- Nothing like a little racism and bigotry to add intrigue to a sport that often flies under the radar. Fact is, not everyone feels as strongly about following women’s pro tennis based solely on the hotness of one Maria Sharapova as I do. Some people just ignore the sport (and Sharapova’s hotness) entirely and focus on other sports altogether. That might change if more countries hosting events on the World Tennis Association Tour were as racist and small-minded as the United Arab Emirates. The UAE is gearing up to host the Sony Ericsson in Dubai, with Israeli player Shahar Peer looking to enter the tournament and become the first Israeli athlete to participate in a professional sporting event in the UAE. Makes sense, as Peer is ranked 48th in the world among female tennis players and is a member of the tour. She should be able to compete in most any event, but not according to the United Arab Emirates. The racists running the UAE have refused to grant a visa to a Peer, preventing her from competing in the Sony Ericsson tournament. Yes, I realize that the UAE has no diplomatic ties with Israel. So what? Suck it up, let her come and play. She’s not on a mission to convert your country to Judaism, she’s not going to be holding a Jewish mass as center court, she would only be there to play tennis. Predictably, Peer said she was "very, very disappointed" to be denied access to the tournament. “Any player that qualifies should attend, and I was prevented,” she said from Israel. “I'm glad the WTA support me. A red line was crossed for every athlete in the world -- politics should be kept separate from sports.” The WTA offered a minor degree of support for Peer, echoing her sentiment of “deep disappointment,” but electing not to cancel the competition, which began Sunday. That seems to directly contradict WTA policy, which says no player should be barred from competing in a tournament for which she has qualified. Hopefully the WTA will show some testicular fortitude and not whiff on its next chance to crack the UAE for its racist stance against Peer. That chance will come next year, when Dubai could lose its membership in the WTA tour next year over the ban on Peer. That revocation of membership would mean that professional players could compete only in exhibition matches in Dubai, the results of which would not count in pro rankings. So far, the UAE has refused to comment on Peer’s exclusion from the event, and why would they do so? There’s no justification and anything they say is only going to make them look even worse than they already do. Way to show your true racist colors, UAE…………..
- Both the First Family and the FBI field office in Washington were in crisis in last night’s episode of 24. For the first family, President Allison Taylor had to hear the difficult news from Jack Bauer that her husband had been shot by Col. Ike Dubaku’s men and was being rushed to Arlington Memorial hospital for surgery. President Taylor was driven there by Bill Buchanan, who volunteered to drive her because of the corruption in the Secret Service that could threaten her safety. Bill also asked to be reinstated as a government agent and also for Chloe O’Brien to be reinstated so she could help the FBI coordinate the search for Dubaku that Jack and Agent Renee Walker were leading. While the president went to the hospital and saw her husband off to surgery (in which his prognosis was described as “not good”), she asked Bill to send someone to find her daughter and bring her to the hospital as well. This is the first we’ve heard of the Taylor’s daughter, Olivia. We knew of their son Roger, who was murdered as part of the ongoing conspiracy, but Olivia Taylor is a consultant in D.C. who has virtually no contact with her mother, refused Secret Service protection and clearly has issues. Bill sends old pal Aaron Pierce, former lead Secret Service agent in the first few seasons of the show under President Palmer, to find Olivia. Pierce does so and convinces Olivia to come to the hospital with him only after revealing that her father has been shot and is in critical condition. As for the FBI, claws were out when Chloe arrived (dropped off by the ever-charming Morris, her husband, and their toddler son Prescott) at the FBI field office and set up shop in the conference room to coordinate the satellite support for the search for Dubaku. Janis Gold wasn’t down with having another computer wizard in the office and immediately began sniffing around to find out what Chloe was up to. In her search, she blackmailed fellow data analyst and all-around a-hole Sean Hillinger for a digital data key that would allow her to hack into the office’s network and monitor Chloe’s activities. Getting the key meant threatening to blackmail Sean by revealing his affair with co-worker Erin, a revelation that could a) get Sean fired and b) ruin his marriage. Using the data key, Janis find out about the search for Dubaku and that Jack is involved. That’s not high on Jack’s list of priorities, as after seeing Henry Taylor off to the hospital, he and Renee comb Dubaku’s basement headquarters for clues to the whereabouts of the man also known as the “Butcher of Sangala.” The only clue to be found is an address tied to banking transactions recovered from the smartphones of two of Dubaku’s men. At the address, Jack and Renee burst in to find Marika, Dubaku’s girlfriend, and her sister Rosa. Marika is packed and ready to leave the country, having received a visit from Dubaku (or Samuel, as she knows him) in which he informs her that he is in the country illegally (part of the truth) and must leave immediately. Dubaku visits her at work, tells her to pack her bags and be ready to leave. He also promises that within a few days, Rosa will be able to join them at his home in Belize. With that done, Dubaku meets with Ryan Burnett, a government suit who helps arrange safe passage from the country for him - in the end. Burnett’s initial plan is to kill Dubaku on his way out of the country, but those plans change when Dubaku threatens to turn over a file to the Justice Department that will rat out everyone involved in the conspiracy. Later, Dubaku sends a car for Marika, but in the mean time Jack and Renee tell her the ugly truth about who she’s really dating. Horrified, Marika manages to hold herself together enough to take a phone call from Dubaku and also agree to help Jack and Renee by getting in the car Dubaku sends so they can follow her and find him in the process, despite Rosa’s vociferous objections (my God is she annoying, by the way). Using Marika’s cell phone as a tracker, Jack and Renee follow a mile back of Marika’s car, going along just fine until two curveballs threaten to ruin their plan. First, Janis’ attempt to horn in on Chloe’s work at the FBI office results in the satellite tracking grid being lost, leaving Jack and Renee in the dark on where to go. That problem clears up when Janis stops what she’s doing and the grid comes back online, but a bigger problem comes when some local police come screeching onto the scene and form a roadblock to stop Jack and Renee. They are stopped and taken into custody on two federal warrants even as Larry Moss, lead agent at the field office, berates the local police chief and demands Jack and Renee’s release. The warrants are the work of none other than Sean Hillinger, who turns out to be Dubaku’s mole in the FBI. Sean got the warrants issued to stop Jack and Renee from finding Dubaku, a revelation he shares in a phone conversation with Burnett. Sean also says he had bugged Moss’ phone line, giving him the information he needed to obtain the warrants. Now the question remains, will Jack and Renee get out of handcuffs in time to find Dubaku before he leaves the country. It seems unlikely, especially after Burnett finished the episode by calling Dubaku, telling him of Marika’s being turned by the FBI and working against him and basically ordering her execution. In cold-blooded fashion, Dubaku vows to off her himself, even though doing so means allowing her to reach his location and possibly lead the feds there as well. So not the best of hours for Jack, but I have a feeling he’ll bounce back, he always does……
- You’re not making a very good case for me to like you, Russia. You’re already on my bad side, what with the whole slow, steady march back toward Communism and all, but you harassing my beloved Somali pirates is only deepening my dislike for you. You know what I’m talking about too, because you’re openly gloating over the fact that a Russian heavy missile cruiser stopped three pirate ships off the coast of Somalia and detained 10 pirates. Your own Russian Navy headquarters put out a statement from the capital of Communism, a.k.a. Moscow. “Ten pirates have been detained. All of them are citizens of Somalia," the press release stated. The cruiser in question, arrogantly named Peter the Great, stopped two small high-speed motor boats and a mid-size support vessel on Thursday, yet another setback to my boys, the pirates of Somalia. These guys are tough, they’re tenacious but the whole freaking world seems to be after them at this point. The Russians also stated that officials from their Northern Fleet's military prosecutor's office questioned the detainees aboard the Peter the Great and their fate is in the hands of the Russian Foreign and Justice ministries. Like I said, you seem verrrrry proud of yourselves, Russian Navy. So what if you used a Ka-27 helicopter to locate the pirates as they were moving toward an Iranian fishing vessel at high speed? What exactly is your place in that situation, anyhow? You’re not Iranian, and to the best of my knowledge Iran and Russia don’t have some sort of mutual agreement to have each other’s back in all international theaters, so back the frak up. The pirates were even pulling back from their planned attack once they spotted your helicopter, but that wasn’t good enough for you, was it? Heck, they went so far as to throw their weapons overboard, but even that didn’t stop your zealots from haranguing them. You captured them, took their remaining weapons, including a G-3 rifle, an Ak-47, two AKMS machine-guns, two grenade-launchers and two anti-infantry grenades, along with a GPS receiver, a ladder, 500 grams of drugs, a large amount of money, a bag of sugar and a bag of rice. So how do you know they weren’t just out for a pleasure cruise on the high seas, maybe have a nice meal of sugar rice, do some blow and go fishing with their automatic rifles? Regardless, you all are exceptionally foolish if you think you’re going to wipe out the scourge of the high seas, international coalition or not. Pirates have been around for centuries and they aren’t going anywhere, persecution by Communists or not……..arrrrrgggghhhhh………..
- So what did you do with your Valentine’s Day weekend? Judging by the numbers I’m looking at, an inordinately high number of you decided that the best place to spend some quality time with your sweetheart was at the movie theater, watching an average slasher flick that’s the latest installment of a movie franchise that should have died years ago. Of course, I’m referring to "Friday the 13th," which easily outdistanced the rest of the field on a record-breaking President’s Day weekend. The return of Jason Voorhies was enough to beat back uber-chick flicks "Confessions of a Shopaholic" and "He's Just Not That Into You," (second with $19.6 million) which you’d think would be the top films on the most romantic weekend of the year. That $42.2 million haul is the best for any of the movies in the "Friday the 13th" series, which has dragged on for three decades and gotten progressively worse, bottoming out with the abysmal 2003 bomb “Freddy vs. Jason,” in which the villain was….death? Yeah, that was very lame. The three aforementioned movies beat out two holdovers from the previous weekend, "Taken" and "Coraline," and the third place film, Liam Neeson’s kidnapping thriller which held strong with $19.3 million in its third weekend, a mere 6 percent decline from last weekend. All told, “Taken” has brought in nearly $78 million and honestly, it’s the best movie of the top 10. It’s certainly better than the Isla Fisher-led "Confessions of a Shopaholic," which had a disappointing opening weekend at No. 4 in the earnings race with $15.4 million and a crowd that was 75 percent female. "Coraline" was fifth with $15.3 million, followed by the epically bad Kevin James comedy "Paul Blart: Mall Cop" Newcomer "The International," which could have been a great movie with better writing and slightly better acting, finished at No. 7 with a measly $10 million -- a total that should have it well on its way to DVD sooner rather than later. In spite of the disappointing opening weekend for several new movies, it was actually the best President’s Day weekend ever, with the total gross of all movies playing estimated at about $190 million, well above the previous record of $157 million in 2007.
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Venture down to South America with me, if you will, to the nation of Chile, where a prison riot (one of my favorite kinds of riot) broke out Sunday among 20 inmates who were part of a crowd 1,600 prisoners who were in the yard of the penitentiary in Santiago at the time of the melee. As with all good prison riots, this one got started with the simplest of things - two inmates brawling. From there, it was only a matter of time before other guys jumped in and things spiraled out of control, and spiral out of control they did. Prison guards responded with a hail of rubber bullets, one of which struck and killed inmate Michel Gajardo Plaza. Plaza was struck in the head by a rubber bullet, the effects of which ultimately killed him after he was initially taken to the prison infirmary and then transferred to a local hospital. Sadly, Plaza was only serving a five-year sentence for armed robbery that began 2007, but he couldn’t just stay down and do his short stint quietly. Authorities say he left his cell armed with a knife, along with two other inmates, with the intent of attacking another group of inmates. While you never like to see someone shot and killed, a convict who clearly was acting like the very thug he was when sent to prison alleviates pretty much any tendency toward sympathy I might have. Props on jump-starting a nice prison riot, though, that’s always aces in my book. It’s just too bad that more of the prison’s 6,400 inmates couldn’t be involved in the riot, would have made for some great riot fun………
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