From Florida to Nigeria, Officers are not doing their Job.

This is a global platform in a world wondrously interconnected and there is a lot to think and write about but it is very difficult not going back to the tragic events in Parkland, Florida. Back to Deputy Scot Peterson, the Broward County deputy sheriff who arrived ninety seconds after the start of the carnage and failed to intervene when he had close to five minutes to move in and at least divert the shooter. He was the M.S. Douglas High School Resource Officer and it is easy to think he would at least have some responsibility to the kids under his watch. President Trump did not mince words in calling him a coward and he is evidently in the bad books of many.
Which his defense of his actions is not going to erase soon. According to him, he waited in inaction thinking the shooting was coming from outside the school. You would think it a bit odd that a fifty-four year old officer with more than twenty years of experience would find it difficult determining the direction sustained gunfire, any gunfire, was coming from. Then he left while the firing was still going on. In fact it continued for a further minute after he had left. So if the carnage was coming from outside into the school, the shooter would not have encountered anyone to confront him. In attacking Mr Scot, President Trump has been badly drawn and quartered in some quarters but it seems our president is now having the last laugh: even assuring that if he had been in the same situation as the Deputy, he would have certainly gone in to confront the Mr Nikolas Cruz. That doesn't sound much like a boast now. We are not really in any position to doubt our president now but paraphrasing James Hadley Chase, if you believe the excuses being bandied by Officer Scot, you would believe anything. Perhaps the three other Broward County deputies alleged by CNN to be also present in inaction while the shooting was going on were also crouching behind their cars with drawn weapons thinking the shooting was coming from outside. In this tragic situation, the law and its purveyors have been in serious remiss. It would have been far profitable if Mr Scot had not said anything at all, allowing us to tumble and tumble in our in distance-effected doubts and conjectures
Which brings us to another serious remiss, the recent kidnap of 101 schoolgirls from their hostel in the town of Dapchi in northern Yobe State by Boko Haram terrorists. You would think Nigerian security agents would have learned from their shortcomings in the abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls a couple of years earlier. Especially in a large girls' school in a town just eighty kilometers south of the border with Niger Republic, a demarcation as porous as an old colander. Of course the police were at their illegal checkpoints collecting illegal duties from motorists and couldn't care a damn if all the women in Yobe were carted away by Boko Haram. The Nigerian police runs the largest extortion and debt collection agency in the world and safety of lives and property was going to be very low in the priority of its officers. And for a reason or reasons anyone in the army or government has not been able to relate even satisfactorily, a couple of weeks before the abduction, troops were withdrawn from Yobe, a hiatus Boko Haram did not hesitate to ruthlessly exploit.
From Florida to Nigeria, officers collect fat salaries and give very, very little in return.  And their excuses are even worse than their lapses.

This Fire Won't Cease in Syria.

It would have been laughable, the latest ceasefire moves by the UN in Syria if the situation in that country, especially in Eastern Ghouta, has not been so pathetic. On Saturday, the Security Council managed to secure a ceasefire resolution, barely an hour after Russia had strongly objected to the list of groups exempted from the ceasefire. Russia knew anyway that securing a resolution was the only possible part of the whole rigmarole, complying with the ceasefire was well nigh impossible. Of course, by Sunday, barely a day after, Sweden and Kuwait, the originators of the Saturday document, were appealing for a new truce, the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, having said the ceasefire would only come into effect until the details were worked out. By Monday, Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor and Emmanuel Macron, the French president were virtually on their knees begging Vladimir Putin to do something. You would hardly see a more heartbreaking sight in international diplomacy. Russia seems to have scored very big in Syria and that only by brushing squeamishness and pity and humane pretensions aside and realizing the conflict was in effect, a fight to death, a war in which no quarter would be asked or given. The US has long abandoned her dreams or lack of them, in the country, its influence having been reduced to a sliver of territory being controlled by Kurds in Eastern Syria, and even Turkey is making her uncomfortable there.
The whole gobbledygook of the ceasefire was likely to flummox you and me. So if you are excluding big, hardline, Islamist groups like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, HTS, formely Al-Nusra Front or Jaysh al-Islam or Faylaq al-Rahman from the deal, whom are you expecting to observe the truce? These are the most ferocious and active groups in Eastern Ghouta and their contributions to the conflict has been the most intense. Even if the government forces and their allies were going to stop fighting, the rivalry and fight for turf among these rebel groups were going to make aid convoys reaching those in need a very huge task indeed. It is a bitter truth Russia is very  conversant with and is ready to exploit happily for its burgeoning influence in the Middle East: It is a reality the UN is so distant from and which it has mishandled with pitiable comedy.
Tuesday morning, the UN had abjectly reduced its hopes and pretensions from thirty days of ceasefire to just five hours. Again, Putin was sitting high on his throne, calling the shots. A semblance of peace managed to reign for two hours and then the shelling and airstrikes resumed pell-mell. The two hours in itself was a miracle in Syria, though no succor got to those besieged. Folks in the ultimately senseless revolution have long given up on the miracles the UN is still hopelessly trying to conjure.
The besieged in Hom only got relieved when the rebels could no longer continue with the fighting and had to shipped out. The same with Aleppo. It is a bit difficult saying this but the mot plausible hope for the starving and desperate in Eastern Ghouta lies in the blasphemy of the fight being allowed to continue for some time in the hope that the government forces will ultimately gain the upper hand. That is the solution is military. This in itself is little hope. Check out the geography. Benign territory for rebels to withdraw to from where they are presently entrenched lies far, very far away and the only reasonable scenario is a fight to death. Ceasefire is out of the question and the conflict is going to be drawn out, as is expected of resistance from people happily fighting to die.
And for the 400,000 trapped in Eastern Ghouta, too bad they are caught up in a war not of their own making. Too many proxy wars being fought by so many powers. They don't have many choices now, except miracles they themselves don't believe in. And which the UN is only believing in because of the fear of being seen to be doing nothing. 

China, Xi and the New Revisionism.

What is not important is the news that the Communist Party of China, in the next couple of days, will abolish the two-term limit for the president and his vice, a restraint entrenched in its own constitution. For some time now observers have expected President Xi Jinping to browbeat the party and the rubber-stamp Chinese parliament,  the National Party Congress, into bending the succession rules to enable him perpetuate himself in power. Ten years in power is a very long time, too long by western democratic standards, and the alarm now is that Xi will be given a carte blanche to continue in power as long as he likes in China, a vital player in global economic, social and political affairs.
It is not clear if the party is going to ramp up the limit, three-term or even four but it is instructive to take a closer look at the kite being flown by a party scholar and member: 'China needs a stable, strong and consistent leadership from 2020 to 2035'. Xi was born in 1953 and will be 82 by 2035 in case someone is preparing him or he is preparing himself for such longevity in power. If this is not a revision to Mao, China didn't build a Great Wall.
Mao was a great leader, no doubt, but it is difficult to argue that what he did for China was far greater than the contributions of another great communist leader, Deng Xiaoping. So a heavy argument against dictatorship in present China subsists. The country has witnessed strong economic growth under Xi but it even saw faster growth under his predecessors; he has launched well-publicized crusades against corruption, but any other leader was going to do that anyway, for the sake and survival of the party itself, corruption having eaten deep into the fabric of the officialdom and was fast alienating the common man in the street. The fight against corruption has also conveniently eliminated real and perceived rivals in the communist party. His nationalistic postures have endeared him to many of his countrymen but Trump isn't doing badly too in his 'American First' policy. The same with Putin in Russia. As Trump himself has pointed out, your country first does not mean your country alone. Hence what endears Xi to his people now are ultimately less important than the orderly political succession and stability that China needs. The Gang of Four conundrum that ensued after the death of Mao almost took back the country to the mayhem of the pre-revolution years. The country is now a far more advanced place and is very unlikely to survive any schism that a power struggle will bring. Xiaoping himself realized this and had to orchestrate the present succession pattern that Xi is trying to topple. The arrangement might have thrown up grotesque individuals like Premier Li Peng, architect of the infamous Tienanmen Massacre but by and large it has helped spawn acceptable and capable leaders who had helped steer the affairs of state creditably. What the country can do without now are the grumblings of political repression and exclusion that would eventually unravel in Tienanmen Square.
The communist party has done well in bringing economic growth to China, especially the feeding of its huge population. All thanks to the vision of Deng Xiaoping. And any arrangement he has made for the sustenance of this vision should be held sacrosanct by Xi and his cronies in the Central Committee of the party, a body very similar to the notorious Politburo of the old Soviet Union. The USSR will eventually implode, no thanks to the longevity of Leonid Brezhnev in power. It is a fate that will not augur well for China. And the whole world

Parkland, Florida Shooting: A Tale of Three Scotts.

The sheriff was in no position or place to shoot or be shot at. His deputy was in position and place to shoot or be shot at. Neither happened. It was Sheriff Scot Israel who alerted us of the 'sickening' inaction, read cowardice, of Deputy Scot Peterson. 'He should have gone in to confront the killer, kill him.'
Most of us were not in position or place to ascertain what really happened at M.S. Douglas High School that day and the only weapons were have now are our conjectures, heated conjectures. Deputy Scot could have been thinking about his own wife and kids(human from his own point of view, execrable from ours), based on training and experience, he could have weighed his pistol against the killer's AR-15 and shaken his head at the mismatch(valid from his own point of view, unacceptable from ours considering the fact there were barehanded heroes in the same saga who threw themselves in the path of bullets), or his courage could have simply failed him. President Trump's  preferred version of the theories. Made worse by the knowledge the guy was on 76k p.a. Life and death situations are often complex and those involved often have less than a tiny fraction of a second to decide whether to become heroes or zeros. Be as it may, the decision was his to make, the judgment will be ours. For ever. Life is like that.
But before we start tacking up Deputy Peterson on the high walls as the poster boy for cowardice, we should not be oblivious of the fact that when the police from Coral Springs arrived at the scene, there were three other officers from the same Broward County Sheriff Office crouching behind their cars with drawn pistols. Doing virtually nothing to intervene. If these accounts by the CNN are anything to go by, then we may equally do well by taking some time off slating Scot Peterson and dwell a bit on well-paid public officials who failed miserably in preventing a carnage that should not have been. For a start, Sheriff Israel should take a closer at his own men in Broward County and we should all help extend this examination. Police officers are paid well, the heroine who alerted them to the errant behavior of Nikolas Cruz probably spent her own money to make the call that they negligently ignored. Still the fantastic woman was undeterred and had to spend additional money, time and effort in approaching the FBI when she got no reply from the police.The FBI chaps,who are equally well-paid, unfortunately, as it turned out to be, had ears that were in the same mode as that of the police. In an earlier blog, we said that the key to preventing such mass murders in the future will be in folks like that woman. Mothers, grandmothers, relatives, neighbors, acquaintances who take a healthy interest in what those close to or near them are doing or thinking and will gladly do their duty to the society without asking to be paid a dime for their efforts.
Apropos of those not doing their job or trying to do it or doing it very poorly, Mr LaPierre of the National Rifle Association could have done far better by saying as little as possible. He should have realized that in times of grief like these, it is not the truth that matters but simply the saying of it and trying to play up to the Second Amendment was simply pathetic. Definitely, the purveyors of the 'right of citizens to bear arms and defend themselves' did not have AK-47s, or the new evil kid on the block, AR-15, in mind, assault weapons that are always in the offensive mode. If the NRA emerges from this outrage unscathed, it will be a mini miracle and Mr Lapierre isn't going to be the savior.
Which brings us to the third Scott, Rick Scott, Florida governor. Cruz might have bought his gun at the age of 18 but the Las Vegas shooter was well above 50 when he perpetrated his carnage. The issue now is not limiting the age at which people legitimately buy weapons but governor Scott is very right in proposing the outright ban of assault weapons like the AK-47 and the AR-15 and the so-called 'bumper stocks' that convert less intimidating guns into far deadlier weapons. Then he would have done his job of protecting his own citizens well if he can follow up his determination to seize weapons from those certified of developing mental illness or beginning to exhibit mind processes that drive hitherto safe individuals into the killer mode.
Provided such individuals cannot well hide their evil turns.   

How Obasanjo Killed the Yar'aduas 2.

When Obasanjo was drafting Umaru Yar'adua into the presidential race in 2006, he was already a wounded president: at loggerheads not only with the entire country that he governed, but also with most of his subordinates. The legacies he had tried to entrench were in dire tatters and he had just suffered a humiliating blow over his Third Term Agenda, a quest to run for a third term, one above the constitutionally stipulated two. All it needed was a stamp of approval by the Senate and he spared neither time nor cash to lure the lawmakers, folks who had worn the corrupt tag all their lives. But even if his popularity had not nosedived, there was no way Nigerians could ascertain that a Fourth Term Agenda would not supplant a Third Term and beyond that...Dictatorship of any kind, civilian or military, was a tune that sounded a bit sour in the streets, Nigerians just about shaking off the trauma of the brutal dictatorships of General Babangida and General Abacha. Besides, northerners felt it was their turn to occupy the seat, their case premised on the unwritten agreement that the cause of national stability would be best served if the presidency was rotated between the north and south. Most people in his Yoruba ethnic stock were even less interested. Even if he had not alienated most of them, they were the most sophisticated group in the federation and were not likely to buy into any ethnic scheme. The result was predictable, except for cronies who were feathering their own nest from the scheme. The rejection in the Senate was devastating and Obasanjo was said to have held on to the sides of his chair trying to steady himself in the shock of the humiliation. And it was especially bitter because the party that brought him to power, the Peoples' Democratic Party, had an overwhelming majority in the Senate.
The president sulked for days unending. He had been made a laughing stock. Naturally, he didn't like parting with money and it hurt him to the doldrums he had lost a colossal sum for nothing. Colossal it was, money having been trucked into the Senate in special, capacious sacks called Ghana-Must-Go to bribe Senators. The gentlemen collected the money and then turned to give him a black eye. He had come out badly battered in what seemed a political Ponzi scheme.
 But he had to hand over power to a successor in barely a year. That was when a little smile flitted across his eyes. If they could prevent him from succeeding himself, there was virtually nothing anybody could do to stop him from anointing a successor. And Umaru Yar'adua sprang instantly into his mind. But the then governor of Katsina State was a very sick man, a fact that was well-known to everybody. He had been a heavy smoker all his life, with the attendant medical consequences, and in fact had had a kidney transplant. But that didn't matter a jot to the president. Yar'adua was his man. If he performed creditably in office, he would be credited with installing such an effective successor; if his illness hampered him from achieving much, well, Nigerians had given him a black eye, they deserve their own eyes to be gouged out. It would serve them right, very right. As military leader, Yar'adua's elder brother, Shehu, was his second in command and there was do doubt he would wield considerable influence on the younger one, gratitude being an associated factor, appreciation for choosing him from among thousands of healthy, capable northerners. Anointing Yar'adua as his successor would be a win-win case for Obasanjo.
The rest is history. Obasanjo spared no effort to make Yar;adua president. The cash left over from the Third Term bribery operations was promptly deployed to buy delegates during the PDP primaries and the general elections were a stroll for Yar'adua. It didn't matter that he collapsed during one of the presidential campaigns and had to be rushed to Germany for treatment, it didn't matter the presidential elections were heavily rigged: and even if they had not been rigged, the electorate were too ignorant to worry about the health status of an incoming leader, at any rate the electorate had hardly mattered in Nigerian elections.
So Yar'adua became president, placed under a burden that was too heavy for his health, a frame of mind and body that could hardly support lesser duties of governance in tiny Katsina State. There was no guarantee he would have lived longer if he had not become president but kidney failure and pericarditis were two things the toll of governance in a country infernally difficult and complex as Nigeria was going to exacerbate.  
   But Yar'adua was smart enough to know that Obasanjo's scheming was not out of genuine love for him. He knew he was going to die soon anyway and it wouldn't be bad if it was written he became president of his country even for a day. However he didn't die without exacting a little pound of flesh from his supposed benefactor. Obasanjo was to suffer a little hurt when the first pronouncement his protege made in office was to denounce the same electoral process that brought him to power, Obasanjo's retaliation against Nigerians. But the Nike Grange affair almost delivered a mortal blow. Recall that Nike Grange was Obasanjo's protege and was nominated by him into Yar'adua's cabinet. As Minister of Health, the professor of pediatrics allegedly flouted the president's order to return all unspent money in ministries to national coffers. Yar'adua was enraged. Obasanjo felt it imperative to intervene but the president, his protege, would have none of it. Iyabo, Obasanjo's daughter was also involved in the scandal, as senator superintending over the health ministry, but her father wouldn't care a hoot if she got her ass fried. It was Nike he was interested in saving but Yar'adua would have none of it. Yar'adua actually felt no compulsion to take orders from Obasanjo. He was of a radical persuasion, having been member of the leftist Aminu Kano-led PRP in the Second Republic while his own father was briefly vice-chairman of the conservative NPN. He had a master's degree in chemistry and in fact was the first university graduate to become president of Nigeria while Obasanjo barely finished secondary school before joining the army. He rebuffed all Obasanjo's entreaties and was to compound recalcitrance and ingratitude by bringing Nike to court in handcuffs, an act that brought Obasanjo fuming to no end. "Shehu gan ko le ba mi dan eleyi wo." An English translation of that Yoruba cliche would read: "Shehu(Yar'adua's late elder brother) would not have tried the insubordination with me."

Parkland Shooting: Vigilance Will, Hysteria Won't Do.

A couple of days before the Parkland shooting, 18 Nigerian students on excursion from the northern state of Bauchi died in a horrible road carnage in a neighboring state. The bus in which they were traveling, while trying to negotiate a bad stretch on the road, had a head on collision with an articulated vehicle that was trying to do the same maneuvers. A couple of dollars spent on road repairs could have saved the lives of these kids and three members of staff. In the same way a little attention on the part of the FBI and the police could have gone a long way in saving the lives of the Parkland kids. A nation can afford to toy with so many things, especially great and rich nations like the US, can even afford to toy with its future(there are almost limitless resources for resurgence) but it cannot afford to toy with the future of its young ones.
So Washington is the right place to march on now, Trump is the obvious person to blame and the National Rifle Association is the right body to take the hit. It is all part of the exigencies of the moment but the hysteria will die down, it would not be the first time, the huge puff of public outrage will expend itself very quickly, like all flashes, and the acrimonious debates about guns will go on forever. We pray and hope such a carnage will never repeat itself. We could all lend our hopes and prayers a helping hand.
Not by railing incessantly at the FBI. The way the organization is set up, it will not stop expending too much time and energy and resources on headline quests that end exactly nowhere: like investigations into Russian meddling in US polls, like inquiries into the Clinton e-mails or even the assassination of President Kennedy. It won't escape attention lapses altogether but despite the hot flak it is currently receiving, nobody is seriously suggesting putting it up for sale. The good it does far outweighs its failings
Not by marching to Washington, Seriously. It is nice calling Trump names but even if he has a change of heart and turns on his erstwhile allies in the NRA and wins ten terms, stopping the likes of Mr Cruz will not happen from the White House. Tougher legislation on federal checks will have an initial surge but eventually will not be enough. The Congress and Senate are peopled by lawmakers most of whom came from varied constituencies far removed from Florida. It is a national tragedy, sure, but selling anti-gun legislation to US voters is often a hard sell. The Democrats may be riding with the tide now but few have listened to President Trump query why anti-gun bills gained little traction while the Dems controlled both legislative houses. The FBI, Trump and both houses and the most stringent of all laws, if they manage to pass them, won't ever get guns off the streets. The gun culture is too entrenched. Besides America is vast. In population, in land mass and in the sheer number of possibilities available to folks: money and like resources, friends and relatives, cyberspace, rivers and forests and so on. Someone who is going to get a gun is always going to get a gun, even if all the guns in the US are confiscated.
So the right place to march to is our homes, our households. Our bedrooms and cyberspaces such as computers and mobile phones. We are a bit emboldened to make this suggestion because we have it on good authority that hundreds of mass-shooting plots are aborted in the US every year by acquaintances, grandmothers, grandfathers, parents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, girlfriends and so on, even neighbors. Folks who take a healthy interest in what those close to them are thinking or doing. The relationship involved in the discoveries is what often prevents the public from hearing about them. Like terrorists, would-be mass murderers are not vipers that stay still for long periods and then rise and strike all of a sudden; they are more or less rattlesnakes rattling warnings and signs the size and brightness of comets streaming across heavens. It was what could have saved the Parkland kids, with a little more attention from the FBI, a remiss that isn't likely to repeat itself.
So to our bedrooms we must march. Vigilance. Bedrooms and You Tube, Google, Facebook, Twitter, all forms of cyberspace. Let's take a healthy interest in what others, especially our kids and those close to us, are doing. It isn't snooping or snitching. It is keeping our schools and streets safe. Privacy is great but in times of tragedy like this, few, very few remember privacy   

FBI and its Investigations: Limbo is the Destination.

The FBI investigation into alleged Russian meddling in US elections reminds one of another probe: the much-worried scrutiny of Hillary Clinton e-mails. Both have generated noise and hype for the theatrics-loving American public, and breakfast for newshounds: and very, very little returns on the huge taxpayers' money that has been liberally invested in them. And both seem destined for a fate that seems like a descent into limbo.
What's the point? No matter the outcome, it will be simply ridiculous to accuse Clinton of treason, or even a lesser official misdemeanor that is deliberate. Maybe lapses in her duty but the censure isn't ever going to be commensurate with the time and energy and resources that have been spent on the quest. In the same way, the Russian probes are not ever likely to be traced directly to Vladimir Putin and even though they have been described as a blockbuster, what they'd succeeded in doing is to thrust a little hammer into the hands of Mr Donald Trump. A weapon which he has wasted little time, trust him, in delving into the image of the FBI itself. With the Parkland shooting giving him a veritable handle. A very tiny fraction of the time and commitment spent on the Russian investigations would have certainly helped in preventing a very visible lunatic from wasting the lives of so many young, innocent souls. It is very difficult not agreeing with the president on that score.
Trump knew that although Americans knew his attentions are a bit on the scrappy side, they equally knew he was too self-conscious to collude with Russians to tweak elections in his favor. The US electorate don't like competitors gaining undue advantages. It instantly confers the tag of the underdog on the opponent and folks don't taste victories sweeter than the triumph that reeks of an upset. It may have little to do with why the Eagles won( a stunning that made the day for millions, minus Patriots' fans) but in an electoral contest where voters were the ones to make the throws and catches and touchdowns, it was going to be a huge determinant.
There is no doubt that Russians actively meddled in the US elections but it seems more reasonable to tie its provenance to Crimea instead of Mr Trump or the elections itself, after all the whole scheme started long before the president announced his intention to contest the polls. The Russians clearly knew they were in for real global censure with the annexation, a prospect even apparent at the planning stage, and it became necessary to work out scenarios that might engender sympathetic ears, no matter how tenuous that understanding might be. It would not be a surprise if Russians also meddled in other post-March 2014 elections in other countries and Trump might have fooled a couple of guys in Moscow with his impetuous profession of love for Putin and Russia during primaries and general electioneering. That the meddlers were also rooting for Bernie Sanders shows they thought another Obama in the White House would not be in the best interest of Russia.
So the so-called Internet Research Agency might be an euphemism for a group of cyber bandits not substantially different from Fancy Bears or the plethora of Russian hackers that make it a profession stealing industrial, sports or military secrets, or just plain cash-most of the heist from the US. A James Bond-style megalomaniac could have superintended over a project that excited his criminal mind and appealed to many other folks. Much noise had been made about the indictment of Yevgeny Prigozhin, popularly regarded as 'Putin's Chef'. It is no more than a hint that must be worked into the blockbuster appeal. It is not always that a master knew what his chef was cooking. It will not be an easy task linking the whole scheme to Putin and neither will it be less difficult tying it to President Trump. Mr Mueller's quest seems destined for limbo. It is hardly tiring repeating it again.
There is something faintly Dantean in the coincidence that Mr Mueller should head this investigation and the probe into the Clinton e-mails. Although he has said it expressly there was no evidence the meddling affected the outcome of the polls, he could turn to his protege, James Comey, to espy what might have affected the outcome. Reopening the e-mail controversy a couple of days to the elections was a recipe that was going to be fatal to the chances of Mrs Clinton.

The Curse of Liberators.

All countries on earth, without a single exception, have been under one sort of occupation or the other before attaining their present sovereign/independent status. Either the occupiers were foreigners, or were native rulers who had visited so much toil, ruin, suffering and unease on their own people that they soon grew to become horrid, repulsive aliens.In both cases, they had to be driven out by largely peaceful but intense political pressure- India, Nigeria, Ghana- or by violent insurrection, uprising: Russia, China, the US, Zimbabwe, South Africa.
But it is expedient to look into recent political history to understand better a scourge that is just becoming well-defined but which has always ravaged, on all fours, polities as diverse as Liberia and Ukraine. We have all heard of the curse of resources in Nigeria and Congo, yet it is the same African continent that has seen the worst of the curse of the freedom fighter, a pestilence that ate its cancer so unobtrusively into the social, political and economic fabric of the countries under its invasion that it is only now the full extent of the hideous damage it had wrought is being fully felt. Yes, we are talking about ANC, ZANU-PF, FLN, to mention a few of the insurgent groups that played a key role in the decolonization or, to use a more glamorous term, liberation of Africa. But we are not talking about the copious atrocities they too committed even on their own populations while driving away the much-hated, arrogant foreigners: excesses that have been poorly recorded, acknowledged, Excesses that were even celebrated in the euphoria of grand heroism. What eventually mattered was what they did with the power they wrestled from the terrible occupiers. The present scourge in Zimbabwe did not start with the British, it started when that hero of liberation, Mugabe, started entrenching himself as a long-term dictator: too long for his own good or for the good of his country. It was a common plague in Africa. Hardly had the colonial masters left when they were supplanted by the torrid dictatorships of Gaddafi, Siaka Stevens, Sekou Toure, Dauda Jawara; freedom fighters and independence heroes of yesteryears. It could be argued that similar outcomes unraveled in Russia, China, Vietnam, but rickety republics like Nigeria Liberia, Burundi had no technological prowess, economic resilience or organizational acumen to paper over the defaults and in many cases of these African countries, fresh political upheavals such as coups and  mass rebellions had to inevitably erupt  to resolve some of the scourge. Often unsatisfactorily. The victims have been social, political and economic progress. The symptoms have been appalling poverty, telling political repression and a wave of migration most of which end up in the watery graves of the Mediterranean.
Authoritarian regimes or lines of party succession that were as far from democracy as Timbuktu is far from Toronto and likely to throw up characters as outlandish as Jacob Zuma. Succession that implied George Washington telling Americans: "Hi folks! We did well to secure your freedom from the infernal Brits and it is legit if your leaders till eternity come out of a line anchored on me, or my comrades." It wouldn't be monarchy, but certain blood must prevail.
The blood is increasingly going under the microscope and folks must necessarily turn to China, a country whose influence is growing very powerfully in Africa and whose leaders have become very adept at tweaking the line. In Zimbabwe, the military had to step in to effect a mini purge, before Grace Mugabe got too powerful, a situation that looked like a perfect recreation of the Gang of Four conundrum after the death of Chairman Mao. And still borrowing from China, the ANC has done very well to ease out Zuma. Jacob Zuma is actually a likeable guy but the controversies surrounding him were getting a bit tiring and he could have been more careful of his association with the Guptas. As shopkeepers or as managers of big enterprises, Indians have a business reputation a bit on the unsavory side in Africa. Of course nothing really has been proven yet. It might even have been a myth made popular by the infamous Idi Amin but Zuma should have realized his hobnobbing with the Guptas was going to profit him little.
He had to go. Not for his own good but for the continued good of the ANC. Cyril Ramaphosa has his work cut out and perhaps our Zuma would have more time to perfect his celebrated recipe for AIDS cure.

Trump's Rasputin Coefficient 2: America Gets its Cutting Edge President.

Mr Donald Trump, as a presidential candidate, got something going for him, though a lot of folks in America might not admit it: or might not even be aware of it. The stage was waiting for a cutting-edge leader and Trump stepped right onto it. It would have taken something very extraordinary to stop him: certainly not his horrific groping statements about women, certainly not the latest Stormy Daniel revelations. If even they had gained more substance then. American folks were simply bored of the unending procession of family-loving, politically-correct speaking presidents, of which the latest, Barack Obama had a demeanor and manner that was so soporific he easily could send a hungry lion to sleep. Trump was a character whose idea had come and he was going to win, come prostitutes, come scandals.
Which was perfectly understandable. Political contests in the US had become hideously repetitive, on a template of combats that were not exciting, even interesting. Candidates were more or less sparing partners wearing the same gloves everyday. The best they could throw were phantom punches. Personal attacks sounded like gossips initiated by bored housewives, nothing subtle or engaging, that catches on all fours. The two dominant parties were rapidly being stripped of their colors and it was only a matter of time before a third force came to steal all the pinks and roses. Trump might have won on the Republican ticket but if someone was searching for traces of Bush or Reagan or Eisenhower in him then folks had better search for their ancestry in Mary, Queen of Scots. American politics was screaming for an Ali to come in and shake the scene and sex things up and in stepped a reality TV star who knew how to serve a repertoire of acts designed to keep his audience glued to their seats.
And he has been serving it aplenty: big, raw(no pun) and loud, very, very loud. Day in, day out, the controversies just keep pumping in. If an aide is not being accused of stubbing out cigarettes on the hand of his darling today, tomorrow a personal lawyer is admitting having paid a prostitute to... A charge he had denied so vehemently earlier. Every moment, Trump's Rasputin Coefficient is unraveling. Which is why the latest revelations will not elicit more than a puff of public outrage, a sudden huge flare of indignation that expends itself so quickly like the flashes of an explosion. More likely the hammer, if there was going to be any, will fall on the fingers of Mr Cohen. Folks take a very dim view of lawyers paying money that look hush. Another controversy will break out shortly, if it doesn't, it means the president has lost the plot Americans scripted for him. Few, very few are complaining. Folks can't have it both ways. Americans wanted a cutting edge chap in the White House and there was no toolmaker written into the scenes: a guy to pull out a blunting stone when the edge becomes too sharp. 

Ukraine, Russia, Crimea, Pushkin and two Revolutions.

Politically, Crimea did not belong to anybody. The independent Crimean Khanate was annexed by Imperial Russia in 1783 as a consequence of the Russo-Turkish War. Before that time, the enclave had been bossed by powers as diverse as the Cimmerians and the Golden Horde.
Geographically, Crimea is part of Ukraine, even though some folks consider the Isthmus of Perekop that connects it to the Ukrainian mainland to be too narrow. Too bad geography does not determine national boundaries, otherwise the US will not be US and Russia will not be Russia. Many of the rickety republics in Africa would not have existed. A country is a sum of its political history, especially violent political history. Which brings to the mind two revolutions: the Russian Revolution of 1917 that would eventually bring Nikita Khrushchev, an Ukrainian, to power in the old Soviet Union. Honestly, when the old boy was transferring Crimea from Russian to Ukraine, it is very doubtful he envisaged the almighty Soviet Union would disintegrate one day. It bizarrely did in another revolution, a sort of revolution and Russia would part ways with Ukraine, though not completely and some folks in Russia must have cast a very rueful glance at a historic part, political part that seemed lost forever.
It was another revolution that would return it to Russia:  the colorful revolutions in Ukraine  that would eventually lead to the sacking of the pro-Russian prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich, in 2014. Folks in the Russia-leaning east did not like it, did not like it at all, and the beautiful country got partitioned, effectively, into three: Kiev, Donetsk and Crimea. It didn't take Putin much effort to annex Crimea. The 1997 Partition Treaty and the 2010 Kharkiv Pact, now in retrospect, seemed to have been a gross indiscretion on the part of Ukraine. It left a foreign navy, a much bigger foreign navy on its own soil. The Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol was to play the crucial role in the annexation of Crimea. So Crimea had been a puppet on strings, revolutionary strings.
Which brings to mind Alexander Pushkin's, Russia's greatest poet, take on revolutions. In his novella, 'The Captain's Daughter', the hero was to see the the carnage of an insurrection  and remark that the most enduring changes he had witnessed were those effected by peaceful negotiations and not violent revolutions.
So another revolution might yet change the status of Ukraine. A lesson those frenzied faces in the Orange and Pink Revolutions in Kiev might have well heeded. Be very careful, very careful of what you wish for and try as much as possible to take into account the feelings of others. The outcomes of revolutions are very difficult to predict: Stalin, guillotine, Islamic State.
A revolution brought Crimea into Ukraine, another revolution took it away. Another revolution might take it back. After all, apart from rain and taxes, the only constant things are revolutions.

How Obasanjo Killed the Yar'duas 1

The Yar'dua brothers have been dead for some time now but few ever realized the role Olusegun Obasanjo, ex head of state, played in their demise. These two powerful Nigerians were closely associated with him in their lifetime but even though he later fell apart with them, it would be a bit ridiculous to suggest he would even wish death on them but two grave errors of judgement on his part would eventually send the two to the great beyond. The elder Yar'adua was the Chief-of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, Obasanjo's deputy when he was military head of state. Yar'adua was barely a colonel when the then head of state, General Ramat Murtala Mohammed, was assassinated in an abortive coup detat in Feb 13, 1976. Obasanjo who was his deputy was promoted head of state by the selfless insistence of General Danjuma, Chief of Army Staff. and in order to assuage the wounded feelings of northern elements in the polity, Colonel Yar'dua was promoted to brigadier and soon major general in order to qualify him for the position of Chief- of-Staff, Supreme Headquarters, in effect vice-president. Colonel Muhammadu Buhari, presently president, was also considered for the post but deemed too incorrigible and inflexible for the highly political post of vice head of state.
Many an officer would be naturally miffed by this exceptional promotion. One of them was Colonel Sani Abacha, a Kanuri man from Borno but brought up in Kano who grumbled, albeit very silently, that he should have been at least considered for this special favor, having come from the same Kano as General Murtala.  But he understood too well the unusual circumstances that prodded his resentment and didn't make much fuss of it. Besides Abacha was very fond of women and beer and as long as the two flowed freely, the world wasn't such an unfair place even though while Yar'dua retired as major-general in 1979, Abacha, who was his mate, only got promoted to brigadier in 1980. Nobody knew what precisely caused the rift between Abacha and Yar'adua while they were in the army. Perhaps Abacha didn't grumble too silently and a whisperer could have been up to a mischief. Yar'adua was from a well-heeled family, his father having been minister in the First Republic and could be a bit condescending to others. His new, sudden position too was making him feel a bit heady and he and the stubborn Abacha were not likely to be great friends. By 1978, he had included the name of Abacha as one of the officers to be retired from the army. Abacha hit the roof. Here was a guy who was his mate in the army, who got unfairly promoted over him...who now had the nerve to root for his retirement. Yar'adua's attempted  betrayal really cut him to the quick. He loved the army, it was the only life he had known and had done nothing to warrant a premature retirement. To worsen matters, Yar'adua arranged for Abacha to be failed in one of army assessment examinations. Yar'adua however got a shock when the list was presented to Obasanjo. His hands as head of state was very weak, he got there fortuitously and those who installed him must be stronger than him, but on this matter, he stood his ground. He loved Murtala who was not only his boss, but was also helping Obasanjo maintain peace in his own family and would not want to visit premature retirement on any officer from Kano. He firmly had Abacha's name erased from the retirement list and that was how Abacha survived Yar'adua's purge. He would later become Nigeria's strongman in 1993 and Yar'adua would die in his prison later. Abacha never forgave Yar'adua for that retirement move. When Obasanjo and Yar'adua were being tried by Abacha  for a coup in 1995, Yar'adua told Obasajo 'Boss, did I not warn you of this man?'

Trump and his Rasputin Coefficient.

Someone once suggested that had Leo Tolstoy lived into the events of 1919, the great man would have regarded Rasputin as a necessary addition to Tsar Nicholas sphere of influence. There are certain things magnet must automatically attract and those that surround a leader must somehow be a reflection of the will and desires of that leader. Hence every ruler has his Rasputin Coefficient: how the aides, advisers, officials, sidekicks that form his administration help to effect his policies based on his own image and preferences. Hitler had his own almost perfect Coefficient: Goebbels, Eichman, Goering, Ribbentrop, Mengele. That of President Trump is slowly unfolding. In a week, two aides have resigned, on charges that are unpalatable even in Taliban Afghanistan. Giving a wife a black eye and stubbing out cigarettes on her hands are controversies this administration could have easily avoided if Chief-of-Staff, John Kelly could have been a bit more circumspect about his job. Rob Porter and David Sorensen hadn't had a lot of sympathizers of late and when accusations of domestic abuse on parts of aides are keyed into Trump's own well-publicized comments on women, whatever good they might have done in office would be well subsumed by fears they had rather added to Trump's Rasputin Coefficient, on the negative side. It is difficult to see how Kelly can easily wash his hands off the latest controversy. Why spend hefty sums of dollars on background checks if  they still end up allowing folks like Sorensen and Porter to end up in the White House. Trump had just spent a year in office but the total number of forced and controversial resignations we've witnessed in this administration far outstrips the total suffered by Bush and Obama in their 16 combined years in office. It will be very surprising if Kelly is not the next guy to bite the dust in the whole saga of misdemeanor on the part of officials.
These accusations have not been proven and the guys might just end up clearing their name. But the thick mud their reputation and that of their principal have been dragged in... They would need a lot of cleaning to do.

Trump, Tweets and the Diversity Lottery Programme.

Trump tweets aren't all that diverse, so is the American Diversity Visa Lottery Program which the president has always expressed his abhorrence for, the latest in a tweet as shallow as it was specious. Tweets aren't such good platforms for expressing opinions, its narrowness forces a stand into the very restricting yes or no mode. Subtlety, which must necessarily incorporate a train of nuances, entails the use of many words, a cache that is often unable to fit into the limited chest a tweet box provides. It is the reason the president's tweets often project controversy and little substance.
A tweet would make it easy for him to explain the Diversity Program is bad because a Sudanese who came into the US through it is being accused by the Justice Department of setting up decoy funds that were later channeled to terrorists in places as diverse as Libya and Chechnya. It is a rare abuse. There are thousands, millions of folks who came in through the system that are making very legitimate living and are boosting the echelons of the economy especially at the lower to middle levels. Human beings are not apples. A few bad ones do not cause the barrel to be emptied. American expatiates in the oil-rich Delta cities of Nigeria are the prime patrons of sex and prostitution rings in Warri and Port-Harcout but nobody is calling for the termination of American oilmen contracts. The US health system would be hard-pressed without the thousands of its Nigerian and Indian doctors, many who came in through the Diversity Program.
Yet the program isn't such a good immigration idea. The control is very poor, as is every scheme determined by lottery, and was always going to let in too many rotten apples: criminals, terrorists, prostitutes,fraudsters, guys who were going to make  the police, FBI and a host of sister security agencies see red.  But nobody has even talked about the damage it did  to developing countries where most of the the immigrants came from. It generated a horrid frenzy among everyone, young and old. Many a grandmother slept for days in the homes of prophets and herbalists for spiritual intervention that would see their wards win the lottery. Millions of naira were lost in the desperation to fake mediums. The program coincided with a very steep dive in education. Since it did not discriminate between  laborers and doctors, many youths did not bother to look beyond high school education that was the basic requirement for the program. The educational system is yet to recover from the damage.
Internet fraud got a very big boost from the program. Many a youth spent days in cybercafes perfecting the art of submitting multiple entries, of  placing photographs of fake wives, children and foreign acquaintances. Those who did not win instantly channeled the acquired skills into 'yahoo, yahoo' business, a moniker for internet scamming.
A better immigration scheme can always replace this. Trump should forget dreaming about Norway. By all living indices, Norway is a far better country than the US. Few, very few folks there are going to be interested even if Trump offers them a million dollars to move. He could target university graduates in developing countries, many of whom are very, very good, and are all too happy to become dishwashers in the US and Canada. Many Nigerian professors are already cab drivers in those climes. Food comes first. Young graduates have bright prospects for economic and social upgrade and can always come back to their countries to become catalysts for change and development using the skills and experiences they have acquired.     

Nigeria's Opioid Crisis.

Few, very few youths in Nigeria can afford cocaine, heroin or even amphetamine, heinous commodities domiciled in dollars. Marijuana is passe, no longer fashionable, so the latest kid on the block is Tramadol, a powerful opioid analgesic. Pain, of physical and mental kinds, are certainly of epidermic proportions in Nigeria and Tramadol was always likely to be abused. Over a very short period, it has been elevated to the status of cocaine. Codeine is also in the mix but TMD is the real deal, the passport to social acceptance: if you really want to 'belong', a couple of the white pills take you there. The drug induces vomiting in some people and retching rather adds to the appeal: the same way some folks get their kicks by urinating onto flower pots.
Tramadol abuse is dead easy. It is cheap, dirt cheap, an abuse dose three times less the cost of a fair-sized wrap of marijuana; it is poorly regulated and is easily available over the counter from chemists pressed for sale. It is considered very clean and spick, in contrast to marijuana that leaves the acrid, tell-tale stink on the smoker. It is widely trafficked in sub-Sahara Africa at enormous profits and that's why the problem extends beyond Nigeria. If the police were going to make arrests, it was always with the aim of extorting and users promptly go back to their habits as soon as bribes are paid.
Peddlers are on the verge of making more profits from the drug than the traditional cocaine, heroin and speed and so gross the governmental inattention that 'Tramadol joints' now even exist, spreading at quick-fire rates: open shops dedicated to the sale of this drug and 'paraga', alcoholic herbal brews. The paraga-Tramadol combo is widely popular among youths and is presently fueling an opioid crisis in Nigeria, spreading fast into sub-Sahara Africa.
A simple overdose of Tramadol induces a calmness that itself that itself engenders the notion of crime as a very cool enterprise. Several cases of rape, armed robbery, kidnapping, burglary, murder have been linked to, or emboldened by it. Teenage girls are strapped with suicide belts and loaded with Tramadol before they are sent on their bombing missions by Boko Haram. It reduces whatever anxiety they might harbor, makes them calm and focused on their mission. Since the publication of this article, codeine has risen dramatically in the pyramid of abused drugs among youths in Nigeria. Mainly encased in cough syrups. And so bad a situation that the normally lethargic federal government has moved speedily to ban the importation of codeine in whatever form.

Trump, Immigration and Walls.

President Donald Trump like his things big and bright, a one off image that catches on all fours and swamps everything else. Hence everywhere you go in his immigration policy, the wall looms large. If he's trying to erect a fence to keep out immigrants along the border with Mexico, why should the whole project borrow a controversy from the horribly contentious Dreamers' Project? Not by any stretch of imagination are the two related.
But he knows the immigration conundrum will not just go away with erecting a wall. It is too complex for that project no matter how big it is. He has to back to the roots of the problem, which are as spreading and diverse as the roots of the West African red mangrove. He would need to start from Africa, a shithole as shitty as they come. Poverty is simply grinding; the leaders who run the shitholes are too powerful and helpless folks do the only thing they can: risk the horribly dangerous journey across Sahara Desert and then cross the Mediterranean Sea in any boat they can find to Europe. It is not foolhardiness. It is desperate survival. America is lucky, so to say. The Atlantic Ocean is a much larger divide than the Med and Africa versions of Vietnamese boat people are not going to be a sight soon. From Africa and Europe, some migrants will find their to Mexico, to Trump's wall but whether it will be an unbreachable obstacle remains to be seen. If the Berlin Wall could not could not keep folks from bursting out from behind the Iron Curtain, I don't see how a wall  in sections of the infernally long Mexican border will be a greater obstacle to those who have crossed the Sahara and the Med. In an age where human desperation and ingenuity are increasing by leaps and bonds.
A Harvard professor was in Nigeria recently and he did see people virtually boiling leaves for food. Which is just a very tiny, tiny fraction of the gory picture. Millions are surviving on less. Mr Trump could be at the forefront of the fight against those who steal money meant for food and stash them away in other countries. He could impose severe sanctions on countries that readily accept and hoard such loot. The Oghara Independent Power Project, a Ponzi Scheme organized by the Delta state government of Nigeria, led to the bleeding of 25 billion naira from the state coffers. Many officials simply shared the money, closed shop and relocated to the US, leaving millions of people in the impoverished region to a fate of hunger and malnutrition. Trump could ask serious questions of folks like that. Britain is already asking investors to explain sources of their wealth. Such proactive steps will not me unnecessary meddling; it could help a lot of folks in Africa and Asia become a bit contended and save the money meant for building the wall for other pressing needs.

Trump, Stephen King and an Eerie Warning.

The trouble with the United States of America is that they drink too much beer in God's own country, a sin as objectionable as not heeding. So, naturally, too many folks have too little time and calmness for reading. A lot of my friends who are out there are now regretting having voted for Donald Trump Which would have been a lot less exasperating feeling if a not-so-substantial fraction of what goes daily into six-packs had gone into obtaining a copy of Stephen King's 'Dead Zone', a book, in my own opinion, the best this great novelist has ever written.
Check the character of Greg Stilson and check President Donald Trump. Check the gushing, madly-adoring crowds and the screaming rabble-rousing; check the hard hat and the outlandish shock of thick hair; check the horrific yet easily-pardonable disdain for women; check the glib yet frequently blurting tongue; check the American First brand; check the bright, lurid American flag draped all over the well-cut suit; check the grandiose dreams of the Great Wall; check the sloppy impulses that might one day lead America to disaster. Check, check, check...
Maybe someone then might have taken a pop at him. Maybe Americans might not have then voted him a dog catcher. Nobody read and now Trump, in a weird reincarnation of Greg Stilson, an eerie fiction-to-life transformation that might have surprised the master of horror himself, is the president of the mightiest nation on earth.
Because the film version never did justice to the original

Nigeria's Unending Comedy 2

The old man might have been attacked all of a sudden by a surge of nerves and join the present bandwagon of Buhari bashing, or someone might have been preying on his name in this toxic political atmosphere where anything a big name says is lapped up by a fickle public as political gospel. In either case, it is necessary to continue with a catalogue of Shagari's achievements as president of Nigeria, to let us assess properly the political gains that might accrue from his criticism of Buhari.
Shagari, ably assisted by the then governor of Sokoto State, Alhaji Kangiwa, was the architect of the Bakolori  Massacre. In 1982, huge swathes of land had been seized from peasant farmers in his own Sokoto State to construct the Bakolori Dam without any form of compensation being paid to them. The poor fellows naturally protested. Shagari moved in with troops and tanks and by the time the smoke from the tanks' exhaust cleared, more than two thousand farmers had been butchered. He was, with Kangiwa, later to earn the sobriquet, 'Butcher of Bakolori.'
The 1983 general elections were the only ones he had the opportunity to conduct and his handling of it shattered all the illusions left about his regime. The polls were not rigged, they were hanged. Packets of voting papers were being openly sold in the streets. Votes were simply allocated not only to the highest bidder, but to anyone who could bid. In the old Ondo State, Akin Omoboriowo, who had just defected to Shagari's NPN, was declared winner of the gubernatorial elections, an electoral heist as brazen as it was hefty. Violence erupted instantly. Laco Stores, a prominent landmark of Akure was sacked by an irate mob and prominent businessman, Agbayewa, and handsome publisher, Olaiya Fagbamigbe were butchered into pieces and set ablaze in their homes. Hundred of lives perished and property worth billions were destroyed in this torrid conflagration, a loss the entire south-west region is yet to recover from.
Shagari's genial features has long been widely propped up as the human face of his regime. By the end of 1983, the handwriting was on the wall for anyone to see. Buhari and Babangida wanted to avoid bloodshed as much as possible in the looming putsch and so they sent Brigadier Bako, more or less a godson to Shagari, his father having been friends with the president, to persuade him to see the handwriting to. They all hoped he would see reason with his 'son.' Big mistake. Bako had hardly pronounced the first letter of coup, when Shagari pressed the red button that controlled his security. A bloodbath ensued and by the end of the day, Bako's blood had been so conspicuously shed.
Shagari's removal was widely celebrated in his own home state of Sokoto.

Football's New Virus.

It might be too late, even quixotic, to rein in the present regime of outrageous transfer fees. Better to let it unravel, like all wildly-galloping schemes. Regulating imbalances in the salary structures of football clubs should be of more reasonable proposition. By this I don't mean salary caps, Lionel Messi could earn a million per week for all I care, but if Harry Kane is going to earn three hundred at Tottenham, as would undoubtedly happen one day, I see no reason why Son should not be earning two-fifty or why Eriksen should be going home with eighty. Alexis Sanchez certainly did not go to Manchester United for $140m but the mouth-watering salary he is going to earn may end up doing far greater, eye-watering damage. As matter of fact, most clubs, even those in the lower echelons of the Premier League, can afford to pay huge transfer fees now. Increasing revenue from broadcasting deals has seen to that. But such transfers also engender huge disparities in wages being earned by players and it is this imbalance that should be the focus of our concern. If I were Phil Jones, or Ander Herrera, or Anthony Martial, I would resent it a bit that Sanchez is earning such hefty money per week. Ozil's skills and contributions to Arsenal's victories are well-known but Bellerin's heart has crevices in which a sludge can naturally calcify that the disparity between his own wages and the $350k Ozil presently earns is not commensurate with the difference in values they add to the team.
My imagination might have been a bit on the effervescent but watching the Man U-Spurs match, it sort of occurred to me Sanchez would need a bit of  pandering to do to his teammates. He is a nice, affable guy, but when it comes to money, folks are far less accommodating.
Perhaps that's why Guardiola decided against taking him in. Perhaps Ronaldo's teammates in Madrid are beginning to feel the same way. Perhaps more Dembeles will still end up in Barcelona to effect a squad of players who believe what they are earning is not unjustifiably far behind that of Lionel Messi.
A team of grumpy players is a sulky team, not a silky team. Great performances can only come, at best, desultorily.
Apropos of things watering, grudges of fairness are one of human emotions that Russian master of salivation, Ivan Pavlov, must have understood too well. It would little harm Mourinho and Wenger to study a bit of human understanding.