Undaunted Danes Beat Brits At Badminton

The victory of the Danish mixed badminton team in the European finals has been overshadowed by events a long way from the court in Leuven

It is almost impossible to mention Denmark at the moment without people’s faces clouding with the painful recollection of the tragic events in Copenhagen just this last week. The deadly attacks that left two dead and several wounded have shocked the small Nordic nation of just five and a half million people, huge gatherings of them in the capital city coming together and mourning the loss of life in this senseless attack with a candle lit vigil and a minute of silence.

Danes Beat English Again
 • 3-0 Victory in badminton final
• Sixth straight win against English
• Danes well placed in Thomas Cup odds

Of course there are senseless crimes each and everyday each motivated by its own form of insanity, be that greed, jealousy, anger or just good old fashioned stupidity, and in each case the criminal responsible feels entirely justified at the time, their actions a manifest requirement from their perspective, some even admitting their moral imbalance by ascribing it the appellation a necessary evil, but in the end, their legitimization are only effective upon themselves.

Whomever inherits the White House in 2016 they’ll be gambling news of another 9/11 doesn’t break during their term of office, but the reality is that it is these deluded individuals that pose a far greater threat. However the rise of these so-called “homegrown” terrorist attacks over the last few years, from the Boston Marathon bombing to the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, does not indicate a rise of radical Islam in Europe, but a rise in the media savvy of the extremists.

The harnessing of social media and the internet by the hardline Islamic extremists has proved very effective, not at causing the full scale jihad against western interests and their corrupt decadent societies for which it so often calls, but at motivating individuals in small numbers to do outrageous things, the news media then perpetuating the process publicizing the extremists efforts and results. The result of each one more fear, the ultimate aim of any terrorist attack.

Gambling On Divide & Rule

The fear, naturally, becomes not of terrorists, but those that look like them, which is, after all, the ultimate aim of this growing number of lamentably fatal attacks, not to erode the societies of the west by loss of life, even a 9/11 a week wouldn’t manage that, but to make people in these societies fear a certain sort of person, forcing a wedge between communities, between people, a divide that eventually feeds on itself. It is that division we should fear far more than gun wielding maniacs.

Bouquets of flowers were laid in Copenhagen on the spot where Mr. Omar El-Hussain was shot and killed by police in the Norrebro district of the city, an elderly lady laying hers told the media “the boy didn’t know what he was doing” and we’ll never know if that was true or not, whether he knew his actions did not begin and end with the firing of bullets at people he didn’t know, but that he was merely another tool used by those unable to project power themselves much beyond the deserts of the middle east and youtube.

This tactic of small scale radicalization via the modern techno-media, however, is doomed to fail. The slow response to counter this new prong of attack is mostly due to the nature of the services assigned to combat it, and their mistrust of technology as a whole, but that doesn’t mean once the ball gets rolling the west can’t mix information, inspiration and incitement to action (or indeed inaction) far better than those from the radical Islamic republic of whoevertheyare.

At present much of the effort is directed towards stamping out the sites that provide these materials but that is a game of electronic whack-a-mole that does nothing save eat budgets and give the NSA something to feel good about for a change, the real challenge is to inform the same audience that the radicals are aiming for with a sensible rebuttal of all the extremists claims, a counter-campaign on social media and farther afield to decry this willful and ridiculous betrayal of Islam that is costing lives and dividing nations.

Another Danish Victory Over England

It is at this point my editor is wondering how I’ll segue from this into a story about the finals of a badminton tournament and frankly, I’ve no idea, but it would have been awfully disrespectful not to mention their national tragedy at this time. I am, of course, tempted to tell you that the way I play badminton is a tragedy of sorts, perhaps in the spirit of life going on despite these awful events, and that the last time I touched a shuttlecock the shuttlecock was far more in control of events that I was.

Sadly, if not entirely unexpectedly, my skills on court really never rose above staying mobile betting eventually the racquet would hit the swift flying shuttlecock by dint of luck rather than judgment. I was by no means alone, whilst a game of skill, tactics and precision for the professionals, for school boys it really is just an organized opportunity to smack shuttlecocks in the faces of those opposing you, and one that eventually left this writer with an eye that made me look like the victim of a cartoon mugging.

In the European Mixed Team Badminton Championships, however, the game was far more seriously played and the Danish team who had gainfully forced their way through victories against both the German and Russian teams entered the final against England and proceeded to hammer out a 3-0 victory, making that the sixth time the Danes have beaten the English team in as many meetings and displayed the desire they had to snatch back the trophy they lost to the Germans two years ago. It is a great shame their win was so overshadowed by events far from the sport they love.

Could this be the start of a march towards a good placing in the Thomas Cup in 2016? The Danes certainly would like to think so and indeed with Come On! Sportsbook giving 23.00 on them winning the trophy, their present form might well incline some of you in Denmark towards thinking them worth betting on now Danish gambling laws have caught up with the 21st century – something the fight against radical Islamic extremists is going to have to do to prevent tragedies like the abhorrent occurrences in Copenhagen.