News That's Fit To Punt - 01/Aug/2016

The Rudd Rejection

It's already a fiasco, but this business of the Coalition Government not nominating Kevin Rudd to run for Ban-Ki Moon's office of Secretary General of the UN is already spinning wayward.

Kevin Rudd says he was told he had Malcolm Turnbull's strong support for his bid for the top job at the United Nations before the Prime Minister suddenly reneged on that commitment, according to private letters from Mr Rudd to Mr Turnbull, obtained by Fairfax Media.

In an explosive new development in the aftermath of the Turnbull government's official rejection of Mr Rudd's request for endorsement to run for the post of secretary-general of the United Nations, Mr Rudd has released letters, which, while only showing one side, suggest that agreements had been reached to support the Rudd bid, but that this support was suddenly withdrawn on May 1, just days before the election was called.

This is quite awkward.
Over the weekend, Peter Garrett was heard this first concert since returning to being a vocalist, that the world dodged a bullet when Malcolm Turnbull refused to back Kevin Rudd as a candidate. It's a bit cruel but I guess there's no love lost between Rudd and Garrett*.

It's not exactly a great move by Turnbull. Now he'll have a vindictive Rudd on his case and god only knows how that will play out. After all Kevin Rudd can be a spectacular media tart and if he signs up for something like Sunrise again to prefer his political opinions on a regular basis, it mightn't be long before he will actively say things to sway public opinion against the government. Rudd was always going to be better for everybody concerned, outside of Australia.

Anyway, Pleiades tells me this won't be the end of it because Rudd doesn't know how to quit. Not only that he has significant recourse with his international friends. Dr. Geoff Raby has an article in the AFR today that illustrates possible path back for Kevin Rudd. If the election/selection for the UN Secretary General does not conclude before the US election and if Hillary Clinton should win,therein every chance that a President Hillary Clinton might back Kevin Rudd for the job. At which point it's going to be an uneasy phone call for Malcolm Turnbull.

In a matrix of fifty-fifty coil flips, there's a 25% chance Turnbull doesn't have to revisit this issue, 50% chance that the issue remains irrelevant, but a 25% chance that he's going to have to eat crow.   That 25% however is looming larger when you think through the fact that the next Secretary General is being selected in sync with the next US President. The US will moe than likely delay the selection until after the election, and that Donald Trump is (for al his blather) unelectable. That means there is a great probability Malcolm Turnbull will be asked to revise this topic.


* - As a side note, I've been pondering for long time why as a fellow leftist Peter Garrett's stance on things have bothered me over the years. My old working theory was that he was a prat, but that seemed too simplistic. The most accurate representation of his position might be that he is a regressive leftist. Once you understand that about Peter Garrett, the rest of it is rather easy to decode. 

One Seat Majority

The last seat in the Lower House fell to the ALP, which means the Coalition have only a seat majority. One would surmise then that Malcolm Turnbull has no margin for error.

No Coalition MP will be able to cross the floor. Even an abstention would force the Speaker to cast a tie-break vote, creating the appearance of party weakness. Coalition discipline will need to be watertight. 

2212`1`12Coalition figures have been fond of saying that a narrow majority will enforce its own discipline. That's true in the sense that it forces the party to stick together like glue. But on whose terms will it stick together? 

Mr Turnbull's challenge of managing his right flank becomes that bit harder because the handful of lower house MPs who might actually take the rare step of defying party discipline at the point of voting in Parliament will need to be placated down to the last man or woman. 

Those passionate outliers within the party will be empowered by knowing Mr Turnbull cannot afford to lose a single vote.

Well... one would imagine that's a two way street. If the fringy-crazy want to threaten to cross the floor, it would be over a policy that the ALP may actually want, and would a fringy-crazy rightwing nut job MP want to cross the floor just to spite their moderate PM? There can't be that many bills that satisfy both the ALP and the Greens and the fringy-crazy right wing of the Coalition. Not even Bob Katter would cross the floor to do that. It's hard to image that fringy-crazy rightwing MP of the Coalition would be going that far as well, no matter how unhappy they are with Malcolm Turnbull.  

Of course Bob Katter's not happy Malcolm Turnbull hobbled Katter's friend Kevin Rudd's aspirations so maybe therein a scenario where Bob Katter crosses the floor (Katter's already signalled he's not going with the ABCC legislation).

Didn't Last The Week

In the last post I pointed out how untenable the Royal Commission that was announced was, having Brian Martin heading up the Royal Commission, and surely enough he's resigned.

Former Supreme Court judge Brian Martin has resigned as the head of the royal commission into the NT juvenile detention just days after being appointed. 

His replacements have been announced as former Queensland Supreme Court judge Margaret White and, following calls for an Indigenous co-commissioner, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Mick Gooda.

Citing the need for public and stakeholder confidence in the joint Commonwealth-NT inquiry, Mr Martin said that criticisms of him had been "disingenuous" and ill-informed.
"However, notwithstanding the nature of the commentary, it has become apparent that, rightly or wrongly, in this role I would not have the full confidence of sections of the Indigenous community which has a vital interest in this inquiry," he told media in Canberra.

As teens like to say, "sure, whatevs". You have to love people putting up defences of their positions that fly in the face of reality. If it were exactly as he said it was, he wouldn't be quoting, would he? Both things cannot stand and one thing we know for sure is he's not doing this Royal Commission any more. You can't put a man in charge to investigate himself.

The Downside Of Identity Politics

Here's something about a statue going up in Ashfield.

It's the peace statue that is dividing Korean and Japanese community groups, with legal threats issued to a church minister and complaints escalated as high as the Minister for Multicultural Affairs. 

At the centre of the dispute is a statue commemorating the "comfort women" of World War II - the women and girls who were forced into sexual servitude for Japanese troops - which has been imported from Korea by a local Korean community group.

The group - called the Peace Statue Establishing Committee - plans to unveil the statue, which they describe as a "peace monument", at a traditional welcoming ceremony to be held at the Korean Community Hall in Croydon Park on Saturday. 

The statue, which cost $35,000 and was donated by a Korean benefactor, is about 1.5 metres high and depicts a Korean comfort woman sitting beside an empty chair, as a symbol of the victims who have since died.

And so it is that we come to the Comfort Women issue, exploding on the streets of Sydney. Really, we ought to ask, should this issue be played out in Australia? Should it be played out in Sydney?

Now, this statue was meant for Strathfield but was soundly beaten back by a presentation by the Japanese community. The main plank of the rebuttal, so to speak, was that there actually is no mythical girl who was forcibly taken away by the Japanese Army to be a sex slave prostitute. Except this is accepted as fact thanks to the Yoshida Testimony of 1982, as published in Asahi Shimbun. Since then there has been much research on this area to corroborate the Yoshida Testimony, and nobody has been able to corroborate any of it. There has even been a US Senate enquiry into it and the the US Senate recognised that there was no truth to the Yoshida Testimony. Seiji Yoshida himself made statements before his death to the effect that he had made it all up.

Last August Asahi Shimbun finally retracted the Testimony as false, which has led to a class action against Asahi Shimbun for insisting on its provenance for 34 years, providing ammunition for the claims that the comfort women were forcibly taken away by the Japanese government orders. It's been such effective bullshit that people in the west are refusing to give up that talking point, now that Asahi Shimbun has retracted the claim. The new of its retraction and what it means has been very slow in getting around the globe.

So yes, the statue is inflammatory. That's the whole point. It's primarily being put there to offend while proclaiming peace and remembrance or whatever. The people who want to put it up want to do so to stick it to Japan over stuff that happened in World War II. The people who don't want it put up are fed up with South Korea trying to stick it to Japan for an apology and an extra pay out.

Except as of 28th December 2015, there has been a new apology and an agreement to pay the claimants. The terms of the agreement stipulate several things including, this is the last discussion to be had on the topic of comfort women, their recompense, their status and as a bargaining point between South Korea and Japan. Part of the agreement was for the government of South Korea to work with the activist group to remove the original statue placed in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul.

Now, it should be noted that it is against international convention to stick a protest statue in front of another country's embassy, regardless of the cause. We don't do it, the Americans don't do it, nobody in Europe or Africa or the Subcontinent does it, Japan certainly does not do it in retaliation, not even Israel does it to the German embassy.

If the agreement of 28th December 2015 is to stand, the South Korean government has to remove the original of the statue. That's what they agreed and signed upon, and eight months later they're yet to do it. It is therefore in incredibly bad faith (and bad taste) to be sticking a replica of that very same statue in the streets of Sydney proclaiming it to be an act of peace. It's extremely disingenuous of this Reverend Bill Crews to be talking about apologies an peace.

Be that as it may, it should be asked of the Korean community if an equivalent statue ought to be erected in tribute to the Vietnamese comfort women the South Korean Army procured for itself during the Vietnam War.

During the Vietnam War (late 1960’s – early 1970’s) South Korea sent troops to Vietnam in an attempt to keep South Vietnam free from communism. It was reported later that many South Korean troops raped Vietnamese women and committed atrocities such as massacring farmers and aged people, and many others were forced into working as prostitutes for the South Korean soldiers. Many of these women would then later become pregnant and after these mixed Korean-Vietnamese children were born they were shunned by Vietnamese society and their soldier fathers returned to South Korea never to be seen or heard from again. The plight of these women was lost to history and not discussed until the late 1990’s when many of the victims began to speak out against the Vietnam and South Korean governments and demand recognition and compensation. To date the South Korean government has done little to acknowledge the issue but has continued to pursue further financial compensation from Japan for their own comfort women survivors and some say that their actions have become hypocritical and they are using the issue as their own political tool. In fact, South Korea orchestrated with Korean-American’s politically-driven campaign in the U.S. continent against Japan.

Yes, that's right.

I'd be okay with the statue going up in Ashfield if the Korean Community acknowledge what their troops did in Vietnam and build a plaque next to it, mentioning it. I doubt they would - it's all about bullshit nationalist fervour. So unfortunately for the Reverend Bill Crews, there's not much moral high ground going around there.

It's kind of pathetic people are still fighting over this terrain, seventy-one years after the conclusion of World War II, but that's what happens when identity politics is given full rein. 

Senseless In Davos

Where Rhetoric Goes To Die (But Where Bastardry Thrives)

This forum going on in Davos is a bit of a joke. A few days ago Shinzo Abe got up and said his visits to the Yasukuni Shrine was to pray for world peace. If you overlook how disingenuous this is, sure, why not? Except all it did was provoke storm of protests form the governments of China and South Korea who like it or not have made it an industry to complain about the alleged re-militarisation of Japan. And so the Chinese have been on a diplomatic offensive everywhere telling every world newspaper what a threat Japan is to world peace. Which of course taken in a vacuum might look that way but as with Shinzo Abe and his disingenuous-ness, the Chinese are building Aircraft carriers and unilaterally declaring  airzones in their favour.

Let's be bluntly honest. The Chinese themselves are the biggest threats to world peace full stop, without comparing them to Japan. So if you overlook that glaring fact, then maybe Shinzo Abe's visit to a war memorial looks provocative. I'm not sure the Chinese sales pitch is working, even in Africa. After all, it's not like Japan's been to any kind of conflict, let alone war for nearing on 70years while China's happily had war action in every decade since World War II ended. The Korean War, the land war with the USSR, The invasion of Vietnam in the 70s not to mention the various oppressive things they are doing to their ethic populations in Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Manchuria and to the Uighurs.

So there's that. But the clincher might be the fact that for any person complaining about the Yasukuni Shrine housing Class 'A' war criminals from the Tokyo Tribunals, nobody can name all the names. They just say, "Class 'A' War Criminals" like there's some universal understanding of what that means. Most of them wouldn't know who Justice Webb was, nor would they understand what Keenan and Pal had to say after the trial about the Tokyo Trials.

Be that as it may, we're going to keep hearing about these visits. Here's the vexing thing. Japanese Prime Ministers since Junichiro Koizumi have eschewed going to the Yasukuni Shrine. That's dating back to 2006 or so. Since then, the first go around for Shinzo Abe, Yasuo Fukuda, Taro Aso, Yukio Hatoyama, and Naoto Kan, have come and gone without attending the Shrine and you can't say they got any slack from the Chinese or the South Koreans. It's been a noisy chorus of complaint regardless. Its not surprising that Shinzo Abe decided he may as well serve himself and his constituency by visiting if there wasn't going to be any merit in not going. The complaining - for all its pseudo-historic self-righteous legitimisation - is gratuitous.

Tony Abbott - Asshole Representative

By now it is clear that Tony Abbott's essential style is 'thrower of artless haymakers'. This week he got up in Davos to try and sheet home the blame of the Australian Government debt to the ALP and threw their record under the bus. It doesn't matter that it's not the done thing when you represent your country. It doesn't stop him from behaving like a prat. It doesn't matter that his characterisation of that recent history is totally at odds with how the rest of the world understood the GFC or how much they would like to swap their problems for ours. It doesn't matter that he comes over like a jerk - he's used to that, he doesn't even notice any more - and that it subtracts from the sum total of Australia's credibility for voting him in. That's right. He really doesn't care. If he went there as an individual to speak bullshit, that just reflects badly on him. Unfortunately as Prime Minister, his Bullshit speak makes us all look incredibly stupid.

Yet, he's our man in Davos. The more I think about it, I think our political class has collectively flown into the twilight zone of good sense or simply into a post-modern simulacrum of politics and not real politics at all. Pleaides was threatening to destroy his computer in furious protest at Tony Abbott's choice of general Cosgrove as the next Governor General, but really Tony Abbott's just meeting expectations of being the pits. And just as the whole thing reflects badly on Australia, it reflects badly on the Coalition that they think this is their man to lead the nation. So far, he's a bust.

It was reported Tony Abbott met with Shinzo Abe, and they didn't discuss whaling as an issue. This upset the Greens back home. After all, how could Tony Abbott not bring up the most symbolic issue that exists between Australia and Japan? Quite easily it seems. Tony Abbot claims they mostly talked about the TPP, trade and security. In the most ironic of ways, it actually makes sense. Why bring up whaling and make thing unpleasant? That being said, I find it incredibly hard to imagine Tony Abbott bringing up a topic that is not close to his heart at all and arguing a robust case on its behalf. Whatever he is, he is not that good a politician.

Dissing Jakarta From Afar

The even more peculiar thing about the Abbott Government so far is how it has mishandled the relationship with Indonesia so badly, to the point where we ought not be surprised should a shooting engagement erupt on the high seas between our navies.

The worst provocation would have been this business of sending back the asylum seekers in boats. To do this, the Australian Navy had to sail into Indonesian waters without permission. Immigration Minister Scott Morrison fronted the media and claimed that the Australian Navy might have "inadvertently" entered Indonesian waters.  Now, I don't know about you, but I don't see how that makes our navy look good when our Immigration Minister uses being lost as an excuse for being somewhere where they probably should not have been.

Jakarta's in a huff and they're buying more military hardware. They're buying F-16s fro America and 8 submarines from Russia. All because we provoked them with our navy, unilaterally sending back asylum seekers in boats; and in turn, this was because this government came to power on the stupid slogan "stop the boats" so they had to be seen to be doing it (otherwise they would be seen  to have broken a promise).

If you thought Shinzo Abe was a bit of a dummy incurring the complaints from China and South Korea for having visited the Yasukuni Shrine, he's got nothing on Tony Abbott.

"Die Hans Brix!"

Team North Korea

Every few years, North Korea surfaces from the sludge of international relations to rattle its sabre and detonate half baked nukes and fire inaccurate missile tests. It's quite a joke really if it weren't for the fact that Kim Jong-Il seems pretty serious about his threats and nobody is willing to march in to North Korea to get themselves some regime-change-a-la-Iraq.

Thus it's always a bad time when North Korea decides to announce that it's detonated its second nuclear test, total contravention of anything discussed in the Six Nations talk. The Six Nations which include the 2 Koreas, China, Russia America and Japan have so far pleaded and begged and bribed with North Korea to stop its nuclear weapons program, but when they go and set off a 20kiloton nuke in a test, it's time for some diplomatic strife.

These fireworks follow the launch in April of a three-stage rocket over Japan and the Pacific. Until that point, it was still possible to argue that increasingly belligerent rhetoric from Mr Kim’s regime was just his way of catching the attention of President Barack Obama’s new administration. The pariah state had long said it wanted an accommodation with the United States that guaranteed its security. But engagement with the outside world now looks near the bottom of its priorities.

North Korea also says it has torn up the truce that ended the Korean war in 1953. This was provoked, it says, by South Korea’s decision to join the American-led Proliferation Security Initiative, a group that aims to block shipments of weapons of mass destruction and related contraband. South Korea was reacting to Mr Kim’s nuclear test; North Korea accused it of a “declaration of war”. With American and South Korean troops put on a higher alert, some kind of military clash looks possible.

North Korea has also said it is restarting its plutonium reprocessing plant at Yongbyon, closed since 2007 as part of a disarmament deal negotiated with America, South Korea, Japan, China and Russia. International nuclear inspectors have been kicked out of the country. There is also concern that North Korea will resume selling nuclear technology abroad.

Earlier this month North Korea told South Korean managers at the Kaesong industrial complex, not long ago seen as a symbol of warming ties on the peninsula, that they must sign new, costlier contracts for North Korean workers, or pack up and go. The chief North Korean negotiator of closer relations between North and South, once a confidant of Mr Kim, is rumoured to have been sent to a labour camp and even shot, possibly for taking bribes.

It's an ongoing joke. Like the warlords of Afghanistan, Kim Jong-Il makes his money dealing Heroin. They sell arms to dictators in Africa, they deal in black diamonds and whatever portable wealth while their population is starving. The regime is repressive to the point of cruelty, and the people are totally brain-washed in to supporting this system because dear leader allegedly makes it so good. It's like a whole nation that's been held captive by a cult of personality trying to build an on-going dynastic system like some medieval king. And the fact that the rest of the 21st Century world actually has to take this nation more seriously because of its serious nuclear ambition is truly pathetic.

But deal with them we must.

Nobody seems to have a plan on how to get North Korea to quit being North Korea as it were. Are they merely essentially fucked up? Or is it that they work hard to be so fucked up? Or is that they get immense help and encouragement to be so fucked up?

The Chinese are too invested in having the nation as a bulwark ally facing off the ...err... capitalist West at the 38th Parallel instead of on its own borders. It's not unlike the anxiety Russia has about the Ukraine wanting to join NATO. China doesn't ant North Korea to be absorbed into South Korea because suddenly the running dogs of the Capitalist West would be at their doorstep across the Yalu River.

Remember Douglas MacArthur's great plan to drop 8 nukes north of that river to create a no-mans land forever which would keep the Chinese out of the Korean peninsula? Yes, the plan that got him sacked by Truman. It sure looks prescient today, if only because dealing with the Kim Regime in both its generations has been like pulling teeth without anaesthetics - a medieval sort of problem. That's the Yalu River for you.

Perhaps we're lucky that Truman's notion of no further nuclear wars prevailed. China and Russia are still talking to the rest of the world, if with their own strategic concerns being their bug bears. That being said, most of these strategic concerns are a bit silly if it means in the case of Russia, the Ukraines cannot get energy supplies and in the case of North Korea, it continues the aggravation of this nuclear threat. And seeing that the Cold War is long over, you wonder why they let these Cold War Era politics continue locally to the detriment of their own reputations. I guess you can put this down to bloody-mindedness.

If it ever comes down to a military solution, it's going to have to be China that digs out the Kims from their bunkers, and not the USA or the West or their allies in the far east. If nukes ever get exchanged, then you'd have to say MacArthur had it right in 1951.

WBC Ends

Japan Wins 5-3

Japan thus defended its WBC title, but it was no easy pickings.

Seattle Mariners star Ichiro Suzuki hit a two-out, two-run single in the top of the 10th, and Japan beat reigning Olympic champion South Korea 5-3 Monday night to win its second straight WBC title before a boisterous crowd of 54,846 at Dodger Stadium.

The Japanese won the inaugural tournament three years ago, beating Cuba 10-6 in the finals at Petco Park in San Diego.
South Korea had tied the game at 3 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth on Lee Bum-ho\'s run-scoring single off Japanese closer Yu Darvish (2-1), who got in trouble by issuing one-out walks to Kim Hyun-soo and Kim Tae-kyun, the 3-4 hitters in the lineup.

Darvish struck out Choo Shin-soo before Lee lined a 1-1 pitch into left field, with pinch runner Lee Jong-wook scoring easily from second.
Seiichi Uchikawa opened the 10th with a single, was sacrificed to second and took third on a single by Akinori Iwamura. After pinch-hitter Munenori Kawasaki popped out, Iwamura took second on defensive interference.
Suzuki managed to foul off a pitch after it had bounced then lined the eighth pitch of the at-bat from Lim Chang-yong (1-1) to center for his fourth hit. The Mariners' star entered with a .211 average and three RBIs in eight previous games.

Given the lead, Darvish worked around a leadoff walk to retire South Korea in the bottom of the 10th, setting off a wild celebration when he struck out Lee Jin-young to end the four-hour game.

I had 6 heart attacks watching the game from start to finish. Korea were a lot tougher than USA as it turned out and deservedly were in the finals. You don't really get a view of how tough a team plays until you sit there and watch the grinding at-bats and the dirty big flyballs. They swing the bats hard in South Korea. the power hitters in the heart of their lineup were every bit as scary as the best of the MLBers from any country. And they played great defense.

The Japanese knocked out 15 hits over the 10 innings and seemed to get a runner in scoring position in just about every inning, but somehow the Koreans kept squirming out of these tight spots and keeping Japan within distance. There were no blow out innings, no long sequences of hits. Every at-bat was contested hard by the Korean hurlers, and the Japanese never looked like they were going to run away with it.

The Koreans caught up with the Japanese twice, the second time in the bottom of the ninth with 2 down, and strikes on the hitter. They're mentally tough guys, and you just have to respect that- and the wonder of Baseball.

Hisashi Iwakuma was a revelation. The guy can really gather his strikes nice and low and pitches to both sides of the plate. The command was sufficient to stifle the Korean bats for 7-2/3 innings, holding them to 2 runs.

It was also the second time I've seen Yu Darvish pitch. His 9th inning was all tense and herky jerky, but his 10th was a lot more powerful and precise, even though he gave up a lead off walk. He's got great tools but he\'s got a way to go yet in the experience stakes. It was very uncomfortable watching Darvish walk 2 guys and give up a hit after letting the count go to 3-1.

Then there was Ichiro who battled the Korean closer Lim Chang-Yong for 8 pitches to slap a 2-run single, who I think is going to go down in the annals of baseball as having balls of steel. That was just a magnificent at-bat. Also, full credit to the Korean manager In-Sik Kim for not walking Ichiro who was 3-for-5 at point in the evening, his bat suddenly finding form in the heat of a tense final. It was a gutsy, honorable call.

The really telling stats are how the only team to beat Korea was Japan and the only team to beat Japan was Korea. They played each other 5 times in 17 days, while playing other teams in between, which in retrospect seems like a novelty. It was one heck of a tournament an I'm already exhausted.

WBC Update 19/03/09

Why Can't They Beat These Guys?

Japan beat China 4-0 and then demolished South Korea in the round 1 match, only to lose a 1-0 duel with the South Koreans in the seeding game. In Round 2, Japan then beat Cuba 6-0, a convincing effort at any time, only to play South Korea again and lost 4-1. Japan then played Cuba again and beat them 5-0, which must be giving Fidel Castro indigestion and fits.

Defending champion Japan advanced to the World Baseball Classic semifinals Wednesday night, leaving mighty Cuba in the fog of another international failure.
Japan beat Cuba 5-0 on a foggy night at Petco Park to clinch the final spot in the semifinals this weekend at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.
Japan scored two unearned runs with two outs in the fourth inning when Cuban center fielder Yoennis Cespedes committed a two-base error on Michihiro Ogasawara's high fly ball. Even though it was hit into heavy fog and Cespedes had a long run, he seemed to see the ball and had it in his glove before it popped out, glanced off his cap and rolled to the wall.
Norichika Aoki went 4-for-5 with two RBIs and one run scored. Ichiro Suzuki went 2-for-5 to raise his WBC average to .214. He tripled in the ninth and scored on Aoki's single.
Hisashi Iwakuma and Toshiya Sugiuchi combined to five-hit the Cubans.
Baseball long has been Cuba's soul, and the WBC and Olympics are among the few major forums it has to show off the country's talent away from home.
But the Cubans are in a funk.
The WBC elimination came seven months after South Korea upset Cuba to win the gold medal at the Beijing Olympics.
Three years ago at Petco Park, Japan beat Cuba 10-6 to win the inaugural WBC.

Thus, the final 4 are Venezuela, USA, South Korea and Japan. It's kind of weird that Japan has shut out Cuba twice and can't seem to down Korea in the money matches. Now we find out the 2 Asian nations are going to face each other again for the seeding of Round 3. It's all a bit barmy and there's still a 1/4  chance they might play each other in the finals if they beat their respective opponents in the Semis.

Manny Dons The Pads

Nothing to do with the WBC, but this article came in from Walk-off HBP.

The made-for-the-media event took place on a sunsplashed field often used by the Arizona Cricket Club, one of an estimated 750 cricket teams in this country. The event paired two men who make their living with a bat -- although the bat wielded by Ramirez on Wednesday had an elongated handle and was flat, like a paddle.

Marsh is a left-handed opening bat who plays for his country and for Kings XI Punjab in the Indian Premier League. Like Ramirez, Marsh is coming back from a hamstring injury that he said had sidelined him for about six weeks.

Marsh said he had been looking forward to meeting Ramirez.

"I've heard a little bit about him, but I really don't follow baseball too much," Marsh said. "I read up about him when I was coming over here. He's certainly an icon in American sport."

Marsh gave Ramirez a few quick pointers on the rules.

"It's pretty simple, mate," Marsh said. "You just make sure you're nice and relaxed. You keep your eyes on the ball, just like you do in baseball."

With Marsh standing nearby, Ramirez swung and missed at his first pitch before lining the second one past the bowler's ear as yellow-jerseyed members of the Arizona Cricket Club chased down the ball.

On the third delivery, Ramirez let the ball hit the wicket, which would have been an out in an actual game.

"That's an out?" Ramirez said. "Give me one more chance."

A few minutes later, Bhuta fired a ball that bounded behind Ramirez, who danced out of the way.

"Am I allowed to charge the mound?" Ramirez said.

It was a funny line, but cricket uses a shiny 5½-ounce ball that feels every bit as hard as a horsehide. Marsh said later he wasn't worried that the Dodgers' expensive property might take a ball in the noggin.

"They weren't bowling too quick," Marsh said.

Fair enough. Manny being Manny, when he was told Marsh once had a 9hour stint at the crease, he said such an at-bat would be just too long.  Of course, there's more to the story.

But, after the last pictures were taken, Ramirez turned back toward the field and said, "Can I hit some more?"

That's Manny.