General News of 2026-10-15

Trump, 9/11, Africa: A look into writings of the late son of Dr Nkrumah

Gamal Gorkeh Nkrumah lived largely outside the public spotlight in Ghana, unlike some members of his family who played prominent roles in the country’s politics and governance. He spent much of his professional life in Cairo, Egypt, where he worked as a journalist and editor at Al-Ahram Weekly, an English-language newspaper. ‘Profound loss'- Nkrumah family pays glowing tribute to late Gamal He spent more than 15 years with the publication and later became the editor of its international affairs section. Following report of his death, we have revisited some of the editorials he published on english.ahram.org during his journalism career. His articles covered a range of subjects, including US President Donald Trump, migration, the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in America, and issues affecting Africa. Through his writing, Gamal shared his views on major political and social developments around the world. His work went beyond reporting events, often offering his perspectives on the issues and calling for action where he considered it necessary. In one of his articles on the 9/11 terror attack published on September 11, 2011, he argued that the United States exploited the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to justify military interventions in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq under the guise of protecting democracy, freedom and human rights. He also accused American politicians of using the “War on Terror” to advance their political interests and expand US influence abroad. He further criticised the US for hypocrisy, pointing to its history of colonialism, land seizure and interference in other countries’ affairs. Inside the lives and careers of Kwame Nkrumah’s children He argued that the legacy of 9/11 includes using terrorism as an excuse for military intervention, citing the Iraq War and the false claims about weapons of mass destruction. Read the full article below: The 9/11 autopsy The ugly legacy of 9/11 is devilishly hard to get right in Washington Nobody, save perhaps Europe, shrugs off international humiliation as disingenuously as the United States of America. Time and again since the loss of face in the Vietnam War and the terrible human cost to Vietnamese and Americans alike, Washington has embarked on military escapades throughout the world in the most ruthless manner under the pretext of defending freedom, democracy and human rights. This would be remarkable enough, but Washington does all this without any qualms about its moral right to do so. The world sees Washington for what it is: a sickening superpower with a morbid imperial mentality. Its politicians and policy-makers are laser-brained careerists who have since 9/11 manipulated the unfortunate event to further their careers. The conventional wisdom in Washington holds that politicians must be packaged as thick-skinned, sharp-elbowed robots of the Dick Cheney variety dedicated to self-aggrandisement and self-advancement. The so-called "War against Terror" was nothing but a hoax designed to win the sympathy of gullible governments around the world. On this tenth anniversary of the 9/11 and the destruction of the Wall Street Twin Trade Towers and the unprecedented attack on the Pentagon, it is time to reflect and ponder the implications of Washington's aggressive policies overseas. Ten years ago, I wrote a commentary entitled Giant's Feet of Clay and received an astounding number of hate-mail from patriotic Americans. I also was applauded by conscientious citizens of the US who were not fooled by the lies spewed by the then administration of George W Bush. Policymakers and politicians in Washington were not in the least interested in principled answers to the poignant questions posed by 9/11 concerning the national security of the US. The powers that be in Washington were more interested in fishing out, hounding and bringing to book those they regarded as having a treacherous and disloyal disposition. Through all this, moreover, Washington was shameless in its pretensions that it was warring with Taliban's Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein's Iraq for justice and retribution. But then the very foundations of the US have been based on the appropriation of the lands of North America's indigenous population. The European settler colonial mentality that created apartheid South Africa and is now expanding the Zionist entity, Israel, on dubious Biblical grounds, is the same ideology upon which the US was founded. The land grab was cynically used to justify genocide. US policymakers do not stand a prayer. The irony is that the name given to the military operation to execute Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden was none other than Operation Geronimo. For those familiar with the history of the US Geronimo was the Native American Apache chieftain who led his people in a brave albeit desperate resistance bid to rid his land of the invaders. He was defending his ancestral lands from European settler colonialism. Washington's politicians' knack of sweeping historical myths and blatant lies into some corner cabinet of the recesses of their evil, heartless minds led them cynically to call their weapons of war and warplanes after the Native American peoples they vanquished. The Blackhawk and the Apache have become buzzwords for US imperialism and synonyms of American military might. Imagine the public outcry had Hitler's Luftwaffe named its fighter jets "Jew" and "Gypsy". Such hypocrisy begs serious introspection and retrospection. Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us reminds us that the first 9/11 was in 1973 when the US toppled the democratically elected government of Chile's Salvador Allende in a bloody military coup d’état that put the right-wing dictator Augusto Pinochet in Allende's place. Such is the twisted logic of the world's leading advocate of democracy, freedom and human rights. Such is the hypocrisy of the powers that be in Washington. Such is the legacy of 9/11 that first used political Islam as an instrument to destroy the Left and progressive forces in the Arab and Islamic worlds and then used militant Islam as a bogeyman, and terrorists as an excuse to re-colonise the oil-rich lands of the Middle East and North Africa such as Iraq and Libya. Saddam Hussein's Iraq had no Weapons of Mass Destruction as the hawks in Washington claimed in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The US might have dumped the body of Bin Laden in the Arabian Sea, but the Taliban still commands considerable respect among a broad spectrum of the frustrated unemployed youth and manages to be as popular as ever in Afghanistan. MAG/VPO Inside Ghana’s Abandoned Engineering Powerhouse: What Went Wrong?