The Sackman Wields the Axe Again.

The White House is full of revolving doors and President Donald Trump is the chief sackman. It is becoming increasingly difficult keeping pace with the number of subordinates that have resigned or have been fired from his administration. The other day it was Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State and it is the third National Security Adviser that we have on seat now. The latest is the US Veterans Affairs Secretary, David Shulkin and Shulkin did not hesitate to fire a parting salvo at his former boss,8 lamenting it should not be this hard to serve one's country. The Rasputin Coefficient measures the level of correlation between the values, beliefs and attitudes of a leader and the values, beliefs and attitudes of his subordinates. A positive correlation, good or bad, sees a high degree of match between the two sets while a negative correlation indicates a high level of dissonance. Hence Kissinger's diplomatic shuttles was an accurate reflection of Nixon's foreign policy mindset while Joe Biden would serve Obama like a faithful steed. When things become 'toxic, chaotic, disrespectful and subversive', as Shulkin has alleged, there is always a high incidence of leaders and aides working at cross purposes. Measuring the Trump administration Rasputin Coefficient was always going to be problematic. It is not all that a static index in the first place, dealing with human emotions, thoughts and passions, qualities that are always on the change and oh, how erratic is our president! This moment, he is threatening to wipe North Korea off the face of earth, the next he is eager to sit down with Kim Jong-un and have a little handshake across the table, if not across the Pacific. When your leader is unstable, voluble, projects the most coherent of his policies in tweets and is always shooting off the cuff, then it is always difficult determining where your minds meet. What made you buddies today might be your undoing tomorrow simply because your boss's thoughts had moved on. What gives you a positive Rasputin Correlation today might give you a negative one the very next moment. Mike Pompeo is the new diplomatic favorite, a hawkish necessity but nothing stops Trump from suddenly becoming dovish and Pompeo would be toast.
It is a win-win situation for Shulkin. We could see him as being fired because he is a stable, rational man who correlates poorly with the 'toxic, chaotic' Trump and if the reason given for his sack is true, an illegal acceptance of Wimbledon tickets, we can always excuse him of having the bad, positive correlation with his boss in the first place. As Trump's thoughts and opinions change, so will his relationship with his subordinates change and we will see the sackman wielding the axe again.

This Ghost Won't Go Away.

Yesterday, Brazil defeated Germany 1-0 in a friendly played in Berlin, Gabriel Jesus of Manchester City scoring the only goal of the encounter. Before the match, the Brazilian coach, Tite said the encounter would have a lot of psychological significance. A victory for Brazil would go some way in pushing back the ghost of the humiliating 7-1 defeat suffered by Brazil at the hands of Germany in the semifinals of the 2014 World Cup in Belo Horizonte. Right on Brazilian soil. It was terrible, and that is putting it mildly. Tite himself said that his wife started crying the moment the 5th goal went in. It was a collective national impulse. Even many people all over the world, one way or the other supporters of Brazilian football, could not resist joining the crying fray. There was the eerie felling a horrible destruction was going on on the field. Something great enduring was being torn to shreds.
But in truth, the real damage had been done after the 4th goal. It was the last straw that broke whatever the camel had left of its back. At 3-0 down, there was the poor hope, very poor hope, that stirring miracles had happened before in football from such hopeless situations. The fifth goal ruthlessly dispelled such faint stirrings. The agony was just unbearable for many. Some had desribed it as Brazil's darkest hour and it is very difficult disagreeing with that conclusion. It had been very few in the history of nations that a 29-minute capitulation threw a huge mass of the populace into a dark, wailing abyss which they could not climb out from for a very long time.
Hence the victory in the friendly match in Berlin that incidentally ended Germany' 23- match unbeaten run couldn't have come sweeter. It didn't matter that Mesut Ozil, one of the prime architects of what became known as the Horizonte Massacre, did not play. Any revenge in this regard would do.
But nothing is ever going to erase the memories of that notorious ghost. Like Hamlet father's ghost, it will always keep on coming back, no matter the revenge gained. Nothing will ever replace it. Some human and natural events are so unique, so peculiar, so stirring and striking that they cannot be repeated. Even if Brazil and Germany meet again in the next World Cup and there is a reversal of the 7-1 scoreline, the occurence might not elicit substantially more than a sense of deja vu. With a shrug. We've all seen that before, hadn't we? Brazil won the football gold at the Olympics, by defeating the same Germany but it will be the most amenable that will suggest they gained satisfaction from it over the 7-1 thrashing. France was to later emerge victorious, sort of, in the 2nd World War and even was to later occupy parts of Berlin but there was simply no erasing the pain and agony of Hilterite armies racing through France in the early stages of the war.
Few incidents in history can be compared to that defeat but not far from the mind is George Foreman's reverse against Muhammad Ali in the Rumble in the Jungle boxing contest in Zaire in 1974. Foreman was to become a very successful businessman and even later in life became the oldest heavyweight boxing champion in history by sensationally knocking out Michael Moorer but nothing would ever erase that defeat to Ali. Such events have such a powerful force of their own, such electricity, such magnetism that nothing will ever neutralize them. They insist on etching their memories alongside the stars in the sky.

President Trump's Scandal Credit is Huge.

Perhaps if Stephaine Clifford, alias Stormy Daniels,  had come out a bit earlier about her illicit relationship with President Donald Trump, the outcome of the 2016 presidential elections would have been less certain. Some have pointed out the sex was consensual. It does not make it any more tolerable, considering the fact that his wife, Melania Trump, was weaning a baby at the time and flesh grabbing on the sidelines in such a tender period smacks of hasty, egregious infidelity. At any rate, consensual or not, sex outside wedlock is strictly forbidden for the president of the most powerful country on earth, whether aspiring or in office. Senator Gary Hart was toast the very moment his affair with Donna Rice went public and gave free ride to Michael Dukakis in the 1988 Democratic nomination. President Bill Clinton escaped by the whiskers in his affair with Monica Lewinsky. It has also been reasoned that Trump's comments about groping women's sexual organs in the run-up to the presidential polls did not compel the electorate to reject him. True, very true, the horrific outbursts were even worse than sexual harassment, but an actual deed often carries greater weight in the mind of people. Stormy Daniels did not do her country a lot of favor by not coming out earlier with her expose, a duty that would have put the future president of the United States in clearer perspective.
Which brings us to the issue of women victims coming out in droves to speak about their experiences. The alleged Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby affairs have a common thread running through them: the abuses were serial. Carried out over a huge length of time on several victims. It is certainly gladdening that the victims are now coming out in droves with their humiliating experiences and similar testimonies have led to the downfall of seemingly important and responsible men in the society, such as the popular actor, Steven Seagal. The #MeToo hashtag campaign  has attracted millions of devotees but so many folks could have been spared excruciating agony and humiliation if the first victim had come out boldly about her experience the very moment it happened. Silence and inaction only serves to embolden such predators and, as it is, we have simply lost count of the plethora of women coming out to allege Weinstein.
Hence the thunder Stormy Daniels was expecting from her revelations has simply not happened. In fact, a lot of people now see her revelations as more of a business venture. If Trump did not sign the non-disclosure agreement in the first place, what ever prevented her from coming out with her revelations in 1916 when they would have constituted real political scandal. The hush $130,000 Michael Cohen, Trump's lawyer, paid her would have been simply sensational. As it is, her expose now sounds real limp, not really more than commercialized petty scandal And it is coming out at a time Trump's scandal credit has grown so huge. The disclosure that a goon approached her in a Las Vegas park in 2011 and threatened her to leave Trump alone will have to need back-up. We hope she has evidence, even a slim one of the encounter. Then the law will require her to satisfactorily link the thug to the president. Otherwise that aspect of her interview rather sound like a cheap thriller brought up to sex up the whole show, wow her audience and keep them queuing for more. Stormy Daniels is certainly going to gain more scheduled appearances and more folks will be visiting her $14 naked cam, all to great profit, but this is a scandal that is not going to pull Trump down. He has enough scandal credit to cover it. Because he is such an outlandish figure that any scandal, real or imagined, fits him like a second skin. Americans recognize the figure that they voted for and scandal isn't a strange fit on the persona.
Trump may come to grief yet from at least two other women accusers: the ex-playboy model, Karen McDougal who claims she had a consensual sex with Trump between 2006 and 2007 and a former contestant on Trump's reality show 'The Apprentice', Summer Zervos, who claimed the president sexually assaulted her at a Beverly Hills hotel in 2007. The various lawsuits instituted by these individuals may prove very, very damaging but for now, he could go on enjoying his bizarre presidency. And Stormy Daniels could storm on with her television shows. Basking in the limelight a bit will not do her glow any harm.

Putin isn't Strongman of the World.

Russia is a superpower, a country that has enormous human and technical resources to prove simply it wasn't behind the notorious poisoning of ex-Russian double agent, Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England. It has chosen not to, relying rather on verbal denials that nobody was going to believe. If Putin was going to wash his hands off the whole mess, he was going to need more than water, and he hasn't even held up a drop. Now even his most ardent supporters will need some convincing the Russian state wasn't behind this insanely stupid attempted murder.
And now, rightly so, Russia is being censured all over the world. Even President Trump has now joined the bandwagon of Russian bashing. Sixty Russian diplomats based in Washington and at the UN in New York have been expelled by the US and Putin should consider this remarkable, knowing he could always count on Trump as a faint ally, very few of which he has on earth. Indeed, Trump had chosen to tread a cautious line over the whole matter, refusing to blame Russia until more evidence had been provided. A lot of people felt the same way all over the earth, rationalizing that Putin and Russian intelligence were too smart to have embarked on such a stupid adventure. The Novichok group of nerve agents used in the attack could be so easily traced to Russia. This medium has even suggested a rogue scientist could have sold the formula to a rogue state or organization with an axe to grind against Russia. Putin and Russia itself has not done anything to encourage such skeptics and for Trump to have moved the way he did, it seems some materials very damaging to the image of the great nation of Russia is circulating somewhere in the labyrinths of international diplomacy.
The response is the same in Russia's backyard, Europe. Germany, France and Ukraine have also expelled Russian diplomats and countries like Latvia and Poland have summoned Russian ambassadors to their foreign ministries. According to them, in solidarity with British friends. A very natural thing to do. If such a brazen murder attempt could be carried out far away in Britain, only God knows what infernal plots could be incubated and hatched in these East European countries so close to Russia. But then there is something faintly grand about that line about solidarity. Ukraine has suffered enormously at the hands of Russia, what with the annexation of Crimea and the switching on and off of gas pipelines from Russia at will by GAZPROM. This is certainly an opportunity to kick some ass in return by Petro Poroshenko. It is a kick at a bully that the Ukrainian president should deservedly relish and which Putin and his Russia deserve for now. He might be liked by his subjects in Russia but Putin is not strongman of the whole world.

General Babangida and General Abacha: A 'Friendship' that Ruined Nigeria 2.

So Babangida started plotting against Buhari quite actively the very day the latter became head of state. And his projections about the new administration came to trenchant actualities. As he expected, Buhari left the affairs of state largely in the hands of Major General Tunde Idiagbon, Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters, effectively his deputy. Idiagbon was another stern, disciplined army officer who arrogantly believed Nigerians could be whipped in line in a day. But the civilian forces he was contending against were too numerous, too riotous, too stubborn and when the resistance became too intractable, it became necessary to resort to high-handed tactics. Newspapers were proscribed, journalists were jailed, unions banned and human rights abuses spiraled away. Nigerians welcomed Buhari with open arms but it didn't take long for the relationship to turn sour. In a disorganized country of 80m people with little or no civic orientation, few, very few, were ready to embrace regulated discipline. The domestic intelligence agency in those days was the National Security Organization(NSO) and overnight, its  director, Ambassador Rafindadi became a poster boy for repression and people started playing on General Idiagbon's name with that of Idi Amin Dada, Uganda's erstwhile murderous dictator. Buhari's subordinates could do all they liked knowing they would receive little or no censure from their master. It was often said Idiagbon was more powerful than the head of state himself.
All of which played into Babangida's hands. However, in order to supplant Buhari, he would have to rely on Abacha again. Abacha and Babangida were no friends. No two men could ever be so dissimilar. Babangida liked to pride himself as urbane, clever, learned and sophisticated while he regarded Abacha as dull, crude and too fond of women and drinks. On the other hand, Abacha took Babangida for a coward, a decadent sophist and a boastful buffoon. He knew Babangida's fabled intelligence to be of the dark type, one which he would use to plunge his country into political and economic disaster. Abacha relied on his sense and intuition, knowing he had more of this in his little finger than Babangida had in the whole of his brain. But if Babangida was to realize his burning ambition, become head of state, Abacha would be a necessary evil. Abacha, because of his ill-discipline and carousing lifestyle, had a huge following among officers in an army that was growing increasingly idle. He had prevailed on Babangida, who was chief of army staff, to install one of his sworn buddies, Brigadier Dongoyaro, as General Officer Commanding 2nd Mechanized Division, Ibadan, that army formation vital to the success of any coup plotter. Dongoyaro was to announce the demise of Buhari's administration on August 27,  1985. Then, in military and political calculations, the much-touted homogeneous north is in fact roughly split along Fulani and Hausa fault lines. The Buharis and the Yar'aduas belong to the Fulani group while Abacha then had the ears of the Hausa or Kano group. He was Kanuri, in far away Borno, but lived and grew up in Kano. Babangida was really an outsider, having come from Bida in far away southern margins of the north. Few Fulani officers would move against one of their own and it was imperative to garner support of the Hausa group, through General Sanni Abacha. Abacha was quite receptive to the removal of General Buhari  but he wasn't going to risk his life the second time for nothing. He too was interested in becoming head of state. He regarded himself as the Khallifa, or Successor. Kano was his adopted city, where the assassinated head of state, General Murtala Mohammed, also hailed from and there was the widespread feeling among civilian and military establishment in city that they had been shortchanged in the scheme of affairs and that they had been poorly compensated for the ill-fated regime of General Mohammed that was cut brutally short. In short, if he was going to spearhead another coup, he needed assurances he was going to get his just rewards.
Babangida said "No problem."
Abacha said he needed an assurance that looked more concrete that a verbal agreement.
Babangida then brought out a Koran and swore to the effect that whenever he was leaving power, Abacha would succeed him. That seemed to satisfy Abacha but he was no fool. He knew Babangida liked swearing falsely. Two events were to later bear him out. As the plot against him thickened, Buhari got wind of it and invited Babangida. "Ibro, I heard that you are plotting a coup against me." Babangida looked at him straight in the eye and flatly denied it and to reassure Buhari, had a Koran provided. On which he swore so volubly. The second was during the later stages of his incredibly tortuous political transition process. He had banned unbanned and banned again so many politicians that few, very few, believed the whole process had any credibility left. So when Chief M.K.O. Abiola was being persuaded to contest for president, he was naturally skeptical. So he went to Babangida who was supposed to be a great friend of his and asked if presidential vacancy truly existed in the whole political process that was looking worse than a charade every passing day. Babangida said yes and then brought out a Koran to cement the assurance.
So Abacha knew Babangida considered it fun taking the name of Allah in vain but he never betrayed a single emotion. He knew what he was going to do. He nodded and there and then, the fate of Nigeria was sealed. A horrific destination from which it was unable to free itself.
 

Between Parkland and France: Vigilance, not Rallies, is the Key(And a bit of heroism)

Across America, and elsewhere in the world, people are naturally rallying against violence in the society, especially mass murders perpetrated by gunmen. The events were precipitated by by the Parkland school mass shooting in which 17 young, innocent and fantastic lives were lost and since then several measures have been put in place to prevent a future recurrence. The state of Florida has raise the age at which people are legally allowed to possess weapons and President Trump is seriously, for once, mulling the banning of bump stocks, devices that enable semi-automatic guns to be converted to far deadlier assault weapons.
Heinous gunmen like Nikolas Cruz are pretty on our minds now but to underscore the overall danger our societies increasingly face, terrorists struck again in France yesterday, a lone gunman wreaking havoc in the south of France. By the time the Islamist gunman, Redouane Lakdim, was shot dead in a supermarket, another three innocent souls had been lost. A police officer was to later die of injuries sustained in the whole sordid ordeal.
The focus is now on guns but, as the events in France have shown, eventually our attention will have to eventually settle on people, on ourselves. Controlling gun possession is not the ultimate solution, and in this, the National Rifle Association is right. France do not have a gun culture as we have in America but it did not prevent terrorists from obtaining weapons and killing people in scores. A determined mass murderer will always obtain his weapons. Imagine a boy who had just dropped his sister at school coming back home, delving into his cache of arms and then embarking on a shooting spree. It was an act a more vigilant mother could have stopped. Or a more observant sister or sibling. This may sound a bit awkward but the duty of protecting our own societies will ultimately have to fall on us. Perhaps those two fantastic individuals who tried to alert the police and the FBI about Nikolas Cruz realized this. But, in truth, if the security agencies are not being negligent as in the case of the Florida school shooting, several other factors exist that will make it difficult to stop a felon intent on terror. Redouane was well known to the authorities in France but the country, as in most advanced western societies, are hampered by the liberal values they hold. In essence, such countries are eventually victims of their own sophistication. The contest soon ensues between giving up these values and making the most of the security difficulties entailed in retaining them. It is the uncertainties that naturally crop up in the contest that terrorists ruthlessly exploit. Laws in France, Belgium and other western societies go to elaborate lengths to protect the basic rights of their citizens. It is easy for those not acquainted with such societies to think such standards, tenets that really form the foundations of  those countries, to be laced with too much saccharine. Why guarantee the rights of a potential terrorist when he in fact has sold the same rights to the Islamic State? But it is really a vital ingredient of their culture and security agents have to live with the hindrances they portend.
But even if the police are always alive to their duties and the laws could be tweaked to stymie the rights of a budding terrorist, the facts remain that western societies are always very large, very sophisticated. Security agents are always going to be stretched and real duties of protecting our societies from mass murderers and societies will have to fall on mothers, grandmothers, sisters, siblings, friends, acquaintances and so on.
And if we are lucky, on brave and intrepid folks who are the antithesis of Deputy Sheriff Scot Petersen, Resource Officer at the M.S. Douglas High School, who had all the reason on earth to intervene while the shooting was going on but did nothing and went home. Folks like the French police officer, Arnaud Beltrame, who was sorely responsible for limiting the damage the Islamist terrorist could have wreaked yesterday. He was more than just a hero. He was obviously that, by taking all the risks he took. But foremost, he was a thorough gentleman. By agreeing to swap himself for the woman held by the gunman, a lady in distress, he has observed all the rules of gentlemanly chivalry. President Emmanuel Macron could have added more when hailing him a hero.

General Babangida and General Abacha: A 'Friendship' that Ruined Nigeria 1.

By late morning on February 13, 1976, Col. Buka Dimkah and his co-conspirators had succeeded in assassinating the head of state, General Ramat Mohammed, and in capturing the national radio station where he made his infamous broadcast of imposing a dawn to dusk curfew. It was as far as he got. Loyal troops rallied quickly and it was left to Col. Ibrahim Babangida to persuade him the game was up. And at the same time, carry out a bit of reconnaissance. Considering the heat of the moment, it was a task that would require tremendous bravery, even foolhardiness. Babangida went and instantly catapulted himself into national fame. And power. Overnight, a mid-level officer started dining and wining with the head of state himself, and other powers that be. Pictures would later emerge of Babangida playing checkers with General Olusegun Obasanjo and General Theophilus Danjuma, head of state and chief of army staff respectively, the two most powerful men in Nigeria at that time.
The taste of power would never leave his mouth and as early as 1981, was himself already plotting the overthrow of President Shehu Shagari, the civilian regime that supplanted the military regime of General Obasanjo in 1979. He had enjoyed the trappings of power and had evidently seen that those who were his superiors in the military regime he helped sustain were not better than him intellectually and morally. Which was a grave indictment of the superiors because Babangida's moral quotient was abysmally low and the intelligence he often prided himself on bordered mostly on the charms of a confidence trickster. As he himself unwittingly confessed, comparing himself to Diego Maradona, the great footballer whose celebrated dribbling skills must have inspired the general in weaving intricate and outlandish political, economic and social twists and turns around hapless Nigerians while he held sway as president. The goodwill, if there was any, that Shagari enjoyed on coming to power barely lasted three months. His administration was horribly effete, dominated by incredibly venal subordinates who were far more powerful than he was. But corruption wasn't the only evil of his regime. In 1982, he orchestrated the massacre of hundreds of his own kinsmen in Bakolori, Sokoto State, poor folks protesting the confiscation of their farming lands for a dam project without being paid adequate compensation. The army moved in and mowed down hundreds in what would later become known as the Bakolori Massacre. The 1983 national elections, the only one his regime would superintend easily became the last straw that broke his back. These were so rigged that ballot boxes and papers were being hawked in the open streets and the outrage and violence that greeted the polls was the coup de grace Babangida needed to stage his own coup. Helped ironically by the sheer cowardice Shagari himself displayed in refusing to disengage him from the army, having been warned several times, by all and sundry, that if his regime was to last, Babangida held the key to that longevity. Babangida had acquired tremendous wealth in the defunct military regime and in the intervening years had bribed and corrupted many a military officer: buying for them luxurious vacations, building houses for them, sponsoring children's education abroad. He stuck out as a dangerous sore thumb to the civilian regime and the fact that nobody deemed it expedient to move against him was a sordid testament to Shagari's overall weakness.
Nobody was going to shed tears, sincere or crocodile, if Shagari was removed but then Babangida would still have to need troops and several other officers and the officer that mattered most was Brigadier Sanni Abacha, General Officer Commanding 2nd Mechanized Division, Ibadan, a formation that had under its command all the army formations in Lagos, the seat of power. Apart from being a fearless army officer, Abacha himself had a large following in the army. A lifestyle dominated by women and beer had ensured he was not without a plethora of buddies that he could count on at any time. Abacha himself was to announce the overthrow of Shagari's regime in 1983.
Babangida later claimed in an interview that in a meeting of senior officers convened to choose a successor to Shagari, most of those present tried to prevail on him to accept the post but that he declined out of altruism, or whatever he attributed to his decision. He had his own loyalists, no doubt, but General Muhammadu Buhari was the obvious choice. Like Shagari, he was a Fulani and it would be of less consternation to the Hausa-Fulani power base if a Fulani man overthrew another Fulani. Babangida was not even technically Hausa, his origins being farther south in Bida, Niger State. Then there was the resolute stance of General Mamman Vatsa who was Babangida's friend and knew him very well. Mamman stood up, he was a poet, and in trenchant eloquence, harangued his fellow officers that if they were removing Shagari as a result of corruption and inefficiency, it made sense that the efficient, spartan and incorrigible Buhari should supplant him. Mamman was to be later executed by Babangida for plotting against him when he would eventually become head of state. That would be about four years later and General Domkat Bali, a top member of the Armed Forces Ruling Council that confirmed Vatsa's death sentence, had admitted that the evidence they relied upon to nail him was weak, in reality, the seeds of his death was sowed in that meeting that chose a successor to Shagari. Babangida was not happy about his snub. He had plotted, organized and financed the coup and it must have necessarily riled him to be denied his just rewards but there was little he could really do. He quietly swallowed his bile and decided to wait for another chance.
Which he knew would certainly present itself. And he was emboldened in his expectations by his intimate knowledge of Buhari. He knew that Buhari would never succeed in a country gone to dogs like Nigeria. He knew Buhari was disciplined and incorrigible, traits that made him the archetypal army officer, but he also knew him to be a poor administrator. Buhari was a 'civil service' army officer. In administration, he could be counted upon to leave tasks, even important one that demanded personal attention, to subordinates. He would leave tasks and instructions to subordinates and expect them to carry out their performance to the letter. With the civil service Nigeria has, that was going to be a recipe for disaster. In many instances would he be unaware of what was going on in his own administration. The qualities that made Buhari a splendid officer were going to be grossly inadequate as the head of state. Babangida started plotting against Buhari the very day Buhari became head of state.
  

Weistein Files for Extiction, not Bankruptcy.

Certainly, the Weinstein Company would not be filing for bankruptcy now if one of its founders, Harvey Weinstein, had realized that the true worth of women lies not in the sexual services they could perform but in their natural grace and beauty and their overwhelming efficiency, effectiveness and capability, a very tiny fraction of which we see in their splendidly organized homemaking.Sex, even consensual sex, and the workplace is a link that is poorly appealing and in the case of Mr Weinstein, it was specially foul as the sex he sought, if the plethora of allegations against him are to be believed, was of the coercive type: rape, sexual harassment and sexual intimidation. All compounded by serial attempts to award favors for sex. Only God knows how many careers he had ruined of women who decided to follow their natural inclination and stood against his sexual bullying.
He has deservedly fallen from high grace to very low grass. With a lot of good coming from his downfall. It had triggered the #MeToo hashtag campaign and encouraged many women who have been victims of sexual bullying to come out and speak about their experiences. And in the process, many powerful men have come to their disgrace, now wallowing in the cesspool of opprobrium.
Such fate naturally befall those who choose bestial lust over grace and honor. Harvey and his ilk should have realized women, especially in Hollywood, were a gold mine and not objects of predatory sexual instincts. His disgrace started in October 2017 and by the end of that year, three of the highest grossing films in Hollywood were enterprises heralded by women. The spectacular performances of Emma Watson's Beauty and the Beast, Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman and Daisy Ridley's The Last Jedi in the box office should serve as pepper in the eyes of the likes of Harvey Weinstein. Women can easily outperform males in acting, and in several other enterprises, and old stereotypes must necessarily be consigned to the dustbin. The Black Panther has been very successful but it is not all that difficult to predict that most of the most successful films in 2018 will be those in which women play leading roles. In a pleasantly perverse way, the Weinstein Effect has opened our eyes to the huge potentials women possess and film-making being a business very compliant with the wishes of customers, execs in Hollywood studios will simply give the people what they want. And that will automatically settle the controversy about pay disparity between actors and actresses, male and female performers. It was all nonsense anyway. Male and female singers get their rewards not according to gender but according to ability and crowd-pulling. Acting should not be an altogether different kettle of fish. Eventually the same system of remuneration will spread to football and even soccer, giving us more of the even world we all desire.
If Harvey had followed his business instincts and not his loins, gave huge roles to women, capable women able to deliver performances, perhaps his company's coffers would be overflowing with cash now. Money that could be used or utilized for worthier causes such as charity. As it is, the only valuable thing left of his company is the removal of non-disclosure clauses. Conditions of engagement that has been serially abused by all and sundry and under which many men have hidden to perform execrably notorious acts of sexual intimidation. Hopefully, other companies will follow suit  

Putin: Russia's Strange Love for Tyrants.

One of the most recurring charades and characters in international politics has just played itself out; for the umpteenth time. The revolving wheel of tomfoolery has come full cycle again with the arrow pointing to Vladimir Putin as the president of Russia for the next six years. For as long as one could remember now, if he was powerful president, the hapless Roy Medvedev  would be puppet prime minister and in a most macabre exchange you could find anywhere, in another round of selections we call elections out of pure courtesy, Medvedev would switch to puppet president and Putin would be powerful prime minister. Dictatorship could be very outlandish at times and nowhere is it more bizarre than in present Russia.
A very predictable oddity. Opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, the only candidate who could have given him a good contest was barred from the polls on trumped up charges by a kangaroo court, leaving the field for a curious posse of contestants that included a reality TV star, Russia's pathetic version of President Trump, and that most pathetic of all comedians, the old, rable-rousing Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Only one outcome could be reasonably expected: a landslide that was going to bury Russia's and Putin's credibility. If only credibility still mattered. Instead of the brute, bare-faced power that now commands respect.
So Putin has another six years, at least, to gloat over his annexation of Crimea and continue with the bullying of near and far neighbors which include Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic states and independent states that formerly made up the Soviet Union. He has already dismembered Georgia and could at will send crude, unrefined exterminators to murder or poison opposition activists and enemies abroad. Putin's authoritarian excesses stretch far and wide.
Whenever he mentions his grandfather was chef to that most heinous of all dictators, Josef Stalin, you could feel undercurrents of pride in his voice. It shows those that he admired. He seems to tell us that nothing has really changed in the Kremlin and that he would be too happy to carry on the tradition of repression and serfdom and Tsarist conquests. That is Putin is a continuation of bad news to neighbors far and near.
But of certain good news to Russians themselves, the folks that tolerate him, adore him and prop him up. Strange folks who seem to thrive very well under tyrants. Check out the list: Ivan the Terrible, Catherine the Great, Peter the Great, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev and Vladimir Putin. Someone once said there is no Russia without her tyrants. It is difficult arguing with that postulation in the light of present events. Russians will rather take the poetry and folklore that their tyrants give them than raise a whimper under these conditions of brazen assault on democracy.
Could you blame them? Even those enamored of democracy, if not congratulating him, are accepting whatever is coming out of the sham elections with numbed resignation. They could do better. Russia is a member of the UN Security Council, a veto-wielding nation and the least that is expected of the international community is insistence on greater transparency in the selection of who leads such an important place. Gary Kasparov, the great chess champion, has said it all, admonishing democracies now warming up to Putin over the elections that their behavior is a salient commentary on their own democracies. You cannot dine with the devil and not get something stuck in your teeth.
It could start from the US but nobody is expecting much from Donald Trump. His most coherent foreign policies are on his tongue and it is often that that piece of equipment gets stuck to his cheeks, He would get something into his tweets but it would be so ambiguous that the murky investigations into alleged Russian meddling in his election would seem clearer in comparison. Right now, Putin has no opposition, both at home and abroad.

Stephen Hawking: A Strong Case for the Soul.

If the soul does not exist, at least Stephen Hawking does. Poor body! Trapped in a wheelchair, even a finger unable to move. Unable to speak, what went on in his mind only available to us through a voice synthesizer.
Splendid mind, oh, soaring soul! One of the greatest scientists that ever lived and did not live by great equations alone but made the the bare essentials very rich indeed. Turned ponderous facts of our universe into such coruscating thrillers that it was wish of everyone that read him to soar above the stars. Where he really belonged. Above the stars and to the farthest reaches of our universe. Our expanding universe. Where the margins of the continuously expanding universe was at any moment, Stephen Hawking could be counted on to be there.
His death had always been exaggerated. Given a couple of months to live, he got to be 76. But that was where the greater exaggeration cropped up. His corporeal body might have gone but it was the mind and soul that we really celebrated, not the wasted body It was an essence that would forever live on. His physical body died a long time ago but his mind had won a very high place among the immortals. As someone said of Roosevelt, and which I can only recreate very poorly here, it seemed as if all energy and vitality drained away from his damaged body into a skull that soon overflowed with incredible intelligence and perception.
So we have no demise to celebrate. Not even a life. But the knowledge that man can reach far above himself. Far beyond where his body can lift him.

A VERSE FOR STEPHEN HAWKING

The zest of walking has ebbed from his legs

And from his hands the grasp of holding, pointing

But as little rivers the headlands of the mighty one

So has all vitality of his life surged into a pool

So vast

Its waves knock on the farthest banks of the farthest worlds

If I could count all the stars in the bright, bright sky

If I could read their omens, configure their alignments

I would still be blind indeed

A poor seer in the light he hawks

He is a revelation that reveals all

Opens our eyes with a single blink of his own

He points to us the farthest earths

Without lifting a finger

He wears not a hat, but plucks out hidden stars

With the magic of his being

He strides through the wide, wide world

Without a step of his still, silent limbs

All treasures of earth I would gladly give up

But worship not: watch him, watch him

Seek not the holy chariot to divine

Heavens beckon in the beacon of his brain.

Rex Tillerson: Serving God and Mammnon.

The oil industry where Rex Tillerson made his mark was a fairly certain arena. The newly-drilled oil-well is guaranteed to produce; new technology was going to make shale oil commercially available and the shady atmosphere enveloping Nigerian oil was always going to get cruder and darker. Only instability in the prices of oil was going to be of much challenge but that too wasn't exactly rocket science and for a man who had risen to the top echelons of his calling, he could be counted on safely to handle that. In short, the world he was familiar with was stable, rational, fairly predictable: always within his grasp. It was a place of gentlemen and handshakes.
So, it must have been a shock to him when he decided to switch jobs and throw himself into politics. Politics is a calling rough enough and American politics is a particularly toxic variant. It wasn't an arena for gentlemen, handshakes being very, very rare and fists in ample display and use and nobody was going to pull punches. And the most combative of the pugilists was the man he was going to serve as Secretary of State, President Donald Trump, a boxer who was going to play very unfairly, not hesitating a moment to punch below the belt. And the most volatile part of American politics would certainly be found in the State Department, in foreign policy. There he would have to deal with players even worse than his master. A place as stable as earthquake-engendered tsunami. An arena where the appalling Rohingya crisis could break out at any time, where Russian hackers and exterminators were going to cause trouble at any time. An arena filled with irrational souls as Mugabe, Kim Jong-un. A theater savaged by unpredictability such as the North Korean rascal making a volte-face and proposing talks with the US all of a sudden. Moments defined by not only not knowing when the next nuclear test will take place but also not knowing whether the missile was flying towards Hawaii, or flying over Japanese mainland or was going to end up shortly in the Pacific Ocean. Torrid moments of terrorists freshly abducting schoolgirls in Nigeria. Intolerable situations in which Turkey, a NATO ally would attack  Syrian Kurds, America's staunchest allies in the Middle East, and both the president and his top diplomat would be tongue tied. Tillerson was stepping into an insane world he was never prepared for, both by training and temperament.
A world that was perfect fit for his master, by temperament. Tillerson was supposed to be America's face to the outside world but it was an America that that gone Trump, a guy who was as brash and unpredictable and unrestrained as his worst adversaries in the diplomatic boxing ring. A chap whose remarks are often off cuff and whose most coherent foreign policies could be found only on his lips and tweets. It was eerily difficult imagining Tillerson as Trump's Secretary of   State. The Rasputin Coefficient was horribly non-correlative. Tillerson, in Trump administration, was practically serving God and Mammon at the same time.
Hence he would think the Iranian deal to be reasonable while Trump would savage it as nonsense. He would lay into Russia over the Salisbury spy poisoning while his president would be uncharacteristically taciturn and quiet all of a sudden. You would think that if the president was going to accept talks with North Korea, he would consult his secretary first. A dove, so to say, wasn't going to serve a hawk. Tillerson was more studied, careful, restrained than he was a pacifist but he wasn't going to do well in a regime stuffed with hardliners and of which head was a sheriff likely to shoot first before asking questions later.
Trump admitted he didn't agree with Tillerson on most issues. Sacking him behind his back was his most poignant testament to that disagreement.   

The War That Came in From the Cold.

It is just appropriate, very appropriate, that the poison used in the attempted murder of former Russian double agent, Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, Wiltshire, England, was a nerve agent belonging to the Novichok group. It seems the cold war has been resurrected  from its very cold grave. And with it the old, thunderous, East-West spy fiction. James Bond, Len Deighton, Frederick Forsyth, Jeffrey Archer, John Le Carre... Check the name alone, Novichok, translated from Russian as newcomer. Only it wasn't a newcomer, the incredibly lethal chemical weapon having been manufactured by the old Soviet Union in the 70s and 80s. The same way there wasn't much pussy galore in Pussy Galore.
Honestly, it is difficult to tell at the beginning this wasn't fiction. A Russian double agent, a former double agent is the candidate for an extermination plot. We can still go along with the fact that the motive, or lack of it, simply makes the plot a very curious one. Sergei Skripal had been arrested and imprisoned by Russia for his treachery, had come to London as a result of a cold-war-style prisoner swap and has been living in his adopted country for a fairly long time without incident, save for the death of his son and wife. Deaths suspicion must now necessarily revisit. The common consensus is that he is no longer a valuable asset in the esoteric spy business. He no longer did active work for British intelligence and the access he had to secrets in Russia had long been blocked with his arrest. So why would Russia want to kill him? Why didn't they just execute him in the first place, when anger and outrage was still hot? Why now when his malfeasance has grown so forgotten and,  in fact, few remember him? Since it is fiction, we can still live with that and assume that the motive will reveal itself on later pages. We now move to the execution of the plot and this is where fiction, except extremely bad fiction, begins to fall apart. Fiction with its  smooth, seamless plots. It begins to crumble and hues of reality, cold, hard reality with its tangled contrivances begin to set in with its natural sloppiness. Even an amateur can see instantly that the execution of the plot is insanely sloppy. Why use an agent that could be so easily traced to Russia, a rare nerve gas that had Russia's signature sprawled all over it? Even more traceable than radioactive polonium, the agent used in the murder of Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko. Polonium, discovered  by the famous Marie Currie and named after her native Poland. Lethal it was but in all likelihood, it would have to be used in the open, air interference an issue, and there was simply no guarantee it would kill father and daughter at the same time. Even a rookie assassin would have done a better job. A murderer had left a trail of clues so wide and bright the great Sherlock Holmes or Hercules Poirot would have retired instantly.
All fingers now point at Russia. And even if this were a red herring contrived to embarrass Putin, Russia would still have a lot of explanation to do as to why such a deadly arsenal slipped out of its fingers.  But, in all reality, events emanating from the Skrikpal Affair are in the realm of conjectures and probabilities and it wouldn't do any harm to inject one now. Chemical agents have formulas, well-known to the designers. They are therefore not all that difficult to replicate. Former Soviet scientists have not been well treated and, in fact, some have shifted allegiance to other countries after the break-up of the Soviet Union. What if a determined plotter is able to buy a formula from a pressed or disgruntled scientist? At least one of these countries has an axe, serious axe, to grind with Russia. What if this sordid affair emanated from such a place? We are not mentioning names, just unleashing the amateur detective instincts that all of us possess.
Nobody is exonerating Russia here. At least until the facts are fully unraveled. Indeed someone has suggested that Russia intelligence might be sending warnings to would-be traitors that perfidious undertakings have serious consequences and that no betrayer will be allowed to enjoy the fruits of his exertions, whether in the long or short run.
That would be a very silly thing to do. The opprobrium such acts will attract far outweighs whatever the intended benefits of security. Benefits that could be secured with less money and effort and image damage by plugging the loopholes traitors exploit. The image of Mother Russia has suffered enough with the annexation of Crimea and notorious, worldwide, activities of Russian hackers and it will hardly improve with the grotesque knowledge and imagination of coarse Russian agents sneaking into the UK, hiring cars and smuggling chemical weapons all the way to Salisbury. Just imagine the MI6 carrying out similar plots on British traitors in Moscow!
The whole affair has been a very poor plot and an even poorer execution, stuff of very, very cheap fiction, and if it indeed finally emerges that it originated in Moscow, it would not only cast Putin into serious infamy but would also go a long way in reinforcing the image of Russian agents in cold war spy fictions as brutal, unthinking, muscular spies.

Black Panther: Hollywood is the Winner.

Were it not for the exertions of the producer, Fred Weintraub, one of the greatest, some say the greatest,  martial arts films of all time would never have been made. Or maybe would have been made in an obscure corner of Hong Kong, certainly without the financial and commercial power of Warner Bros behind it. And it would have taken cinematic martial arts a long, long time to emerge from the narrow alleys of Hong Kong. And Bruce Lee would never have become the global figure and icon he became: restricted only to the oriental fame that he gained with his roles in previous films such as 'The Big Boss'.
You wouldn't blame Warner Bros in being reluctant to listen to Weintraub. Omar Sharif had delivered big in Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago but such success stories were few and far in between. Perhaps for the first time, studio supremos were being asked to cast not only a non-white, non-Caucasian male in the leading role of a major movie, but a Chinese as well. Bruce Lee had made his breakthrough in Asia but even though he was an American, the stardom to break into mainstream Hollywood hadn't yet arrived and his Mongoloid features were certainly going to work against him. Of the cast, only John Saxon and Robert Wall fit into leading acting stereotypes of the white, Caucasian male. Jim Kelly was black even though the role of Williams was not meant for him in the first instance. It wasn't racism, Warner Bros was a business venture and were merely following the first strict rule of entertainment: 'Give your viewers what they want.' It was perhaps a measure of the strength of the studio execs' skepticism that the film was first released in Hong Hong and not the United States. If it was going to succeed, it was going to need some special, convincing performance, goods which Lee and co effortlessly delivered.
In the intervening years, the Sean Connerys,  the Schwarzennegers,  the Travoltas were to rule the box offices but perceptions were changing and demography even faster. The internet had turned the world into a truly global village and from India to China, non-Americans were increasingly having a bigger say in what to be viewed and what to be produced. It was therefore not surprising, the rise of the Jet Lees and Jackie Chans. Soon, blacks like Will Smith, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, Samuel L. Jackson were being cast into leading roles and promptly delivering blockbusters.
From Dwayne Johnson, the next step, huge step would inevitably be Black Panther. Cinema having been seen not to regress with blacks in leading roles, having been seen to rather attract viewers in droves with black frontmen, it was inevitable that a movie featuring mostly a black cast will be the next star in the firmament. Black Panther has all confirmed that  and there is no doubt more of it will be trending in the future. And you can bet it wouldn't only be spin-offs. We would be happily seeing more of Chadwick Boseman and Lupita Nyong'o and co-travelers in casts that would not need acting stereotypes to be forced into it in order to sell or projected to do well. And as usual, it will still be good business for the big studios. Give the people, the viewers what they want. It is now a much varied world.

Fury of the Fans: West Ham is just the Beginning.

According to his own testimony, Mr Slaven Bilic, former manager of West Ham Football Club, sometimes after he was sacked as manager of the club, perhaps compelled by hurtful soul-searching, decided to place calls to some of his former players, inquiring about what he could have done to avoid the fate that befell him. It isn't a pleasant fate, being sacked from a workplace, and few places are as alluring and glamorous as a sports club, especially a football club. Especially a Premier League club. Nobody cares about the manager that produces his Coca-Cola, or his Mercedes or his Louis Vuitton handbag but all eyes are on Cristiano Ronaldo who manufactures the football the fans gush over on the football field: and Zinedin Zidane, the manager that designs the manufacture. And nowhere is sports scrutiny more intense than the Premier League, an arena filled with money, noise and hype. And emotions and passions so combustible they explode at the slightest ignition. Therein success could be so sweet and rewarding and, moving to the other end of the spectrum, failure that inevitably leads to a sack could be very bitter, painful. Especially for a coach who was certain he had put in a load of credible shift.
The unanimous reply Bilic got from his own former players is as shocking as it is telling: simply, he was not hard enough on them.
In other words, the modern-day football player no longer derive joy and elan from a sport that pays him obscene sums of money, that gives him instant world-wide fame, that helps secure his future. After collecting a fat pay packet every week, he still expects to be whipped in line to do his job. Like an expensive Bugatti that has stalled all of a sudden, he expects to be pushed before he starts.
Take a look at Paul Pogba, sometimes a world record holder not in terms of performance but in terms of the fees paid for his services. Ever since his arrival at Manchester United his services and performances have taken back seat to a whole tranche of issues dominated by speculations and counter denials, searing rumors and conjectures. Now his not being on the field seems more valuable than being on it.
Or Mesut Ozil, a gifted footballer who switches on and off at will. Plays sumptuous football when there is a fat contract to be signed and then slumps to the lowest depths of abysmal football immediately after putting pen to paper. But, be as it may, the Premier League is filled with fantastic performers who take enormous pride in the jersey that they wear and work their socks off to defend the honor of their club. Take the Brazilian Kennedy for example, a role model who decided to jettison the glamor and riches of Chelsea to jump at the chance to play regular football and whose heart-warming performances is one of the major reasons Newcastle is inching gradually towards safety. He is a fantastic example, quite in contrast to the off and on pitch body language we've been seeing at Arsenal, West Ham, West Brom of late.
Happily, West Ham players have gotten their wishes, the push they wish for provided by their own fans yesterday. The manager, David Moyes, was of the opinion the fans crossed literary and figurative lines by invading the pitch to protest their players' dreary performance. Sir Trevor Brooking, an ex-striker of the club echoed similar lines when he said the six home games due to the club before the Burnley game presented an opportunity that is now is in serious jeopardy. Both gentlemen are seriously out of tune with the realities of the modern game. Soccer is a game of passion and emotion, a combustible mix likely to boil over at any time, a game meant for the horde and not gentlemen for whom its rules are obviously drawn for. Everywhere, not England alone. It is telling that a little after the West Ham brouhaha, a similar scenario erupted in France where fans of Lille also invaded the pitch and aimed kicks at their own players after a below par league game. Brooking should have kept his opinions to himself. If you have six home games and you are losing the first of such like that, what assurance have you got that the rest will not go the same way? The rest can as well be moved to the doldrums. Burnley is a decent club and Sean Dyche has done a fantastic job on the players, but West Ham is a massive club, one of the biggest in the world and the fans were not going to take it lightly that the players were not losing to Burnley but have put themselves in a position where losing to Burnley would jar to no end. The defeat was therefore not the iceberg, but the tip of the iceberg that tore huge gashes in the hull of the fierce West Ham pride.
Another pitch invasion will happen, probably at West Brom. Another owner is going to have a coin thrown at him soon, a symbolic gesture towards the Shylocks in football. By fans who are the real owners of such enterprises.

Maybe Kim Jong-un's Sister is the Miracle Worker.

On the night of October 27, 1962, the then Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev  was close, perilously close to a nuclear holocaust. Or he could have been well several hours into it were it not for the restraint of a Soviet naval officer aboard a submarine. Earlier, US forces had dropped depth charges on the submarine and the standard operational response from the warship was to fire nuclear-tipped torpedoes, a move that would have likely triggered a nuclear confrontation. However, all the three officers aboard would have to agree to the retaliation. It was the restraint of Vasili Arkhipov on submarine B59 that saved the world from nuclear annihilation. Still, on the night of the 27th, the Cuban Missile Crisis was far from being resolved and Khrushchev must have sat in a very quiet corner of the Kremlin, mind wrapped in trenchant introspection, a lot of 'what is the point?' going on in his mind.
What is the point of putting the vast, almighty Soviet Union on the firing line for the sake of tiny Cuba thousands of miles away? What is the point of placing nuclear missiles in Cuba when a single Intercontinental Ballistic Missile(ICBM) launched from Russia can equally make the same statement? A lot has been said about the strategic ICBM superiority of the US over that of Russia in that period but placing medium and intermediate-range missiles in Cuba was not really going to bridge the gap overnight. What's the point of the whole crisis? And that train of reflection, perhaps aided by the sight of his young son nearby, must have engendered the biggest of them all. What is the point of building nuclear weapons?
Perhaps North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un had experienced the same epiphany of recent. He has just agreed to hold presidential-level talks with the US, a move a lot of folks now regard as a miracle, and which a greater number now attribute to the huge sanctions imposed on the pariah state by the international community in wake of well-publicized nuclear tests by Kim. In international politics, emphasis is mostly placed on cold, biting calculations. Hardly is there a place for emotions. It might be as well but there is really no hard evidence to suggest that Kim's sudden change of heart, if it is real, was triggered by sanctions. The sanctions have been biting, no doubt, especially with the active cooperation of China, North Korea biggest trading partner, in making them effective but stiffer sanctions had been imposed on Iraq, Iran, Liberia, on many brutal regimes, and there is no single instance in which a positive correlation has been safely recorded between pressure and capitulation. In fact, the US had to move in troops on Iraq and the West African peace-keeping force, ECOMOG, had to go into Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Gambia when it became clear tough sanctions imposed were not working. It is very simple to see. No matter how devastating the sanctions are, some resources will still have to flow in and the brutal dictator only has to appropriate most of these for his cronies and repressive forces for him to continue in power, the sufferings of his people not mattering a jot. Many commentators point to Iran but the sanctions were a diversion for leaders who were increasingly grappling with a young population with whom Great Satan rhetorics were not going to resonate much and who were equally going to be disenchanted with their country's involvement in costly foreign wars. At any rate, Iranian clerics must have come too to the inevitable question: 'What's exactly the point in acquiring nuclear weapons?" Weapons nobody, even a madman, is not likely to fire. The destruction a single one can wreak is so mind-boggling that it even weighs down the hand. Khrushchev's son himself said that his father cut a very forlorn subject on the night of October 27, 1962, clearly unwilling to go down in history as the first person to start a nuclear war. By the following morning, his mind was made up. In fact, he had to accept the terms put forward by President Kennedy for ending the stalemate without consulting the Politburo, the highest decision-making body in the Soviet Union at that time. The capitulation was a severe humiliation for the USSR and was later to pave way for Khrushchev fall from power two years after. He was never a fan of nuclear weapons again and if he had stayed in power longer, there was credible likelihood he would have actively sought their complete elimination. Weapons he had spent billions producing.
Hence there are feelings, emotions, attached to nuclear weapons many of us are not conversant with but which those who produce or control them are too well aware of. The tough, thuggish, Khrushchev was not immune to them and there is no reason to believe the bad Kim Jong-un will be too. Perhaps the guy realized that he was to fear the unreliable, unpredictable Donald Trump more than the American president was to fear him. His own sister, Kim Yo-Jong has been prominent of late and the lady might have had a calming influence on him. And for those enamored of cold, hard calculations, what stops him from coming to the futility of putting all his aces in a couple of nuclear weapons most of which American anti-ballistic missiles are likely to intercept anywhere. The US has thousands of more sophisticated, more reliable ones, five of which can obliterate the whole of North Korea in a couple of minutes.
Still on cold, hard facts, which nobody has exempted Kim from deducing, he and his sister could have stood side by side gazing south of the border, envying the incredible luxury (luxury she was well-acquainted with in her recent visit to South Korea during the Winter Olympics) their kith and kin are living in. Without manufacturing nuclear weapons. Goods that nobody is going to use or use without a single benefit. Goods that invariably constitute a drainpipe.
Goods worse than grasses the often tactless Putin claimed the North Koreans would rather eat than give up nukes. Castro and the Cubans came to the inevitable conclusion they could not go on feeding for ever on sugar cane, another form of grass, so to say. Kim and his sister might have realized that they and their suffering citizens might do better by investing lean resources on pizza or chicken or bread or pills. And not on nuclear weapons America and Russia keep on manufacturing in thousands. And keep on dismantling in thousands.   

Between Hitler and Merkel: Women Reign over Peace and Grace.

Today is the International Women's Day.
If you believe in providence, then the obvious place to be or refer to in order to underline your faith is Germany. Hitler envisaged a supreme Germany, a nation that would be master over any other nation on earth, a state before which every other state must tremble, and then set to actualize his vision by building a mammoth army, manufacturing state-of-the art weapons and then underlining his resolve with a frightening philosophy in which racism was the chief creed. Aryans were the superheroes and every other race was subhuman. He did not mince words. He was going to exterminate all Jews on earth. He held nothing back too in launching a devastating war in which millions perished and whole cities were flattened in his quest to achieve greatness for Germany. A political continuum, the Third Reich, which he heralded, was supposed to rule for a thousand years. Germany was not going to be master of Europe, but master of the universe. It took approximately five years for his empire and dreams to unravel. His grandiose, male-dominated world in which women were barely allowed even a whimper.
Fast forward to 2018 and Germany is at least master of Western Europe, a key voice in international affairs and an economic superpower. Greatness achieved through hard-work, economic ingenuity, tolerance of differences and healthy respect for the rights of others. A healthy superiority achieved without firing a single shot and vividly contributed to by the same Jews Adolf Hitler did all he could to remove from the surface of the earth.
And it is all so apt that a woman should now preside over this greatness. Angela Merkel reigns in Berlin and her ascendancy, and Germany's own, is pure testimony to the fact that the most resilient rise of nations are the ones achieved not by war and conquest but by healthy desire and determination. And God places women on thrones so uplifted to show all of us the wonderful grace and charm and peace these superb creatures possess.
But if you don't believe in providence, then come down to Ikole-Ekiti, in the state of Ekiti, south-western Nigeria, to isinmole, a traditional festival that usually holds in August. For two or three days during this cultural fest, women are usually barred from the streets. A phenomena of interest to the sociologist, no doubt,  but of very shocking impression to the visitor. No matter how many times he has witnessed it. A frightening air of desertion, desolateness, sweeps the streets and the immediate impression is that not a half of humanity is missing, but three-quarters of it. Humans have two legs and a woman is the third leg of the tripod on which our world stands. Without them, folks, we are toast.
It might seem  a bit condescending, setting out a special day for women, a sop to our chauvinistic societies, but so do we set out a special day to celebrate Christ. After God, these amazing creatures are next.
Happy women's day to everyone.   

Trump, Turks and Kurds: Leaving Allies to Fry 2

So President Erdogan  sends troops, tanks and warplanes into Syria at will to attack the Kurds while President Trump and Secretary Tillerson look on numbly like rabbits caught plumb in powerful headlights. It does not really matter that Syria is supposed to be a sovereign state, the country had long been partitioned among Russians, Iranians, The Gulf States, Saudis, Turks, Kurds and just anybody that could arm a miscreant with a rifle. This inaction, even silent acquiescence, on the part of the US is even more baffling in the sense that the Kurds remain the only sensible option for securing the porous borders and crossing points  from Syria to Iraq and even to Turkey itself. Hence the decision of the US to convert the YPG to a border force is a well thought out policy, the only effective way to stop the IS from regrouping. After all, Turkey with all its huge army and security paranoia was unable to prevent would-be militants from Europe and elsewhere from using the country as transit points to join  the shitty caliphate in Syria and Iraq at the height of IS ascendancy. Hordes of them were crossing the borders in broad daylight and Turkish officials were looking the other way as a result of compromise or sheer incompetence. The Kurds represent the only credible and capable buffer force in those climes, a fact Trump well recognizes. Hence shrugging helplessly while Erdogan attacks and decimates the forces required to carry out the all-important policing can only be as a result of a foreign policy that is at best, formulated in tweets. Trump is horribly incoherent in his foreign policy and in no instance is this more demonstrated than his inertia in coming to the defense of his most dependable allies in the Middle East. It seems as if he had gathered the Kurds in a police compound for training and then he sends in a bomb-laden suicide truck to blow up the whole place. When policies are set out in tweets, or on a glib tongue, the obvious victims are organization, logic and unity. Senselessness supplanting sense and vice versa.
Maybe Trump thinks that it is a choice between NATO and the Kurds. Then it is equally a choice between where he could put his two feet in and a place that could, in all honesty, admit in other feet. It is leaving immediate, pressing certainty for a long-term certainty, if we can even qualify it as such. It is the Kurds that are in the demand books of the US now, not the Turks. A country that the EU would not even allow in.
Someone said he was confused as to what the US could have done when Turkey sent in its forces into Afrin. Very simple, a couple of US soldiers stationed in very visible places in the enclave. There was no need to do anything combative. No need to unleash warplanes to protect her allies. Something very symbolic would have stopped the tanks. Erdogan's attack on Afrin was no more than a diplomatic test of will, just like Hitler's re-militarization of Rhineland. He was really expecting a firmness from Trump that an attack on YPG and Kurds would be an attack on US troops itself. A couple of  unarmed Green Berets placed on Afrin roads would have driven that home quite trenchantly.
Just like Hitler, all he got in response was sordid appeasement.
After Rhineland, Austria was next and then Czechoslovakia. After Afrin, Manbij, Raqqa and other Kurdish enclaves.
Appeasement is defined as letting a bully have his way always. 

Trump, Turks and Kurds: Leaving Allies to Fry 1

President Trump's most coherent foreign policies are on his lips, so it is a huge wonder that he is presently tongue-tied as Turkey sends tanks and troops to attack the only slice of influence the US has left in Syria: the sliver of territories controlled by Kurds in the eastern margins of the country. Putin and his Iranian allies call all the shots now in wider Syria, committing men and materiel to underline an influence growing by leaps and bounds every hour while the US has been hiding in the deserts of eastern Syria. Right from Obama, the country didn't even have a plan A in Syria, not to talk of a plan B or C. In other words, Russia had a focus it was going to enforce with a trenchant ruthlessness now yielding immense results while the US simply did not know what to do, looking back fearfully at an American public that had grown so weary of war.
But the US was lucky, so to say. It did not have to move in thousands of troops or an aircraft carrier brimming with warplanes. Like in Afghanistan during the invasion, all it needed on ground was a proxy army. And no proxy army could ever be more reliable than the Kurds, sturdy individuals with fighting skills and resilience that easily put to flight the famed capabilities of the Northern Alliance. Their heroics in Kobane is well known, a battle that showed everyone that the Islamic State was not an invincible evil horde before which every resistance must melt. The Islamic State impaled itself on the chimneys of Kobane and once they were defeated there, their days were numbered, just as Nazi Germany days were numbered after Stalingrad. The Kurds, under their YPG militia, were to later play the crucial role in driving the IS out of their fiefdoms in Raqqa, Manbij and several other towns and territories in eastern parts of the country, aided by Arab allies and US airstrikes. Without the Kurds, maybe IS would have been defeated but there was little doubt it would have been a very protracted conflict: infinitely sapping on morale and public opinion.
Faithful and largely peaceable individuals the pugnacious, rabble-rousing Erdogan now label as terrorists despite the fact that not a single instance of terrorism on Turkish soil, whether tenuous or even contrived, has ever been linked to the YPG. The border crossings now controlled by the YPG used to be manned by the evil IS fighters and not a single shot was fired by Turkey into Syrian territory then. Naturally, Erdogan would be more comfy with Daesh. Convoys of trucks laden with fuel stolen from Syrian oilfields were crossing the Turkish border in broad daylight on a daily basis, driven by IS terrorists while they held sway in areas now controlled by Kurds. Perhaps Erdogan feared a bullet would ignite one of the trucks and set off a fearsome conflagration.
So it is easy to understand Erdogan's contrived animosity towards the Syrian Kurds. What is far more nebulous is the US silence and inaction. Save for a couple of rhetorics that do not even qualify for a whimper, Trump and his Secretary, Tillerson, have watched with soporific eyes as Turkey rolls its tanks deeper and deeper into the Kurdish enclave of Afrin in Syria.  

A Letter to Laurent Koscielny's Boy.

Dear Lad,
Many of us who support Arsenal Football Club do not really care about the ownership of the club. As far as we are concerned, it could have been acquired by aliens from outer space. Neither do we worry so much about the board or what even transpires in the dressing room or on the training pitch. Involvement and commitment really grip our hearts when the players file on to the pitch in a match and the referee blows his starting whistle. For the next ninety minutes or so, we clap or cry, shout in joy, ecstasy or in pain and hurt. We could end up in delight or gloom. In short, it is the footballing aspect of the club that really concerns us and in that regard most of our attention dwell on the manager of the club, Mr Arsene Wenger, and the players we revere, almost worship, and whom we dedicate our money and effort and time to watch perform. Players led by your father, as captain of the club.
Good lad, you  must have seen images of that distraught young supporter during the League Cup final against Manchester City. In all likelihood, he is of the same age as you and I had no doubt you must have shared in his pain and trauma occasioned by a miserable defeat. At times, pain and hurt might be the strongest of all feelings that bond us together and I believe your young heart is too good not to be moved. Too young and tender to be oblivious of the fact that hurt and pain have been our lot of recent, young and old, hundreds of millions of Arsenal supporters all over the world. The club is one of the biggest on earth, some say the most elegant, and if only the goodwill and love it receives all over the world can win matches!
So the club has not been doing us a lot of good of recent but, young lad, you've done us a lot of good. More than, I'm sorry to say this, the players of the club led by your father have been doing us of late. By asking your father why the players have been playing so badly of late. During the ninety minutes or so that really matter, the manager is outside the pitch and cannot have too much control over the events that go on on it. He selects the eleven players he trusts will give him and the fans victory. What becomes crucial and goes on to determine victory is the tranche of skills, vision and passion, zeal and determination exhibited by the players in the match. Apart from the manager barking out instructions most of which is not heeded anyway and making two or three substitutions, winning a match solidly rests on the players. Led by their captain.
Hence it is very apt you should ask your father that salient question, apt that he is closer to you in space, time and place than Arsene Wenger. We don't know what he told you but it is an answer you yourself should have seen very clearly, the age being irrelevant. You could see it from outer space. You must have watched the Premier League match with Manchester United in which your father gave the ball away so sloppily that the much hated enemy scored instantly. It was a pure pass to the opponent. It wasn't a more heartwarming performance in the cup final and only on Sunday, Brighton scored their second goal after the captain, the same captain, inexplicably gave the ball away again. You would think that if the captain cannot marshal his troops, he would at least try to organize his defense, a department he was supposed to be a stalwart in and which has come for serious censure of recent in the downward spiral Arsenal has slipped into. In fact the defense is the culprit being fingered now in the continuous abject performances Arsenal has seen of late.
There is no doubt skills are abundant in the club. Your father and his troops have demonstrated that times without number. What has been in remiss is the tranche of zeal, skills, passion and determination. What sears the heart stronger than a sight of players walking so listlessly on a football pitch? Your father was given the honor of rallying the troops and that he cannot even do. That is why Arsenal is playing very poorly. The players have lost the motivation, but not the desire to collect their fat pay packets, and you've asked the right person why?
Did you see the way Aubameyang celebrated after scoring his measly goal against Brighton? He  seemed to be telling us that as long as he gets a goal now and then the huge money spent or being spent on him is quite justified. Leaving team victory and his paymasters, which include you and me, in the lurch.
Football is a ruthless sport and Arsenal players, in a perverse way,  are lucky to have a manager who is too trusting. A manager who expects a player to get up and dust his ass. When it is a very stout stick the ass needs to get hauled up.
    

President Pierre "Messi" Nkurunziza.

'There is always something new out of Africa'- Pliny the Elder.
But first let's start with an invention in a place far away from this mostly blighted continent. President Trump in far away America forms a football team. American football or gridiron football so to say and names it The White House Patriots. He spends most of his team moving around with this team and engaging all forms of opposition in football matches, a traveling choir providing the entertainment because the president claims to be an evangelical christian. So no Justin Timberlake or Janet Jackson and all that wardrobe malfunction nonsense, just thumping gospel music in heavy metal mode while the president and his team carry out another sort of thumping on the opposition: always scoring at will, always winning silly, with unbelievable margins. Because the president is not expected to be tackled, or roughened or impeded. If there is going to be any engagement, it would have to be the softest of all touches. In essence it is not supposed to be a contact sport anytime the president is holding the ball. So he makes all the throws, all the catches, all the running, all the touchdowns. He is the quarterback, the halfback, the fullback, the wide receiver rolled into one. And naturally he is the superstar and takes all the plaudits. And why not? He is the president of the United States of America.
That is until he travels to Texas and plays a team made up mostly of refugees being held in camps along the Mexican border. Latinos and blacks, guys being held in concentration camps. Fellows who were not in the happy mode at all. Guys who would like to kick some presidential ass. And which they gleefully did, roughening up the president, sending him tumbling into the dirt several times and getting his jersey torn. Respect my foot!
Naturally, the president is not happy about it, not happy at all and he gets the governor of Texas and his deputy arrested and corralled into a little fetid jail. Crime? Conspiracy against the president of course. You can't arrange a little roughening up of the president in the evening and expect to eat breakfast in your own house the following morning.
A very short, dystopian  story? Sure.
But if you change the settings to Africa, precisely to a nasty corner of it called Burundi, and gridiron football becomes soccer and Trump transforms to President Pierre Nkurunziza and the Texas team is replaced by a group of hungry refugees from Congo, you have the latest comedy from Africa. Nkuruziza runs a football outfit called Haleluya FC and as a self-acclaimed evangelical christian, travels with his own choir called' Komeza gusenga which in the local Kirundi language, means 'pray non-stop.'
A real, real comedy. Dystopian to the ends of nightmare. And not funny at all because the governor of Kiremba region of Burundi where the president was made to 'fall several times and kiss the dust' and his deputy are now in even a dirtier jail for conspiring against and humiliating the president. It is not everyday that Messi has his way. Even Messi of Africa.
What is fiction anywhere else in the world can turn into a nasty, grinding reality in Africa.
Yes, there is always something new out of Africa. And most of it is not always pleasant.