Category Archives: Comment

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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.

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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.

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Occupied Territories: How Israel managed to turn a great victory into defeat 🇵🇸

27 Thursday Feb 2014

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🪖 What now for Russia and The West – a war over the Crimea? 🇷🇺

25 Tuesday Feb 2014

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TEMPLATE ANALYSIS

ANALYSIS – The decline in relations between Russia and the West began with the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Moscow having turned its back on Communism looked to its former Cold War foe for guidance. The year was 1991, and what followed in the months and years after can today be seen for what it is – a great lost opportunity.
Washington sent in its academics, including one Jeffrey Sachs who came up with a revolutionary idea of his own called shock therapy – opening up the state and its assets to market forces.
Within seven years, a superpower was bankrupt and today’s Russia is arguably still suffering from the after effects both socially and economically. Russians regard that dark period in their history as a lost decade. It was a time when a forward thinking and humanitarian leader like Boris Yelsin, who pulled his troops out of Grozny and continued to enact reforms of the state and economy, was made to look like a drunk fool as Russia lurched from one crisis to another. He, like Mikhail Gorbachev before him, had not believed the Soviet propaganda about the bad old West.
And like Gorbachev, he was reduced to looking like a modern Sultan dangling at the end of a puppet master’s string.
When Vladimir Putin stepped into the breach, he brought a form of order as well as respectability. But all that has come at a terrible cost – in the killing fields of the Caucasus where he installed a modern day Khan, and now with the fall of his man in Ukraine could a war be looming over the future of the Crimea? Looking at the scenes of ethnic Russians in Crimea clearly rejecting recent events in Kiev and seeking guidance from Kremlin that remains a possibility as Vladimir Putin uses all the tools at his disposal to preserve a vital pillar of Russia’s security and identity.

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