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Europe
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Jayson retweeted
Several Jews participated in the Holocaust. They led their people to their deaths and benefited greatly from it.
There is no history that White people remember and ensure the entire world remembers that doesn't have participants from the victims.
It is never used to diminish the Holocaust. In fact, you, Suella, would be apologising on Twitter and would have visited every Synagogue in London if an MP ever said this about the Holocaust.
This is exactly why we need to discuss a confrontation and a formal apology. Grave sins, and even outright insults like this about slavery, are very well acceptable. The Caribbeans, who, by the way, still largely have the King as a head of state, are talked down to and silenced when they call for their own reckoning.
Even "memory" to a white supremacist poster child like you is something only reserved for the European colonialist descendants. That is how badly this has gotten.
Africans fully participated in the slave trade at Elmina, Ghana.
Trade records from the Dutch West India Company, Royal African Company, and Danish ledgers from Elmina, Cape Coast show African rulers and merchants negotiating prices, quantities, and terms with European factors.
African brokers and rulers controlled who could trade and where.
African-authored testimony, for example, Ottobah Cugoano, a Fante man enslaved around 1770, wrote that he was kidnapped by fellow Africans and sold into slavery.
In fact the Asante expansion in modern-day Ghana involved conquering neighbours like Denkyira, Akyem, and Gonja. The prisoners taken in those wars- by Africans- supplied both the coastal trade and domestic labour.
The fort archaeology from excavations at Elmina, Cape Coast, and inland Asante sites back all of this up.
On your logic, the government of Ghana should be apologising for their involvement in slavery.
Jayson retweeted
I have always been fascinated by a particular breed of African politicians in Europe who seem to have made it their life’s ambition to be more British than the British, more French than the French, and more hostile to Africans and immigrants than the most rabid nationalists in their adopted political circles.
You find them in Britain, France, Belgium and across Europe, particularly in countries that once colonized Africa. Many are the children of African immigrants, sometimes the first generation born in Europe, whose parents arrived in those countries as foreigners. Yet their children have somehow developed an almost religious devotion to the most reactionary interpretations of European nationalism. They speak about immigration as though their own parents descended from the heavens with citizenship certificates in their hands.
And I am not talking about Africans who happen to be conservative. I am talking about those who appear determined to prove their loyalty to their political constituencies by expressing a degree of contempt for immigrants, Africans and their own ancestral history that would embarrass even some European conservatives. The irony would be hilarious if its consequences were not so serious.
Because these politicians occupy a particularly convenient position in the racial politics of Europe. Their African ancestry gives certain political movements an opportunity to present deeply contested positions on immigration, race and colonial history through someone whose very presence is then offered as proof that racism could not possibly be involved.
It is the political equivalent of the racist who insists that he cannot be racist because he once dated a Black woman. Except that this time, instead of producing a Black girlfriend, they produce a Black politician with an African surname and a spectacular appetite for defending their ideological prejudices.
What particularly disgusts me is the historical revisionism that sometimes accompanies this performance. Imagine being so desperate to demonstrate your European patriotism that you begin defending an imperial history whose victims included people who looked like your grandparents.
And for what? To prove that you are sufficiently British? Sufficiently French? That your African ancestry has been politically disinfected to the satisfaction of your audience? I find this obsession with proving oneself more authentically European than Europeans themselves intellectually fascinating and morally disturbing.
This is the context in which I examine Kemi Badenoch’s politics. Badenoch is entitled to her conservative convictions, just as anyone else is entitled to challenge them. But her Nigerian heritage does not make her interpretation of British colonial history more credible, nor does it make her positions on race and immigration immune from criticism.
Jayson retweeted
I am thoroughly exhausted by the intellectual gymnastics and extraordinary moral cowardice that emerge whenever Africans and people of African descent raise the question of reparations for slavery and colonialism.
Every time we discuss the transatlantic slave trade, someone rushes to remind us that Europeans were not the only people who enslaved Africans. There was the Arab slave trade, they say. Africans sold other Africans, they insist, as though they have just unearthed some extraordinary historical revelation capable of absolving Europe of centuries of organized human exploitation.
And what exactly is the argument here? That because several people participated in a crime, none of them should be held accountable? That the involvement of an African merchant somehow diminished the suffering of the African who was sold? What a spectacular bankruptcy of moral reasoning.
Yes, some Africans participated in the slave trade. Some African monarchs, merchants and elites profited from the trafficking of human beings. These are historical realities that deserve serious examination. We can even discuss the Afro-Brazilian returnees who settled along the West African coast. Some were formerly enslaved Africans who had obtained their freedom in Brazil, returned to Africa and subsequently participated in the very trade that had once deprived them of their own liberty. Joaquim d’Almeida, for example, was enslaved in Brazil, obtained his freedom, returned to West Africa and became a slave trader. Francisco Félix de Souza, a Brazilian-born merchant, built an immense commercial enterprise around the trafficking of enslaved Africans from Ouidah.
We can examine the royal families, merchant dynasties and political institutions that benefited from this commerce. We can investigate the fortunes accumulated, the properties acquired and the privileges transmitted across generations. I have absolutely no objection to holding African historical actors accountable for their participation in slavery. But now that we have identified some of the sellers, can we please return to the people who were SOLD? Can we talk about their descendants?
Can we talk about the millions of human beings whose bodies became commercial merchandise, whose children were born into captivity and whose descendants were subsequently denied access to land, education, property, political equality and economic opportunity for centuries?
The participation of an African king in the slave trade does not absolve the European merchant who purchased human beings, the shipowner who transported them, the banker who financed the enterprise, the plantation owner who extracted their labor or the governments that legalized and protected the entire system for centuries.
And then comes my favorite exhibition of historical illiteracy, the claim that Europeans today cannot be expected to pay for the sins of their ancestors. How convenient!
Apparently, nations can inherit the wealth of their ancestors, the institutions of their ancestors, the territories acquired by their ancestors, the commercial advantages secured by their ancestors and the accumulated prosperity produced by centuries of exploitation. Oh they can even compensate the slave owners for freeing their slaves. But the moment we discuss the obligations attached to that inheritance, history suddenly becomes irrelevant. You can inherit the estate, but apparently the debts buried beneath its foundations must remain with the dead.
What an extraordinary understanding of justice!
Jayson retweeted
Please take a few minutes to read this exceptional response to from @Farida_N.
Farida is a writer, Pan-Africanist and human rights activist from Togo, who has spent much of her life fighting authoritarianism and campaigning for democracy.
Her response is a powerful reminder of the sheer scale of Britain's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, and the extraordinary wealth accumulated through the exploitation of millions of people.
But there's an even bigger conversation we need to have.
The exploitation didn't simply end with the abolition of slavery. It continued through colonialism, resource extraction, unequal trade and economic systems that concentrated wealth and power in the hands of a few.
And the consequences are still with us.
Look at the extraordinary imbalance in global wealth, economic power and governance today. Look at how much of the world's resources come from poorer nations, and how much of the wealth generated ultimately accumulates elsewhere.
This isn't simply about assigning blame for the past, or even reparations.
It's about confronting the structures that continue to perpetuate inequality today.
We cannot change history. But we absolutely can change the economic system that continues to reproduce so many of its injustices.
Please read Farida's response. And consider not just what happened in the past, but what we're still allowing to happen today.
Kemi, congratulations on leading a major British party as a Black Woman. It takes real talent to rise to where you are and deceit is what it takes to rise as a Black leader in a western Conservative Party.
It is a pity the climb did not leave room for a history book and since you chose to argue in the language of history, let us do the history. Let’s dissect your verbal diarrhea point by point.
Everyone participated." Slavery existed on every continent. So did war, and nobody calls a village feud the World War. The transatlantic trade ran for 366 years (1501 to 1866) and put about 12.5 million Africans on ships, of whom about 1.8 million died before they saw the Americas, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. It ran through joint-stock companies, chartered monopolies, Lloyd's underwriters and acts of Parliament. It was hereditary, because the law made the child of an enslaved mother property from birth. It was racial, because a whole continent was defined as chattel. No other system in history combined those features at that scale. Dissolving all of it into "people from every continent" is far worse than intellectual dishonesty.
Britain was a market leader, not a participant. British ships carried about 3.2 million Africans, second only to Portugal and Brazil. The Treaty of Utrecht (1713) gave Britain the asiento, a thirty-year monopoly to supply 4,800 enslaved Africans a year to Spanish America. The Royal African Company, chartered in 1672 and headed by the Duke of York, later James II, branded its captives "DY". During Edward Colston's years in its leadership it shipped about 84,000 people, and roughly 19,000 died on the way.
You say British taxpayers should not answer for what happened before they were born. They did. In 1833 Britain borrowed £20 million to compensate slaveholders, and taxpayers serviced that loan until 2015, including the descendants of the enslaved. So the principle you invoke was not applied when the cheque went to slaveholders. It only appears when the cheque changes direction.
"Navel-gazing" is a curious charge from someone whose party spends more energy on the past (Empire nostalgia, culture war crusades) than most of those you accuse. Defend Britain if you must. But do not use your Nigerian name as the permission slip for arguments Nigerians know better than anyone.
Jayson retweeted
We cannot reach our destination if we do not start the journey.
Barbados will meet this opening for dialogue with purpose. We will carry our history to the table, speak plainly and respectfully about our differences with the United Kingdom on reparations and pursue agreements that can improve lives.
Guided by CARICOM’s Ten Point Plan, we seek an apology, investment in health and education, and fairer debt terms for vulnerable states.
Our children must inherit more than the consequences of the past. They must inherit the progress we have the courage to make.
Jayson retweeted
STATEMENT FROM THE CHAIR OF THE CARIBBEAN COMMUNITY,
THE HON. PHILIP J. PIERRE, PRIME MINISTER OF SAINT LUCIA |
REPARATORY JUSTICE
The Caribbean Community has taken careful note of the remarks published by the Right Honourable Andy Burnham MP, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, on Britain's role in the transatlantic trafficking and chattel enslavement of African bodies ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting which opens in Antigua and Barbuda on Sunday.
Let me begin by recognising what is new.
Prime Minister Burnham has expressed personal sorrow and regret for the suffering caused by slavery and its continuing effects on the world today. He has said that he is open to a formal apology on behalf of the British state, and he has offered a structured dialogue with those affected. No British Prime Minister has gone this far before. It would be wrong of us not to say so, and we welcome it in the spirit in which it appears to be offered. For more than a decade, this Community has asked for exactly such a dialogue.
We are ready to engage.
But friendship requires candour, and so I must be equally clear about where we differ.
The Caribbean Community does not accept that reparations are "not the right answer". Nor do we accept the argument that responsibility falls away because the people of Britain today played no personal part in these crimes. Reparatory justice has never been about individual guilt. It is about the responsibility of states and institutions — and that responsibility does not expire with the passing of generations. We do believe that the successive generations continue to be the beneficiaries, materially, socially and psychologically of that crime of racialised chattel enslavement.
Read the Chair's complete Statement here:
caricom.org/statement-from-t…
Jayson retweeted
Kemi, congratulations on leading a major British party as a Black Woman. It takes real talent to rise to where you are and deceit is what it takes to rise as a Black leader in a western Conservative Party.
It is a pity the climb did not leave room for a history book and since you chose to argue in the language of history, let us do the history. Let’s dissect your verbal diarrhea point by point.
Everyone participated." Slavery existed on every continent. So did war, and nobody calls a village feud the World War. The transatlantic trade ran for 366 years (1501 to 1866) and put about 12.5 million Africans on ships, of whom about 1.8 million died before they saw the Americas, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database. It ran through joint-stock companies, chartered monopolies, Lloyd's underwriters and acts of Parliament. It was hereditary, because the law made the child of an enslaved mother property from birth. It was racial, because a whole continent was defined as chattel. No other system in history combined those features at that scale. Dissolving all of it into "people from every continent" is far worse than intellectual dishonesty.
Britain was a market leader, not a participant. British ships carried about 3.2 million Africans, second only to Portugal and Brazil. The Treaty of Utrecht (1713) gave Britain the asiento, a thirty-year monopoly to supply 4,800 enslaved Africans a year to Spanish America. The Royal African Company, chartered in 1672 and headed by the Duke of York, later James II, branded its captives "DY". During Edward Colston's years in its leadership it shipped about 84,000 people, and roughly 19,000 died on the way.
You say British taxpayers should not answer for what happened before they were born. They did. In 1833 Britain borrowed £20 million to compensate slaveholders, and taxpayers serviced that loan until 2015, including the descendants of the enslaved. So the principle you invoke was not applied when the cheque went to slaveholders. It only appears when the cheque changes direction.
"Navel-gazing" is a curious charge from someone whose party spends more energy on the past (Empire nostalgia, culture war crusades) than most of those you accuse. Defend Britain if you must. But do not use your Nigerian name as the permission slip for arguments Nigerians know better than anyone.
Slavery was an evil in which people from every continent and region participated. We should be honest about the whole history, not select the parts that are politically convenient today, especially given Britain's leading role in ending the transatlantic slave trade.
If Caribbean countries are asking Britain for a formal apology for Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, will they also be asking the same of the descendants of African kingdoms, rulers and merchants who captured, sold and profited from the trade?
On demands for reparations, whether through cash or debt relief, we have been down this track before. Twenty-five years ago, Jubilee 2000, Drop the Debt and Make Poverty History argued that cancelling the debts of poorer countries would give them a fresh start. More than $100 billion of debt was eventually written off, but many of those countries have since built up even bigger debts. Labour are already spending too much on Britain's welfare state, now is not the time for Andy Burnham to be providing global welfare.
There is no reason British taxpayers today should be held financially responsible for things that happened generations before any of us were born. And I have even less patience for political elites in commonwealth countries who don’t know how to make their own citizens prosperous now looking for another opportunity to blame Britain.
As Prime Minister, Andy Burnham should be Britain’s greatest defender. Instead, he is writing articles saying we need to confront our history (as if we haven't done enough of that) and considering another formal historical apology. Tony Blair already expressed Britain’s deep sorrow and regret for our role in the slave trade nearly twenty years ago. There is no need to do so again.
This is all another navel-gazing distraction. The Commonwealth should be looking forward, not endlessly backwards. That means economic partnerships to make us all richer and deeper military and security cooperation against common threats. If every Commonwealth summit becomes an exercise in presenting Britain with demands for cash then we need to start asking if it is worth the effort.
Jayson retweeted
You say we should be honest about the whole history and not just the convenient parts. I agree so let's do that.
African rulers and merchants did sell captives into the Atlantic trade. Nobody serious denies it and plenty of Africans have faced it openly. Benin's president, Mathieu Kérékou, apologised for his country's part in 1999. Ghana spent years building reconciliation projects with the diaspora around exactly this history. Africa has been looking at its own role for a long time. The question is whether Britain is willing to look at its own with the same honesty.
Because the scale was never equal. The ships were British, French, Portuguese and Dutch. So were the insurance, the financing, the ports, the sugar plantations and the laws that turned human beings into property. British vessels alone carried more than three million Africans across the Atlantic. A local chief selling captives on the coast didn't build Bristol or Liverpool. The demand and the machinery came from Europe and Britain sat near the top of it for most of the 18th and 19th century.
You mention Britain's role in ending the trade and that part deserves credit. The rest of that story matters too. When Britain abolished slavery in 1833 it paid £20 million in compensation, around 40% of the Treasury's annual budget at the time. Every penny went to the slave owners. The enslaved received nothing and were made to keep working for their former owners as apprentices for years afterwards. That's the part of the history people find inconvenient.
Then there's your point about taxpayers. You say nobody alive today should pay for something that happened generations ago. British taxpayers were paying off the loan that funded that compensation until 2015. The Treasury confirmed it so British taxpayers today have already paid for slavery. They paid to compensate the people who owned human beings. The descendants of the people who were owned are the only ones who have never received anything.
If the argument is that the present shouldn't pay for the past, the British state already settled that question when it chose who to pay.
On debt relief, I'm the last person who'll defend corrupt African and Caribbean elites. I spend most of my time criticising Ghana's leaders for mismanaging our country and I'll keep doing it but writing off debt in the 2000s was never reparations. Most of that debt was owed to Western lenders in the first place & much of it on terms that kept poor countries dependent on selling raw materials. Cancelling some of it was the lenders tidying up their books. It wasn't anyone acknowledging the centuries of extraction that left these economies where they started.
Tony Blair expressed deep sorrow in 2006. Sorrow is something you express at a funeral you weren't responsible for. Caribbean governments are asking for a formal acknowledgement from the state that profited which is a different thing entirely. CARICOM's plan asks for an apology, help with public health and education and debt cancellation. Calling that global welfare tells me you haven't read it @KemiBadenoch
As for looking forward and not backwards the Asante gold looted from Kumasi in 1874 was still sitting in British museums until 2024 when some of it was lent... not returned to the Asantehene for his jubilee. The past isn't behind anyone while Britain is still holding it in glass cases.
Nobody is asking the average British worker to feel guilty for what their great-great-grandparents did. We're asking the British state, the same institution that ran the trade and compensated the slave owners to deal honestly with what it did. A country that's proud of its history should be able to handle all of it....the part where it ended the trade and the part where it built its wealth on it.
You're right that the Commonwealth should look forward. It just can't do that properly while one side keeps insisting the other has nothing to complain about @KemiBadenoch
Slavery was an evil in which people from every continent and region participated. We should be honest about the whole history, not select the parts that are politically convenient today, especially given Britain's leading role in ending the transatlantic slave trade.
If Caribbean countries are asking Britain for a formal apology for Britain’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, will they also be asking the same of the descendants of African kingdoms, rulers and merchants who captured, sold and profited from the trade?
On demands for reparations, whether through cash or debt relief, we have been down this track before. Twenty-five years ago, Jubilee 2000, Drop the Debt and Make Poverty History argued that cancelling the debts of poorer countries would give them a fresh start. More than $100 billion of debt was eventually written off, but many of those countries have since built up even bigger debts. Labour are already spending too much on Britain's welfare state, now is not the time for Andy Burnham to be providing global welfare.
There is no reason British taxpayers today should be held financially responsible for things that happened generations before any of us were born. And I have even less patience for political elites in commonwealth countries who don’t know how to make their own citizens prosperous now looking for another opportunity to blame Britain.
As Prime Minister, Andy Burnham should be Britain’s greatest defender. Instead, he is writing articles saying we need to confront our history (as if we haven't done enough of that) and considering another formal historical apology. Tony Blair already expressed Britain’s deep sorrow and regret for our role in the slave trade nearly twenty years ago. There is no need to do so again.
This is all another navel-gazing distraction. The Commonwealth should be looking forward, not endlessly backwards. That means economic partnerships to make us all richer and deeper military and security cooperation against common threats. If every Commonwealth summit becomes an exercise in presenting Britain with demands for cash then we need to start asking if it is worth the effort.
Jayson retweeted
I have met Meghan Sussex. I met her this year, at an event we were both at. She is not at all like the media, and her haters, portray her to be. They have spent years dehumanising her, and creating a whole caricature of a person that doesn't exist.
There were many people at the event we were at. Meghan asked her staff (we found out via organisers later) to ensure she had time to meet us all personally, one on one.
She asked each of us our names and we all had the time to have a conversation with her, about anything we chose to discuss.
My teenage daughter had drawn a picture of Guy, so we discussed my daughter, my family. I also told her of the wonderful support that she had from people of all walks of life. She had greeted me with a warm hug but after our discussion, as I went to walk away, she grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze.
She was at the event to do a Q&A. We were all able to submit a question for her to answer. The questions varied from her business plans, to her kids, to Harry, friendships, the media, how she copes with the constant criticism and hate.
She answered all questions.
We learnt a lot about Archie and Lili that I haven't seen in the public sphere so wont repeat. We learnt just how strong her marriage is. They are still smitten ( Harry was also present although he didnt speak. He was there to support Meghan)
She spoke on how she deals with the constant hate and criticism. On how sad she is that the media has turned her into a caricature that isn't her at all. A caricature that isn't a version of her that any who know her recognise. She expressed sadness that people who don't know her believe this is who she is, but has resigned herself to the fact that people will believe what they choose to believe and there is nothing that she can do to change it. So she is determined to stay true to herself and live her life as authentically as she can.
I, as a RN/midwife and former mental health nurse, am a pretty good judge of character. We are trained to look for signs and red flags. There was nothing fake about Meghan. She was warm. Genuinely warm. She was extremely funny, something that I didnt know about her before. She glowed, literally. She had an aura about her that made it easy to see why so many in her real life are drawn to her, and perhaps why so many feel threatened, and she is extremely intelligent.
She didn't speak on the royal family at all. I'm certain those in the room wouldn't have asked her to.
There were people in attendance that were not Meghan supporters. I spoke to a few who went just to hear what she had to say. All came away extremely impressed.
So, they can blame her, hate her, judge her but, I know how she made me feel and how she treated me. So I will always support her, and defend her unapologetically.
I am so glad that my favourite Prince found her.
❤️
#MeghanSussex
#MeghanandHarry
#IstandwithMeghan
#AsEver
Jayson retweeted
I hate commenting on this.
I have had this surgery. I have literally never had any issue whatsoever. Can orgasm easily. Don’t have to dilate because I have always had male partners.
The right wing and trans women who like having penises want you believe it’s dangerous. It is not.
Transgender actress Hunter Schafer has revealed she underwent gender-affirming bottom surgery trib.al/XVYKFm8 🔗
Jayson retweeted
«In tennis love means nothing»
Bande-annonce de FORTY LOVE, un film de Pierre-Ange Carlotti avec Paul Kircher, Guillaume Canet, Romeo Beckham, Benjamin Voisin et la participation de Catherine Deneuve. Au cinéma le 25 novembre.
Avant-première mondiale le 17 novembre à Paris : bit.ly/4jnatoH 🔥
Trailer for FORTY LOVE, a film by Pierre-Ange Carlotti starring Paul Kircher, Guillaume Canet, Romeo Beckham, Benjamin Voisin, with a special appearance by Catherine Deneuve. In French theaters November 25 and coming soon worldwide.
World Premiere November 17 in Paris : bit.ly/4jnatoH🔥
