Nigerian Times

Arthur Miller once described a good newspaper as “a nation talking to itself.” If only in this respect, the Huffington Post is a great newspaper. It is not unusual for a short blog post to inspire a thousand posts from readers—posts that go off in their own directions and lead to arguments and conversations unrelated to the topic that inspired them. Occasionally, these comments present original perspectives and arguments, but many resemble the graffiti on a bathroom wall. The notion that the Huffington Post is somehow going to compete with, much less displace, the best traditional newspapers is arguable on other grounds as well. The site’s original-reporting resources are minuscule. The site has no regular sports or book coverage, and its entertainment section is a trashy grab bag of unverified Internet gossip. And, while the Huffington Post has successfully positioned itself as the place where progressive politicians and Hollywood liberal luminaries post their anti-Bush Administration...

I thank God Samantha Power, resigned with apologies and regrets for her terrible utterances against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton . Samantha Power is brilliant without doubt. But you cannot blame Bill Clinton for the Rwandan Genocide as you cannot blame President George W. Bush for the the genocide in Darfur happening before our very eyes. I am 100% Black African who is committed to the efforts to end the Darfur Crisis and communicated with the former UN Special Envoy to Sudan, Jan Pronk and my own insider in Darfur on how to stop the massacre of innocent people in Darfur. But the Sudanese government and the rebels have continued to pour fuel in the fire of the conflict in Darfur and they are both guilty of the genocide. The African Union and the UN are guiltier than the former President Bill Clinton on the Rwandan Genocide. I do not think there is anything Bill Clinton would have done to stop the genocide in the hellish circumstances if the UN failed to do so. America cannot ...

15 Feb 2008 18:31 Africa/Lagos PARADE Magazine Names Kim Jong-il of North Korea the World's Worst Dictator Despite Atrocious Acts, the U.S. Continues To Do Business With Many Dictators NEW YORK, Feb. 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Kim Jong-il of North Korea has been designated the World's Worst Dictator in PARADE Magazine's 6th annual listing by Contributing Editor David Wallechinsky. Kim beat out Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan, who held the No. 1 position for three years in a row, from 2005 to 2007. Kim was No. 1 in 2003 and 2004. Kim runs the most isolated, repressive regime in the world, says Wallechinsky in this Sunday's issue of PARADE. His citizens have no access to information other than government propaganda. His harsh system includes collective punishment (three generations of a family can be punished for one member's alleged crime); detainment of roughly 200,000 citizens in labor camps; and the capture, torture and jailing of those who try to flee to China. Last year,...

They say that the world is a crazy place, but I say they're wrong. The world is a wild, whacked-out, insane place. In 2007, we went through it all. The big, bloated blimp of self-confidence, Hugo Chavez, was dealt a mighty blow to the ego this year when Venezuelans said "NO!" to his proposed amendments to the Venezuelan constitution. One of the proposed amendments would have removed term limits, allowing Chavez to run for president indefinitely. Yikes. Of course the biggest dictator news of the year was the death of Saddam Hussein by hanging in Iraq. This actually happened at the end of December in 2006, but the backlash from his execution was felt throughout the Muslim world in January. By humiliating and executing Saddam in the way that they did, the Iraqi justice system succeeded in making Saddam a martyr. Great job, guys. But that's not all, our other dictator friend, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had the world on edge for a while in March when Iranian military apprehende...

Nobel Lecture December 7, 2007 By Doris Lessing The Nobel Prize in Literature 2007 On not winning the Nobel Prize I am standing in a doorway looking through clouds of blowing dust to where I am told there is still uncut forest. Yesterday I drove through miles of stumps, and charred remains of fires where in '56 was the most wonderful forest I have ever seen, all destroyed. People have to eat. They have to get fuel for fires. This is north west Zimbabwe early in the eighties, and I am visiting a friend who was a teacher in a school in London. He is here "to help Africa" as we put it. He is a gently idealistic soul and what he found here in this school shocked him into a depression, from which it was hard to recover. This school is like all the schools built after Independence. It consists of four large brick rooms side by side, put straight into the dust, one two three four, with a half room at one end, which is the library. In these classrooms are blackboards, but my frie...

Bye Bye Mugabe

My historical fiction of the agonies in Zimbabwe under the draconian rule of President Robert Mugabe, "Bye Bye Mugabe" is live on Amazon . Domboramwari, a young Zimbabwean blogger and proofreader for the Zimbabwean Times was sympathetic to President Robert Mugabe. But Domboramwari had to go on exile to escape from political persecution when he refused to join the notorious Green Bombers after collecting the financial payment to do so. He fled with his South African girlfriend Nkosi to Johannesburg after telling his old uncle. And he had to help in digging a grave to bury the dead grandson of his mother's neighbor. This is the story of the millions of the traumatized Zimbabweans suffering under the draconian rule of one of the worst dictators in Africa. "When you give someone a book, you don't give him just paper, ink, and glue. You give him the possibility of a whole new life." – Christopher Morley, 1890-1957, Novelist, Journalist and Poet