Mini-links For Thursday (Late Edition)

Some late links (or early if you're back in Asia):

Some of you may have heard of the fact that Pep Guardiola showed a motivational video to his players before the final against United in Rome. Well, the video made its way to Spanish television and then, quite naturally, to Youtube. It interspersed scenes from Barca's season with scenes from The Gladiator.




By the way, I'm pretty sure I would have been ready to go play against United if I had seen that beforehand. I also love this tidbit from a story on the video:

As the lights went up, several players were reportedly in tears, and Guardiola, his job done, did not address his players again before the entered the field.

Well, at least we now have an explanation for Barca's slow start in Rome.

Staying on football, here's a pretty funny column on pampered football stars and how they're incapable of taking care of their shit. Make sure to read the comments to see the poor sod who proffers that he's a PhD student and doesn't make enough money given his contribution to society, and the responses to said sod.

I would like our readers to put their hands together for reader Wasay for sending me two fantastic links. The first is this story about the U.S. accidentally releasing sensitive information on the location of their nuclear sites. As he said in his email, "and they worry about our nuclear safety." Wouldn't it be amazing if our foreign ministry said in a press release "We are understandably concerned about developments concerning the safety and security of American nuclear weapons. While we retain full confidence in our ally's ability to safeguard such sensitive information, we are monitoring the situation closely. The American government should know that Pakistan stands fully behind them should they need any assistance in making their weapons program more secure"?

I won't ruin the second link by telling you what it contains; all I'll say is that it ends up with a man robbing a store being named Nawaz Sharif Zardari.

Finally, here's a super depressing story in The News about some women displaced by the war in the north west. Here's what one of them has to say:

"We have been fooled. We have been fooled by the Taliban, the Army and the government. We knew two years ago that this was not Islam but nobody would help us. Why did the army not do something two years when the Taliban were fewer in number and that when they could be controlled? When they knew exactly where they were. What is the reason for their friendship with these animals? Where were this army and this government when we were screaming for help and going to them?"

Where indeed.