South Africa and Lesotho agree that IDs are enough to cross the border Basotho who have been barred from South Africa for overstaying will be granted amnesty

South Africa and Lesotho have agreed that citizens only need their national identity documents to cross the border.

Read groundup.org.za/article/leso... by Sechaba Mokhethi

The cyberattack on The British Library in October 2023 knocked out ebooks and almost ever other computer thing there for years.

Ebooks just came back. They were knocked out everywhere using the BL’s license (legal deposit libraries I think? More libraries?)

Distributed physical copies matter.

Aerial view of large scale devastation inflicted on the southern Lebanese town of Bint Jbeil, with an Israeli tank parked in the center of the photo.

This is what Israel has done to Bint Jbeil, my hometown in southern Lebanon

Coachella is trying to wipe all of the footage of The Strokes protest set so I’m gonna post it here. The last images on the screen made me cry.

Cover of the business of racism: labor and environment in Brazil's racial Capitalism by Ian Carrillo

The Introduction of my book is currently free to read.

assets-us-01.kc-usercontent.com/f7ca9afb-82c...

When the information that turns up demands more than a plaque or an acknowledgement, those in power get ugly.

The latest issue of @africaneconhist.bsky.social is out now Open Access!

Our first issue with a book reviews section, including a review of Richard Reid's new book by @araujohistorian.bsky.social and of Jody Benjamin's new book by Eguono Lucia Edafioka.

Enjoy! 📚🤓

muse.jhu.edu/issue/56637

In AEH 53.2, Dr. Adeyinka Banwo shows how local farmers in Ilorin, Northern Nigeria grew food crops instead of cash crops despite efforts by British administrators and how "food itself became a cash crop."

Read the article available on #openaccess here muse.jhu.edu/article/986543

Comrade, scholar, cadre: A letter of respect to Sakhela Buhlungu An open letter to the Fort Hare vice-chancellor, honouring a shared struggle, principled leadership and a bond forged in activism, scholarship and sacrifice

mg.co.za/education/20...

The catastrophic failure of the Jagersfontein tailings dam: An industrial disaster 150 years in the making This study provides a sociohistorical account of decisions made over a 150-year period about the Jagersfontein mine in South Africa's Free State and t…

Great bit of mining history here combining legal, engineering and social history to explain the 2022 Jagersfontein tailings dam.

Decisions taken by De Beers, the courts, local and national government resulted in a disaster that was entirely avoidable:

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

As a member of the International Scientific Committee of the UNESCO Routes of Enslaved Peoples Project, I praise UN Declaration of the Trafficking of Enslaved Africans and Racialized Chattel Enslavement of Africans as the Gravest Crime against Humanity, resolution is here ➡️ shorturl.at/0ueKA

The latest issue of @africaneconhist.bsky.social is out now Open Access!

Our first issue with a book reviews section, including a review of Richard Reid's new book by @araujohistorian.bsky.social and of Jody Benjamin's new book by Eguono Lucia Edafioka.

Enjoy! 📚🤓

muse.jhu.edu/issue/56637

We are pleased to highlight Dr. Cheikh Sene's new article, "Organiser et Réguler les Marchés de Captifs et de Gomme Arabique en Sénégambie."

It is available in open access here: muse.jhu.edu/article/986542

Dr. Sene is a postdoctoral research fellow at
@gettymuseum.bsky.social

Our new issue 53.2 is out🥳 We will be highlighting the articles and celebrating the authors in our upcoming posts!!!

English by Yusef Komunyakaa English When I was a boy, he says, the sky began burning, & someone ran knocking on our door one night. The ho...

English by Yusef Komunyakaa
www.divasofverse.com/2017/12/engl...

Re-posting this study because it is demoralizing but essential data.

War, Finance, and Monetary Reform in Ashanti, 1807–1935 Gold dust was introduced as legal tender in Ashanti during Osei Tutu’s reign, which ended around 1712. During the nineteenth century, gold dust ran short in Ashanti principally because of the changing...

Interesting article about why Ashanti (in modern-day Ghana) didn't mint coins, though they mined gold, were familiar with coins and had the skills to mint coins.

Instead, the kingdom adopted gold dust – weighed precisely for transactions – as currency:

aeh.uwpress.org/content/53/1...

‘I wished for death’: Sexual violence in Israel’s prisons is an ‘organised state policy’ Palestinian testimonies reveal how sexual violence, including rape using objects and dogs, is approved by 'highest levels' of Israeli leadership

The testimony here about sexual violence by Israel against Palestinian prisoners is so beyond the pale everyone must see it.

It is so bad I can’t in good conscience share a quote other than the headline, which somehow manages to understate the horror within.

www.middleeasteye.net/news/i-wishe...

I am not one of those who believes that history repeats, but consider the following from Herodotus: the Oracle at Delphi told the fabulously wealthy King Croesus that if he invaded Persia he would "destroy a great empire." Croesus invaded and lost--the empire he destroyed was his own.

The human cost of Kenya’s expanding lakes As Kenya’s Rift Valley lakes expand, swallowing homes, farms, and infrastructure, what appears as a climate anomaly reveals a reckoning with ecological limits, failed planning, and the illusion that w...

As Kenya’s Rift Valley lakes expand, swallowing homes, farms, and infrastructure, what appears as a climate anomaly reveals a reckoning with ecological limits, failed planning, and the illusion that water would stay where it was put. africasacountry.com/2026/04/the-...

photo of Gaza City two years apart; in the first, a normal modern coastal city, in the second a mess of ruins evoking images not seen since WWII

the Israeli model for Gaza is also apparently being followed now in southern Lebanon; already there are multiple photos of Lebanese villages razed to the ground, some of them half a millennia old

🇿🇦 BDS report on South African coal exports to Israel.

Tldr: SA coal continues to fuel Israel’s electricity production, which, ofc, means it’s fueling the war.

Despite its case against Israel in the ICJ.

Le sigh du désespoir

Could expanding protected land undermine biodiversity? Paradoxically, conservation efforts in Liberia and Senegal are threatening native ecology.

Thanks to @africasacountry.bsky.social for working with us on this two-part series on The Underbelly of Conservation, as mining and #conservation increasingly work together to dispossess local communities of land and livelihoods in the name of development and environmental protection in West Africa.

From the archive: Are we really prisoners of geography? We are raiding the Guardian long read archives to bring you some classic pieces from years past, with new introductions from the authors. This week, from 2022: A wave of bestselling authors claim…

A wave of bestselling authors claim that global affairs are still ultimately governed by the immutable facts of geography – mountains, oceans, rivers, resources. But the world has changed more than they realise. By Daniel Immerwahr: pca.st/episode/87e5...

‘The violence of racist tyranny’: African Guernica goes on display alongside Picasso masterpiece Piece by late South African artist Dumile Feni is part of new series History Doesn’t Repeat Itself, But It Does Rhyme

www.theguardian.com/artanddesign...

On loan from the University of Fort Hare.

Enjoyed @mininghistory.bsky.social on Anglo-American’s departure from SA:

‘It’s possible that one reason Anglo
so comprehensively sold off their mines in the region is because the potential environmental and health liabilities could have exceeded the value of any future profits from mining.’

Wikipedia now has higher standards than all universities

photograph or a poster on cream colored paper. "Dear President Ambar, we are writing to you on a typewriter that is over 70 years old. This is a machine that we all know well. With it, we misspell words without the crutch of spell check or generative AI and we think intently about every phrase we pound out. As we force ourselves, for once, to slow down, we engage in a cognitive dialogue with ourselves. We do not seek perfection because we know that education is about the growing and challenging of our young minds' potential, not the chasing of institutional 'gold-star' approval. We do not believe that your so-called 'Year of AI Exploration; providing enterprise ChatGPT and Google Gemini subscriptions to every Oberlin student aligns with our college's founding principles. You claim that this year will be one of experimentation, not adoption. But even just one semester of accepted (encouraged even) chat bot use will jettison our student body down a lazy and irredeemable tunnel of intellectual destruction. We are a college grounded in learning and labor, which now risks straying from these rooted ideals. With ChatGPT at the helm, our emails, essays,and discussion posts will be generated for us, not by us. And let's not fool ourselves. This is precisely what these platforms will be used for by our busy, anxious student body. We see your vision for this year as.advancing the college's 'businessification'--an alarming trend also seen in the takeover of our beloved library cafe by a 'bookstore' with no books in stock and an app replacing customer service. In one instance, the college assumes we want efficiency at all costs through automated rather than hand pulled coffee. In the other lies the false belief that we simply desire to turn in an essay, regardless of how little we've written of it." there's more that doesn't fit in the 2000 character limit :(

OH MY HEART...the Oberlin Luddites Reject "The Year of AI Exploration"! 💚

This line graph illustrates the percentage change in agency staff levels from the previous year for nine major U.S. federal scientific and health organizations between the fiscal years 2016 and 2025. The agencies tracked include the CDC, Department of Energy, EPA, FDA, NASA, NIH, NIST, NOAA, and NSF. For the majority of the timeline between 2016 and 2023, the agencies show relatively stable fluctuations, generally staying within a range of +5% to -5% change per year. However, there is a dramatic and uniform plummet starting in the 2024–25 period. Every agency depicted shows a sharp downward trajectory, with staffing losses ranging from approximately -15% to over -25%. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) shows the most significant decline, dropping to roughly -26%, while the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) shows the least severe but still substantial drop at approximately -15%.

This is the most astonishing graph of what the Trump regime has done to US science. They have destroyed the federal science workforce across the board. The negative impacts on Americans will be felt for generations, and the US might never be the same again.

www.nature.com/immersive/d4...

The UN General Assembly on Wednesday designated the transatlantic African slave trade as "the gravest crime against humanity," despite opposition by the United States and some European countries.
u.afp.com/SboE