This journal was started in 1999 at the dawn of the 21st Century It was aimed at providing leading edge thinking on Africa and the diaspora issues at a time when a stale orthodoxy ruled the Black academy. At the time I had a full time role as partner in a City firm and the journeying around the world consequent on the launch of the first issue made a second issue impossible! However the need for an independent and…
In an FT interview on 9 May 2022 with Henry Kissinger ( Note1 ) Kissinger let the cat out of the bag. Eighty per cent of the Russian population lives in the European part and much of the Asian part of Russia was acquired recently he said. Here Kissinger is taking 1600’s as ‘recent history’. This suggests that he is seeking to get the Russians to see themselves as ‘European’ not Asian. On the basis that Russia is mostly…
Western views of sex There is an important misunderstanding when there is a discussion about sexuality. Given the weight and power of western media western views of certain matters become dominant and understood as primary. How does this affect people from other cultures? What happens is that people from other cultures try hard to make sense of western views of sexuality and re-interpret them and so begins a trail of misunderstanding. https://imgix.ranker.com/user_node_img/22/425448/original/alessandra-ambrosio-photo-u179?auto=format&q=60&fit=crop&fm=pjpg&dpr=2&w=375 Image from Ranker.com of Alessandra Ambrosio It…
Sergey Karaganov was interviewed by Bruno Macaes for The New Statesman ( 2 April 2022) see Note 1. Karaganov speaks with the fluency and calm assurance of someone closely connected to power. His tone is factual and if anything a little weary of his audience as if to say ‘I have told you this before but you won’t listen.’ He outlined Russia’s concerns and objectives in simple language with exquisite brevity. Unlike so many commentators in the West he…
27 March 2022 US foreign policy has been expressed in terms of spreading democracy around the world. There is silence around the matter of sovereignty. Is democracy compatible with sovereignty? Democratic Party in the US has acknowledged that democracy can be corrupted in such a way as to undermine sovereignty. It is not relevant what position one takes on Russiagate. The allegation is that Russia took steps as an external power to subvert the election in the US. This…
On 8 Feb 2022 they published an article entitled: What the hard data reveals about the true state of the nation (spoiler alert: not good at all) This article goes over many features and data sets in the apparent attempt to appear detailed and objective. However, it assumes that most Africans are data ignorant and statistically uninformed. It exhibits a deliberate misuse of data. When painting a data picture of a country, the selective omission is a form of outrageous…
Went on 17 feb 22 to see a private screening of ‘Tick Tick…Boom!’ the new film by Lin-Manuel Miranda and the star of the film,Andrew Garfield, attended a Q&A. Garfield gave another great performance at the Q&A. Full of life and fire. However there is a dark side to all this. This film presents the romantic image of the starving artistic genius who struggles to achieve fame and dies young. I have never had any attachment to the image…
There was a Bristol Museum Winter Lecture by Egyptian ‘Egyptologist’ Ms Heba abd el Gawad on 10 Feb 2022. Her dialogue is between Europe and Egypt but involves no dialogue with the rest of Africa. A very fashionable presentation playing cleverly to British guilt over colonialism and presenting herself as a modern ‘revealer’. But is this honest or sincere? There is an amazing element of misuse of words. Serious issues can be concealed by such misuse of words. The…
Generally one considers European strategists to be among the smartest there are. So it is with some disappointment that I notice that they are way behind the curve. Standard concerns are: Gas Russian containment According to this view, US motives are to encourage Europe to switch to US gas from Russian gas. Alternatively, the US is seeking to mortally wound Russia. Or both. Then some criticize the US strategists because they are taking on Russia and China at the…
Andrew Jaggs has done important work in his PhD. I only have had access to an abstract (note 1) and a video interview. (Note 2). His thesis is about the relationship between ancient Egypt (Kemet) and Yoruba religion. Previously African scholars have focussed on archaeology and linguistics. But the heart of the matter is culture. It is culture that binds Africans together not skin tones. A second issue in the past has been a visible reluctance of some African…
Sometimes it may be hard to understand cultural genocide, to get a handle on it. When something has become as pervasive as this is it begins to appear normal. One of the consequences of this cultural genocide is that Black people occasionally recognise something is wrong but locate it in their own skin and seek to get out of their skin. They hypothesise that if I cease to be seen as ‘Black’ I will be free. But this prison…
