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Saudis want US to fight another war for them

On 3 August 1990, the morning after Iraq invaded Kuwait, the Saudi Arabian government was more than a bit jittery, fearing that the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein would make Riyadh his next target. The Saudis had been some of the bigger buyers of American and British arms, but they found that they had a big problem.

And that was the fact that all the princes who were pilots of F-16 jets, considered one of the glamour jobs, had gone missing. Empty jets were of no use. How would the Saudis defend their country if Baghdad decided to march into the country’s Eastern Region? If Hussein decided to do so, he would be in control of a sizeable portion of the world’s oil resources and many countries would be royally screwed.
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Was Garces the right choice to officiate SA-NZ game?

The authorities who select referees for matches at the Rugby World Cup do not seem to think very deeply about the choices they make. This is, perhaps, what resulted in the French referee Jerome Garces being put in charge of the game between New Zealand and South Africa on 21 September.

Some background is necessary to understand why Garces’ appointment was questionable. He had officiated in the game between Australia and New Zealand earlier this year and handed out a red card to Kiwi lock Scott Barrett for a charge on Australian skipper Michael Hooper. This was a decision that was questioned in many quarters; that Scott Barrett deserved a yellow card was not in question, but a red card was deemed to be a gross over-reaction.
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Serena Williams loses another Grand Slam final

Serena Williams has fallen flat on her face again in her bid to equal Margaret Court’s record of 24 Grand Slam titles. This time Williams’ loss was to Canadian teenager Bianca Andreescu and what makes it better is that she lost in straight sets, 6-3, 7-5.

Andreescu, 19, is a raw hand at the game; she has never played in the main draw of the US Open before. Last year, ranked 208, she was beaten in the first round by Olga Danilovic.
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Australian politicians are in it for the money

Australian politicians are in the game for one thing: money. Most of them are so incompetent that they would not be paid even half of what they earn were they to try for jobs in the private sector.

That’s why former members of the Victorian state parliament, who were voted out at the last election in 2018, are struggling to find jobs.

Apparently, some have been told by recruitment agencies that they “donâ’t know where to fit you”, according to a news report from the Melbourne tabloid Herald Sun.
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The Rise and Fall of the Tamil Tigers is full of errors

How many mistakes should one accept in a book before it is pulled from sale? In the normal course, when a book is accepted for publication by a recognised publishing company, there are experienced editors who go through the text, correct it and ensure that there are no major bloopers.

Then there are fact-checkers who ensure that what is stated within the book is, at least, mostly aligned with public versions of events from reliable sources.

In the case of The Rise and Fall of the Tamil Tigers, a third-rate book that is being sold by some outlets online, neither of these exercises has been carried out. And it shows.
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Whatever happened to the ABC’s story of the century?

In the first three weeks of June last year, the ABC’s Sarah Ferguson presented a three-part saga on the channel’s Four Corners program, which the ABC claimed was the “story of the century”.

It was a rehashing of all the claims against US President Donald Trump, which the American TV stations had gone over with a fine-toothed comb but which Ferguson seemed convinced still had something hidden for her to uncover.

At the time, a special counsel, former FBI chief Robert Mueller, was conducting an investigation into claims that Trump colluded with Russia to win the presidential election.
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The Rise and Fall of the Tamil Tigers is a third-rate book. Don’t waste your money buying it

How do you evaluate a book before buying? If it were from a traditional bookshop, then one scans some pages at least. The art master in my secondary school told his students of a method he had: read page 15 or 16, then flip to page 150 and read that. If the book interests you, then buy it.

But when it’s online buying, what happens? Not every book you buy is from a known author and many online booksellers do not offer the chance to flip through even a few pages. At times, this ends with the buyer getting a dud.

One book I bought recently proved to be a dud. I am interested in the outcome of the civil war in Sri Lanka where I grew up. Given that, I picked up the first book about the ending of the war, written in 2011 by Australian Gordon Weiss, a former UN official. This is an excellent account of the whole conflict, one that also gives a considerable portion of the history of the island and the events that led to the rise of tensions between the Sinhalese and the Tamils.
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Methinks Israel Folau is acting like a hypocrite

The case of Israel Folau has been a polarising one in Australia with some supporting the rugby union player’s airing of his Christian beliefs and others loudly opposed. In the end, it turns out that Folau may be guilty of one of the sins of which he accuses others: hypocrisy.

Last year, Folau made a post on Instagram saying adulterers, drunkards, fornicators, homosexuals and the like would all go to hell if they did not repent and come to Jesus. In this, he was merely stating what the Bible says about these kinds of people. He was cautioned about such posts by his employer, Rugby Australia. Whether he signed any agreement about not putting up similar posts in the future is unknown.
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Wake me up when the World Cup is over

The World Cup cricket tournament began on May 30 and will end on July 14. By that time, even the most ardent fan would have had enough and will be wishing that it gets over, not matter who wins. The International Cricket Council has turned what was once a short, enjoyable cricket festival into a boring tournament which is a pain in the nether regions.

Twenty-seven matches have been gone through, and four have already been washed out, giving the teams involved a singular disadvantage. No extra days can be factored in to play such washed out games, else the tournament would only end when Christmas comes around. And there are another 18 matches to go.
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Journalists Savva and Karvelas knew the polling was wrong. Yet they kept quiet. Why?

Over the weekend, the Australian federal election ended in a manner that was the exact opposite of that expected by the public if one were to go by the opinion polls — Newspoll and Ipsos — that ran in the major media outlets. Both predicted a win for Labor. The result, as you are well aware, could not have been more different.

But surprisingly there were some people who were aware that the polling was not correct and kept mum about it. [Watch this video from 11:29].

ABC journalist Patricia Karvelas mentioned during election coverage on the network that she had been told of internal polling by the Labor Party that indicated that the reality was different. Karvelas said on the Insiders program on Sunday that Labor sources had told her of internal polling that indicated that things in Queensland were quite different to what was being reported in public.
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