Nick JENKINS

Just a bloke from Sydney Australia who created a twitter to follow the best football team ever to grace this planet and birthplace of legends... ARSENAL!!!

[Carl Jenkinson @carljenkinson]

Thank you to everyone who played a part in my journey, from my Charlton days as a kid through to my last time playing football at Bromley. From the age of 8 football has been my life, it’s given me a lot, and I have also given it a lot back. In fact I’ve given it everything.

It’s for that reason that I can write this looking back over my career with no regrets. Do I wish certain things went better? Without a doubt. A lot of things. I once scored an own goal from 30 yards out. I certainly wouldn’t mind deleting that from history. But were these bad or difficult moments ever because of a lack of effort? No. Like I said, I gave football everything. Everyday.

And I guess I’m writing this because I can see that’s getting lost a bit these days. I don’t know if it’s social media painting a certain picture of what a footballer looks like, but I want to be clear, behind the scenes these top players train like their life depends on it. Alexis Sánchez, wow. Every training session he trained like it was his last. The ones that don’t, they fall by the way side eventually. Even when they’re really, really good. I’ve seen it happen to too many young pros and scholars, trying to make a name in the game.

Apply yourself everyday, listen to your coaches and learn from the players who have already been where you want to get to. Because if you don’t make it, and it’s because you got carried away with yourself, it’ll be a heavy burden to carry later in life.

I suffered a lot with confidence throughout my career, which I found strange because my Dad always backs himself to the hilt. I saw loads of people, to try and unlock something within me and find that inner belief. “Take the chains off” Arsène Wenger would say to me. “I’m trying boss”, I would say to myself. But I’m certain it was that same insecurity that gave me the drive I have, that would make me run harder and train harder than everyone else. Ultimately that’s what gave me a career at the top level, because physically I was a machine and I took a lot of pride in that. Was the way I am a blessing or a curse for me? A bit of both I think. But you can only play the cards you’re dealt and try and make the best of them.

I’m writing all this because I hope some young players might read it. You guys have so much confidence these days! I wish I could nick some of it and take it back in time, but confidence without application and having that fire in your belly to improve everyday won’t get you far. I see less young players doing extras, working on their craft, doing extra running after training. Trust me, you won’t have a career if you neglect this aspect.

Try and find the sweetspot. That’s why I love guys like Bukayo Saka. He’s got that swagger, but you only need to listen to him in a post match interview to see he’s never lost his humility. Find the sweetspot.

Hopefully the above has some value to someone out there. I didn’t want to write the generic retirement ‘thanks for everything’ post as it seemed like a missed opportunity. Although of course I am very grateful to my friends, family, coaches, managers and of course the fans who have been with me on my journey. I’m looking forward to seeing what life has in store for me next.

Cheers,
Jenko

[Nawaf @N14ARS]

أفضل فيديو شفته من احتفالات أمس.. تاريخي 🤩❤️

[Olena Rohoza @OlenaRohoza]

“AND YOU STILL DARE TO OPEN YOUR MOUTH…”

Sasha Legerman: This is too accurate not to share.

This Australian’s response to Trump’s rant that “NATO does nothing for America” is absolutely devastating:

“Mate. You run a country where 600,000 homeless people will sleep on the streets tonight.

A country where 40% of adults can’t cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money.

A country where insulin costs more than a car payment, and people ration it just to stay alive.

A country where medical debt is the number one cause of bankruptcy.

A country where women die in hospital parking lots because doctors are too afraid of abortion laws to treat miscarriages.

You imprison more of your own citizens than any country on Earth.
More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea.

In the land of the free, 2 million people sit in cages, and a quarter of them haven’t even been convicted of anything.
They’re simply too poor to afford bail.

Your life expectancy is declining. You’re the only developed nation where that’s happening.

Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba’s.

Your children practice active shooter drills between math and English classes while you sell defense stocks to your friends.

Your minimum wage hasn’t changed in 15 years.

Your teachers work two jobs, your veterans sleep under bridges, and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that never attacked you.

And now a convicted criminal — found liable for sexual abuse, defending a pedophile, sleeping with a porn star, and running the biggest dumpster-fire campaign since the Taliban — is thanking you for yet another disaster.

And you call Greenland badly governed?

Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world.
Nobody there goes bankrupt because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because insurance refused treatment.

‘NATO wasn’t there when we needed them.’

When exactly was that, champ?
September 11?

Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU.

Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU.

Australia wasn’t even in NATO, and we still showed up. For twenty years.

And then you left at 2 a.m. without telling anyone and left everybody else to clean up the mess.

You don’t care that a great nation is being terrorized by your friend, and you haven’t shown it a single ounce of sympathy.

So maybe before calling other countries badly governed, take a look at your own backyard, you aluminum siding salesman with a spray tan.

The only thing badly managed in this picture is your damn mouth.

And you still dare to lecture the rest of the world?”

[Charles Davie @chuckdavie]

Two all nighters in 6 days 🥳🔴⚪️🔥 Arsenal are huge.

[Dr. Rajpal Brar, DPT @3cbPerformance]

Random thought:

Spurs fans truly showed who they are two seasons ago. Would rather their own team lose and miss out on CL than us win a title. No long term thinking, took cutting off your own nose to spite your face to a whole new level lmao.

Only fitting where the two clubs are now.

#arsenal

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

*BRITISH WRITER PENS THE BEST DESCRIPTION OF TRUMP*
Someone asked "Why do some British people not like Donald Trump?" Nate White, an articulate and witty writer from England wrote the following response:
A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed.
So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump's limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.
Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever.
I don't say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman.
But with Trump, it's a fact. He doesn't even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty. Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers.
And scarily, he doesn't just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness. There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It's all surface.
Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don't. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He's not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He's more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.
And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead.
There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless or female – and he kicks them when they are down. So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think 'Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy' is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:
• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and most are.
• You don't need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man.
This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss.
After all, it's impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

[Jamie Spangher @jamiespangher]

The most damning indictment on the state of the game right now is that fans, managers and media are forcing a narrative of Arsenal bending the rules of football when they’re in a title race with a club that is evading 115 charges for bending the rules of football.

[(TCAG) Командир Бред Кроуфорд (CDR Brad Crawford) @evo1tactical]

Real talk. I have trained Ukrainian troops for three years straight, and saying we “owe them nothing” is not just wrong, it is dangerous.

People forget very quickly. Ukraine stood with us in Iraq and Afghanistan. They sent troops, bled beside our soldiers, and never asked for anything in return. They did it because they believed in the West, in democracy, and in the idea that free nations stand together.

And now, for four years, Ukraine has been fighting the enemy that has openly wished death on the United States many times. The same enemy that still keeps nuclear weapons pointed at every major American city and every piece of critical infrastructure we depend on. How anyone can say that their fight has nothing to do with us is beyond me.

This kind of talk is exactly what Americans were saying before World War Two. We called it “not our war.” We insisted Europe’s problems were not our problems. Yet we still sent equipment. We still had volunteer pilots fighting for the United Kingdom. And it took Pearl Harbor to finally wake us up and show us that isolation and indifference were mistakes that cost countless lives.

When will we learn that in the world we live in today, everything is connected. There is no isolation. Not when dictators are reshaping borders by force. Not when war criminals hold nuclear stockpiles. Not when democracies fall one by one if no one helps. Appeasement does not stop tyrants. Appeasement encourages them.

I have trained thousands of Ukrainian soldiers. I have watched them fight for their land, their families, and frankly for the rest of us. To pretend that their struggle does not affect the United States is to ignore every lesson history has ever taught us. The red line where this “becomes our problem” was crossed a long time ago. Thinking otherwise only helps the people we should be standing against.

This kind of thinking is not realism. It is the beginning of another disaster we will regret later.

If America actually wants stability and peace, we cannot abandon a nation fighting the front line of that global struggle.

We either help now, or we will pay a heavier price later.

[Editorial & Political Cartoons @EandPCartoons]

Mike Thompson @ThompsonToons

[Nick JENKINS @NickJENKINS12]

@Verbalshitting @wolfofx Best comment

[Bandera Fella *-^ @banderafella]

Evil does not negotiate. It does not compromise. It does not grow tired.

It adapts. It waits. It feeds.

You cannot calm it with diplomacy or soften it with empathy. You cannot reason with something that thrives on the absence of reason. Evil doesn’t want understanding—it wants compliance. And every attempt to pacify it becomes fuel for its return.

What we face is not madness. Madness burns out. This is calculation stripped of conscience. This is the kind of evil that smiles while it sterilizes names, wipes out villages, reprograms children.

To meet it halfway is to kneel.
To delay is to dig your own grave in measured inches.

There is no calming the thing that kidnaps your children and calls it salvation.
No compromise with the thing that bombs hospitals and lectures you on peace.
No shared future with the thing that lies by default and kills by design.

It cannot be placated.
It must be broken.

Not debated.
Not contained.
Broken.

Evil is not a storm. It does not pass. It is a machine, and it runs until you shatter the gears.

[Anthony Albanese @AlboMP]

For three years Australia has proudly supported the brave people of Ukraine in their struggle to defend their sovereignty against the brutality of Russian aggression and in support of international law.

Australia stands with Ukraine. 🇦🇺🇺🇦

[Defense of Ukraine @DefenceU]

Three years of full-scale invasion.

Each of us remembers February 24, 2022.

Ukraine has not only endured but has grown stronger. russia planned to break us in 72 hours. But today, russia is suffering catastrophic losses.

Ukrainian warriors fight for every meter of our land. Thousands of volunteers have joined the Defense Forces. The entire country is working towards Victory. Together, we have shown the world our strength.

Today, Ukraine is a strong shield of Europe.
We have stopped an enemy that threatens the entire democratic world. Our experience in modern warfare is invaluable for NATO, and our defense industry is a reliable partner for the Alliance.

But the fight continues. To win, we need decisive action from our allies. Only together can we restore our borders, free our prisoners, and make russia pay for its crimes.

🇺🇦 Support for Ukraine must continue until the last occupier leaves our land.
🇺🇦 Ukraine will keep strengthening its army and defense industry.
🇺🇦 Our victory is the security of the entire free world.

Thank you to our warriors. Thank you to everyone bringing our victory closer. Thank you to all the countries standing with us.

Glory to Ukraine!

[Paul Mason @paulmasonnews]

https://t.co/5m528S2sYx

[PoliticsJOE @PoliticsJOE_UK]

“I am a very innocent man” - Donald Trump

[Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 @IAPonomarenko]

No, this was never about 'the U.S. 'owing' Ukraine something.

Yes, 25 years ago, our leaders of the past stupidly gave up on our nuclear stockpile and strategic bombers, which were decommissioned or, moreover, handed over to Russia, just like that.

Yep, there were multilateral 'security assurances' - but who is here to blame for the fact that we once gave up on our tactical nukes and cruise missiles for basically a piece of paper with words of encouragement written on it.

Our leaders thought there'd be no tomorrow and that a war was impossible. Their direful attitude toward our military for decades has been tragically known.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are right now paying the ultimate price for that colossal crime of historic scale.

It's been happening all this damned decade -- ever since the days of February 2014, when Russia unfolded its punitive war on its former colony embraced by a victorious revolution.

The thing is that in our own Revolutionary War, the empire generally failed to bring its colony back on its knees, yet it spilled rivers of blood.

And in 2022, it came back for the final solution fueled by a propaganda-driven irrational cult of revenge, hatred, territorial grabs, and perpetual war on the West as a ruling narrative.

The last thing that we, as a struggling 40-million democracy, wanted was a grand, all-out invasion by one of the world's largest military powers hellbent on eliminating Ukraine as an independent nation.

We did not choose this hell.

Yet, the delusional aging dictator in the Kremlin, drunk with lust for power and willing to crown himself a new emperor, decided that he needed yet another splendid little war.

You know what happened next - the biggest European war of aggression since WWII.

In which, against expectations, Ukraine managed to stem the enemy onrush, stabilize the front line, and even take large amounts of the national territory back.

Russia, in the first month of its war, the active part of which was supposed to last nearly 10 days, suffered a tremendous defeat at Ukraine's capital city, Kyiv, which effectively derailed the entire war's initial goal.

Now it's been two years of a tremendously large battle of million-strong armies.

Just think of the scale. Right now, for instance, Oryx has documented and confirmed the loss of a total of 2,714 Russian tanks.

That's more than the entire fleet of M1 Abrams in active use by the U.S. Army (2,645 per Military Balance 2023).

That's a square full of destroyed tanks measuring 360 by 360 yards.

That's tanks alone.

There's really a handful of nations in this world that could successfully wage an all-out war of defense against such a gargantuan armada, and, moreover, aspire towards a victory in such a war.

All this time, this has been a story of Ukraine literally begging for weapons and munitions, getting as little as it gets from the hypercautous and undetermined West, and carrying on with its war of national survival.

And we and our friends, particularly in media, again and again, managed to break our heads through the wall and persuade the West to take one more step forward.

Artillery, munition, tank killers, air defense, missiles, jets, tanks. Reluctantly, slowly, amid long wars of words, the West did that - simply because most do understand that helping Ukraine is necessary and that it works.

No wonder that so-called 'opponents' of the Ukraine aid against the Russian invasion can't give any mature and rational explanation as to why the free world should just let Russia devour a 40-million European nation.

It's always either about primitive 'pRoXy wAr' conspiracy theories that comfortably ignore the simple timeline of events or just outright lies -- like "they want to send American soldiers to fight" or "we don't really know where our taxpayers' cash money goes", or "we're spending 40% of American GDP on Ukraine as there are poor people in Philadelphia."

Or it's about something as childish as "let them all burn, it's not my problem."

Well, dictatorial regimes in Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere are only glad to see you step aside and do nothing -- very soon, they will be very much of YOUR problem, and that's what's happening right now in the news.

This world is now too small and interconnected to just put heads into the sand.

The thing is that we NEED EACH OTHER.

Not because somebody 'owes' something but because it's wise, smart, and mutually advantageous.

With Ukraine's defense aid, America has been supporting a truly decent and simple cause, morally and practically, that is admittedly a pretty rare thing in human history.

Moreover, it was doing it with absolute support from European allies, which had not always been the case in the past.

The United Europe is also bringing a lot to the table, although the temptation to close its eyes and do nothing is strong.

Moreover, it was rendering assistance to Ukraine at a very moderate cost, with not a single American soldier to be sent to fight - but with a whole range of American enterprises getting government contracts and providing American jobs, American salaries, and American taxes in America.

And Ukraine asks for tools to neutralize the worst European war of aggression since Adolf Hitler with its own hands.

Over the last two years, Ukraine has demonstrated it so many times that this is absolutely possible and vital to the safety of the world we live in.

How is this any worse than spending billions and billions and billions on decades-long, pointless wars somewhere in the Middle East, with folded American flags sent back home?

We need America to rejoin the rest of the free world in one of the most dangerous moments in modern history.

It's not too late yet - but cheap politics and listening to irresponsible demagogues have given way too much time and resources to the aggressor.

There's still time to prevent a catastrophe but the time is running very short.

Support my work: https://t.co/j4T7XvJnUN

[Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 @IAPonomarenko]

This chronic lack of resolve, leadership, and strategic vision will bury the free world.

Systemic fear of responsibility and historical decisions, trying to hold on to the comfort zone as hard as possible — this is why we are where we are now. And the free world is at its weakest throughout the entire post-1991 era.

That's the endless procrastination, security escapism, and over-compromising at any cost (upon someone else).

It's painful to realize that in February 2022, much of the Western decision-making elite was generally ready to come to terms with Russia's complete takeover of Ukraine, which seemed hardly preventable. But a lot of things on the Russian side suddenly went very wrong.

Ukraine unexpectedly (for some) prevailed at the Battle of Kyiv and effectively derailed the central axis of Russia's blitzkrieg.

The 'special military operation' failed, and Russia's full-scale, protracted war on Ukraine followed. And as you know, the entire history of the war is Ukraine and its friends beating their heads against the wall of the 'don't-provoke-Putin' attitude.

Again and again. It started working only as late as springtime and summertime 2022, when the Battle of Donbas was at its horrific peak and when it became apparent that Russia was not stopping and Ukraine was not going down just like that.

First, it's tank killers, then artillery, then armored vehicles, radars, ammo, rocket systems, radars, tanks, air & missile defense, now it's F-16. And with every single weapon and hardware class and type, there has been generally the very same scheme:

1. "Ukraine will never get X and Y, that's a major escalation, that's too complicated and too expensive for Ukraine to use"
2. Months-long deliberations, denial, and discussions
3. Ukraine eventually ends up getting X and Y many months late and demonstrates outstanding results on battlefields
4. Russian 'red lines' end up being empty threats, and Russia's military gets a painful punch in the gut
5. *repeat with another weapon*

Do I need to tell the story of a handful of HIMARS systems that effectively derailed Russia's frontline logistics and its late summer 2022 campaign? Do I need to remind anyone how long Ukraine was denied getting MIM-104 Patriot systems that are now demonstrating the most excellent results in their entire operational history?

Again and again, with every weapon type and class that Ukraine asked for, there was the need to break through the obsession with "escalation management" (that was again and again proven totally inconsistent) and move forward.

With all due respect to President Biden (who has done a lot for Ukraine!), when POTUS spends more than a year saying no and then eventually gives up to the green light on European F-16s for Ukraine and authorizes the transfer of just 20 outdated ATACMS missiles (that nonetheless immediately wipe out key Russian airfields) - that doesn't look like a way to resolve the problem.

And that's in the middle of the worst European war since Adolf Hitler in which Ukraine defends itself against one of the world's biggest military powers with one of the world's biggest military budgets.

Things have gone pretty absurd by now.

As a result of Ukraine's successful campaigns in 2022, we all were too quick to optimistically declare that "Putin has already lost," that what needed to be done had been done, and that the worst European war since Adolf Hitler would somehow go away.

In reality, endless deliberations and obsessive 5D chess to save Putin's ass from falling entirely into Chinese hands effectively saved the Kremlin from a proper and resolute military defeat in Ukraine that could have disabled the Kremlin from new acts of aggression for decades to come.

Putin was given almost two years to recover from his disastrous early failure. The Kremlin rebooted its economy, adapted it to international sanctions, found new markets to sell gas and oil on, relaunched its military production industry, and made an alliance with Iran and North Korea to get drones, missiles, and ammo and replenish its emptied Soviet stocks. And you know what?

They ended up being very fine with this war. Russian people, being what it is, are silent or widely supportive. The poor and destitute are happy to kill Ukrainians and die for an equivalent of a U.S. blue-collar salary.

The rich and powerful are now having a cut in the giant black hole of budget spending that any war is, and entire Russian industries are thriving thanks to a massive war. Nobody gives a shit about Russia's insane loss of life not seen since World War II.

From the Western side, we have a historically unique situation. Not a single American or European soldier now has to die in the worst European war since Adolf Hitler. Western defense industries have prospects for gargantuan, long-term contracts to support Ukraine in war and its subsequent post-war defense development.

Ukraine, having as little as it has, demonstrates outstanding battlefield results thanks to the exceptional heroism and dedication of its military. Ukraine asks for money and arms to deal with the greatest European security threat of the 21st century all alone.

But no, the free world keeps impeding itself and fearing getting out of its long-ingrained comfort zone.

And yeah - while the West is just dreaming of getting back to normal, Russia's propaganda meta-world is having a full-scale war on the entire West. Try and watch Russian TV for five minutes if you don't trust me.

The Kremlin has recovered from the initial shock of the early setback in Ukraine and has made this "civilization war with the West" a cornerstone of its ideology. It's now their foremost instrument of holding power over Russia.

They're not landing on the Moon, or building a quantum computer, or making Russia home to the world's top five universities. They've been investing billions for decades to propagate hatred, revanchism, Soviet Stalinism, domination, and territorial expansion based on "taking what's ours."

Poor, destitute, and revenge-seeking, Russia gets back to the state of the besieged fortress of Eurasia that will always be at war with Oceania. They need triumphant victories over the heinous West that owes it everything, they need "new territories" (even in the form of senselessly desolated cities turned into mass graves, you know).

They need war as such.

So of course, why would Moscow want a real 'ceasefire' and 'peace' in Ukraine at the present status quo — if they obviously see that they can intimidate and wear out the West into giving up on Ukraine completely?

As @FRHoffmann1 very correctly points out, Russia's main conclusion behind this war is that the West is critically short of resolve.

The Kremlin quite expectedly sees weakness in this endless drama over the Ukraine aid. That's a pleasant invitation for more aggression because this works. What they've seen and are seeing makes them believe NATO will very likely back off first for the sake of a short-living illusion of its peace of mind and safety.

And yeah, they basically don't even need to reinstate their military power decimated by Ukraine — seeing how weak the West may be, they know that nuclear threats and blackmailing may work.

And yeah, again, there will be a lot of galaxy brans yelling "Send not a single rifle round to Tallinn/Riga/Vilnius/Chishinau/Helsinki/Warsaw and roll back to 1997/1989/1945/1913 for peace!!"

This reminds me of a situation in which a sick person continuously ignores his or her increasingly dangerous symptoms. Until he or she just can't anymore. Or until it's too late.

Support my work: https://t.co/j4T7XvJnUN

[Nick JENKINS @NickJENKINS12]

@OurNewHomecoach

[Chris Hewitt @ChrisHewitt]

I just found out about recency bias, and I’d have to say that out of all the biases, it’s my favourite.