The Tri-Nations tournament resumes this weekend at Cape Town's Newlands Stadium. The Springboks will clash against the All Blacks in a game both sides will desperately want to win to keep their hopes alive of emerging as the winners of the annual clash of the giants of Southern hemisphere rugby. The home-field advantage will serve the host side well and i anticipate a closely fought match akin to those the sides played in New Zealand with South Africa emerging as 27-18 victors.
The biggest subplot of the weekend's fixture is that Percy Montgomery, already the most capped Springbok of all time, and the leading scorer in South African test match history by a long distance, is set to earn his 100th cap. He will become just the ninth player in world rugby to achieve this milestone. (As always, it seems, there have been some concerns raised about the side's representativeness this weekend as the issue of transformation continues to haunt the sport most defined by race in the pre-1994 era.)
A few months ago, I wrote about the early stages of the conflict in Ukraine through the lens of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. While it appears likely that the war will carry on into the foreseeable future, enough time has passed for us to make an honest assessment of each side’s relative […]
The Ukrainian Army has made dramatic strides in the last few weeks. Ukraine’s tactical commanders have outfoxed their Russian counterparts, and by issuing a feint towards the south the UA has been able to earn substantial gains in the north of their country. The impact of these efforts have been compounded by the steady stream […]
In mid-May the Irish political party, Sinn Féin, won the plurality of seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly. Many American readers might not fully understand the significance of Sinn Féin’s political victory- but rest assured that subjects of the United Kingdom and a wide range of political movements the world over have heard the message […]
The first wave of the Russian offensive in Ukraine has fallen short of Russian autocrat Vladmir Putin’s ambitions. Most analysts deduced that Putin had hoped to achieve a decapitation strike of the Ukrainian government- taking Kiev and replacing Ukrainian President Vladimir Zolinski with a pro-Kremlin voice. Kiev has been threatened repeatedly through the course of […]
On the weekend of March 26th, the notorious MS-13 gang went on a massive killing spree in El Salvador which left more than 70 people dead by Sunday. Even for a country where powerful gangs hold massive sway, this recent tragedy stands out considering that it was the bloodiest day on record since the civil […]
