saco-indonesia.com, Timnas Indonesia U-23 telah dapat memastikan satu tiket final setelah berhasil mengalahkan musuh bebuyutannya Malaysia, di ajang semi final Sepak Bola SEA GAMES 2013 yang diselenggarakan Myanmar. Garuda muda telah berhasil untuk mengalahkan Harimau Malaya lewat adu pinalti dengan skor 4-3 setelah sebelumnya kedua tim bermain imbang 1-1 hingga pluit akhir.
Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono ( SBY ), langsung merespon atas kemenangan anak asuhan Rahmad Darmawan tersebut melalui akun Twitter-nya. SBY pun juga berharap di Final nanti, Garuda muda bisa membawa pulang medali emas yang telah beberapa tahun tidak pernah didapat oleh Indonesia.
"Selamat atas kemenangan Timnas Indonesia U-23 dlm semi final SEA GAMES 2013. Saya bangga. Satu langkah lagi jadi juara. Kita bisa! *SBY*" tulis SBY dalam akun resminya, Kamis(19/12).
Ucapan SBY pun juga langsung direspon ribuan pengikutnya di jejaring social tersebut. Bahkan salah satu pemain timnas Hamkah Hamzah telah meminta agar SBY dapat menghadiri Partai final yang akan diselenggarakan di Zayyarthiri Stadium, Naypyidaw, Myanmar, saat bertemu Thailand pada hari Sabtu mendatang.
Seperti yang telah diketahui, Tim nasional Thailand U-23 akan menjadi lawan Indonesia di partai final SEA Games Myanmar 2013. Kepastian itu diperoleh setelah Thailand berhasil memetik kemenangan tipis 1-0 atas Singapura di semifinal kedua yang digelar Zayyarthiri, Naypyidaw, Kamis (19/12) malam.
Kepastian Thailand menjadi lawan Garuda Muda ini telah ditentukan oleh gol Praweenwat Boonyong pada menit ke-23 lewat titik penalti. Gol tersebut telah menjadi satu-satunya gol yang tercipta pada laga yang digelar usai laga Malaysia vs Indonesia tersebut.
Baik Thailand maupun Indonesia sejatinya telah mengenal permainan satu sama lain. Pasalnya, kedua tim sebelumnya telah bertemu di babak penyisihan Grup B. Saat itu, Thailand mampu mempecundangi Indonesia dengan skor telak 4-1.
Baltimore Residents Away From Turmoil Consider Their Role
BALTIMORE — In the afternoons, the streets of Locust Point are clean and nearly silent. In front of the rowhouses, potted plants rest next to steps of brick or concrete. There is a shopping center nearby with restaurants, and a grocery store filled with fresh foods.
And the National Guard and the police are largely absent. So, too, residents say, are worries about what happened a few miles away on April 27 when, in a space of hours, parts of this city became riot zones.
“They’re not our reality,” Ashley Fowler, 30, said on Monday at the restaurant where she works. “They’re not what we’re living right now. We live in, not to be racist, white America.”
As Baltimore considers its way forward after the violent unrest brought by the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died of injuries he suffered while in police custody, residents in its predominantly white neighborhoods acknowledge that they are sometimes struggling to understand what beyond Mr. Gray’s death spurred the turmoil here. For many, the poverty and troubled schools of gritty West Baltimore are distant troubles, glimpsed only when they pass through the area on their way somewhere else.
And so neighborhoods of Baltimore are facing altogether different reckonings after Mr. Gray’s death. In mostly black communities like Sandtown-Winchester, where some of the most destructive rioting played out last week, residents are hoping businesses will reopen and that the police will change their strategies. But in mostly white areas like Canton and Locust Point, some residents wonder what role, if any, they should play in reimagining stretches of Baltimore where they do not live.
“Most of the people are kind of at a loss as to what they’re supposed to do,” said Dr. Richard Lamb, a dentist who has practiced in the same Locust Point office for nearly 39 years. “I listen to the news reports. I listen to the clergymen. I listen to the facts of the rampant unemployment and the lack of opportunities in the area. Listen, I pay my taxes. Exactly what can I do?”
And in Canton, where the restaurants have clever names like Nacho Mama’s and Holy Crepe Bakery and Café, Sara Bahr said solutions seemed out of reach for a proudly liberal city.
“I can only imagine how frustrated they must be,” said Ms. Bahr, 36, a nurse who was out with her 3-year-old daughter, Sally. “I just wish I knew how to solve poverty. I don’t know what to do to make it better.”
The day of unrest and the overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations that followed led to hundreds of arrests, often for violations of the curfew imposed on the city for five consecutive nights while National Guard soldiers patrolled the streets. Although there were isolated instances of trouble in Canton, the neighborhood association said on its website, many parts of southeast Baltimore were physically untouched by the tumult.
Tensions in the city bubbled anew on Monday after reports that the police had wounded a black man in Northwest Baltimore. The authorities denied those reports and sent officers to talk with the crowds that gathered while other officers clutching shields blocked traffic at Pennsylvania and West North Avenues.
Lt. Col. Melvin Russell, a community police officer, said officers had stopped a man suspected of carrying a handgun and that “one of those rounds was spent.”
Colonel Russell said officers had not opened fire, “so we couldn’t have shot him.”
The colonel said the man had not been injured but was taken to a hospital as a precaution. Nearby, many people stood in disbelief, despite the efforts by the authorities to quash reports they described as “unfounded.”
Monday’s episode was a brief moment in a larger drama that has yielded anger and confusion. Although many people said they were familiar with accounts of the police harassing or intimidating residents, many in Canton and Locust Point said they had never experienced it themselves. When they watched the unrest, which many protesters said was fueled by feelings that they lived only on Baltimore’s margins, even those like Ms. Bahr who were pained by what they saw said they could scarcely comprehend the emotions associated with it.
But others, like Lambi Vasilakopoulos, who runs a casual restaurant in Canton, said they were incensed by what unfolded last week.
“What happened wasn’t called for. Protests are one thing; looting is another thing,” he said, adding, “We’re very frustrated because we’re the ones who are going to pay for this.”
There were pockets of optimism, though, that Baltimore would enter a period of reconciliation.
“I’m just hoping for peace,” Natalie Boies, 53, said in front of the Locust Point home where she has lived for 50 years. “Learn to love each other; be patient with each other; find justice; and care.”
A skeptical Mr. Vasilakopoulos predicted tensions would worsen.
“It cannot be fixed,” he said. “It’s going to get worse. Why? Because people don’t obey the laws. They don’t want to obey them.”
But there were few fears that the violence that plagued West Baltimore last week would play out on these relaxed streets. The authorities, Ms. Fowler said, would make sure of that.
“They kept us safe here,” she said. “I didn’t feel uncomfortable when I was in my house three blocks away from here. I knew I was going to be O.K. because I knew they weren’t going to let anyone come and loot our properties or our businesses or burn our cars.”