Slave Traders Cheated

Copper manilla bracelets from a late 17th-century Royal African Company trader in the Western Approaches. Photograph: Seascape Artifact Exhibits Inc.

Early English enslavers sourced copper from Cornwall to create manilla bracelets, the grim currency of the transatlantic slavery trade, and used an impure mix to maximise their profits, according to a study.

Dr Tobias Skowronek, a German scientist, has conducted a scientific analysis of horseshoe-shaped bracelets that were exchanged over hundreds of years for enslaved people from Africa who were transported to Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean.

His study revealed that copper had been sourced from Cornwall decades earlier than previously thought, overturning assumptions that it had come primarily from Sweden and Flanders until the 1720s.  READ MORE...

Self-Determination Shaped the Modern World

Fifty independent countries existed in 1920. Today, there are nearly two hundred. One of the motivating forces behind this wave of country-creation was self-determination—the concept that nations (groups of people united by ethnicity, language, geography, history, or other common characteristics) should be able to determine their political future.

In the early twentieth century, a handful of European empires ruled the majority of the world. However, colonized nations across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and elsewhere argued that they deserved the right to determine their political future. Their calls for self-determination became rallying cries for independence.

Ultimately, the breakup of these empires throughout the twentieth century—a process known as decolonization—resulted in an explosion of new countries, creating the world map largely as we recognize it today.

But now that the age of empires is over, is that map set in stone? Not quite. Self-determination continues to play a role in deciding borders, but the landscape is more complicated.

Many people around the world argue that their governments—many of which emerged during decolonization—do not in reality represent the entire country’s population. The borders of colonies seldom had anything to do with any national (or economic or internal political) criteria. So when decolonization occurred, many of the newly created countries were artificial and thus rife with internal division.

However, for a group inside a country to achieve self-determination today, that country’s sovereignty—the principle that guarantees countries get to control what happens within their borders and prohibits them from meddling in another country’s domestic affairs—will be violated. In other words, creating a country through self-determination inherently means taking territory and people away from a country that already exists.

Whereas many world leaders openly called for the breakup of empires, few are willing to endorse the breakup of modern countries. Indeed, the United Nations’ founding charter explicitly discourages it. And the fact that so many modern countries face internal divisions means few governments are eager to embrace the creation of new countries abroad, fearing that doing so could set a precedent that leads to the unraveling of their own borders.

A road to self-determination still remains, but it is far trickier in a world in which empires no longer control colonies oceans away.  READ MORE...

Femicide

Gulsum Kav, founder of We Will Stop Femicide

Femicide - the killing of women and girls because of their gender - is the most extreme form of gender-based violence, but in many countries no record is kept of the number of cases. BBC 100 Women spoke to three women who carry out detective work to identify femicides, and obtain justice for victims.


Gulsum Kav began a campaign to stop femicide in 2010, the year after the dead body of a teenager, Munevver Karabulut, was found in a bin in Istanbul. It took police more than six months to track down the suspect, leading to protests on the streets of Istanbul.


One of Gulsum's goals was to understand how many murders take place Turkey, in which the killer's motive is gender-related.


Another was to provide support to Munevver's family as the case came to trial. "We have a slogan today, 'You will never walk alone,' which came from this," she says.


But soon Gulsum and her fellow activists in We Will Stop Femicide found themselves taking on the role of investigators.


"It started when a letter arrived from a family who believed their daughter had died in suspicious circumstances," she says.


This was the case of Esin Gunes, a young teacher whose body was found at the bottom of a cliff in Siirt province, south-eastern Turkey, in August 2010.

What is femicide?

• Femicide is defined as "the murder of women because they are women" or "the gender-related killing of women and girls"
• Eighteen countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have adopted specific laws making femicide a criminal offence
• In many other countries the word is not widely used, but is increasingly being adopted by campaigners against gender-based violence

Esin's husband said they had gone to the area for a walk and a picnic, and she had slipped to her death. While the authorities initially accepted this story, the family didn't, as Esin had only recently returned to her husband after walking out and saying she wanted a divorce.


Gulsum's team commissioned a report which proved it was not physically possible to fall in the way she did and that she must have been thrown. This led to her husband's conviction for murder, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Since that first case, the team has worked on over 30 suspected femicides.  READ MORE...

Favorite Places to Live and/or Visit

While my wife and I like East TN as the location in which we live and Myrtle Beach as the location in which we visit...  everyone else, for the most part, has their favorite locations for one reason or another which allows for the rich diversification that makes American Great... 

For example, we have visit several places in Europe, around the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, Alaska, and Hawaii and none of those places suit our personalities 100% even though there were aspects of those areas that we really enjoyed as we were experiencing them...

Locations, to us, are not just locations but they consist of:

• travel time to get there
• transportation to get there
• cost of living there
• number of people there
• annual climate there
• things to do there

As we get older, even the 6 hour drive to Myrtle Beach is becoming to long of a time to take just to get someone in which we feel comfortable and know what to expect.  And, it is this knowing what to expect that clinches the deal for us...

COVID has put a damper on our travels and this fear will probably continue until next Summer even if they get a vaccine because we believe vaccines should be tested by others first in case they need to be modified due to side effects...   of course, the FDA would have taken all of that into consideration one would think.