IMAGE/Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar (Egypt), Popular Chorus, 1949.
The US-backed genocide in Gaza has led to a precipitous loss in the population’s life expectancy. Even as the ceasefire allows aid to enter Gaza, this profound demographic loss will take generations to revert.
The idea of a ceasefire is as old as the idea of war. In old records,
one reads of halts in firing for humans to eat or sleep. Rules of
combat developed out of an understanding that both sides had to rest or
refresh themselves. Sometimes, this understanding included the lives of
animals. During the Easter Rising in 1916, for instance, the Irish
rebels and the British troops stopped
their shooting around St. Stephen’s Green in Dublin so that James
Kearney, the park keeper, could enter and feed the ducks. It was this caesura, or pause, of gunfire that popularised the term ‘ceasefire’.
For Palestinians in Gaza, any ceasefire that promises to stop the
bombardment and allow for the arrival of humanitarian aid (particularly
food, water, medicine, and blankets) is a relief. In the days since 19
January, when a temporary ceasefire went into effect, aid at scale has
been able to reach Gazans, United Nations Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs spokesperson Jens Laerke confirmed. On the first day of the ceasefire, 630 trucks entered
Gaza – many more than the fifty to one hundred trucks per day that
struggled to get in during the Israeli bombing. These trucks are
‘getting food in, opening bakeries, getting healthcare, restocking
hospitals, repairing water networks, repairing shelter, family
reunifications’, and carrying out other essential work, Laerke said.
After almost five hundred days of genocidal violence, this aid is more
than a relief. It is a lifeline. But this ceasefire agreement had first
been tabled
in May 2024, when it was approved by the Israeli government and later
agreed to by Hamas until ultimately being rejected by Netanyahu. The
guns could have been silenced then.
Palestine has been deeply impacted by the genocide. Using estimates from the United Nations’ World Population Prospects 2024,
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and Global South Insights
analysed the decline in Palestinian life expectancy caused by the
Israeli bombardment in Gaza and found that Palestinian life expectancy
at birth fell by 11.5 years between 2022 and 2023, from a respectable
76.7 years in 2022 to just 65.2 years in 2023. It was the first three
months of the US-backed Israeli bombing – from October to December 2023 –
that brought about this terrible decline in total life expectancy. We
are not aware of such a rapid decline in life expectancy at any other
period of modern human history. A Palestinian life is now more than
seventeen years shorter than an Israeli one. This gap is greater than
that which existed between blacks and whites in apartheid South Africa,
which was fifteen years in 1980.
Eleven and a half years lost per Palestinian. That is almost 60
million years lost for the remaining 5.2 million Palestinians who have
remained in Palestine and survived the genocide. This loss cannot easily
be recovered. It will take years of immense work to rebuild Palestinian
society and reach anything near the pre-genocide life expectancy.
Health systems will need to be rebuilt: not only hospitals and clinics,
which were almost all destroyed in Gaza, but new doctors and nurses will
have to be trained to replace those who were killed. Food systems will
need to be recovered: not only bakeries, but fields will need to be
detoxified and fishing boats repaired. Housing will need to be rebuilt
to replace the 92% of homes in Gaza that were destroyed or damaged (what the UN has called a ‘domicide’).
Schools will need to be rebuilt. The mental trauma that afflicts
children will need to be healed so that they feel that these structures
are not graves but places of safety and learning.
When Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared on
a Jan. 10, 2025, episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” he lamented
that corporate culture had become too “feminine,” suppressing its “masculine energy” and abandoning supposedly valuable traits such as aggression.
Perhaps not surprisingly, Zuckerberg has also embraced stereotypically masculine pursuits in his personal life. He’s become a mixed martial arts aficionado and has shared his affinity for smoking meats. On his expansive Hawaii compound, he’s even taken up bow-and-arrow pig hunting.
He’s come a long way from the geeky image of his youth.
But is Zuckerberg right? Do workplaces in the U.S. need to embrace a more diesel-fueled, street-fighting, meat-eating mentality?
In 2018, sociologist Jennifer Berdahl and her colleagues coined the term “masculinity contest culture” to describe workplaces rife with cutthroat competition, toxic leadership, bullying and harassment.
Integrating decades of prior research
on masculinity in the workplace, Berdahl and her collaborators were
able to map how masculinity contest cultures operate, as well as show
how they affect organizations and individual employees.
In her experiments, she had participants agree or disagree with
statements such as “expressing any emotion other than anger or pride is
seen as weak,” based on their perceptions of their own organization. Using advanced statistical techinques,
Berdahl’s team was able to distill masculinity contest cultures down to
four components: “showing no weakness,” “strength and stamina,”
“putting work first” and “dog eat dog.”
Then they were able to show how these cultures are tied to a host of negative outcomes for workers and companies, such as burnout, turnover and poor well-being.
And at the organization level, they can foment a dysfunctional office
environment, toxic leadership and even bullying and harassment.
What, then, led Zuckerberg to claim that the workplace has been
neutered and must be infused with masculine energy? Has the American
office really gone full “Legally Blonde”?
Argentine startup Nippy aggregates data from gig workers and sells it to companies like Mastercard and Movistar, who in turn offer workers their services.
Nippy has set up rest stops for gig workers in Argentina, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic.
The startup makes money by selling workers’ data to companies that offer benefits to gig workers.
Workers told Rest of World they did not know Nippy was selling their data.
Every day, Fredy Ivan Alba Trejo bikes for over an hour through busy
highways to reach pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods of Mexico City where
he works as a food delivery worker for Rappii.
His biggest challenge during the day is finding a reliable spot to
use the restroom or charge his phone in an area that is far away from
his home. Most restaurants don’t allow gig workers like him to use their
facilities and shopping centers insist they leave their backpacks and
helmets outside. “But by doing so we risk getting everything stolen,”
the 29-year-old told Rest of World.
A few months ago, he found a solution to this problem when he
discovered a gig workers’ pit stop run by Nippy, an Argentine startup
that has built a business around the lack of spaces and benefits for
workers like Alba Trejo. The company rents out small storefronts where
gig workers can use clean toilets and get coffee free of charge — in
exchange for downloading Nippy’s app. Nippy makes money by processing
and selling the data workers register on the app to financial,
insurance, and telecommunications companies it has partnered with.
Priscilla Chan, her husband Mark Zuckerberg of Meta/Facebook, Lauren Sanchez, her fiance Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Sundar Pichai of Alphabet/Google, and Elon Musk of Space X in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington DC on Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, for the 60th Presidential Inauguration. IMAGE/AP/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, Poo/The Hill
Nothing can be more diametric and tragic than an unfolding fascist, joined by some of the world’s most richest men, being sworn-in for the second time on January 20, 2025 on the official Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
On August 28, 1963, in the US capital, Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., addressing a rally at the March On Washington D.C., dreamt:
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self evident; that all men are created equal.'”
Dr. King’s dream will have to wait until the current system gets destroyed due to its arrogance, terrorism, violence, and overstretch; or, the people in the US revolt to change the over rotten almost two and a half century exploitive capitalist system.
On January 20, 2025, the billionaires, who consider themselves more equal than all other men (women and genders) got their dream for absolute freedom to loot, realized. Martin Luther King Day was turned into Billionaires Maximum Sovereignty Day.
Mind you, the rich have always been in power in the US; it’s just that whatever little facade of restraint there was, is being removed rapidly.
The rich have been running this country since its inception but preferred, mostly, to maintain a thin veneer. However, with Trump, a billionaire, who is more exhibitionist than President Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (1901-1909), things were bound to change, and indeed they did. The tech billionaires, Fox News hosts, and big donors were inside the Capitol Rotunda whereas Republican governors such as Florida’s Ron DeSantis, Mississippi’s Tate Reeves, Georgia’s Brian Kemp, Indiana’s Mike Braun, and Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin, were dumped in the Emancipation Hall overflow viewing space. In fact, they do belong there. What are most of the governors, mayors, elected officials, and even presidents? They are merely agents of the filthy rich.
The rich were sitting in the front row but the Trump’s cabinet members were in the row behind.
Many individuals and corporations donated more than $170 million to cover the expenses for inauguration and related events.
Billionaires pageant
Jeff Bezos, the 2nd richest person had this banner on his newspaper Washington Post, bought in 2013: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Now he should change it to “Democracy Shines in Orange Glow.” Washington Post, which had been endorsing presidential candidates for almost 40 years, refrained in 2024 from endorsing Kamala Harris under pressure from Bezos. He wanted to play safe and continue to get his government contracts with the new government — whether under Harris or Trump. Bezos is “extraordinarily aggressive” and uses various tactics to get contracts. (200,000 digital subscribers of Post were angered by non-endorsement and cancelled their subscription. It doesn’t make much difference to the second richest person. Boycotting Amazon services could hurt him to some extent.)
But Zuckerberg himself is fearful of Trump; who knows what he is hiding. The unpaid taxes, his company Facebook registered in Ireland, and so on. He knows how vengeful Trump <1> is. In January 2021, after the then president Trump incited attack on US Capitol, Zuckerberg’s Facebook and Instagram sites removed Trump from both platforms. In 2023, both accounts were reinstated but with “new guardrails in place to deter repeat offenses.” The guardrails were removed in July 2024. Around that period, Trump had threatened to put Zuckerberg behind bars, if re-elected. Zuckerberg also ended third party fact checking program on his sites; now whatever Trump, Musk, and their acolytes say will be treated as fact and so no checking will be needed.
On January 27, 2025, Meta announced it will “allow more free speech by lifting restrictions.” According to Intercept, the training materials include the following racist, anti LQBTQ, anti immigrants, hateful statements: “Black people are more violent than whites,” “Mexican immigrants are trash,” “transpeople are immoral,” “gays are freaks,” “immigrants are grubby filthy pieces of shit,” or the description “look at that tranny [i.e., transgender person],” under the photo of a 17-year-old girl.
Mukesh Ambani, an Indian billionaire who has 250 plus companies, including electronic and print media, under his Reliance Empire, never misses a chance to show off his wealth nor lose an opportunity to put as many people as he can around him to show them he’s the boss. Former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a Democrat, attended his daughter’s lavish wedding in 2018, which cost $100 million. Ivanka Trump, her husband and daughter, were also guests at Mukesh Ambani’s son’s $600-million extravagant wedding in 2024. <2>
Miriam Adelson, very impressed by what Trump did for Israel, wished in 2019 for a “Book of Trump” in the Bible. Adelson donated $100 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign. Now perhaps Trump deserves an entire new Bible for his grand plan to cleanse Gaza of Palestinians and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” This heist was first proposed by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son in law.
Sundar Pichai was there too. Like an obedient billionaire, Pichai didn’t disappoint the Dear Leader. The Dear Leader wanted a name change and Pichai’s Google agreed to change “Gulf of Mexico” to “Gulf of America.” If tomorrow, the Dear Leader says the “Planet Earth” should be called “Planet America,” Pichai’s Google will do it. Google has also gone back on its promise to not develop AI (artificial intelligence) weapons “that cause or are likely to cause overall harm.”
Elon Musk, the richest person on earth, is Trump’s non-elected Secretary of Firing — not executions, at least, not yet, but sacking federal employees and throwing them at the mercy of billionaires like him. Musk spent invested almost $300 million dollars of his own on Trump campaign and so will remain busy for quite some time to recover the investment and realize unlimited profit. (Taylor Swift could have saved us from Musk but she didn’t.)
Bill Gates did not attend the inauguration but had kissed His Fascistness‘s ass when he had a three-hour audience with Trump shortly after Christmas. Gates had given $50 million to Kamala Harris’ 2024 campaign just three or so months ago. Billionaires, for whom increasing profit without paying taxes is the main goal, are good at changing sides; people evolve, but billionaires evolve extra fast. According to Gates, it was a “long and actually quite intriguing dinner.” Gates was also “impressed” by Trump’s interest in world health problems. How much Trump is interested in world health matters is clear from his announcement that the United States is leaving the WHO (World Health Organization).
Once again, Dr. King on how government’s handing of free money to rich has a different name, then that for the poor.
Whenever the government provides opportunities in privileges for white people and rich people they call it “subsidized” when they do it for Negro and poor people they call it “welfare.” The fact that is the everybody in this country lives on welfare. Suburbia was built with federally subsidized credit. And highways that take our white brothers out to the suburbs were built with federally subsidized money to the tune of 90 percent. Everybody is on welfare in this country. The problem is that we all [too] often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor. That’s the problem.
The capitalist system is a disaster for our world as it promotes and creates inequality, pollution, climate change, corruption, rat race, family disintegration, etc.; and maybe, for the universe because the rich are planning to colonize Mars, Moon, etc., which will for sure result in space wars.
Those who wants to see our world a better place should heed economist/activist Kshama Sawant’s advise:
“We need to build an organized, unified movement of working people to systematically take on the rich who run society and to undermine their ability to rule. Our goal must be to both fight for radical change in the present and to bring down the billionaires and their system, capitalism.
“There is no other path to avoid total disaster for human civilization and the planet.”
Notes
<1> Trump, like India’s Narendra Modi, is a very vindictive person. This prompted the outgoing President “Genocide Joe” to take precautionary measure of pardoning many people, including his own relatives. One of the persons, who really deserved freedom was Indigenous political prisoner Leonard Peltier. Peltier’s sentence, after almost half a century, was commuted to indefinite home confinement. Though it’s not total freedom, but still was good news. Biden should have preemptively pardoned all the Democrats and all anti-Trump people, more than half of the country, this would have saved Trump, a great deal of time, from going after them. Or may be not, Trump almost always finds ways, like the United States, to get people he doesn’t like.
<2> Ambani was invited but Indian Premier Narendra Modi was not, even though he was desperate to attend. Modi’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar did attend the inauguration. During Modi’s last US visit in September 2024, he avoided meeting Kamala Harris or Trump despite Trump’s remark that Modi is coming to meet him. On the other hand, Trump extended an invitation to China’s Xi Jinping, who wisely avoided the Trump spectacle and, instead, sent his Vice President Han Zheng. Modi and company’s efforts for a meeting with Trump have paid off and he’ll be visiting the US in the second week of February.
B. R. Gowani can be reached at brgowani@hotmail.com
A painting from Siyer-i Nebi, Ali beheading Nadr ibn al-Harith in the presence of Muhammad and his companions.
Qutayla ukht al-Nadr or Qutayla bint al-Nadr) was a seventh-century CE Arab woman of the Quraysh tribe, noted as one of the earliest attested Arabic-language poets on account of her famous elegy for Nadr ibn al-Harith.
Life
Qutayla appears in the historical record in connection with her relative Nadr ibn al-Harith, an Arab Pagan doctor from Taif, who used to tell stories of Rustam and Esfandiyar to the Arabs and scoffed the Islamic prophetMuhammad.[1][2] After the battle of Badr in 624 CE, al-Harith was captured and, in retaliation, Muhammad ordered his execution in hands of Ali.[3][4][5] Some sources characterise Qutayla as Nadr’s sister (ukht), others as his daughter (bint), though the most popular claim seems to be that she was his sister (hence the title of this article).[6] Her full name appears in some sources, for example, as Qutayla ukht al-Nudar b. al-Harith b. ‘Alqama b. Kalda b. ‘Abd Manaf b. ‘Abd al-Dar b. QuSayy al-Qurashiyya al-‘Abdariyya.[7] There was also a tradition, attested in one medieval source, al-Jahiz in his Kitab al-Bayan wa ’l-tabyin, that she was actually called Layla.[8]
Work
To Qutayla is attributed the following elegy for Nadr, in which she upbraids Muhammad for the execution.[9] According to some commentaries, Muhammad’s response to this was ‘Had I heard her verses before I put him to death, I should not have done so’.[10]
On the fifth night’s morning, stranger, with luck
a tamarisk tree should appear by the way:
Leave word that travellers never cease
as they pass to wave a salute from the road;
that you saw me standing, the tears on my face;
on other tears, unseen, I choke.
Will my brother hear my voice when I call?
If the dead can hear they never speak.
Weary and worn he was led to his doom,
a captive dragging his feet in chains,
torn by the swords of his cousins and kin:
To God I mourn the divided house.
Muhammad, of noble woman born,
son of equally noble sire!
It would not have harmed to be generous then;
a man, incensed, may still forgive.
Had you taken ransom — Nothing too much,
too grand, but we’d gladly have given it up.
My brother was nearest of those you took,
the first to be spared — had you pardoned his youth.
‘Although doubt has been expressed regarding their authenticity … these verses, frequently cited and highly appreciated, have perpetuated alNadr’s memory’.[11] Whatever its origin, the poem attributed to Qutayla is among the poems most frequently cited in the medieval Arabic anthologies known as Hamasat,[12] being noted for their moving quality.[13] In the assessment of Nadia Maria El Cheikh, ‘Qutayla’s poem reflects the new Islamic ethos conveying the dramatic tension of a particular moment in Islamic religious history. She does not call for vengeance but for a modification of behavior, a kind retroactive display of restraint and forbearance’.[14]
Researchers are exploring how to prolong ovarian life and revisiting hormone replacement therapy — a once routine treatment that has fallen out of favour.
In late 2022, Naomi Busch, a lone physician in her book group, began
fielding question after question about menopause. Members of the group
had started to experience the hallmark symptoms — hot flushes, poor
sleep and mood swings — and wondered what they could do about them.
“They all looked at me,” says Busch, “and I was like, ‘I don’t know
anything about menopause.’” She searched for knowledgeable physicians in
and around Seattle, where she lives, but the few specialists were
booked out for several months. Meanwhile, the women in the book group
were not getting the answers that they needed from their gynaecologists
or primary-care physicians. “I’m not going down quietly,” Busch
remembers one woman vowing.
Busch, who trained in and practised
primary-care medicine, wasn’t surprised by the lack of information.
“It’s not something we learn about in medical school,” she says. So
Busch decided to find out everything she could about menopause.
Ultimately, she passed a competency exam to become a certified
practitioner through The Menopause Society, a non-profit organization
based in Pepper Pike, Ohio, that provides tools and resources to
health-care professionals. She’s not alone in her interest. More than
1,300 providers became certified in 2024; and more than five times as
many people applied for the exam in 2024 as in 2022. The International
Menopause Society, a UK-based charity, also offers a free online
training programme for health-care professionals. More than 2,600 people
completed the course in 2024, up from under 2,000 in 2023.
Many
health-care professionals — along with society in general — regularly
tell women, and transgender, non-binary and intersex people who go
through menopause, to accept the misery of the transition, and the
health troubles that can follow. Menopause comes with increased risks of health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, osteoporosis and memory loss.
Yet,
few medical options are typically presented to people going through
menopause. Sometimes, oral contraceptives are prescribed to ease
symptoms and prevent unwanted pregnancies, which are still possible
during the transition. But common doses and formulations can include
risks, such as developing blood clots, and don’t always provide
sufficient treatment, says Busch. Non-hormonal drugs, such as fezolinetant
and elinzanetant, treat hot flushes — but they also have side effects.
Other options include antidepressants, cognitive behavioural therapy,
acupuncture and lifestyle changes, which usually go only so far in
alleviating symptoms. Hormone replacement therapy, which was a routine
treatment until 2002, is widely passed over, owing to a misinterpreted
study1 that prompted fear of its use.
A
trade deficit – also known as a negative balance of trade – is an
economic term related to international trade. A trade deficit, in short,
means that a nation’s imports exceed its exports. In other words, a
country with a trade deficit spends more money in a year than it
receives from its exports. Many nations around the world have trade
deficits, including the United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil, and the United States.
The United States has the largest trade deficit in the world. In
2023, the trade deficit of this nation was $773.4 billion. While the
country brought in $3,826.9 billion in imports, the amount of exports
was just $3,053.5 billion, (BEA,
2024). The largest exports of the United States were cars, food, and
commercial aircraft. The largest imports were cell phones, oil, and
cars.
The largest deficit in goods in the United States is with China.
In fact, over one third of the trade deficit – or $279 billion – is
because of imports from China. The main imports that the US purchased
from China include clothing, machinery, and electronics.
The United States also has a significant trade deficit with Mexico.
This deficit is smaller than that of China’s at $152 billion. The U.S.
has imported $475 billion worth of goods from Mexico in 2023, including
vehicles and auto parts.
The US has the third largest trade deficit with Vietnam at $104 billion. The primary categories of imported goods include machinery, mechanical appliances, textiles, and footwear.
A trade deficit of $83 billion with Germany
is the fourth largest trade deficit of the U.S. In 2023, the U.S.
imported almost $160 billion in auto parts and vehicles, medicine, and
machinery.
The United States has a trade deficit of $71.2 billion with Japan. Vehicles and industrial supplies are among the primary imports that the U.S. acquires from Japan.
The U.S. also has a $68 billion trade deficit with Canada. While the U.S. exports vehicles, petroleum, and auto parts, it imports more crude oil and gas from Canada.
Abstract: Who is allowed to practice
medicine? This question recurred in different forms throughout Japan’s
modern era, reflecting fundamental changes in how people provided and
received medical care. This article explores one key issue that
underlined this question: a persistent doctor shortage, whose causes and
form changed over time—from the late wartime era, through the immediate
postwar rehabilitation years, to the era of rapid economic growth.
Rather than focusing on issues of policy, the article examines personal
histories, revealing how shortages led to various doctor substitutes,
some legitimate and some not, in a process whereby doctor care came to
be seen as a basic right.
Who is allowed to practice medicine, and in what capacity? What is
the relationship between medical licensing and skill? In postwar Japan,
discussion around these questions was inextricably linked to what was
often referred to as the doctor shortage problem (ishi busoku ????).
During the final years of the Asia-Pacific War (1937–1945), the
Japanese military enlisted an ever-growing number of doctors, creating
shortages at home. To meet this demand, medical education grew shorter,
and standards dropped. After Japan’s defeat, under the American
occupation, medicine underwent demilitarization and broad reform,
reshaping medical practices as well as the criteria for practicing. Yet,
concomitantly, the population faced a potential humanitarian disaster
as a result of the ongoing impact of the destruction of war. Every
capable hand was needed to provide medical care, even at the price of
turning a blind eye to the absence of formal accreditation. Only decades
later, when Japan began to enjoy a culture of plenty, did medical
quality—and the power of a license to ensure it—rise to public attention
and become a matter for debate.
At the center of these debates were individuals who doctored the
population without the title of doctor. I refer to this phenomenon as
medical workarounds. During each historical stage—war, occupation, and
reconstruction—medicine underwent reconfiguration, which included a
redefinition of its professional boundaries. Change, however, took time,
while the demand for medical services on the ground remained urgent.
The gap between changes that would improve the future and current needs
led to the emergence of workarounds—ways of practicing medicine beyond
the official paths of training and licensing.
These non-doctors answered a genuine need, providing help to numerous
people who had no other recourse and earning reputations as respectable
professionals. In certain instances, particularly during the period of
rapid economic growth, some referred to them as “quacks” or “charlatans”
(nise isha ???) to discredit and belittle them, as they
challenged the professional boundaries of the accredited medical system.
There were also cases of non-doctors who indeed caused harm by offering
substandard services under false pretenses or attempting treatments
they had no skill to provide. Referring to non-doctors as quacks,
however, obfuscates the broader significance and varied nature of these
people and the services they provided. As the article reveals, the
differences between the licensed and unlicensed could be blurry, with
some non-doctors possessing equal or even superior skill when compared
with licensed counterparts. And in Okinawa, non-doctors were also
licensed.1
Examining the actions of this broad group within the framework of
medical workarounds rather than quackery provides a better understanding
of this largely overlooked history of medicine in action.
One reason this history has gone largely unnoticed is its unofficial
nature. In most cases, non-doctors did not operate as an organized group
within a formal, documented framework. Instead, their history appears
in personal stories, which powerfully reveal lived experiences and daily
realities of life that typically escape regulatory records.
Accordingly, each section of the article focuses on the personal story
of one individual, based on interviews and memoirs—rare sources, many of
which are rapidly disappearing. For a significant period, the wartime
generation refrained from sharing their life stories, and now, with the
passage of time, fewer and fewer remain to do so.
Last month, ROAPE re-posted a collection of essays from 1993 to mark the 50th
anniversary of Amílcar Cabral’s murder in 1973. Continuing our tribute,
Chinedu Chukwudinma interviews António Tomás, who wrote Cabral’s
biography in the 21st century. Tomás speaks about Cabral’s
political development as well as his abilities as a teacher,
revolutionary diplomat and leader. But he also discusses his
insecurities, shortcomings and the myths surrounding national liberation
in Guinea-Bissau.
What motivated you to write a biography of Amílcar Cabral in the 21st century?
When
I wrote the first version of the biography on Cabral, I was in
Portugal, and I wrote the book in Portuguese. The introduction is
different from the one in English. I don’t see Amílcar Cabral: the life of a reluctant nationalist (2020)
as a translation. I prefer to say that it is the English version of the
book that was written in Portuguese. When I started working on this
book project in the early 2000s nobody, at least from my generation, was
talking about Cabral in Portugal.
But
Cabral, his generation and all the people fighting for the independence
and liberation of Africa were students in Lisbon. Most of them lived in
Lisbon. Cabral was married to a Portuguese. So he was pretty much part
of the debate about blackness in Europe, and blackness in Portugal as a
student. When I started writing about Cabral in Portuguese (O Fazedor de Utopias – Uma Biografia de Amílcar Cabral (2007) I
was just trying to understand, as a black man, how to think through and
engage with Cabral and his struggle in the context of race, not so much
that of independence, which is the kind of stuff I became interested in
after I went to the United States and did my PhD at Columbia
University. I was trying to understand, the place of race and blackness
in Lisbon in the context of black Portuguese or African immigrants.
Many years after, I changed a few things in the English version of the book. The
initial debate on race and racism is less there. But what is
interesting now is that the Portuguese version is sold out in Portugal.
It has been sold out for many years. I’m now preparing a new edition
where I bring back the debate on race because we have a lot of
developments: A right-wing party in Portugal and an emerging and very
strong black movement, formed mostly by people who want to bring debates
on racism and the legacies of colonialism to the national agenda. It is
a good moment to get back to these original questions that drove me to
the quest of Cabral’s legacy.
In
what ways do you think Amílcar Cabral’s life and work have relevance to
the young people developing their racial and political consciousness in
the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protest?
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