Dr. Gonzo

I mean, Moshiri's invested pretty heavily in Usmanov's mining businesses - so I do think he has genuine wealth (not as much as Usmanov though), but sanctions are going to have that money frozen a bit. His other ventures I think would have him as "just a multimillionaire" () - but his ties to Usmanov push him up to a billionaire I think. But I think he doesn't have access to a lot of his money right now due to those ties with Russian industries & oligarchs. If an auditor isn't willing to sign off on financial reports, I think that would lend credence to those money laundering rumours though.

I think in this instance, we're hoping that the military steps in to stop the IRGC (which is a separate entity to the military... but better equipped and funded) - the people you see out in the streets beating and shooting protestors are Basij - a volunteer force of the revolutionary guard.

It's mirrored 1978 in Iran in a lot of ways - the demonstrations at universities marred with violence, now the oil and gas industries going on strike with national strikes (which are happening today - so we're seeing basically a total internet blackout as Iran tries to hide it & their response to it from the world). The oil and gas strikes are massive news. The government needs the energy revenues to survive. A few months after it happened in 1978, Pahlavi's Iran fell. I hope the West holds its resolve and doesn't engage the IRI in any new nuclear deal that eases sanction restrictions (which is weird because in the past I had been a big advocate of engaging in democracy to gradually moderate them). I know the EU is keen for new sources of energy after the Russia-Ukraine war broke out - but with Iranians compounding the economic squeeze of sanctions... doing so now undermines the best chance for change in Iran in my lifetime. There's obviously a huge amount of uncertainty about what could come next - but I think most Iranians I know seem to prefer an uncertain future over the certainty of the IRI staying in power.

Correct me if I'm wrong, and maybe @RandoEFC or @Whiskey know better than me, but aren't many of Moshiri's big money business deals tied to that Russian/Uzbek oligarch Usmanov? I think most of Moshiri's wealth comes from mining - Usmanov's got several mines. I wonder if whatever is going on with Everton's accounts may be an indirect result of Moshiri finding a lot of his money inaccessible in Monaco where he lives due to the aftermath of Russia's invasion.

Pretty sure that's @LFCMadLad's job

Yeah but you made it sound like he'd just get syphilis, not never play and then get injured for months

Is this the guy who took a lot of El Salvador's money and put it in bitcoin?

She lives in the UK & is a citizen - she went back because her brother/my uncle (who also lives in the UK) was there before the protests on Holiday & had a pretty serious stroke unfortunately. He needed help getting back to the UK, so his wife and my mum went there to go get him. They've both been in the UK since the revolution. She hates wearing the hijab & said it was a bit of an interesting time to be back - as many women were openly not wearing a hijab. But also the basiji were out looking for women not wearing hijabs to beat. My Iranian side of the family is pretty anti-religion though, which is understandable because religious zealots ruining a country will do that to people.

Hooray my mum is out of Iran!

I think FSG would need to sell about 7 players to fund that

Arthur Melo was such a pointless signing thank god it’s only a loan.

Just very bad news to lose one of the few players who looks like they give a shit.

Diaz out until after the world cup, so we're fucked.

I’m sure @Storts doesn’t put too much stock into what Paul Merson thinks. And honestly nobody should

The survivors who had to go elsewhere cos all their farmland was destroyed, though.

Still displaced though

In Yorkshire they put down rebellions by slaughtering a lot of the natives and salted the fields to make it harder for people there to survive.

Yeah, probably the worst kind of people you can trust tbh. I'm neither of them, but surely Thatcher is up there.

Rhinos are a lot faster than you think - assuming this is a normal sized room, I think you'd be pretty fucked with a rhino in the room. If I've got a laser pointer, I think I could distract the cat. If I've got nothing, I'll take my chances on trying to befriend the gorilla for 37 minutes like @Tommy

Out of touch cunt

Wtf is up with the tactics this season? Why's Trent drifting so far inward? Why's Salah set up so wide? It often feels the way we set up this season has us set up in a way where we're isolating our most creative player (TAA) and our best goalscorer (Salah)... at the expense of... being worse at defending? A bit weird. I'm sure there's a reason for it and we're persisting with it until it clicks... but when so many players are looking out of confidence & form, questions about the tactics are always going to be an issue.

Students massacred at Sharif University (the country’s top uni) in Tehran

That housing issue is happening even in places that don’t have as open of borders as Canada though. Canada’s immigration policy isn’t really much like the US’s for example - if you want to move for work you don’t even need a sponsor. I also wouldn’t say leaving the kleptocracy of the Philippines is really anything like leaving the autocratic theocracy of Iran. In 2022 it’s virtually impossible to emigrate to the US from Iran, it’s difficult enough to get a tourist visa for them. And in Canada they can only get in from Iran if you’ve got a lot more money than the average person in Iran has. So it’s either Iranian doctors or people closely connected to the regime. Or students who won’t be there permanently. Most Iranians you meet in the west aren’t people who’ve come over recently. It’s people who left around the revolution and around the end of the war (I suppose some countries felt a bit guilty about supporting Saddam’s war crimes?) Which is why I think Trudeau’s condemnation rings a bit hollow. Condemning the brutality of the IRI is a good thing. But its pretty hypocritical when you make it difficult for the victims of the IRI to get the fuck out… but you make it so easy for the children of IRI officials to escape the hell they’ve created. Imo it’s complicity with the regime - condemning them and in the same breath taking in their money they’ve stolen from a country. They should be given the Huawei heiress treatment & locked up. They’ve got more direct ties to the government and behavior being criticised than she did. Or they should be deported and made to live in the hell that their fathers created.

They’ve got a long-standing policy of wanting to encourage immigration to have a constantly growing workforce, so it’s an appealing place to go for a lot of people. And Canada’s got a reputation of being pretty welcoming of immigrants. So I guess it’s understandable that in a time where migration is more possible than ever (flight more affordable for more people than earlier), Canada’s had such a big shift in that time period. But I didn’t know anything about it until you told me to look at the demographics

I’m half English half Iranian