Ovi magazine; Tuesday January 10th, 2023

The articles, the opinions, the stories, the poems and the cartoons Ovi magazine covers for Tuesday January 10th, 2023

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Sportswashed: Ronaldo heads to Saudi Arabia by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

It just keeps getting darker and darker.  For the professionally ignorant, things are only getting better.  With one of history’s great events of sportswashing concluded – the 2022 Qatar World Cup – another state famed for its cosmetic distractions and moneyed seductions made a splash.  Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal, his sun setting and his prospects diminishing among Europe’s top clubs, was signed to play in Saudi Arabia.

He had been seething and fuming at Manchester United, increasingly cast into peripheral, bench warming roles.  The inner truculent brat screamed and found a voice on the ever humbly named show Piers Morgan Uncensored.  In a conversation between brats who felt they had been mistreated over the years, the impression given by Ronaldo was always going to be a love of the game over cash.

“Is it also that you want to keep playing at the highest level?  That you want to play Champions League football, you want to keep breaking records?” asked Morgan.  In the manner of a ghost writer mulling over the bleedingly obvious, Morgan persisted.  “Again, it comes back to my gut feeling about you that, if it was just about the money, you’d be in Saudi Arabia earning this king’s ransom.  But that’s not what motivates you, you want to keep at the top…”

Continue reading HERE!

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Informing Pattern #poem by Jan Sand

“Words first arrived on cave walls in France and Spain,
Shaped as animals, aurochs and deer.
Symbolic prey, sorceries of hunt. It is presumed
Those dark halls echoed speech to resound, invoke
That magic imagery to permit it to be spoken.
The skills to inscribe a graceful line can be rare.
But a tone pronounced, a whistle or a hiss, a soft scream
To modulate into a pictured dream
Is easier to represent with a scribbled line or two.
Thus, alphabets appeared, or so it seems.”

Continue reading HERE

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Ma-Siri & Alexa #50 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

For more Ma-Siri & Alexa HERE!

For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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Ovi magazine; Saturday November 20th, 2021 – Universal Children’s Day

 

The articles, the opinions, the stories, the poems and the cartoons Ovi magazine covers for Saturday November 20th, 2021

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Universal Children’s Day by Rene Wadlow

The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed 20 November as Universal Chlidren’s Day, a day devoted to promoting the welfare of the children of the world.  The date of 20 November was chosen as it is the anniversary of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959 and the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1989.  The Convention, which is the most widely ratifies international human rights treaty sets out a number of children’s rights including the right to life, to health, to education and to family life.

When the Convention on the Rights of the Child was unanimously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 20 November 1989, governments took a major step forward in establishing a framework of world law to protect the basic dignity and rights of children in all parts of the world.  Thus, we remember with gratitude those who worked to develop the concepts and reality of the Rights of the Child but also to measure the tasks that are before us, especially as members of non-governmental organizations (NGOs).  This universal framework is based on the principle that each child should have the possibility to develop into an active and responsible member of society. The way in which a society treats its children reflects not only its qualities of compassion and protective caring, but also its sense of justice, its commitment to the future and its urge to better the human condition for continuing generations.

Continue reading HERE!

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A Dedication To My Great-Niece #poem by Nikos Laios

“A baby girl,
Born with beauty,
Adorned with nature’s
Noble gifts”

Continue reading HERE!

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Elite sportsmen, elite artists and anxiety by Joseph Gatt

Anxiety is part of the sport. First off, being an elite artist or sportsman is a privilege that usually comes with years of hard work and training.

Definition: there are lots of sportsmen or artists playing any sport or dabbling with any art. Elite means you get lots of visibility, usually because you play the sport or the art really, really well. Either because you collect a long series of titles and championships, or because your art work has huge impact.

Being part of the elite is of course not a lifelong title, and you have to keep your elite status for about a decade or two before you can become a so-called “legend” and that’s when you’re in the history books.

Problem with being an elite sportsman or artist: you have four full-time jobs!

Which ones?

Continue reading HERE!

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Fika bonding! 21#19 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas

For more Fika bonding! HERE!

For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!

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The Ovi magazine today

Interview with the ...Dracula (Greek) by Panathinaikos Palmos

Συνέντευξη με το αφεντικό της ΠΑΕ Παναθηναϊκός

It Was All Greek to Me by Clint Wayne
The first time I found myself interested in Greek football was when I took my brother, as a birthday treat, to Wembley to see the 1971 European Cup Final between Ajax and Panathinaikos on a pleasant summer's evening.

100 history and one misery that must go! by Thanos Kalamidas
Too many times over the last few years I have written articles about the lethal responsibility of the billionaire owners of football teams and their potential to destroy the world's most popular sport.

1971 European Cup Final: AFC Ajax vs. Panathinaikos FC by The Ovi Team
The 1971 European Cup Final was a football match held at Wembley Stadium, London, on June 2, 1971, that saw AFC Ajax of the Netherlands defeat Panathinaikos FC of Greece 2 - 0.

Should I stay or ... GO home! by Thanos Kalamidas
Αφού δεν καταλαβαίνει το κάναμε ...εικόνες!

Sarkozy the first to talk about boycott

We are definitely going to live again days of the Moscow Olympics! French President Nicolas Sarkozy says he has not ruled out boycotting the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in China over the situation in Tibet.

His aides said France was still opposed to a full boycott but that it might pull out of the opening ceremony in Beijing on 8 August. The recent unrest in Tibet has sparked worldwide concern.

Olympics chief Jacques Rogge said last week he was "heartened" that no major government had backed a boycott. On Tuesday, the White House said US President George W Bush still planned to attend the opening of the Games, while the UK said Prime Minister Gordon Brown would still be going to the closing ceremony.

It seems in the end the Athens Olympics will be the last real Olympics to remember despite the fact of all the negativity before they started.

Olympic torch aflame …China

The Olympic torch has been lit at a ceremony being held in Greece amid heavy security. About 1,000 police officers are patrolling ancient Olympia, fearing protests by pro-Tibet demonstrators.

One person briefly disrupted proceedings as China's representative spoke but was removed by security.

Olympic ceremony

A ceremony is due to be held in Greece to light the torch that will be carried to Beijing for the Olympic Games. Hundreds of police will be on patrol around ancient Olympia, where the games originated almost 3,000 years ago.

Security is tight to prevent disruption by activists, who have vowed to protest over the violence in and around Tibet. The head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) defended the decision to hold the Games in China saying there was "no momentum" for a boycott.

"The major political leaders don't want a boycott," said IOC president Jacques Rogge said ahead of Monday's ceremony. The torch is to travel through 20 countries - and scale Mount Everest - before the Beijing Games open on 8 August.

He’s running out of excuses as well, what does it mean the major political leaders don't want a boycott? If I remember well from the past USA was a major power but boycotted Moscow Olympics and the Russians did the same in Los Angeles, the thing now is who’s going to be the first, the rest will just follow!

Kimi Raikkonen won the Malaysian Grand Prix

World champion Kimi Raikkonen kicked his title defence into life with victory in the Malaysian Grand Prix. The Finn passed his Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa thanks to a stunning lap before his first pit stop, after which he dominated the race. Massa spun out of second place, gifting it to BMW Sauber's Robert Kubica, with Heikki Kovalainen's McLaren third.

Raikkonen said: "I got alongside Felipe after I got a bit better start but I thought we don't want to risk between the team-mates in the first corner, and I decided to stay behind and try my move on the first stop and it worked out perfectly. "We were pretty similar speed-wise, but once he went in my car went better and I was able to go much quicker on my in-lap and pass him.

"After that the car was handling perfectly and I was able to go away. "It was a pretty easy race from that first pitstop really. "We had quite a difficult weekend in Australia and we were not 100% sure it was going to be any different here. "But everything worked perfectly. This is a good start to the season for us and we're in a pretty good position."