a number of issues with you, but I would like you to get back to me your availability in particular.

Perhaps one established meaning of “revert” that would be appropriate is “return to the subject”.   In the above examples:

• In the first – I will return to the subject with the information you requested.
• In the second – Please return to the  subject of your availability.

In any event, the meaning of words change over time, especially through usage.   Perhaps in time, it will become accepted that “revert” means “get back”.

Two clips on Youtube:

Members of the jury took just over 70 minutes to find the Reds’ captain not guilty.

Judge Henry Globe told him: “The verdict is a credible verdict on the full facts of this case, and you walk away from this court with your reputation intact.

“You did not start the violence, it was started by the violent elbowing of Marcus McGee in the face by one of your friends John Doran.

“At all times you insisted that you only ever acted in what you believed was reasonable self-defence to what you understandably, albeit you accept mistakenly, believed was an attempted attack upon you by Marcus McGee.

“What at first sight to the casual observer may seem to have been a clear-cut case against you of unlawful violence, has been nowhere near as clear-cut upon careful analysis of the evidence.”

When he was interviewed by police after the incident:

The England midfielder told police he had been drinking but he said it was another man, Marcus McGee, who was initially arrogant and aggressive.

The footballer, who denies affray, told police he hit out in self-defence.

….

The court heard Mr Gerrard said he wanted to sort the problem out – as he had on other occasions when he had been “mithered” – so went back to discuss the problem with him.

The footballer said he believed Mr McGee was going to attack him.

“He stood up quite aggressively out of his stool and I thought to myself ‘I am not going to be able to sort this out in the way I wanted’,” he told police.

“I thought he was going to give me a smack,” he added.

“He was shouting back and I didn’t know what he was saying but he started arguing and I thought he was going to hit me so that’s why I threw a punch.”

Mr Gerrard admitted throwing three punches but told the police only one connected.

At common law, “A person may use such force as is [objectively] reasonable in the circumstances as he [subjectively] believes them to be.”

To gain an acquittal, the defendant must fulfill a number of conditions. The defendant must believe, rightly or wrongly, that the attack is imminent. Lord Griffith said in Beckford v R:

“A man about to be attacked does not have to wait for his assailant to strike the first blow or fire the first shot; circumstances may justify a pre-emptive strike.”

However, because of the completeness of the defence, “self-defence is interpreted in a relatively conservative way to avoid creating too generous a standard of justification. The more forgiving a defence, the greater the incentive for a cynical defendant to exploit it when planning the use of violence or in explaining matters after the event.”

I wouldn’t say Gerrard was a “cynical defendant” in this case.  In any event, it is clear he can afford the best available legal advice and representation.

What is less clear is whether a celebrity has more leeway to punch someone who is “arrogant and aggressive” and who stands up “quite aggressively”.  The fact it was Gerrard’s “mate” who struck the first blow against the “victim”, and the “victim” was in fact trying to get away from his attacker, appear to be irrelevant.

• Babynology
• Onlinebabyname – Hindu names
• Indian Girl Baby Names
• Babynamer
• Indian Girl’s Name & Meaning
• Sanskrit Dictionary

Names:

• Aastha:  (1) Faith
• Anuskha:  (1) A Term of Endearment
• Anshula:  (1) Radiant, Bright, Enlightening
• Ela:  (1) (2) Earth
• Ila (1) Earth, Speech, Prayer, (2) Earth, Daughter of Manu, (3) Earth, Water, Wife of Manu
• Ishuka:  (1) An Arrow
• Manisha:  (1) Intellect
• Monisha:  (1) Lord Krishna
• Oma: (1) Life-Giver
• Omaja:  (1) (2) Result of Spiritual Unity
• Roma: (1) Lakshmi, (2) Full of Hair
• Roshna:  (1) Light
• Roshni: (1) Light, (2) Brightness
• Shulka:  (1) Saraswati
• Yasha:  (1) Success, (2) Fame, (3) agate, celebrity, fame, glory, prestige, prosperity, renown, reputation, success
• Yashada:  (1) The one who gives success
• Yashna:  (1) Prayer, (2) One with fame
• Yashwini:  (1) To Succeed

Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, some of the big names in F1 are moving into football:

• Ernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore bought Queen’s Park Rangers in August 2007.
• Red Bull have added to their stable of football clubs by taking over SSV Markranstädt of the NOFV-Oberliga Süd (at the fifth tier in Germany), moving them to Leipzig, renaming them Red Bull Leipzig.   Leipzig clubs had some degree of success in the former East Germany, but both its clubs, Lokomotive Leipzig and Sachsen Leipzig are currently also playing in the NOFV-Oberliga Süd.

Both F1 and football are both European-dominated sports which have become increasingly costly to operate, although by all accounts, F1 is more expensive.

Won’t be long before all music is played at higher speeds.  They just need to lower to pitch to make it more real.

How a school project can make you a minor internet celebrity:

Peaches’ parody of Alanis Morissette’s parody (below) of “My Humps” led me to the first video above.