Tuesday, March 12, 2024

Sign of The Times

 

                                                                 Sign of the Times

                                                            Junious Ricardo Stanton


“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” Eric Arthur Blair aka George Orwell

                                                                    



Astute people today realize we are living in a time of universal deceit! Not only does the media lie, their owners are attempting to propagate a new reality, a “new normal” where wrong is enshrined as right, where insanity is pushed a being sane, where recklessness and lack of moral control are promoted, where moral depravity is celebrated, where the bounds of decency are evaporating, where megalomaniac psychopaths call the shots and coerce us to acquiesce to their fiendishly anti-life agenda and where people are so panicked, zonked out and dumbed down they go along with this lunacy.

What is happening in this country is not organic, it is not a natural evolution nor is it “progress”. Rather it is a deliberate devolution, a planned destruction of the current order to make way for a wholesale authoritarian reconfiguration of society through mind control, perception management, social reengineering and institutional reorganization, what the perpetrators of this wicked agenda are calling The Great Reset!

We find ourselves being subjected to stimuli and media content designed to make us pliable and susceptible to the globalist overlord’s agenda; a campaign that includes: induced hysteria over nonlethal microbes (the so called novel Coronavirus), the bogus notion of a climate crisis (the Earth is a living entity, if it were not we could not sustain life on this planet and all living things go through changes) and global social reengineering.

The plutocratic elites further their plans through the ownership and control of mass media, the education systems and government. They own the mass media! A handful of conglomerates own just about all the major media in the world. https://www.webfx.com/blog/internet/the-6-companies-that-own-almost-all-media-infographic/

So when they want to get us to go along with their plans they use the media to condition us to think the way they want us to think, believe what they want us to believe and react the way they want us to react. The best way to do this is to blanket the airways, print and digital media with their spin, propaganda and lies then suppress all counter narratives and ideas. To double down on their mendacity they reinforce their narratives by “fact checking” any content that runs counter to their party line/propaganda.

These “fact checkers” are in fact in the employ of the misanthropes and megalomaniacs who want to rule/run the world. It is the “fact checkers” job to debunk, obfuscate, demonize or cast doubt on anything that challenges their masters’ fake reality. The fact checkers are in cahoots with their owners/employers to propagate lies and deceit! It is becoming more and more obvious the so called fact checkers are part and parcel of the globalist mind control apparatus.

As time went on, the attempts to censor became more brazen and obvious. Then the Twitter files and other FOIAs generated proof of what many suspected all along. These entities were funded either directly or indirectly by government or by other dark-money sources as quid pro quos for other relationships they had cultivated with interested parties. In other words, they were not some independent, science-based entities at all but rather hit squads with a hard political agenda. What was actually happening here was a form of censorship laundering. Government wants to censor but cannot so it turns to the social-media company to do the dirty work. To make this hand-in-glove racket less obvious, the companies would outsource to a fact-checking organization, making the lines of control even more blurry. Sometime within the last several months, the whole racket seems to have unraveled. I rarely see the fact-checks cited at all. Or maybe they are cited ironically: what is declared false came to be seen as a badge of honor, a confirmation of core truth. That might seem crazy but these are the times in which we live. Nothing is as it seems.” The Fact Check Racket Finally Unravels Tyler Durdan https://www.zerohedge.com/political/fact-check-racket-finally-unravels

The billionaire class uses their money through “philanthropic” grants, sponsorships, advertising, business deals, bribes, extortion (think Jeffrey Epstein, Mossad and CIA honey traps) and intimidation to get what they want. Bill Gates is a prime example. His Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation literally controls much of what we see read and hear via media. https://www.cjr.org/criticism/gates-foundation-journalism-funding.php The Rockefeller Family’s Foundation has been doing the same thing for a century. https://resource.rockarch.org/story/war-of-the-worlds-rockefeller-philanthropies-disinformation-and-media-literacy-in-the-1930s/

In October of 2019 a group of “influential” individuals and institutions came together to convene the last drill and simulation before the roll out of their COVID “pandemic”. It was called Event 201. It was sponsored by globalists like: the Bill and Belinda Gates Foundation, The World Economic Forum, Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and a few others. Most people are unaware of Event 201 or the ongoing series of simulations and drills that had preceded Event 201 like Crimson Contagion during 2019 or that simulations have been going on since 2001! https://thefreedomarticles.com/9-simulations-drills-laws-prepared-for-the-coronavirus/

When you look at the recommendations of Event 201 especially number seven you can see their brazen plans for censorship and suppression. https://centerforhealthsecurity.org/our-work/tabletop-exercises/event-201-pandemic-tabletop-exercise#recommendations In other words they planned to censor, control and eliminate any counter discussion, narratives or questioning of their nefarious plans and methodology; meaning this was not about public health best practices but about control and manipulation! This is a sign of our time, we are living in a time of universal deceit!

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Saturday, March 02, 2024

Alarming Trends Are Being Suppressed

 

                                             Alarming Trends Are Being Suppressed

                                                           Junious Ricardo Stanton

                                                                 


        

In a December 12, 2023, article for The Hill,15 Kory also reviewed the actuarial data, which reveals another shocking shift: The burden of death now falls disproportionately on the young and working-aged, a demographic that once epitomized health and vitality within American society. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's decision to archive its excess deaths webpage in September, ceasing updates, adds a layer of mystery to this already perplexing situation.” Shocking Finding: Life Expectancy Continues to Plummet https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2024/03/02/life-expectancy-continues-to-plummet.aspx?ui=


The corporate media in cahoots with public health bureaucrats, governments, Big Pharma and the Military Industrial Security Complex are suppressing the truth about what is occurring in this country. This is a crime, it is not an oversight, it is a cover up of humongous proportions. We are not being informed about trends and patterns that are directly impacting our lives on an extremely fundamental level, Americans are dying at alarmingly higher rates!

In 2021, more than 892,000 of the 3,456,000 deaths the U.S. experienced, or about 1 in 4, were ‘excess deaths’ In 2019, that number was 483,000 deaths, or nearly 1 in 6. That represents an 84.9% increase in excess deaths in the U.S. between 2019 and 2021. Excess deaths refer to the actual number of deaths that occur in a given year compared with expected deaths over that same time period based on prior years or, as in this study, in other countries.” We’re still learning just how badly America handled the pandemic—’excess deaths’ jumped nearly 85% in 3 years, study finds. By Patrick Heiveline and The Conversation https://fortune.com/well/2023/06/17/america-covid-excess-deaths-worse-other-rich-countries-85-percent/

The first indications of this trend were mentioned but not covered widely in the media in 2021 when the US insurance industry noted payouts for life insurance policies were skyrocketing and these numbers had skewered the actuarial forecasts and predictions the industry used to manage their financial projections and their bottom line profits. “Life insurance actuaries are reporting that many more people are dying – still – than in the years before the pandemic. And while deaths during COVID-19 had largely occurred among the old and infirm, this new wave is hitting prime of life people hard . No one knows precisely what is driving the phenomenon, but there is an inexplicable lack of urgency to find out. A concerted investigation is in order. Deaths among young Americans documented in employee life insurance claims should alone set off alarms. Among working people 35 to 44 years old a stunning 34% more died than expected in the last quarter of 2022 with an above-average rates in other working age groups too… From 2020 through 2022, there were more excess deaths proportionally among white collar workers 19% versus 14% above normal. The disparity nearly doubled among top-echelon workers in the fourth quarter of 2022, U.S. actuaries reported. And there was an extreme and sudden increase in worker mortality in the fall of 202 even as the nation saw a precipitous drop in COVID-19 deaths from a previous wave. In the third quarter of 2021, deaths among workers ages 35-44 reached a pandemic peak of 101% above – or double – the three-year pre-COVID baseline. In two other prime working-age groups, mortality was 79% above expected.” More young Americans are dying and its not COVID, Why aren’t we searching for answers? Dr. Pierre Kory and Mary Beth Pfeiffer https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2023/08/11/more-americans-dying-than-before-pandemic-covid-deaths/70542423007/ The underlined emphasis is mine.

The phenomenon of rising deaths was given a name, Sudden Adult Death Syndrome or “died suddenly”. This is happening too frequently especially in younger adults. The common element here is these deaths occurred during the so called COVID-19 “pandemic” following a “vaccine” that was supposedly fast tracked and presented to the public as the prime public health treatment modality to stop its spread. Is it a coincidence the excess deaths, the died suddenly incidents began shortly after the COVID inoculation roll out? I think not. More importantly why aren’t public health officials alarmed about these numbers?! Why hasn’t there been global investigations and extensive research into this phenomena?! This adds to the mystery and suspicion something is not right here.

One way to determine the truth is by using autopsies or postmortem examinations. For the most part postmortems have been discouraged! Why? Could it be the media, academia, Big Pharma, the government and related interest groups don’t want us to know how deadly the shots are? Is it possible they know autopsies will shatter their narrative the shots were “free, safe and effective”?

These questions, attitudes and issues are a major problem of public trust and accountability. Fortunately a group of scientists attempted to address in their paper published in 2021 entitled Autopsy Findings and Causality Relationship between Death and COVID-19 Vaccination: A Systematic Review. They concluded, “Although post-mortem investigations were reported in only a few cases, it is reasonable to assume that the potential causality between death and COVID-19 vaccination had been studied in a large number of post-mortem investigations for different reasons that had not been published: the fact that only 17 papers with post-mortem investigations were published does not mean that post-mortem investigations in deaths after vaccination were not performed. This consideration is important in order to clarify the important effort that the scientific community is still making to clarify all aspects related to COVID-19 vaccination... In order to avoid another ‘Lockdown of science’, we are firmly convinced that autopsy should be the rule in the causality assessment of fatal cases occurring at the same time as COVID-19 vaccination. Measures such as clarifying vaccine safety and effectiveness are essential to reduce vaccine hesitancy in the general population. Despite vaccine hesitancy being a global phenomenon, the causes are very different in each country. As discussed in the present review, the reports about the severe adverse effects of vaccination, such as thrombosis, thrombocytopenia, and myocarditis, have negatively influenced public opinion, slowing down the vaccine program. In line with these considerations, it is desirable that all data collected after post-mortem investigations are shared in the scientific community in order to point out the relative countermeasures.” Sadly their recommendations have fallen on deaf ears.

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Monday, February 12, 2024

Historic Cheyney University Needs Help

 

                                                         Historic Cheyney University Needs Help!

                                                                       Junious Ricardo Stanton




Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, a member of the state owned Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education is the oldest institution of higher learning for people of African descent in the United States. It’s origins date back to 1829 with the Last Will and Testament of Richard Humphreys a white man who was born on February 13, 1750 on the British Colonial Island of Tortola in the West Indies.

Slavery was deeply rooted in Tortola, it was the engine that drove the colonial island’s agrarian economy. Humphreys father who raised sugar and cotton owned slaves. Humphreys’ parents died when he was a young boy but his father’s will provided for Richard and his older brother Thomas to be apprenticed in America; Richard as a gold and silversmith and Thomas as a tanner working in animal hides.

In America Richard eventually became a successful silversmith operating a shop at 54 High Street in Philadelphia. Humphreys was also an upstanding member of The Religious Society of Friends also known as Quakers. The Quakers were renowned for valuing education, thrift, hard work and piety. While living in Philadelphia Humphreys became keenly aware of the horrid conditions of Blacks and provided in his will for the establishment of an institution that would, “.. having for its object the benevolent design of instructing the descendants of the African Race in school learning, in the various branches of mechanik arts, and trades and in Agriculture: in order to prepare and fit and qualify them to act as teachers in such of those branches of useful business as in the Judgment of said society they may appear best qualified for...”

Humphreys bequeathed $10,000,one tenth of his total estate, to fund that institution. Richard Humphreys died on February 5, 1832. The thirteen trustees he named in his will, all fellow members of the Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends accepted the challenge to execute Humphreys’ wishes. During their planning it was first named The African Institute but was later changed to the Institute of Colored Youth.

ICY was not founded or chartered as a college. It didn’t have to be considering the lofty standards the Quakers set for all their educational institutions. Plus ICY was created to also teach mechanical arts, trades and agriculture. ICY became a forerunner of American land grant colleges and universities by several decades.

The Quakers (actually the Humphreys Foundation) administered ICY which later changed the name to Cheyney after the Quaker who sold farmland for the school in Delaware County Pennsylvania to the Trustees, until the foundation sold the school to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1922. Needless to say the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania lacked the same passion, concern and commitment for Cheyney’s mission to educate Blacks as the Quakers. The Commonwealth’s lack of fervor and vision resulted in decades of neglect and racist policies that continued after the creation of PASSHE in 1982. This neglect has continued to the present.

Despite an uninterrupted denial of equal support by the Commonwealth, Cheyney’s administrators still retained the commitment to education, moral uplift and service the Quakers infused in it when they founded ICY. Under Commonwealth and PASSHE ownership, Cheyney suffered from a continuous lack of equal and adequate funding from the state. In the mid to late 60’s student unrest, protests and direct action forced the state to pay attention and up the ante. But once Wade Wilson who was appointed President of Cheyney State College after the first wave of student uprisings retired as Cheyney president, the Commonwealth and PASSHE refused to recruit the innovative leadership needed to position Cheyney as a premier educational institution.

But it wasn’t just Cheyney, PASSHE as a system proved not to be ready for prime time. Many think because of the early Quaker influence in Pennsylvania that it is a progressive state, it is not. It is as benighted and backward as its some of its more infamous sister states, especially when it comes to public higher education!

Just two years ago the Commonwealth out of necessity was forced to merge six universities into two new regional schools due to massive fiscal and enrollment challenges. Pennsylvania ranks at the bottom as far as public higher education goes and is one of the least affordable states for pubic higher education in the nation. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/admissions/traditional-age/2023/07/12/pa-public-colleges-battle-students-and-funding,

In many ways PASSHE is merely a “good ol’ boy’ network, a bastion of cronyism and political appointees with little or no insight into the complexities and dynamics of higher education. Governors and the legislature with the exceptions of Tom Wolf the immediate past governor and the current Governor Josh Shapiro, have not prioritized public higher education in the Commonwealth with the exception of Penn State University. PASSHE as a system has failed in its mission to provide low cost quality public higher education in Pennsylvania for working class families. https://www.cbsnews.com/pittsburgh/news/study-ranks-pa-worst-state-for-higher-education/

Now Cheyney faces yet another challenge. The Middle States Commission on Higher Education the regional accreditation agency placed Cheyney University of Pennsylvania on probation on November 16, 2023. The Middle Sates Website posted this, “To acknowledge receipt of the supplemental information report requested by the Commission action of June 22, 2023. To note the on-site follow-up team visit by the Commission's representatives to the main campus at 1837 University Circle, Cheyney, PA 19319 on September 5-6, 2023. To acknowledge receipt of additional information provided by the institution on October 23, 2023.  To place the institution on probation and note that the institution's accreditation is in jeopardy because of insufficient evidence that the institution is currently in compliance with Standard II (Ethics and Integrity), Standard III (Design and Delivery of the Student Learning Experience), Standard VI (Planning, Resources, and Institutional Improvement), and former Requirements of Affiliation 5 and 11. To note the institution remains accredited while on probation. To note further that federal regulations limit the period during which an institution may be in non-compliance, which started on November 16, 2023. https://www.msche.org/institution/0480/

The underlined emphasis is mine. Go to the Website and read it for yourself. The wording of this post is a direct indictment against the administration of President Aaron Walton and an indirect indictment against PASSHE and the Governor who appointed him. Middle States is saying the institution lacks integrity and ethics and questions the administration's ability to even accomplish the mission of the university! This is a huge development. It places the Commonwealth in a major conundrum. What to do, how does PASSHE get out from under this indictment by an extremely influential and independent third party accrediting agency?!

The knee jerk letter of support from the Chancellor and the PASSHE Board of Governors is worded in such a way when you read it, it is obvious they didn’t even take the time to read the Middle States’ notice. Contrary to their letter, Middle States did request additional documentation and additional meetings with the university.

Let’s be honest, Aaron Walton did not create the problems at Cheyney University, Cheyney was a mess. However he continued them as a member of PASSHE’s Board of Governors by being a company man especially when he served as Vice Chair. Walton exacerbated the school’s problems when PASSHE sent him to Cheyney as president! He was simply not a good leader. There is no way to get around Middle State’s placing Cheyney on Probation without a change of leadership! That is the first step towards a practicable solution.

It is one thing for a president to be inept or incompetent but it is catastrophic when he or she is inept, unethical and unable to carry out the processes for accomplishing the university’s mission and reason for existence! Frankly I don’t see how any additional documentation will alter this reality!

Albert Einstein said, “You cannot solve problems using the same consciousness that created them.”; to which I add or the same energy and the same people who created or contributed to the problem! The bottom line is, Aaron Walton must go!

                                                                       -30-

Thursday, February 08, 2024

 

                                                           George Washington Carver

                                                            Junious Ricardo Stanton

                                                                                  



In the mid to latter part of the twentieth century in the US you could rarely go to a city or county in the South that didn’t have a school named after George Washington Carver. Even during the days of virulent racial oppression and caste, George Washington Carver was viewed as “a credit to his race” and famous scientist who single-handedly saved Southern agriculture. Today many Black people and Euro-Americans don’t even know who George Washington Carver was. So as part of this year’s Black History articles I will share a bit of Carver’s personal and professional history, genius and accomplishments.

The exact date of George Washington Carver’s birth is not known. It is surmised he was born between 1863-1865 in Diamond Grove Missouri during the formal enslavement era. He was born into servitude, into a large family. His parents were “owned” by a man named Moses Carver. His family was given the surname of the White man who owned them, Carver. Before he was born George’s father died in an accident. As an infant George suffered several traumatic experiences. When he was only a few days old, George along with his mother and a sister were kidnapped by raiders and transported to Kentucky. Only George was found and retrieved by an agent working on behalf of Moses Carver. This was the norm during enslavement; “owners” would pay “agents”, trackers aka slave catchers to trail and retrieve their “property” as part of the federal government's Fugitive Slave Act.

When Carver was returned to Moses Carver’s farm he had no parents. His father had died before George was born and the trackers weren’t able to recapture his mother and sister so George and another brother James were raised by Moses Carver and his wife Susan.

George was a sickly boy so he was spared the hard work in the fields even after the War Between the States was over. Early on he developed a fascination with plants and herbs while living with the Carvers working in Mrs. Carver’s garden. Moses and Susan Carver also taught young George and his brother how to read and write.

George unlike many of his peers was able to attend school. He was sent to an all Black school in Neosho Missouri where he lived with a Black couple named Andrew and Mariah Watkins. He learned more about plants living and working for and with them but he subsequently left Neosho and migrated to Kansas. He completed high school in Kansas, applied to and was accepted at a White college that rejected him once they discovered he was Black. He applied to, was accepted and attended a college in Iowa, Simpson College, where he studied art and music but later transferred to and graduated from Iowa State Agricultural School now known as Iowa State University. Carver studied botany earning a Bachelor’s Degree in 1894, the first African American to do so. Carver remained at Iowa State Agricultural School earning a Master’s Degree in Agricultural Science in 1896. He taught at the college once again he was the first Black to do so.

Booker T. Washington was looking for science teachers for his Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama. In 1896 Booker T. Washington heard about George Washington Carver and recruited him to come to Tuskegee. There Carver spent his life teaching, researching, becoming a world renowned innovator, inventor and highly respected scientist.

Carver focused on service providing practical education and information to the rural Blacks in Alabama. Under Carver’s tutelage Tuskegee initiated mobile agricultural education programs, hands on demonstrations in the local communities to teach farming and animal husbandry skills to rural farmers. Using his research and ideas Carver showed the farmers how to use crop rotation to replenish the soil because exclusive cotton planting was depleting the nutrients in the soil. Carver used what he learned and taught at his Tuskegee teaching laboratory to help farmers increase the yields on their cotton crops by alternating planting cotton with soil improvement crops like soybeans, sweet potatoes and peanuts. He expanded the mobile outreach to offer midwifery, family hygiene with nurses to help educate and service rural Alabama communities.

Alabama farmers’ most profitable crop was cotton and many of them were leery of Carver’s instruction to plant soybeans, sweet potatoes and peanuts. Carver meanwhile was hard at work discovering new products that could be developed from those crops. Carver discovered and developed over three hundred products and new uses for those alternative crops which allowed the farmers to profit from his discoveries and save Southern agriculture in the process.

Carvers work and success brought him to the attention of government officials and industrialists like Henry Ford and Thomas A. Edison. Carver was often invited to Washington D.C. to testify before Congress or as a speaker at important policy meetings and educational seminars. His work benefited the whole nation not just Alabama!

George Washington Carver’s research saved Southern agriculture from self-destruction and in the process created new markets for plants many ignored, took for granted or failed to recognize their potential. Carver was not bitter about the racial caste and oppression he experienced during his life. He had an extremely positive philosophy about life. One of his many quotes about living and life was, When you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.” Carver explained his success this way, “God is going to reveal to us things He never revealed before if we put our hands in His. No books ever go into my laboratory. The thing I am to do and the way of doing it are revealed to me. I never have to grope for methods. The method is revealed to me the moment I am inspired to create something new. Without God to draw aside the curtain I would be helpless.” During his life, Carver overcame obstacles and barriers and ended up a highly respected scientists during an era of virulent racial animus and terror.

Carver discovered hundreds of uses for peanuts, soybeans and sweet potatoes as food, commercial and industrial products such as cooking oils, milk, soaps, cosmetics, medicines, dyes, paints, paper, and alternatives to silk and rubber. Prior to Carver arriving on Tuskegee’s campus in 1896 the peanut wasn’t even recognized as a bona fide US crop; but thanks to Carver by 1940 the lowly peanut was ranked number six and had become the second leading cash crop in the South behind cotton!

For all of his accomplishments and recognition George Washington Carver has a mild mannered humble and deeply spiritual man. He prayed and meditated and said the plants spoke to him and shared their secrets. Carver eschewed the spotlight and remained committed to serving his people using botany and chemistry to make a tremendous impact where he was. He turned down lucrative requests from Henry Ford and Thomas Edison to work with them. He only owned a few patents on his discoveries, he allowed others to take credit for his research and work.

What can we take from the life of this genius? My take-away is: cultivate our innate gifts, follow your passion, be committed, stay single minded and focused, remain humble and appreciative of your successes. My family owes a deep gratitude to George Washington Carver. On my paternal side my ancestors owned land and were peanut farmers (along with corn, soybeans and other crops) in Southampton County Virginia from the late 1870’s to the present. Thank you Dr. Carver!

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Thursday, February 01, 2024

African Genius and Originality

 

                                                        African Genius and Originality

                                                            Junious Ricardo Stanton




Over the years, I have shared information about the accomplishments of Africans that largely go unrecognized and overlooked due to a deliberate campaign to suppress, obfuscate and ignore African people and our history. For example few people know Africans were the first boat builders, https://keyamsha.com/2019/09/07/the-8000-year-old-dugout-canoe-from-dufuna-ne-nigeria/ the first navigators of the rivers and lakes in African who later circumnavigating the world. https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-important-events/did-ancient-humans-acquire-nautical-knowledge-sailing-prehistoric-megalakes-021434

Celebrating African and Black history during the shortest month of the years is counterproductive even though we need the exposure. We should celebrate African/human/world history all year long, daily because it is human history.

Let’s look at the things we take for granted that were begun, invented and developed by our aboriginal African ancestors. Africans developed the concept of family as an organized social as well as a biological unit. Family formed the basis of social organization and culture. Africans recognized the importance of blood connections and used those blood connections what we call families as the core foundation of their group, tribe, clan and society. Leadership and governance were based on the family or clan.

While animals have instinctive ways to determine leaders for example the proverbial “alpha male”, humans developed specific methods to create formal leadership and governance. On the most primitive level, leadership was conducted by group consensus through elders who had life experiences and served as leaders because of their and direct connection to their ancestral family members. These elders were charged with not just wisdom and guidance in daily affairs but also with propitiating the spirit realm, serving as intermediates between the family members, the forces of nature and the invisible energies they perceived all around them.

The leaders created traditions, rituals, and ceremonies to acknowledge births, deaths, status changes such as young adulthood and marriage, seasonal variations and to map the passing of the heavenly bodies. This was the origin and purpose of Adams Calendar, Nabta Playa and the similar megaliths. https://thyblackman.com/2019/02/15/2019-ancient-african-megaliths/ This is also the origin of what we call culture. These rituals and ceremonies included chants, hand clapping, foot stomping with rudimentary instruments that had deliberate and specific meanings, reasons and intentions for doing them.

In short Africans invented government whether it was tribal elders, tribal council, selected chiefs, hereditary chiefs or kings and queens. As their groups expanded over territory and their populations grew, they developed hierarchies for social administration, they created divisions of labor, work details and they encouraged and incorporated artistic skills and incorporated them into their daily lives.

So when we attend a wedding or a funeral or witness governments in action remember our ancestors were the first to do these things! When we look at Africa we see the beginnings of social/civil organization what we now call civilization. We see aboriginal people exchanging, battering and trading amongst themselves, other tribal groups in other lands. This was the beginnings of commerce across the continent and later into Asia and Europe. https://african.business/2021/10/trade-investment/a-short-history-of-african trade#:~:text=The%20very%20earliest%20evidence%20of,paintings%20dating%20from%2010%2C000BC.

Our ancestors were the first to chop and carve trees into boats and canoes, to weave reeds to make water tight vessels. Africans were the first to use these boats, canoes and sailing vessels to engage in trade, taking their surplus crops, goods and artifacts first to nearby groups, then throughout Africa and subsequently the world.

Europeans admit the first articulated and practiced system of ethics (Maat) originated in Africa. Timelines indicate the first monarchy/dynasty in the world, extensive territorial occupation and social organization originated in Africa along the Nile Valley. Africans had empires but they were not all created by violence and invasion, some were the result of force and conflict some were not.

In review Africans created: family based social organization; we created rites of passage to mark the growth and transition of members within the community and determined how they each fit into within the social fabric and scheme using trial and error and later formalized traditions. We invented rituals and ceremonies, we invented and developed trade and commerce.

Africans created metallurgy, working in metals like gold, cooper, bronze and iron. https://oxfordre.com/africanhistory/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-148 We invented clothing, we created early weaving machines https://www.amatuli.co.za/2021/12/woven-together-the-art-of-african-weaving/ we invented adornment, demarcations and decorations to distinguish social status, to tell whether a female was married was an adolescent or a male was an initiated member of the community, a warrior or an elder. We were the first to map the heavens.

Africans recognized sound had power and invented music, instruments and incorporated music and sounds into our daily activities. We invented meaningful symbols and their recognition whether it was hieroglyphics on papyrus, on the walls, the megaliths or Her-em-akhet (misnamed the Sphinx by the Greeks).

Africans created practical technology whether it was a digging stick, a rudimentary plow, the ramp, and pulley or a weaving loom. https://www.adireafricantextiles.com/textiles-resources-sub-saharan-africa/an-introduction-to-sub-saharan-african-textiles/loom-types-in-sub-saharan-africa/ We developed farming techniques like crop rotation, using fire to burn the soil to give it nutrition. We were the first fishermen. We created the first planned urban centers and cities. We were the first educators.

I could go on but you get the drift, we are a creative, inventive and profoundly gifted people. This same creativity resides in our/your DNA; it is in our genes and blood. We do ourselves our ancestors and progeny a disservice if we allow our genius to be stifled and atrophy, not be fully developed or expropriated by others for their benefit and not ours!

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Thursday, January 25, 2024

Hooray for South Africa!

 

                                                          Hooray for South Africa!

                                                             Junious Ricardo Stanton


       



On December 29, 2023 the government of South Africa went before the International Court of Justice in The Hague to officially file charges against Israel accusing that nation of the crime of genocide against the people of Gaza. This was an historic initiative on several levels; first because Israel has been aggressively conducting illegal territorial expropriation and land grabs and has illegally usurped, stolen, occupied and displaced hundreds of thousand of Palestinians since 1967. Following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war Israel has subjected the residents of Palestine to brutal, ruthless military occupation on their own land, constant assaults on their dignity and person and knowingly and deliberately deprived Palestinians of natural resources such as water, destroyed and expropriated their farm lands displacing them off of their land and illegally detaining them without just cause. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/06/israel-occupation-50-years-of-dispossession/

Israeli settlers have an extremely hostile attitude towards the Palestinians and have worked incessantly to undermine their efforts at indigenous internal organization and self-determination. Israel colluded with it prime enablers the US and UK to create a counterweight to the Palestinian Liberation Organization which vehemently opposed the ongoing settler expansion. Together the US, UK and Israel played a pivotal role in the creation and promotion of Hamas. https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/ https://tribune.com.pk/story/2302309/how-and-why-israel-helped-create-hamas

Hamas started out as a charity organization far less political and militant than the PLO; but once it gained Israeli support it overshadowed the PLO (a classic divide and rule tactic by the Israelis) because many rank and file Palestinians felt the PLO sold them out by negotiating a ”peace” deal with Israel.

Hypocritically, the United States of America, the greatest purveyor of violence and conflict on this planet today in its role as a global arms seller and instigator labeled both the PLO and Hamas terrorist organizations. This act of psychological projection (ascribing to others what you yourself are guilty of) allows the US to support the crimes against humanity being conducted by it allies and proxies or in the case of Israel its master!

The details and narratives of the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack which ironically is being called Israel’s 9-11 are highly suspicious. Gaza is one of the most thoroughly policed, spied upon and monitored spaces on this planet; even the Israelis say a mouse can’t move anywhere in Gaza without them detecting it! Similar to the US 9-11, astute people should be asking: how did such a highly sophisticated, costly occupation, intelligence/monitoring system get caught flat footed, how did well armed entities with advanced detection/defense systems like the kind the US and Israel deploy, have such feeble initial responses to these two attacks?!

The theory both the US and Israel allowed their attacks to occur makes the most sense to me. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/30/world/middleeast/israel-hamas-attack-intelligence.html Allowing it to happen provided Israel with the rational to rapidly do what it has been gradually doing for fifty years: ethnically cleanse Gaza, displace the people either via death or massive destruction and disruption. The attack provided an excuse for Israel to go full speed ahead with their plans for a Greater Israel stretching from the Nile to the Tigris Euphrates Rivers. https://www.jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/what-is-greater-israel-why-is-the-idea-not-acceptable-to-the-muslim-community-1621507466-1

The South African government had a Popeye moment “That’s alls I can stands and I can’t stand no more.” witnessing the impact of Israel’s deadly overhanded response to the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas. After watching drones, missiles and artillery murder innocent civilians and decimate large swaths of Gaza territory, South Africa said enough. South Africa filed charges against Israel in the International Court of Justice charging Israel with genocide! Their presentation laid out the facts of collective punishment and indiscriminate violence against civilians. “In an 84-page filing to the ICJ, South Africa argued that Israel is committing genocide by killing Palestinians in Gaza, causing serious mental and bodily harm, forced evacuation, widespread hunger, and by creating conditions “calculated to bring about their physical destruction.” It also accused Israel of failing to stem incitement to genocide in the public pronouncements of its officials. During three hours of oral argument, lawyers representing South Africa asked the ICJ to order a suspension of Israel’s campaign in Gaza to protect the rights of Palestinians in Gaza ‘from imminent and irreparable loss.’

Such ‘provisional measures,’ as they are known, function as a kind of restraining order to stop a dispute from escalating while the court considers the full merits of the case, which could take years. For provisional measures the court need only decide if prima facie, or ‘at first glance,’ the acts complained of could fall foul of the genocide convention… South Africa presented widely reported evidence that it said showed a “systematic pattern of conduct” by Israel ‘from which genocide can be inferred.’ The UN defines genocide as an act ‘committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.’” South Africa accuses Israel of genocide and urges top UN court to halt Gaza war by Christian Edwards https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/11/middleeast/south-africa-israel-genocide-icj-hague-day-one-intl/index.html

While the ICJ has no power whatsoever to enforce any ruling it may make, we can applaud at least one nation, an African nation that knows first hand the horrors of settler/invader racial oppression that had the courage to do the right thing! Meanwhile Israel and its lapdogs attempt to justify the unjustifiable, defend the indefensible and promote the slaughter of innocents.

                                                                       -30-