A two-part World War 2 Biopic on Charles de Gaulle has been released

Général de brigade Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French Forces, photographed in London, 1942.

This looks interesting.

It is about Charles de Gaulle's life between 1940 and 1944.

You could make 3 or 4 separate feature length films on his life such as by focusing on the events of 1968 or the period between his "comeback" in 1958 to his granting of independence to Algeria.

I would expect this movie to include depictions of his achievements as a military officer.

De Gaulle was among those who helped develop the theories associated with tank warfare, a topic which is often dominated by the work of the German Heinz Guderian. He was also the only French general to have mounted a successful counterattack against invading German forces during "Fall Gelb".

Also, this film will no doubt explore his close but complex relationship with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. He fled to England with only a few supporters and then a death sentence awaiting him in Vichy.

But he persevered and he gave Churchill "hell". Churchill and other Brits were perplexed as to why de Gaulle should be so bold and "arrogant" in his dealings with his hosts while in exile, but he felt that the fact that he was in a weak position meant that he should be even bolder when defending France's interests and its honour while the shame of capitulation and collaboration surrounded French acquiescence to German occupation and the creation of Vichy.

I hope the director recreates an episode where John Colville, Churchill's private secretary, heard them shouting at each other at the top of their voices in a rather violent way. Then a sudden silence descended on the place.

He thought that they'd killed each other.

But when he entered Churchill's office both men were sitting down and smiling at each other, De Gaulle was smoking one of Churchill's cigars.

I would also expect the film to cover the assassination attempt on him in Notre Dame Cathedral.

The man led an eventful life while living in interesting times!

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Shostakovich’s Main Theme for The Gadfly (1955)

Poster for The Gadfly (1955).

Dmitri Shostakovich composed a good deal of music that is accessible to the discerning listener.

I love this overture to the Soviet film titled The Gadfly, an historical epic set against the backdrop of Italian freedom fighters battling to expel the Austrian invaders from their land.

I have the album as reconstructed by Mark Fitz-Gerald and played by the Deutsch Staatsphilharmonic Rheinland-Pfalz. The tempo of the overture and its reprise is faster than most of the versions I have encountered in YouTube.

The Gadfly soundtrack also has a sweet, delicate tune referred to as "Romance" which came to be well-known to many because it was used as the opening theme music to Reilly: Ace of Spies, the epic mini-series produced in the early 1980s on the life of the spy Sidney Reilly (nee Sigmund Rosenbloom).

© Adeyinka Makinde (2021).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

The Late Lindsey Graham: The subject of a litany of anti-eulogies

Lindsey Graham (1955-2026).

The journalist Piers Morgan sanctimoniously decries what he describes as the "despicably cruel, heartless and abusive way that many people in (the) UK and US have responded to the deaths of conservative politicians, Ann Widdecombe and Lindsey Graham". He also claims that the "least kind people on earth are ironically those on the #BeKind woke left". However, the truth is that such anti-eulogies are not confined to any segment of the ideological spectrum. And regarding Graham, the late U.S. Senator for South Carolina, the “abusive” comments voiced on social media after his demise were largely unrelated to conservative values, as they focused on his perpetual support for U.S. military intervention and his slavish devotion to Zionist interests.

Graham arguably typified the profile of the bought and paid off U.S. politician who is more apt at serving the interests of his donors than his constituents.  He called for the murder of foreign leaders and he also called for and condoned the mass murder of civilian populations, both highly ironic given his training as a lawyer who as an active duty U.S. Air Force officer and as a reservist advised pilots on the laws of war.

He was a man who slavishly promoted the United States war machinery which alongside his promotion of the imposition of sanctions has directly and indirectly resulted in the deaths of millions of innocent civilians.

Graham personally profited from his devotion to the U.S. military industry and the Zionist lobby, both causes which have ultimately led to the diminution of American moral standing among the global community of nations, as well as its unmanageable trillion dollar sovereign debt.

Graham effectively admitted that U.S. policy was geared towards using Ukraine as a proxy force for the purpose of "weakening" Russia. To him the aid given to Ukraine -a country which has suffered from the migration of a good deal of its population and the loss of what can be objectively estimated to be the physical destruction of well over a million men- was worth it because it led to the deaths of Russians. Few who heard it are unlikely to forget his precise remarks:

And the Russians are dying. The best money we’ve ever spent.

But Graham's support for proxies employed by the American empire to achieve certain geopolitical goals did not only include Ukraine. Along with John McCain, the late U.S. Senator with whom Graham worked together for many years in drumming up support for U.S. interventions, Graham approved of the use of Jihadist extremists in operations dedicated to the overthrow of the secular, anti-Zionist governments of Libya and Syria.

Indeed, Graham was pictured next to McCain as his colleague gave an award to Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the leader of the al-Qaeda-affiliated and now defunct Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), during a visit to Benghazi in late 2011 to celebrate the overthrow of the government of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

So while it is distasteful to use abusive language against the dead, it is important that Graham be acknowledged to be the perennial warmonger and corrupt politician that he was.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Photograph of Jazzman Courtney Pine Taken by Me in 1989

Courtney Pine captured during a solo performance at the Virgin Megastore, Oxford Street, December 1989. Photo Credit: Adeyinka Makinde.

I kept an eye on jazz music during the 1980s.

My LP-buying focused on Miles Davis and John Coltrane and contemporary stars such as Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Jordan. Miles of course released several albums during the eighties until his death in 1991 and I acquired most of them.

I did not consider myself an aficionado but was aware of the rise of the British Jazz saxophonist Courtney Pine who led a group named the Jazz Warriors.

To my surprise I encountered him playing saxophone during a solo in-store performance at the now defunct Virgin Megastore at Oxford Street in December 1989. I spent a few minutes watching him with a few others during which time I took several pictures.

I had half-forgotten the incident but recently encountered the photographs while rifling through old photos contained in a store box. He had apparently lost his contract by this time but has been actively recording and performing to the present day.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Why does Netanyahu support the Argentinean national football team?

Image generated by Grok as a result of instructions provided by the writer.

No surprise that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has announced his support for the Argentinean football team.

The country's president, Javier Milei, is the most rabidly pro-Zionist foreign leader of any nation on earth. Milei's government has granted automatic privileges to Israelis such as relating to pension rights and has been busily preparing the Patagonian region of Argentina for Zionist colonisation.

It is remarkable how the Jewish state has a high degree of influence in a country that was famous for shielding Nazi war criminals such as Eichmann, Mengele, Priebke, Roschmann and Kutschmann. It was also for a time the base of operations of Otto Skorzeny, the special forces officer of the Waffen-SS who came to be known as Hitler's favourite commando.

Argentina is also, a country whose junta in the 1970s was unabashedly anti-Jewish. The military government led by General Jorge Videla accused Jews of financially supporting left-wing groups such as the Montoneros guerrillas. David Graiver, a financier of Polish-Jewish descent allegedly acted as the primary investment banker and money launderer for the Montoneros organisation.

As was the case with the leaders of Nazi Germany and Francoist Spain, the junta believed that Jews were at the heart of leftist movements including the other prominent guerrillas, the Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP), the armed wing of the Communist Workers' Revolutionary Party.

This resulted in the junta focusing a lot of its efforts on the Jewish community during the "Dirty War" conducted against what were designated as Marxist subversives between 1976 and 1983. Although Jews made up 1% of the population, they represented 10%-12% of los desaparecidos i.e. the "disappeared ones".

Ironically, the Israeli state supplied significant amounts of weapons and gave military training to the Argentinian military during the "Dirty War". It was in this context as one of Argentina's primary arms suppliers that Israel sold weapons and munitions to Argentina during its war against Britain over the Falkland Islands.

But as mentioned earlier the transformation of Argentina from a country which harboured Nazi criminals and which in the 1970s witnessed a rise in pro-Nazi and anti-Jewish sentiment to one that has become one of the most vital allies of the Jewish state is noteworthy. Milei, the self-described "most Zionist president in the world" has been at the heart of establishing the "Isaac Accords" (the Latin American equivalent of the West Asian "Abraham Accords"), has stood in solidarity with Israel in all its conflicts and has introduced laws that provide a privileged status to Israelis including Israeli Defence Force veterans suspected of committing war crimes in war theatres such as Gaza and south Lebanon.

And Netanyahu's support for the Argentinean national football team can only be bolstered by the perceived pro-Zionist sentiments of Lionel Messi. While Messi has previously donated to hospitals in Gaza and to UNICEF projects in Palestine, images of his visit to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem during a "Peace Tour" in 2014 with his former team, FC Barcelona, have become ingrained in the minds of both pro-and anti-Zionist fans of the game. During the visit, Messi and his teammates wore traditional yarmulkes, prayed at the holy site, and left handwritten notes between the ancient stones.

In contrast to Diego Maradona who avowedly supported left-wing causes and left-wing regimes, Messi has striven to maintain a personal policy of political neutrality. And Netanyahu appears to have respected this stance by justifying his support for the Argentinean national team by referencing President Milei.

"Before Messi,Milei", Netanyahu joked, "He's a superstar."

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

 Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Did Mossad Plan to Assassinate Field Marshal Munir in Switzerland?: A Brief Note of Zionism’s Record of Carrying Out Political Murders.

Field Marshal Asim Munir, Pakistani Chief of Army Staff and Chief of Defence Staff

According to Pepe Escobar, a Brazilian journalist and geostrategist who is based in East Asia, Mossad, the foreign intelligence service of Israel, recently plotted to assassinate Pakistan's Army Chief Field Marshal Asim Munir in Switzerland for his role in brokering talks between the United States and Iran. However, while it is difficult to ascertain the veracity of this claim, it is worth noting that Zionism has a record of plotting and carrying out the assassinations of statesmen who act against its perceived interests.

For instance, the Zionist Stern gang of pre-Israel Palestine assassinated Lord Moyne and Count Folke Bernadotte respectively in 1944 and 1948. Moyne was the Middle East Envoy for Britain and Bernadotte was a UN Peace Mediator. The former was gunned down in Cairo, while the latter suffered a similar fate during an ambush in Jerusalem.

And various British political and military leaders were threatened with death through a letter bombing campaign by the terrorist organisation Lehi, known to the British authorities as the Stern Gang. The targets included Prime Minister Clement Atlee, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, then the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and even Sir Winston Churchill.

The letter bombs were reportedly intercepted in the Italian city of Genoa.

The threats extended to the British royal family. In 1946, extra security precautions were taken to protect King George VI because of threats of Zionist violence aimed at the state opening of Parliament. This followed a boast by a leader of the Irgun, the larger organisation from which Lehi had split, that it would “attack London’s heart and even Buckingham Palace itself.” In a front page article of its June 8^th, 1947 edition, the Australian newspaper The Truth stated that the “"arrogant boasting of Jewish terrorists and their cowardly threats, particularly that Princess Elizabeth, have disgusted the world."

Ezer Weizman, a future Major General who would become the commander of the Israeli Air Force, joined a cell of the Zionist terror group Irgun to plot the assassination of General Evelyn Barker, the head of Britain's military in Palestine, by placing a mine on a road outside his home in England. However, the group gave up the plan after arousing the suspicions of Scotland Yard.

Interestingly, John Gunther Dean, a U.S. Ambassador to India in the 1980s alleged that the MOSSAD had assassinated General Zia ul-Haq, the military ruler of Pakistan. Zia died in a plane crash in 1988. Dean, who provided no evidence of this, based his assumption on the fact that Israel did not want Pakistan to obtain a nuclear weapon. He was censored by the U.S. State Department and forced to retire on the grounds that he was "mentally unbalanced".

A German Jew by heritage, Dean was targeted in a failed assassination by Israel in 1980 while he was serving as the U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon. Responsibility for the rocket attack on his motorcade in Beirut was claimed by the FLLF (The Front for the Liberation of Lebanon from Foreigners), a phantom terror group formed and directed by the Northern Command of the IDF.  Dean was able to trace the source of the projectiles that targeted him to a shipment of arms in 1974 from the United States to Israel. However, his findings were never officially investigated, although he was officially rehabilitated.

The rationale for an Israeli orchestrated assassination of Field Marshal Munir would be consistent with previous assassinations conducted by Zionist terror militias and later by the Israeli state on those seeking peaceful compromise. Count Bernadotte’s murder arose from his belief that the Palestinian people were entitled to the right of return, while Dean was targeted for his suggestion that Israel should abandon its heavy-handed approach and enter into peace talks with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation. The targeting in more recent times of peace negotiators of Hamas and the Iranian state testify to a longstanding policy embedded in the mentality of Zionists.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

The Calabar Landing and other Nigerian Navy amphibious operations conducted during the Nigerian Civil War

Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Adekunle, the General Officer Commanding the Federal Third Infantry Division & the Officer Commanding Land Forces (left) and Commander James Rawe, the Forward Control Officer of naval forces on the bridge of Rawe’s vessel NNS Penelope during the amphibious attack on Oron, March 1968. (Credit: Photo archive of the late Captain James Rawe).

A post titled "The Liberation of Calabar, 1967" by a Facebook group named "Ibibio History" reminds me that I urgently need to complete my research project on all Nigerian Navy orchestrated landings during the civil war. Several errors of fact and improbable analyses stimulated me to make the following comments and observations.

These are the thoughts I jotted down soon after encountering the post:

1. The AI depiction of NNS Nigeria -a frigate- as a tiny patrol boat is a bit of an eyesore. Nigeria was 314 feet and possessed an array of gun armament vastly more than what a patrol boat would have.

2. The date of "14th, September 1967" in the image should have been removed as the combined operation occurred in October 1967.

3. Benjamin Adekunle, the General Officer Commanding the Federal Third Infantry Division, was a Lieutenant Colonel at the time - not yet a Brigadier or a Colonel as the text later states.

4. The text neglected to inform the reader how Major Anthony Ochefu, who the narrative initially states was on NNS Nigeria, later "disembarked from (NNS) Lokoja."

5. While Major Ochefu was on NNS Lokoja and successfully fought from a landing site and captured key territory in Calabar, the narrative -even if intended to be brief- ought to give an indication of how extremely tough it was for the Federal troops.

For one, the landing site was on lowland while the Biafran forces had taken up defensive positions on highland. Calabar is situated on high ground overlooking the Cross River. This meant that Ochefu and his troops were pinned down on the landing vessel Lokoja and could not open its heavy steel bow door for a considerable period because of the sheer volume of bullets smashing into the metallic structure of Lokoja.

The Federal side lost a lot of troops as they established a beachhead and slowly inched their way up the hilly terrain.

6. So, the sentence "small Biafran resistance was quickly overwhelmed" is an untrue portrayal of what went down. The Federal commanders of the navy and army expected the secessionist side to put up a spirited fight to preserve their last port. The operation was not as easy as both landing accomplished earlier at Bonny in July 1967 and at Sapele, Warri and Koko in September 1967.

At Bonny overconfidence on the part of the Biafran leadership that the Nigerian Navy was incapable of staging a landing because of the internal sabotage carried out by defecting naval personnel of Eastern region origin at the Apapa base, and by the thinking that the Nigerian Navy lacked the smarts to orchestrate an amphibious landing led to a state of gross underpreparedness.

The Biafrans failed to shift buoys at the entrance to the Bonny River which could have directed Federal naval navigators towards shallow waters where thier ships would have run aground. They failed to set up watchtowers, plant incendiaries in the river and station a garrison of appropriate strength to confront a potential invading force. They even failed to anticipate an invasion by keeping daily tabs on the rise and fall of the tide.

So far as Warri, Sapele and Koko is concerned, the Nigerian Navy vessels were extremely vulnerable to attacks while navigating the narrow rivers which were too shallow for NNS Nigeria to participate. The Nigerian ships and barges carrying soldiers of the Third Infantry Division would have been sitting ducks for an organised ambush involving rocket-propelled grenades and artillery.

But things were different for the Calabar landing.

The Biafran troops were well prepared. They laid Ogbunigwe bombs in uncharted rivers they correctly anticipated some Nigerian Navy vessels would use en route to attacking Calabar. They placed bombs on jetties, and they also placed tape recorders with sounds of gunfire amplified by loudspeakers on trees and other vantage points. The aim was to confuse the Federal soldiers as to where gunfire was coming from.

7. Another impediment to the Nigerian operation were an assortment of 105mm guns which the secessionist side fired from Oron, a town which is almost opposite to Calabar on the other side of the Cross River estuary. Lt. COL. Adekunle had wanted the operation to involve capturing both Calabar and Oron. But Commander James Rawe, the architect of the landing, successfully argued that the Federal side would be better off focusing on Calabar so as not split up naval and army resources. Rawe was aware of the "guns of Oron”, but it was a necessary risk for naval and merchant vessels to run the gauntlet to secure the more important target of Calabar.

Oron was captured in the final amphibious operation six months later in March 1968.

8. The conclusion is overblown.

The poster writes: "This decisive operation marked a turning point in the Nigerian Civil War, demonstrating the effectiveness of joint naval and ground forces in reclaiming strategic territory."

Each amphibious operation prior to the Calabar landing was incrementally important in achieving the objective of creating a southern front and setting the scene of the ultimate encirclement of secessionist Biafra.

. Capturing Bonny town and securing the mouth of the Bonny River was important in ensuring that the secessionist side would not control the production and export oil.

. Capturing Warri, Koko and Sapele ensured that the Biafran side had no sea outlet through the Mid-West after the Biafran attack on the Mid-West in August 1967. It also played a part in ensuring the recapture of the Mid-West by the Third Infantry Division in combination with the Second Infantry Division which was led by Lieutenant Colonel Murtala Muhammed.

It should also be noted that the Nigerian Navy made an unopposed landing at Forcados in August 1967 soon after the Mid-West invasion.

. Capturing Calabar ensured that the Federal side could begin gaining territory in a northward direction while completing the task of sealing off the border with Cameroon.

I hope to complete or write the bulk of what should be an 8,000 to 10,000-word scholarly article over the coming summer months.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England. His late father was a Nigerian Navy officer, and he has presented lectures to naval officers and other officers of the armed forces on the Naval Warfare Course run by the Naval War College Nigeria.

Adeyinka’s article "The Bonny Landing: The anatomy of Black Africa’s first amphibious operation, July to September 1967" was published in the August 2024 edition of The Mariner's Mirror, the international journal of the Society for Nautical Research.