boo jan

[Yasmina @yasminalombaert]

In this powerful monologue, Joe Scarborough proves that Trump and his cronies acting as cheerleaders for putin are no different from the Nazi sympathisers of the 1930s. It’s a chilling, crystal-clear wake-up call about what happens when leaders trade American democracy for a dictator's favour.

Joe Scarborough:

“… just peeling what putin has had a collection of useful idiots across America do now for the past five years.
I really I really don't say this often in American politics. but when you're defending vladimir putin, an ex KGB agent who is committing war crimes by the day, I'm not sure how you sleep at night.
And this phenomenon though, has historical parallels. It was 89 years ago this month in October 1937, that the former king of England walked up the steps of Adolf Hitler's mountain retreat in Bavaria. The Duke of Windsor had given up the throne less than a year earlier, but he toured German factories, inspected the SS and was photographed greeting the Führer. Time Magazine reported that Hitler gave the Duke a Nazi salute as they parted and Edward returned that Nazi salute. Later he told friends that Britain shouldn't fight Hitler, the war should not start. Winston Churchill had to actually send him to the Bahamas to keep him away from his new friend in Berlin. But the Duke wasn't alone, just like Donald Trump isn't alone. Here at home, Charles Lindbergh, an American hero who accepted the medal of freedom from Hermann Goering in 1938, went on to lead America First. And in a 1941 speech in Des Moines, he blamed Jews and the British for pushing America toward war. Even FDR's US Ambassador to Britain, Joseph Kennedy, predicted democracy is finished in England. His appeasement and his lack of moral alarm cost Kennedy his job. In Britain, aristocrats like the Astors and Lord Halifax thought Hitler was a man they could do business with.

Does that sound familiar?
Sounded so respectable, trade, stability, money, peace in our time.

History remembers them now as morally vacuous opportunists who looked at a tyrant who was devouring his neighbours, the only thing they saw, a business partner.

The parallels with Trump are too on point. Now on Friday, Donald Trump got on the phone with vladimir putin who always plays him when they get on the phone and what happened? He lifted sanctions on the Russian diesel deal, he did it three weeks after Republicans had forced him to sign a Russia sanctions bill in honour of Lindsey Graham. The White House says his gift to putin will lower prices at the pump, but it won't. The first shipment is only about 2.2 million barrels and America burns through more than that every day. It's not going to lower gas prices in America. But it will help putin kill innocence in Ukraine, a country Trump has always hated. Trump's four billion dollar gift to the man he kowtows to every day will buy missiles, drones, and glide bombs that will keep terrorising and killing Ukrainians who are fighting for their country's freedom and their children's lives and yes, our freedom.
A bipartisan group of senators including Susan Collins wrote in a statement Sunday that the United States should not provide putin with a financial lifeline while Russia continues to kill Ukrainian civilians. But Trump's aping of putin’s talking points, they just keep getting worse. With this weak president attacking Ukrainian freedom fighters and perversely calling for new leadership in Kyiv. We do need new leadership, Mr. President, but not in Ukraine. Donald, I've known you a long time and I know you don't read history, so let me tell you how this story ends. The Duke of Windsor ended up a footnote, a cautionary tale in a fancy suit forever assigned to the dustbin of British history. And your time to finally do the right thing in Ukraine, Mr. President, it's running out. Stop bowing down to putin. And start doing your job.
1/2

[Professor Benjamin Zephaniah @BZephaniah]

Football gives me a feeling of standing with thousands I’d never normally stand with. Not political. Not war. Just local. Theatre, identity, community—all in one. From Birmingham, with Villa winning, you feel it. #AVFC @BirminghamRepTheatre

[Abdoulie Fatty @AFatty101]

I listen to some of these Barrow loyalists attacking Talib and Lawyer Darboe and wonder how quickly they would switch sides if either became President. From Jawara's PPP to Jammeh’s APRC and Barrow’s NPP, some political characters are only interested in proximity to power. Their loyalty is not to any leader, but to whoever holds power.

[boo jan @kaachadoo]

@AFatty101 Most of them are opportunists who lack sincerity; they are acting purely in their own self-interest rather than for the good of the country.

[Prem Sikka @premnsikka]

ITV footage shows racist, sexual, violent rhetoric among Reform members.

These lunatics say “King Charles is a f***ing Muslim… " and want him to be beheaded.

They want concentration camps for migrants, violence against minorities.

Return of the Nazis.
https://t.co/fXVOhexjvP

[Wayne Chen @wcchen]

Olaudah Equiano (16 Oct 1745–31 Mar 1797) writer and abolitionist, born 281 years ago today. Formerly enslaved, worked for his people's liberation; autobiography ‘The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano’ (1789) depicted horrors of slavery. Visited #Jamaica 1771. #Caribbean
https://t.co/mS8H7qS5nT

[Chino @ChinoUTD]

🚨 Mikel Arteta on Jurrien Timber’s performance against Lille:

“After the match, somebody asked me if Jurrien was finally back to his best.

I said, ‘No.’

They looked at me as though I’d watched a different game.

‘Mikel, he scored, you won 3–0, and he was named Player of the Match.’

I said, ‘Yes. I saw all of that.’

But when you work with a player every day, you know the difference between him playing very well and him feeling completely free again. Jurrien is getting closer. That’s what excites me.

People forget what happened when he first came here. He had barely begun his Arsenal career before that serious injury. Imagine arriving at a new club, learning your teammates, hearing the supporters sing your name, and then having to watch football from the treatment room.

There were days when he would come to training and ask questions about what we were doing tactically, even though he couldn’t join in.

I remember telling him once, ‘Jurrien, you don’t have to solve everything today.’

He said, ‘I know, coach. I just want to understand where I should be when I come back.’

That’s the person you’re dealing with.

So when you see him arrive in that position against Lille, take the ball and lift it over the goalkeeper, I don’t just see a beautiful finish. I see a player who refused to let all those months turn him into somebody who was afraid to try things.

And I laughed when I saw Noni shouting at him to shoot.

Because Noni is very good at telling people to shoot. Sometimes I wish he would give them a second to think first.

But Jurrien did think. That’s what people miss. A defender gets into the box and everybody expects him to hit the ball as hard as possible. He takes a touch, looks at the goalkeeper and chooses the difficult finish because, for him, it’s the right finish.

Afterwards I asked him, ‘Did you know you were going to chip it?’

He said, ‘Not until I saw the goalkeeper.’

I said, ‘Good. Because if you tell me you planned that from the halfway line, we’ll have to have another conversation.’

He smiled.

The trophy for Player of the Match is lovely. The goal is lovely. But the biggest thing for me is seeing him trust his body, trust his decisions, and enjoy playing again.

And now everybody keeps asking what he’ll look like when he’s 100 percent.

I don’t know exactly when that moment will come. That’s not how recovery works.

But I can tell you something.

If Jurrien can produce a performance like that while people are still asking whether he’s back to his best, you can understand why I’ve been so patient with him.

I wasn’t waiting for a right back who could score against Lille.

I was waiting for Jurrien Timber.”

[boo jan @kaachadoo]

@Oceesay @BarrowPresident I am hopeful that the votes will be tallied immediately at the polling stations. I lack confidence in the independence of both the Electoral Commission and the Chief Justice, who was appointed by the President, to ensure a free, fair, and transparent election process.

[Black Journals @blackJournals01]

The first Black woman to produce programmes for the BBC was a Jamaican poet who arrived in London in 1932 and could not find anyone who would rent her a room.

She ended up running the radio programme that launched Caribbean literature.

Then she had a breakdown and was put on a ship home.

Una Marson. She was already an editor and playwright in Jamaica when she came to Britain.

She documented the experience of looking for lodgings in a city where the signs said no coloureds, and wrote a poem about it called "Nigger" that is still hard to read.

She worked for the League of Coloured Peoples, then for Haile Selassie when he was in exile in London after the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, and sat behind him at the League of Nations.

In 1941 the BBC took her on.

By 1942 she was producing "Calling the West Indies," which began as a programme reading servicemen's messages home and which she turned into "Caribbean Voices" — the programme that broadcast and paid a generation of Caribbean writers including Derek Walcott, V.S. Naipaul, Samuel Selvon and George Lamming.

It is not an exaggeration to say modern Caribbean literature was partly built in that studio.

She was the only Black woman in the building, in wartime, producing for an organisation that was not always sure it wanted her there, and the strain was enormous.

She had a breakdown in 1945 and returned to Jamaica.

She kept working — journalism, publishing, social work — and died in 1965 at fifty-nine, largely forgotten in Britain until scholars rediscovered her in the 1990s.

She gave the Caribbean its literary voice from inside Broadcasting House and went home on a ship with a nervous collapse.

[John Simpson @JohnSimpsonNews]

I’m celebrating (if that’s quite the right word) the 60th anniversary of my arrival at the BBC in 1996. Tomorrow (Tues) at 9 pm BBC Two will mark it with a documentary, which will then be available on iPlayer. It’s been made by the brilliant Simon Lister, and does me proud.

[Wayne Chen @wcchen]

When Christopher Columbus arrived on Guanahani (San Salvador) in 1492, he encountered the Taíno people, described in his letters as "naked as the day they were born." The Taíno had complex hierarchical religious, political, and social systems. Skilled farmers and navigators, they wrote music and poetry and created powerfully expressive objects. They were the #Caribbean’s most numerous indigenous people; inhabited Cuba, #Jamaica, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. By 1550, the Taíno were close to extinction, many having succumbed to diseases brought by the Spaniards. Taíno influences survived; today appear in the beliefs, religions, language, and music of Caribbean cultures.
https://t.co/bNzc8xZFgQ

[Wayne Chen @wcchen]

To think and act by ourselves, for ourselves…
to access modernity without trampling on our authenticity.

Léopold Sédar Senghor (9 Oct 1906 – 20 Dec 2001) Senegalese poet, politician and cultural theorist; first President of Senegal (1960–80); born 120 years ago today. One of the major theoreticians of Négritude.
https://t.co/ogfKzSImFj

[Yorkshire Victor Meldrew+his dog @TheMeldrew]

Indian NHS worker harassed by an idiot and told to go home

[Crewkerne Man @CrewkerneMan]

Reform will tell you a Westerner can't move to Japan and become Japanese.

Tell that to Lafcadio Hearn. A British subject raised in Ireland, he arrived in 1890, married Koizumi Setsu, became a Japanese citizen in 1896 and took the name Koizumi Yakumo.

Today he's one of Japan's best-loved writers. His great-grandson Bon Koizumi is a respected Japanese folklorist, and NHK just made a morning drama about the family.

Japan seems to have coped.

[boo jan @kaachadoo]

Very true

[Ebrima Sonko @Sonkondeyni]

Malcolm Momodou Jallow on Amat Bah's tribal rhetoric.

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

Kemi Badenoch, "I don't want to live in a country run by people.. who debate whether my mixed race children are English"

"I don't want to explain to my son, when we're watching our brilliant England team play football, that some people don't think our black players are English"

"I remember back in when day when Ian Wright and John Barnes were playing, nobody questioned whether they were English"

"We certainly didn't have sitting MPs - like former Conservative Attorney General and Home Secretary Suella Braverman who has now joined Reform UK - questioning whether they were English"

"We must not let these people take us backwards, that is not the country that we are"

"Reform UK MPs are openly questioning people's identity, they are not like us, we are not like them, we are different, we are the Conservative party"

My view: Badenoch is right to reject the politics of racial exclusion. No child should grow up being told that their nationality, belonging or love of their country is somehow conditional on the colour of their skin.

But it is extraordinary to hear it framed as though the Conservatives have consistently stood apart from this politics.

For years, too many Conservatives indulged or amplified the same culture-war rhetoric: portraying migrants and minorities as a threat, treating citizenship and belonging as conditional, and refusing to confront those in their own ranks who racialised who gets to be “properly” British.

Suella Braverman did not emerge from nowhere. She was promoted by the Conservative Party to be Attorney General and then Home Secretary, and was repeatedly defended by senior Conservatives while using inflammatory language about immigration, multiculturalism and identity.

The party cannot now act as though she was simply an outsider whose politics had nothing to do with it.

The contrast with Reform is real in tone and increasingly in substance.

But the Conservatives cannot credibly present themselves as the antidote without acknowledging how often they helped normalise the ground Reform now occupies.

Britain belongs equally to everyone who calls it home—not merely to those some politicians decide look or sound English enough.

[Wayne Chen @wcchen]

Slavery was abolished in Cuba only 140 years ago, on 7 Oct 1886. Over one million Africans were abducted to the island, starting 1513; part of the Atlantic slave trade. A brutal, dehumanising institution not as far in the past as many would like to believe. #Caribbean #Cuba
https://t.co/Q2mwpNq6yi

[Freddie Jackson @FreddieJrnb]

It is with profound sadness that we share the passing of our beloved Freddie Jackson. More than a legendary voice, Freddie was a kind, generous soul whose music became the soundtrack to our lives. Details regarding arrangements will follow. Rest in peace, Freddie. 🕊️❤ The Family

[boo jan @kaachadoo]

@FreddieJrnb Rest in peace. Sad news.

[boo jan @kaachadoo]

It is fascinating to learn about your Senegambian heritage. Thank you, Wayne, for sharing this information in your tweet.

[Wayne Chen @wcchen]

Henri Christophe (6 Oct 1767-8 Oct 1820) born 259 years ago today, in #Grenada. Formerly enslaved; became a leader in #Haitian Revolution; 1804 claimed independence from France. 1807 elected President of the north, turned it into a kingdom; declared himself Henry I, King of #Haiti. #Caribbean
https://t.co/4ZsR8sE4ni