Monday, December 26, 2016

Lagos, Etc.


Lagos, Nigeria is one of the greatest cities in the world. It is found in Africa or the Motherland. It is the largest city in Nigeria in population. It is one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. It is a major financial center. It is a mega city with the highest GDP in the nation and has some of the largest and busiest ports in the continent. Lagos initially emerged as a port city which originated on a collection of islands, which are contained in the present day Local Government Areas (LGAs) of Lagos Island, Eti-Osa, Amuwo-Odofin and Apapa. The islands are separated by creeks. It has over 8 million people at least. Its metropolitan area has about 21 million people. Lagos is found in 2 major geographical areas of the island and the mainland. The island region is made up of many islands while the mainland has most industries there. It is known for its music and night life. The major areas of the mainland include areas like Ebute Metta, Yaba, Ajah and Ejigbo. Some rivers, like Badagry Creek, flow parallel to the coast for some distance before exiting through the sand bars to the sea. The city is near the equator, so its temperature remains constant with no major change year round. There is no single municipality in Lagos, so there is no overall city administration. There is the existence of 16 to 20 governmental local areas which together make up the Lagos State. The mainland beyond the Municipality of Lagos, on the other hand, comprised several separate towns and settlements such as Mushin, Ikeja and Agege. Lagos’ economy is very powerful. The Central business district is found in the island and its economy generates a major part of Nigeria’s GDP. Lagos’ economy is a 24 hour economy. Some residents have the highest standards of living in Nigeria and in Africa. There is still poverty in Lagos too. The Port of Lagos is Nigeria's leading port and one of the largest and busiest in Africa. It is administered by the Nigerian Ports Authority and it is split into three main sections: Lagos port, in the main channel next to Lagos Island, Apapa Port (site of the container terminal) and Tin Can Port, both located in Badagry Creek, which flows into Lagos Harbour from the west. The port features a railhead. The port has seen growing amounts of crude oil exported, with export figures rising between 1997 and 2000. Oil and petroleum products provide 14% of GDP and 90% of foreign exchange earnings in Nigeria as a whole. Lagos is known for its massive tourism too.

There is an oral history of the Lagos that says that in the period around 1300 to 1400, the Oba (King) of the Benin Empire heard from one of his traders complaints about being mistreated by the Awori who lived in the area of current day Lagos. The Oba of Benin then sent a trade expedition by sea to engage with the Awori people, who nonetheless declined to engage and attacked the mission sent by Benin. Upon hearing this as the mission returned to Benin City, the Oba of Benin commanded the assembling of a war expedition, led by Ado, a prince of Benin, which headed to the settlement of the Awori in current-day Lagos, then called Eko by the Benin people, and demanded an explanation. On getting there, Ado and his army were more than well received - the Awori from Lagos asked Benin Prince Ado to stay there and become their leader. Ado agreed, on the condition that they surrendered their sovereignty to the Oba of Benin, to which the Awori people of Lagos agreed.  Upon hearing this, the Oba of Benin gave his permission for Prince Ado and the expedition to remain in Eko with the Awori. The Oba of Benin later sent some of his chiefs, including the Eletu Odibo, Obanikoro and others, to assist Ado in the running of Eko. Lagos was inhabited at first by the Awori subgroup of the Yoruba people in the 15th century. They called it Oko. The leadership of Oloye Olofin existed back then and he caused the Awori to move into an island which is now called Iddo and then to the larger Lagos Island. In the 16th century, the Awori settlement was conquered by the Benin Empire  and the island became a Benin war-camp called "Eko" under Oba Orhogba, the Oba of Benin at the time. Eko is still the native name for Lagos. Lagos means “lakes.” It was a nme given to the settlement by the Portuguese. Today, the Lagos state has a high percentage of Awori, who migrated to the area from Isheri along the Ogun river. Throughout history, it was home to a number of warring ethnic groups who had settled in the area. Following its early settlement by the Awori nobility, and its conquest by the Bini warlords of Benin, the state first came to the attention of the Portuguese in the 15th century. Portuguese explorer Rui de Sequeira visited the area in 1472, naming the area around the city Lago de Curamo. Another explanation is that Lagos was named for Lagos, Portugal—a maritime town which, at the time, was the main center of Portuguese expeditions down the African coast.

IN our time, many music videos still have many messages in them. One such video is called Weeknds’ “Starboy.” The video has the Weeknd destroying his house using an “illuminated” cross. That scene shows a lot of meaning. There is occult imagery in the video too. The video deals with a collaboration with Daft Punk. The video seems to be about a boy who is a star in the entertainment business. Yet, the symbolism makes it more than about it. It has a ritualistic tone and outlines the principle of the death and rebirth narrative found in esoteric initiations. The 2 videos of “Cant’ Feel my Face”, "Tell your Friends”, and the Hills outline a trilogy too. When the videos are seen together, it shows a story about the Weeknd meeting a figure holding an apple, which is similar to the serpent story in the garden of Eden. In Can’t Feel My Face, the figure (which is similar to Lucifer) literally sets The Weeknd on fire and figuratively lights up his career. In Tell Your Friends, The Weeknd buries himself in the desert. It outlines the old Weeknd. In Starboy, The Weeknd kills his old self again by suffocating him. The Weeknd “Starboy” video starts with a masked man entering the Weeknd’s house. The Weeknd sits in a chair. The masked man then gets up and suffocates The Weeknd with a plastic bag. When the killer removes his mask, it shows that this person is the Weeknd. He shaved his hair and he looks different. So, symbolically, he is reborn with a new hairstyle. He is wearing a cross too. The Weeknd passes by a painting featuring Daft Punk. It shows a falling star in the background and the black panther. The Weekend sees the illuminated red cross hanging in his room. The cross literally catches his eye. The cross reflects inside a single eye, which the single eye has multiple meanings in the occult. Later, he takes the cross and breaks his gold records and the cover of his first album. In the song, he said that his P1 (a sports car) is cleaner than your church shoes (the rewards of the occult elite are greater than the life of a humble church going person). He also says that he makes a lot more money than you and that his girl (and the girl he cheats this girl with, which he calls his side B word. Many artists degrade women using that word) are better than yours. So, this has nothing to do with real Christian principles or fighting materialism. Later in the song, explains how he upgraded to a new table where his girl can snort cocaine from. So, he is boasting of what he has been given or has. The industry loves this as they love to make profit off of people rapping or singing about wordiness. Also, he is blatant about his intentions in his song by saying: “…We don’t pray for love, we just pray for cars…” He is destroying things to go into another level of his career not to destroy materialism. It is no secret that the corporate elites and the occult system runs Hollywood and the rest of the entertainment world. Also, many celebrities’ relatives have ties to the military industrial complex too. The cover of the Starboy single cover sums up the occult transformation that is happening. On the left are lightning bolts, in the middle are crosses (and a star) and on the right are more lightning bolts. There are six symbols in each column. In occult symbolism, the lightning bolt represents “descent” from the heavens to Earth. For this reason the symbol is sometimes used to represent Lucifer who is said to have descended from the Kingdom of God to mankind. Lucifer is also known as the Light Bringer. The same terms have been used since the dawn of time to describe the planet Venus. Venus is esoterically associated with the symbol of the 5-pointed star and the pentagram due to its “astronomical dance” in the skies. This symbolism is not new. The late David Bowie used Kabbalistic imagery and the lightning bolt image for decades. After destroying his things and burning down his clothes, The Weeknd leaves his house. A black cat follows him. The cat is bigger in the car and its eyes glow. The illuminated cross is no on the ground. The Weeknd is now a “starboy”, a person who was hand picked by the elite to become a “higher level” star. Because of this, he owns a bunch of material things that he brags about in his songs. To become a starboy, he has to kill his old self while wearing a cross and he must pledge his allegiance by ritualistically destroying his possessions using a cross. Using this Christian symbol to commit death and destruction is part of the soul-selling process. The industry is not peaches and cream. Tons of celebrities tell about orgies, abuse, materialism, violence, drug addiction, and other evils throughout the industry. Nothing is new under the sun which is why goodness is always good to promote and good in society.

The term of anthropology has a long evolution in human history. It current use was first found in Renasisasance Germany in the works of Magnus Hundt and Otto Casmann. It is a combination of two Greek words of  ánthrōpos (ἄνθρωπος, "human") and lógos (λόγος, "study"). (Its adjectival form appeared in the works of Aristotle.)  It began to be used in English, possibly via French anthropologie, by the early 18th century. In 1647, the Bartholins, founders of the University of Copenhagen, defined l'anthropologie as follows: “Anthropology, that is to say the science that treats of man, is divided ordinarily and with reason into Anatomy, which considers the body and the parts, and Psychology, which speaks of the soul.” There were later uses of the term like by  Étienne Serres in 1839 to describe the natural history, or paleontology, of man, based on comparative anatomy, and the creation of a chair in anthropology and ethnography in 1850 at the National Museum of Natural History (France) by Jean Louis Armand de Quatrefages de Bréau. Various short-lived organizations of anthropologists had already been formed. The Société Ethnologique de Paris, the first to use Ethnology, was formed in 1839. Its members were primarily anti-slavery activists. When slavery was abolished in France in 1848 the Société was abandoned. Meanwhile, the Ethnological Society of New York, currently the American Ethnological Society, was founded on its model in 1842, as well as the Ethnological Society of London in 1843, a break-away group of the Aborigines' Protection Society. These anthropologists of the times were liberal, anti-slavery, and pro-human-rights activists. They maintained international connections. Today, anthropology deals with diverse subjects like anatomy, linguistics, and ethnology. In essence, anthropology is the study of the actions of human kind in the world. Many modern anthropologists today study gender, multiculturalism, ethnography, race, and other issues. Cultural anthropology is more related to philosophy, literature and the arts (how one's culture affects experience for self and group, contributing to more complete understanding of the people's knowledge, customs, and institutions), while social anthropology is more related to sociology and history. To understand anthropology is to understand social structures of peoples in the world too. Ethnomusicology is an academic field encompassing various approaches to the study of music (broadly defined), that emphasize its cultural, social, material, cognitive, biological, and other dimensions or contexts instead of or in addition to its isolated sound component or any particular repertoire. Therefore, anthropology is a very multifaceted field of study.

After the Russian Civil War, revolutions continued to exist worldwide. Later, revolutions grew in China and throughout Europe plus all over Africa. The Russian Revolution and the Russian Civil War changed the world forever. War and revolutions caused many changes. The civil war devastated Russia for a time. Lenin and his Red Army won. Yet, the Russian economy suffered because of the destruction of the war. Trade was stagnant. Industrial production declined. Many people went into other countries in order to gained employed and many of these people were skilled workers too. Lenin had to do something. Therefore, in March of 1921, Lenin put aside his plan for a state-controlled economy at the moment. He created a small scale reform plan call;ed the New Economic Policy. This was called the NEP for short. The NEP allowed the peasants to sell their surplus crops instead of turning them over to the government. The government still controlled major industries, banks, and means of communication. Yet, it let some small factories, businesses, and firms to operate under private ownership. The government also encouraged foreign investment. The country slowly recovered in part because of the peace and new policies. By 1928, Russian firms and factories were producing as much as they did before World War I. Bolshevik leaders obviously didn’t agree with nationalism since Marxism is internationalist by nature. They wanted party unity and loyalty. That is why they including Lenin organized the Soviet Union into many republics that were self governing but under the control of the central government. In 1922, the land was called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or the USSR. The Bolsheviks now renamed themselves the Communist Party. The Communist Party came from the literature of Karl Marx. Marx wanted communism to be a classless society where workers seized power to overthrow the capitalist elitists. In 1924, the Communists created a constitution based on socialist and democratic principles. It was very historic. The Communist Party held power. Lenin ruled the USSR. It is important to promote workers’ power, which Stalin didn’t really advocate, especially after Lenin passed away.

By Timothy

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