This space is for contemporary commentary by our editor, Dapo Ladimeji, on important but also sometimes the fleeting and ephemeral events of life. An opportunity to give an African gloss on these events which so often feel important at the time but quickly flow with tide towards the beach of incidental memories and to note those events that are truly important but may be concealed by the mist and noise of the day’s trivia.
It is a common trope to describe the UK as a poodle to the US. It is said the Europeans saw the UK as America’s unsinkable battleship. It certainly appears in the press that the UK does anything the US requests. But this is curious. Several decades earlier there was great debate among the British elite about whether UK should join the US as a US state. But the idea that the UK should be a long time permanent…
There is much astonishment about the behaviour of the neo-con establishment and the different stories being told about Nordstream. There is also astonishment at the scale of lies and deceit about Covid and mRNA vaccines. How can they think we are all so stupid? Let us stop and think. Consider the imperial expansion of Europe which is mostly portrayed as a macho, a superior expression of white personality. When the Portuguese first set sail for the Americas using Chinese…
Angela Merkel has stated that she negotiated in bad faith with Russia, and that the Minsk accords were only a time-saving device to allow Ukraine to build itself up1. Many commentators appeared shocked by these admissions. However, any close reading of US policy in Southern Africa would have shown that this sort of behaviour was the standard operating procedure for the US. For reasons which we will reveal later, Western commentators ignore the evidence trail from Africa, as if…
Josep Borrell has a famous role as an advertiser for the EU’s elite’s view of Africa. Russia would have found it hard to develop a believable media campaign that portrayed EU leaders as boneheaded racists who think Africans are gloriously ignorant and stupid. Borrell notoriously said the EU was a garden and the rest of the world was a jungle. (Note 1) Now Borrell has put the other foot in his mouth. He is now reported as saying that…
Scott Ritter – US strategic dysfunction Scott Ritter has suggested a wise and reasonable analysis. (note 1) But he has a serious weakness in that he underestimates the devil. Appian warns against such a dilemma. He describes the position of Russia as seeking a ‘soft landing for Europe’. What he does not consider is the risk of dealing with the neo-cons if the motive of some neo-cons was to exit with as much damage as possible to all remaining…
Luana Maroja has published a piece in Common Sense. (Note 1) Her concern is apparently with freedom of speech, but she opens with: ‘If you had asked me about academic freedom five years ago, I would have complained about the obsession with race, gender and ethnicity ..’ This is a strange. How is concern with race, gender and ethnicity related to academic freedom, or is this coded speech? How does concern about race and gender become an ‘obsession’? Is…
There is a misunderstanding in Martin Jay’s view of Putin. In a western view of the world there is the West in leadership and the USA sees Russia and China as challenging the USA in leadership. This view is itself also embedded in the Western neo-con view of the world. It is simply a reverse view. This is NOT the new world order. History is changing and history is witnessing the decline of the USA. Jay’s view that Putin…
It is well known that the US nuclear war strategy of the 1960s, SIOP 62 (Note 1), involved targetting both Russia and China, whether both countries were part of the crisis. There are no doubt many commentators who would argue that a US pre-emptive attack only meant an attack when the US had good information that Russia was preparing an attack. It is not verifiable whether Russia was planning anything, and the ability to reach any desired conclusion that…
Dmitry Babich finally hit the nail on the head in his discussion on RT on 10 October 2022 where he quotes Stephen Walt. Walt identifies the Ukraine war as part of an internal battle within the US policy establishment. Walt argues, according to Babich, that success in Ukraine (defeat for Russia) would make the neo-cons uncontrollable in their global ambitions. To this end, the moderates and realists in the US policy establishment have a deep, vested interest in the…
There is a problem with the anti-war lobby. They do not wish to believe their eyes. It appears that in their hearts they want to believe that the US at its roots is rational in pursuit of its interests. Therefore arguments about national interests could have traction if only enough people could see matters clearly. If they had to accept that ‘rational interest’ did not have traction then they would have to start considering the US as a sinister…
