Black Caviar: Mare's best

This piece of mine appears in The Spectator (Australia)

Neil Clark:  Black Caviar's narrow victory at Ascot will seal her legend.


She came. She saw. She conquered. But blimey, it was close. Like 77,000 or so others I headed to Royal Ascot on Saturday to see ‘The Wonder from Down Under’ — to get my first glimpse of the horse officially rated the world’s fastest sprinter. I’d seen Black Caviar on YouTube and had read about her exploits at Flemington, Caulfield, Moonee Valley and other tracks across Australia. But now this equine superstar was 10,496 miles from home, in the cool and cloudy UK, to put her reputation and her unbeaten record on the line. Could she make it 22 wins from 22 races? Or were we about to witness the eclipse of an Australian sporting icon, a shock defeat on a par with Eric Hollies bowling Don Bradman out for a second ball duck in his final Test innings at The Oval? 

You can read more of the article here.

Seumas Milne on the (latest) disgrace of our neoliberal and neocon governing elite

This is yet another disgrace for the country's governing elites. The new revelation of corruption comes after the exposure of the deception of the Iraq war, fraud in parliament and the police, the criminality of a media mafia and the devastating failure of the banks four years ago. It could of course have happened only in a private-dominated financial sector, and makes a nonsense of the bankrupt free-market ideology that still holds sway in public life. 


You can read the whole of the article here.

The best and the worst of the Euro 2012 football tournament

This piece of mine appears over at The Week/The First Post.


Neil Clark: Who gets the brickbats, who gets the plaudits among players, managers, commentators and fans?



THE LATE Jimmy Sirrel  famously said that in football the best team always wins - the rest is only gossip. Few could disagree that the best team- Spain - won the tournament. But what about some other categories as we look back at a vintage three weeks of football?

You can read the whole piece here. 

Hands off Syria and Iran! No to western intervention! -London public meeting

‘They lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They lied about Vietnam. Cambodia, Serbia and so on, they lied when they told you that Libya was about ‘humanitarian aid’ , they are lying about Syria and will lie about Iran’.

Stop the War is organising a week of action against western  intervention in Syria and Iran.

Do try and take part and if you’re anti-war and  live in London or the south-east, do try and make it along to the Stop the War meeting on Syria and Iran in London tomorrow where I will be among the speakers.

It's not just about opposing western intervention in Syria and Iran- it's also about lifting sanctions.

"On June 28 US oil sanctions on Iran are set to take effect, followed by EU sanctions on July 1. Iran has threatened to close the straits of Hormuz in response. Even in the absence of an immediate conflagration, oil sanctions are an attempt to weaken Iran and therefore a prelude to war, not an alternative to it. "

John Pilger: History is the enemy as “brilliant” psy-ops become the news

The threats against Syria, co-ordinated in Washington and London, scale new peaks of hypocrisy. Contrary to the raw propaganda presented as news, the investigative journalism of the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung identifies those responsible for the massacre in Houla as the “rebels” backed by Obama and Cameron. The paper’s sources include the rebels themselves. This has not been completely ignored in Britain. Writing in his personal blog, ever so quietly, Jon Williams, the BBC World News editor, in effect dishes his own “coverage”, citing a western official who described the “psy-ops” operation against Syria as “brilliant”. As brilliant as the destruction of Libya, and Iraq, and Afghanistan.

You can read the rest of John Pilger’s brilliant new NS piece, on how US and British democracies have been replaced by an extremism hell-bent on the destruction of democracy, here. 

While on the subject of the destruction of Libya, do take a look at this report.  Also, this great piece by Peter Hitchens from last week’s Mail on Sunday.

‘Liberal interventionism’.  Or as it should be called, the destruction of independent countries that don’t do the west’s bidding. 

Memo to Platini: don't change Euro 2012's winning format

This piece of mine appears over at The Week/The First Post.

Neil Clark: The next European Championships will expand from 16 to 24 teams. It will make for a more boring tournament

DEAR M. PLATINI - Like other football fans across Europe, and indeed the world, I've been enthralled by Euro 2012.

We've had some great games, lots of goals and some tremendous excitement. There have been shocks and surprises aplenty - with Russia, who started the tournament with a 4-1 demolition of the Czech Republic, being eliminated after a defeat by Greece, and Holland, one of the tournament favourites, failing to register even a single point.

The 2008 Euros was a fantastic tournament, too: we can all remember the incredible never-say-die exploits of Turkey, the attacking dynamism of a young and emerging Germany and the brilliance of the tournament winners Spain, but 2012 has surpassed even that - and to think the knockout stages haven't even begun yet.

This year's European Championships has been so very different from the boring and sterile 2010 World Cup, where there were many disappointing matches.

Yet my enjoyment of the tournament is tinged with sadness. I fear that due to changes that your organisation is making to the competition, we will never have such an exciting European Championships again.

You can read the whole of my Memo to Platini here.

Letter of the Week: Dick Maunders on Syria in the Morning Star

This week's pick: Dick Maunders on  Syria in the Morning Star.

..........It is plain to see the long-term tactics of the West.

They are hoping to create another Libya scenario in Syria, start a civil war and overthrow the Syrian government to be replaced by a compliant Western one, then use Syria as a forward base for any impending invasion of Iran.

William Hague should mind his own business about the internal affairs of Syria. We can see the results of Western meddling in Libya now with tribal fighting and murders happening every day.

You can read the whole of Dick Maunders' excellent letter here.