As I get older, I'm starting to understand more about issues. Just because someone calls themselves as apart of the GOP doesn't mean that they are pro-God. Even the Republicans back then are different from the Republicans that you see today. Once, Theodore Roosevelt (with his errors) fought to promote food safety from the robber barons. He promoted environmental safety and used money to preserve natural treasures in the form of national parks in America to benefit all Americans. Once, the NYC mayor Fiorello LaGuardia governed in the era of the New Deal in FDR's time. LaGuardia wanted coal to benefit all of the people and use the government to actively pursue that goal. Regardless if you agree with coal technology or not, the use of active government in a progressive act is taboo for the Tea Partiers to embrace. Some Tea Party people oppose a minimum wage, Social Security, public works, and other acts that have enriched the lives of millions of American citizens. Theodore Roosevelt tried to have his independent Bull Moose party, but he failed to be President later on. The Tea Party today would of condemned the Republicans of yesteryear. Big business took over both major parties now and especially the Republican Party (some of its biggest supporters supported the Nazi Party decades ago). By the 1960's, the Republicans became more reactionary. Many Republicans voted for more civil rights legislation (along with Democrats like JFK, RFK, Hubert Humphrey, and LBJ), but the Dixiecrat Democrats came into the Republicans with open arms by the mid to late 1960's. Hubert Humphrey as far back as 1948 called for civil rights legislation and said that all humans are equality and ought to have equal rights including African Americans. Private power should never be stronger than the democratic state since that's basically fascism or the ownership of the government by a select few of corporate interests. Times have changed over 150 years after the beginning of the Civil War. We see the Tea Party and the Young Guns in full effect today. Both major parties have had their share of men and women of high moral character on the one hand, and of very low moral character on the other, and they still do. That is why we should promote the interests of the poor and all peoples not the privileged rich elite. For it's better to help the neighbor than exploit or oppress the neighbor. Even Micah 6:8-12 condemned the corruption of the rich elite. Isaiah 58:1-10 said that we should clothe people and help people suffering in the world. Reactionaries say that this is the individuals' responsibilities not the state. Yet, the government is created by individuals and the people. It's made up of people and the government (as made up of the people) helping the people is not evil nor a vice. It's a function of compassion and it's even mentioned in the Constitution (as found in Article I, Section 8). If progressive efforts to improve human standard of living are bad then why are European nation have equal or better HDI (and standard of living levels) than the USA (like Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Denmark, the Netherlands, etc.). It's very hypocritical for those of reaction to say nothing on the government sending mail, building roads, having a military, preventing fire, having national parks, etc. and then say that any other government intervention is equivalent to socialism. The red baiting is old and tired. For their ilk (or the neo cons, etc.) to claim some intellectual superiority over people like me, they sure advocate some archaic, unintelligent views.
Michel Chossudovsky have done a lot of research about the recent turmoil in Tunisia in 2011. The situation deal with the IMF's Diktats. The policies of macro economic policy has triggered worldwide poverty and unemployment for years. General Zine el Abidine Ben Ali is the deposed President of Tunisia. The Western media call him a dictator and praise his fall from the throne. The West view the Tunisian protest movement as really describing as the consequence of an undemocratic and authoritarian regime. This defies the norms of the international community. Ben Ali technically was a servant of Western economic interests. He followed the policies of the international communities. New information found that food price hikes done by the IMF and Wall Street influence the chaos in Tunisia (or this revolves around foreign interference in that Northern African country). IMF's policies made Tunisia to be more poor. In 1987, there was a huge debt crisis. National sovereignty was gone. The left nationalist government of Bourguiba was replaced by a new regime, firmly committed to "free market" reforms. So, the macroeconomic management under the helm of the IMF was in hands of Tunisia's external creditors. Over the last 23 years, economic and social policy in Tunisia was ruled by Washington Consensus. Ben Ali stayed in power because his government obeyed and effectively enforced the diktats of the IMF, while serving the interests of both the US and the European Union. The IMF's deadly reforms existed for other nations too. This neoliberal agenda caused the conditions for the demise of the current demise of the Tunisian government. The protest movement isn't targeting the neoliberal reform or the Western financial systems at all. A puppet government might occur in the nation. The interim government is headed by acting President Fouad Mebazza. He is currently in an impasse, with fierce opposition emanating from the trade union movement (UGTT). Mebazza has promised to "break with past", without however specifying whether this signifies a repeal of the neoliberal economic reforms. There was a food breat riots in 1984 in Tunisia. People didn't like the 100 percent hike in the price of bread as deamned by the IMF the structural adjustment program (or SAP). Food subsidies were goen as the de factor condition of the loan agreement with the IMF. President Habib Bourguiba, who played a historical role in liberating his country from French colonialism, declared a state of emergency in response to the riots. Bourguiba reversed the hike and the he fired his Minster of Interior. He didn't want to follow the Washington Consensus. The neoliberal economic policies came on causing big inflation and mass unemployment. He was replaced in a bloodless coup d'etat to be replaced by the General Zine el Abidine Ben Ali as president in November 1987. This coup was not directed against Bourguiba, it was largely intended to permanently dismantle the nationalist political structure initially established in the mid-1950s, while also privatizing State assets. This ended the post-colonial nationalism led by Bourguiba. Ben Ali's government allied with Washington not France. Later, Tunisia made a free trade deal with the EU and made an agreement with the IMF. There was a privatization program under the supervision of the IMF-World bank. Tunisia was a cheap labor haven for the EU since hourly wages was only Euro 0.75 an hour. Ben Ali was a puppet of the IMF/World bank. he fired public sector workers. He eliminated price control over essential consumer goods and implemented a sweeping privatization program. There was a lifting of trade barriers ordered by the World Bank causing bankruptcies. Following these dislocations of the national economy, cash remittances from Tunisian workers in the European Union became an increasingly important source of the foreign exchange earnings. The IMF wanted to get rid of all subsidies and other austerity measures that didn't benefit Tunisia at all. This increased staple food price. Some blame manipulation (like market manipulation in speculative trading) or scarcity for the food hikes. Grain prices have increased as well. The World Bank is actively involved in cooking the data and distorting the social plight of the Tunisian population. The official rate of unemployment is 14 percent, the actual level of unemployment is much higher. Recorded youth unemployment is of the order of 30 percent. Social services, including health and education have collapsed under the brunt of the IMF-World Bank economic austerity measures. Market forces being manipulated have caused havoc in Tunisia. Scholars have exposed these things. It isn't a secret that the IMF using evil intervention tactics (and the rising food prices, massive lay offs, closing of schools, closing of health clinics, and the destruction of social problems) have destroyed people's lives. We have the right to show the truth and oppose austerity acts.
Henry Louis Gates is the perfect Left gatekeepers. He's loved by liberal elites since he supports most of their policies. He agrees with the neo-cons by blaming the victim of people of color and the poor including the lie that Africans collectively share equal blame with Europeans for the centuries long holocaust of the African slave trade. This slave trade is also classified as the Maafa (or the destruction of Holocaust in the Swahili language). He has a professorship at Harvard University. He wrote literature on African American issues, so he isn't ignorant at all about these issues. The deal is that Gates sucks up to establishment white people in order to don't touch any toes. He also allows the crimes of Europeans to be omitted greatly from the historical record in order to place blame on Africans. He doesn't like reparations for African Americans when Jewish people, Japanese people, and others have received reparations for decades. They deserve it. Yet, none of these people suffered the international slave trade at all. Gates goes on to describe African involvement in the sale of human beings and does so only for the purpose of making white people feel guilt free and dismiss any discussion of the need to compensate black Americans for their ancestors’ enslavement which was followed by decades of Jim Crow segregation. Ironically, economic reparations isn't profitable to him or his career. Reparations (whether you agree or disagree with it) isn't about blaming indiscriminately every single white person in history for the act of the Maafa. It's about compensation for the terror and oppression done and sanctioned by the West (including in part by the U.S. government). Ironically, Gates was arrested by a Cambridge, Massachusetts policeman in July of 2009. Gates certainly wanted to talk about injustice during that moment of time. Gates omits that the how gave slave owners cash after it abolished the slave trade. Some Africans were traitors, but Europeans initiated, planned, and tried to immorally justify the slavery of Africans. Dr. Gates ignores the resistance efforts of Africans against slavery like Queen Nzinga. Let us not forget, Europeans from Christopher Columbus enslaved the Native Americans to dig out Gold in the Americas and decimated them in the course. Amazing that Gates (an ally of Amy Goodman) is mum on the involvement of Lehman Brothers and Aetna involvement in the slave trade. Although, I don't blame every European in history for the slave trade. That would be silly. Dr. Gates is a member of the Bretton Woods Committee. That committee is made up of the super rich being anti-labor and anti-union now. Its members include Henry Kissinger, George W. Bush, Peter G. Peterson, as well as the upper echelon of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Blackstone Group, Carlyle Group, Veritas Capital, and the usual suspects. I am a victim of the Maafa and our people are global. Gates promotes the "tough love" ethic when we have people like Oscar Grant dead. When leading scholars like Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Dr. Leonard Jeffries, Dr. Charshee McIntyre, Dr. James Turner, Sonia Sanchez, Dr. Molefe Asante, Dr. Maulana Karenga and a host of others were contending that the goal of Black Studies/Africana Studies must be "education for liberation," it was Professor Gates who sided with the academic establishment in castigating this approach. Indeed, he became the "darling" of conservative White academia by denouncing African-centered Black Studies programs as "separatist" enterprises, lacking in scholastic rigor and objectivity. People say that Gates suffered racial profiling, but he believes that we live in a post-racial society. There are African-Americans, Afro-Mexicans, Afro-Hondurans, Haitians, Jamaicans, Afro-Cubans, Afro-Bolivians, Afro-Colombians, Afro-Venezuelans, Afro-Brazilians and so forth. Wanting equality is fine (we're born equal), but wanting justice and freedom is just as important.
Back in Spring of 2002, the LDS completed its reconstruction of the Nauvoo Temple in Illinois. It was once destroyed after Mormons left the town. Symbolism in it relates to Freemasonry that Joseph Smith embraced. Hyrum was a Mason just like Joseph. Even Brigham Young is said to be another Freemason and Young was another famous innovator of the Mormon religion. Scholars like Reed Durham wrote that Masonry have had an influence on Joseph Smith and the development of Mormonism. 1842 was the time that records show Smith receiving the first degree of Freemasonry in the Nauvoo Lodge. Smith said that in March 16, 1842, Joseph Smith rose to the sublime degree. According to one source: "...The introduction of Freemasonry in NAUVOO had both political and religious implications....Eventually nearly 1,500 LDS men became associated with Illinois Freemasonry, including many members of the Church's governing priesthood bodies—this at a time when the total number of non-LDS Masons in Illinois lodges barely reached 150." (Encyclopedia of Mormonism, vol.2, p.527). The original Nauvoo Temple had a weather vane with a Masonic square and compass above the angel. This was found by the The Salt Lake Tribune by in May 4, 2002, pg. C3 as written by the reporter Peggy Stack. The Mormons now replaced it with the gold leafed Moroni (that is found in the Salt Lake Temple). The Endowment ritual by Joseph Smith is a high probability of being related to Masonic rituals. The inverted stars in the Nauvoo Temple is related to Masonry too. The inverted star has many meanings from satanic influence, the travels of Venus in its 8 year cycle, and to the concept of the Perfected Man. The sun stone from the Nauvoo Temple with its human race (is similar to the Masonic depictions of the sun). Albert Pike, in his book, Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, discusses the various Masonic symbols and their meaning. Masons used the beehive, the All Seeing eye, the compass and square, the sun, the moon, and the stars (as found in the apron present to President George Washington by Freemason Lafayette. This is recorded by the book The Craft and Its Symbols: Opening the Door to Masonic Symbolism, by Allen E. Roberts, p.11). All of these symbols have been used by the Mormon religious church indeed, especially in the Salt Lake Temple. The beehive image is the Masonry emblem of industry or working.
By Timothy
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