The Jason Arday Affair and the probing of academia

The recent furore centred on the late Jason Arday has brought into focus the question of whether what is termed EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion) policies are consistent with fundamental ideas about meritocracy and fairness. A strict definition of what EDI entails negates the proposition that such policies inherently equate to anti-white discrimination and the compromising of standards. However, allegations that Arday, appointed with much fanfare as Cambridge University’s youngest ever black professor, had plagiarised parts of his doctorate thesis alongside claims about the value and scholarship of his papers and teaching competence have served to create an atmosphere designed to render suspect the credentials of black academics. This was the objective of the race realist network behind Nathan Cofnas who served as the “whistleblower” whose evidence would take Arday down. But if an academic deserves to be scrutinised, such scrutiny should not be conducted in the form of trial by media. Arday should have been examined by the same standard procedures afforded to other academics who have been accused of plagiarism and even of financial impropriety. Further, a probe of the university sector ought not to be delimited to the alleged perversion of the objectives of EDI but should encompass a range of issues including those related to questions of propriety in hiring faculty, as well as in financial management. Lessons must be absorbed from the apparent flaws in Cambridge’s procedures in investigating misconduct and the manipulation of the media by an organised group of people who were bent on waging a malicious campaign against a neuro-divergent individual.

Consider for instance the case of Dr. William O'Reilly, an associate professor of modern history at Cambridge. In 2018 an article was published in his name in the Journal of Austrian-American History. However, it was later discovered in 2021 that his article contained large segments of two essays that had been copied from one of his undergraduate students. The former student made a complaint to the university showing that more than 12 pages of O’Reilly’s journal submission were wholesale reproductions from his undergraduate papers.

The investigating panel was left with no choice but to uphold the complaint.

It is important to note that the university’s disciplinary guidelines consider plagiarism to be a form of “serious or gross misconduct” which will “normally merit dismissal”. O’Reilly faced a disciplinary tribunal which accepted the charge of plagiarism but after two-years of investigating and deliberating ruled that this had been “the product of negligent acts but was not deliberate”. 

O’Reilly kept his job.

Consider also the story about Professor George Holmes, the university vice-chancellor who was dismissed for financial corruption involving over £1 million and other misconduct. Holmes had been suspended in 2025 following allegations raised in The Mill, a Manchester-based investigative news outlet. Arrests followed in relation to allegations of fraud, money laundering and bribery.

Both cases involving O'Reilly and Holmes did not bring anywhere near the level of scrutiny put on Jason Arday. In the period between late July and early August after an article written by Nathan Cofnas at his substack page, almost 200 articles were written about a miscellany of allegations against Arday. These included those published by broadsheets such as the Guardian, the Times and the Telegraph.

The argument that Arday's case contained elements of Baron Munchausen Syndrome or that he was a "Walter Mitty"-type character does not justify the aggravated level of scrutiny heaped on him by the British media. By way of contrast, William O’Reilly also had unflattering allegations made about him outside of his confirmed plagiarism. Student journalists of Varsity, the oldest of Cambridge University’s main student newspapers, who decided to follow up on the university’s upholding of the complaint of plagiarism in 2023, claimed that they were threatened with legal action by O’Reilly. Earlier in 2020, Varsity reported on O’Reilly overseeing a disciplinary process involving a male student accused of rape and sexual assault. This despite the claim that O’Reilly had a “close relationship” with the accused student and that O’Reilly himself had been accused of sexual assault by a student. O’Reilly denied the allegations and no action was taken by the police.

This media blitz only served to stimulate the level of opprobrium directed on Arday by racial identitarians who are convinced -and seek to convince others- that blacks in positions in academia, including Oxbridge have only obtained their jobs without merit. This was of course the aim of Cofnas and his “race realism” backers who favour a return to the biological racism of the 19^th century, as well as the rehabilitation of eugenics as a field of study and an essential factor in the formulation of social policy.

It is possible that the Jason Arday affair is being used by certain interest groups and some sections of the media as a route towards the shaping public sentiment to favour a probe of the university sector. There would be nothing new about investigating key institutions designed to serve the public.

The policing sector for instance, has periodically been subjected to both formal and press scrutiny over concerns such as bribery and other corrupt practices. The police were also subject to scrutiny after the handling of the murder of Stephen Lawrence which culminated in the Macpherson report declaring the London Metropolitan Police as “institutionally racist”.

Yet, while a probe of universities concerning the unfair hiring of minorities is conceivable, the idea of limiting this to the employment of minorities would not be sound given the circumstances surrounding the likes of Dr. O’Reilly and Professor Holmes.

An objective investigation or series of investigations into the university sector would need to encompass issues related to undisclosed plagiarism and financial impropriety alongside biased practices pertaining to the appointment and promotion of staff.*

And those who believe in the message orchestrated the instigators of the campaign to destroy Arday will be almost certainly disappointed to discover the falsity that Black representation in British academia is down to biased hiring. This supposition is quite ironic given that many have complained of disadvantages linked to obtaining appointments, getting promotion, and receiving funding for PhDs from research councils.

While there is truth to the perception that the majority of British academics are left leaning in views on politics and social policy, this does not mean that conservative and right-wing ideologies are totally shut out. James Orr, an Associate Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at Cambridge University’s Faculty of Divinity, is an example of the right-wing presence in academia.  

Orr, until recently the Head of Policy of the Reform Party from which he was suspended for allegedly discussing ways of obtaining foreign funding, was already revealed to have been part of such a network. The aim it appears was according to the independent media outlet the Byline Times to “bring students into a hard-right, theocratic political project.”

Orr’s appointment was claimed to have been accompanied by a clandestine donation by Peter Thiel, the founder of Palantier, who has links to figures involved in the propagation of “race realism” and the politics of the “dark enlightenment”, the anti-democratic political concept posited by Curtis Yarvin.

His academic career at Cambridge has been sullied by accusations of neglecting his contractual obligations due to his commitments with the Reform Party. There appear to be instances in which complaints have been made been made about his conduct which have not been acted on and he has had a grievance against him for academic negligence and misconduct partially upheld. Moreover, the evidence thus far appears to reveal a morally compromised man who while teaching ethics was willing to circumvent electoral law.

The Arday affair with its frenzied press attention and breathless social media commentary presents an unfortunate case study of background orchestration and partisan evaluation before all the facts have been rationally assessed. Cambridge in their attempt to provide a fairy tale story of a black man who overcame a socially disadvantageous background and a disability appear to have failed in exercising their due diligence prior to appointing Arday. There also appear to have been flaws in the way they have dealt with complaints against O’Reilly and Orr.

The priority must be for Cambridge to put its house in order and for the mainstream media to acknowledge their role in the sensationalist campaign against Arday which was prompted by a network composed of elements dedicated to projects related to scientific racism and eugenics.

* Putting aside the question of plagiarism, these issues will become increasingly relevant as the sector grapples with present and future challenges. These include the many English universities whose indebtedness threaten them with insolvency, and the demographic trend of declining numbers of teenagers within the population. The consequence of this phenomenon is already being felt in the United States and there is an increasing awareness that Britain’s “enrolment cliff” is fast approaching.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

An Interview with Trillblack Channel on the Recolonisation of Africa

I was interviewed yesterday on a livestream by the Trillblack channel where I discussed neocolonialism.

Among the topics covered were:

. The assassinations of Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese political leader, and of the Cameroonian politicians Ruben Nyobe and Felix-Roland Moumie.

. France's use of its colonies to rebuild its economy after the devastation of World War 2 and the creation of its "Shadow Empire" after granting them "independence" under the auspices of the French Community.

. How the creation of the EU was based on the concept of "Eurafrica", a paternalistic relationship between Africa and Europe which is predicated on exploiting the mineral resources of Africa.

. The distinction between "open" and "closed" societies in the context of the survivability of governments which the CIA or other intelligence agencies wish to effect "regime change".

. The distinction between "white chauvinism" and "white supremacy" and how it fits into the post-World War global construct and rising anti-immigrant sentiment and white identitarianism.

. Operation Legacy: a secret British Colonial Office programme  from the 1950s to the 1970s to destroy, hide, or remove official documents that could implicate the British Empire in wrongdoing before its former colonies gained independence.

The show is hosted by Isaac Sable (nom-de-plume).

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Photograph of General Colin Powell awarding General Sani Abacha the Legion of Honor

General Sani Abacha (right), the Nigerian chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, receiving the Legion of Honor medal from General Colin Powell, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the Pentagon on Wednesday, May 15th, 1991.

"(General Sani Abacha) has the worst CIA bio I've ever read, and I've read lots of them."
- U.S. General Colin Powell (rtd) speaking in 1995.

This photograph will come as a surprise and even a shock to the many who are familiar with the quote made in 1995 by U.S. Army General Colin Powell.

Why would the United States government bestow a prestigious medal to a foreign dignitary only for one of its top officials to make such a disparaging comment?

There are several reasons for this, but it is first important to note that Powell would have become familiar with the contents of Abacha’s CIA profile when he served as the 15^th U.S. National Security Advisor (NSA) from 1987 to 1989. The period includes that of 1987 when he was the deputy NSA during the Reagan presidency. He may also have had access to Abacha’s file on a need-to-know basis during his spell as the 12^th chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993, during which time he awarded Abacha the medal.

A foreign military officer must perform exceptionally meritorious services in support of the United States to be awarded the U.S. Legion of Merit. Abacha may have presided over increased cooperation between the militaries of the United States and Nigeria, although the volume of trade was not exceptional at the time. The United States made up only a minor fraction of heavy weapons deliveries to Nigeria.

It is important to note that while Powell’s comment on Abacha was an expression of frustration about the intelligence services of the United States having little useful or psychological insight into Abacha, it was of sufficient ambiguity to be construed as a disparaging evaluation of a man who was becoming a figure of hate in Western media circles.

In 1995 Powell was no longer in government and was promoting his autobiography. His comment was made in the same interview in which he described Nigeria as a "nation of scammers".

His words succeeded in uniting all Nigerians in condemning Powell himself. As a Nigerian pointed out, how would Powell have liked it if -as biological racists assert- that high levels of violent crime among Black Americans in annual FBI figures make all Black Americans criminals?

Others who tracked Powell’s career may not have been impressed by his moralising tone. They allege that he distinguished himself as a "company man" and servant of the American empire through his part in covering up the Mai Lai Massacre in Vietnam while a mid-ranking officer.

Powell also allowed himself to be used by ruthless neoconservatives to spout lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. His factually compromised statement to the United Nations was a key step in the build up to the illegal invasion of Iraq, and his legacy became irretrievably tarnished by this.

As for Sani Abacha, Powell’s comments were made in the context of his controversial tenure as the military head of state of Nigeria, a period which saw widespread repression including Abacha’s formation of a unit which assassinated political dissenters. He was also extremely corrupt, managing to embezzle between U.S. $2-5 billion which was secreted to a multitude of destinations including Switzerland, Liechtenstein, the United Kingdom and the United States.

He was also working towards transforming himself from a military dictator to a civilian one.

But Abacha’s flaws do not explain the disparity between the United States decision to on the one hand honour Abacha with a prestigious medal and on the other to demonise him. A clue lies in a tried and tested formula that has been part of U.S. foreign policy for decades. Those foreign leaders who are not subservient to American whims are often given such treatment. It is no secret that American policymakers were wary about Nigerian successes in striving to bring peace first to Liberia and then to Sierra Leone through ECOMOG, the West African military force which was composed of mainly Nigerian troops. The Abacha regime oversaw these deployments. The Abuja Peace Agreement signed by warring factions in the Liberian war was also done under Abacha’s watch.

If Abacha in 1991 was -to borrow the phrase coined by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt- a proverbial “son-of-a-bitch” serving U.S. interests in 1991, it is clear that by 1995 that this was no longer the case.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

About Paul Muni

Actor Paul Muni on the set of the movie Scarface with Jocko the Monkey.

I don't think I've watched more than two movies in which he starred, namely I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang and Scarface but have always been aware that he was a highly regarded actor.

I once read of Marlon Brando stating that Muni was his greatest influence as an actor or words to that effect.

I think he had the vibe of being a "method actor" before the term was invented. But his roots were in Yiddish Theatre, starting as a child actor, and not in the Stanislavski system which hugely influenced "The Method".

Regardless, I believe that an evolutionary line can be drawn from Muni to both Brando and Montgomery Clift, with John Garfield fitting somewhere in-between. They all incrementally developed the side of acting concerned with psychological realism.

I must make an effort to watch more of his movies.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Wey, Mountbatten and a glimpse at my past

Commodore J.E.A. Wey, the Chief of Naval Staff, Nigerian Navy, and Lord Mountbatten, an Admiral of the Fleet of the Royal Navy and the Chief of Defence Staff of the British Armed Forces, during the latter's visit to the Naval Base in Apapa, Lagos on October 14^th, 1964.

This frame from a Reuters newsreel covering the visit of Lord Mountbatten to the naval base in Lagos caught my eye.

The white painted building in the background used to serve as apartments for naval officers. We lived there for a short period after returning from England where my father's diplomatic posting as the Deputy Defence Advisor at the Nigerian High Commission came to an end in April 1973.

The building, which overlooked Lagos Lagoon, was located further up from the jetty from which Mountbatten alighted. Beyond it was a cove.

Our stay at the base was a little longer than that at the Excelsior Hotel where we had stayed for a week or two upon our return. We had arrived after Easter, and the school terms had already begun. My father had originally intended to enrol me at Command Children’s School, Ann Barracks, Yaba which my three older siblings had attended prior to our departure to England. It had been previously named Army Children’s School. However, since the quota of pupils for my age grade was filled, I was enrolled at its sister school at the cantonment in Ikeja.  

The Navy School Buses which took the children of naval personnel to both schools in Ikeja and Yaba started at the base. It meant that we had to wake up earlier than most other children. Our father who had worked at the base during the 1960s -first as the Flag Lieutenant and the Flag Secretary to Wey- was deployed to the Ministry of Defence which was situated across the Lagoon on Lagos Island, and we arrived home early enough to see him return via a naval launch and alight from it at the aforementioned jetty.

Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t much playing space in a military establishment although we could roam a little on weekends. The base offered a range of delights such as viewing the lagoon at sunset and absorbing the cool breeze that often wafted our way. I also enjoyed looking at the various naval vessels berthed in their designated spaces. They included NNS Nigeria, a frigate which was the navy’s flag ship, and the twin corvettes NNS Otobo and NNS Dorina. Another enjoyable aspect of living at the base was of our father regularly ordering seasoned goat meat from the new officer’s mess which was built on sticks some metres away from the jetty.

It was an altogether enjoyable experience living at the base but it was something of a relief to finally get housed in a large two-storey home which had a very large balcony.

As for the block of flats, I recall that they were turned into administrative offices by the late 1970s, although I was recently informed that it has been converted to living quarters for junior officers.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Malcolm, Elijah and Louis

Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad and Louis X. Image I restored using AI software from a frame ‘snatched’ from the Lance Shabazz Show on YouTube.

A photograph of three key figures in the history of the Nation of Islam.

From left to right:

. Malcolm X (later El-Haj Malik Shabazz) who became the National Spokesman for Elijah Muhammad, the leader of the Nation of Islam.

. Elijah Muhammad the Georgia-born leader of the Nation of Islam until his death in 1975.

. Louis X (later Louis Farrakhan) who succeeded Malcolm as the National Spokesman for Elijah. Farrakhan revived the NOI in the late 1970s after initially accepting Wallace Muhammad's decision to convert the NOI into an Orthodox Sunni Islam organisation.

The photograph was taken in Harlem in 1963 before Malcolm’s suspension later that year for remarks made about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He went on to form the Organisation of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) in 1964. The OAAU was a secular Black Nationalist organisation. Malcolm’s suspension was made “indefinite” the following year and in February 1965 he was assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

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.

A critique of the rationale of Mark Felton’s criticism of the diminished fleet strength of the Royal Navy

Logo of the Royal Navy, the naval warfare force of Britain.

I fear that Dr. Mark Felton is merely playing to the populist gallery and being intellectually dishonest in a recent upload at his YouTube channel titled “British Navy Doom Loop - Can Terminal Decline Be Halted?”

First, for all its glory-laden history of ruling the waves, it became apparent to all after World War 2 and particularly after Suez that Britain was finished as a global military power. And with the decolonisation of empire in Africa and Asia, it was clear that the size and reach of the Royal Navy would have to be reduced.

Secondly, the ending of the ideological Cold War with the USSR ought to have further curtailed the size a British maritime force. NATO should have been disbanded and a new security architecture established on continental Europe which would have involved Russia.

The problem is that Britain has hung onto the coattails of the United States which succeeded it as a world power. This has meant regular involvement in military endeavours engineered by the United States, a situation that gives Britain's political, military and intelligence leaders the false impression of been still relevant in shaping a global dominium.

Felton mentions in the style of a pub debate that if Britain had a Falklands-type crisis, it would not be able to reclaim the islands.

But he forgets to mention that had Margaret Thatcher's proposed cuts to the Royal Navy gone through (she sacked her Navy Minister Keith Speed who opposed them) Britain would not have been able to have mounted a task force in 1982.

Importantly, Felton assumes that a large Royal Navy would be able to cope with any and every type of Falklands-type emergency.  Does he think that the Royal Navy could have kept Hong Kong as a British colony if Britain had refused to cede it to China in the 1990s?

He also refuses to contend with developments in maritime warfare. The Russia-Ukraine War and recent conflicts in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf have exposed the limitations of naval vessels including the vulnerability of aircraft carriers to shore-based ballistic missile and drone attacks.

The Royal Navy in combination with other NATO and non-NATO navies led by the U.S. Navy failed in the attempt to open up the Red Sea during continuous operations under the Biden and Trump administrations. And the U.S. Navy has discovered that it is incapable of opening the Strait of Hormuz given Iran's capability of sinking any and all U.S. vessels if they pressed the issue.

And while not all will go so far as to rule out aircraft carriers as obsolete in a similar vein to the those who argue that tanks are, Felton should be aware of the problems associated with developing new generation naval vessels. Just as the U.S. military have had issues in developing the F35 fighter jet, the U.S. Navy has admitted the failure of the development of the Zumwalt-class of naval destroyers.

Given these facts, why on earth would Felton propose that the Royal Navy can only be effective with a multitude of frigates, destroyers and carriers?

A more purposeful critique would have been to acknowledge the diminution of Britain's world power status and the non-efficacy of maintaining a large global naval force. He could have framed his argument by expounding on what a repurposed British naval Force would look like.

This would have encompassed the role that would need to be played by manned and unmanned drones including those with an underwater role. Submarine warfare remains a crucial aspect of waging modern wars and any cuts in this area should be validly scrutinised.

A correct means of addressing reforms to the naval service would be to calibrate what quantities of equipment and manpower should be deployed for defensive and offensive capabilities.

So far as manpower is concerned Felton's focus on advertisements featuring females and persons from non-white backgrounds points to a lazy but effective way of rousing nationalistic sentiment and positioning the dire state of the armed forces in the context of the culture wars. Felton makes the subtle but unmistakable proposition that the navy has become mired in so-called "woke" culture and is seeking to recruit "wogs" and "girlies" at the expense of white males.

His assertion that the army, although facing much the same problems as the navy, is better off because it has recruited more soldiers of Gurkha and Fijian heritage is a devious attempt at deflecting from the racialist undertone by invoking two longstanding sources of loyal non-white manpower. What goes unsaid is the unequal treatment both groups have been subjected to. Over twenty years ago veteran Gurkhas took the British government to court in a racial discrimination suit over their pensions, pay and conditions.

But Felton fails to consider the reasons why young white working-class males no longer have the urge to pursue a career in the military. As in the United States there are issues related to the general physical conditioning, competitive remuneration in the private sector, the physical demands of military service and different attitudes held by the younger generation to military service. Yet another challenge to recruitment which will become more pronounced in the non-so-distant future is that of falling birth rates which is shrinking the pool of potential recruits.

Felton was recently taken to task for his views on the naval service in a history-focused YouTube channel. It is titled "Mark Felton is helping spread misinformation.

Britons who are well-versed in the maritime history of their nation unsurprisingly and understandably think of the Roya Navy - the Senior Service- as the heroic figures who sank The Bismarck, whose plucky light cruisers backed up The Admiral Graff Spee in the Battle of the River Plate, who went toe-to-toe with the High Seas Fleet at Jutland and with imperious Nelsonian pride swiftly avenged their defeat at the Coronel by destroying a German squadron during the Battle of the Falklands. The British navy also played a decisive role in suppressing the transatlantic slave trade. 

But of course, the Royal Navy had its dark side, subduing -in the service of empire- a multitude of sovereign African and Asian city states and kingdoms. It also served as the instrument for conducting gunboat diplomacy by, for instance, assuming the role of a debt-collecting Leviathan Sea monster in the Don Pacifico Affair and by launching a series of amphibious assaults and blockades in the course of forcibly opening trade with China during the Opium Wars. Also, prior to 1807, the Royal Navy protected Britain's slave-based sugar economy by escorting slave ships and directly enslaving Africans who worked as labourers at dockyards on islands such as Jamaica and pressganging people into military service.

And notwithstanding the navy's laudible efforts in combating the drug trade on the high seas, its contemporary role alongside other branches of the British armed forces is often mired by their supporting act to the hegemonic adventures of the U.S. empire, endeavours in relation to which Britain has given diplomatic cover to American-instigated conflicts which do not stand the test of morality and which consistently breach the strict application of international law.

The question Felton does not address is precisely what an imperial-sized Royal Navy would be doing in this age? Provoking Russia in the Baltic and Black Seas? Or China in the Strait of Malacca? And does he envisage the Royal Navy follow the same path as the U.S. Navy which itself has been repurposed as a piratical maritime force which extrajudicially kills the occupants of speedboats far from its national jurisdiction, enforces illegal blockades aimed at stealing the natural resources of other nations such as Venezuela, as well as conducting medieval like sieges with the objective of starving countries such as Cuba into submission?

I certainly believe Felton to be highly selective in terms of the information he has deployed on this latest critique of the Royal Navy and would go as far as to accuse him of sensationalism and even intellectual dishonesty.

© 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.

Examining Nick Tosches' book on the life of Sonny Liston

Tosches’ book was titled Night Train: The Sonny Liston Story in the United Kingdom in contrast to its original American title The Devil and Sonny Liston.

My discovery yesterday of the publication of this article which examines Nick Tosches' biographical treatment of Charles "Sonny" Liston has just inspired me to fish out my copy of the Tosches book.

Sandwiched between biographies on Joe Frazier and Louis Armstrong, I have not opened it for a good number of years and can hardly believe how many years ago I acquired it. Accompanying the inscription of my name is the date of purchase: "27 April 2000".

The publication of Tosches' book was looked forward to by many boxing afficionados. The last treatment of Sonny's life had been that of Rob Steen which was titled Sonny Boy: The Life and Strife of Sonny Liston. It is another boxing biography among my collections and again cannot help but marvel at the passage of time. My inscription finishes with "20th of March 1993".

I recall that many aficionados were not enthralled by Steen's book and even fewer were thrilled by Tosches' effort.

It took some time for me to appreciate that many readers of the sport of boxing prefer what I would describe as a "meat and potatoes" stylizing of a biography. In other words, one that is linearly arranged, devoid of the penmanship of the hyper-intellectual overly devoted to thematic interludes on issues of culture and philosophy.

While the hard-boiled journalistic style of Budd Schulberg and the participatory journalism of Norman Mailer and was largely appreciated by the average boxing book reader, the efforts of writers such as Steen and Tosches were angrily dismissed.

Why?

I think Tosches was seen by many as fundamentally an interloper. In other words, he was cynically a non-aficionado using the rich history of sport, its litany of characters and the drama that intrinsically attaches to a contest between two gloved combatants in a squared ring for the selfish purpose of enhancing their credentials as a writer.

Also, Tosches' emphasis on the Mafia underworld at the expense of giving a more structured account of Liston's boxing career did not go down well. Neither did his unflattering evaluation of Muhammad Ali as the apotheosis of "mediocrity". Moreover, his penchant for "macho writing", described by the New York Times's reviewer as "his complex, heavy-breathing metaphors", struck boxing readers as akin to the exhibition of a show-off circus juggler.

I personally have no such qualms and seek to extract whatever knowledge and enjoyment that I can from each biography I read regardless of the author's stylization. If the biographer's aim is to present the "truth" and the essence of a person, there are a variety of ways of achieving this, including Tosches' strategy of framing Liston and his existence in America via Aristotelian ideology.

And I of course look forward to absorbing Narjisse Moumna's deconstructions of Nick Tosches' method of attempting to uncover the truth and the essence of Charles "Sonny" Liston.

The Architecture of Absence | ALMA Magazine

© Adeyinka Makinde (2026).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.