Aren't safe and Canada the same thing?

So while the Tehran Times is offline - a bit of humor from a "news organization" that doesn't even pretend to be independent from the Islamic Republic:

The Persian Gulf region is the world safest oil supplier, Minister of Oil Gholam-Hossein Nozari said Saturday evening.

He stressed that as a powerful country in the region, "Iran plays essential role in security of the Persian Gulf."
The minister made the remarks after a meeting with the Secretary General of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) Abdullah al-Badri who arrived in Iran on Friday on a three-day visit.

Persian gulf? Safe? Safer than Nigeria, okay, but safer than Canada??

Fitna or Football

So in the news this week we had blond Dutch parliament member/filmmaker with his incendiary piece "Fitna" which pairs footage from terrorist attacks with quotes from the Koran. So I opened up the Tehran Times, just to see what they had to say today and... nothing? This is the headline photo:


Okay, so those poor girls have to play soccer with all those layers on but... but... I can't help but feel some small amount of hope when I look at the photo.

CORRECTION: Okay, so apparently Tehran Times hasn't been updated in over a week... probably because of Norooz, the Persian new year. My lack of oversight - should have looked at the date.
In other news, interesting that they don't publish at all during the holiday - its not a religious holiday, just a cultural one. Hmm.

Book Report?

Haven't had class in awhile - I really thought we were supposed to show up last Wednesday but there only ended up being about 10 of us so... okay!
Not sure how the book report fits in to the rest of what we are doing with these journals and etc, but I'm just going to jot a few ideas here:
1.) I just finished the Utility of Force by British General Rupert Smith, who led UN forces in the Bosnian and Gulf War conflicts. General Smith looks to "update" the Clausewitzian Trinity to the modern age and extensively looks at the role of the media and the increasingly-involved international community.
2.) Language Shock, by Michael Agar, sits on my shelf (a bookstore purchase that hasn't made it to the top of the queue yet - it's somewhere after Paris: The Secret History and The Fabric of the Cosmos). It claims to be about not taking language for granted - that language is a byproduct of culture. This relates in class to the idea of looking at the foreign media - an English translation of an article, or even an article produced in English but intended for the consumption of a specific audience is very, very different down to the level of the very words...