Joe Hart's a goose

Joe Hart needs a holiday from football for a couple of years -- too many mistakes.  How about Hawaii?

Joe Hart: I wanna go to Hawaii

No matter how many times I look at the replay I can't understand what Joe Hart is trying to do here in Man City's recent game with Chelsea in the English Premier League. Toward the end of the game, that was level at one goal a piece, he inexplicably comes out of the penalty box to meet a ball that City defender Nastasic was probably going to get.

Why would you go to a ball that was outside of the penalty box, especially when there were other outfield players nearby?  You should only go out that far if it's a one on one or if you know you can get to the ball well before the attacker gets there.  

Nastasic was heading it when Hart met the ball, and this occurred outside the box, so Hart couldn't have handled it; what could have he have done?

Not only that, he practically tackled Nastasic, putting Torres through on goal by himself.  I don't think he could have done a better job to thwart Nastasic if he tried.

Hart in no man's land. Hart is hitting Nastasic with Torres just to the right of them, who went on to score. From: mcfc.

His excuse is that he was shouting "keeper". Well who can hear that among the noise of the crowd? And what if Nastasic heard Hart and decided he was crazy -- I would have.

I don't think the mix up was Nastasic's fault at all; this was all on Joe Hart.

I thought Hart should have been dropped after letting in two goals in the Champions League game against Bayern Munich.  He let in the first goal against Ribery through weak hands.

Ribery shoots...

...goes straight through Hart's hands for Bayern's first goal in their Champion's League meeting, 3 Oct 2013.

It's time to stop picking people on reputation.  Joe Hart's too big for his boots at the moment and he needs to get back to basics for a year or two.  Maybe if he didn't spend so much time doing shampoo commercials.

Maybe a holiday is too extreme for Hart.  Perhaps he can find a home in an understanding League Two team. I think Manchester City coach Manuel Pellegrini would be crazy to make him the number one keeper again this season, and should ditch him at the end, or maybe the summer transfer window. 

Hart means a goal lost every three or four games right now for City; he's a bench warmer at best. Best scenario: city should be loan him out pronto.

FIFA should be disbanded over Qatar debacle

FIFA should be disbanded and Sepp Blatter should resign as a result of the Qatar debacle.

Hear no evil.  Qatar debacle: what me worry?

FIFA and UEFA have given up on the original plan for futuristic air conditioned stadiums that were supposed to allow for a summer World Cup in Qatar.  They have approved moving the 2022 World Cup to winter and a showdown looms with the major European clubs in a year's time for their approval for the move.

What happened to the fancy air-conditioned stadiums we were promised?

I think the clubs would be crazy to allow this change to occur.  FIFA awarded the 2022 Cup to Qatar on the basis that it could be done in the heat of a Middle Eastern summer.   If Qatar will not host it in summer they should be stripped of hosting rights. But FIFA is not backing down.  This is why FIFA should be disbanded.

There were plenty of other hosts who could have hosted a successful summer Cup, and one host in the southern hemisphere where it would be winter in July -- Australia.   I think Frank Lowy and FFA are rightly aggrieved that FIFA wants to move the 2022 Cup to a northern hemisphere winter.

Any one of these (other) World Cup bidders would have been better than Qatar

The successful Qatar bid shows that FIFA is corrupt and easily bribed.  Every FIFA voting member with the possible exception of Franz Beckenbauer should resign for corruption in my opinion.

Qatar should be stripped of its 2022 hosting rights and a totally new FIFA should be built from the ground up.

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Michel Platini's 4+5 rule is a way to reel in the financial success of the English Premier League.  I don't agree with the proposal to limit foreign players at all, because I don't agree with the philosophy that you need that many home grown players, namely 5, playing in every team in the domestic competition in order to have a good national team.

Taking the example of England, if there are only 2 English players in every Premier League team that's still 2 x 20 = 40 players to choose from.  As it is about 68 English players will start in the EPL this season. Add a few more from the Championship and from outside of England and that's quite a lot of players to choose from.

In my opinion having lots of foreign players flood the English Premier league is only going to improve the standard and therefore the quality of players in the England national team.

I also think England should get 1 - 2 more Champions League places. Look at the great competition among the top six teams in the EPL. 

Odds to win EPL 26 Oct 2013

All six of the EPL's top teams (above) belong in the Champions League in my opinion.  But with the prevailing Anglophobia at UEFA led by continentalists like Platini I doubt that will happen any time soon.

Angela Merkel's phone hacked: nothing to see here

Just don't mention the war! 

Don't think anything of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone being hacked by US intelligence agencies. It's all routine. Routine hacking of an allied leader's phone. For security purposes you understand. 

The best photographic manipulation Google ads can buy

You can't be too careful, what with Adolf Hitler, the Third Reich and all that. Angela could be the next Hitler you know! Hence it's perfectly justifiable...to tap her phone right? Well no, it's completely unjustifiable; we should not be spying on our allies if it's really about fighting terrorism and not just big brother-style surveillance of everyone.

It's as silly as governor Jesse Ventura being frisked by the TSA at an airport when everyone damn well knows who he is.

I wasn't that surprised when whistle-blower Edward Snowden revealed that US spy agencies spy on everyone.  The US insists that it's just terrorists they're monitoring, but I've always suspected that everyone was monitored all the time by the government.  Just another reason why the government is our enemy and not our friend.

Anti-dentite bastard

"Tim Whatley was one of my students, and if this wasn't my son's wedding day, I'd knock your teeth out, you anti-dentite bastard." - Seinfeld, the Yada Yada.

What is with people and their fear of dentists!? After that attention grabbing headline followed by a rather flimsy segue, here is a fascinating (not) story about my recent trip to the dentist.

I just had a dentist appointment with a new dentist and I thought the lady who was interviewing me was the assistant, not the dentist, as most dental assistants are women. So I'm answering her questions thinking: it's nice to have this chat but the real questions will come when the dentist comes in, not realising I was talking to the real dentist! When I realised she was the dentist I was too embarrassed to mention it.

Anyhow, it wasn't that embarrassing a slip up because I did answer all of her questions candidly and openly, so no harm done, but you can imagine my surprise when suddenly she reaches for the tools and starts looking in my mouth. 

Also there was another person there, a dental assistant who was indeed a woman, yet that still didn't clue me into the fact that the woman I was talking to was the real dentist! Oh well. 

In retrospect I realise that my dentist was the one wearing white, while the dental assistant was wearing something blue. So I know for the future: the one in white is the dentist (regardless of gender).

I told them I've got a huge cavity on my right side -- I felt it there a few days ago. I was picking some food out of my mouth and felt what I thought was a 1mm wide cavity along the length of the top of one of my top back molars. 

When I looked at it in the mirror it was brown. I thought: my god how did such a big cavity form so quickly without me noticing?! And I confessed to my dentist my sin of not brushing my teeth consistently before bedtime. I thought: my oral sins have come back to haunt me.  She took one look at it and said: that's tartar.

I was embarrassed for the second time in this dental appointment. I had mistaken tartar build up for a huge cavity! After a thoroughly professional clean my mouth was sparkly and spanking new, the tartar gone. I had freaked out over nothing!

It was good to get a new dentist though and actually I think she was better than my old one who was rougher and always scraped all of my teeth hard with a metal pick.  This lady just looked at my teeth for the initial inspection. (I suppose she would have been on the lookout for holes as she scrapped the tartar off.)

I go to the dentist at least once a year nowadays.  But I had a naughty period where I didn't see one for eight years. I didn't know you had to go to one regularly to get the tartar scrapped off your teeth, and that you can't scrape it off yourself. 

Worst of all, at the beginning of that eight year dentist-hiatus the last dentist I saw frightened me into not brushing well along the gum line because, he said, once you scrape off your gum cells they never grow back.

So I tended not to brush thoroughly near the gum line, which weakened my enamel near the gum line leaving me with a vulnerability to cavities ever since. I would have been about 16 years old when I saw that dentist, and then I didn't see one until I was 24.

Funny thing about that dentist was, he said I wasn't making consistent eye contact with him and he took me through a guided meditation until I would look at him with a consistent stare. 

The appointment went for a long time as a result, so long that there was no time for my father, who was also due to see him, to have his appointment.  When my father and I left I didn't have to say anything to him about the weirdness of the guided meditation incident and he said: I don't think we'll go to this dentist anymore, and we didn't!

So long Holger, no hard feelings

Osieck sacked (right)

After two 6 - 0 drubbings, I agree with this decision to sack Holger Osieck as Australia national coach, as it's time for a change.  But I don't blame Holger for the recent poor form of the Australian side. Australia is in a transition phase now and every generation can't be golden, at least not yet.

Osieck did well as coach of Australia.  He got us to the World Cup.  But it's good that he goes because Australia needs to rebuild and we need fresh ideas.

The players are more of a problem than Holger, especially the older ones.  Lucas Neill should retire. Holman has been disappointing. Marc Bresciano is playing well but at 33 he's the type of player we should be looking to wean the national team off.

Another problem was described by TV commentator Mark Bosnich who said that Holger has lost the players (respect) in the dressing room.  In a recent Foxsports interview (link) Bresciano denied this. He made it seem uncontroversial.

Yet there seemed to be a lack of will power in the two recent games against France and Brazil.  If so, such team discord is probably lead by senior players like Neill, and possibly the likes of Tim Cahill. Yet all deny it. Is the denial believable or is it just good politics on their part -- a sort of code of silence?

Cahill is still a key man for Australia and is still doing well at club level.  Lucas Neill by contrast has been on a steady decline club-wise drifting on and out of Middle Eastern leagues and languishing.

Matt McKay was only ever a stop-gap measure who played a good role in Asian games but isn't really up to top class football, not that many else in the team are up to it.  But I never want to see McKay in an Australian jumper again.

Wilkshire is also languishing and is past his prime too.  Carney I still have hopes for, but his club record is so inconsistent -- a bit of an odd one.  I would like to see younger guys coming in like Lowry.

Schwarzer's move to become the second keeper at Chelsea was weird. I can understand why he did it for his own reasons: looking for his future after retirement, perhaps he can become a goal keeping coach at Chelsea. 

Chelsea's close to his London home. His family is comfortable in England and will want to stay, so Schwarzer must too. But I think it rightly damages his claim to be the national keeper and we have an able replacement right now in Langerak. He's been a legend for Australia, but I think we should dump Schwarzer now.

Foxtel TV commentators were lamenting that the current poor form of the national team will tarnish the good deeds of the "golden generation" -- the class of 2006 that did so well. I disagree.  The current humiliation is disappointing, but it does not throw water on the fire of 2006.

Hopefully a new generation of Australian footballers is still being built and we will improve in the future.  Although the current youth teams don't inspire much hope, getting pummelled in international competitions.

Some say there's enough room for all codes in Australia.  Maybe so, but there is a lot of bias toward AFL and NRL.  The media is familiar with these sports and there's a lot of money in them.  I get frustrated with the extreme lack of footballing news in this country. I hate wading through 50 minutes of AFL and NRL to get to 2 paltry minutes of football coverage in a one hour sports show.

This year I got excited when the AFL and NRL grand finals were over because I thought it meant we would get more football news.  I was mistaken. A week or two later since those finals and the sports headlines are still dominated by AFL and NRL.  It's like Australian sports reporters don't know how to report on sports other than AFL, NRL and rugby; maybe that's true. Or maybe they just think that soccer isn't worth reporting on?

Although having said that, the last week since Holger has been fired there's been quite a lot of football news, which is good to see.

There is cultural and media bias against football in Australia.  If we all watched football like we do AFL/NRL we would be a major footballing power. Every year would be a golden generation like for countries in Europe.  But you know what, just forget about that Australia: let's play sports that only we are good at, that way we will be the best in the world every time!

Aussie rules is a sport that only played in Australia that has no prospect for expansion anywhere in the world except Nauru.  Rugby league is played in England and New Zealand as well as Australia, but the best domestic comp and players are in Australia.  And guess what?  We have the world's best teams in both those codes, always have and probably always will.

So who cares if we get defeated 6 - 0 in Paris in soccer?  If we make up our own sports, we can have the best teams in the world! Mainly because we have the only teams in the world.  Well done Australia, you're best at something only you do.

Anyhow the theory is that if you're going to be smashed at a tournament, such as the upcoming World Cup in Brazil 2014, you may as well do it with young guys and an eye to the future (a future that doesn't look that good).

Who should definitely leave:

Brett Holman

Lucas Neill

Luke Wilkshire

Harry Kewell

Sasa Ognenovski

Who should probably leave:

Matt McKay 

Marc Bresciano

Mark Schwarzer

Types of player we should focus on:

Tommy Oar
Mitch Langarak
Robbie Kruse
Mathew Leckie
Rhys Williams
Tom Rogic
Ryan McGowan

Nothing to see here folks, move on!

Team America: World Police

The question of whether the US should attack Syria is not about justice or chemical weapons, it's about whether the US should be the world policeman.  It's a role America has been stuck with since WW2.  

Although nominally a republic, thanks to their security posture and global military deployment, the US is effectively an empire.  The critical element in that empire is oil and therefore the critical area is the Middle East.

The other issue is that the American military industrial complex is so big it needs to be fed with war every now and then to justify its existence; preferably two or three small ones and one big one per decade. 

I cringed when I saw Obama in Russia at a press conference at the G20 trying to justify US involvement in Syria.  He was too honest in explaining the situation saying e.g. that well America is the only country with this capability.  Yes, but that's not justification for war.

Obama is a good talker, but when it comes to the War On Terror he needs to take a leaf out of George W Bush's book and stop the "maybes" and talk more terms of absolutes.  He needed to talk up the War On Terror aspect more.  

Has the beneficial effect of 9-11 as being a Pearl-Harbor-like-event for US imperialism really dried up so much?  Did Bush ruin international sympathy over 9-11 with the Iraq war?  Certainly Americans are tired of war and of the War On Terror in general.

Who's responsible for the Syrian chemical weapons attack?

Chemical warfare agents are extremely difficult to manufacture and distribute.  A ragtag bunch of rebels in the Syrian desert can't make such weapons.  Of all the weapons you could want to use, chemical weapons are the least practical and least cost effective to make.

So that leaves the Syrian regime and western powers such as Israel and the US who could actually make weaponisable chemical weapons and deploy them to Syria.  Syria is one of the few non-signatories to the chemical weapons convention and is thought to possess a stockpile of them.  But I don't see an incentive for Assad to use these weapons on his own people.  The West, however, does have an interest insofar as generating a pretext to attack.

The Grand Chessboard

False flag attacks are how any major power gets the ball rolling on military action.  Military conflict is politics by other means...someone said (I think Hitler).  If the US wants to be involved in conflict: it will be. 

Whether it's the Gulf of Tonkin to start the Vietnam war or the explosion in the battleship Maine to start the Spanish-American war: it will happen if the will and means are there.

The United States wants to be involved in the Middle East as part of what Zbigniew Brzezinski described as the grand chessboard -- control of the world's most strategic area in the oil rich Central Asia/Middle East.  Put it this way: if this chemical attack happened in Uganda would the US be prepared to become involved?  Of course not, there's no oil in Uganda!

The Grand Chessboard

The reason events in the Middle East are always in the US's vital national interest is because without importing oil from the middle East to power their vehicles, the economy would grind to a halt.  That's why many in the US are desperate to develop fracking so as to finally free it from Middle Eastern oil dependency.

There are two factions in the Middle East roughly divided along the Sunni - Shia fracture in Islam.  The Sunni-Saudi side is backed by the US.  They tolerate Israel in return for US assistance (where "assistance" is of the kind of a mafia protection racket; we assist you or we break your legs).    The other side is the Shia Iran/Syria side backed by Russia.  (Most in Syria are Sunni Muslim but Assad is Shiite.) Let's call this side the axis of evil.

The axis of evil is backed by Russia, but Russia is not the superpower it used to be.  One of the strange things I hear of the coming war in the Middle East is that it will lead to WW3, I don't agree.  I think the limited action in Syria will lead to worse consequences such as Iranian involvement, and I think that's kind of the point -- to provoke Iran into a response that will lead to a wider Middle East conflict which the US is ready for -- that's what they've been preparing for all this time: confrontation with Iran.  

All Syrian attack contingencies from the US military planers would include the possibility of Iranian retaliation. But it's not going to lead to all out WW3; that's a ridiculous notion.

Russia backs Syria and Iran, but it's not going to start WW3.  China is even less likely to become involved.  China sells most of its stuff to the US and holds trillions in US government bonds.  It's not going to fight the golden goose that lays its economic eggs.

The Report From Iron Mountain

The Report From Iron Mountain was released in 1967.  Some say it's a hoax; if so it's a hoax about a true thing.  It basically says that the US has a war-based economy, continuing from the WW2 economy, and that economy needs to be fed with a war every now and then to keep it going.

Libertarian Congressman Ron Paul proposed pulling back from the Empire and the war based economy to a pre-war stance of bringing the troops home and defending the US within its borders.  This would cost a lot less and allow the federal budget to be balanced and the deficit finally reduced -- Paul's so-called austerity plan.  

Most US voters have the view that America should no longer be the world policeman, and case in point: should not get involved in Syria.  If Congress doesn't authorise military action against Syria then it's time to re-examine the US's position as Team America: World Police.

Surprise landslide victory for Coalition?

There's a landslide election victory in the offing for the Liberal/National Coalition, and apparently it's quite an unexpected surprise to mainstream TV commentators such as those I have been watching on Sky News. To me it's not that surprising.

My own survey of people I know is that most are pissed off with Labor.  Only the rusted-ons are voting Labor this election.  But the polls and the main stream media (MSM) have been saying it was a much closer race until this point.  At the beginning of the campaign some Labor commentators were even saying they could win.

I've always taken a grain of salt about polls and about anything the MSM has to say in general.   One problem is not everyone answers a poll; another is the drop-off in land-line use.  Polls are usually cold-calling by telephone and not everyone, teenagers for example, are receptive to a telephone survey.  Not everyone answers the phone at night.  And some people hang up as soon as they know it's a survey.

Another problem is the margin of error which is usually around 3%.  A swing of 6% could mean nothing statistically due to the margin of error, yet all movements no matter how small will be reported by a MSM who is desperate to stay relevant and stop losing ratings to the alternative media.

At the end of the day polls don't mean as much as a real vote.  In 5 days time the will of the electorate will no longer be subject to media spin, and I expect a landslide victory to the Coalition.

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How will I be voting?  Not Labor and not Greens, that's how.  Beyond that, don't know.  Last year there were only four candidates for the seat of Rankin in the lower house to choose from: Labor, Green, Lib/Nats and one other...can't remember, maybe an independent.  It doesn't matter how I vote though as Rankin (think Logan City, Queensland) is a perennial Labor seat.

I think I voted conservative for the first time last election in 2010.  In my youth I voted Greens and preferenced Labor.  In my middle age I don't think I can vote Green ever again in my life -- I've grown and they are even further out of touch with reality.  I'll consider Labor again in a generation once they clean up their act.

I wish there was a libertarian party in Australia along the lines of US Congressman Ron Paul.  Though I'm not a traditional conservative, strangely the main stream party closest to my views now are the Nationals -- something I never thought I'd say in my youth.

Speaking of Nationals, good luck to Barnaby Joyce in Tony Windsor's seat of New England.  (I was raised in Armidale, NSW in that electorate.)  I may not be as conservative as Barnaby, but the refreshing thing about him is his straight talking attitude.  And he sticks up for Australia.

Tony Abbott can come across as hyper-scripted and minder-managed.  Joyce is like the opposite: everything he says sounds like it was just blurted off the top of his head, which I like.  Barnaby for PM!