113: An Audio Diary from Gaza
Latitude Adjustment
We have been wanting to bring you voices from inside Gaza since the very start of the current atrocities, but for what are obvious reasons this has proven to be extremely difficult, especially after Israel cut all communication lines and mobile phone networks in Gaza, in the prelude to their ground invasion. However, a student from our Palestine Podcast Academy, Shahd Safi, has managed to send me a series of daily audio diary entries detailing her experiences and her feelings in recent days. Shahd is from al Nuseirat Refugee camp in Central Gaza, a camp that has been subjected to repeated...
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112: Colonialism in Global Public Health
Latitude Adjustment
Why don’t we see more African researchers presenting at global Public Health conferences and in US and European research journals? Who determines which public health issues are prioritized in Africa? What is Public Health and “Vaccine Apartheid”? What do these insights reveal about the current state of our Public Health discourse on the global scale? It’s impossible to isolate the conversation around public health in the Global South from the topic of colonialism and anti-Blackness more generally. What’s more, while Africa and Africans continue to be presented with unique...
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111: Death and Corruption in the Shadows - The Global Arms Trade
Latitude Adjustment
While the global arms industry may only account for about one percent of global trade, it’s important to note what that one percent actually buys. Beyond the price tags on the weapons themselves, arms and arms sales have a tremendous impact on all other aspects of global trade, and on relations between trade partners and competitors. This week's episode is a collaboration between journalist and Latitude Adjustment Podcast. Our guest, Andrew Feinstein, is the author of the best-selling book, "", published in 2011. In his review Noam Chomsky writes, "This shocking expose unveils a shadow...
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110: Solidarity Rising for Western Sahara
Latitude Adjustment
In 1975 Spain formally ended its colonization of "Spanish Sahara", but instead of ceding control to the indigenous Sahrawi population Spain instead handed the keys to its former colony to the Moroccan regime. For nearly 50 years the Sahrawi people of illegally occupied Western Sahara have been subjected to a brutal regime of settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, resource-theft, and the violent suppression of all dissent including the systematic use of rape and torture by the Moroccan authorities. Meanwhile, more than 170,000 Sahrawi refugees have been left to languish in refugee camps in the...
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Africa's Last Colony - Understanding Western Sahara
Latitude Adjustment
Where is Western Sahara? What is Western Sahara? Is it a country? Who lives there? If you find yourself unable to answer any of these questions, or if you want a resource that will help you to quickly explain the history and the current political realities around Africa's last colony to your friends and to your community, this short episode was created for you. Latitude Adjustment Podcast is also working on plans to complete a multimedia documentary series, working on the ground with Sahrawi refugees in Western Algeria, and in collaboration two former guests of the show. You can find...
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109: The American Roots of African Homophobia
Latitude Adjustment
What we are seeing now in the US, with the rollback of so many progressive victories, and with the passage of bigoted legislation towards sexual minorities, is in many ways the final stage of a decades-long strategy by violent strains of American Christian Evangelism. That strategy has seen Africa used as a testing ground in an ideological war against sexual minorities. And that war has returned home with a vengeance; newly emboldened, with more support, and with a more focused strategic vision. Reverend Doctor Kapya Kaoma is an Anglican priest from Zambia, a human rights activist, and one of...
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108: Assad's "Human Slaughterhouse" - Surviving Sednaya
Latitude Adjustment
is currently 28 years old. He was first arrested at 15 for attending a protest against the Al Assad regime, and was arrested a total of 11 times between 2011 and 2013. His last arrest, in 2012, along with the arrests of two of his cousins, led to his incarceration in the Branch 215 military intelligence detention center for 21 months, where he experienced torture on a daily basis. In 2014 he was transferred to Sednaya prison, where he experienced even more brutal forms of torture, and where prisoners were subjected to summary execution for talking without permission. During his period of...
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107: Understanding the War in Sudan
Latitude Adjustment
On April 15th war broke out in Sudan. The fighting between the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group and the Sudanese army has devastated Khartoum, spread across the country, and an estimated 1,800 people have lost their lives, with hundreds of thousands displaced. joins us from the UK, where she has been living since fleeing the war in April, after a missile struck her home. Dalia is a former journalist who moved back to Sudan in 2013 after living in Egypt for more than two decades. For more information about how you can help the people of Sudan you can follow the following...
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106: From Kabul to Canada (2 of 2)
Latitude Adjustment
This is the second of a two-part series about Basir Bita’s escape from Afghanistan after the US withdrawal in August, 2021. In this second half of his story, Basir shares his experiences getting from Pakistan to Canada, the challenges of adjusting to a new culture, the double-standards in Western moralizing, and navigating the prejudices and stereotypes that refugees often face. Be sure to listen to part one, about the fall of Kabul and about his family’s escape from Afghanistan after the US withdrawal in August of 2021. Also be sure to listen to our interview with , who escaped overland...
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105: Abandoned in Afghanistan (1 of 2)
Latitude Adjustment
On August 30th 2021, the US and its coalition partners ended their nearly twenty-year occupation of Afghanistan. Two weeks before they left, the Taliban swept across the country taking major urban centers, including Kabul. As embassies were abandoned, and as Afghans government officials fled the country, those Afghan citizens who had worked with the occupying forces faced the very real prospect of execution by the Taliban as collaborators. Yet, just Afghan interpreters had been abandoned in years past, many were left behind when the last US flight left the country. Now they, and the millions...
info_outlineWhat we are seeing now in the US, with the rollback of so many progressive victories, and with the passage of bigoted legislation towards sexual minorities, is in many ways the final stage of a decades-long strategy by violent strains of American Christian Evangelism. That strategy has seen Africa used as a testing ground in an ideological war against sexual minorities. And that war has returned home with a vengeance; newly emboldened, with more support, and with a more focused strategic vision.
Reverend Doctor Kapya Kaoma is an Anglican priest from Zambia, a human rights activist, and one of the central figures in the documentary film, “God Loves Uganda”.
Kapya is also a researcher, and the author of several books, including “American Culture Warriors in Africa”, “Christianity, Globalization, and Protective Homophobia.” He has testified before the US Congress, US State Department, and the United Nations. Though he has also focused on Environmental Ethics, much of his research and advocacy work focuses on the targeting of the LGBTQIA community in Africa and the Christian Evangelical and Catholic roots of this persecution.
See below for links to organizations in Africa that are in need of your support for their work on the front lines.
SMUG (Sexual Minorities Uganda)
Transbantu Association (Zambia)
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