Features
It’s a Girl, But is it Black?
by Vijaya Chandrasoma
President Biden has completed 50 days of his Presidency in a style as different from that of his predecessor as night and day. And he has performed magnificently, in the backdrop of the worst health and economic crises ever faced by the nation.
Amazingly, a crisis of regal proportions has overwhelmed the world’s headlines. A scandal that has driven media attention of the most terrible crises faced by the world to obscurity. A cataclysm that will change our lives forever.
Will the unborn child who is destined to be eighth in line for the British monarchy be black? This is the burning question which raises any number of new and unanswered questions.
Archie, the firstborn of Meghan and Prince Harry, will have a little sister according to the latest news breaks. When is the due date? This vital information has not been revealed for reasons of national security, but her bump seems suspiciously prominent. The adoring public needs to know.
The recent Oprah interview, which brought this controversy into the spotlight, highlighted most dramatic allegations in the interview made by Prince Harry and Meghan. Why was their firstborn, Archie, denied a royal title? Was it because of his skin color? Which, incidentally is alabaster white. Archie is now plain Archie Mountbatten-Windsor, while the children of Harry’s elder brother, William are Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis. Seems unfair, definitely not cricket, old boy. However, according to a decree made by a long dead King, only the children of the first in the line of succession are entitled to royal titles. But Prince William is not the first in line, Prince Charles is.
Having a colored Monarch is anathema to all the finest traditions of the ancient House of Windsor. Archie got lucky. He was born with a white skin, to the envy and relief of his white subjects. But what if the child on the way has a DNA throwback to an African, and turn out to be a black baby! At Buckingham Palace, for God’s sake.
All these rules and traditions got to be so confusing, even to the British, that Queen Elizabeth II created in 2004, by Royal Warrant, no less, the Roll of the Peerage, a public record of the relative levels of aristocracy in the United Kingdom. The Roll is maintained by the Crown office within the British Department of Justice, and published by the College of Arms. The Roll, in its devotion by the British, is second only to the Bible.
A system of aristocracy headed by a monarch, treats with contempt the efforts of other, sadly tradition-free countries,Vicky to experiment with various methods of government. Like Democracy in the USA until 2016; the Marxism of early 20th century Russia; the Principle of Ethnic and Religious Purity, most famously in the Germany of the 1930s and proliferating throughout the world; the disaster of dynastic, criminal autocracy, again in the USA from 2016 to 2020, which is being emulated, with similar consequences, in much of the Third World, including our beautiful Sri Lanka. All these systems of governance are either dead or terminal while the successful and eminently just system of the British Monarchy has endured, indeed flourished, for centuries.
The complex rules of racial classification in American traditions have always confused me. My understanding is that if you are 1/64th black, if your great, great, great grandfather was black, then you are black, however white your skin color is. You and your future generations will, as the saying goes, always “have a touch of the tar brush”.
Look at Meghan. She has the beautiful skin tone and features of a tanned European woman. But when she fills a job application in the USA, she ticks the box that says Black. And now that Harry and Meghan have shed the most aristocratic shackles of the British monarchy and are private citizens, so will Archie and his future sibling. How the mighty have fallen!
Maybe the perfect opportunity for a budding author to script a modern sequel to Mark Twain’s classic, The Prince and the Pauper.
We have the ultimate examples of this racial confusion. President Obama’s father was a Kenyan, but his mother and his grandparents who had an important role in raising him were Kansas white. Obama was never known as half-white, he was always our first Black president. And so with our current Vice President, Kamala Harris. Her father was from Jamaica, a black man from the West Indies. Her mother, who single-handedly raised Kamala and her sister, Maya, was born in Madras. VP Harris always talks about the Indian traditions that had been instilled into her when she was growing up. But she will always be our first Black Vice President.
The abiding rule is that If you are not 100% white, then you are black. How these 100% white people figure out to a certainty who their ancestors slept with is a secret they will take to their graves. A secret that fosters and strengthens their belief in White Supremacy.
Trying to figure out if the British monarchy is racist, because a technically black child not yet born should have a royal title is hardly a difficult – or material – question. A colored British Prince? How revolting. Imagine a colored man being Britain’s Tory government’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, or worse, the captain of the English cricket team. Or the Catholic unthinkable -an African Pope. Almost as unthinkable as Jesus being a Jew from the Middle East, whose natives are not famed for blonde hair and blue eyes.
The Times They Are A-Changin’, as the Bob Dylan song goes.
The current British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, is colored, of Indian origin, as is Home Secretary, Priti Patel.
A man born in Madras, Nasser Hussain, led the English cricket team from 1999 to 2003. He is also an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).
And there have been three African Popes, though all before 500 A.D. What makes this fact interesting is that the ethnicity of these Popes was hidden from common knowledge, “because over the years, artists created images of them with European features”.
Racism has endured since the beginning of the great religions. The British monarchy is just carrying on these traditions. The great wonder is how the monarchy of an Empire on which the sun never set, whose rule was based entirely on white supremacy, has commanded, enthralled and earned the devotion and admiration of the world.
Now to the less important, inner page news of the comparatively insignificant crises facing America and the world.
President Biden has been working day and night tackling the twin crises of Covid 19 and the resultant economic depression. The progress he has made in containing the virus, in committing to guidelines recommended by scientists and getting the pharmaceuticals to accelerate the speed of production and distribution; and actually getting the vaccine into the arms of sometimes reluctant people, is nothing short of spectacular. The epidemiologists predict that a sufficient number of Americans will be vaccinated to reach herd immunity by the end of the Summer. The rescue stimulus package which he has now guided through a hostile, though minority Senate will be yet another shot in the arm for desperate Americans and the economy.
He has delegated the less desperate problem to his able and diverse cabinet, most of whom have now been approved by the Senate. He has also left the investigations into the numerous crimes committed by the Trump administration to the Department of Justice.
The Washington DC Attorney General is conducting an independent investigation into the insurrection of January 6, including Trump’s probable involvement/incitement. Over 300 Trump supporters have already been arrested; many have told the prosecutors that they sought to violently overturn the November election because Trump told them that the election was stolen, the Big Lie.
Georgia prosecutors are presently investigating into the telephone call of over one-hour Trump made to the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, threatening him that he (Raffensperger) would be committing a felony, if he didn’t doctor the Georgia election to “find” 11,780 votes (existing only in Trump’s delusions) and give him a fraudulent win in that state – a demand that the Republican Raffensperger rejected out of hand. A similar threat emerged last week that Trump made a recorded telephone call to Frances Warren, chief investigator of Georgia elections, pleading with her to subvert the election, saying “she would be praised” if “the right answer comes out”. The Georgia Secretary of State told Trump, very politely, to go to hell: “I can assure you that our team (the Georgia Bureau of Investigation) is only interested in the truth and finding information based on facts”. The Wall Street Journal has a recording of this conversation, which has been released to the media.
This is the integrity, the independence and the incorruptibility of public officials which has withstood the efforts of would-be dictators, auto and plutocrats and crooks to destroy American democracy; through slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow laws of apartheid and the violence of today. Through a racist president who placed his knee on American democracy, not for eight minutes, but for four years.
The integrity, the independence and the incorruptibility of the bureaucracy of Sri Lanka in the post-independence 1950s, was ruthlessly and unscrupulously politicized, manipulated and finally destroyed by the aforementioned Sri Lankan brand of politicians and crooks. This has transformed a beautiful, abundant, thriving island to the dire, corrupt, economic and administrative straits of today – in just over 70 years.
There are other major crises facing America and the world today, according to historian Jared Diamond, “we currently have four global crises to address: the ongoing threat of nuclear attacks, climate change, running out of resources and socio-economic inequality”.
These petty crises may engage the attention of lesser mortals, but we devotees of the British monarchy reserve our concerns to the color of an unborn child.
The perceptive commentator seeking to make some sense of social and economic developments within most Southern countries today has no choice but to revisit, as it were, that classic on post-colonial societies, ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ by Frantz Fanon. Decades after the South’s initial decolonization experience this work by the Algerian political scientist of repute remains profoundly relevant.
The fact that the Algeria of today is seeking accountability from its former colonizer, France, for the injustices visited on it during the decades of colonial rule enhances the value and continuing topicality of Frantz’s thinking and findings. The fact that the majority of the people of most decolonized states are continuing to be disempowered and deprived of development should doubly underline the significance of ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ as a landmark in the discourse on Southern questions. The world would be erring badly if it dismisses this evergreen on decolonization and its pains as in any way outdated.
Developments in contemporary China help to throw into relief some of the internal ‘structural deficiencies’ that have come to characterize most Southern societies in current times. However, these and many more ‘structural faults’ came to the attention of the likes of Fanon decades back.
It is with considerable reservations on their truthfulness that a commentator would need to read reports from the US’ Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) on developments in China, but one cannot approach with the same skepticism revelations on China by well-known media institutions such as Bloomberg News.
While an ODNI report quoted in this newspaper on March 25th, 2025, elaborated on the vast wealth believed to have been amassed by China’s contemporary rulers and their families over the years, Bloomberg News in a more studied manner said in 2012, among other things, on the same subject that, ‘Xi’s extended family had amassed assets totaling approximately $376 million, encompassing investments in sectors like rare earth minerals and real estate. However, no direct links were established between these assets and Xi or his immediate family.’
Such processes that are said to have taken hold in China in post- Mao times in particular are more or less true of most former colonies of the South. A clear case in point is Sri Lanka. More than 75 years into ‘independence’ the latter is yet to bring to book those sections of its ruling class that have grown enormously rich on ill-gotten gains. It seems that, as matters stand, these sections would never be held accountable for their unbounded financial avarice.
The mentioned processes of exploitation of a country’s wealth, explain in considerable measure, the continuing underdevelopment of the South. However, Fanon foresaw all these ills and more about the South long ago. In ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ he speaks insightfully about the ruling classes of the decolonized world, who, having got into the boots of the departing colonizers, left no stone unturned to appropriate the wealth of their countries by devious means and thereby grow into the stratum described as ‘the stinking rich.’
This is another dimension to the process referred to as ‘the development of underdevelopment.’ The process could also be described as ‘How the Other Half Dies’. The latter is the title of another evergreen piece of research of the seventies on the South’s development debacles by reputed researcher Susan George.
Now that the Non-aligned Movement is receiving some attention locally it would be apt to revisit as it were these development debacles that are continuing to bedevil the South. Among other things, NAM emerged as a voice of the world’s poor. In fact in the seventies it was referred to as ‘The trade union of the poor.’ Accordingly, it had a strong developmental focus.
Besides the traditional aims of NAM, such as the need for the South to keep an ‘equidistance’ between the superpowers in the conduct of its affairs, the ruling strata of developing countries were also expected to deliver to their peoples equitable development. This was a foremost dimension in the liberation of the South. That is, economic growth needed to be accompanied by re-distributive justice. In the absence of these key conditions no development could be said to have occurred.
Basing ourselves on these yardsticks of development, it could be said that Southern rulers have failed their peoples right through these decades of decolonization. Those countries which have claimed to be socialistic or centrally planned should come in for the harshest criticism. Accordingly, a central aim of NAM has gone largely unachieved.
It does not follow from the foregoing that NAM has failed completely. It is just that those who have been charged with achieving NAM’s central aims have allowed the Movement to go into decline. All evidence points to the fact that they have allowed themselves to be carried away by the elusive charms of the market economy, which three decades ago, came to be favoured over central planning as an essential of development by the South’s ruling strata.
However, now with the returning to power in the US of Donald Trump and the political Right, the affairs of the South could, in a sense, be described as having come full circle. The downgrading of USAID, for instance, and the consequent scaling down of numerous forms of assistance to the South could be expected to aggravate the development ills of the hemisphere. For instance, the latter would need to brace for stepped-up unemployment, poverty and social discontent.
The South could be said to have arrived at a juncture where it would need to seek ways of collectively advancing its best interests once again with little or no dependence on external assistance. Now is the time for Southern organizations such as NAM to come to the forefront of the affairs of the South. Sheer necessity should compel the hemisphere to think and act collectively.
Accordingly, the possibility of South-South cooperation should be explored anew and the relevant institutional and policy framework needs to be created to take on the relevant challenges.
It is not the case that these challenges ceased to exist over the past few decades. Rather it is a case of these obligations being ignored by the South’s ruling strata in the belief that externally imposed solutions to the South’s development questions would prove successful. Besides, these classes were governed by self- interest.
It is pressure by the people that would enable their rulers to see the error of their ways. An obligation is cast on social democratic forces or the Centre-Left to come to center stage and take on this challenge of raising the political awareness of the people.
On the morning of 21 March, 2025, a Chinese-built K-8 jet trainer aircraft of the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) crashed at Wariyapola. Fortunately, the two pilots ejected from the aircraft and parachuted down to safety.
A team of seven has been appointed to investigate the accident. Their task is to find the ‘cause behind the cause’, or the root cause. Ejecting from an aircraft usually has physical and psychological repercussions. The crew involved in the crash are the best witnesses, and they must be well rested and ready for the accident inquiry. It is vital that a non-punitive atmosphere must prevail. If the pilots believe that they are under threat of punishment, they will try to withhold vital information and not reveal the truth behind what happened, prompting their decision to abandon the stricken aircraft. In the interest of fairness, the crew must have a professional colleague to represent them at the Inquiry.
2000 years ago, the Roman philosopher Cicero said that “To err is human.” Alexander Pope said, “To err is human. To forgive, divine.” Yet in a Royal Air Force (RAF) hangar in the UK Force (RAF) hangs a sign declaring: “To err is human. To forgive is not RAF policy” These are the two extremes.
Over the years, behavioural scientists have observed that errors and intelligence are two sides of the same coin. In other words, an intelligent human being is liable to make errors. They went on to label these acts of omission and commission as ‘Slips, Lapses, Mistakes and Violations’.
To illustrate the point in a motoring context, if one was restricted to driving at a speed limit of 100 kph along an expressway and the speed crept up to 120 kph, then it is a ‘Slip’ on one’s part. If you forgot to fasten the seatbelt, it is a ‘Lapse’. While driving along a two-lane road, if a driver thinks in his/her judgement that the way is clear and tries to overtake slower traffic on the road, using the opposite lane, then encounters unanticipated opposite traffic and is forced to get back to the correct lane, that is a ‘Mistake’. Finally, if a double line is crossed while overtaking, while aware that the law is being broken, that is labelled as a ‘Violation’. In theory, all of the above could be applied to flying as well.
In the mid-Seventies, Elwyn Edwards and Frank Hawkins proposed that good interaction between Software (paperwork), Hardware (the aircraft and other machines), Liveware (human element) and the (working) environment are the essentials in safe flight operations. Labelled the ‘SHELL’ concept, it was adopted by the International Civil Aviation Organisation. (ICAO). (See Diagram 01)
In diagram 01, two ‘L’s depict the ‘Liveware’, inside and outside an aircraft flightdeck. The ‘L’ at the centre is the pilot in command (PIC), who should know his/her strengths and weaknesses, know the same of his/her crew, aircraft, and their mission, and, above all, be continuously evaluating the risks.
Finally, Prof. James Reason proposed the Swiss Cheese Theory of Accident Causation. (See Diagram 02)
From this diagram we see that built in defences in a system are like slices of Swiss cheese. There are pre-existing holes at random which, unfortunately, may align and allow the crew at the ‘sharp end’ to carry out a procedure unchecked.
Although it is easy and self-satisfying to blame a crew, or an individual, at an official accident investigation, what should be asked, instead, is why or how the system failed them? Furthermore, a ‘just culture’ must prevail.
The PIC and crew are the last line of defence in air safety and accident prevention. (See Diagram 3)
A daily newspaper reported that it is now left to be seen whether the crash on 21 March was due to mechanical failure or pilot error. Why is it that when a judge makes a wrong judgement it is termed ‘Miscarriage of Justice’ or when a Surgeon loses a patient on the operating table it is ‘Surgical Misadventure’, but when a pilot makes an honest error, it is called ‘Pilot Error’? I believe it should be termed ‘Human Condition’.
Even before the accident investigation had started, on 23 March, 2025, Minister of Civil Aviation, Bimal Ratnayake, went on record saying that the Ministry of Defence had told him the accident was due to an ‘athweradda’ (error). This kind of premature declaration is a definite ‘no-no’ and breach of protocol. The Minister should not be pre-empting the accident enquiry’s findings and commenting on a subject not under his purview. Everyone concerned should wait for the accident report from the SLAF expert panel before commenting.
God bless the PIC and crew!
– Ad Astrian
Yes, it’s happening tomorrow, Friday (28th), and Saturday (29th,) and what makes this scene extra special is that you don’t need to rush and pack your travelling bags and fork out a tidy sum for your airfare to Thailand.
The Thai Street Food Festival, taking place at Siam Nivasa, 43, Dr. CWW Kannangara Mawatha, Colombo 7, will not only give you a taste of Thai delicacies but also Thai culture, Thai music, and Thai dancing.
This event is being organised by the Thai Community, in Sri Lanka, in collaboration with the Royal Thai Embassy in Colombo.
The Thai Community has been very active and they make every effort to promote Amazing Thailand, to Sri Lankans, in every possible way they can.
Regarding the happening, taking place tomorrow, and on Saturday, they say they are thrilled to give Sri Lankans the vibrant Thai Street Food Festival.
Explaining how Thai souvenirs are turned out
I’m told that his event is part of a series of activities, put together by the Royal Thai Embassy, to commemorate 70 years of diplomatic relations between Thailand and Sri Lanka.
At the Thai Street Food Festival, starting at 5.00 pm., you could immerse yourself in lively Thai culture, savour delicious Thai dishes, prepared by Colombo’s top-notch restaurants, enjoy live music, captivate dance performances, and explore Thai Community members offering a feast of food and beverages … all connected with Amazing Thailand.
Some of the EXCO members of the Thai Community, in Sri Lanka,
with the Ambassador for Thailand
I’m sure most of my readers would have been to Thailand (I’ve been there 24 times) and experienced what Amazing Thailand has to offer visitors … cultural richness, culinary delights and unique experiences.
Well, if you haven’t been to Thailand, as yet, this is the opportunity for you to experience a little bit of Thailand … right here in Colombo; and for those who have experienced the real Thailand, the Thai Street Food Festival will bring back those happy times … all over again!
Remember, ENTRANCE IS FREE.
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