Category Archives: Analysis 🙌

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⚽️ TEMPLATE ANALYSIS The end of Manchester United as a football force? 🥅 🏟

16 Sunday Mar 2014

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TEMPLATE ANALYSIS

When Muhammad Ali was beaten by some one called Trevor Berbick, it was clear that the world of boxing was witnessing the end of an era.
Was the same happening at Old Trafford today where Liverpool outplayed the once mighty side called Manchester United to win 3-0.
There were three penalties – two of which were converted by Steven Gerrard – and the killer blow that ensured David Moyes’ men were out of it was made by their star striker Luis Suarez, who no doubt was the reason for the appearance of Diego Maradona in the crowd.
At least two of the penalties were questionable, but Brendan Rogers’ men had numerous other opportunities against an oppostion that despite fielding Robin Van Persie and the highly paid but sadly overrated Wayne Rooney showed no sparkle.
Currently, the Premier League Champions look a pale shadow of that triumphant side which looked unstoppable for season after season under the stewardship of Sir Alex Ferguson.
Of course, they need major surgery although the haste to sign Wayne Rooney for a massive contract or some of the other additions like Fellaini have not helped David Moyes’ cause.
Whether Van Persie will remain next season despite his claims to wanting to stay is another matter given the likelihood that the current Manchester United side may not even qualify for Europe – unless they win the Champions League title.
So are we looking at the end of an era?
Well, four sides are now clearly breathing and functioning in the absence of the great man. The board at Old Trafford will of course stick with their man but if they are in the same position this time next season and the side will look as hopeless as they did today they will find it difficult to justify keeping the under pressure Moyes.
At the moment, United look a top seven side side will little chance like say Spurs of breaking into the top four. That can change for a team the size of this club with the right signings. And one other thing Aberdeen have just won Scottish Cup, their first trophy since Ferguson left their club for an up and coming one called Manchester United.  Are the Old Trafford faithful who so memorably supported their side today despite an abject performance prepared to wait that long for their next taste of success?

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TEMPLATE ANALYSIS The Tartars – Crimea’s forgotten people

14 Friday Mar 2014

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TEMPLATE ANALYSIS

John Kerry today met his Russian counterpart one Sergei Lavrov to inform him that the United States of America could not and would not accept the outcome of this weekend’s referendum on the future of Crimea.
Russia says its recent moves into the region are motivated by a desire to protect the Russian speaking population from the neo Nazi thugs that now control Kiev.
Other commentators point out on state owned RussiaToday that Crimea has of course been part of Russia for centuries.
No one seems to care about exactly how Russia and its vicious Cossack army got into Crimea and what has happened to the people who once ruled that land.
Crimea was for centuries the powerful Khanate that was allied to the Ottoman empire for whom she turned to for protection whilst remaining independent.  The first signs of a decline in that relationship was perhaps during the final Ottoman siege of Vienna when the Khan of Crimea allowed access to a Polish army which went on to defeat a vast besieging Muslim army camped outside the gates of the Austrian capital. A century later, the Ottoman Sultan ceded Crimea after his army failed to recover this territory from the emerging kingdom that was Russia. Today, the descendents of that once great Khanate live as a minority in their own land with no access to decent welfare or standard of living. They have been forced to accept the name Tartars although it is as old, as medieval and ignorant as the name Saracens, as well as a decline in their population through deportations and death, as Russia colonised their country with its own people.
This is of course the same Russia whose Cossack soldiers would use the bones of Muslim soldiers as drum sticks each time they went out to wage war against the Sultan.
Of course more recently Stalin deported on mass the Tartars to Central Asia because they were said to have collaborated with the Nazis during the Second World War, a memory that is very much alive and well today in those who didn’t perish on that long journey.
So, it won’t come as a surprise that the Tartars will not be voting in this weekend’s referendum. For they like other minorities in the Crimea know that they don’t count or matter to Moscow – the great protector of Russian speaking populations.

Posted by | Filed under Analysis 🙌, Arab World 🌎, Asia 🌐, Comment, Europe 🇪🇺, International News, Politics 💼 🗳 🪖, Russia 🇷🇺

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Protected: Farewell Tony Benn, the Leftwinger who kept the Tories in power

14 Friday Mar 2014

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ARSENAL BLEW IT AGAIN

12 Wednesday Mar 2014

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TEMPLATE ANALYSIS

No one gave the Gunners a chance last night as they attempted to overturn a two goal deficit against the European Champions on their home turf.
Surely, lightning doesn’t strike twice, surely last year’s 1-0 win at Bayern Munich was a freak result.
Well, for the first twenty minutes or so it looked like Arsene Wenger’s nearly men were never going to get a sniff of chance at the opposition goal, as the powerful Germans played lockdown.
For the rest of the half Arsenal had their moments but nothing more.
And when Bayern’s Bastien Schweinsteiger grabbed a goal early in the second half, it looked like the floodgates had opened. But then something astonishing happened when the German forward Lukas Podolski literally brushed aside a Bayern defender and fired in the equaliser against his old club.
Podolski had expected to be booked but Arsenal had got back in and the manner had stunned the opposition who like the powerful national side folded now they were under the cosh.
After this Bayern looked ordinary as Arsenal had numerous opportunities to seal the deal. Trouble is they just did not have the quality up front to make that happen.  Mesut Ozil the man who had missed that penalty in the first leg and who could been the made the difference here had been subsituted for the second half of this leg for what later turned out to be a hamstring injury.
It could have been Arsenal’s day – a fact underlined by Bayern’s Thomas Muller missing a penalty in the last minute, after Lukasz Fabianski dived the right way and then dived again to prevent a follow up.
But Arsenal blew it – sure there were positives, Wenger’s men had made the superhuman Germans look ordinary, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain was energetic, but he like the rest of the fowards just didn’t make it count.
And with that it another year out of the Champions league for the Premier League’s great underachievers.

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TEMPLATE ANALYSIS Farewell, Bob Crow, Working Class Hero

11 Tuesday Mar 2014

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ANALYSIS – I have often thought that when I am at the gates of the hereafter,  negotiating an admission into Paradise, that there would be only one man I would call on to argue my case –  Bob Crow, the RMT leader, whose sudden and completely unexpected death, was announced at 11:02 today. Bob Crow was a larger than life figure,  the kind of man that was made for the Trade Union movement,  a man who cut his cloth under that other great and formidable champion of the  working man Arthur Scargill. Quite, what the NUM leader would  think of his protégé’s six figure pay salary and expensive dining and holidaying  habits is of course another matter. But Bob, unlike his mentor, was admired by most – his legions of supporters in the RMT union, as well as his many opponents and political adversaries such as the London Mayor Boris Johnson who was one of the first people to offer his sincere condolences. Except to those national newspapers to whom he was a left wing radical, a member of the Ken Livingstone club, it was rare to hear a bad word said about him – even from London’s long suffering commuters who were at the sharp end of the many RMT strikes to hit the capital. For his opponents respected and understood that at the end of the day, his stand however formidable and trenchant in appearance was only reflecting the wishes and aspirations of his members whose numbers swelled in the decade or so that he became their leader.
So, perhaps the most fitting tribute to come so far, has been from the London Mayor who observes that when it came to settling a dispute he found his ideological opponent to be most the most practical and least extreme of the union leaders that he has crossed swords with.

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Will Pakistan’s army finally pacify its lawless tribes 🇵🇰

07 Friday Mar 2014

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ANALYSIS  – At the beginning of last century when the areas now known as the federally administered territories were under the loose control of the British Empire, Winston Churchill used a new technique to pacify the rebellious tribes – bombing.
The Pathans of the North West Frontier never accepted outside rule then, especially when they were not Muslims.
When the nation of Pakistan was formed they were the first to offer their allegiance to the newly created Islamic republic.
But they never changed their ways and customs – lawlessness is and has always remained part of their way of life.
The question is will they finally behave now that they have the threat of the Pakistan army hanging over them.
Using first rate intelligence and backing it up with a single deadly airstrike or a bullet from an assassin, Pakistan’s military has pushed the ‘Pakistan Taliban’ to the the negotiating table. But the attacks have continued with a horrendous assault on a courtroom in Islamabad which brought today’s warning from Pakistan military that a full scale operation could be launched as early as this month if there is no end to the violence.
The people of Pakistan have already made their feelings clear about what should happen to the so called Tehreek e Taliban, even the politicians are united on this issue.
Only Nawaz Sharif who has attempted to bring them with in the political process has stood in the way.
The first wave of deadly Pakistan operations began after a number of Pakistani soldiers were beheaded by the Taliban. A pause in operations came after the Taliban leadership clearly afraid for their lives announced they were ready to talk.
A splinter group has been blamed for the courthouse attack, but that will not be good enough if there are any further atrocities. The question is of course have the lawless tribes finally got the message.

Posted by | Filed under Analysis 🙌, Asia 🌐, Comment, International News, Politics 💼 🗳 🪖, Terrorism, UK

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⚽️ ENGLAND ARE GOING TO NEED MORE THAN GOOD LUCK AT BRAZIL 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

06 Thursday Mar 2014

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ANALYSIS – Denmark is clearly rebuilding its football team – that was obvious to everyone who watched England’s unsatisfying 1-0 win at Wembley Stadium last night. They are not going to the World Cup in 98 days time. Trouble is, its Roy Hodgson’s team of unlikely lads that have that dubious pleasure. England showed no sign that they have moved on from the European debacle, when a flat and tired looking side folded as soon as they faced the first real opposition in the competition, namely Italy. This England side doesn’t look tired but it is still flat, lacks imagination and creativity at the front, and frankly appears clueless – each player struggling to find a role in a side that still hasn’t cemented into a team capable of going beyond the qualifying stages of a major tournament. Of course, there aren’t any great teams out there, but England are floundering and Roy Hodgson’s comments that he felt the national side were shaping up nicely show that he is either deluded or plain stupid.
The Danish manager wished them good luck last night.  On the evidence of their performance yesterday and during the last two ‘friendlies’ they are going to need a lot more than that in Brazil 2014.

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TEMPLATE COMMENTARY: The Tragedy that is Oscar Pistorious

03 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by in Africa 🗺, Analysis 🙌, Comment, Media 📷, Sport 🏏 🎾 ⚽️

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TEMPLATE COMMENTARY

The man known to the world as the ‘bladerunner’ faces the fight of his life over the coming weeks as his very expensive defence team attempts to prove in the full glare of the media spotlight that he did not deliberately shoot to death his girlfriend.
The unworldly sounding South African model Reeva Steenkamp sadly gained the fame she craved throughout her life through the circumstances of her tragic death. Pictures and video footage emerging in the hours leading to Valentines Day 2013, clearly show that she was besotted with a man that had managed to overcome incredible odds to become one of the fastest men on earth.
When they were first seen together, they dazzled and astonished the celebrity circuit in South Africa and were taking the appearance of a golden couple before the events of that dark day.
What ever the outcome of this trial – which has been likened to OJ Simpson trial for the media circus and frenzy it has generated – only Pistorious himself will really know what was going through his mind, and whether he was really acting out of a mistaken belief that intruders had broken into his exclusive home.
Reeva’s mother says she will know whether she will forgive the man who shot to death her daughter when she looks him straight in the eye.

Whether the public in South Africa or outside will be able to forgive him or forget what he has done, regardless of the outcome of this trial though, is another matter.

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Russia has sent a message to the outside world

02 Sunday Mar 2014

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ANALYSIS – The pictures unfolding on our television screens show well armed ‘professional’ troops patrolling the key sites of the Crimea.  By all accounts, the atmosphere is calm and everyone is carrying on their daily duties with some waiving Russian flags, others Ukranian. When they are asked whether they are Russian, the troops do not reply. Since the takeover in Kiev, hundreds of such men have arrived in the Crimea and have  occupied key strategic areas. Initially, they were there to protect the Russian speakers who form the majority of the province but the longer they are there the more this looks like a complete takeover of what to Vladimir Putin is a vital part of his nation’s identity. Russia has been accused by the Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen of putting peace at risk in Europe. The US President Barack Obama has threatened Moscow with economic and political sanctions. Ukraine says that Russia has declared war on her, but could the highly dubious government in Kiev really risk more bloodshed against a far bigger and more dangerous bully than the one it fought for its freedom on her own streets? Russia has sent a message to the outside world – it wants to be treated with respect, and part of that includes no lectures on international law from nations that play fast and loose with its principles when it suits them. As for Ukraine, if it wants to continue with the current political state of affairs in Kiev, it will not only lose its cheap gas supplies but also the Crimea.

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Could there be a war over Crimea?

01 Saturday Mar 2014

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ANALYSIS – With thousands of Russian troops now reported to be in the Crimea, armed gunmen thought to be Russian in control of Parliament and the governor of the province appealing to the Kremlin for assistance, could we be seeing  conflict unfolding in this vital region along the lines of Georgia?
Those who are quoting international law may find that Moscow is in no mood to be dictated to, given what has gone on in Ukraine and of course the Middle East and North Africa.
Crimea is in Russia’s sphere of influence and anyone who wants to argue with that like the former Georgian President did during that conflict will find themselves out in the cold when looking for allies and like that conflict will guarantee a sealed breakup of the country.

Posted by | Filed under Analysis 🙌, Comment, Europe 🇪🇺, France, Germany 🇩🇪, International News, Politics 💼 🗳 🪖, Russia 🇷🇺, Terrorism, USA 🇺🇸

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