JUDAS

Oli London is a British influencer, singer, and television personality who gained notoriety for undergoing numerous plastic surgeries to resemble BTS member, Jimin. He has since identified as transracial, claiming to have changed his racial identity to Korean.  Transracialism is a controversial concept that challenges traditional notions of race and identity. It posits that an individual can identify as a different race or ethnicity than the one they were assigned at birth.  Oli London - I could've done him so dirty here but I chose a photo I don't find laughable. Firstly, I'd like to say that transracialism is ridiculous, and not a valid identity. It is the ultimate cultural appropriation - taking all the beautiful aspects of other cultures and using them without the burden of racism. However, I think it raises some interesting questions about the myth of race, and its importance in society despite its status as a social construct. Race is a social construct, science has c...

 The Covid-19 pandemic has had a dramatic and devastating effect on the British education system. Forced into our homes, under lock and key, we had little to do but sit with our own thoughts and somehow find the self-motivation to learn. It’s something that all British schoolchildren have had to endure by now, and it’s not to be laughed at, the lockdowns have had an unpredictably massive effect on our educational experience, and I don’t doubt I’m worse off for it. I felt the effects of the pandemic first-hand, as did my peers.  The first lockdown was a brutal and wholly unforgiving period for me, made to hop on Zoom once a day to endure a few hours of technical difficulties. With no motivation to continue, and no sight of light at the end of the tunnel, it was so easy for me to just disconnect and dissociate from the hellish monotony my life had become.  The second lockdown was slightly better, but it was still a vicious cycle of boredom, disappointment, and an...

It ain't what you don't know that gets you in trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so. Although Mark Twain’s quote holds up to the SVB collapse as it did in 2007 and to an extent the recent failure of Credit Suisse, a Swiss investment bank -, don’t be so sure that we are going to experience another rerun of ‘The Big Short’ - yet. The S&P 500 is up 6.4% since the failure of the bank and current moods are high. However, what does this mean for the average person in the US or UK and where did this instability in the banking sector start?      The Apple HQ in Silicon Valley. To answer these questions we have to go back to the Obama administration in 2010. When President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Act, a reform that would subject nearly all banks to stricter regulation as an attempt to reduce poor business practices and overly-risky lending that caused the 2008 recession. However, some of these reforms were rolled back by the Trump Administration in 2018...

Emma Goldman was a Russian-American Jew who lived during a period of great social and political upheaval. She was a radical thinker and a fierce advocate for individual liberty and social justice, and her work in feminism remains influential today. Born in 1869 in what is now Lithuania, Goldman emigrated to the United States in 1885 and quickly became involved in the anarchist movement. She was a prolific writer and a charismatic speaker, and she used her platform to promote ideas that were considered radical and dangerous at the time, such as free love, birth control, and workers' rights.  Goldman's identity as a Russian-American Jew played a significant role in shaping her worldview and her activism. She experienced first-hand the anti-Semitic violence and oppression that was rampant in Russia, and she saw how Jews were marginalized and discriminated against in the United States as well. This fuelled her commitment to fighting all forms of oppression and injustice, and it led...

When we imagine life in the classical period, especially the most notable discoveries of the time, we often imagine the illustrious men of the time - their contributions to science, philosophy, and the arts. However, one woman stands out as a firebrand for intelligent ancient women and broke the patriarchial mold to make her mark on history - Hypatia.  Hypatia was born in Alexandria, in Eygpt, in around 370 CE. She was the daughter of Theon, a distinguished scholar who taught mathematics at Alexandria. It was from her father that Hypatia discovered her passion for learning, and sought to master multiple disciplines. Mathematics, astronomy, history, philosophy, geometry: Hypatia learned them all under her father's tutelage, and was a natural. Her growing reputation as a woman of science lead her reputation to almost separate from her father's, a concept unheard of in ancient Egypt.  An illustration of the death of Hypatia at the hands of her accusers.  Hypatia's achieveme...

Born as Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana in 1648, Juana is the reason I renamed my 'Ancient Women of Power' series to the 'Historical Women of Power' series. Despite being born far from the classical period, her feminism and strikingly modern thought were too inspirational not to include.  She was born in New Spain, Mexico, to descendants of Spanish immigrants. Despite her link to the noble Spanish, she seemed destined for a middle-class life, as she was born out of wedlock. Her father, a Spanish military officer, left her mother to raise Juana and her sisters alone. Despite her illiteracy and Mexican society's misogyny, Juana's mother successfully ran one of her father's estates and was determined on educating her children in the way she never was. It was perhaps her mother's revolutionary ideas about a woman's role in society that inspired Juana to pursue a life in scholarship.  A painting of Sor Juana, rocking what I believed were micr...

It's 500 BCE, and the sun is shining over Delphi, the seat of the Oracle of Apollo. According to the legend, Delphi was founded when Zeus sent out two eagles to the east and west. The eagles were meant to meet at the navel of the world, and they met at Delphi - the true centre of the world. Zeus marked the spot with a sacred stone, and the place was thereafter known as the centre of the world. Later, Apollo slayed his chthonic enemy - Python, the great snake - at Delphi, and the legends said that when the Python was slain, its body fell deep into the earth, its smoking body sending fumes through chasms in the earth.  The oracle sat upon her tripod in John Collier’s The Priestess of Delphi, 1891 Apollo, after saying the Python, took over the snake's Temple and Oracle in Delphi. The Oracle was a blameless woman selected from the local people, who would give advice from Apollo. Sitting above one of the city's chasms on a tripod, inhaling the fumes of Apollo's slain enemy, ...

Looking at the present state of LGBTQIA+ rights in African countries' legislation, it would seem western countries are its trailblazers. The Netherlands legalised gay marriage in 2001 with more powerful countries, such as America, legalising it in 2015. This is a stark contrast to Africa, where half of the world's 69 countries which criminalise gay marriage reside. For the queer citizens of these 34 African countries, living as their authentic selves is impossible in the face of rejection by family, friends and the law. For these people and modern society at large, it may seem it's been like this forever. However, when we look to the past, to forgotten history, we can see this is not the case. Firstly, let's look at pre-colonial attitudes towards aspects of some African societies which didn't conform to European views around sexuality and gender. Social conventions vastly different to European practices exist and still do across Africa's countries and tribes. O...

Born  in Singapore in 1981, 'Tila Tequila' is an American TV Personality, and, get this, Bisexual! Her 2007 'bisexuality-themed' MTV show, (very creatively) entitled 'A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila' was MTV's  second highest-rated series premiere of that year. She's kind of an icon, and she'd be my new Gemma Collins had she not posted a photo of herself in a 'scantily clad SS uniform' in front of Auschwitz, and posted an article she'd written entitled 'Why I Sympathise with Hitler: Part I,' but we'll get to that another time. My main enquiry, of course, is to ask: why was there more than one part? Why wasn't one part enough, Tila?     One of the show's most chaotic images. So, the show, why we're all here. MTV's ' A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila' (2007) is both one of the most distressing and entertaining pieces of reality TV I have ever consumed - and I've been through two seasons of 'My Uno...

  An illustration from 'TimTum: A Trans Jew Zine.' In the modern day, religion is seen as incompatible with queerness. Because traditional biblical and Talmudic readings have historically enforced conservative ideals on religious communities, we see religion as anti-Queer. In reality, whilst much biblical interpretation is anti-Queer, the original scripture is either ignorant or inclusive of gender non-conforming identities. Today I'd like to talk about the diversity in gender identity that we see in the Talmud - the primary source for Jewish law, tradition, philosophy, ethics, and history. The Talmud defines six genders, six! That means that when the Babylonian Talmud was written, in the year 500sih - Jewish authorities thought that the populations of non-binary genders were significant and diverse enough to fall into four non-binary categories. The six genders defined in the Babylonian Talmud are as follows: - Zachar (זָכָר) - AMAB, living as male; - Nekevah (נְקֵב...

This image is absolutely wild, and I think the Sun's watermark over the top only adds to how truly British this image of the Queen doing the Nazi salute is. Elizabeth II, would I will not address as 'Queen,' died in 2022. Her death signified the end of an era: an era of colonialism, racism, and white supremacy. Whilst white supremacist and racist ideals still permeate our society, and the effects of colonialism can still be felt around the world, the Queen signified a privilege and right to the racism that I hope died with her. I won't say her death made me happy, but it certainly didn't make me sad. Here's why I won't mourn the Queen. The hagiographic fairytales of the Queen's life are lies - they represent a disgusting colonial desire to cover up the history of black oppression that Britain is built upon. As noted Sri Lankan Academic and Author Indrajit Samarajiva wrote: The British Empire were just Nazis that won. Their greatest victory is that their ...

The Israel-Palestine conflict is an incredibly complex issue at the intersection of religion, politics, sociology, and economics - an ever-evolving affair that is both multifaceted and extremely hard to comprehend, let alone attempt to resolve. I apologise if this month's instalment is the Frankie Robinson anthology is a little downbeat, the conflict is an incredibly serious topic that I am very passionate about. This article is not supposed to be non-partisan or non-biased - I have bias that is very obvious: I'm pro-Israel, I identify as a Zionist, I observe rabbinical and Talmudic scripture on the topic, and I am ever aware of the conflict mostly from the view of Israeli media, and Jewish news outlets. There are plenty of very compelling pro-Palestine arguments in the aether, and I'll be pushing for one of our own writers to release a contrasting piece on the topic, to balance me out. With that out of the way, let's begin.      An Israeli and Palestinian flag hang, s...

The Encyclopædia Britannica, the oldest English-language encyclopaedia, defines the social and philosophical movement of Transhumanism as: A philosophical and intellectual movement which advocates the enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies that can greatly enhance longevity and cognition. To help us grasp the ideas and ethics of Transhumanist ideology, I'll use an example from David DeGrazia, a Bioethicist and Professor of Philosophy at George Washington University. Professor DeGrazia imagines a woman called Marina, who has insecurities and anxieties and is generally unhappy with herself. Marina wants to take Prozac (Fluoxetine) because she's heard that it can make people more confident. Marina, essentially, wants to use a drug (biotechnology) to go beyond her limitations. DeGrazia asks if this is okay if she's still the same person, is this acceptable, but what he's really trying to ask is  what defines ...