DECEMBER 22 UPDATE
COMMITMENTS
Texas Aces Gold
Commitments/Signings
Kesha Hagerman
2007 OF committed to Prairie View A&M
Lauren Miller 2007 OF committed to Blinn JC
Katie Brokmeyer 2007 C/SS signed with Lipscomb
Lindsey Langner 2007 2B signed with McNeese State
Lauren Preston 2007 SS/3B signed with Texas Tech
Jenna Emery 2007 3B/1B signed with Texas State
Rhiannon Kliesing 2007 P signed with Texas A&M
Kelsea Orsak 2008 C/3B committed to Texas A&M
CHINESE NATIONAL TEAM PITCHERS
Wang Lan will be attending Lassen College In Susanville, California. and Zhou Yin will be attending Central Arizona Community College In Coolidge, Arizona.
RECOVERY VS RESCUE
Those who ponder the decision to call of the search on Mt Hood until better weather have to consider the probability that the two climbers could not survive in the stormy weather. Just like the search at sea for the Canadian boater. Sometimes, best efforts are to no avail. For example: January 1, 1985, Eastern 980 crashed into Bolivia’s Mt Illimani at the 19600 ft level. All 29 killed. Extreme high altitude and inaccessibility made immediate search impossible. Voice and flight recorders never recovered even though a team reached the site the next summer. Could not penetrate the wreck which had burned through the ice cap into the mountain. The bodies are still there, including the wife of the American Ambassador.
BLOOD DIAMOND
Last year, SPY Magazine (www.spysoftballthemagazine) published a story about diamond smuggling, including facts drawn from the Holocaust. Diamonds are a highly preferred médium d'échange. To be widely marketable, a medium of exchange should possess the following characteristics: (1) transportability, (2) divisibility, (3) high market value in relation to volume and weight, (4) recognizability, (5) resistance to counterfeiting. Moreover, given the control of the market exercised by the deBeers family, and the markets in Amsterdam, Antwerp and New York, diamonds are easily traded at a known price. For all these same reasons, drug traffickers, arms dealers, terrorists, and other criminals have used diamonds as financial instruments – and illegal diamonds are especially valued because they can be bought below market and conveniently converted at will into other commodities including currency, bonds etc. in both legal finance and illegal money laundering schemes. As acknowledged at the time, the SPY story drew on the information provided by agents of many stripes, including the old friend who was the British undercover agent in the diamond trade. Good man.
THE GOOD SHEPERD
If the movie persuades you to learn more about the story behind the movie, start with the book and then other histories involving James Jesus Angleton who literally turned the CIA inside out in a zealous search for a Russian “mole.” Sadly, Russian and Soviet spies have penetrated the CIA, the FBI and Britain’s MI6. The CIA expert who drew the task of debriefing Aldrich Ames, who perhaps did the most damage to American interests as a double agent, was well known in the 90’s as a softball coach.
THE SCORE: HYPOCRISY 1, CONGRESS 0
Buried in the business pages: AIG has purchased British P&O’s interests in managing US ports. Remember when Congress got its collective underwear twisted into a knot when P&O reached agreement to sell its ports management business to Dubai Ports World, despite its long term , successful management of ports worldwide. AIG’s experience in ports management: zero. But, it hoists an American flag over HQ.
DARFUR MON AMOR
In the annual year-end task of cleaning out old newspapers, etc, I came across a 2003 story about the need for the US, UN and the civilized world to do something about the tragedy in Darfur. As expected, Congress called up the Administration, especially the State Department, to take both bilateral and unilateral action.
This week, a State Department spokesman said a letter had been delivered to the Sudanese government urging an end to the violence and massacres. Not surprising, the letter does not say what the US is prepared to do if the Sudanese don’t comply.
The Darfur conflict is an ongoing armed conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan, mainly between the Janjaweed, a militia group recruited from the tribes of the Abbala (camel-herding Arabs), and the non-Baggara people (mostly land-tilling tribes) of the region. The Sudanese government, while publicly denying that it supports the Janjaweed, has provided arms and assistance and has participated in joint attacks with the group, systematically targeting the Fur, Zaghawa, and Massaleit ethnic groups in Darfur. The conflict began in July 2003. Unlike in the Second Sudanese Civil War, which was fought between the primarily Muslim north and Christian and Animist south, in Darfur most of the residents are Muslim, as are the Janjaweed.[2]
Estimated number of deaths in the conflict have ranged from 50,000 (World Health Organization, September 2004) to 450,000 (Dr. Eric Reeves, 28 April 2006). Most NGOs use 400,000, a figure from the Coalition for International Justice that has since been cited by the United Nations. As many as 2.5 million are thought to have been displaced. The mass media have described the conflict as both "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide." The United States government has described it as genocide, although the United Nations has declined to do so.
PS: the Western world has a sad history of coping with violence in the Sudan. In 1885, Britain named Major General Charles George Gordon – known as Chinese Gordon for his successful leadership in the capture of Peking in 1860 – and ordered him to put down an insurgency led by the Madi. I those days of communication by mail boat, Britain was slow to realize Gordon needed military support. An army was mobilized under Lord Kitchener who, after months of training, defeated the Madi at Obdurman and became a national hero. Poor Gordon – he was beheaded long before Kitchener arrived at Khartoum. PSS: Charlton Heston starred in both Khartoum and 55 days at Peking – at last report he still had his head.
A Navy-style Christmas
NARCISSUS DEFINED
The world improved Thursday when Turkmenistan President Saparmurad Niyazov died unexpectedly of a heart attack. Mean, egotistical, maniacal, murderous – all those tags applied to this dictator. He ordered a gigantic gold statue of himself erected in Ashgabat equipped with a mechanism to rotate the statue so that he was always facing the sun. Why did the world tolerate his flagrant abuse of his people? Russia is heavily dependent in Turkmenistan’s bountiful supply of natural gas. We put up with him because he annoyed Putin – and he let us create an a military base after the Uzbeks showed us the door.
ANNIVERSARY: CLIPPER MAID OF THE SEA
Pan Am Flight 103 was Pan American World Airways' third daily scheduled transatlantic flight from London's Heathrow International Airport to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. On December 21, 1988, the aircraft flying this route, a Boeing 747-121 registered N739PA and named "Clipper Maid of the Seas", was destroyed and the remains landed on Lockerbie, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. In the subsequent investigation into the crash, forensic experts determined that 340 to 450 g (12 to 16 oz) of plastic explosive had been detonated in the forward cargo hold, triggering a sequence of events that led to the rapid destruction of the aircraft. Winds of 100 knots (190 km/h) scattered victims and debris along a 130 km (81 mile) corridor over an area of 845 square miles (2189 sq km). The death toll was 270 people from 21 countries, including 11 people in the town of Lockerbie.