Combat global terror network
The News Review:
- Combat global terror network
- Freshman Byrum kicks Gators where it hurts — twice
- This limbo that lasts a lifetime
- ‘3:10 to Yuma’ has obvious similarities with the war in Iraq
- USC football, the story of a lifetime
- Greed will be the death of football
Combat global terror network
Charleston Post Courier - Charleston Post Courier (subscription) - Sep 30, 2007
Examples of the new terror networks abound. The plot, which news reports say was uncovered with the help of eavesdropping on terrorist communications by the U.
Freshman Byrum kicks Gators where it hurts — twice
CBS News - Sep 30, 2007
“I was a little bit more comfortable the second time,” said Byrum, and how’s that for steady nerves under pressure? With such composure laced with confidence, there was little doubt the second attempt would be as pure as the first. So when it left his foot Byrum looked up, turned, ran and did a Gator chomp with his arms, and the reigning national champions had suffered their first loss of the season — a 20-17 stunner — thanks to a home-grown product. Yep, a Floridian beat Florida. Gator bait, he was not. “It doesn’t get any better than that,” said Byrum, a native of Fort Lauderdale, just 315 miles south. “That’s a dream situation… Nobody woke up expecting to witness it. But given how the game unfolded, this was hardly a surprise. Even Gators fans who had watched 18 consecutive home wins seemed something less than optimistic things would turn out OK once they started so badly. Though Florida did enough to erase a 17-3 third-quarter deficit, when it needed a drive to take the lead late the offense reverted to looking like the same unit that was shut out through the initial 33 minutes. Rather than a game-winning march that would’ve pushed Tim Tebow to the front of the Heisman Trophy race, the Gators ran three plays, lost 6 yards and punted the ball 25 yards out of bounds. That gave Auburn possession with 3:38 remaining, first-and-10 at its own 39.
This limbo that lasts a lifetime
Guardian Unlimited - Sep 30, 2007
In both cases, early investigation was hampered by scant co-operation between local and British police. (The recalcitrance is not necessarily always foreign: the Sheffield officer on Ben’s case told me proudly that he’d never had a passport and didn’t want one now; what good, he demanded, could he do in bloody Greece?)There is consistency, too, in the eagerness of local police to blame the families. As with the mayor in Jaws, serving a district that survives on tourism involves ignoring home-grown sharks; if the family is guilty, at least the sin is not indigenous. Every time leaks spill from Portuguese police, I remember the Kos officers who fancied young Stephen for an imagined murder, but who also saw fit to tell me that Eddie and Chris took a drink too many and that unmarried Kerry was a slut, in a tone that suggested losing a child was too lenient a punishment for her. Back in Blighty, armchair sleuths were then, as now, having a blast, albeit by parking accusation in the space reserved for whichever bogeyman was in vogue. In 1991, we were not yet in thrall to paedophilia, so favourites were body snatchers: hundreds of people, I was assured (here and in Greece) were taking children to harvest their organs. Ben may return alive, I was told ominously.
‘3:10 to Yuma’ has obvious similarities with the war in Iraq
San Francisco Chronicle - Sep 30, 2007
And a sadistic, Bible-touting Pinkerton is an apt stand-in for Blackwater USA. But there’s plenty of sop for the right as well - it’s a Western, after all. The killer’s band of outcasts includes not just an Apache (”Indian Country” being the military’s favorite metaphor for combat zones worldwide), but a Mexican sharpshooter for the anti-immigrant crowd, even a vaguely gay second-in-command. These are definitely the kind of home-grown terrorists whom red state America can’t help but hate. More important, the crucial action driving the plot - the decision to bring the killer to trial - reveals itself to be a pointless blunder. Why not just string up the villain now and be done with it? Echoes of torture, rendition and other compromises of American values, now considered “quaint” in some quarters, spring to mind. And the fact it’s the prissy, craven, amoral railroad man who insists on a trial neatly undermines any pretense that recourse to the law bespeaks virtue… But there’s plenty of sop for the right as well - it’s a Western, after all. The killer’s band of outcasts includes not just an Apache (”Indian Country” being the military’s favorite metaphor for combat zones worldwide), but a Mexican sharpshooter for the anti-immigrant crowd, even a vaguely gay second-in-command. These are definitely the kind of home-grown terrorists whom red state America can’t help but hate. More important, the crucial action driving the plot - the decision to bring the killer to trial - reveals itself to be a pointless blunder. Why not just string up the villain now and be done with it? Echoes of torture, rendition and other compromises of American values, now considered “quaint” in some quarters, spring to mind. And the fact it’s the prissy, craven, amoral railroad man who insists on a trial neatly undermines any pretense that recourse to the law bespeaks virtue. There are millions of Americans, several of them running for the Republican presidential nomination, who scorn the notion of trying terrorists, and more generally the use of a law enforcement paradigm in the war on terror.
USC football, the story of a lifetime
Charleston Post Courier - Charleston Post Courier (subscription) - Sep 30, 2007
It is an athletic soap opera like no other in college football. It keeps untold thousands of Gamecocks fans on the edge of insanity as they wait patiently for the climax that always seems a season away. My parents did not attend college so I had no home-grown allegiances. But from the time I was a small boy growing up in a small South Carolina town, I’ve been aware of the USC football and those who call themselves Gamecocks fans. They are people for whom being a Gamecock is like being Baptist. They attend faithfully. They give generously.
Greed will be the death of football
Guardian Unlimited - Sep 30, 2007
What to do? Ten days ago, Michael Platini, incoming president of the Union of European Football Associations (Uefa) wrote to Gordon Brown arguing passionately that ‘the values championed by football are a powerful source of social integration and civic education’. Now the values are money. He wants pan-European action: wage caps on players; quotas for home-grown players; regulations on agents; financial checks on owners; revenue sharing between clubs; and redistribution of revenue into lower leagues. Platini even wants a reference to sport’s special nature in the EU Reform Treaty. Brown will give Platini short shrift. When a draft EU report on football (commissioned by Britain!) dared to float similar ideas, a Brown spokesman said he would not allow England’s national game to be run by Brussels, a line deemed to play well in the Eurosceptic tabloids. So, instead, it can be run by a murky crew of the footloose global rich, already salivating at the prospect of breaking free from tiresome Uefa and even national leagues, instead mounting show games between their debt-burdened clubs in global tours, modelled on rock concerts and sponsored by multinationals.