Author Archives: kenneth

USA: Have guns, will shoot! Amendment 2: USA Constitution A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. Another gruesome mass murder … Continue reading →

Mo Yan, winner of Nobel Prize  for Literature in 2012. “Through a  mixture of fantasy and reality, historical and social perspectives, Mo Yan has  created a world reminiscent in its complexity of those in the writings of  William Faulkner and … Continue reading →

18th Congress of the Communist Party of China The constitutions of governments of all  countries that seek to be representative of their people have evolved over  centuries with both home grown and imported characteristics. In Britain, the  first country to … Continue reading →

The Story of Qiu Ju Film Review Most cinema goers who patronise the neighbourhood cinema hall are usually treated to blockbusters with plenty of sex and violence with strong nationalistic overtones where our good guys overcome foreign bad guys. So … Continue reading →

John Carlos Story, by John Carlos and Dave Zirin Published by Haymarket Books, Chicago,  Illinois. 2012. Book Review The only reason I bought this book about a now forgotten episode in the American Civil Rights struggle of the 1960s was … Continue reading →

  The Man Who Changed China, by Robert Lawrence Kuhn Crown Publishers, New York, 2004 Book review and commentary This is not just the biography of an important modern Chinese leader, Jiang Zemin, who became the General Secretary of the … Continue reading →

Book Review On China, by Henry Kissinger The Penguin Press, New York, USA,  2012 Henry Kissinger, the supreme diplomat and renowned academic, has put out  a book that should be made compulsory reading for current American diplomats.  Unlike the American … Continue reading →

The Dumbing of the West and the decline of  Democracy In the early 20th century, West European historians  contemptuously referred to the declining Ottoman Empire  as “The Sick Man of Europe”. After its defeat in World War 1 the empire … Continue reading →

Economists as Fortune Tellers “Behind every great fortune there is a crime.” Honore de Balzac (1799-1850), French novelist. Prof. Luis Garicano, Director of Research at the London School of Economics, was explaining to Queen Elizabeth on 05 November, 2008, the … Continue reading →

Turmoil in the Indian Ocean Ever since Vasco da Gama and his small flotilla of ships rounded South Africa (which became for them the “The Cape of Good Hope”) in 1498 to enter the Indian Ocean, Western imperial powers have … Continue reading →