Recalling "Black September": The Civil War in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan between Palestinian Fedayeen and the Jordanian Army, September 1970.

King Hussein speaking to Jordanian soldiers after assuming command of the army.

Trouble had been brewing for a while between the growing force of Palestinian militias in Jordan, the largest of which was Yasser Arafat's Al Fatah, and the Bedouin army of the monarch. The power of the Palestinian militias grew in Jordan after the Israeli conquest of the West Bank, which had been part of Jordan, in 1967. Fedayeen, such as Fatah, relocated to Jordan to set up bases. The prestige of Fatah grew after their fight with the Israeli military during the Battle of Karameh in March 1968.

The Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) had effectively become a state within a state in a country where at least half of its population was Palestinian. As a Western diplomat put it:

When you have two sovereign powers operating in one country, with the population practically evenly divided, you’ve got a problem.

The evolving power of the PLO threatened King Hussein and there were explicit calls from among the ranks of the Palestinian guerrillas to overthrow the Hashemite king.

Some historians put the start on September 6th while others make it September 17th when King Hussein created a military government. But it is worth noting that on September 2nd, 1970, King Hussein had survived an assassination attempt when a mortar was fired on his convoy. The king had granted concessions over the months to the PLO much to the chagrin of his soldiers.

What was the precise turning point?

This allegedly came from “The Bra on the Tank Gun” incident when Hussein encountered a bra on the turret gun of a tank.

“Do you have women on board?” he asked.

“We are all women now,” came the morose reply.

Although there would be an agreement in Cairo signed by Hussein and Arafat which was mediated by the about-to-be deceased Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, the fighting would continue until July the following year. Victory ultimately came to Hussein whose 55,000-strong army proved too much for the poorly organised and divided Palestinian militias.

This conflict would have many ramifications:

First, the Palestinian militias were expelled to neighbouring Lebanon where they would play a part in the in-fighting of the Lebanese Civil War. Their presence would also play a part in successive Israeli invasions including the bloody one of 1982.

Secondly, the bitter defeat and the ill-treatment by Hussein’s army of Palestinian refugee camps (Jordan was and remains a majority Palestinian population) would lead to the creation of the terror group "Black September" which assassinated Jordan's Prime Minister Wasfi Tal and carried out the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics; an act that prompted a series of Israeli acts of vengeance such as "Operation Spring of Youth", all of which came under the assassination programme known as "Operation Wrath of God".

The war was also important because of external actors: The Syrian Army intervened on the Palestinian side and Iraqi troops based in Jordan threatened to act against Hussein. It will be remembered that the King's cousin, Faisal II, a Hashemite king of Iraq was murdered during the military coup of July 1958. The Hashemites were the original custodians of the Holy City of Mecca until forced out by Ibn Saud.

One other external actor, a certain Brigadier Zia ul-Haq played a key role in the brutal takedown of the PLO's attempt to seize power. Zia would of course later become the military dictator of Pakistan.

Israel, the presumed enemy of all its Arab neighbours, watched with a projected neutrality, although Palestinian groups claimed that their airplanes struck at them. The Israelis, who certainly would not have wanted a Palestinian state on its borders, nonetheless projected a neutral, even humanitarian stance with General Moshe Dayan, waiting with truckloads of aid by the Allenby Bridge, and Palestinian Fedayeen crossing the border and surrendering to the Israeli enemy rather than be captured and face the wrath of Jordanian soldiers.

The Israelis played a role in preserving the king’s throne. The Syrians had withdrawn through a combination of Israeli threats to intervene, strafing attacks by the Royal Jordanian Air Force and diplomatic pressure from the Americans.

"Black September" as Palestinians referred to the month in 1970 was a decisive moment in the history of the Palestinian people. Lives of innocent women and children were lost during the shelling of refugee camps. And the guerrillas, who were the only hope of ever regaining the lands and properties lost after their expulsion during the Nakba of 1948, had to relocate en masse to Lebanon.

It was the continuation of a bitter exile that lasts to this day.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2020)

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Kamala Harris: The Archetypal Flawed U.S. Political Candidate

Kamala Harris. Credit: Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Times.

Joe Biden’s selection of U.S. Senator Kamala Harris as his vice-presidential running mate, was lauded by an editorial opinion in the British Guardian as “a safe and historic appointment”. But a cursory examination reveals Harris to be the archetype of what the contemporary U.S. politician has become: One who works ceaselessly for the ‘Donor Class’ and who thus is beholden to powerful lobbies. This has informed her record as a prosecutor and legislator who is committed to the perpetuation of America as a ‘Carceral State’. She is also a servant of the National Security State, which means that she will maintain the bi-partisan arrangement which has ensured that America has remained committed to the militarism which has characterised its foreign policy since the ending of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War.

The selection by Democratic Party Presidential Candidate Joe Biden of U.S. Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate for the forthcoming elections is striking on several accounts. As what is often termed as a ‘Woman of Colour’, Harris’s selection certainly deviates from the typical presidential candidate as being a person who is both male and White Anglo-Saxon. Nonetheless, there is much about her which remains typical of the calibre of candidates for either the presidency or vice-presidency. Many candidates like her have typically been selected from the pool of serving U.S. Senators. They are creatures of one of the major political parties and must have performed some sort of public service. Yet, in Harris’s case there are two noteworthy issues that mark her out as a flawed candidate.

Firstly, her abilities as both a politician and a public servant are rather questionable. And secondly, she represents many of the negative attributes of the modern political operator in either of the parties that represent the duopoly of American politics.

There is much to perplex over her selection by Biden. Harris was a big loser in the Democratic Party Primaries during which her poll-ratings were so low that she was forced to suspend her campaign before formally withdrawing. Her conduct on the hustings marked her as a poor campaigner, and her performance during the televised debates revealed her to be a poor debater. 

During the debates, Tulsi Gabbard, a Congressional representative from the State of Hawaii, took Harris to task over her record as a District Attorney in the city of San Francisco. Harris, Gabbard reminded, had put hundreds of marijuana smokers in jail, and later when asked about whether she had ever smoked the substance had responded with a smirky giggle. It speaks of Harris’s grotesque sense of entitlement and rancid hypocrisy to boast about imprisoning people while boldly admitting that she had committed the same crime.

And she shamelessly -and awkwardly- once used this in projecting herself in the context of the identity politics that is so prevalent today. Harris once gave a speech at a forum at which she boasted of having smoked marijuana while alluding to her part-Jamaican origins. But to his credit, her father, the parent of Jamaican parentage, rebuked her for feeding into the stereotype of Jamaicans as freewheeling, ganga-smoking outlaws.

He issued a statement saying the following:

My dear departed grandmothers, as well as my deceased parents must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected in anyway, jokingly or not, with the fraudulent stereotype of the pot-smoking joy-seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics.

That attempt at gaining an imaginary street cred was mirrored by her painfully contrived assertion that she had been a fan of the Rap Music icons 2Pac and Snoop Doggie before they became famous; implying that she got high while listening to their music during her college years.

Her competence, as well as her integrity, as a public prosecutor was compromised when, as Gabbard revealed during the debate, Harris was found to have been prepared to conceal exculpatory evidence in relation to an innocent prisoner on death row until a court order forced her to reveal the information.

One reason why Joe Biden selected Harris is presumably because he feels that her tough stance on crime will render her immune to attacks by the Republican Party which traditionally finds fault in many Democratic Party candidates as liberal progressives who are ‘soft’ on crime. But while Harris, resolutely proud of her record, insists on describing herself as a progressive, her goals in this area have been anything but progressive. There is an ineluctable contradiction between her posture as a progressive and her record as a prosecutor. This is borne out of her policy of using prisoners -some of them beyond their sentences- as cheap labour. In defiance of a court order, she failed to release ‘Minimum Custody Inmates’, that is, persons who have committed minor crimes on parole. When challenged in court, state lawyers under her control argued that releasing these sorts of prisoners would deny the State of California an important pool of labour. When this line of argument was brought to the attention of the public, Harris claimed that she had no knowledge of the policy.

A crucial defect in Harris’s attempt to portray herself as a progressive who is nonetheless ‘tough on crime’ can be garnered from the fact that her policies have impacted on the poor and the marginalised, and not the well-off. For instance, her policy of prosecuting the parents of children who were truant meant that parents who did not have the financial resources to pay the fines levied on them were sent to jail, a factor which then impacted on the very issue sought to be addressed: the absence of parental direction in the life of the affected children.

Harris’s self-promoted zeal at prosecuting transgressors did not apparently extend to Wall Street and its banks. For instance, she declined to prosecute OneWest Bank for foreclosure violations in 2013. OneWest was the bank for which Steve Mnuchin, the present Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, served as CEO from 2009 to 2015.

Harris’s deeds thus expose her for what she is: the member of a privileged class who irrespective of their professed ideologies and party affiliations serve the monied interests of an oligarch-controlled political system.

It explains Harris’s penal policies geared towards using prisoners as a cheap form of state labour, and her stances on imprisoning those who smoke contraband drugs, as well as those parents who could not pay fines for truant children. A high prison population is good for the business interests that benefit from the nation’s Prison Industrial Complex.

Her failure to prosecute Mnuchin’s bank is consistent with the attitude of the political class that they cannot bite the sources that fund their campaigns and feather their nest eggs. For in America, banks who bring the nation to near economic collapse through their greed and avarice are “too big to fail” and receive bailouts, while the lives of ordinary people who suffer from foreclosure, unemployment and bankruptcy do, it would appear, count for little even to those who label themselves as progressive.

Harris is simply the latest of a litany of politicians who are foisted on the American public because of their pliability to the interests of those who run the major political parties, in this case the Democratic Party. The decision to choose Harris clearly has more to do with her as someone who is capable of being controlled rather than her competence as an administrator and her ability as a political campaigner.

The suspicion that she has emerged because of the calculations on the part of the power brokers in the Democratic Party is an irresistible one. So resolute are they in the quest for maintaining control that they clearly do not mind losing to Donald Trump by offering as a presidential candidate a man whose faculties are clearly in sharp decline, and a woman who is a proven vote-loser within her own political party. The objective of these higher ups in control of the Democratic Party machinery thus would appear to be to ensure that the left-wing or genuinely progressive segment of their party does not displace this control. After all, a defeat by Donald Trump in November will not remove their access to the funding from the oligarchs who sponsor the party whether it controls the White House or not.

A similar scenario holds true for the Republican Party.

The question then is when, if ever, will the insouciant American masses wake up to the fact that they need to remake their political and economic system by removing those mechanisms which enable monied groups to control their political leaders. Their attention for the most part is taken up by the false ideological divide in the duopoly ruling them and the manufactured culture wars which keep them divided along racial and social lines.

To sum up, Kamala Harris typifies the politician of the era who is short on principle, and who is lacking in the ideas required to energise and unite Americans at a period in time when the country is increasingly divided and its global prestige and economic power is in noticeable decline.

Harris, like others including Joe Biden, has nothing new to offer.

She has demonstrated none of the intellectual resources required to project any foundational philosophies upon which her political beliefs are based. On the contrary, she is chameleon-like and has changed her position on so many issues that the only conclusion that a reasonable observer can reach is to describe her as a political opportunist. For in accepting Biden’s offer to be his running mate, Harris is evidently willing to set aside her strongly worded campaign accusation of Biden as a racist whose anti-bussing rhetoric during the Civil Rights era impacted on her as a schoolgirl, just as she is willing to bury her belief in the veracity of the women who came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against Biden. 

Harris is clearly a ‘company man’, that is, a person dedicated to carrying out the policies dictated to her by those who control the Democratic Party and the financial interests who facilitate such control.

Indeed, Harris’s record so far as the criminal justice system is concerned, only  demonstrates her servitude to the sort of interests which ensures that a nation which composes less than 5% of the world’s population houses just under 25% of the world’s prisoners. Further, the foreign policy views which she expressed during the Democratic Primary debates indicate that she would be a willing servant of the National Security state and the endless wars it has promulgated and sustained for over two decades.

In sum, Kamala Harris’s candidature is nothing short of a disaster for her party, as well as her country which at this moment in history is desperately in need of a higher calibre of political leaders.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2020).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

The Glory of Medieval Benin Portrayed by a Revered Artist

The Court of the Oba of Benin by Ben Enwonwu

The Court of the Oba of Benin was a work created in 1972 by the Nigerian artist Benedict Chukwukadibia Enwonwu (1917-1994).

It depicts an Oba (King) of Benin holding a yellow royal ceremonial sword while being attended to by chiefs who also hold ceremonial swords. The King is wearing a white skull cap while dressed in white folds of cloth rather than the more formal coral bead regalia. The red earthen walls indicate that the ceremony is being held within the royal palace in Benin City.

Ben Enwonwu was born in Onitsha, a city in Igboland with historical and cultural connections to the Edo Kingdom of Benin. He taught at Edo College in Benin City, and was a professor at the University of Ife when he produced this painting.

The oil-on-canvas painting sold for US$137,575 (£106,854) at an auction held by Bonhams in New York in May 2019.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2020)

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg and the German Soul

Secret Germany: Claus von Stauffenberg and the Mystical Crusade Against Hitler by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. Published by Jonathan Cape in 1994.

Colonel Count Claus Graf von Stauffenberg is widely known as the man who planted a bomb in a briefcase which almost succeeded in killing Adolf Hitler. Secret Germany: Claus von Stauffenberg and the Mystical Crusade Against Hitler, a book which I purchased back in August 1994, sought to explore Stauffenberg not in the linear narrative format or by focusing on the Bomb Plot against Hitler, and instead investigated the influence on him by the German symbolist poet Stefan George, one of whose works was entitled “Secret Germany”. Stauffenberg allegedly shouted “Long live Secret Germany” (some claim that it was “Long live Holy Germany) just before a firing squad opened fire. The book makes references to figures such as Heine, Goethe, Thomas Mann, Wagner and others who examined what may be termed “The German Soul”. It examines German history, as well as the philosophical and spiritual content of the ideas which shaped German nationhood up to the Third Reich.

The best book that I have read about a military figure is Secret Germany: Claus von Stauffenberg and the Mystical Crusade Against Hitler.

Why do I rate it highly?

Because of what it is not.

The book is not a conventional biography. While it does cover biographical details, as well as Colonel Stauffenberg’s pivotal role in the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, it delves into the ideas and the belief system which shaped the man, as well as the epochs in German history which shaped the German people.

Stauffenberg reportedly shouted the words “Long live Secret Germany” prior to being shot dead by a firing squad after the failure of the anti-Hitler coup that he led. Those words were pregnant with meaning and open the window through which Baigent and Leigh assessed his belief system. There are thought-provoking reference points to esotericism, mysticism, religion, poetry, and the shaping not only of the subject, who was an aristocrat by birth, but also of the German people and the powers that unleashed their domination of culture through music, philosophy and economics. It also explores the factors influencing the German tendency towards martial belligerence and hyper-nationalist sentiment during the rise of Prussia, the era of the Kaiser and the Third Reich.

The reader is reminded that Heine, the German poet and thinker, felt that Christianity served as a bulwark of sorts to control the “battle lust” of the German people. Even after centuries of official Christianisation, he believed that this religion kept a tenuous lid on the warrior tendencies of the German race, among who could arise a demagogue-thinker who would be able to use his primitive powers to summon up the demonic forces of German pantheism.

The “battle lust” that led to German defeat and near annihilation in two World Wars was something predicted by Goethe, who during the Napoleonic age cautioned his people about their embrace of nationalism and militarism. As the authors point out in the chapter entitled “Culture and the Spirit”, Goethe predicted that Germany would come to disaster if its people pursued the path of militarism, and so called on the German people to invest in culture and the spirit, that is, conquer the world with their talents in music, philosophy, trade and the sciences.

By initially supporting the policies of Adolf Hitler, this is something which Stauffenberg did not adhere to. But his action in seeking to end Hitler’s life in an operation which was not likely to succeed, was designed from his perspective to serve as an atonement for the sins of his nation.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2020)

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

Research Interests, Publications and Citations of my Writings - Updated July 2020

Research interests

●        Intelligence & Security

●        The History and Culture of the Sport of Boxing

Publications

Books:

JERSEY BOY: The Life and Mob Slaying of Frankie DePaula (iUniverse) 2010, ISBN: 978-1-45020-637-2, 274pp including b/w photographs.

DICK TIGER: The Life and Times of a Boxing Immortal (Word Association) 2005, ISBN: 978-1-59571-042-0, 312pp including b/w photographs.

News magazine articles:

“Italy’s Ethiopian Massacre Finally Comes to Light” (Book Review of Ian Campbell’s The Addis Ababa Massacre: Italy’s National Shame). New African Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 584 June (2018) 68-71.

"A Night To Remember But...” (Commemorating the semi-centennial of Black Africa's first world championship boxing contest fought between Nigeria's Dick Tiger and the American Gene Fullmer on August 10th 1963). Africa Today, Vol. 19, No. 0809, August/September (2013) 31-34.

Journal articles:

"Old Man of Biafra" (Chapter Excerpt from the biography Dick Tiger: The Life and Times of a Boxing Immortal). African Renaissance, Vol 2, No 5 September/October (2005) 124-130.

"Boxing: Rousing the Nigerian Giant." African Renaissance, Vol 2, No 2 March/April (2005) 68-73.

Book reviews:

"On Intelligence: The History of Espionage and the Secret World"​. Global Security and Intelligence Studies Journal, Vol 2, Number 1 (2016)103-105.

"Empire of Secrets: British Intelligence, the Cold War and the Twilight of Empire." Covert Policing, Terrorism and Intelligence Law Review, Vol 2, Issue 2 (2014)159-161.

Textbook contributions:

"Pug of Ages: Weep for Me." Essay reproduced in Writing the Synthesis Essay, edited by John Brassil et al. New Jersey: Peoples Education, 2008 13-15.

Book Chapters:

"The Africans: Boxing and Africa," in The Cambridge Companion to Boxing, edited by Gerald Early, New York: Cambridge University Press, 201 99-117.

"Jose Torres: The Boxer as Writer," in The Cambridge Companion to Boxing, edited by Gerald Early, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019 223-235.

Conference Papers:

"Intelligence and Accountability: From the Cold War to the War on Terror."

Presented at 'The Past, Present and Future of Intelligence' on 25th May 2013 at Aberystwyth University under the auspices of the Centre for Intelligence and International Security Studies (CIISS).

Selected Unrefereed Essays and Commentaries:

Global Security

“Russia and Britain: An Enduring but Fruitless Rivalry,” Global Research dot Canada (2018).

“The Pan-Islamic Option: The West’s Part in the Creation and Sustaining of Islamist Terror,” Global Research dot Canada (2017).

“Saudi Arabia and the Doctrine of Global Islamist Terror,” Global Research dot Canada (2017).

“Israel and Islamist Militias: A Strange and Recurring Alliance,” Global Research dot Canada (2017).

“M.A.D.: The Nuclear Debate America Should be Having,” Global Research dot Canada (2016).

“The Syrian Tragedy: Western Foreign Policy and its ‘Useful Idiots’,” Global Research dot Canada (2016).

“Vladimir Putin and the Patterns of Power,” Global Research dot Canada (2015).

“The Crisis of Isis: A Debacle of a Great Game,” Global Research dot Canada (2014).

“The Ukraine Crisis: The Case for Russia,” Adeyinka Makinde, Writer Blog (2014).

“Democracy, Terrorism, and the Secret State,” Global Research dot Canada (2013).

History

“The Six Day War - Myth and Reality,” Global Research dot Canada (2017).

“Solzhenitsyn: The Price of Blacklisting a Nobel Laureate’s Book,” Adeyinka Makinde, Writer Blog (2013).

“Pope Pius and History,” Adeyinka Makinde, Writer Blog (2009).

Military History

“Frank Kitson: A Soldier’s Legacy,” Adeyinka Makinde, Writer Blog (2016).

“About Brigadier Benjamin Adekunle,” Adeyinka Makinde, Writer Blog (2014).

“Skorzeny: The Mythical Commando,” Adeyinka Makinde, Writer Blog (2013).

African Political History

“The Tragedy of Ignatius Acheampong: Visionary and Kleptocrat,” Global Research dot Canada, (2020).

“The Iron-Fisted Ethiopian State,” Global Research dot Canada, (2016).

Music

“Remembering Fela Anikulapo-Kuti,” Dissident Voice (2017).

“The Legacy of Michael Jackson,” Adeyinka Makinde, Writer Blog (2009).

Boxing

“The Mystery of the Velodrome: Battling Siki Versus Georges Carpentier,” Adeyinka Makinde, Writer Blog (2016).

“Floyd Mayweather: The Aesthetics of African-American Boxing Style,” Adeyinka Makinde, Writer Blog (2013).

“Remembering Dick Tiger,” Eastside Boxing dot com (2001).

Citations

Books

Work cited: DICK TIGER: The Life and Times of a Boxing Immortal. Word Association, May 2005.

Cited in the following books:

Lis, Daniel. Jewish Identity among the Igbo of Nigeria: Israel's "Lost Tribe" and the Question of Belonging in the Jewish State. Africa World Press, Nov. 2014.

Oliver, Brian. The Commonwealth Games: Extraordinary Stories Behind the Medals. Bloomsbury Sport, May 2014.

Torromeo, Dario; Esposito, Franco. I Pugni Degli Eroi. Absolutely Free Editore, Dec. 2013.

Achebe, Chinua. There Was A Country: A Personal History of Biafra. Allen Lane, Sept. 2012.

Hall, Karen L. Game Plan: A Social History of Sport in Alberta. University of Alberta Press, Jun. 2012.

Hudson, David L. Boxing in America: An Autopsy. Praeger Publishers, Jun. 2012.

Redner, Charles. Down But Never Out. Open Books Press, Feb. 2010.

Work cited: "Democracy, Terrorism and the Secret State: From the Era of Gladio to the War on Terror." Global Research dot Canada, Jan. 2013.

Cited in the following book:

Paterson, Graham L. A Constitutional Journey. Xlibris, Feb. 2013.

Work cited: "The Politics of Anthony Mundine." Eastside Boxing dot Com, Oct. 2001.

Cited in the following book:

Sarra, Chris. Strong and Smart - Towards a Pedagogy for Emancipation: Education for First Peoples (Part of New Studies in Critical Realism and Education Series). Routledge, Aug. 2012.

Academic journals

Work cited: "Project Balkanisation: Oded Yinon and an Enduring Plank of Israeli Foreign Policy". Global Research dot Canada, Jul. 2018.

Cited in the following journal:

Abadi, Jacob, "Israel and Lebanon: Relations Under Stress" Contemporary Review of the Middle East, March 2020.

Work cited: DICK TIGER: The Life and Times of a Boxing Immortal. Word Association, May 2005.

Cited in the following journal:

Johnes, Martin and Taylor, Matthew. "Boxing, Race and British Identity, 1945-1962" The Historical Journal, 1 29, Cambridge University Press (2020).

Work cited: "M.A.D.: The Nuclear Debate America Should be Having". Global Research dot Canada, Oct. 2016.

Cited in the following journal:

Kővári, László Lt. Col. "AZ Amerikai-Orosz Fegyversetkorlatozasi, Illetve Csokkentesi Megallapodasok Helyzete es Perspektivaja" Honvédségi Szemle, 2019/5 pp. 102-113.

Work cited: Book review of "On Intelligence: The History of Espionage and the Secret World.” Global Security and Intelligence Studies, Vol. 2: No. 1, Article 8 (2016).

Cited in the following journal:

Bonaldo, Frederico and Marques Silva. “Industria da Espionagem: Ponte Comercial ou Obstaculo a Paz?” Quaestio luris, Volume 5, Volume 12, No. 2 (2019) pp. 691-705.

Work cited: “Vladimir Putin and the Patterns of Global Power.” Global Research dot Canada, Nov. 2015.

Cited in the following journal:

Li Ming, Tseng. “No More Blood For Oil. How Could EU Help?” Review of Business and Economics Studies, Volume 5, No. 2 (2017), pp. 47-57.

Work cited: “NATO: Private Club of War Criminals.” Global Research dot Canada, Oct. 2016.

Cited in the following journal:

Ahmed, Mughees; Murtaza, Zainab & Shahzadi, Tanzila. “Libyan Gold Dinar Plan and US-Nato Retort”.  The Government: Annual Research Journal of Political Science, Volume 6, No. 6 (2017), pp. 115-124.

Work cited: "Floyd Mayweather: The Aesthetics of African-American Boxing Style." Adeyinka Makinde, Writer Blog, Oct. 2013.

Cited in the following journals:

Perkins, Paul; Helmer, Richard J.N.; Mackintosh, Colin & Hahn, Allan G. "Reflections on Long-Term Development and Use of Automated Scoring Technology in a Sport (Modified Boxing) Context." World Journal of Engineering and Technology, Volume 5, No. 03 (2017), pp. 455-480.

Perkins, Paul; Hahn, Allan; Lucas, Richard & Keegan, Richard. “The Boxing Conundrum: Is there a Place for a New Variant of the Sport?” Journal of Research in Humanities and Social Science, Volume 2, Issue 09 (2014), pp. 09-25.

Work cited: “The Iron-Fisted Ethiopian State.” Global Research dot Canada, Sept. 2016.

Cited in the following journal:

Yiannoutsos, Alexandra. “Crossing Arms: The Plight and Protest of the Oromo in Ethiopia.” The McGill International Review [Online] Nov. 8 (2016).

Work cited: DICK TIGER: The Life and Times of a Boxing Immortal. Word Association, May 2005.

Cited in the following journal:

Gennaro, Michael. “‘The Whole Place is in Pandemonium’: Dick Tiger versus Gene Fullmer III and the Consumption of Boxing in Nigeria." The International Journal of the History of Sport, Volume 30, Issue 16 (2013).

Work cited: "Retreading Hagler versus Hearns." Eastside Boxing dot Com, Apr. 2002.

Cited in the following journal:

Ehrlichman, Brad. "In This Corner: An Analysis of Federal Boxing Legislation." Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts. Volume 34, No. 3 (2011), pp 421-456.

Academic textbooks

Work cited: "Pug of Ages: Weep For Me." Cyberboxingzone dot Com, Oct. 2002.

Reproduced in the following textbook:

Brassil, John et al. Writing the Synthesis Essay. Peoples Education, 2007.

Reference books

Work cited: DICK TIGER: The Life and Times of a Boxing Immortal. Word Association, May 2005.

Cited in the following books:

The Editors of Salem Press. Great Athletes - Boxing & Soccer (Volume 1 of a 12-Volume set). Salem Press, Sept. 2014.

Grasso, John. Historical Dictionary of Boxing. Scarecrow Press, Jan. 2014.

Akyeampong, Emmanuel K.; Gates, Henry Louis (Editors). Dictionary of African Biography. Oxford University Press, Dec. 2011.

Hudson, David L. Combat Sports: An Encyclopaedia of Wrestling, Fighting and Mixed Martial Arts. Greenwood Press, Apr. 2009.

Gates, Henry Louis; Higginbotham, Evelyn Brooks (Editors). The African-American National Biography. Oxford University Press. Mar. 2008.

Think Tank Papers

Work cited: “Debacle of a Great Game: The Islamic State (IS) and America’s War on Iraq and Syria”, Global Research dot Canada, Aug. 2014.

Cited in the following papers:

Yilmaz, Sait. “Kuresel Tetorun Geldigi Asamayi Nasil Okumaliyiz?”, 21 Yuzyil Turkiye Enstitusu (2015).

Yilmaz, Sait. “ISID ve Ortadogu’da Uzun Savas”, 21 Yuzyil Turkiye Enstitusu (2014).

Unpublished Work (Theses & Dissertations)

Work cited: DICK TIGER: The Life and Times of a Boxing Immortal. Word Association, May 2005.

Cited in the following projects:

Gennero, Michael. “‘Empire Boxers are the Goods’: Race, Boxing, and Nigerians in the Black Atlantic," Nigeria in the Ring: Boxing, Masculinity, and the Empire in Nigeria, 1930-1957, unpublished dissertation, University of Florida (2016).

Obasa, Olusegun. Sports and the Modernity of Leisure in Nigeria: Stadium Space and the Symbolisms of Expressions, 1930-1980, unpublished dissertation, University of Texas at Austin (2015).

Work cited: "Floyd Mayweather: The Aesthetics of African-American Boxing Style." Adeyinka Makinde, Writer Blog, Oct. 2013.

Cited in the following project:

Perkins, Paul. "Can a Modified, Low Risk Form of Boxing Achieve Significant Community Intake?" unpublished dissertation, University of Canberra (2019).

Work cited: “The Six Day War: Myth and Reality”, Global Research dot Canada, June 2017.

Cited in the following project:

Havelkova, Lenka. “Conflict of Identities: Zionism and Palestinian Nationalism”, unpublished master’s thesis, Univerzita Karlova (2017).

Work cited: “The Manchester Bombing: A Case of State Criminal Negligence or Worse?”, Global Research dot Canada, May 2017.

Cited in the following project:

Giroux, Kathryn. “The Quest for an Optimal Balance: Civil Liberties in an era of Securitization: An Analysis of Canadian Anti-Terror Legislation", unpublished master’s thesis, McGill University, Montreal (2018).

© Adeyinka Makinde (2020)

Adeyinka Makinde is based in London, England.

King Moshoeshoe, Lt. Colonel Yakubu Gowon and My Father in 1966

Photo capture of my Father Navy Lieutenant Emmanuel Makinde (on right) on Thursday, November 24th 1966 at Ikeja Airport, Lagos.

He was among the welcoming party for King Nathaniel Moshoeshoe of Lesotho who was on an eight-hour stopover visit to Ghana. At the airport were the Nigerian Military Head of State, Lt. Colonel Yakubu Gowon and his colleagues in the Supreme Military Council, Commodore Joseph Wey, the Chief of Naval Staff and Major Mobolaji Johnson, the Military Administrator of Lagos.

My Father was the Flag Lieutenant to Commodore Wey.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2020).

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.

June 16th 1979: The Execution of General Ignatius Acheampong

A rare photograph of the hooded figures of General Ignatius Acheampong (right) and Major General Edward Utuka tied to execution stakes as they await their deaths by a firing squad assembled at Teshie Military Shooting Range in Accra. Source of image: Drum Magazine, January 1980.

Both men had been condemned to death by decree of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) which had come to power 12 days earlier after a violent uprising by junior officers and men of the Ghanaian military.

The text of the magazine article erroneously implies that Lt. General Akwasi Afrifa, like Acheampong a former Military Head of State, is the other figure on the firing range. Utuka, like Afrifa, was tall, slimly-built and wore a moustache. Afrifa would be executed ten days later with five other senior officers.

The other error is the supposed quote of Afrifa crying for “more bullets”. Witnesses of Afrifa’s execution recall that he dragged himself up after a salvo of shots to declare that he was not dead yet, and a soldier having to walk to his prone figure to complete the execution.

Afrifa, who was a participant in the 1966 coup which overthrew Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, had been Ghana's Head of State in 1969, while Acheampong, who deposed Dr. Kofi Busia, in 1972, was the Military Ruler until he was removed from power six years later in a palace coup.

Read: “The Tragedy of Ignatius Acheampong: Visionary and Kleptocrat” by Adeyinka Makinde.

© Adeyinka Makinde (2020)

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.