No gloating until I get back, please.
Topic: Misc.
I'm off to Vienna this afternoon with the intention of playing the ?2,000 E-WSOP main event, so blogging will be light or non-existent while I am away. This is the comp I've always wanted to play, but never felt like pulling up for. However I've done very well in the last six to nine months and it's now only a small proportion of my bankroll. Although I don't play anywhere near as many comps as many of those who are going, I am happy that I have an edge in the game. I won two comps online last week (one with 400+ runners, another with only 70) and I won a two outright last year and from memory came second in another, with a few other money finishes. Not bad given that I play so few of them.
But before leaving, I have to remark on the strange 'gloating' messages I have had recently. I'm not against gloating per se. In fact
I have encouraged it before.
But some of the gloats I've had aimed at me recently make little or no sense at all. In particular, the person who said that the election of Hamas had been "a Bit of a slap in the chops for you" clearly didn't read what I wrote on Dec 21 last year:
https://members.tripod.com/overlay_uk3/sleepless/index.blog?entry_id=1312774 which concludes:
"Fundamentalists can shout empty slogans like 'Islam in the answer' and never be disputed as long as they are kept out of power. Islamism must be given the chance to fail, democratically."The same person also tells me
"What you expect of Islam is never going to happen". Well I can't see the harm in trying! Because the alternative of doing nothing is so much worse. And if you really believe that muslims can't adapt to democracy, then Europe has as much of a problem as Iraq does. Bosnia and Turkey are likely to be admitted to the EU in the next ten years or so!
I'm also puzzled by the civil war jibes about Iraq. I appear to have more faith in the common sense of the average Iraqi than such critics. But again, if I'm wrong then Britain has as much of a problem in the long term as Iraq does. For all the people who insist that the Shia and the Sunni cannot get on together, I've yet to encounter one who goes on to wonder why then this country allows muslims of both groups to live here.
And while we're on the subject of 'civil war', can we at least be clear that for there to be an Iraqi civil war, then both sides must be Iraqi? In the case of the most repugnant suicide attacks, it's clear that many of the bombers themselves have come from outside Iraq.
As for the snipes about not responding to my right-wing critics (!!) who say that I'm overlooking the threat to America's dominance through its Imperial Overstretch and loss of world reserve currency status, I have explained before why I don't discuss this. It's because it brings back painful memories of something I did over ten years ago. As I explained to James Butler not long after I started this site. Specifically:
https://members.tripod.com/overlay_uk3/sleepless/control.comment?a=add&entry_id=154994
in which I related how I was required to prepare a talk about a subject of my choosing for a public presentation course while I worked at Midland Bank. Bizarrely I decided to talk about 'Decline of the United States'. As I later wrote:
Several years ago I was worried about it too. I even went as far as to buy a bestselling book about it: Paul Kennedy's `Preparing for the Twentieth Century'. And nicely gathering dust it is too. In the four or five years since I've bought it, I haven't read more than one paragraph. I did however read another doom-and-gloom book by William Rees-Mogg and James Davidson called `The Great Reckoning'. So worried was I by the predictions of its chapter about urban America (titled `Drugs, delusions and the imperial culture of the slums') that when I needed to prepare something for a presentation course at Midland Bank, I delivered a talk on `The Decline of the United States'.
I cringe now to think that in the decade or so since I gravely told my audience of the forthcoming collapse of the US, the country went on to record nine consecutive years of economic growth. Didn't they know that they were supposed to suffer economic disaster? The cheek of those damn yanks! And I was so solemn too.
After the briefest of recessions, the US economy is now growing at over 7 per cent! For an advanced economy, that is a truly incredible result. I guess in part, I'm trying to spare Butler the embarrassment I now feel. Don't dig any deeper James, you'll only regret it! He writes: `But how much longer will it last? When the money runs out and the heathens batter their doors down then they won't be as happy as their TV persona would suggest. Yet again he is obsessed with the decline of empires. In particular the one he has read about the most. In James' world, all odes lead to Rome.I've heard of this idea of the decline of the dollar. I've read about Imperial Overstretch. I've bought the book, drank the Kool-Aid, and worn the T-Shirt. I just hope nobody has a picture of me wearing it! It's too embarrassing.
All the best until I get back!
*See also:
https://members.tripod.com/overlay_uk3/sleepless/index.blog?entry_id=109560