Liberia Lone Star fades in Dakar

By: ralph geeplay

Skipper Francis Doe

Liberia squandered an early lead in Dakar on Saturday June 2, 2012 when Senegal came from behind to win their opening World Cup qualifier 3-1 against the Lone Star.  Francis Forkey Doe’s (Terengganu FC, Malaysia) second minute target was the only effort at goal that Liberia recorded in the FIFA 2014 World Cup qualifier against the Teranga Lions. Attacking to erase the Liberians early goal, Senegal fought back at the Leopold Sedar Senghor Stadium in their back yard, wrestling the the lead away.

Africans anxiously awaits the Taylor’s verdict

By ralph geeplay

Former Liberian president Charles Ghankay Macarthur Taylor, who was elected president in 1998 after a long ‘bush war’ which began in Liberia’s Nimba County on Christmas Eve in 1989, will face justice this Thursday in the Netherlands. He is the first African president to be tried on a continent where leaders like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, and Sudan’s Oman al Bashir plus countless other despots still enjoy state power as they terrorize their own people. Matter of fact, Bashir has been indicted, but he still eludes justice. If Taylor is acquitted jitters could run throughout West Africa, where the former Liberian president is accused of trading arms for minerals, especially diamonds in Sierra Leone. Flushed with cash from Liberia’s timber and its resources, he meddled and also exported his war to Liberia’s neighbors: Guinea and Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone. His war in Liberia saw almost 300 thousand Liberians dead, from a pre war population of 3.5 million and hundreds of West African peace keepers (Ecomog) killed under Nigerian command.

 

Taylor, at the peak of power

Let’s remember April 12, 1980

By ralph geeplay

 

This week, Liberians remember April 12, 1980. It is hard to comment on the events that preceded the day and the aftermath of the military overthrow without raw emotions being in the mix. A day when some Liberians trooped to the streets to dance while a segment of the population was mourning. 

A Mail for Mali

By: ralph geeplay

The March 22, seizure of power in Bamako, the Malian capital, was just one more rude awakening that the men in military uniforms in the world’s least develop continent are still thirsty for political power. And Mali, the Western African landlocked country is its latest poster child. It is hard to understand why the coup took place in the first place?! If the main complaint of the army and reason for aborting a democratic government is that it neglected the army and its needs, to waged an all out war against insurgents from the north, then the army has done virtually nothing since coming to power a fortnight ago to take control and beat back the  revolt. The army since seizing control has done a dismal job. The fact that must be laid bare is that the Malian army lacked the guts and fighting spirit to take on the rebels, weapons aside. Since they came to power almost half of the country has fallen to the Islamic radicals in the north, all of this, in less then three weeks.

Hire this man for the Lone Star job!

By ralph geeplay

 

Coach Huh Jung-Moo

This week, The Liberian national team the Lone star went on a shopping spree for a foreign coach. The Liberian Football Association is making it clear, it intends to hire a foreign coach, even though, several foreign coaches it hired in the past four years show nothing for the huge salaries, benefits and bonuses they collected

Negbalee Warner throws a gauntlet!

 By: ralph geeplay

This week, the former Board Chair of the Liberia Petroleum Refining Company, Negbalee Warner took his case to the public in a press conference he called to give reasons why he left his lucrative more than 4.000 dollars job. Warner, a prominent Liberian lawyer is also the former Head of Secretariat of the Liberia Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (LEITI). His recent press conference has received the buzz in the media, because reports say he has credibility, and his revelations if proven right could help President Sirleaf's drive to root out corruption in govt.