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Read about it here. Victorious Afghan Hamid Hassan blogs about it here:
After the match, I had to go to do a post-match media conference and they all wanted to know how it felt to beat USA, but the opposition didn’t matter to me. I was just happy to win another cricket match.
I love getting the chance to play against different countries and this was the first time we had ever played USA in an international match. I could never have dreamed when I was young, that I would one day play them in a cricket game.
I am a big fan of American television and movies and my favourite film is Rocky – I vividly remember watching it when I was growing up – and one of my heroes is Sylvester Stallone.
I think that there is a similarity in the story of Rocky and the Afghanistan cricket team – we both started at the bottom and gradually made our way up the rankings. …
Gradually? I thought Rocky did it with one fight.
Seriously though, it’s fun to see a guy so gripped by the American ideal of the common man excelling, and as a result … defeating America.
The way Hamid Hassan writes about Rocky and Silvester Stallone and so on makes me also think of this piece, about how the imminent decline into relative insignificance of the USA is once again being oversold, in which Joshua Kurlantzick says:
Most important, the United States is a champion of an idea that has global appeal, and Asia is not.
Although my part of the blogosphere is very anti-Obama just now, what with Obama seemingly hell-bent on ruining the USA’s economy, the rise of Obama to being President of the USA must look like a very similar kind of story to Rocky, if you are someone like Hamid Hassan.
Last night I watched most of a discussion programme “chaired” (I’ll get to that) by Kirsty Wark on BBC2 television, about President Obama and how he is doing. It was something called The Review Show.
Three things struck me about this show.
First, the BBC is finally acknowledging that President Obama is in some political trouble. This is refreshing.
But second, the dominant explanations of why Obama is in trouble are delusional. There is, said Bonnie Greer, without contradiction, a racist backlash going on. Sadly, in BBC-land, if a black person accuses white people of racism, the accusation is still allowed to stand, no matter how unpersuasive it may be, and no matter how unsatisfactory it is as an explanation for whatever is being talked about.
The other dominant explanation for Obama’s fall from political grace, aside from racism, offered by a blond American lady who talked too fast, was that this backlash is “emotional”. Obama, she said, is making the mistake of concentrating entirely on being “rational” in how he responds, and we all know what wins when facts have a face-off with feelings. → Continue reading: BBC thoughts and feelings about President Obama
Hitler finds out Obama lost Massachusetts… hehehe.
In Scott Brown we have an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against woman.
– Keith Olbermann, MSNBC host.
To which Mark Steyn responded, under the heading “Homophobic Nude Teabaggers on the March”:
That’s certainly why I’m supporting him. But who knew there were so many of us?
“Can Barack Obama turn things around?” asks Harold Evans in the Telegraph.
The most galling thing for Obama is that his campaign vision of a less polarised America has turned out to be a daydream. The fright-wing of the Republican party has become more virulent than ever. Instead of joining with him in essential reforms, he has been demonised as a Hitler, an enemy of the American Constitution, and the Wingnut “birther movement” screamed that he is not even an American citizen. It is a tribute to Obama’s resilience that he has kept his cool in the face of this hysteria. He remains personally likeable to most Americans (something that could not have been said for the moralising Carter or the abrasive Bush), but the fervour of the movement that elected the first black president has abated.
Oh those mean old wingnuts! Clearly Bush never had to put up with anything like that!
But if the current economic mess in the USA sprang from a Big State Republican’s policies operating with a congress full of his enemies, why even ask the question if an even Bigger State Democrat can ‘turn things around’ by digging the same holes deeper?
As for Obama being “the smartest guy in the room”… really? He took the failed policies of his predecessor and doubled up the bet… is that really the sign of intelligence or original thinking?
And whilst I may have thought Bush was dismal, I do not recall him publicly stamping his feet at all the Hitler analogies being made about him and I also never got the impression he was ‘abrasive’… just habitually wrong. Rather like Obama actually. Only a bit whiter.
Some people whip themselves for thrills… me, I watch Congressional votes – no doubt for similar mental reasons.
Anyway the vote was not quite how it would be in a Paul Marks doom-of-horror fantasy – no triumphant cries of “Death to America” and “Obama is the Living God” from the leftists (although Durbin and some others were no doubt thinking at least the first of these two things) as they waved copies of the Economist magazine. However, there were some noteworthy moments.
My favourite was when Senator K.K.K. Byrd shed tears during his vote saying it was for “his friend Ted Kennedy”.
The late Senator Edward Kennedy is presently burning in Hell for the manslaughter of Mary Jo and other crimes (none of which he ever repented of – and repentance, contrary to Hollywood, must include openly admitting one’s guilt and accepting punishment). But it is some seasonal comfort to me that Senator Byrd will be joining Senator Kennedy in Hell, reasonably soon.
I realise that for any US politician to seriously court the US conservative vote, they have to ‘do the God thing’, but I cannot help wincing when I hear people like Sarah Palin, who I think has much to commend her, say things like “the United States should rededicate itself to seeking God’s will“… whatever the hell that means.
I think what really offends me most about this sort of proclamation is the notion of the need for ‘unity’ rather than just a simple commonality of interests: if I am going to support someone politically, I am damned if I will to seek in that politician an additive “whole world view”. If Sarah Palin wants to trim the intrusive regulatory state, as she seem to want to do, well that is splendid, but I would rather not hear about how she thinks others need to include some anthropomorphic psychological guy-in-the-sky construct in their decision making processes.
Perhaps it is my English sensibilities but I am deeply suspicious of anyone who cannot keep their religious sentiments to themselves. I am willing to tolerate the religious views of others but, like most vices, religion is something best practised behind closed doors with other consenting adults as can be very unedifying when indulged in public.
 Bremen, Germany. November 2009
It is no secret I am no great admirer of some aspects of the US legal system and the corrupting influence of the US trial lawyers lobby, but then along comes a particularly stark example of why the US really really really needs a UK style ‘loser pays’ system to discourage preposterous actions like this…
Man Blames Planes For Divorce, Seeks $555 Million […] (Stanley) Hilton’s 16-page suit against San Francisco International Airport blames 37 organizations for the collapse of his marriage and seeks $15 million from each of them. Targets of the suit include the city and county of San Francisco, the airport and every airline based there, airline engine manufacturers and the real estate agencies involved in the sale of his house.
This is a clear indication of a legal system is in dire need of radical reform. I do not know if Stanley Hilton is in fact deranged, but any legal system which allows him to do what he is doing certainly is.
There is a fascinating post on Instapundit about the thinly disguised intention of the Obama administration to purge Republicans from federal government jobs… this is excellent news.
One of the best ways to get the next (eventual) Republican in the White House to support taking an axe to the public sector would be if there are as few Republicans apparatchiks as possible and the civil service is seen as a bastion of the Democratic Party (and thus there are few votes to be lost by bashing them hard and often).
More and faster please, Obama.
I am grinding my teeth trying to restrain myself from commenting on some of the drivel being written about the recent murder of US soldiers by a muslim US army officer… but this is just a measure of the ignorance that permeates the profession and which is directly responsible for the growth of so called ‘new media’, i.e. things like blogs. Nick Allen writes in the Telegraph in an article titled “gunman used ‘cop killer’ weapon in massacre at US Army base” (a catchy ‘yellow journalism’ title if ever there was one):
Major Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, used an FN Five-Seven, a semi-automatic pistol popular with SWAT teams, that can fire armour-piercing bullets.
Oh for fuck sake. Any weapon can fire ‘armour-piercing bullets’. I know little about Nick Allen, but I assume he is a Brit and therefore knows bugger all about firearms and thus parrots the equally dismal urban US journalist propensity to describe any handgun firing a round capable of penetrating (some) body armour as a “cop killer”. Also I strongly suspect 9mm and 10mm handguns are far more popular with SWAT teams, as SWAT teams have rifles for use against armoured targets.
The weapon is designed for high(-ish) penetration for use against low end body armoured targets (the victims at Fort Hood were almost certainly unarmoured), but it has rather poor stopping power (that said, when it comes to handguns, bullet placement rather than calibre is the largest single determinant of stopping power), making the FN actually a poor choice… presumably the high magazine capacity may have been why the murderer chose it, knowing he was going to commit his crimes at very close range in a ‘target rich’ environment.
If journalists want to be credible, they need to try to avoid loaded (no pun intended) and rather ignorant terms like “cop killer” and not make meaningless remarks about weapons being capable of using “armour piercing” rounds (which is just another way of saying “they can shoot the rounds they are loaded with”). This ghastly incident contains more than enough news fodder that such sloppiness is inexcusable from ‘professionals’.
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