rocket_scientist

Therein lies the requirement for definition. What is the club? Who are the club? It is the support that defines a club best. Man U fans, exactly like Rangers fans, are the most obnoxious people on planet earth. Like Real Madrid too. Their divine right to win has more correlation with their reasons for supporting them than anything to do with any "natural" affiliation. In the RFC case of course, you can add reasons of Protestantism and anti-Catholicism but it's still from the same origins of human sickness. Real Madrid are also swelled by historic illness, the harking back to war and intolerance being their foundation.

I was hardly suggesting that the club, rather than an opportunist was making the scarves. The fact that they were bought, plus the very many home-made banners were proof of my point. Lest we forget, this is the disgusting club that called for the head of SAF. Unlike LvG however, the board got it right back then.

If ever there was proof of the disgustingness of Man U, today sealed it. Before kick off they're selling Mourinho scarves. They have loads of banners like Leave Vanish Go etc. Their manager is a dick but he's got pedigree and whilst he's fair game for non MU, it's pretty disgusting how they turn on their own so quick. Like Rangers and Real Madrid, no-one likes us, we don't care. These are clubs that attract the sad, the arrogant and the ignorant. Hope Chelsea find something in this second half. Shite game so far.

The last time Arsenal won a game after trailing at HT was over FOUR YEARS AGO! 5-3 v. Chelsea was the last time, October 2011. 28 times since then they've been down at HT and 17 defeats and 11 draws is the count. Having just conceded a 2nd to Southampton, looks like this trend will be continuing. Gutless Wenger. Same old, same old.

Hud on. Did Xmas 2014 not exist? Fakers. Weegie fakers. ? ??

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/12/23/christmas-column-2015/ by Paul Craig Roberts Christmas Column, 2015 Dear Donors, thank you for your support in 2015. Although you have kept me working yet another year, I find it encouraging that there are some Americans who can think independently and who want to know. As Margaret Mead said, it only takes a few determined people to change the world. Perhaps some of you will be those people. My traditional Christmas column goes back to sometime in the 1990s when I was a newspaper columnist. It has been widely reprinted at home and abroad. Every year two or three readers write to educate me that religion is the source of wars and persecutions. These readers confuse religion with mankind’s abuse of institutions, religious or otherwise. The United States has democratic institutions and legal institutions to protect civil liberties. Nevertheless, we now have a police state. Shall I argue that democracy and civil liberty are the causes of police states? Some readers also are confused about hypocrisy. There is a vast difference between proclaiming moral principles that one might fail to live up to and proclaiming immoral principles that are all too easy to keep. Liberty is a human achievement. We have it, or had it, because those who believed in it fought to achieve it. As I explain in my Christmas column, people were able to fight for liberty because Christianity empowered the individual. The other cornerstone of our culture is the Constitution. Indeed, the United States is the Constitution. Without the Constitution, the United States is a different country, and Americans a different people. This is why assaults on the Constitution by the Bush and Obama regimes are assaults on America that are far worse than any assaults by terrorists. There is not much that we can do about these assaults, but we should not through ignorance enable the assaults or believe the government’s claim that safety requires the curtailment of civil liberty. In a spirit of goodwill, I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a successful New Year. Paul Craig Roberts The Greatest Gift For All Christmas is a time of traditions. If you have found time in the rush before Christmas to decorate a tree, you are sharing in a relatively new tradition. Although the Christmas tree has ancient roots, at the beginning of the 20th century only 1 in 5 American families put up a tree. It was 1920 before the Christmas tree became the hallmark of the season. Calvin Coolidge was the first President to light a national Christmas tree on the White House lawn. Gifts are another shared custom. This tradition comes from the wise men or three kings who brought gifts to baby Jesus. When I was a kid, gifts were more modest than they are now, but even then people were complaining about the commercialization of Christmas. We have grown accustomed to the commercialization. Christmas sales are the backbone of many businesses. Gift giving causes us to remember others and to take time from our harried lives to give them thought. The decorations and gifts of Christmas are one of our connections to a Christian culture that has held Western civilization together for 2,000 years. In our culture the individual counts. This permits an individual person to put his or her foot down, to take a stand on principle, to become a reformer and to take on injustice. This empowerment of the individual is unique to Western civilization. It has made the individual a citizen equal in rights to all other citizens, protected from tyrannical government by the rule of law and free speech. These achievements are the products of centuries of struggle, but they all flow from the teaching that God so values the individual’s soul that he sent his son to die so we might live. By so elevating the individual, Christianity gave him a voice. Formerly only those with power had a voice. But in Western civilization people with integrity have a voice. So do people with a sense of justice, of honor, of duty, of fair play. Reformers can reform, investors can invest, and entrepreneurs can create commercial enterprises, new products and new occupations. The result was a land of opportunity. The United States attracted immigrants who shared our values and reflected them in their own lives. Our culture was absorbed by a diverse people who became one. In recent decades we have lost sight of the historic achievement that empowered the individual. The religious, legal and political roots of this great achievement are no longer reverently taught in high schools, colleges and universities or respected by our government. The voices that reach us through the millennia and connect us to our culture are being silenced by “political correctness” and “the war on terror.” Prayer has been driven from schools and Christian religious symbols from public life. Constitutional protections have been diminished by hegemonic political ambitions. Indefinite detention, torture, and murder are now acknowledged practices of the United States government. The historic achievement of due process has been rolled back. Tyranny has re-emerged. Diversity at home and hegemony abroad are consuming values and are dismantling the culture and the rule of law. There is plenty of room for cultural diversity in the world, but not within a single country. A Tower of Babel has no culture. A person cannot be a Christian one day, a pagan the next and a Muslim the day after. A hodgepodge of cultural and religious values provides no basis for law – except the raw power of the pre-Christian past. All Americans have a huge stake in Christianity. Whether or not we are individually believers in Christ, we are beneficiaries of the moral doctrine that has curbed power and protected the weak. Power is the horse ridden by evil. In the 20th century the horse was ridden hard, and the 21st century shows an increase in pace. Millions of people were exterminated in the 20th century by National Socialists in Germany and by Soviet and Chinese communists simply because they were members of a race or class that had been demonized by intellectuals and political authority. In the beginning years of the 21st century, hundreds of thousands of Muslims in seven countries have already been murdered and millions displaced in order to extend Washington’s hegemony. Power that is secularized and cut free of civilizing traditions is not limited by moral and religious scruples. V.I. Lenin made this clear when he defined the meaning of his dictatorship as “unlimited power, resting directly on force, not limited by anything.” Washington’s drive for hegemony over US citizens and the rest of the world is based entirely on the exercise of force and is resurrecting unaccountable power. Christianity’s emphasis on the worth of the individual makes such power as Lenin claimed, and Washington now claims, unthinkable. Be we religious or be we not, our celebration of Christ’s birthday celebrates a religion that made us masters of our souls and of our political life on Earth. Such a religion as this is worth holding on to even by atheists. As we enter into 2016, Western civilization, the product of thousands of years of striving, hangs in the balance. Degeneracy is everywhere before our eyes. As the West sinks into tyranny, will Western peoples defend their liberty and their souls, or will they sink into the tyranny, which again has raised its ugly and all devouring head?

It's not about a slow news day. It's always the case with Sky and BBC. Channel 4 news and Al Jazeera are worth their salt. I always tune in to Rupert and Auntie though, simply to see how they perpetrate their propaganda and studying their formulae and their presentation, it doesn't take too long to see how they operate and who they're serving. In a world where Bush and Bliar are still to be held accountable and a majority of the population still believe four planes were hijacked 14 years ago, it's incredible to me that cognitive dissonance can be this strong. Repression for some, denial for others but it's got so bad that it's turned full circle. Whistle blowing is treasonous and they have a term for it now - "truthers". Investigative journalism is a dying art. Serving the machine is the norm.

Sky and BBC lead on an 88 year old who drives into Costa Coffee some fucking where. Who cares? Who gives a fuck? How is that "news" to merit the top of the show? It doesn't of course but it fits the model. Feed the masses inanity, something they can ingest without thinking. Wallow in the inconsequential. Ignore real news. Move on. Job done.

At the end of the day, it was always going to boil down to an opinion or the opinions of the people who put it together and being a weegie paper, it was always going to highlight the OF players, understandably. I would say that they got 1 and 2 right, or more properly, my 1 & 2 accords with theirs but I know McGrain was a great Left Back but no way the third best player in history. That's just ridiculous, as are so many on that list, Charlie Nicholas and particularly Kenny Dalglish being so far down relative to their exceptional skill and influence. We could argue all day about it but at the end of the day, it's just opinions. The MVP concept (Most Valuable Player) doesn't even have a framework let alone the data within it to determine who was better than who and given the nature of the game, I'm not sure that we would ever want to see player comparisons subject to concrete data analysis. Science can reduce everything to data on whatever micro level but sometimes art is best left to appreciation and admiration.

There are so many giveaways that it's Hun biased so instead of Henrik being no. 1, it will be Gazza 1, Larsson 2 and Laudrup 3. A total joke list indeed.

That's an interesting point re his defence blind spot. Whilst this might fit with my impression of his idealist temperament, there is one exception. Gael Clichy is a superb footballer. I didn't appreciate this until I saw him in the flesh. Then again, whilst he has technical skills better than the vast majority of midfielders and strikers, what he was employed to do was defend and so I guess he might just have been yet another symptom of Wenger's over-appreciation of technical expertise. I'm not as down on Giroud than you either. I like strong forwards like him and think he's had a tougher press than he may deserve.

There is no right or wrong answer. Nor does exploration require a pre-determined end point. Interesting points you make. Animals are not corrupt and have a purity that humans do not, you say. We're not here to psychoanalyse you of course but you're laying down some HUGE markers here. I wonder if Murray's love of animals also originates in perceptions of purity and not being "corrupt"? We agree on the bigger subjects, I feel. I similarly value each being irrespective of species, or in the case of humans, creed, colour, race or religion - only the stupid being forcefully religious, of course. I reserve the right to eat meat however and therefore lambs, cows, haddock, sardines, anchovies, prawns, shrimps and pigs, I don't mind when they die to land on my plate, plus numerous other animals depending on my culinary requirements.

An interesting debate opportunity right here. Why do you say that you love animals? I've got an Aberdeenshire Terrier and two cats. I love the three of them but I definitely do NOT love animals. I don't even like the majority of other dogs I come across.

Results are a good benchmark. He's not delivered the league nor been close to either that or the CL for a very long time. The reasons why he has failed to do this are worth examining. I also agree and feel that his lack of spending, certainly relative to others - I think he has a considerable net gain in transfers over the last decade - is a strong argument for being a barrier-to-the-top. But the dichotomy here is that his incredible eye for talent is WHY he's been making transfer gains, or a "transfer credit" if you like. That's his greatest strength, his recruitment of talent. I didn't think Joel Campbell had a particularly effective shift on Monday but at his age, having 55 caps for his country already, this guy can obviously play football. EVERY regular starter under Wenger can play, and almost every single one of them has exceptional technical ability. Let's be honest, who of us, and who of the Arsenal fans had heard of him until Wenger bought him, before sticking him out on loan to various places presumably to enhance his experience and learn his own game. My own criticism of Wenger is purely results-based. Whilst the paying off of the Emirates stadium may well have been a contributory factor to his being unable to spend heavily in the market, like Barcelona though, he's been building effective units for a very long time, just on a lesser scale. I think he has had squads capable of winning the EPL. They just haven't got close, certainly this decade and before this season. The reason that his fantastic technical footballers haven't stayed the distance over the course of any season before is purely down to him in my opinion. He's an artist and a scientist, an idealist but not a street-fighter. To win a fight, particularly a long fight over 10 months, you can't rely just on method and formulas, picking great potential and turning them into skilful technicians. You have to get down and dirty in the trenches and fight like fuck and have the character to deal with adversity, recognise that it will always show itself and have the mental fortitude to get through it. Wenger is too idealistic to get involved in a scrap and doesn't appreciate the value of mental strength and character, preferring to think that technical excellence can triumph over all. That's not worked for well over a decade now and it's only because Chelsea, Man U and Man C this season are doing so much worse than they can have reasonably expected to, that he's got his best chance ever of breaking a long personal drought. There's a long way to go of course but much as I would love to see it, I can't see the fairytale Leicester story keeping up steam. They're already overachieving with what they have and would have to invest heavily in the January transfer window to strengthen their squad to get close to achieving the impossible dream.

Although whatever he, and his team have done before this season hasn't been very effective. Arsenal have been nowhere near good enough to compete at the top end of the game for years, since long before he joined them. For this I've always blamed Wenger. He's just not a winner. His talent-identification skills are his best suit. But he's not a good enough man-manager for me. Not enough cunt about him i.e. insufficient ruthlessness.

I must clarify that I'm talking more about BEFORE this season. I've seen very little of the EPL in recent months. Delighted to hear Ozil is finally doing the business. I was hugely enthused by his coming to these shores.

It's not possible to "over-think". It is possible to take something too personally however. Just as the nature of charities is a separate discussion, the correlation between people "loving animals" and anything that this says about their personalities is also a completely separate debate, one that I personally find more interesting than who won a human-voted award and how well deserved it was or otherwise, the human condition being of far greater fascination for me personally. And that's what good debates do, spawn other subjects of interest and discussion. Another potential subject of interest arising from your comments might be the nature of fandom, keeping up with them on social media, forming opinions about their characters rather than just their areas of expertise etc. but it's not one I that I really want go into, especially with you and at this time and on this thread in particular, as I suspect that we would fall out over it.

I've never watched Mangala so don't know enough about him to discuss but I'm presuming he's a stand-in for the injured Kompany, who I raved about in his first season in England. Ozil was someone I thought would be a real coup for the gooners but someone I feel has had too many games where he's done fuck all. There is no doubting his incredible skill but I wonder about his heart, his ability to dig out performances when adversity is looking him in the eye? Didn't Mourinho marginalise him at Madrid for a while, perhaps for the same reason? The fact that there were so few mistakes in the first half hour, so many great supporting runs, the ball was being zipped about at pace, being instantly controlled almost ALL of the time was astonishing and a joy to watch, despite very few chances being created. Then it exploded with a fantastic Walcott strike. I'm surprised both teams aren't doing better. The standard on show was infinitely better than Leicester Chelsea the week before, although that plus this are the only two full EPL games I've bothered to watch for ages. Wenger will never have a better chance than this season.

Whilst I have agreed and said already that he deserves his award, you raise yet more issues for debate. I have no doubt that he is a good bloke and charitable in that he would give his time selflessly to good causes but I don't know what particular "charity work" he's been engaged in. Unfortunately most charities are funded by fools and run by people without charity in their hearts. Your "love of animals" line astonishes me. Is someone who loves animals a "top man"? I'm not even sure how you established that Murray has a discernible love of animals? Perhaps he said it in a multi-question profile type interview and he's hardly going to say no, I hate animals. Most people wouldn't say that they "love animals" and even fewer would say they didn't like them but what can we possibly correlate between animal-appreciation (or not) and aspects of personality? In fact, it is known that some persons with strong love of animals harbour defective capacities to love humans. I'm not talking about those who go the full hog and engage in bestiality here but the love of animals can often substitute the interrelationship difficulties that they face in life. The myriad possibilities of why that should be are infinite, from simple inability to relate to other humans due to emotional damage suffered in childhood and infancy, a lack of trust having been betrayed once too often, experiencing love only conditionally from humans and therefore appreciating the unconditional love from animals etc. etc. It may not even be a relate-to-humans issue. The psychopath might "love animals" because they can control them in whatever way they wish, another damaged human might love the power to control their relationship with an animal because they were spectacularly unsuccessful in harbouring any sense of power in their human relations, the possibilities as I say, are limitless. That he "loves animals" I'm not disputing, as I don't know this, I don't know him personally and am not therefore qualified to comment. Seeking a correlation between the fact that he does and anything about him as a person is what I can't fathom.

The technical level of skill being shown in this Arsenal Citeh first half hour is staggeringly good. Phenomenal footballers. Fascinatingly poised.

I don't think we're disagreeing on anything here but just to add some observations which hopefully make sense: - "Unless you're a Murray fan you're not going to see his personality..." Putting aside the definition of who is and who is not a fan, it's not going to be possible to discern enough about his actual persona to be conclusive about him, unless you actually know the man. For sure there are certain aspects of personality that can be picked up from his performances e.g. drive, determination etc. and certain aspects of personality that can be suggested from interviews e.g. uncomfortable or not natural when the cameras/microphones are shoved on him, resulting in his tendency towards coming across a potentially drole, humourless etc. but if you don't know him personally like I don't know him personally, we're only guessing. At the end of the day, who cares what his personality is like in his private life. That's his business. Our only interest should be what he does on the court. Being pro-indy was ALWAYS going to work against him with the vast majority of the Engerlish but this is where he gains my admiration, for having the balls to be honest and put his personal thoughts above any consideration of PR and image. Good on the cunt, I say, whether I agreed with him on this point (which I most certainly do) or not. I'm not sure how you can say that "he doesn't care about that either". He cared enough to tweet it on the eve of the referendum. Maybe you've read/heard something that I haven't, that wasn't a retraction of what was an obvious PR blunder. Getting wound up by others "itching for him to fail" is silly. I'm not even sure who these people are although I don't doubt that there's a few who do. Who fucking cares what others think? I'm pretty sure he doesn't. He even made a joke about it last night in his acceptance speech, which I took as a deliberate PR line to "burst the bubble", to minimise the negativity that has always followed him, mostly due to perceived moroseness in years of interviews and the ABE etc., which only Scots truly understand anyway. He's a great athlete who's talents has given him great riches. He comes across as a determined, fantastically successful young man who's discipline and work ethic has got him very close to the best in the world. I hope he hits no. 1 one day and adds to his majors so that he may be considered as a true great of the game. With a family to look forward to next year, I wouldn't blame him if he has already peaked and has achieved his majority already. Unlike you as a self-confessed fan, I wouldn't necessarily ever want to break bread with him but I admire his achievements.

His exceptional sporting achievements is not in dispute. He's become the second best in the world. The only debate concerns his personality. When they made that sketch years ago - "the dog died" - it was good observational satire. It's the same issue that he himself is aware of and made reference to last night with the article and his joke about it being unfair to Worthing. He comes across in interviews as sombre, as whiney, as overly serious. This has been in evidence from day one. We can't blame him for this. It's just the way he comes across. He's had to be so singularly focused and disciplined to get to nearly-the-top that he's different from almost everyone else, certainly from 99.999% of the population. Even though I didn't see the article, any journo who still focuses on his interview persona more than his ability and achievements will be a sad fuck. He might be English and still resentful of Murray's excellent ABE sentiments back then, failing to understand Murray's patriotism and offended that he came out as one of the 45% last year. Every true Scotsman is ABE and pro independence so to vote 55% No was a sad indictment on our nation, thick fucking non-thinking idiots that they were. Murray isn't popular for a number of reasons, not one of which is his tennis ability. It can go too far the other way, those who love his skill so much that they can't understand why others don't like him.

And just to make sure the world knows about it, she chose a strapless dress. She should have consulted someone other than Tyson Fury or a Wahhabist Muslim as her costume designer.

Murray deserved winner. Biggest highlight was Izzard in stilettos, red lipstick and a woman's necklace. What a tube. Attention-seeking bordering on pathology.

Without the (blue) squares, it doesn't look like an AFC top.