Category: Uncategorized

There has been a very constructive conference ICTA (International Conference on Tax in Africa) held by ATAF ( African Tax Administration Forum). Contrary to many expectations in the world of Tax, Africa is aware and planning for the future and seeking applications for utilising advance tech, such as blockchain, for improving tax administration. On several occasions senior tax administration officials complained about the bad advice given by foreigners associated with international and multilateral aid organisations. This is serious. Dr…

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Jean-Marc Sauve has written about the sexual abuse of children by the Catholic Church over many decades. His report estimated that 350,000 children over the years have been subject to sexual abuse by members of the Catholic Church since the 1950’s. “The most terrible thing for me was to see the most absolute evil – the attack on the physical and psychological integrity of children – that is to say a work of death, perpetrated by people whose mission…

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Matt Stoller comes from the anti-monopolist tradition in America. Given the strident screams of neo-liberal ideology that any constraint on business is bad, this sounds like a positive economic position. However, there is more to this than first appears. Matt manages to link the anti-trust issues to anti-China issues. This step involves some extraordinary footwork. But the clue to this may lie in his statement that one cannot be heard in Congress or taken seriously at high levels of…

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  Biden stated in his speech after the bombing at Kabul airport: ‘We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down. We will make you pay’… (Note 1) You may have missed the hysterical absurdity of threatening to hunt down a suicide bomber and make him pay. Even the hypothetical threat of following them beyond the grave would not work as he/she will not believe the Americans and they are going to the same place….

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He shows himself in his video interview on 9 Aug 21 with AriseTV, Bishop Kukah (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZQVZHCjdtY) as a wise and critical commentator of the Nigerian political scene. He compares what is happening in Nigeria with what happens in Europe and America. One of the important statements he makes is the failure of Nigerian intellectuals. However, there are aspects that he misses or misconstrues and these are very important. It is correct but not sufficient to refer to the vacuity…

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IBB (Ibrahim Bamasi Babangida), in an interview with AriseTV on 6 August 21(IBB Interview, 2021), suggested that he could recommend a way forward for Nigeria. This same person is the dictator who introduced SAP (structural adjustment programmes) to Nigeria. This policy, enforced by the IMF and implemented by Babangida and the military junta, destroyed the nascent manufacturing base of Nigeria and largely reduced the country to poverty. Since then, the IMF has accepted that SAP was a disaster and…

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It is interesting to speculate if empirical evidence supports the human sacrifice explanation of US police killing of Black males. It is quite challenging to design tests for a real-world situation, but under certain conditions, one can review the expectations of one theory compared to another. Conventional theories of police brutality would, it is suggested, predict that with the protests and outcries against police brutality in the US, the number of deaths and attacks on Black males during the…

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At a talk at JFK Library, Evan Thomas describes the birth of American global covert operations. Bryan Bender asks him about his description of the motto of covert operations at the CIA in the early days as: Money no object No holds barred No questions asked. He claims that the US had to behave this way because ‘we felt we were up against a great enemy – global communism’, which seemed to be massing to take over the world….

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