Free Republic

An academic has hit out at the ‘psychosis of whiteness’ after saying the British Empire did more damage than the Nazis. Birmingham City University’s Dr Kehinde Andrews appeared on Good Morning Britain on Monday to discuss the renaming of the MBE and OBE. He appeared alongside Breakin’ Convention founder Jonzi D, a dancer and spoken word artist, who turned down an MBE for its connection to the British Empire and the empire’s history of slavery. Jonzi D said: ‘I didn’t want the label of ‘Member of the British Empire’ on my chest.’ Piers Morgan then challenged the panel on whether...

JERUSALEM — It would be hard to find two institutions of higher learning that seem more different than Bard College, an upscale, bucolic college in Dutchess County, N.Y., and Al Quds University, a struggling, sprawling Palestinian institution in and near this disputed capital. Yet the two schools have decided to join forces in an unusual venture aimed at injecting American educational values and expertise into Palestinian society, in hopes of contributing to a future democratic State of Palestine. Although the effort has been many months in the planning, those involved say the recent war in Gaza and a political turn...

“It saddens me”, he says,” to see the white man beating his breast over and over, too emasculated to put up any resistance to people who’ve come to threaten him on his own doorstep”. He believes that a toxic mix of guilt, “human rightsism”, political naivety and crass ignorance of History have a debilitating effect on Europeans’ capacity to fight the invasion. He accuses the corrupt African leaders of destroying the lives of hundreds of millions of human beings in all impunity, but is equally critical of the ideologues who are paving the way for them. They should stop blaming...

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Leave supporters have always expounded the virtues of being outside the EU, including the ability to negotiate its own trade deals on its own terms for the benefits of its own citizens. Being part of a big gang has its advantages and disadvantages. Yes, you have to make compromises and adapt your goals to match commonly-agreed policies. But you also get the power of the bloc behind you in trade negotiations. Where does this leave Africa? The UK's International Development Secretary, Alok Sharma, is, as one would expect, very optimistic saying that Britain's relations...

Six astronauts, five space agencies and a fresh start into underground worlds to help prepare for living on other planets. ESA’s latest training adventure will equip an international crew with skills to explore uncharted terrains on the Moon and Mars, this time with a focus on the search for water. The CAVES training course takes astronauts to the depths of Earth to improve their communication, problem-solving and teamwork skills. After a week of preparations above and underground, the ‘cavenauts’ are set to explore a cave in Slovenia where they will live and work for six days. “It is all part...

There is a lot of debate these days about whether the United States owes its African-American citizens reparations for slavery. It does. But there is a far bigger bill that the United States and Europe have run up: what they owe to other countries for their colonial adventures, for the wars they imposed on them, for the inequality they have built into the world order, for the excess carbon they have dumped into the atmosphere. The creditor countries aren’t seriously suggesting that the West send sacks of gold bullion every year to India or Nigeria. Their people are asking for...

Canada is complicit in a "race-based genocide" against indigenous women, a government inquiry has found. The report cited research finding indigenous women were 12 times more likely to be killed or to disappear than other women in Canada. The inquiry blamed the crisis on deep-rooted colonialism and state inaction. Among more than 200 recommendations is a call for all Canadians to help end violence, including by learning indigenous history. The 1,200-page document released Monday is the culmination of almost three years of hearings and research by the inquiry into disproportionate violence faced by indigenous women and girls in Canada. Red...

Russia which kept Damascus standing during the civil war in Syria reaps the fruits of the efforts, receiving privileges in the region. During civil war the Syrian government resisted standing thanks to support of Russia. After the help rendered to Damascus both military, and material, Russia began to receive a response payment. The Minister of Transport of Syria Ali Hammud said that Russian company JSC "Stroytransgaz" takes control of the largest port of the country in Tartus for a period of 49 years was transferred. It is reported that the Russian company which received port will enclose investments in the...

Zimbabwe is to start paying compensation this year to thousands of white farmers who lost land under former president Robert Mugabe’s land reform nearly two decades ago, the government said, as it seeks to bring closure to a highly divisive issue. Two decades ago Mugabe’s government carried out at times violent evictions of 4,500 white farmers and redistributed the land to around 300,000 black families, arguing it was redressing imbalances from the colonial era. But land reform still divides public opinion as opponents see it as a partisan process that left the country struggling to feed itself. President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s...

In the initial media churn, they were nearly missed. But a small band of Hebrew Israelites, members of a historic but little-known American religious movement, may actually be at the center of a roiling controversy that has gripped the nation in recent days. It began with a now-viral video clip, filmed Friday at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, in which high school students from a Catholic school in Kentucky appeared to be in a faceoff with a Native American elder, who was beating on a drum. The boys, some wearing red hats with President Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan, appeared in...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) rebuked the Trump administration for its response to Hurricane Maria during a rally in Puerto Rico on Tuesday, committing to combat any diversion of federal funding from disaster relief toward building a border wall. Speaking in San Juan, Warren advocated investigating the federal response to the devastating storm, even calling for the resignation of FEMA director Brock Long. She also advocated a “Marshall Plan” for the territory and an audit of Puerto Rico’s debt, which has mired its government and infrastructure for decades. "I am hear again today to talk about the dignity and respect this...

Kenya runs the risk of losing control of the Port of Mombasa if it should default on loans from state financial institution China Exim Bank, according to a new report from Kenya's auditor general. The terms of a $2.3 billion loan for Kenya Railways Corporation (KRC) specify that the port's assets are collateral, and they are not protected by Kenya's sovereign immunity due to a waiver in the contract. "The payment arrangement agreement substantively means that the Authority's revenue would be used to pay the Government of Kenya's debt to China Exim bank if the minimum volumes required for [rail]...

More than 50,000 people have signed a petition accusing Disney of “colonialism and robbery” after it trademarked the Swahili phrase “hakuna matata”. The expression means “no problem” in Swahili, which is spoken across east Africa and is a national language of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The petition, which calls on Disney to drop its trademark, precedes the release of the company’s motion capture remake of The Lion King next summer, which will be voiced by Beyoncé, Donald Glover and Chiwetel Ejiofor. The phrase was popularised in 1982 by the Kenyan band Them Mushrooms, whose...

China is following the path that Japan took in the years leading up to the bombing of Pearl Harbor 77 years ago. Of course, China has been much more subtle, but no less aggressive. Indeed, the outcome may be worse. Some background is in order. In the year (1918) immediately after First World War, a war in which Japan was a member of the winning alliance, the Japanese expected to take their place on the world stage as major player. They were awarded many of the formerly German territories in the Pacific, but they demanded more. They demanded the formerly...

Her story was one that galvanised a movement; her face became a symbol of that movement. Savita Halappanavar died from infection after miscarrying her first child in an Irish hospital in October 2012. Her family said she pleaded for a termination during the miscarriage, but medical staff refused her requests because there was still a foetal heartbeat. Mrs Halappanavar's death caused international controversy and sparked a campaign to have Ireland's abortion law liberalised. Her story was one that galvanised a movement; her face became a symbol of that movement. Savita Halappanavar died from infection after miscarrying her first child in...

The Black Panther first entered the Marvel Cinematic Universe back in 2016 in Captain America: Civil War. Now he's got his own film, which goes way beyond the usual expectations of fantasy, fight scenes and romance. Having a plot based around a black superhero with a predominantly black cast is a first for Marvel, but the film builds on this concept in a massive way. Directed by Creed's Ryan Coogler, it is set in the mythical country of Wakanda: a hidden African kingdom with incredible technological power, due to its reserves of the world's most useful precious metal. Chadwick Boseman,...

The legalization of marijuana for medicinal or recreational use, has not, as some politicians proclaimed, eliminated the black market for cannabis. Illicit weed grows are common in California, often manned by U.S. citizens or Mexican nationals in the country illegally. Like Sollozzo in The Godfather, the Chinese are now moving in on the market. As the Sacramento Bee reports, in recent police raids, “the occupants of these grow houses have turned out to be Chinese nationals, raising questions about who is recruiting them and financing their operations.” In four California counties, police made “multiple arrests of people with Chinese...

Those who would like to soften the hard sciences may think that they are building metaphorical bridges but you might not want to drive over the physical bridges they construct. "Alas, the world we engineers envisioned as young students is not quite as simple and straightforward as we had wished because a phalanx of social justice warriors, ideologues, egalitarians, and opportunistic careerists has ensconced itself in America's college and universities," Indrek Wichman, an engineering professor at Michigan State writes in a column distributed by The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. "The destruction they have caused in the humanities...

Incredibly, it wasn’t until I was 19 that I learned that there had been a Holocaust. My hyper-assimilated, New England Jewish family and friends looked only to the present and future. We focused on the polio vaccine that promised to banish the iron lungs that had been our childhood terror. We trusted in the United Nations, whose gleaming buildings my father took me to see when they were brand-new, and from which I came away with hopeful admiration—mixed, however, with a vague sense, which I couldn’t have put into words then, that perhaps an enterprise housed in architecture so grandiosely...

Colonialists come with a veil of pretence. They show their true colours only after settling down on the territory they want to conquer. For a country (Pakistan), which is the product of 100s of years of struggle against colonialism, it shouldn’t be too hard to diagnose the colonial ambitions of a rising power, in this case China, which has now made its ambitions open to the world in the form of “One Belt, One Road (OBOR)” initiative that includes China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as a “flagship” project. Chinese official daily Global Times says, “The global economy needs new driving forces,...