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Saturday, March 21, 2009

RAFA BRINGS THE DRAMA VS. USA'S RODDICK and HOW I REALLY FEEL ABOUT OBAMA AND DARFUR


RAFA BRINGS THE DRAMA - WINS INDIAN WELLS 09 THE SEMI FINAL VS. USA'S RODDICK
RAFAEL NADAL (1) DEFEATED ANDY RODDICK (7)
in Indian Wells Semi-Final
6-4, 7-6 (7-4)
Saturday, March 21, 2009
in a quirky second set

Andy Murray (4) defeated Roger Federer (2)
in Indian Wells Semi-Final
6-3, 4-6, 6-1

Doubles - Final
M Mirnyi (BLR) / A Ram (ISR) vs M Fish (USA) / A Roddick (USA)
To be played Saturday, March 21, 2009

Final Match Set
Rafael Nadal (1) vs. Andy Murray (4)
Sunday, March 22, 2009
2:00 p.m. Indian Wells, California time
that is 6:00 p.m. USA EST

So Rafa plays another Andy tomorrow. Back to back Andys.

I hope Rafa brings some heat tomorrow.






Rafa in the Semi-Final Match
Indian Wells March 21, 2009
Above photo credits: The photographer is unknown
because where I copied them didn't post credit.
Probably a Getty photographer.

10 pictures of Rafa at the Semi-Final match with Roddick March 21, 2009

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Semi-Final at Indian Wells March 21, 2009 Nadal d Roddick (1 of 2 videos)
Uploaded by merikob

See merikob's playlists


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I watched the semi-final match here...

This is not free:

Image

LIVE SCORING is Free

USA TV Schedule by Region

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This is footage of World #1 Rafael Nadal warming up at the 2009 BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, CA...The practice courts at Indian Wells offer unprecedented access to the players... This footage was shot over the course of several days, thus the different outfits Rafa can be seen wearing. This text is taken from the poster. Uploaded March 20, 2009 by FYB2007

MY SOAPBOX

Apparently, the poker game was more important today than showing the Semi-Final Match live with Rafa and Andy on the east coast of the USA.

It looks like here Fox Sports Net NE is airing the Semi-Final matches between 11:00 pm. and 3:00 a.m. EST

Who knows if they will show the entire match. In the past they have skipped games and almost entire sets to fit the match into the allotted time slot.

Imagine doing that with any football, baseball, basketball, hockey, golf, bowling or any other sport's game. Aw, heck ....poker.

Hey, what about tiddly winks, does anybody play that on TV?
I know. I'm going over the top.
I'm venting.

I mean Rafa is the Number 1 Professional Tennis Player in the World and this is how they air tennis on TV.
Last season, when he was Number Two, they actually left a big match before it was over and went to paid programming.

It's.

Simple.

It's

Ridiculous.

.........
.........

TENNIS
GETS
NO
RESPECT
IN THE USA



Rafa Nadal's interview after Quarter Final against Del Potro - in English

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Rafa vs. Andy Roddick
March 21, 2009
Great Pass by Rafa
Uploaded by SharapovaPower

The Quarter Final Match March 20, 2009

Rafa d Del Potro
6-2, 6-4 in 1 hour 49 minutes
Uploaded by vamosrafelnadal

Rafa enters the court - Indian Wells
Uploaded March 21, 2009 by Rapocali

This was posted March 19, 2009
Rafa Nadal vs David Nalbandian
It's just a medical time-out, but we who love Rafa even like watching this stuff.
Uploaded by luneworld

One of my favorite pictures of Rafa
from the archives....


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And now shifting gears....
to what's really important


Jen Marlowe Director of the film Darfur Diaries and author of the book Darfur Diaries - Stories of Survival, Sandra Hammel and Dr. Peter Liotta, Director of the Pell Center in Newport, Rhode Island at the screening of Darfur Diaries at the 500 seat Jane Pickens Theatre in Newport on March 24, 2007. If you click on the picture, you will see the words: We Will Not Be Silent in two languages on Jen's shirt.


MY OTHER SOAP BOX

The thing is about Darfur and how I try to write about it. I just feel so very helpless. I want to scream at our lovely and shiny new President. I adore him. I do. But he is letting me down. And all we citizen activists who have felt like we have reached down to the bottom of the barrel over and over to try to get the light shone on this humanity-falling-way-short issue of genocide feel so small compared to the huge bottomless hole of ignoring this issue by all of the world's leaders. And really what we mean is President Obama is letting us down for the sake of the forgotten people who have been hanging on by shreds of mental and emotional threads for nights and days on end. Year after year.
I understand the treatment of a raped female in Sudan is one of rebuke to the point of totally dismissing her as worthy. Like she is not respectable anymore once she is raped. And she has done nothing to deserve the brutal rapes. And the rapes include ramming sharp objects into the woman's vagina.

And we go about fretting over the stuff in our world where our government, no matter how wrong it has been over the last eight years, it isn't charging people with the duty to torch our houses while we are sleeping, village by village, terrorize our children, brutalize and kill fathers, steal all our belongings and livestock, take away our food and all clean water supplies, rape our souls and our bodies, gouge our eyes out, tell us we are unworthy to live because of the shade of our skin, take everything away from us. EVERY THING. And yet some people are still trying to stand up and keep some shred of sanity. They have to be emotionally frayed. They have to be emotionally depleted. And they don't have anti-depressant drugs. I so hate that "depression drug" commercial that is running on TV..."Who does depression hurt? Everyone. Where does depression hurt? Everywhere...." I mute the TV every time it comes on.

What is wrong with us, that we allow this kind of treatment to go on to our brothers and sisters of the human race? We are just self-absorbed. We are spoiled. We could learn something from the people who are braving to breathe every day with the hope that America, the USA will come to their rescue. Or Europe. The thing is they still believe that the democracies of the world will care about something this brazen. Outrageously wrong. They don't have to watch "Survivor" on TV. They ARE Survivor. The Real Story.

We have done nothing to warrant their trust. And yet they have no one else to put their trust in.

And we are betrayers of their trust in our goodness.

I am just so embarrassed and horrified that we stand by and have done nothing to help these people see an end to this injustice. This bondage. This humiliation. This degradation.

So you see, I really don't have such an issue about the tennis getting no respect on TV. It is people like the Darfuri people who love their children. Who want their children to have a good education. Who want their children to be able to play without being traumatized. Who want to get up in the morning and know that they are safe. Who get NO RESPECT. By our media. By our leaders. We should be ashamed. We like to pretend we are moral people. We like to believe we are principled people. We like to believe that we are the best because we are American citizens of the USA. But that doesn't mean a thing if you don't walk the talk.

I have a wonderful sense of humor. But I find myself feeling like I need to stop myself from feeling humorous or light because these people of Darfur are screaming inside and we are just going about our business like the story doesn't exist.

But the story does exist.

And no matter how many genocides we let go on. And no matter how many politicians lie and say "Never Again" - we know who we are. Small people who didn't want to do anything to stop the madness we gave a word to in 1948 - Genocide I know that wikepedia is no expert resource but check out the page Genocides in history .


Here is a bit of the page:

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.

While precise definition varies among genocide scholars, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocidenational, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." (CPPCG). Article 2, of this convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a

The preamble to the CPPCG states that instances of genocide have taken place throughout history, but it was not until Raphael Lemkin coined the term and the prosecution of perpetrators of the Holocaust at the Nuremberg trials that the United Nations agreed to the CPPCG which defined the crime of genocide under international law.

We really are a sorry lot.

Won't you follow Katie-Jay, Gabriel and Yuen-Lin,
while they are in Chad the next 10 days?
Here is their website:

www.stopgenocidenow.org/iact/iact7

Here is their button:

 

Follow them on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/iact

It is my first time really doing the Twitter thing. I did it a little when Ann Curry was in the Darfur region, recently.

And won't you choose to make a difference? It starts with one person, deciding to act. And you'll know at the end of your days, that you didn't stand idly by and just ignore this plain and awful behavior of our fellow human beings upon other fellow human beings.

The situation was dire before the arrest warrant for Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir March 4, 2009. You know, he wasn't elected, right? Now, the devastating situation is a devastating situation on top of a devastating situation. It is hell on earth.

Please, call or write President Obama and tell him it is not all right with you to continue the same chartless plan of the Bush administration about the Darfuris plight. It just isn't all right. And we need to say so. Clearly and apparently with more voices than we have been saying it with since 2003.

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Write President Obama
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

You can also call or write to the President:
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Comments to President Obama:
202-456-1111
or
1-800-GENOCIDE

The White House comment line is available
9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. weekdays

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Find USA elected politicians contact information at this link:
www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

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Link to the song
The Answer is Blowin' in the Wind
Trini Lopez
Uploaded by hun896

It doesn't have to be blowin' in the wind.



"The Most Important Office is That of Citizen"
I heard Barack Obama quote this on Oprah


I also remember he repeatedly said
"Now, let's go change the world."


Let's. You lead. We so need a leader.

Come on President Obama
Be the one.
We have been trying to be the ones we've been waiting for.
But, we still need a President to
have the political will to find a way to end the genocide.
We can't do it without you, Mr. President.

So, step up
and
join us.

It
is
the
right
thing.

At the Los Angles Darfur demonstration recently.




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