Cherno, It is codswallop for you to think that gallant and brilliant could tantamount to being right. You could be both gallant and brilliant whilst being immature and verbose. The reason why i didn't attack your immaturity and Ayittey was unlike you and others, my access to the internet is limited. It is expensive to log on the internet when you have to pay for the phone bill on your own. We are not all fortunate like you. The reason why i called you gallant was simply for daring to take Halifa on when many of our intellectuals shun from it. Your rebuttal of Halifa was by any standards a brilliant piece of writing. Do you mistake this imputation of mine as meaning that you are right and Halifa wrong? You must be in special need of a session on how to read. I said Ayittey's work was not scholarly because it was dearth of data, evidence, empiricism that all hallmarks scholarly works. Frankly reading Ayittey i thought i was reading a tabloid columnist having a go at a British politician. How can you begin a scholarly castigating and deriding a personality in the mannedr of a sleazy tabloid columnist? That you couldn't discern between personality spats and scholarly works tells what your problem is. Perchance its time you take up another hobby; reading and love for details and research and not just words. My intervention on the Nyerere issue was to tell you all differently what have been saying despite your different methodologies. If your analysis of that piece is that i contradict myself then better still your love for words has not saved you from being lost in the labyrinth and friction of my writing.That you would accuse me of being Halifa 's poodle is grossly unfair for you don't know me. If you don't have the capacity to comprehend my writing then tough Mawbeh. Please continue to entertain us with that brilliant and gallant prose of yours. I strongly admire it. Cordially, Hamjatta Kanteh ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html ----------------------------------------------------------------------------