G-7 Minus One Gentleman.

Disputes are not new to the G-7, a group of wealthy, industrialized and advanced nations that is made up of the US, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Japan. Being an association of countries with diverse economic, social and political histories, disagreements were bound to be plenty and loud but the good news was that they always managed to resolve them, or at least paper over the cracks. Simply because it was supposed to be a club of gentlemen well-versed in boardroom antics of compromise and hand-shaking. National leaders who must carry with them the negotiating skills and dignity of their respective countries The not-so-good news now is that the good news seem to be finding it very difficult and awkward to fan out. All because one of them does not now care a hoot about being a gentleman, cracking up huge fissures in the organization.
It is well-known President Trump of the US has a predilection for prowling on the battlefield, not in the boardroom, despite his corporate background, and, not surprisingly, did not think it twice before firing hefty salvos at gentlemen supposed to be his comrades in the G-7, slapping huge tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Europe, Canada and Mexico. The president argued the move would protect domestic producers of such commodities and help to boost national security. He conveniently forgot to add most of those home producers were struggling. And his colleagues in the EU, still smarting from his unilateral and very peremptory abrogation of the Iran deal which they helped to bring to the table with a great deal of effort and to which they were signatories, wasted no time in retaliating, announcing counter-tariffs on a wide range of goods from the US. In fact, the G-7 now looks like a madhouse, with a huge madcap of retaliations reminiscent of cold war battles. The schism has been widening since last year over conflicting positions on climate change, differences that came to a head with Trump's subsequent announcement to unilaterally withdraw from the landmark Paris agreement on climate change. This year G-7 summit in Canada is even expected to generate less agreement. Meetings have been at best fractious with leaders speaking loudly and unreservedly about divisions and Trump's body language suggesting his forthcoming June 12 summit with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un in Singapore was of far greater interest to him than sitting down in Canada to resolve a host of differences with his G-7 allies. Which is as well, as he has long been suspected of being uncomfortable at negotiating with groups as opposed to one-on-one, man-to-man, mano-o-mano negotiations that the summit with Kim envisages. And he has just dropped a cat in the cage of pigeons by suggesting Russia should be readmitted into the body. He knows it is a suggestion that will raise the decibel of commotion a shade further, giving him ample cover to sneak out of Canada.
As for the G-7 itself, the convulsions extend beyond Trump and may take some time quietening. It is too exclusive a club, practically needing the Crown Jewels for admittance. Requirements will have to be lowered and there is no reason for countries like South Korea and China and India and indeed Russia not to come in. The body might corner 60% of global wealth now but it is a share that is not going to increase in the near future. Many nations are coming up and a rival body might not be out of place. It is instructive to note that as the summit in Canada taking place, China was hosting a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional security block, inviting Russia to the event. The G-7 should look over its shoulders in its squabbles.
AND THE GIRL LIFTS IT.
Simona Halep has just won the French Open, beating Sloane Stephens in the process. It would be her first Grand Slam, having lost on all three previous occasions she would reach the final. Still she remained unbowed, just like Chris Evert who faced exactly an ordeal in her career,

Simona Halep

and has just confirmed the suspicion that despair and defeat are not always linked. Congrats, girl.

Trump

G-7

M.K.O.Abiola:Buhari Rights a Wrong.

Righting a wrong is not, often, the same as righting a situation. In most instances, the wrong outlives the situation so long that rectifying it can only be symbolic. Of recent, President Trump issued a pardon to Jack Johnson, the first American heavyweight boxing champion. Johnson happened to be a black but had a white wife and was jailed under the notorious Mann Act forbidding one to transport a woman across state lines for 'immoral' purposes: charges as racially motivated as they can be in that Jim Crow era. That can only happen now in a distressing comedy but over a hundred years ago, such offenses, even though hideously unfair, were serious violations under laws extant then. Now, such pardon cannot undo the term Johnson served in prison but such gestures help put events in the correct perspective and could help prevent a future recurrence.
It is in light of this that we must appreciate and understand the decision of President Muhannadu Buhari to declare June 12 of every year the appropriate time to celebrate democracy in Nigeria. It was on that day in 1993 that Nigerians rose en masse to elect Chief M.K.O.Abiola as president of the country on the platform of the Social Democratic Party in an election widely adjudged to be the freest and fairest in the country up to date. Thereafter, the polls were strangely annulled by the then head of state, General Ibrahim Babangida, under whose tutelage the elections were organized and conducted in the first place: a heinous cancellation that sparked a quickfire series of crises such as the formation of the Interim National Government headed by Chief Ernest Shonekan, soon declared illegal by the courts and in no time toppled by General Sanni Abacha, the de facto military strongman;  the death of Abiola in Abacha's prison as a result of insisting on reclaiming his stolen presidency; the incarceration of General Olusegun Obasanjo for coup plotting; the death of Abacha himself and the restoration of democracy on May 29, 1999.
Officially recognizing Abiola's role in the evolution of democracy and freedom of choice that we now enjoy will not bring him back to life and neither will it even begin to repair the ruin visited on his businesses and large family. The posthumous medal awarded him, Nigeria's highest, will do him little good and will certainly fit poorly on his neck skeleton. Symbolic things do no such things.
But this recognition will help etch vividly on our mind that his struggles helped call time on military misadventures in Africa and went a long way in cementing democracies now entrenching solidly all over the continent. It will also give some joy to those splendid supporters who stood by him till the end. Once again, Buhari makes the right choice.

Why Zinade will not miss Real Madrid.

Few, very few, managers seem to be interested in the Real Madrid job, thrown wide open with the sudden, unsurprising surprise resignation of Zinedin Zidane. Sisyphean jobs, which the position has become, are hardly appealing. No sooner do you roll the huge, taxing stone of success to the top than it rolls down and you start all over again, heckled to heavens by a mean, taxing, vociferous crowd Charles Dickens himself would have found confounding. For a start, the manager is a workman whose tools and parts, horribly expensive tools and parts, had been assembled by the workstation and he is expected to perform miracles with what he has been provided. It might be that the parts may not fit in with the design and machine he has in mind, it may be that a part may turn out bigger than the whole, the disharmony does not really matter, he is expected to proceed pell-mell. After all only a lazy or uninventive workman complains about his tools. And if he sets about his task with zeal and determination and eventually wins a trophy, his situation even gets the more complicated. Another tournament, another competition is just around the corner and he must reprise the whole regimen of success again, as if he was in continual duel with competitors in eternal slumber or inertia: folks not facing the pressure of winning from their own supporters too. And if you think that is the end of the intricacy, you aint seen nothing yet.The definition of success itself, among the fan base, may turn out to be very maddening. For some, it may be Zidane winning the La Liga, or winning the Champions League three times in a row, or winning the World Club Cup. A combination of all that may still not assuage some sections of the crowd. Zidane won the eternal enmity of some fans who vowed never to forgive him for that chaffing 3-0 home defeat to Barcelona in the league. It does not really matter that Real Madrid loses to a team at the 19th position of the table, it may not matter that they have not won a trophy for three seasons, the cardinal sin might be losing to bitter rivals, read enemies, such as Barcelona or Athletico Madrid. At the Bernabeu, there are so many segments of the crowd to appease. The New York Giants, a team of comparative size in American or gridiron football have not been NFL champions since 2012 and no major upheaval have been recorded at the club as a result of this. Real Madrid have been champion of Spain and three times master of Europe in the same period and that is not appeasing many fans. It was just like appeasing Hitler: the more territories dignity you conceded, the more his appetite got whetted for greater capitulation. Heavens will not fall if the same New York Giants loses to city rivals, New York Jets, it will not fall too in Madrid if Real loses to Athletico, but the coach will certainly feel something very heinous falling on his head.
Zidane might have felt it was not possible for him to go beyond his unprecedented success at the club and so decided: not to throw in the towel, or quit when the ovation was loudest, but to simply shock the shockers. Many other great managers: Mourinho, Ancelotti, Benitez have left under less propitious circumstances and one could conveniently argue the club is getting its just desserts. More so that many big names being bandied about such as Pochettino and Loew do seem to be all that eager to be associated with the job. The logic is very simple. Many of them may just feel that replicating Zidane's  achievements at the club may be tasks too tough for health. And after that? Still being put against the ropes by an insatiable fan base.
The latest is ex-legend, Raul Gonzalez. Why not?  Doing another Zidane might be the only option left for the club? But even then many are already thinking Gonzalez might be too fragile for the job. Every manager, in any sporting club, works under one pressure or the other. The urge to win is what drives sports, especially football. Hence he is virtually working in a cauldron, the fire continually stoked by fans. In Real Madrid, it is an inferno that they stoke.
  

New York Giants

Raul Gonzalez

Zinedin Zidane

Ugandan Museum of Evil.

Adolf Hitler.

It is always difficult resisting the urge to quote Pliny the Elder's famous saying that there is always something new out of Africa and once again the ancient wise comes to mind with the decision of the Ugandan government to build a museum to the late, execrable dictator, Idi Amin Dada. According to statements credited to Stephen Asiimwe, Chief Executive of Ugandan Tourism Board, the move is to 'set the records straight'. As if what we know about this monster's nine years reign of terror is not clear and well-documented enough. What records do you still need to clarity for descendants and relatives of the over 400,000 people murdered during his evil regime? Or thousands of Asians who were driven out of the country after their businesses were confiscated? Plunging the once-buoyant economy into instant crisis. Or innocent Israeli air passengers hijacked by Arab terrorists and diverted to Kampala? This sparked Operation Thunderbolt, one of the most audacious and spectacular air assaults in history, a rescue in which Col Yoni Nentayahu, brother of the current Israeli prime minister, was killed during the raid on Entebbe Airport, Kampala. This grim buffoon made himself King of Scotland, Conqueror of the British Empire, among his many comical excesses and deservedly met his Waterloo in an infantile and immature attempt to annex the Kagera region of Tanzania. The well-motivated troops of Julius Nyerere counter-attacked instantly and in record time, captured Kampala. The beast fled to Libya, after writing one of the bloodiest, darkest chapters in world history. The same tourism boss, who could be easily accused of having a reckless way with cliches, without sounding offensive, likens Ugandan history to wine. The older it gets the better, especially with some flavors added. He should just try tipping some hemlock into the cask.
 Stephen Asiimwe and the Ugandan authorities can only succeed in establishing a museum for the sadist, the voyeur, with their plans and it is all parallel with creating a museum for Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot and other infamous denizens of history. What are we going to see there? Images of Idi Amin snarling at the governor of the Ugandan Central Bank to simply go and print money after the hapless fellow had told him the government was broke? We might be compelled to treat the whole plan as a joke if not for the curious knowledge that Idi Amin is still considered a Field Marshall in Uganda. The guy is effectively a lieutenant in the British Army and if they still accord him that regard in his country, then we cannot scream loud enough in this outrage. And to compound mischief, they are also planning to dedicate a section to the notorious Lord Resistance Army. Sadists, kidnappers, butchers and child soldiers recruiters. Uganda is very resourceful in manufacturing monsters but, sorry, few of us, very few, are interested in their showcasing.

Idi Amin Dada.

News: Buhari Plans Corruption Tribunals.

Plans are afoot by the Nigerian government to set up anti-corruption tribunals across the country.
These special judicial bodies will be located in all the six geopolitical zones of the country and will be staffed by judges at the level of appeal court arbitrators. Already, a technical committee headed by a respected retired judge of the Supreme Court has been set up and it will commence work very soon.
The Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari won the 2015 polls on a tough anti-corruption platform and so far many prominent Nigerians have been arrested and charged to court. A lot of illegal monies have also been confiscated. There is certainly improvement in the sanity of government spending, especially with the introduction of the Treasury Single Account, a consolidated financial platform that allows for greater monitoring of government revenue and expenditure but many feel he has not done enough. His critics also say that most of the high profile corruption busts involved members of the opposition. Vendetta and bias may not be all that apparent here as the opposition is made up mainly of politicians that belong to the Peoples Democratic Party, the body that ruled the country for sixteen years and under whose watch most of the brazen cases of corruption took place. However many of these politicians defected from the PDP into the present ruling party and there is widespread resentment the law has been tardy in catching up with them.
However the jailing this week of a prominent member of the ruling party has suddenly given the much needed  fillip to the fight against corruption. Reverend Jolly Nyame, the governor who ruled the north-eastern state of Taraba for eight years under the platform of the PDP but later defected to the ruling party, was found culpable of various charges bordering on high graft and was sentenced to fourteen years in jail. Buhari is very keen to build on this notable success and sees the proposed tribunals as the most viable means to consolidate on his anti-corruption mandate now that elections are fast approaching. The seeming slow pace of the fight against corruption can be traced to the conventional courts. Cases are many and trials are very laborious processes. Judges will also have to deal with other types of litigation and setting up special courts that deal solely with corruption cases will fast-track trial and punishment.
Recall that when the president seized power in a 1983 military putsch, he set up similar tribunals to deal with corrupt politicians and many of them ended up being jailed as long as 155 years. The fate that had just befallen Rev Nyame brings up faint echoes of those tough punishments.
However there are fears in government quarters setting up such special anti-corruption tribunals will have to pass though the national assembly, a body known for its high antagonism to the present executive, and there is every likelihood the move will be shot down by legislators. However, the government is undaunted and top officials are already sounding out the Chief Justice, Walter Omoghen on the ways the national assembly could be bypassed in setting up the tribunals.

President Muhammadu Buhari.

Rev Nyame.

Jesus and Klopp: Iscariot and Karius.

The Champions League final in Kiev really produced a lot: a not-too-scintillating contest, there had been talks of Red Arrows, Ronaldo's Superman and Spiderman efforts and many other appetite-whetting epithets but what actually turned up in place of the anticipated fireworks were at best dull sparks; Mohamed Salah's injury, largely responsible for the just-mentioned damp squib; Gareth Bale' resurrection in form of a wonder goal, the Liverpool's goalkeeper confounding howlers. And a new word play. Loris Karius is now Lor isKarius. Clever but quite disingenuous as the source is quite familiar to everyone of us; the young German goalkeeper could be accused of so many things in the blunders that led to Real Madrid goals but by no stretch of imagination could he be tagged with perfidy. Karius has done fairly well in Liverpool's bright season and we could all see the genuine agony in his eyes after the final whistle but mischief is not always far from folks in an enterprise as passionate as football, especially in Africa where suspicions and conspiracy theories are dished out daily in cartloads. It is often that players battle with nerves, as well as genuine mistakes, and what Karius suffered from on the pitch was simply nerve failure and no other thing could be responsible. And he should take heart, after all our savior was accused of far weightier things, and in football, as in the larger life, there is always an opportunity for redemption. A second is all it even takes. Bale will easily attest to that.
Apropos of our savior. We will see greater substance in the wordplay by turning our attention to the principals of Judas Iscariot and Loris Karius. We know the two guys in question very well. Jesus knew someone was going to betray him and he could have saved himself by simply having the culprit seized by his disciples. But he did not. He had the greater duty of saving the whole world and the divine will must prevail. His blood must be shed and in that would be the redemption for all of us. And that is why we still look at the curvature of our neighbor's wife with covetous eyes without the threat of fire and brimstone, that fire and brimstone, doing things to our lustful hearts. Klopp was outright negligent in not seeing that his goalkeeper was not feeling all that comfortable in goal. We could all see that the moment Salah was carried out of the pitch. It was a simple case of getting scared knowing he faced a greater threat from the suddenly expanded breathing space Real Madrid players now roamed with the pressure the formidable Egyptian was exerting now attenuated with his removal. His coach should have seen this but then the usually passionate Klopp might have been too animated in his technical area. A similar thing happened in the second leg of the 2009 champions league semi final match between Arsenal and Manchester United. Arsenal were playing at home and everyone could see that the young defender, Kieran Gibbs, was feeling uncomfortable with the prospect of facing the Cristiano Ronaldo juggernaut. The tension, the size, of the occasion  simply overwhelmed him and his inexplicable slip in the box gifted the opposition a crucial goal. Arsene Wenger would eventually take him off, seeing he was coping badly with the weight of expectations, but by then the damage had been done. Klopp should have taken Karius off after that first howler. He wasn't Jesus Christ. Maybe then the outcome would have been different. Now he carries the unenviable tag of a coach that gets selections and tactics right except at the crucial moments: the finals.

Signing another non-aggression pact.

History repeats itself and in no department of it is this more pronounced than political history. Over time, we had a succession of political monsters that were almost perfect clones of one another: Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, Adolf Hitler...or political processes that are, in crucial respects, replicas in actualities or reverse. On 23rd August, 1939, with the 2nd Word War imminent in Europe, the Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin, was compelled to sign a non-aggression pact with another dictator, the rampaging German Nazi monster, Adolf Hitler.  Both sides pledged to refrain from attacking each other, sought cooperation in neutralizing common enemies and so on. But the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, named after the two countries' foreign ministers was actually no more than mere paper, a document Hitler would tear to shreds barely two years later by invading Soviet positions in eastern Poland.
Fast forward to 2018, almost 79 years later, and one could see another non-aggression pact taking shape again between the two countries. In the reverse. A lot have changed, certainly. The Soviet Union now exists as a rump called Russia and communism that used to be the foundation of the state is now gone. Dictatorship now exists in other forms, propped up by an imperfect democracy but a democracy nevertheless. Germany had lost East Prussia, a third of its territory, is now a pure democracy, if any such thing exists, and now has a woman calling the shots in Berlin. The country is now an economic power but it now relies practically on the United States of America to protect her. Of recent, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has been setting her sights on the East, on erstwhile bitter foe, Russia, strangely on a country the US has sworn to protect her from. It is just like extricating oneself from a very gentle handshake and then delving into the suffocating embrace of a bear hug. Strange, yet it is a reassessment that is very inevitable. The so-called handshake across the Atlantic has been gradually turning into a fist lock. Physically, President Trump's hands might be small but the grip they enforce could be really humiliating. And in no way is this demonstrated more than the recent peremptory cancellation of the Iran deal, an agreement Merkel and the European powers of Britain and France helped put on the table at great pains. Talk about making allies look small, ineffectual and pathetic! These three countries have had their diplomatic reputation torn to shreds and the outrage from their own nationals and economic concerns have been loud, reverberating. Merkel, a professor of physics, must have been miffed even further that the chap  making them look so inconsequential is one who could not really tell the difference between HIV and HPV, two classes of organisms so dissimilar. And so appalling was the remission that Bill Gates, the Microsoft founder, had to explain it to him twice, according to the billionaire's testimony. There are very audible grumblings in Europe by folks there that they cannot continue to be treated like vassals and Merkel must have been listening to the discontent of her own subjects.
Merkel knows that her Achilles' heels, and that of Europe, is ironically, an economic power that is hugely entwined with that of the United States. Even long before these European leaders had started trying to voice some determination, restating their resolve to shore up the Iran deal, many of their companies and big businesses such as the French energy giant, Total, were already pulling out of Iran. Deweaning Europe of the alliance with the US is going to be tough,  very tough, long and laborious but as a scientist, Merkel very much knows it is never too late taking a first step, no matter how small it is. She knows too that the Transatlantic Alliance is one that needs reappraisal. The world is not what it used to be. There is a new military power in the shape of China which also has a vast economic power. Asia's economy, if we factor in the influence of the Asian Tigers, is rumbling and in the foreseeable future, American economic power might not be decisive again. No doubt, Russia, although a rump of the former Soviet Union, is still an enormous military power and has in fact been behaving badly of late in its annexation of Crimea and elsewhere in Britain and Ukraine but the military picture is not the same as the one that drove it into the arms of the US.. Soviet satellites such as Bulgaria, Poland e.t.c. are now fully independent states with their own credible armies. The same for countries that used to be part and parcel of the Soviet Union itself. Sovereign states such as Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Belarus, Uzbekistan and so on. Russia  will have to roll its tanks through these obstacles to get to western Europe.
Hence in this peace, as in that war, Germany can always forge some partnership with Russia, if not an alliance. For now, Merkel has little to fear from Russia, besides Putin will not be there for ever. Increasing partnership with Russia and China means decreasing alliance, read reliance, with the US. If it gives a new world order, it will also secure Germany's vital gas supplies from Russia. A new non-aggression pact makes sense.

What does Kim really want? Trump, Pence and Bolton won't let us know.

What does the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un really want? We don't know, simply don't know. In suddenly agreeing to talks with the US, perhaps the most remarkable volte-face of the new century, a huge factor could have been at play in the mind of this guy that used to sport a very bad haircut. A factor, or several factors. Things we could only guess. It might have even been a dream: after all without a dream we wouldn't have had something, a movement as momentous as Christianity. At least in its present form.
There are a lot of things we do not know. We do not know  whether his hand was forced by crippling US sanctions, severe penalties that have brought the at-best crawling economy to a coma. Made more so by the fact that China that used to supply some oxygen have decided to cut some gas, thinking it more profitable to bow to US pressure that to bow to some nebulous friendship. Chinese-style economic reforms are just across the border and these might have appealed to him quite strongly, a panacea to some future turbulence and insurrection that might sweep his dynasty out of power: reforms that will never happen with sanctions in place. It might be that he got his inspiration by simply gazing across the border, seeing the development and affluence his foes and kinsmen in South Korea are basking in. It might be he was simply indulging himself in some diplomatic tomfoolery and that he was as interested in peace as Harvey Weinstein was interested in women dignity, confirming what the often tactless Vladimir Putin said was the resolve of the pariah state to eat grass rather than give up nuclear weapons. Then his influential, blushing sister, Kim Yo-jong, could have been whispering some filial softness into his ears. He might even know that the much touted nuclear weapons were not as perfect and developed as we have been made to believe, in no shape or condition or advancement to threaten South Korea, let alone the US. He might be genuinely interested in peace, secretly coveting the sure Nobel Prize that will come to him by pulling off the twin magic of unification and denuclearization.
Answers we would have surely obtained at the June 12, US-North Korea summit in Singapore, a coming together that would have laid bare precise intentions on both sides of the divide. A summit that would have been victory for all of us, those confirming suspicions or confirming expectations. The tone here is a bit fatal because the summit looked increasingly to be in jeopardy, judging by recent comments from both sides of recent. Now President Trump has decided to pull out of it outright. None of the two sides wins laurels for tact and subtlety but North Korea is the bull in the China shop and Trump's aides seemed to be nursing the habit of chasing it away with a pepper spray. The trouble with this administration is that there are too many hawks in in. Hawks snatch things and what is being snatched now is defeat from the jaws of victory. Victory that the highly anticipated summit would have given us. Whether those who suspect or anticipate.
There is no doubt Trump really wanted the summit. After such petty scandals at home, he needed the big diversion the summit would give him. It did not matter whether it was successful or not. The fact that it is happening alone would have been a very big step for him.  It seemed the loud-mouthed hawks that fly around him had different things in mind. Kim has a big chip on his shoulder but Bolton, architect on the infamous Iraq weapons of mass destruction, should have known linking denuclearization to Gaddafi of Libya was going to be a mammoth faux-pas. Even less subtle threats were ratcheted up by the Vice-President, Mike Pence, in a recent interview with Fox News. Pepper spray, pepper spray in the whole shop, everywhere.
The popular author, John Grisham, in the run-up to the polls that brought Trump to power campaigned vogorously for his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and when asked about a year later if he had reasons to change his mind, he said no. The only thing missing to confirm his misgivings was a crisis. Which he was sure the president would mismanage. Trump is capable of mismanaging peace either.

With Expendables Like These...

One of the most remarkable success stories of the season, in sports and elsewhere, is the octane-fire rise of the ice hockey team, the Vegas Golden Knights. Only in its inaugural season in the highly competitive sport, it has unbelievably reached the finals of the Stanley Cup, ice hockey's equivalent of the Super Bowl. Some say they are on the verge of making history: they are not, they have already made history, the first expansion team in fifty years to make the finals playing in their first season. The team is made up of players practically rejected by their former clubs, expendables in the sport parlance. These castoffs, throwaways, can still be acquired, bought in an Expansion Draft, a particularly distressing flea market peculiar to the sport. It was for no reason they were dubbed the Golden Misfits. But if you think hope had sunk as far as it  could go, consider the obliterating news that the head coach was fired by the Florida Panthers in the 2016/2017 season: a club that, while not taking anything away from their history and performances, cannot by any stretch of imagination considered one of the illustrious names of American ice hockey. The dismissal took place during an away game and coach GG, Gerald Gallant, was rumored to have been denied even a seat on the team bus and had to pay his own cab fare to the airport. If the largest group of outcasts, rejects, write-offs ever assembled in a place, the Vegas Golden Knights was one. Lots of folks joked it must have taken an audacious nerve of naming to have attached  the adjectives of golden and knights to the club. Few, very few expected them to lift their own hockey sticks, let alone a sword and now they roam in a territory where the big boys of the game such as the Detroit Red Wings, the Chicago Blackhawks and the marvelously-named Pittsburgh Penguins used to call the shots.
The odds staked against them reaching thus far was enormous, dispiriting, in all aspects similar to the chances given Leicester Football Club of England to win the 2015/2016 Premier League. Here was a club that escaped relegation by the whiskers the previous season. Leicester went on to win the league, a feat the whole world had said would only be achieved in the realm of dreams. Like Leicester, the Vegas Golden Knights have shown us that the dividing line between dream and reality could be very thin, very nebulous indeed. Their belief has won, the unflagging determination to rise from the abyss of despair to dizzying heights of glory and illumination. Their story would have been a fable indeed if reaching the Stanley Cup final was their sole achievement but we have added goodies in the fact that the Vegas Golden Knights have done good in other aspects, It is the only major sports club, American Football and all, that has Las Vegas as its home and gives the city a huge sense of togetherness, camaraderie, if not unity. The first match they played was only five days after a gunman killed fifty eight concertgoers in  Las Vegas in October 2016. The Golden Knights won the match and provided some upliftment for the grieving city.
So the stones the builder rejected have become the centerpiece of solidity and over-achievement, golden stones so to say. These expendables are not expendable, not on your life and they have shown us that being given the tag of failure, fiasco does not in any way equal the tag of damnation.

May, Macron, Merkel: The Three Mumsketeers.

Captains with salt and ice in their muskets. Unarguably the three biggest losers in the just annulled Iran deal, allies left high and frying in the high desert, thumbs stuck deep in their asses. There is all the grand talk of keeping the Iran deal alive but even the most optimistic know that it is as dead as the dodo: without the US, it is difficult to see how it could even be kept on life support. In diplomatic rhetoric, American leaders used to refer to Britain, France and Germany as allies, speeches that often sounded patronizing, condescending at times, but even these thin icings of sugar have been brutally peremptorily dispensed with by President Trump in cancelling the deal. No single hint of consultation, no acknowledgement of the tough, enervating and complex negotiations these governments had to carry out in order to bring the deal to the table. No consideration of their interests. It was as if they were not there in the first instance. Macron even had to travel to America to indulge in some charm offensive that was nothing short of being comical. Trust Trump not to indulge in some sweet horseshit, pandering to some shitty allies. The damage has been massive but of more poignant disaster is the harm the whole fiasco has done to their reputation. Nobody will ever trust them to be agents of the United States again. If any country does, then a paradise exists on earth. A fool's paradise.
Grumblings in Europe have been very loud. Bruno Le Marie, France Economy Minister has talked about defending his country's 'economic sovereignty', bristling heatedly about France behaving as a vassal to the United States. But the chaffing reality is that his country is not only a vassal, politically, economically and militarily, it also has little power to compel its own big companies not to shiver whenever the US sneezes. The energy giant Total is pulling out of multi-billion deals it has signed with Iran and many companies in France and elsewhere in Europe are following suit.. For Daimler-Benz, as an example, the stark choice is between selling Mercedes cars in Iran and selling them in America. It is a terrible mismatch. Such is the level to which these countries have sunk from being great European powers to great vassals of the United States.
And to set fire to the shredded regalia, the man putting them through such torrid trials is a guy who cannot tell the difference between HIV and HPV. The job of the president of the United States might be the most powerful and glamorous one on earth but it is in no way the toughest or most cerebral. He needs to work as a team, surrounded by thousands of aides and advisers and he has the money, clout, connections and power to hire the best.. He could bring in the infernally brilliant James Rubins of this world with just a snap of his fingers. Nobody is expecting Aristotle to occupy the seat but then a president of the most powerful, most technically-savvy country on earth should be able to know the difference between the Human Papillomavirus and Human Immunodeficiency Virus, HPV and HIV. Every schoolboy knows it and it is a pity Bill Gates had to tell us at an event that he had to explain the difference to the president. Twice. As early as 1980, long before the advent of HIV and AIDS, Time was doing a lot of articles on herpes and papilloma viruses. If such a common knowledge, such simple understanding, can elude our president, it becomes difficult envisaging how he would comprehend and grasp the nuances, the fine details of the hideously complex Iran deal. It is dead easy to suspect the deal was impetuously cancelled on the shallow fancy of a man that heads a country Europe has accustomed itself to in not-all-that graceful followership.  Too bad, too sad. May, Macron and Merkel will not only have to extricate their countries from this pathetic embrace, they will also have to extricate their economies, big businesses and to some extents their cultures. The missteps of the tango are becoming badly glaring.

Prince Harry Marries His Heartthrob: Congratulations...with some bitters.

Prince Harry, or 'Arry' or Henry, has just married his sweetheart, Meghan Markle, in, as you would expect, a lavish ceremony at Windsor Castle. The show was grand, happy, attended by the high and the mighty and accompanied by the most glittering pomp and ceremony that could be mustered. We on this forum are not immune to some mischief and while we eat and drink and savor this wonderful occasion, we might try some bitters to accompany and flavor our...er...
In case the wine may dull our senses, we should not forget that some of the troubles that had bedeviled the British Monarchy of recent have emanated from marriages. We could start from the abdication of the throne by Edward VIII in order to marry his heartthrob, the American socialite, Wallis Simpson. The whole affair almost engendered a constitutional crisis but love eventually won and the king had to abandon the comforts of the throne for the comforts of the bosom of his mistress. His abdication led to the enthronement of George VI and then the present monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, grandmother of our prince.
The present ceremony reminds us of another one, in 1981, Princess Diana getting married to the heir to the British throne, Prince Charles, father of our Prince Harry. In ample display was a lot of blushing and laughing and loving. What turned out to be displayed in equal abundance was the confounding ruckus that the marriage, and wedding, had been a bit contrived. Royal blood or half royal blood or things like that. We are glad we are not hearing such things now, Meghan Markle mother's being black, or African-American, according to the latest taxonomy. The only blue blood that has ever been seen is the one poisoned by carbon monoxide. God forbid. You can also see green blood in the horrid alien in the Arnold Schwarzenegger film 'predator'. It wasn't a little turmoil that the indiscretion brought into the monarchy. Nobody can say for certain that the Princess of Wales loved her Prince but it was clear to all, as it later turned out on the pages of the most lurid and obstreperous tabloids that ever suffered to be printed on earth, that Prince Charles actually had his heart locked in Fort-Knox like vaults with that of Camilla, now Duchess of Cornwall. Princess Diana, whom we think is not a princess but just a smart modern girl, was to seek other hearts to lock hers with, an adventure that culminated in a fatal crash in Paris with her lover, Dodi Fayed. Moments before the crash, folks claimed a red vehicle was seen behind her limousine and it wasn't long before Bond-like conspiracy theories surfaced. The controversies are yet to die down. The Queen seemed to have learned some lesson and Prince Andrew, brother to Prince Charles, was certainly given freer hand to choose her bride. The marriage to Sarah Ferguson wasn't all that more successful too and it all ended in divorce. The world is a much more modern, less stable place and there was no way the monarchy was going to secure itself against divorces, love and modern interpretations of marriage.
But not to worry. Marriages or weddings, successful or not, are not what keeps the monarchy going. King Henry VIII launched a torrid rebellion against the Pope in order to divorce his queen, Catherine of Aragon, and marry Anne Boleyne. Whom he then had executed on trumped-up charges in order to marry a third wife. And here we are still celebrating another royal wedding, hundreds of years later. So let's all pour the wine, raise our glasses and holla: 'Congratulations, Prince Arry!'

Santa Fe: Yet Another Shooting.

Barely three months after the shooting at the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, We have yet another mass shooting at a high school in Santa Fe, 40 kilometers south of Houston, Texas. There is little we can say or do right now, except let our thoughts be with the families of the murdered and our prayers with those injured and their relatives. As usual, the president has sent in condolences and tons of promises to rectify an enduring, odious and cancerous phenomenon. We can do better than take him for his words. It is a bit difficult to sift through reports now but one suggested(it may be altered yet) that a boy saw the shooter walk in with a shotgun and managed to trigger the fire alarm. This singular act of bravery and vigilance may yet turn out to be what will limit the casualty figures.
It is a vigilance we've been advocating on this forum. Gun controls and outright abolition are vital but a determined mass murderer will always get the weapons to perpetrate his evil. In the same way that the Prohibition did not deter guys intent on quaffing their whisky or bourbon. Gun legislation need to be tweaked, very fast, so also are privacy laws. That dictum of aloofness "It ain't my business" doesn't sound all that musical again when horrors like these crop up. Safety is everyone's business. Those who commit these evils do so with detailed planning and in most cases a vigilant mother or grandmother or friend or girlfriend, acquaintances or even curious, not nosy, neighbors could have prevented the carnage as a result of filial intervention or simply tipping off law enforcement agents. Nothing is private again when shots ring out.  

The Fireman Hath Honor...

The firefighter hath honor, but only when the fire is raging. Few, very few people remember him the moment the inferno dies down. It is such a dispiriting job.
Mr Sam Allardyce, erstwhile coach of Everton Football Club, England should be the last person to be surprised by his recent sack by the club. He has said he is disappointed by the decision of the club but that is a feeling he should have inured himself against. In his storied managerial career, and few coaches, football or not, have lived through more interesting times, sacking has always been his lot. From Newcastle to Everton.
He knows he is a fireman, to be called in only in times of disaster raging or about to break out. He is the guy directing the water hose or wielding the axe to break down doors and hurl himself into a raging inferno. He is the muscular rescuer, savior, football's superman. He smashes into car doors to pull out the trapped and injured or dives into water to hold aloft the drowning, the sinking, give him something, even a straw, to cling on to. Even the drowned is not beyond his attention. He has led Bolton and West Ham from the lower rungs of British football back into the Premier League.
He knows he is not the elegant, sophisticated conductor directing an orchestra. Leave that to the Wengers and Guardiolas. Such sophistication, refinements are for Arsenal and Manchester City, clubs least likely to be entangled in the dangers of sinking or drowning. Therein the lines are already written and arranged, the only problem is for performance to be made perfect, flawless. Allardyce is the wild savage, body stripped bare save for a cluster of leaves covering essentials and streaked into a frightening motif, veins coursing wildly with blood, all too eager to plunge into battles torrid and enervating. The beats of calling are from the drums of the primeval tribe and elegance is so far away. He cannot be too chic and classy in the type of hero he wants to be. He was called in when Everton was sinking, sinking badly and he has done the job he was appointed for. It did not really matter how he went about it, if it involved pumping balls into the opponents' box and giving the devil free rein to less loose some of its most feral hounds, so be it. In a drowning, any straw will do. It is safety first and methods later. If anyone still cared about methods.
It is his lot. The job has been done, thanks and goodbye.. He should hardly harbor ill-feelings about his dismissal. It is a very ungrateful world in football. Fans are so demanding and besotted with ingratitude that after safety their next inclination is to bask in the luxury of questioning the methods that brought the result. The heroic fireman soon becomes the distressing, boring villain. And who can really blame them? They own the club, pay to high heavens to be entertained and in the new world, getting value for money is a quest folks don't hesitate to push to extreme limits. It is such an unfair world. He is the strange fireman. People eagerly accept his exertions, his drive and after safety, immediately turn around to question his methods. From their dissenting cacophony in the safety of dry land, you would think they would have preferred to drown in the first place.
But he should not be too dismayed. Drowning, sinking, is a very common accident in football, especially in the Premier League. Infernos break out at will. It won't be long before his services are required again. After all Everton did think they had enough life-jackets when they appointed Koeman as coach. It may be yet that the same club will come begging, cap in hand. Returning, as we say in Africa, to lap up their own vomit. 

The Bible Isn't God's Word 2: Waiting for Israel's Destruction.

So trying to destroy Israel is not going to be a mean task, a country with a very efficient army and scores of nuclear weapons. The wait might not be for eternity but it is certainly going to be long, horribly long and in the meantime, Palestinians might try some semblances of other things, even it it is only to kill some of the boredom of waiting.
They can attempt to turn Gaza  and the West Bank into a place flowing with milk and honey. The arguments against such a likelihood may appear so obvious but Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Hong were also densely populated, impoverished countries but today have success stories to tell through determination and unwavering focus. All it needs is a combination of technical ability and enterprise, qualities Palestinians have not been proven to lack. Necessity and desperation are the seedlings of invention and scarce, lean resources can be channeled into watering these little outcrops of growth. The drive and energy and finances  required to take rockets from Iran and fire them at Israel can always be diverted into building more classrooms, improving higher education and acquiring technical inputs to drive the economy and development.
Ancestral homes are very near, just across the blighted border, but they are also far away, so far away. Present demarcations are the products of negotiated settlements that resulted from a series of wars starting from 1948. They are not perfect, undoubtedly, even less satisfactory to those at the receiving end and the UN has passed several resolutions that seeks massive readjustments on the part of Israel. Still they remain negotiated settlements and are most likely to be amended by another set of negotiations. Short of force, which has failed miserably to make belligerents shift their stance. And folks should realize the UN is not going to create a mighty army to drive Israel out of where they presently occupy. The little that has been achieved was arrived at as a result of negotiations and nothing suggests ways cannot be found round the most obdurate of obstacles that stand in the way..
All these may sound sheer poppycock to Hamas, Islamist rulers of Gaza Strip and avowed enemies of Israel, guys at the forefront of the destruction business. But in situations like these, it is easy to overplay one's hand. Assessments shift over time and people do get war-weary. Critics have started suggesting Hamas got behind the recent protests in order to get enough smokescreen behind their increasingly visible failure in governing Gaza. They did get enough smoke, judging from images from the ruinous protests, but it will hardly veil the skepticism welling-up gradually on the part of many Gazans whether the heavy death toll of 58 is worth it all. Gaza is also being blockaded in the west by Egypt, supposedly a Muslim brother. As a result of their ties to Iran, odious enemy to many folks in those climes. Hamas cannot always count on the cooperation of its citizens in trying to resist being hemmed in from both sides. It is not inconceivable that over time, Gazans are increasingly going to see sense in Bertlot Bretch's famous suggestion that food comes first.
One of the most moving images from the recent protests was the sight of folks trying to use catapults to shoot stones at Israeli troops. Some reversal of the David- Goliath story. But it is a Goliath that has morphed into thousands of well-armored soldiers, tanks and nuclear weapons and stones have a bit of work to do. Miracles are also commodities that are in short supply in the present Middle East. However, Goliath didn't have to bare himself to a missile. Israel need not bare herself to catapult-wielding protesters. As the David-Goliath story shows, might is not always foolproof. There is always a caveat to belligerence and one of these is the fact that its arch-enemy, Iran, is also arch-enemy to many Arab countries: Shiites versus Sunnis. And on the basis of this many Arab countries might be willing to prod Palestinians to the negotiation table. An arch-enemy's arch-enemy might be worse than the arch-enemy. This might be a tiny, tiny chink in itself but in the Middle East, where opportunities are at a premium, this might be a huge window.  

The Bible Isn't God's Word, 1

The bible isn't God's word: at least the larger half of it. The Old Testament. That part is definitely the word of the sons of Israel, with a lot of quotations and deeds attributed to God. Jews have always been excellent poets, in addition to many other alluring attributes and have had little trouble turning what is essentially history into a document that tickles human faith and spiritual yearnings. That is why we must take with a pinch of salt statements quoted to a religious leader in the US, relying heavily on quotations from the bible, that God, more than three thousand years ago, ordained Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel. If we resist the temptation to delve into long history, Tel Aviv has been the capital of Israel for some time now and nothing catastrophic has happened to the Jewish state. Now, in case the resistance crumbles, the time Jerusalem has not been capital of Israel far outstretches the period it has and nothing distinctly evil has been attributed to that displacement. There has been pogroms, genocides, even a holocaust suffered by the race in between but Armenians also suffered genocides at the hand of Turkey and that disaster has never been linked to the failure or non-observation of a divine will of a place being capital or not. At any rate, Russian Jews should be more interested in Moscow being capital of Russia that Jerusalem being capital of Israel. French Jews should be more interested in Paris... Millions of Jews are there all over the world who don't all that care much for Jerusalem. This is what Trump knows distinctly well and it is a bit difficult arguing with his critics that in moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, he was only trying to fulfill electoral promises made to his core political base which included orthodox Jews and right-wing American Christians. This is what Palestinians should have seen through. They rather allowed themselves to be blinded by needless emotions and 58 of them have been killed in another ruinous confrontation with their arch-enemy.
Apropos of things catastrophic. May 15 is al-Nakba or Catastrophe for Palestinians, the most mournful date in their calendar. On May 14, 1948, the British Mandate ended in Palestine and Israel declared war the following day. In the battles that ensued, more than 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes in territories now occupied by Israel and they have not been able to return home since then. Many of them now live as refugees in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and so on. It is certainly a loss of epic proportions but no more catastrophic than the slaying by David, who later became a great Israeli king, of the giant Goliath, commander of the Philistines, ancestors of the present Palestinians. Going back to the bible, so to say. Jews and Palestinians have both suffered mind-numbing catastrophes in course of their entwined histories, yet they have multiplied. The rhetorics of destruction should now sound a bit tiring on both sides. It is too late for that. That urge is a bit more strident on the Palestinian, at least Hamas, side but they should now realize they have more than 8.5 million Jews to destroy in Israel alone. A huge task, potentially catastrophic considering the fact that their enemy has scores of nuclear weapons. It will do very few people harm changing the tune to new rhetorics now

Aristotle Mentors Wenger: But the Business of Football is no Business.

"Watch the costs and the profits will take care of themselves."
Poor Arsene Wenger. As a student of economics, he must have gushed over this ancient dictum: one day he was going to run a football club - forget Arsene who? - one of the biggest on earth, and he must have taken old Aristotle admonition as a tool to be taken far more seriously than a managerial wisecrack. He wasn't the only one: for ages, it was an advice that had saved many a business and businessman from collapse and ruin.
Wenger turned out to be an excellent master at tweaking costs. He would buy players dirt cheap and place them under salary structures that were not going to trouble club finances for a very long time and with his undoubted technical ability, mold them into stars that would eventually leave at enormous profits to the club. Aristotle must have beamed with delight in his grave. He also was an excellent salesman. His beautiful brand of football was to do all sorts of exciting things to British football, a brand hitherto notorious for long balls and hooliganism. His football tactics served him well, and so was the financial model that propped up the alluring brand. The pinnacle of his smart money moves was the construction of the magnificent Emirates Stadium.
But the business side of football wasn't going to remain the business of pizza or laundry soap for long. Strange competitors would enter the market. Rich guys with with oversized pockets and king-sized egos. Starting with the Russian oligarch, Roman Abrahamovich, football clubs became mere expensive acquisitions, like yachts, private jets and priceless arts and jewelry. Clubs became expensive toys that helped massage personal egos. In other words, costs no longer mattered, profits even less. Overnight, the double model of success: winning on a solid footing of financial prudence split violently, prudence cast into the abyss of immediate gratification. A satisfaction that could be bought by spending lavishly on the best footballers on earth. The Chelsea model was soon riding hell-for-leather on the increasingly limping Arsenal model.
Wenger's model wasn't going to gain traction too by the ever-changing nature of the game. There was no football during Aristotle's time but even this wisest of all men must have been a bit stretched imagining the business side of this sport: a product with a demand so maddening you could play the most absurd version of Russian roulette with its costs and still come out a winner. Football clubs like Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Manchester United were incurring hefty costs in acquisition of players and were still making hefty profits. Talent was hemorrhaging at Arsenal under Wenger's watch and there was little he could really do about it. He could not bring new infusion of prime talents and it was inevitable the club would slip rapidly. No Messi or Ronaldo was coming down to Arsenal.
He would eventually bring in expensive talents like Lacazette and Aubameyang into the club but it was all too late. Inertia and rot had set in and such acquisitions were more or less panic buyings. Football has grown malignant. Even not watching the costs is no longer a guarantee that success, which has practically replaced profits, would take care of itself. Aristotle would have been amazed.

Muhamadu Buhari, Mahathir Mohamad: The Young Turn to the Old.

Malaysia's case is the clearest indication yet of what corruption does to a nation. For over three decades, starting from the late seventies, the country witnessed unprecedented development: rapid modernization, sustained economic growth and pacy technological advancement. It soon belonged to the elite club of Asian Tigers, alongside Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and North Korea: a group of hitherto poor or stagnant countries that had shed the toga of underdevelopment and almost miraculously had delved into the realm of advancement, helped by able leadership and technological incubation and tendering. They became the envy of the whole world and served as prototypes for other countries that wished to succeed.
Fast track to 2018 and Malaysia's story isn't all that alluring again and the culprit for this downturn is the usual, old suspect: the evil saboteur called corruption. It took less than ten years to undo all that had been achieved over three decades. Allegations of corruption were sufficient, showing how potent a force of destruction this phenomenon can be. National inertia set in instantly, placing on the back foot national enthusiasm, international trust and economic coordination. The Malaysia Development Berhad scandal has refused to die down and former prime minister Najib Razak has just been ordered not to leave the country. So bad and frightening was the situation that the electorate had to rally round ex prime minister, Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the man under whom the unprecedented development took place in the eighties and nineties. Mohamad is ninety two years now, the oldest head of state on earth, even ahead of the long-reigning Queen Eliabeth of England, and has certainly lost much energy and vigor and for youths of twenty and thirty to have run back to him shows the desperation of the situation at hand. It is easy to underestimate the evil of graft, yet of all the prisms that voters use to view the actions and inactions of their leaders, it is easily the most powerful. The same happened in Nigeria in 2015, when the electorate decided to put their trust in ex head of state, General Muhamadu Buhari, then 72, now75: rejecting outright the then president, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, a far younger man. But under Jonathan, corruption reigned supreme, graft and sleaze became almost institutionalized and economic and social collapse was not far away. The two cases are very instructive. Age, vigor, energy and health resonate with the electorate but the very moment graft factors in, they take the back seat. Trust becomes the overriding determinant, both for young and old voters. The old want to protect their savings and the young want to save their future, no pun intended here, and if it is an old and certainly ailing man that will do the job, so be it. At 92, Dr Mohamad is not in the best of health and Buhari had paid several visits to London over his health, even indulging in extended stays to stay well, but bizarre as it sounds, both men might yet win elections again. Without being able to summon the energy to campaign hard. They already had a huge political war chest in their reputation. Choice was no brainer during th 2014 polls once voters remembered Buhari's stern anti-corruption posture in his reign as military head of state and Malaysian voters had little choice in running back to Dr Muhamad. Savings or the future had to be saved. 

The US, George Orwell And The New Cold War.

In light of recent events, the rhythms of the Transatlantic cooperation, or Western solidarity, now that the cold war is fully back, have been sounding eerily Orwellian. It must be right if the US says it is right. A faux pas that is a bit worn, a cliche that doesn't even hold water in present day animal kingdoms. The US is not always right, as Tony Blair found out after his tactless haste to deploy British troops to oust Saddam Hussein, an American misadventure based on the fake intelligence that Iraq was brimming with weapons of mass destruction. It is instructive that the architect of that hoax was John Bolton, the then US envoy to the UN under President George Bush and now Secretary of State under President Trump. Not a single phial of chemical weapons was found in Iraq and the whole fiasco should have served as a restraint to Theresa May, an otherwise sensible girl. The presence of John Bolton alone should have sent the alarm bells ringing and with Trump at the helm of affairs, the horror of two reckless Napoleons, crude hardliners, veritable loose canons, should have reinforced caution. Russia is not the same as Iraq and incidents that could trigger skirmishes with a nuclear power need to be handled with utmost restraint. There is simply no guarantee that a missile will not go astray and land in a very wrong place. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is already in place in Syria and acceptable caution dictates that concerned paties should have waited for its findings. A report of culpability would have secured a reasonable mandate from the UN and then the missile strikes would have had a greater impact than the silly show of fireworks many people are now claiming it to be. With his tweets and loose tongue, Trump was always going to err on the side of impulse and Jeremy Corbyne was right in asking huge questions about British involvement in the strikes. Britain is a power on its own and doesn't have to be corralled into doing whatever the US does
 No power is as effective as one that is cautious, reasonable and based on facts. Corbyne has a point and he would have a huge ammunition indeed if it turns out that the OPCW team finds out that that the allegations of the use of chemical weapons in Douma might have been more complex than thought. The UN was established to handle situations like this and its chief was right to remind the allies of their obligations to the UN charter. The Syrian civil war is indeed a very, very complex conflict and truths emanating from such spheres need to be handled carefully, intractabilities Trump was inclined to simplify. Simplicities made worse by preemptive accusations of Russia tampering with the attack site
 The OPCW is a well-resourced technical organization and it should not be difficult for it to ascertain a chemical weapon was used in a place, even a year ago. The next few days should be revealing indeed.

Trump Promised Fireworks: He Hasn't Even Struck A Match.

The President was always going to err on the side of impulse. His tongue and tweets were too quick for caution. As the news of the alleged chemical attacks in by Syrian government forces in Douma, Eastern Ghoutta, broke out, Trump raced out of the blocks instantly, promising retaliation in form of big, bright bombs that were coming in numbers. Of course the flow of adrenalin had ebbed a couple of days later and subsequent tweets on the issue weren't as enthusiastic. Trump should have then proceeded with his tour of Latin America, that itinerary would have certainly yielded more returns than throwing 105 missiles into facilities no one, except Syrian regime officials, can really say with certainty still contain a single phial of chlorine or other chemical agents. If you're going to attack a place, why announce it so loudly? Why shout your intentions from the rooftops? The Russians and Syrians are no fools. The facilities attacked would certainly contain underground passages with designed exigencies to ferry materials through them very quickly. As it is, a president in the habit of shooting off the cuff must have given them sufficient time and warning to do so. It gave the Russians sufficient time to move their big warships out of their base in the Syrian port of Tartaus and there is nothing to suggest evacuation of smaller chemical containers will pose greater difficulty. Hence this brings us back in time, to President Clinton lobbing criise missiles into terrorist training camps in Eastern Afghanistan. As it turned out to be, the camps were empty and the outcome was that al-Qaeda got bin Laden got emboldened and encouraged to the extent of launching the devastating 9/11 attacks on the US. The missiles launched by Allies into Syria are more likely, as Assad had threatened, to emboldened the Russians and Iranians and Syrians into launching attacks on Idlib, the last major rebel-held enclave in Syria. The place had been a dumping ground for defeated rebels in the country and if it should fall, as it certainly will, then we may as well witness the dumping of defeated enemies into the sea. If the rebels are going to fight to death, having nowhere else to run, will their wives and children show the same determination?
The pyrotechnics weren't even spectacular. Israel does a better job of it with far fewer missiles. Better, quieter and more constant jobs. More efficient jobs. Of course the Russians are making huge propaganda capital out of the announcement that 65 of the missiles were shot down by Syrian air defences that were based on batteries manufactured in the old Soviet Union, 30 years ago. This has been corroborated by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an organization that has been fairly accurate in its reporting and even if can still take this with a pinch of salt, the attacks are not the perfect strikes Trump claims they are. The body language of Gen. McKenzie says it all during his Pentagon briefing. It was apparent he wasn't comfortable with his assurances the missiles achieved all their goals. The whole attack is turning into the most expensive pyrotechnics ever organized. Sadly, we see even a better spectacle at the Sydney harbour, during New Year celebrations.

Mr Comey and Trump's Unending Wars.

In the United States, of late, a new, nasty turn has entered the writing of memoirs. We used to write those books because they give us something to do in the boredom of retirement, could bring in hefty cash and at the same time satisfy some personal joy on the sidelines. James Comey, the ex-FBI Director fired by President Trump doesn't seem to be looking for money, looks very busy and if he's in retirement or semi-retirement, he's certainly deriving no joy from the inactivity. It would have been his wish he was still FBI Director, revelling in the glamour and power of office and he wasn't going to like it at all he was kicked from office by a man who has certainly not filched hair from sheep and whose hands are not really out of proportions as we think, virtually the only positive things he said about President Trump in his trending memoirs. If Mr Comey was out to unleash some vendetta, have some pound of flesh, a direction some memoirs are now turning, he has given himself some relief. Let's be sincere, Comey's sacking surprised even himself, he has been chafing all the while and he was certainly going to fight back and he has done plenty of hitting back in his latest book.
And the book isn't really going to do much more than that. He could write tomes and tomes of horrendous things about his ex-boss and still not say more than what we already know about him. Many of these thing's are in the open: Trump has a mafia-like impulse for elimination and it is hardly all about execution, even the most trenchant exhibitions of loyalty do not guarantee aides they would be spared the axe. What saved you today might be your death sentence tomorrow and in this way, you might liken him to the infamous Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin. In fact, Trump sounds and looks eerie because so many personae swirl around him, images from many outlandish, troubling figures of history. Comey's memoirs will contain so many truths, and a rich sprinkling of outright fables, but it wouldn't matter a jot: Trump is such a grotesque character that anything trivial or prodigious redounds on him. He is a sort of Pandora Box and many of us are resigned to whatever he might throw up.
And out of view, Mr Comey might be silently bitting his ow fingers. If he had been convinced he did right by reopening the Clinton e-mails brouhaha when he did then he wouldn't have been making so much noise about Obama's vote of confidence. He reopened that particular nasty box and out flew a president that would busy himself not with substance but with so many unending wars.