Category: Uncategorized

Afton Titus  has written an article on Chinese investments in Africa  implying more costs than benefits.1 What is more important is how she puts her article together. She violates almost all the rules either of academia or of international tax. She is aware of the many arguments that China is involved in debt trap diplomacy but she is also aware that most of those arguments have been discredited. She has arrived with a new argument. What is this new…

Read More

Jim Jones led a religious movement that ended in mass suicide. Initial reports suggested that  Jim Jones led a solely Black congregation with the silent implication that these Black people were just dumb idiots who would commit suicide if a white leader told them to. Though Jim Jones was anti-racist, his congregation was not exclusively or majority Black. Jim Jones had fervent dreams of bringing about a better world and was driven by these dreams. Self-awareness was not one…

Read More

We are in this story following a tradition from Canon Doyle. What is missing might be the important and strong clue as in ‘the dog that did not bark’. Let us consider the current analysis of The Duran (Alex Mercouris and Alex Christoforou). They have accepted that the Ukraine war is part of a conflict between US on one side and China and Russia on the other. They also accept that China and Russia have an unbounded relationship. However,…

Read More

There is a strange situation in the world. America is riding tall even though it is only one event from a catastrophic fall. Consider the geo-political environment. If Germany had broken loose from the Western alliance and decided to join hands with Russia then US dominance would collapse overnight. Russia and Germany would be a great power actually greater in a short time than the US. Russia and Germany would be beyond US military intimidation. This would be Mackinder’s…

Read More

Ndlovu-Gatsheni writes: ‘Wole Soyinka’s widely cited injunction against Négritude, ‘a tiger does not proclaim its tigritude, it pounces’ (Ischinger 1974, 23), suffers miserably from ahistoricity. If the tiger’s essence or being as a tiger was questioned and renamed derogatively as an ant or something similar, it would definitely be forced to proclaim its tigritude (its essence or being) as part of its resistance and defensive self-constitution.’ 1 Soyinka’s famous phrase is widely misunderstood. I am not fussed about the…

Read More

Sometimes the worst insult is the one you don’t know you are giving. Moscow Times gives the final insult to Russia. Russia is a major global power and a democracy. Russia has been on the receiving end of US’s complete disdain and disrespect. It has also  been on the receiving end of complete lack of sincerity in negotiations, with the US believing it has no obligation to commit to previous agreements. It is strange and important that no one…

Read More

David Olusoga is a well-known British presenter cum historian. But he is a problem. There needs to be some serious analysis.  The immediate issue is his show ‘Africa Turns the Page’. As a history of African literature this is a disaster. He has neither a historical understanding nor literary understanding. When he talks about the history of a period there is no sense of time and place in his narrative.  His basic temporality is all upside down making Soyinka…

Read More

Alex Mercouris has revealed himself as a soft racist in his video on ‘A New Europe ’  1. I write this with some sorrow. I do not consider it on the basis of his saying something negative about immigrants (frankly who cares?) but on the basis of his deliberate distortion of the facts, and his inflammatory insinuations. Lets start with the most simple statement. His statement that migration is causing increasing cultural stresses  in Britain  is an amazing statement….

Read More

It is written in Ignatius Loyola’s autobiography: ‘While he journeyed on, a Saracen mounted on a horse came up with him. In the  course of the conversation mention was made of the Blessed Virgin. The stranger  remarked that though he admitted that the Mother of Christ had conceived without  detriment to her virginal purity, yet he could not believe that after the conception of  her divine Son she was still a virgin. He was so obstinate in holding this…

Read More

One of the great mysteries for many is the incoherence of Nigeria despite its brilliant people. To unravel this mystery we must first start with an understanding of ‘fifth column’. Britannica’s definition is as follows: ‘fifth column, clandestine group or faction of subversive agents who attempt to undermine a nation’s solidarity by any means at their disposal‘. (see note 1) Mola is credited with inventing the concept of ‘fifth column’ during the Spanish Civil War. see note 2: ‘In October 1936,…

Read More