The Slog takes a closer look at a terrifying Present, a more flippant Past, an unexpected FA Cup Final present, and too much globalist money destroying the Game in the Future
A few months back, I made passing mention of the fact that the Russian Federation has the most sensitive and sophisticated Voronezh early-warning radar defence system on the planet.
Zelensky and his drug cartel don't have any way of knocking out the system; the RF system would redirect the missile elsewhere [wouldn't that be fun]. But NATO is alleged to have developed a medium-range weapon with under-the-radar capabilities.
Even if the Ukrainians did have such technology, they wouldn't know how to use it.
But somehow, between five and seven "weapons" allegedly got through the Voronezh defences last week and knocked out two static points in the Donetsk battery.
There are about a million reasons why this is profoundly depressing news….but these are my top four:
1. NATO has clearly developed a weapon, but I'm not clear about what that weapon actually is. I've been shown one photograph of the Donetsk installation damage, and to be honest it looks exactly like the Hawaii microwave weapon that not only could identify and pintpoint exact properties for selective destruction, it burnt several local palm trees from the inside out.
2. I suspect we may not be talking about a missile at all. I'm not showing the shot I was given, because this could easily be a wicked combo of convincing photoshop and I don't want at this stage to make an ass of myself until we know more.
3. Most terrifying of all, Moscow knows only Brit, US and French boffins could develop and launch something of this nature. So to be potentially simplistic about this, we now have an undeclared hot war with the RF and EUNATO staring at each other from the opposite trenches, and the world only a gnat's kneecap away from full-on existential conflagration...with EUNATO forces on Russian soil.
4. Finally, this is exactly what you'd do as a precursor to invasion: knock out the enemy's hitech defences.
Gulp.
OFFICIAL: White House announces Putin is the illegitimate son of Mad Monk Grigorij Rasputin, and the result of an early cryogenic experiment that went slightly wrong, but proves that Putin is sexually insane despite having three heads, fourteen wives, an addiction to Cocaine, Heroin, Meths, and a deadly Sweet Tooth
And so, time to bring a smile back to baby-boomers' faces….in a past we all took far too seriously, long before we got to the stage of technical advance we now tolerate where, once invented, the hitech capability is used for depraved reasons with a group name called Misleading Privacy Invasion…..broken up at various levels to make the surreal seem normal, the counterfeit seem genuine, plaything smartphones seem merely harmless fun [as opposed to the global track and trace spies they really are], Artificial Robot intelligence to add more leisure to our lives, and braindead media content to distract us from the reality that a free press ownership has sold out to the bourses and now dictates what we are [or are not] allowed to see, hear, or express our our feelings about in elections.
Back then – I'm talking mainly 1970-80 – the demos and adventures took us to Paris to bombard the flics with pavement slabs, wander up and down the Boule St Miche and then head further south to northern Spain, where the still undiscovered little coastal town of Cadaques was a haven for Vietnam War draft dodgers and those into non-compliance with an unwinnable conflict.
It was all very long hair, Peace Man, San Francisco, LBJ and the kids he'd killed that day. There was an American owned eaterie, and so many East Coast Ivy League accents, one expected Ernest Hemingway to ride into town at any minute atop a Bull, and start flogging copies of Death in the Afternoon.
Following the seafood, around eleven pm, my immediate travelling companion Hugo Davies [who went on to write a definitive book on painter Francis Bacon's screaming Popes (Left) from 1953] plus a few others would repair via Pug Vidal to the then infamous Bar Melitone, and start ploughing into the Sol y sombra - an after dinner drink (or digestif), consisting of equal parts brandy and anise dulce (sweet anise or anisette) served in a brandy snifter, that is well known in most parts of Spain.
I wanted to read a book about Spanish surrealism founder Salvador Dali in good light, and thus purloined the barman, plonking down to sit at his end of the Cantina for better access to mind alteration and gigantic candlelight from the shelf above....the whole idea of the trip, after all, was to meet Dali. Being young and often wasted, Hugo and I didn't bother to check whether he was even there. In the event, he turned out to be at a retrospective in Paris. [So you see, if you spend your youth getting wasted, then youth is indeed wasted on the Young].
Completely absorbed in the book, it was twenty minutes before I ordered the deadly digestif once more...only to see several grinning faces and lots of finger-pointing emitted by the local Cadaquesistos. Almost immediately afterwards, I became uncomfortably aware of a huge lead weight that seemed to be pushing my ears down far below my lungs towards internal organs of which I had little or no knowledge.
But even in my own alcohol splattered state, I was still able to conclude, "this is way beyond anything I might call normal".
With a smile five miles wide on his face, Hugo walked over to where I was sitting, and said, "Jaahn, I think you need to go to the bathroom and look in the mirror".
So I did.
I'm guessing there must have been half a kilo of candle wax sitting – like a giant ant-hill – on my skull. Another in our group - the French motor racing driver Georges-Francis "Johnny" Servoz-Gavin* (18 January 1942 – 29 May 2006 - see left) took pity on me and scraped the gigantic clinging altar candle pollution out of my hair. But the next day – as we lay once again on the rocky beaches of Dali's home - by 10 am the following morning, I was soon the victim of more free-flowing candle wax.
*Johnny was in fact the understudy for Scottish F1 driver Jackie Stewart, but he did not die on the circuit: tragically, he died from a brain embolism of the kind that very nearly killed my elder daughter.
Let's face it, name-dropping life anecdotes told about oneself bring every David Nivenesque ego down to earth once the gap between human aspiration and human achievement has been established.
Charlie Chaplin said, "All my humour is about sympathy for failure". There is an absolute truth and tragedy in all of that.
This weekend just gone demonstrated my failure in a way that has never made me so happy. Convinced that Manchester City were going to give my team United a pasting just as they did last year, to my astonishment, United took a two goal lead in the first half and stayed ahead to win the FA Cup.
But there's a lesson to learn even from this. For once, the United head coach gave his team a simple brief: "Don't let them settle, don't give them time to play the careful build-up stuff they thrive on: harry them, don't give ground and play attack>>attack>>attack."
City didn't know what had hit them.
But then as soon as the second half began, United had obviously been told to sit back on the two-goal cushion….and City came right back into it playing midfield pinball - which is about as entertaining as watching a tumble-dryer.
There's too much money in soccer, and too many rich globalist jerks wanting to win games no matter what the cost. Football is about entertainment. Somebody needs to explain this to the sponsors. Also that there is a strength called 'Patience'.
Having won pretty much every competition since his arrival, within 36 hours of FA Cup Final defeat, Manchester City's manager has turned down what those close to him call "A risible contract renewal deal". Now this morning we also hear that Eric Ten Hag the Manchester United coach who beat local rivals City to win the Trophy is "the subject of debate about his future with the club".
Rumour has it that the Manchester United joint sponsors for season 2024-5 will be Christ, Allah, Lord Buddha and Shinto.
The currency to be used remains a subject of debate, but seems likely to reject paper alternatives in favour of the inestimable power of quantum wish fulfilment driven by unconscious superstar strikers, always assuming the referee is bent.
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