By: Amir Abdulazeez

Several decades into the global modern era, Africans, Asians and Latin Americans are continued to be held hostage by their colonially indoctrinated inferior mindsets engineered by the blackmail and mythology of western moral supremacy. This error is not in observing western virtues; many of which are real. The error is in the uncritical veneration that renders their vices invisible and their judgements unchallengeable. It is evident from the events of the last three decades alone, that the so-called saner climes of Western Europe and North America are the primary architects of global chaos and instability of nations, all in the name of injecting sanity into ‘less sane’ societies.

The ongoing US-Israel war on Iran, launched in the midst of Ramadan is a typical doctrine of the saner climes, exhibited in its most naked form. Iran’s Foreign Minister had three days before the war declared that a nuclear agreement was ‘within reach’, after a third round of indirect talks had taken place in Geneva. The IAEA itself confirmed there was no evidence of a structured Iranian nuclear weapons programme at the time of the attack. Yet, the surprise assault assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, killed his family members and damaged schools, hospitals and even UNESCO-recognized cultural heritage sites. This is a typical catalogue of barbaric war crimes for which the West has condemned others across generations.

The Donald Trump administration whose seemingly rude, dishonest and arrogant officials, has offered a menu of rationalizations and a handful conflicting justifications for the war. However, when Amnesty International confirmed that the United States was responsible for a strike that killed at least 160 primary school girls, the US officials chose more arrogance through denials instead of remorse. In fact, the Head of the Federal Communications Commission simultaneously intimidated his own press, threatening the withdrawal of broadcast licenses of American news outlets whose war coverage he deemed unfavourable. Another trademark saner-climes mythology, muzzled in a way only a few non-saner climes can imagine.

Meanwhile, in all these, it is the ‘lunatic’ Iran that is supposed to apologize and do nothing while it is been attacked. The Iranian Regime, branded autocrats on the premise that it compels women to cover their hairs in public are being lectured by leaders of societies whose women go out naked in the name of civilization and whose governments topple, kill and abduct Heads of States of other countries for recklessly greedy reasons. Now imagine if the erratically behaving Donald Trump was the leader of any African Country, the West would’ve since declared him incoherent and unstable to deal with or labelled his citizens stupid for voting him. Worse still, imagine if the Epstein scandal happened in Asia or Latin America. All these contradictions reveal with crystal clarity that Western principles are instruments of convenience.

To understand the foundations to all these, let us revisit some history. Britain’s Industrial Revolution was fertilised by the profits of the transatlantic slave trade and the systematic plunder of India, a country whose share of global GDP fell from about 25% at the onset of colonial rule to barely 4% at independence. France financed much of its republican grandeur on the forced labour of West Africa and the Caribbean. Belgium’s King Leopold II transformed the Congo into a private abattoir, severing the hands of Africans who failed to meet rubber quotas, leaving behind a traumatized country that still bleeds today. To speak of the sanity of these climes without acknowledging that they were partly built from organised insanity inflicted elsewhere is to ignore the background to what we are witnessing today.

In the last fifty years alone, the so-called saner climes have unleashed a level of violence and destabilisation that would shame any regime they have ever deemed fit to condemn. The United States, the self-acclaimed sentinel of the free world, has engineered irrational regime changes in Chile (1973), Iran (1953 and subsequently), Guatemala (1954), Nicaragua, Panama, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, among others. The 1973 CIA-backed coup against a democratically elected socialist president of Chile Salvador Allende, installed Augusto Pinochet, under whose reign thousands were tortured, disappeared, or executed. Henry Kissinger, the American architect of that atrocity, received the Nobel Peace Prize from his fellow saner clime comrades. The French Government, through its notorious Françafrique policy, maintained a neocolonial empire across West and Central Africa long after the 1960s, propping up murderous dictators and conducting military interventions to protect economic interests, with a consistency that made a mockery of every democratic principle France professed to uphold.

The invasion of Iraq in 2003 by Western Governments is perhaps the most consequential act of manufactured catastrophe of the modern era. The war resulted in the deaths of an estimated 200,000 to one million Iraqi civilians, the obliteration of the country’s infrastructure, the rise of ISIS from the ashes of a disbanded Iraqi army and the triggering of a refugee crisis that continues to destabilise the Middle East. No one was held accountable. George W. Bush and Tony Blair are living happy lives in their saner countries. The International Criminal Court, which has indicted multiple African heads of state on much lesser crimes with considerable alacrity, found no jurisdiction to examine any of them. Meanwhile, the people of Iraq, Syria and Libya who were dismantled in the name of liberation still live in the ruins and pains of what the saner climes call democracy.

While the West was busy bombing the Middle East, Africa, the so-called backward continent, was largely attending to its own affairs of conflict resolution with a remarkable degree of maturity. The African Union mediated crises in Burundi, the Gambia and Lesotho without firing a single bullet. ECOWAS brokered peace agreements in Sierra Leone and Liberia, deployed peacekeeping forces with genuine multilateral mandates without the casual trigger-happiness of Western powers.

Western attitude towards violence is shamelessly selective. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Saner Clime’s response was swift, comprehensive and morally unambiguous: sanctions, weapons, diplomatic isolation and a media chorus of civilizational solidarity. This response was appropriate anyway. But the problem is its stark contrast with the Western posture toward other invasions. When Saudi Arabia launched its war on Yemen in 2015, the United States and the United Kingdom did not merely decline to intervene; they allegedly supplied the bombs, refuelled the warplanes and provided intelligence for strikes that killed thousands of Yemeni civilians and engineered one of the worst humanitarian crises on earth.

Many argue that the actions of Western Governments isn’t a true reflection of what their citizens stand for. This is debatable especially when one examines certain incidences. During the Obama presidency, Edward Snowden revealed that the US National Security Agency was conducting mass, warrantless surveillance of American citizens and foreign governments, including the personal telephone of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel in flagrant violation of constitutional protections and international diplomatic norms. The response was not accountability but exile for Snowden and a classification of his revelations as treason. The United States, has the largest prison population on earth both in absolute numbers and per capita administered under a system in which Black Americans are incarcerated at five times the rate of their white counterparts, in conditions that the United Nations has described as cruel. Since 1968, gun violence has claimed more American lives than all of America’s foreign wars combined. One can certainlybe inclined to believe that these are controversies that ordinary western citizens may not approve of.

Climate change is another damning indictment of Western moral authority in the twenty-first century. The Industrial activities enriching Europe and North America still depends on burning carbon at a scale the planet had never experienced. The United States, historically the world’s largest cumulative emitter of greenhouse gases, withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement under Donald Trump. Australia, another clime reputed to be considerably saner than most, has built its prosperity on coal exports and resisted meaningful emissions reduction. Some Pacific Island nations face sea submersions within this century as a consequence of decisions made in saner capitals. When these nations’ leaders speak at the United Nations with tears in their voices, the saner climes offer symbolic but empty sympathy before later returning to preserving their industrial prerogatives.

The Western Media’s tactical twisting of narratives regarding other climes is another issue. For example, CNN may not run primetime documentaries on the Swiss banking system’s complicity in laundering the proceeds of African kleptocracy, but will rather concentrate on the primary kleptocrats. The BBC does not lead with investigations into the role of British arms dealers in sustaining African conflicts. The New York Times does not dedicate its front page to the tax avoidance schemes through which Western corporations drain billions of dollars annually from African economies (more than the continent receives in foreign aid).

Beside all these, there is something more worrisome. The bulk of support received by these saner climes come from their victims in the third world. In Nigeria for instance, the blind sympathy for religious affiliations drives people to support the brazen oppression and cruel injustices perpetrated by the West. Our solidarities should be among ourselves, not with those who see and treat us as worthless humans and more like animals because of their superior moral hypocrisy. Additionally, our bootlicking governments who are considered close to valueless in the International arena or even insane just like us, must stop intimidating its own citizens who decide to speak up against western double standards. Let’s remember, the phrase “saner climes” is a moral verdict and a devastating condemnation of everywhere else expect Europe and North America. Africans and all peoples of the marginalised world are owed the intellectual inheritance of critical discernment.

The world does not need more or fewer saner climes; it needs a more honest accounting of what sanity actually requires. It requires consistency: the same rules applied to the powerful and the powerless alike. It requires humility: the acknowledgement that no civilisation holds a monopoly on wisdom. And it requires accountability: not the selective justice of indicting the weak and glorifying the mighty, but the universal application of standards that do not bend in the presence of a Security Council veto or the impulse of a self-serving Super power. Until that accounting arrives, the presumption of Western moral authority deserves not deference, but fearless interrogation; the kind that the so-called saner climes have always claimed to celebrate and so rarely been prepared to receive.

23-03-2026

By Abba Anwar

Disturbed by the global price shocks caused by US/Israel-Iran War and the lingering insecurity plaguing our dear nation, the Deputy Senate President, Distinguished Senator Barau Jibrin, CFR, called for consistent prayers for the intervention of The Creator, The Almighty Allah.

It was his major urge for peaceful coexistence in the country, after consistent contributions to the security agencies in the last couple of years, as reflected in his special Eid-el-Fitr message after the completion of the Ramadhan Fasting period.

Part of the statement issued by his Special Adviser, Media and Publicity, Ismail Mudassir, reads, “The Deputy President of the Senate, Senator Barau I. Jibrin, has rejoiced with Muslims in the country on the successful completion of the Ramadan Fast, urging all to sustain prayers for global peace.”

Not only that, DSP Barau, as one of the leading principal officers of the National Assembly, alongside his distinguished senator colleagues, is doing everything possible to restore peace in the land. Sustained peace and tranquility, free from ethnic, political, sectional, or religious crises. His mission is peace, and peace is at the forefront.

His physical contributions to security agencies in his constituency, Kano North and the state in general, are testimonies to his commitment towards everlasting peace and tranquility. Is just like what I always say, not all security interventions need public attention. Because of their nature of high level of secrecy and confidentiality.

Just recently the Deputy Senate President was involved in many regional and global engagements, with the view to promoting regional and global security through the formulation and implementation of viable economic integration and environment-friendly societies. Across nations of the Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS), up to the platform under Commonwealth of Nations. He has been visible recently under these fora.

Understanding the fact that, legislation is not enough for bringing peace to the society, he uses his wealth of experience and political maturity, to strengthen an effort, however little, in my own estimation, of the Executive arm, by encouraging the President towards that angle, as the release says, the DSP “Commends Tinubu’s relentless efforts to stabilise Nigeria’s economy, tackle insecurity.”

Commending that, “President Tinubu has been up and doing in the fight against insurgency and banditry in the country. And we must all continue to accord him all the support needed to achieve this.” Further stressing optimism that, “President Tinubu’s directive for Security Chiefs to relocate to Maiduguri, following recent terrorists attacks, would help flush out the criminal elements.”

To add spiritual weight and touch to the entire process, he “… prayed to Allah SWT to accept the supplications, prayers, and good deeds of the Ummah during the blessed Month of Ramadhan.” Urging the, “… the Muslim Ummah to sustain the lessons of the Holy Month and to always reflect them in their daily activities, as enjoined by Prophet Muhammad, Peace Be Upon Him.”

Distinguished Jibrin’s humility and being humane, places him some inch above others. So also his hopeful attachment to the Will of our Creator. Hear him, “Glory be to Allah SWT for the successful completion of this year’s Ramadan, 1447AH. I wish to rejoice with fellow Muslims across the country. This is a period of joy and happiness, as well as a time to show appreciation to Almighty Allah.”

His love for peace and the dire need to spread peace, as against acrimonious relationship, he stresses that, “Let’s spread love and help people in need during and after the festive period.”

Anwar writes from Kano
Sunday, 22nd March, 2026

By Zubair A. Zubair

Throughout history, many great men have stood up against injustice, particularly during the struggle for civil rights in the United States. Among the numerous African American leaders who emerged during the era of segregation, Rev. Jesse Jackson stands tall as one of the most influential. In my view, only figures like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. rank above him, not merely because of their fame or tragic assassinations, but because of the role they played in mentoring and shaping future leaders like Jackson himself.

Jackson was a protégé of Martin Luther King Jr., working closely with him in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), where he was gradually entrusted with significant responsibilities. However, his journey into activism did not begin there, it was rooted in his life experiences.

Born in Greenville, South Carolina, Jackson faced early personal challenges. He was born to a teenage mother, Helen Burns, and his father, Noah Robinson, was largely absent from his upbringing. These difficult beginnings shaped his resilience. He later took the name of his stepfather, Charles Henry Jackson, who raised him. Despite facing rejection and racial discrimination during his formative years, Jackson persevered, eventually emerging as a student leader at North Carolina A&T State University, a turning point that propelled him into national prominence.

One of his most notable contributions was his leadership in Operation Breadbasket, an initiative under the guidance of Martin Luther King Jr. and James Bevel. The program focused on economic empowerment, job creation, and financial independence for Black communities, echoing broader movements for self-sufficiency and social justice.

Jackson’s legacy is also defined by his powerful oratory. His speech at the Democratic National Convention 1988 remains one of the most memorable in modern political history. In that speech, he shared personal stories of struggle and identity, emphasizing unity, justice, and inclusion. His message resonated deeply, reminding audiences that leadership must be rooted in empathy and shared human experience.

Beyond activism, Jackson also served as a shadow senator for the District of Columbia, further demonstrating his commitment to public service and political advocacy. His lifelong dedication to Black empowerment, social justice, and equality earned him the trust and respect of leaders like Martin Luther King Jr..

As a society, we must continue to teach future generations about the contributions of leaders like Jesse Jackson. It is only through such awareness that we can inspire new leaders in the mold of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, and Marcus Garvey.

Jesse Jackson’s life is a testament to humility, sacrifice, and unwavering commitment. He dedicated his life to building a world free from racism, segregation, and inequality, so that future generations might live with dignity and equal opportunity.

Zubair A. Zubair
Journalist, Activist
Writing from Kano, Nigeria