Fiat Lux
Pardon me if I’ve already told you this one, but it’s a favourite of mine from a film I watched as a young man. It was based on Rudyard Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King”, and starred Sean Connery and Michael Caine. Two young English adventurers arrive at the gate of some Western Asian town, probably occupied by the Pashtun. This is an area forever in thrall to the…
May 12 2016 – The reader may still remember the nickname “La Pasionaria” I wrote about a few years ago in this space. Well, she was that Spanish woman who stood at burning barricades in 1930s Madrid, under the fire of the fascists under General Francisco Franco, and urged the republican resisters with the immortal words, “No Pasaran!” They Shall Not Pass! Her real name was Isidora Dolores Ibarruri Gomez,…...
October 22 2015 There are so many ways of appreciating issues related to corruption in our countries, and some of them can be quite edifying. I have heard of corruption as the very essence of power, as in power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. This would tend to mean that as long as you get involved with power you cannot choose but be corrupt. There are those who say there…...
April 4 2016 – Two years have gone by, and still no end in sight for the ordeal that has been meted out to the so-called Chibok girls. These are the unfortunate young women who were abducted en masse – more than 250 of them — from a school in north-eastern Nigeria. The dramatic abduction set off a global outrage as political leaders and other public individuals and bodies called for…...