Rejoinder to a comment on my recent commentary: Tony Blair - War Crimes Suspect

Glad you enjoyed the column Michael.

I take all your points on board although I do disagree with a number of your interpretations.

The article wasn’t comparing the US political system to that operated by the Hitler regime.

It was laying out the cold facts which if linked to the relevant legal principles means that anyone ranging from the leader of a democratically elected nation to those at the helm of a totalitarian state can be judged by the same standard.

Otherwise we would have different standards for punishing a person who burgles a house while dressed in traditional eye mask & striped jersey to that of those who burgle while dressed in a tuxedo. They have both committed the same crime.

It is important to distinguish between culpability for the initiation of the war and further issues such as culpability for the conduct of war including the targeted slaughter or otherwise of innocent civilians.

My commentary focuses on the initiation aspect. What was the pretext? What was the disingenuous material relied upon as justifying the commencement of hostilities?

In the case of the totalitarian Nazi regime, it was the manufactured ‘attack’ by so-called Polish soldiers on a German radio station, while in the case of the democratically elected American and British governments, it was the reliance on false (or at the very least shoddy) intelligence reports on the manufacture of weapons of mass destruction.

These non-existent weapons of mass destruction were specifically highlighted as being capable of deployment and launch within 45 minutes. To believe that, Tony Blair (and George Bush) would have needed to have obtained credible intelligence data to a highly specific degree which many suspected at the time was very suspect and which was subsequently confirmed as untrue. 

Michael, you write: “Fakery apparently works over there (in the Arab world)”, but just as surely, fakery works just as well over ‘here’ (in the Western world).

The history of war-making when put under close scrutiny from the perspective of the United States is littered with highly suspect events: The blowing up of ‘The Maine’; the sinking of ‘The Lusitania’; and what of the ‘Gulf of Tonkin Incident’?

So far as the underlying reason for an attack on Iraq is concerned (as well as the removal of ‘hostile’ regimes in Syria and Iran) eyes should be directed at the geo-political strategies devised by the infamous think tank named the Project for the New American Century.

Paul Wolfowitz was obsessed about the idea of a cataclysmic (or a catastrophic and catalyzing) event analogous to that of Pearl Harbour which would form the basis of a justification for greater spending on the American military infrastructure and the application of its war machinery with or without international support to enforce a form of global domination. This would involve overthrowing certain regimes as well as ensuring continued secured access to resources including that of oil from the Persian Gulf.

Amazingly, then came 9-11.

Saddam Hussein had absolutely nothing to do with 9-11, but there were strenuous efforts made at the time to link Iraq to it. No chance: Saddam presided over a secular and not a theocratic regime which meant that he was not in league with Osama Bin Laden or any network of Al Quaeda.

The “ultra-violent terrorist” to whom you refer is I believe Abu Nidal. Nidal was assassinated by Saddam. (Incidentally, he was from a breakaway faction of the Palestinian Liberation Movement whose group committed acts of murder directed either at Yasser Arafat’s group or against targets which seriously damaged the cause of the PLO).

But Michael, when you write that “someone was going to get attacked” and then add “justifiably”,  one wonders whether the true emphasis in that statement is that regarding the need of attacking “someone” (another state given the decidedly acephalous nature of Al Quaeda); a fixed state and less on the justification.

There were absolutely no grounds for attacking Saddam’s Iraq which had been severely weakened by sanctions and the imposition of, I believe, two geographic no-fly zones, which incidentally did not stand the test of international law.

So where does the buck lie? Your response gives clues as to the likely culpability of key members of the Bush administration although as chief of state, George Bush cannot be let off the hook. And based on the principles established at Nurnberg, those senior members of the American armed forces who prosecuted the war on behalf of their political masters would also be culpable. We all remember the non-defence of “I was merely following orders”. The fact that Parliament and the US Congress approved this illegal action only shows the imperfections in so-called democratic and informed societies who are just as susceptible to the manias that are whipped up by government propaganda as well as by the mass media. Again, it is instructive to look at the historical role of the media in beating the drums of war as they manipulate and fashion public opinion.

I understand the distinction which you wish to make between the nature of the Hitler regime and even Saddam’s brutal reign, but I beg to differ as to its relevance in regard to the facts of relying on false information to start a war.

And by the way, I agree with you about the misuse of the Hitler comparison in certain instances in history. (This, as I have explained, does not apply to my references to Nurenberg; one has to mention Nurnberg because the Nurnberg Principles are the starting point. They are the STANDARD.) Take Gamal Nasser who was painted as ‘The Hitler of the Nile’ by Anthony Eden as well as the Israel propaganda of the day. He was nothing of that sort.

And while we speak of Nasser, here’s a thorny-sensitive matter: The war commenced in 1967 by the state of Israel on the basis of its being a pre-emptive act in self-defence against an impending attack by Egypt and the armies of Jordan and Syria is one of the most persistent myths in the annals of war.

In short hand, Nasser was skilfully lured into a trap set by Israeli hawks who had practically staged a military coup against Levi Eshkol’s government and installed Moshe Dayan as the minister of defence. The war of 1967 was one of a pre-designed territorial expansion; one which was to create a Greater Israel and complete business which had been left unfinished after the 1948 war.

The admissions of Generals Rabin, Bar Lev, and Peled, along with members of the war cabinet including Menachem Begin make this plain.

Nasser’s closing of the strait of Tiran and removal of the UNIF buffers were actually designed to, as he thought, force the hand of the American government to settle issues which he believed were in accordance with the state of affairs left by Eisenhower who forced the British, French and Israelis to call off their illegal occupation of Egyptian territory during the Suez war of 1956.

The existential threat posed by Egypt in ’67 and the threat of the annihilation of ‘little Israel’ is simply not true. Israel has never been in danger of being overwhelmed by any combination of Arab armies. Not in 1948, nor in 1967. Not even in 1973.

But back to Saddam, while you say that he started the first Gulf War, I think it worthwhile to put the invasion of Kuwait into some context.

The background to this is the war between Iraq and Iran which lasted for much of the 1980s. Saddam was encouraged to attack Iran by the United States who wanted to be rid of the Ayatollah and other theocrats who had hijacked the anti-Shah revolution of 1979. He was also encouraged by much of the Arab world who have historically displayed much antipathy towards the Persians who are also of the rival shia denomination; the Arabs being largely Sunni.

It is rather shameful that people only remember the chemicals unleashed against the Kurds by Saddam but not the chemical warfare that he employed against the Iranians.

Anyway, the war was a costly, bloody drawn out affair and Iraq, given that they were fighting a pan-Arabist, Sunni war on behalf of the Gulf kingdoms (and a proxy war on behalf of the United States), not unreasonably demanded that they pay something towards repairing the Iraqi infrastructure as well as fix things so as to enable higher oil prices from which Iraq as an oil producer would benefit.

When this was not forthcoming he threatened Kuwait which also shared a not very well demarcated border with Iraq (both were under the same administration during European colonial rule). Kuwait was also apparently ‘stealing’ crude oil from fields which apparently had been agreed as Iraqi.

Crucially, there is evidence that a serving but outgoing US ambassador to Iraq gave assurances that the United States would not view an invasion of Kuwait in an unfavourable light.

So not condoning his invasion (did you hear that the stuff about Iraqi soldiers throwing Kuwaiti newly borns out of their incubators was a propaganda lie?) but that’s the background to that first Gulf War.

Again, I must say that I respectfully disagree with the standard that the “US and Britain would have been stupid to give him the benefit of any doubts. And doubly so in the aftermath of 9/11”.

Such an argument would not stand the test of scrutiny of a lawfully constituted tribunal of inquiry. Nations cannot start wars or threaten to start wars on the basis of this or that nation posing existential threats. That is a law which favours the strong over the weak. It is analogous to the proverbial law of the jungle, although it fits in perfectly with the aforementioned Wolfowitz Doctrine of acting unilaterally and with overwhelming might.

But I believe that what you say about “fixing what we broke” and giving them “food and money” serves as an admission on your part that an unjust and indeed an illegal war was instigated by America.

Apologies will not bring back the colossal cost in human life (or indeed the lives of American servicemen whose relatives should not be seen as unpatriotic if they choose to hold to account the chiefs of state who led their nation into this disastrous debacle), and you are correct to assert that they can never be truly paid back fairly.

That war did not serve America’s interests at all. In fact, it led to a majority government of Shias who had been oppressed by the minority Sunni regime of Saddam, thus giving a foothold to neighbouring Iran.

It also led to the unleashing of ‘Al Queda in Iraq’ which proved that Bin Laden and his demented Sunni extremists have killed more of their fellow Muslims than so-called ‘Western infidels’. The chain reaction of violence was/is truly tragic and for this, the initiators of the original war should bear responsibility.

You need to listen to the father of one of the British soldiers who was among the first servicemen killed after the commencement of war when he speaks with such bitterness, but moral and legal force about the culpability of Tony Blair.

As I said in my preamble to this thread, the appellation of war criminal should not be delimited to African, Asian and Balkan figures. There are a number of Western leaders with blood on their hands too!

NB

Did someone just mention the name ‘Henry Kissinger’?

(C) Adeyinka Makinde (2012)

COMMENTARY: Tony Blair – War Crimes Suspect

Archbishop Desmond Tutu recently called for the trial of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and ex-United States President George Bush at the International Criminal Court in The Hague over the circumstances leading to the Iraq War.

Whatever the supposedly amorphous qualities that are frequently attributed to international law, there are existing principles clearly enunciated in relevant jurisprudential authorities and enshrined within the protocols and provisions of binding international agreements.

The Nurnberg Principles refer to the “Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances" and "participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment" of any of the aforementioned acts.

Following the conclusion of World War Two, the likes of Wilhelm Keitel and Alfred Jodl; key members of the German Military High Command as well as the likes of Joachim Von Ribbentrop, who were the remnants of Adolf Hitler’s cabinet, were tried and hanged at Nurnberg for having been complicit in the waging of a war of aggression.

While the background to the German attack on Poland combined longstanding territorial disputes with the Poles and the wider Nazi objective of creating Lebensraum (Living Space) in Eastern Europe, the Hitlerite state, as many nations have been apt to do in the long history of war-making, offered a justification for its breach of the peace.

This came via the Gleiwitz Incident, a crudely devised and executed ‘false flag’ operation which involved German operatives posing as Polish soldiers attacking a German radio station with the result that 24 hours later, Hitler could stand before the Reichstag to announce to the German nation and to the world that “we are returning fire.”

The countdown to the war in Iraq involved a sustained media bombardment of various items of information supplied by the intelligence apparatus of the United States which implicated the regime of Saddam Hussein in a miscellany of apparently belligerent deeds and intentions  which included the acquisition of uranium from the Republic of Niger, collusion with Al Quaeda over the September 11 tragedy  and the most prized item of all: the presence of weapons of mass destruction which could be deployed, according to Blair in an announcement before Parliament, within 45 minutes.

An air of desperation surrounded these claims at the time each was made and they were widely scrutinized, as was the infamous speech made by the reluctant Colin Powell before the United Nations.

Indeed, what many at the time felt to be suspect pieces of information were subsequently found to be crudely manufactured falsehoods, or at the very least, items among a spectrum of genuinely gathered intelligence data which ought not to have seen the light of day after a sober process of in-house analysis.

Part of the case made against the war as having been legal is the fact that a second vote regarding an invasion was not put before the United Nations. The case against Blair is seemingly bolstered by the fact that he formally blocked the then UK attorney general, who is officially the government’s legal advisor, from formally giving his view on the legality of the proposed war to his cabinet.

Blair’s defence to Tutu’s call is to refer to his accusers as peddlers of “old canards”. He dodges the specific issue of his complicity in a gross deception by asserting that a cruel dictator who used chemical weapons against his people, was removed from power; that the Iraqi economy is much improved and that the infant mortality rate has been cut down.  

What Blair fails to mention is that the chemical weapons and the export licences allowing their purchase emanated from the West. The ‘miracle’ of a much improved economy is not so impressive when set against the background of the crippling UN-sponsored sanctions imposed on the pre-war Iraq, as indeed is the improvement in infant mortality given the 500, 000 deaths of Iraqi children as a result of the embargo; a resultant factor in regard to which the then US secretary of state, Madeline Albright cruelly announced: “the price is worth it.”

The case against Tony Blair has been made in a number of ways. A satirical drama produced by the UK Channel 4 station, entitled The Trial of Tony Blair, was broadcast in 2007 and depicted Blair being arrested and flown to The Hague while in Malaysia last year, a mock tribunal featuring among its seven prosecutors, an American professor of law, found Blair and Bush guilty of “crimes against peace.”

One of the United Kingdom’s most prominent human rights lawyers, Geoffrey Bindman is on record as categorically stating that the Iraq War was an “illegal aggressive war.”

One often hears from those involved in law enforcement about a kind of psychosis among criminals who did the crime but who keep on insisting on their innocence until they actually believe they are innocent.

There are many who would argue that Tony Blair's self-delusion neatly fits this profile.

Adeyinka Makinde lectures in Public Law at a London University.

(c) Adeyinka Makinde (2012)

The Original Jersey Boys: Frankie Valli and Frankie DePaula

The original JERSEY BOYS: Frankie Valli (left) and Frankie DePaula captured sometime in the late 1960s. Valli, who was born Francesco Castelluccio in Newark, NJ, is of course the legendary singer of the Four Seasons and subject of the successful Broadway musical 'Jersey Boys', while the deceased DePaula, a native of Jersey City, NJ, was the subject of my book Jersey Boy: The Life and Mob Slaying of Frankie DePaula. (PHOTO: Richard Gizzi).

Profile of Wole Soyinka

Akinwale Oluwole Soyinka holds the distinction of being the first African winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. His works, which have encompassed drama, novel and poetry genres, have tended to reflect the syncretism of Yoruban culture and the subversive instincts of his Egba heritage; traits which also marked the career of his famous musician cousin Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.

With his distinctive bushy Afro and fulsome goatee, whitened over the course of time, Soyinka's physical appearance, cutting the seemingly contradictory figure of a free spirited eccentric with the stentorian bearings befitting an academic, has often been matched by the deeds of the man: one whose facility with the complex usage of formal language is distilled through an engaging acerbity and an often indelicate witticism.

Rebellious, raffish, and something of a loose canon, he is not unlike his contemporaries Chinua Achebe and Ngugi Wa Thiogo; much of his work having been steeped in observations and analysis of Africa's colonial heritage and post-colonial woes of despotism.

He was born in 1934 to a solidly middle class family in the Western Nigerian city of Abeokuta; the bastion of the Egba sub-group of the Yoruba. Although brought up as a Christian, his life and works have consistently demonstrated a pre-occupation with Yoruba mythology.

His higher education began in 1952 at Government College, Ibadan. In 1954, he left for England to study at the University of Leeds and completed his first degree, a BA in English Literature, in 1957. During his sojourn, Soyinka worked as a dramaturgist at the Royal Court Theatre in London. He busied himself making contacts and associations with people in the arts world and wrote his first plays including a light comedy, The Lion and the Jewel.

Returning to Nigeria, after six years, Soyinka began studying African Drama, a devotion he was able to focus upon as a result of the award of a Rockefeller bursary. It enabled him to embark on an attempt at merging Western and Yoruba theater traditions. 

To this end, he founded an amateur dramatic ensemble called 'The 1960 Masks', and four years later the 'Orisun Theater Company,' which produced his plays, most of which he directed and in some of which he took acting roles. He pursued these endeavours while holding teaching positions at the Universities of Ibadan, Lagos and Ife.

Yet, these immersions in both the arts and academia were not the total ambit of his range of expression. Increasingly, Soyinka began to apply himself within the maelstrom of Nigerian post-independence politics. 

Much of the dangerously conflictual nature of political life in the country was manifested in his native Western Region; strife-ridden and unstable because of an intensifying rivalry within the ruling Action Group party led by Obafemi Awolowo, and his deputy Ladoke Akintola.

In 1965, Soyinka was falsely accused of entering the broadcasting house in Ibadan to force a producer to play a pre-recorded tape at gun point. He was subsequently imprisoned, but later released, due in part to an international campaign led by Western artists such as Norman Mailer. 

Soyinka's political activism included a vain attempt at brokering a peace between the secessionist state of Biafra and the federal government of Nigeria. He was imprisoned in 1967 by the military leader, General Gowon, and released in 1969. His recollections of his incarceration, much of which was spent in solitary confinement, would be published in his work, The Man Died.

Soyinka inaugurated successive decades with two popular plays heavy on sacarcism: The Trial of Brother Jero (1960) and Madmen and Specialists (1970). The 1970s was a welter of creativity. More of his plays including Death and the King's Horseman (1976) were staged internationally, and a film version of his novel Kongi's Harvest was produced. He also took up several academic appointments abroad.

Still, politics remained at the fore of his activities. Whether it was criticising the corruption of the Nigerian military or the tyranny of African despots or the inhumanity of apartheid, Soyinka was in his element; his abiding concern being: "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it."

It was a principle that he held to when campaigning against the dictatorship of General Sani Abacha in Nigeria from where he was forced to flee in 1994, although many felt him compromised when soon after his 1986 award of the Nobel Prize, he accepted a position as chairman of the Road Safety Corps which had been created under the auspices of the regime of Abacha's predecessor, General Ibrahim Babangida. 

Before this, Soyinka's personal pleas for clemency on behalf of Mamman Vatsa, a soldier who was also a published poet, proved futile, and Vatsa was shot before a firing squad for participating in a coup which many now acknowledge to have been non-existent.

Soyinka continues to play the roles of an academic and political activist. His most recent chairs have been in the United States while in Nigeria he has served as a key member of PRONACO (Pro-Sovereign National Conference Coalition); a group seeking a national conference to determine Nigeria's political future. He also travels widely on the lecture circuit. In 2007, he published a memoir, You Must Set Forth at Dawn, the completion of his earlier works, Ake: The Years of Childhood, Isara: A Voyage around 'Essay, and Ibadan: The PenkelemeYears.

Be it as playwright, lecturer, social critic, or raconteur, Wole Soyinka has consistently enlightened and challenged through the creative use and calibration of language; a special skill acknowledged by the award of the Nobel prize and encapsulated in the words of the awarding Swedish Academy by their reference to him as one "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence."

Written for the brochure accompanying the Diaspora Showcase Africa event held on 20th September 2008 in Tucson, Arizona.

(c) Adeyinka Makinde (2007)

COMMENTARY: The Spanish National Football Team’s Place in History

The defeat of Italy by Spain in the finals of the recently concluded European Championships tournament in Kiev has, if any doubts existed, confirmed the current Spanish national football team as one of the greatest football squads in history. 

They are the first team in the modern history of the sport to win consecutively, three major tournaments; namely the 2008 Euros, the 2010 World Cup and now the 2012 Euros.

No team before, not even the formidable West German machine of the early to middle 1970s, had ever accomplished the stunning feat of securing back-to-back European Championship trophies, or were able to have won a final in such an emphatic manner. The 4-0 trouncing of the Azzurri is the widest ever margin of any final match.

The appellation of greatness is the preserve of but a few national sides. In Europe, the Dutch side of the early 1970s, purveyors of the system known as Totaalvoetball, immediately springs to mind, as indeed do their West German contemporaries.

But until the emergence of this particular Spanish side with its peculiar brand of football, for many the apotheosis of footballing brilliance was attained by the Brazilian World Cup-winning side of 1970.

That side, emblematic of the romantic notions assigned to the Brazilian style which combined attacking flair with a capacity for improvisation, represented the culmination of a golden age of international dominance stretching back to their World Cup triumphs in Sweden in 1958 and in Chile in 1962.

Although acknowledged as a bastion of excellence in the sport, the Spaniards for decades represented an exemplary case study in perennial underachievement at international level.

It was the enigma of Spanish football that after the European Nations Cup win of 1964, which followed the European Champions Cup dominance of the legendary Real Madrid clubside of the 1950s and early 1960s, no further international honours followed.

While La Liga continued to be an esteemed football league producing a successive pool of very capable players and even exceptional ones such as the strikers, Emilio Butragueno and Raul Gonzalez; and even while Real Madrid and Barcelona remained perennial powerhouses within the sphere of European football, success continually eluded a national side which as hosts endured the embarrassment of a futile campaign for the 1982 World Cup.

To whom or what circumstances can this ascendancy to apparent dominance be assigned? To answer this, a story of migration along with the cross-pollination of footballing philosophy and culture requires telling.

The roots of the methodologies employed by the Spanish national side and its style of play lie interestingly in the aforementioned Totaalvoetball, the brain child of Dutch coach Rinus Michels who led Ajax Amsterdam to European Champions Cup victories in 1971, 1972 and 1973. 

It is a tactical theory which is guided by the premise of all outfield players being able to assume the role of any other player. It was a style of play which Michels, for a time also the national manager, used to great effect at the World Cup finals in 1974. That team, influenced by the brilliant skills and technique of Johan Cruyff, of course, lost the final to West Germany.

Cruyff transferred to FC Barcelona in the middle 1970s where during his lengthy association with the club, both as a player and later as a manager, he remained a proponent-in-chief of the philosophy of Totaalvoetball, which Michels had brought to the Catalan side.

The Dutch connection with Barcelona, which continued over the years through the tenures of Cruyff, Louis Van Gaal and Frank Rijkaard, ensured the enduring influence of the style; the tenets of which were inculcated by Josep ‘Pep’ Guardiola whose imposition of the Spanish-derivative labelled Tiki-Taka has brought the club an astounding level of success.

History provides much compelling evidence that the successes of several of the great national teams have been predicated on the acquiring of key manpower of a dominant clubside along with an adaptation of the playing systems guiding such clubs.

This was true of the West German national team which had a ‘spine’ of Bayern Munich players consisting of goalkeeper Sepp Maier, defender Franz Beckenbauer and striker Gerd Muller, and which played the sweeper system at the heart of which, as at club level, was the sweeper himself Beckenbauer.

It is certainly borne out by the Dutch side which was composed of Ajax players like Johan Neeskens and Cruyff alongside a contingent of Feyernood players who operated under the premise of Totaalvoetball.

The Spanish national side has followed this path. It is composed of many players from FC Barcelona, from which it has also appropriated the methods of Tiki-Taka; the underpinning factor in their recent monumental successes.

This evolved version of Totaalvoetball  retains a strict adherence to the rigours of team effort and the physical demands involved in the interchanging roles of players who have to be constantly aware of the use of space.

At a fundamental level it focuses on ball possession; close and sustained possession along with precision passing which ensures their domination on the field of play. The possession and passing provides the basis of both defensive as well as offensive capabilities.

It can be used to stifle and frustrate the opposition, as part of the process of preserving a score advantage, but at the same time it can be used to create openings for attacks.

The style of play can be misleadingly referred to as being ‘defensive’ or as ‘counter-attacking’. Its proselytisers prefer the term ‘pro-active’. The constant possession of the ball is somewhat analogous to the effect of a bullfighter on his prey; luring the opposition into a state of despondency or desperation before the sword is administered. It allows them to slow down a game or, quick as a flash, to transform the activity into an attack from any part of the field.

The sense of team effort is palpable. Composed of many gifted individuals, none stands out to a great degree from his teammates. The sum of the individual’s skill is sublimated to the overall machinery of collective effort.

Deprived of the services of David Villa, and wary of the suspect marksmanship of Fernando Torres, it meant that the team was able to score goals and win without the services, for long stretches, of a recognised striker.

In keeping with the spirit of totaalvoetball and its disavowal of fixed positions and the interchangeability of players, midfielders and defenders are capable of stepping into the relevant attacking positions to score goals as was demonstrated by the goals which were contrived against the Italians.

This is as distinctive a system as has ever been invented and perfected in the sport of football, but it has a history extending further back in time than Michels’ exposition.

For Michels was himself influenced by tactics developed in Hungary which were utilised by that nation’s groundbreaking team of the 1950s and an even deeper link posits the elemental origins of Tiki-Taka and Totaalvoetball to the Austrian ‘Wunderteam’ of the 1930s.

Whether it is in essence an ‘unbeatable’ system is a contentious matter. The Catenaccio system which emphasised a defensive strategy aimed at stifling attacking play and goal scoring opportunities was successfully applied by a number of Italian sides in the 1960s.

But football is a creative sport capable of tactical innovations and developing counteractive formats of play. It was Totaalvoetball which definitively unlocked the ‘door bolt’ of Catenaccio in the 1972 European Cup final when Ajax defeated Inter Milan.

It remains to be seen whether a countervailing system can be formulated in order to disrupt the Spanish style of play and be capable of consistently overcoming Tiki-Taka.

It is argued, with much logic, that teams cannot adopt the system overnight because most of the Spanish players have had its nuanced techniques drummed into them from youth level, so on a long-term basis, the possibility exists that other countries may decide to adapt the system into their youth development programmes.

For many, the romance of the Brazilian style of play, epitomised by the grace and the intuitive brilliance of the 1970 side, will remain the definitive rendition of how the game of football should be played and won. But there are of course many difficulties in comparing teams from different time periods.

If that Brazilian side played the ‘Beautiful Game’ beautifully, the contemporary Spanish team play a pragmatic game replete with its own aesthetically pleasing features which see the merging of a high level of physical fitness with spatial ability and technical adroitness.

History, while acknowledging the part played by aesthetics in assessing greatness, will ultimately judge them on their record. And what a record it is, and what a record it threatens to become if they can retain the World Cup due to be held in Brazil in two years time. 

(c) Adeyinka Makinde (2012) 

Adeyinka Makinde is the author of the biographies DICK TIGER: The Life and Times of a Boxing Immortal and JERSEY BOY: The Life and Mob Slaying of Frankie DePaula.

The Hummingbird Review: A Literary Anthology (Volume III/Number 1)

The Blue Marble visage of the globe with the African continent at its centre as portrayed on the cover of the latest edition of the Hummingbird Review serves as a statement of intent.

The Review, which according to publisher Charles Redner, is committed to “portraying the beauty and challenges of life through literature and art” as well as promoting “cross cultural writing in all forms” is indeed a smorgasboard of literary modes and devices; providing a forum for both established as well as neophyte figures.

Here, poetry is presented alongside journalism as are lyrics and screenplays with the theme of this edition being largely to do with Africa. Redner’s thoughtful preface is headlined in the Shona language of southern Africa and, true to its stated intent, the content spans different regions of the continent.

The inaugural piece features an interview with Noam Chomsky conducted by Said Leghlid, a Moroccan-born American, in which the venerable intellectual voices his characteristically insightful and vehement analysis of United States foreign policy, this time in regard to the Arab Spring which of course started in North Africa.

Among the poetical selections is The Cloud, an 1835 work by Alexandre Pushkin, the acknowledged father of Russian Literature who was the descendant of Abram Gannibal, a general of the Russian Empire who may have been of Eritrean ancestry or with roots further west in modern day Cameroon.

Among the eye catching works are The Berber Stone and the Cherokee Enigma, an essay which postulates the migratory connections between North Africa and the Americas via oral histories handed down through the mists of time, linguistic similarities, archaeological discoveries, and even DNA traits.

Also of interest, from this writer’s perspective, is an excerpt from a biographical screenplay on the heavyweight boxer George Foreman. It is centred on the profound transformation in the life philosophy of Foreman; the roots of which germinated from his experiences related to the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’, the legendary heavyweight championship contest he had in 1974 with Muhammad Ali in Kinshasa, the capital city of what was then Zaire, which is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Another highlight of this edition of the review is a rationale of and an example of contextual poetry by the genre’s proselytiser-in-chief, Dr. Thea Iberall, poet and scientist. Contextual poetry aims to “integrate the knowledge of science and history with the language of poetry.”

If the purpose of literature is to stimulate thought, to provoke debate, to evoke joy and pathos, to educate, and to develop the inherent human thirst for a personal understanding of the stirrings of the inner mind as well as the wider world, then the Review strives to provide some measure of each.

This journal genuinely serves as food for the cerebral palate.

Adeyinka Makinde is the author of the biographies: DICK TIGER: The Life and Times of a Boxing Immortal and JERSEY BOY: The Life and Mob Slaying of Frankie DePaula. Website:http://adeyinkamakinde.homestead.com/index.html

BOOK REVIEW: John R. Bradley’s ‘AFTER THE ARAB SPRING: How Islamists hijacked the Middle East Revolts’ by Adeyinka Makinde

There is always the temptation for writers, analysts and political leaders, all with an eye on future historical narrative, to ascribe a symbolic significance to contemporary events which suggest a break with an old order and the birth of the new. British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan captured the mood of decolonisation with his reference to the ‘Wind of Change’ then “blowing across the African continent” in a 1960 speech to a largely indifferent Apartheid-era Parliament in South Africa.

In contrast to this positive message of liberation his predecessor, Winston Churchill, had thirteen years earlier gloomily assessed the series of communist party takeovers in Post War-Eastern Europe as akin to the descending of an ‘Iron Curtain’ across a continent. Both, the decolonisation of Black Africa and the sovietisation of Eastern Europe, represent the sum of individual but ultimately related national revolutions.

Revolutions are multifaceted. They may be wholly directed and executed by elites or may be engineered by a ground swell of action by segments of the masses. They may be of indigenous origin or may in fact be exported from a foreign source. By definition, they will always involve upheaval and change; out with the old and in with the new, and are often accompanied by some measure of violence, whether as the means used for effecting the change, or, as a means of resisting such change.

Those revolutions which are genuine evocations of the will of the masses and which would largely be composed of uncoordinated protests through mass gatherings, rioting or other forms of civil disobedience eventually need a focus for leadership and an underpinning rationale of the ideas proposing change.

In such circumstances, where one ideological tenet does not underscore the discontent which is driving the mass of people, the danger exists that the removal of the leader or leadership will leave a vacuum which would be filled in, or, for want of a better word, would be ‘hijacked’ by a well-organised group which may not represent the will of the people as arguably occurred with the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917, and the Khomeini-led Islamists in Iran in 1979. 

Revolutions of the popular imagination for the most part emphasize the role played by the common person.  Thus, at the heart of the romantic notions with which revolutions are imbued are the deeds of the worker, the student, the farm hand, the rank and file soldier, the housewife and so on.

Contemporarily, in keeping with the need for soundbite-type captions, revolutions as expressions of the largely non-violent masses come with names such as the Czech ‘Velvet Revolution’, the Ukrainian ‘Orange Revolution’ and Georgia’s ‘Rose Revolution’.

When we think of peoples revolutions of the not too distant past, our minds cast back to the ‘People Power Revolution’ of the Philippines which brought an end to the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos and the ushering of democracy.

A few years later, the revolutions in Eastern Europe among the former nations of the Soviet Union-dominated Warsaw Pact led to the collapse of totalitarian regimes, most memorably the chain of events leading to the fall of Romania’s Nikolai Ceausescu and the symbolic breaching of the Berlin Wall.

It is one thing, however, to describe and analyse a current chain of events, but quite another to invoke prophecy before they happen. After the collapse of the Eastern Bloc regimes and the ending of the ’Cold War’, Francis Fukuyama infamously declared that the expected spread of liberal democratic forms of government at the expense of increasingly untenable totalitarian and authoritarian regimes, would mark the ‘end of history’.

John R. Bradley, a writer specialising in the history and politics of the Middle East, was less grandiose but extremely prescient in predicting the Egyptian uprising of 2011 in his 2008 book Inside Egypt: The Land of the Pharaoh’s on the Brink of a Revolution, which was banned by the regime of Hosni Mubarak.

The series of ‘revolutions’ which came to be known as the ‘Arab Spring’ began when a Tunisian trader by the name of Mohamed Boazizi committed suicide by immolating himself at the frustration at allegedly having his goods seized by an overly officious official of state. This in turn triggered a series of protests which eventually led to the deposing of President Ben Ali who fled into Saudi Arabian exile.

The example of Tunisia was then followed by Egyptian’s whose protests were focussed in Tahrir Square in the capital city of Cairo. Like Ben Ali, long-term dictator, Hosni Mubarak was forced to step down. Like a ‘Domino Effect’, the upheavals then spread to Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria.

The Western media followed events with great interest and intensity, as indeed did the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera News Network. The line taken by the media was that the masses of the Arab nations, tired of corrupt and despotic regimes, were thirsting for Western-style freedoms as represented by a political system of liberal democracy in which pluralism and individual rights would assume primacy.

Like the Czechoslovaks, who under Alexander Dubcek had attempted to unshackle themselves from the Soviet system via a process of liberalisation in an episode referred to as the ‘Prague Spring’, so it was that the Arabs wished to dislodge the perennial scourge of dictatorship from their countries.

While the media rhapsodized about the efforts of groups in Tahrir Square who valiantly organised themselves and disseminated information via social networking sites such as facebook and twitter, United States President Barak Obama claimed that the uprisings were ‘proof’ that the Arab masses had not been influenced by Al-Queda and Islamic fundamentalist thinking, but by Western ideals of freedom and pluralism.

Not so claims Bradley, whose After the Arab Spring examines the underlying motivations of the demonstrators in Tunisia and Egypt, and also explains why those who represent the ‘Western liberal’ reformist segment of the political classes in these countries are not in a strong enough position to assume the mantle of leadership. 

His thesis is straightforward enough: years of Western governments’ indulging of Arab dictatorships whose repressive measures largely submerged viable liberal-leaning opponents, but who while cracking down on Islamists also left enough of their structures in existence to serve as a bargaining tool with the West, has meant that Islamic fundamentalists in both Tunisia and Egypt, represented respectively by Ennahda and Al-Gamaa Al Islamiya, are poised to take over these societies.

Interestingly, he claims that these groups are not necessarily concerned with seizing power immediately, and instead would rather concentrate on Islamisizing the societies from the bottom up. The future, they believe, belongs to them.

He gives ample evidence of the efforts of the well-organised adherents of Salafism, an extremist Islamic creed which professes a wish to return to the pre-modern application of the religion, in enforcing Islamic codes and mores on the streets. Salafism is the puritan Egyptian counterpart of Saudi Wahhabism.

In his book The Siege of Mecca (2007), Journalist Yaroslav Trofimov, traced a direct line between the armed insurrection in the holy city by one Juhaymon Ul-Taibi and his followers to the events of September 11^th 2001 and the contemporary struggle between the West and Islamic fundamentalists.

In short, stunned by the severe criticism of the perceived extent of encroaching ‘Westernisation’ of Saudi society by clerics, the Saudi royals entered a deal whereby in exchange from not interfering with their running of the country, they would sponsor the policy of extending Wahhabism via the establishment of a network of Islamic centers of education, known as madrassas, in the wider world. The net result argued Trofimov, has been a rise in extremism and the fodder for the Jihadist guerrillas and terrorists who have been waging war against the Western world.

With the fall of the Tunisian government, Muamar Gadaffi in Libya, the rising influence of Egyptian Islamists and the potential fall of the Baathist regime of Hafez Al Assad’s Syria, one of the results of the so-called Arab Spring would be the dislodging of the remnants of secularism in the Arab world.

In Tunisia, a country built on the charismatic leadership of Habib Bourguiba, the gains made in terms of social and economic freedoms appear to be dissipating in the aftermath of the fall of Ben Ali. Bradley persuasively argues that the ‘social contract’ by which Tunisians enjoyed a wide range of freedoms and benefits in return for not mounting political challenges has perhaps been irrevocably broken.

He is particularly good at pointing out the hypocrisy of the West who armed and supported Libyan rebels against Gadaffi, but who turned a blind eye to the suppression of Bahraini protesters by Saudi troops acting to protect the monarchical despots who rule that nation.

When Gadaffi announced that the West was arming insurrectionists who were adherents to the philosophy espoused by Al-Quaeda, the media smirked. But events have since proved him right. Armed to the teeth, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group along with a rabble of vengeful, racist and genociadal rebels have butchered their foes in a series of beheadings and mutilations culminating in the lynching of Gadaffi himself.

In a short but excellent segment of analysis which illuminates the nature of power politics, as well as the expediency of the sorts of ‘unholy’ and alliances Western powers have consistently made in the Middle East, Bradley compares and contrasts the kingdom of Saudi Arabia with the republic of Iran; the former, a Sunni nation which oppresses the Shia minority in its oil rich eastern province, and the latter, a Shia nation that marginalises the Sunni minority in its oil producing Khuzestan province.

Run as theocracies, both are regional rivals whose competiveness is exacerbated by the current uprisings. Many of the features of their governance are antithetical to the values espoused by the United States. Yet, America backs the Saudis to the hilt and turns a blind eye to its foreign interventions, the virulent anti-Jewish propaganda in its learning curricula and its human rights violations while demonizing Iran.

But of course, Realpolitik, holds sway: Saudi Arabian action in putting down Shia protests in Bahrain not only perpetuates the Sunni hegemony in that country, it also protects the interests of the United States because of the naval base stationed there.

It also means that the kingdom will vote for the US and bring along the Arab league in a half-filled conclave in support of US and Western European bid for Libyan oil, while America and its allies turn a blind eye to Saudi suppression of revolts in its troublesome Shia region.

The fallacy of the claim that NATO was protecting demonstrators from being massacred in Libya is confirmed by the lack of evidence of any mass killings having taken place. It is clear that the Americans wish to use the uprisings as an excuse to remove those countries in opposition to its foreign policy objectives.

Bradley does not go into the motives the West went for broke in seeking the ouster of Colonel Gadaffi. Certainly, it is difficult to see how the blood of Libyan protesters is more precious than the blood split by protesters in Bahrain, Yemen or Syria where, so far, the Western powers have been unwilling to intervene.

And while oil played a part in it, so too, it is argued, did Gadaffi’s plan to introduce the gold dinar, an African currency which would have rivalled the dollar and the euro. The idea that African and Muslim nations would sell oil and other resources around the world in a currency other than for dollars and euros is one which the West ultimately could not countenance.

With Gadaffi gone, the other states which would be targeted are Syria and Iran, both of which enjoy good relations with Russia and China. It may be a long-term geo-political ploy engineered in the corridors of Washington’s policymakers’ and ‘think tanks’ linked to Western corporate interests to contain the threat of these nations.

Nonetheless, with the unleashing of the forces of puritanical Islam, such meddling may ultimately come back to haunt the West. The expedient support of Mujahideen guerrillas in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan among whose ranks was the young Osama Bin Laden springs to mind, as does the advent of a Shia dominated, and Iranian-influenced government in post-invasion Iraq.

It is perhaps a lazy analysis to infer that the West is inadvertently presiding over the creation of a modern Islamic Caliphate, but the irony is that such scheming may lead to the cultural and political domination of North Africa and the Middle East by Sunni Islamism under the suzerainty of the Wahabist Saudi kingdom.

If this happened, it would signal the final victory of the proponents of pan-Islam over the secularists who in the heyday of Gamal Abdel Nasser had projected the cause of pan-Arabism under the stewardship of Nasser.

If one primary result of the so-called Arab Spring is the dislodging of the remnants of secularism in the Arab world, it is a cause for concern, notwithstanding that the overthrown regimes were corrupt or oppressive. As Bradley points out, Ben Ali largely continued Bourguiba’s policies which led to a strong economy and individual freedoms so long as they did not challenge the political authority of the rulers.

He mentions nothing about Gadaffi’s achievements. Yet, his eccentricities notwithstanding, the Jamahiriyan republic of Libya provided free education and health services to the masses , as in Tunisia women were accorded opportunities for social advancement. Not least among his achievements was the feat of developing the ‘Great Man Made River Project’ which provided water to the country’s major cities.

The apostate-form of Ba’athism as practised in the police state of Syria nonetheless has kept a balance of peace and protection for the rights and interests of different ethnic and religious groups. The removal of Assad and the Alawite minority from control would lead to a Sunni-Shia conflict in the midst of which the Christian minority, as happened in Iraq and is happening in Egypt, would face increasing persecution.

So what to make of the ‘Arab Spring’? Despite the grandiloquent passages in the initial rose tinted coverage by the Western media which waxed lyrical with the usual sentimental metaphors and motifs of revolution, the uprisings have been shown to bear little of the romantic notion of fighting for Western-style liberal democracy; most protesters having been simply motivated by their deteriorating economic circumstances.

That Arab societies seem perpetually to be governed by dictatorships need not be considered a foible of fate or adjudged to be an ineradicable cultural phenomenon, if a ‘social contract’ of the sort established by Bourguiba in Tunisia brings about positive social and economic advancement. 

But even the overthrow of Gadaffi which involved the decimation of Libya’s infrastructure by NATO and the deaths which have ensued has thrown Libya onto the path of an instability from which it will be difficult to recover. The  covert and overt interventions by the West’s military and intelligence services has simply helped unleash the forces of religious intolerance and tribal chauvinism in many of the affected nations.

Bradley’s discourse provides sufficient evidence that the West’s role in promoting and directing events without ultimately achieving the secularization and democratization of the powerhouse nations of Saudi Arabia and Iran will ensure that an apparent victory in unseating the regimes of certain countries will, ultimately in the long term, be a pyrrhic one.

Adeyinka Makinde is the author of the biographies: DICK TIGER: The Life and Times of a Boxing Immortal and JERSEY BOY: The Life and Mob Slaying of Frankie DePaula. Website: http://adeyinkamakinde.homestead.com/index.html