Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
Well you wrote it. Fence, 50 years later build a door. 50 years later open the door.
Me, I wouldn’t bother opening the door. It’s not like there is anything of value there:
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
What on Earth could be more harmless than a cricket team? What is wrong with those people?
This is actually a big deal, at least as it ripples through Commonwealth countries.
And some doubted the Australian team for baulking at touring Pakistan….
I just don’t understand, myself. Cricket players? If they were a curling team I could sort of see a self-defense angle here — once that sport takes hold there’s no saving your country. But cricket?
On the other hand, I see an opportunity here for the biathalon team…
– Max
It was noted elsewhere that the Pakistani team, which was scheduled to (or normally did) leave at the same time as the Sri Lankan team, had a sudden last minute change of plans.
I smell a skunk.
SSG Jeff, you may be correct, but really… how can there be anything “last minute” about a cricket team?
I would note that IIRC a Pakistani cricket star running for parliament was the guy who ginned up the murderous riots over the Newsweek “Koran in the toilet” fairy tale.
Even cricket isn’t safe.
Chap-
You mean Imran Khan?
I didn’t think he had too much to do with that little debacle….
“The one person most directly responsible for touching off the current frenzy over alleged Koran abuse by American interrogators at the Guantánamo Bay detention camp, more than anybody at Newsweek, was a Pakistani politician named Imran Khan. Khan is an Islamic populist, not exactly a rarity in that part of the world, but with a difference. Several differences, in fact. He is, first of all, a wealthy sports celebrity—a global cricket star for two decades—and a national hero not only for that but also because he built his country’s first cancer hospital. He is a graduate of Oxford, and so thoroughly Westernized that his private life is fodder for the tabloids. After he laid down his cricket bat, he became increasingly devout, and in 1996 he founded his own political party. He is its only member of parliament, but his voice is listened to in Pakistan and beyond.”
“Then, on May 6th, Khan, in a press conference in Islamabad, waved a copy of the offending issue and thundered, “This is what the U.S. is doing—desecrating the Koran.” And, rhetorically addressing Musharraf: “This war on terrorism is self-defeating if, on the one hand, you are demanding that we help them”—that is, us—“and, on the other hand, they are desecrating the book on which our entire faith is based.” Khan’s remarks were broadcast repeatedly throughout the Muslim world. The riots began on May 10th; in Afghanistan, seventeen people died and more than a hundred were injured.” 30 May 2005
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/05/30/050530ta_talk_hertzberg
Spaz-
As always, happy to be corrected, I had thought he was more moderate than that….
Sadly the Sri Lankans were only there to plug a gap after the Indian Govt. ordered their team not to tour….
Sim, I would have said the same thing. I’m fairly sure Imran apologised profusely later because he no intention of causing riots. He was ‘playing politics’ like an amateur. I think he has pulled his head in now.
This sort of thing does make one wonder. These Pakistani terrorists keep trying to pull off another 9/11. Our response last time was to invade Afghanistan. What if these terrorists goad India into attacking Pakistan? I have doubts about the credibility of the Pakistani nuclear deterrent and if I do, I daresay India does. I spent a month in Karachi once and found only the thinnest veneer of civilization. I’m sure it’s much worse in the rest of the country.
It’s not what I expected as a child growing up in the 60′s that I would be able to sit out and observe the second nuclear war. I grew up expecting to be an unwilling participant.