Yearly Archives: 2010

Wikileaks: The Hard Lesson So Far

Post author:Grimot Nane Zine
Post published:December 19, 2010
Post category:Corruption Governance Institutions
Post comments:7 Comments
Reading time:2 mins read

Wikileaks: The Hard Lesson So Far

“Financial asphyxiation” or some synonym is going to be a buzz word that will be popular with politicians (silently) and activists (openly) in future… I guess. Why? I will briefly and emphatically state that the core message and implication of the Wikileaks saga so far is. If you act against the interests of the owners of global and national political economies, legal or otherwise, they will annihilate your efforts through the mechanical ostracism via financial institutions. This is the story and anything else is neither secondary nor tertiary but at best quatenary. (more…)

Wikileaks Leaks – So Very Ordinary?

Post author:Grimot Nane Zine
Post published:December 2, 2010
Post category:Corruption Governance
Post comments:16 Comments
Reading time:3 mins read

Wikileaks Leaks – So Very Ordinary?

If Wikileaks has leaked nothing of the confidential and classified information relating to the workings, conditions and decisions of the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. Nothing of exploitation-driven genocides in the Third World. Nor the arms trade, genetically modified foods, corruption. Nor regime change, insurgency sponsorship et al, then it has said nothing of significant importance. That is, not to anyone who understands history, international relations and human nature. So where is the extraordinary news from the leaks? (more…)

Resisting Ecocide: Crimes and Rents

Post author:Grimot Nane Zine
Post published:November 28, 2010
Post category:Ecocide Governance Institutions Niger Delta Crisis The Environment
Post comments:15 Comments
Reading time:6 mins read

t is interesting to know that the Niger Delta is listed third out of ten hotspots of ecocide in Polly Higgins’ Eradicating Ecocide. I have written a review of the book on this blog for two reasons: its project represents the amalgamation of my three main research interests namely, corruption, institutions, and green economics, and it is a very interesting visionary book. The fact that the region has been classified as an ecocide hotspot saves me the need to describe the monstrous environmental and human degradation going on there in the name of Nigeria being a “middle-income nation” and doubling as an “improving nation” within the provisions and expectations of “transparently globalised profit-seeking”. Transparency for what it is worth washes its hands of a lot of things and especially ecocide. (more…)

The Grandeur of Rejecting a Disabled Person

Post author:Grimot Nane Zine
Post published:November 27, 2010
Post category:Institutions
Post comments:2 Comments
Reading time:4 mins read

The Grandeur of Rejecting a Disabled Person

Being disabled is neither pleasant nor easy in any society, and Britain is a society civilised enough to appreciate the fact fairly in all institutions. Not everyone in Britain shares such civilisation. (more…)

Spiritual Infections, Physical Cures

Post author:Grimot Nane Zine
Post published:November 23, 2010
Post category:Musings Social Relations
Post comments:10 Comments
Reading time:2 mins read

Spiritual Infections, Physical Cures: Catching Gonorrhea In A Dream

I am increasingly taking the message of James Randi quite seriously, well beyond and above average, because of the decadent state of belief and irrationality that certain people adopt and adhere to in their quest to explain the unacceptable conditions of life they encounter. Beliefs are the software that keeps society together but only when they are the stuff of “useful or rational” contents necessary for its proper coordination.

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Corruption in Nigeria: Is It Curable? Part One

Post author:Grimot Nane Zine
Post published:November 23, 2010
Post category:Corruption Governance Institutions
Post comments:13 Comments
Reading time:7 mins read

Corruption in Nigeria: Is It Curable? Part One

The Nigerian nation might not be a failed state but it is certainly by all ostensible standards of politics and governance a true kakistocracy. Nigeria’s condition of kakistocracy is a function of corruption and moral decadence. It is a truism to say corruption is a major societal ill in Nigeria blighting its way of life; Nigeria is a certainly bandits’ nation. Hitherto, Transparency International perennially ranked Nigeria as one of the most corrupt nations in the world for a number of years but the recent ranking of the nation as being a much less corrupt from practical experience and common sense appears at best to be dubious. (more…)

Educating a Shell Worker

Post author:Grimot Nane Zine
Post published:November 19, 2010
Post category:Corruption Ecocide Governance Institutions Niger Delta Crisis The Environment
Post comments:4 Comments
Reading time:13 mins read

Ever since ex-President Obosanjo threw the gauntlet to Nigerians in general in to prove the acts of corruption of General Babangida (rtd) (Nwaobi 2004), it has become fashionable for specially interested Nigerians to ask for proof of obvious crimes and malfeasance carried out against the nation and its people by either privileged individuals or organisations with a sole purpose i.e. the presumed impossibility of individuals to provide the proof asked for. That is a very delusional precedent for Nigerians to uncritically follow since in reality there is abundant proof of Babangida’s acts of corruption. (more…)