Tuesday, January 30, 2018

BLACK AMERICAN ENEMIES?

BLACKS ARE AMERICAN ENEMIES? How and when did we black people become the "enemy" of the United States of America? Which action is it that demonstrated black enmity ? This question first occurred to me as I read in Thomas Paine's essay, "Common Sense, on The King of England's Speech dated February 19 and 28, 1782." It recurred to me, when the American CIA director, Pompeo, said to the BBC that the Russians and Chinese are America's greatest threats, without mentioning American black folks at all. But with President Trump's ill-conceived "shithole" descriptive references to African descendants and American policy and disparities it is clear that African people are the 'domestic' enemies of America! But why? For what? Paine writes: "Her [America's] situation now is such, that to whatever point, past, present, or to come she casts her eyes, new matter rises to convince her she is right. In her conduct towards her [enemy], no reproachful sentiment lurks in secret . No sense of injustice is left upon the mind. Untainted with ambition and a stranger to revenge , her progress has been marked by providence, and she, in every stage of the conflict has blest her with success ." P. 291, THOMAS PAINE , COLLECTED WRITINGS (1955) When this founding father, Thomas Paine, wrote these words, America was newly-flush with victory over King George III of England. British General Charles Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia, in October 1781, following seven years of war. The "enemy" then referred to was the British. The blacks had fought on both sides, seeking freedom from chattel slavery, wherever it could be found! It later turns out that a black slave named "Armstead," who was a spy for the Americans, unbeknownst to the British, who had thought that he was a spy for them; secretly, had lured Gen. Cornwallis and his army into the lethal sand-trap that compelled their surrender from, a position of hapless siege and total annihilation wherein it found itself! The Marquis de Lafayette writes of the indispensable heroism of then-slave Armstead in Lafayette's book "Lafayette in America, 1777-1783." A few years after the war ended Armstead was finally granted his freedom, a small plot of land, and a small annual pension by the Virginia legislature, in homage to this black man's extraordinary spy service. "Lafayette Armstead," as he was later known, is not taught in school history of the Revolutionary War. That would make a black man seem to be heroic, or, by extension, the black people in America as well! Such racist, purposeful, factual, omissions as these bestir American racism and sycophancy, in whites and blacks, respectively. Not meaning to digress, the issue before us is: how and when the black man in America became the [enemy]? Well, it must have been after the Revolutionary War, given Armstead's singular representative contribution on behalf of the black. But the "Articles of Confederation" were the young nation's governing document in 1782, when Paine wrote his essay. 'The Articles' and the "Declaration of Independence," which Thomas Paine, undoubtedly, and as surely, wrote were its leading documents. I re-assert Thomas Paine's authorship of the "Declaration," rather than Thomas Jefferson's, given the presence of certain phraseological similarities between the two versions. The infamously stricken phrase about "Indians and Negroes," that was formally redacted from the "Declaration's" original draft by a Constitutional Congress' editorial committee, in 1776, was recast by Thomas Paine in this 1782 essay, six years later. http://alexpeak.com/twr/doi/change/ He said: "That the very man who began the war, who, with the most insolence refused to answer , and even to hear the humblest of petitions, who hath encouraged his officers and his army in the most savage cruelties, and the most scandalous plunderings, "who has stirred up the Indians on one side, and the Negroes on the other," and invoked every aid of Hell in his behalf, should now with an air of affected pity turn the tables from himself, and charge on another the wickedness that is his own, can only be equaled by the baseness of the heart that spoke it." Id. P287-288. My additional point of proof besides phasing is in the fact that Thomas Jefferson was a well-known slave holder, while Thomas Paine was not a slaveholder! Why then would Thomas Jefferson write anything inimical to his economic or political interests or contrary to his inherent biases and beliefs in the original "Declaration?" He would not! Paine would! President Jefferson's racist prejudices are set forth frontally in Jefferson's 1785 book, NOTES ON THE STATE OF VIRGINIA, "Query XIV." http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/jefferson/ch14.html Jefferson's book was a clarion call for American racism, based upon his innate alleged inferiority of African Americans, Jefferson said . This rash crassness was later responded to by that iconic black Maryland farmer, Washington D.C. assistant surveyor, astronomer, mathematician, Benjamin Banneker, who wrote his renunciation in a 1791 letter to Jefferson refuting its baseless allegations. Benjamin Banneker's letter, as further proof, included his ephemeris (almanac). This astronomical work Jefferson sent to the French Academy, M. Cordocet, that confirmed the accuracy of Banneker's calculations. Banneker's almanac went on to be published widely in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, as a valuable reference. https://founders.archives.gov/docum…/Jefferson/01-22-02-0049 Oh my! I digress again! The query being how and when did African Americans become American "enemies?" During the period after the American Constitution was ratified in 1789, it could not have been then; for despite being regarded as 3/5s human in its legislative provisions, the slaves fully counted for Southern representation purposes in the Congress a virtual, matrix-like "non-citizenship status" was ours . We were and we were not at once! Even so, Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, and other black folks in their new Free African Society, relying on spurious promises about their freedom from Dr. Benjamin Rush, and others, sacrificed their own lives, health, fortune to save the white Philadelphians from Yellow Fever plague in 1793, that killed 5,000 people. The blacks, who were falsely represented to be immune to the disease, helped whites, by nursing them, cleaning for them, feeding, washing and burying them; while the big white folks like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Washington et al., fearfully fled the nation's Capitol for safer climates, quarantines, not as contaminated! So given the blacks' salvific labors for the nation's Capitol in 1793 in the Yellow Fever Plague, they must have become enemies of America at a later date and place. http://hsp.org/…/richard-allen-ap…/the-yellow-fever-epidemic Well, the War of 1812 came next, against Great Britain again. Andrew Jackson, future President and commander of the American forces at the Battle of New Orleans, praised the black free men and slaves who brought him American victory; although he reneged on his promise (as did Congress) to give these black warriors land, money, freedom, like the white soldiers got. Oh well, at least he praised them! They were not the enemies! http://www.rarenewspapers.com/view/602305 The Civil War, of course, was a "white man's war." Blacks, slave or free, could not enlist until after January 1, 1863. Though the status of blacks was certainly the issue to be decided by the war, the blacks were not the 'enemy,' as recently as 1865, when the former "white man's war" came to a close, due once again to the salvific blacks! http://www.abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/…/abraham-lincoln-…/ Neither were blacks the 'enemy' in the early Reconstruction period when they were freed from slavery, given citizenship by birth, and given the right to vote, 1866-1870, by the 13-15th Amendments to the United States Constitution and their enabling statutory laws. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_Amendments Perhaps 'enemy' is in the "nadir" as historian Rayford Logan has termed it, the period after 1876, with the Hayes-Tilden Compromise . This was the reconciled political agreement between unidentifiable leaders of the North and South that federal troops were to be withdrawn from the South as consideration for the Presidency going to Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio, a Republican, and the North assuming a "hands-off" approach to the South's handling of its black folks: socially, legally, economically. "Enemy" status, if extant, for we black Americans lasted well-beyond the 1896 "Atlanta Exposition Speech" of Tuskegee's founder Booker T. Washington (who replaced Frederick Douglass as national black leader who died that year) and lasted equally well-beyond that same year's Plessy v. Ferguson U. S. Supreme Court decision that mandated "separate but equal" Jim Crow-segregation in every public venue as lawful all over the nation. As this draconian decision was not reversed until 1954, to the extent that "enemy status" yet existed or pertained, it lasted at least until then. But given Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's civil rights labors, victories and 1968 assassination, plus the strong efforts of others, it is clear that the same "enemy status" obtained through 1968. For, it was then that Richard M. Nixon revived the Dixiecrat "Southern Strategy" to enable the Republican Party to win the Presidency, then, and again in 1972. Now in January 2018, with Donald "shithole" Trump as our President, with mass incarceration and with lawful police killings of black justified in federal courts by the cops' subjective "fears," whether blacks are still enemies of the United States of America, is a question well-worth considering! 

THE LANGUAGE OF TRUTH IS INFINITE

To title a book THE LANGUAGE OF GOD, as Dr. Francis Collins, co-discoverer of deoxyribonucleic acid's double helix, has seemed to have done with his widely, robustly acclaimed 2006 release, is to limit our conception of illimitable 'God' to one language, to but one 'God' as the article, "the," plainly implies. Whether the word "language" means DNA, RNA, music, mathematics, plants, animals, fish, insects, microbes, beauty, reason, intelligence, forces, chemicals, our solar system, our human universe, infinite everlasting 'omniverses,' or them all, God can never be limited. God is unlimited . Therefore, push away, from natural parietal hubris and human arrogance that reveal themselves in such a seductively deceptive titling for this book, or for any other book whatsoever! in short, no book is big enough for ultimate Truths., I suspended reading this book in 2009, on page 79, before the subsection "Quantum Mechanics and Uncertainty Principle." Earlier I had written 'exactly' in the margin of p. 76, beside the following language: "'The more I examine the universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense must have known we were coming.' And Arno Penzias, the Nobel-prize winning scientist who co-discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation that produced strong support for the Big Bang in the first place, states, the best data we have are exactly what I predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five Books of Moses , the Psalms, the Bible as a whole.' Perhaps Penzias was thinking of the words of David in Psalms 8: 'When I consider your heavens , the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him?'" P.76 I will now resume my reading of Dr. Francis Collins' important book, and teachings, being better able to receive them, since my life-altering stroke July 20, 2010. To God be the glory for the things that he/she//it/they, have done for me, for us, entirely since then. Amen.

Monday, January 29, 2018

TROY

HECTOR-TURKEY, ACHILLES-GREEKS Hector, mighty Hector, whence the verb "Hectoring," of old Troy in Turkey, was alleged to have been a bad dude, one terrible dude, until one mightier, one more terrible, Achilles, beat him in battle, then beheaded him, and drug his body triumphantly behind his chariot around the walls of Troy to be seen by all. Yet, Achilles, histrionics aside, was soon felled, himself, by an errant arrow that struck his "Achilles" tendon, eponymically-named now for this famous Greek fatality. Yet, through it all, impregnable Troy, still stood, despite the deaths of legends, Hector and Achilles, and despite the siege of Greece. But Greeks were crafty craftsmen. As they were pretending to leave, to put out to sea, to sail in triremes for their home they rolled out a great, beautiful, wooden horse before the gates of Troy and left it, saying nothing. Jubilant Trojans deeming this Grecian gift to be the Greeks' tribute to Trojans' pluck and peerless nobility, threw open their gates; rolled the "Greek gift" inside; and celebrated themselves far into the night. Before dawn, when they were all drunk with wine, exhausted, from feasting, sexual revelry, and hectoring, fell soundly asleep. Then it was that the crafty Greek soldiers emerged from their carefully crafted horse gift, to slay where Troy lay drunk. This legend of diverse Greeks and Turks has come down to us from the pen of Homer, the first literate Greek, in THE ILIAD. These tales of Troy's subsequent, epic, civilization-survivorship sea-odyssey of fleeing Trojans who later became warring Romans, is told in Homer's THE ODYSSEY, and recovered, documented, verified by Schliemann in archaeology, who dug deep to find found Troy's walls. 

SERMON

"With A Child's ❤️ " Sermon delivered by: 1/28/2018 Rev Dr Larry Delano Coleman At Gilbert AME Church, Pastor, Rev. Brenda Smith 3700 Topping St Kansas City, Missouri "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you ; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh." Ezekiel. 36:26 WITH A CHILD'S HEART Go face the worries of the day; Turn each problem into play; No need to worry. No need to fear . Just being alive makes it all so very clear VAMP Nothing can ever get you down; You've got no reason to frown VAMP Love is as welcome as a bright sunny day No gown up thoughts to send our hearts astray VAMP Take life easy. So easy. Nice and easy. Like a child. So gay, peaceful and carefree . VAMP The whole world smiles with you as you go your merry way. VAMP https://www.google.com/search… "Touch gently the shattered harp of the human soul, if they would string it again to divine music ; that they must encourage self-respect and hope , and sense of character, or the bonds of death can never be broken.... KEYS TO UNCLE TOM'S CABIN by Harriet Beecher Stowe, (1853) Amen 🙏

AFRICAN KILN

"Great submarine depressions and elevations which have so largely affected Europe, Asia and America, during the secondary, tertiary , and quasi-modern periods, have not affected Africa . In fact, Africa is the oldest continent in the world... "Here at every third or fourth village, we see a kiln -looking structure , about six feet high, two-and-a-half or three feet in diameter. It is a clay, fire-hardened furnace for smelting iron. No flux is used, whether the specular iron, the yellow haematite, or magnetic iron ore is fused, and yet capital metal is produced. Native manufactured iron is so good, that the natives declare English iron to be 'rotten' in comparison, and specimens of African hoes were pronounced at Birmingham to be nearly equal to the best Swedish iron." P. 420-421, "Kota-Kota Bay to Chinanga," NARRATIVE OF AN EXPEDITION TO THE ZAMBESI by David and Charles Livingstone (1865)

Sunday, January 28, 2018

RE-ENGINEERING AMERICA

Reengineering of America is what our communication of ideas online embraces and entails.

Saturday, January 27, 2018

WITH A CHILD'S HEART

"In conducting the education of negro, mulatto and quadroon children, the writer has often observed this fact:--that, for a certain time, and up to a certain age, they keep equal pace with, and were often superior to, white children with whom they were associated; but there came a time when they became indifferent to learning, and made no further progress. This was invariably at the age when they were old enough to reflect upon life, and that society had no place to offer them for which anything more would be requisite than the rudest most elementary knowledge.... "Does not every one know that, without the stimulus which good teachers and parents thus continually present, multitudes of children would never gain a tolerable education? And is it not the absence of all such stimulus which has prevented the negro child from an equal advance ?... "Hence we see the reason of the passionate attachment which often exists in a faithful slave to a good master. It is, in fact, a transfer of his identity to his master. A stern law and an unchristian public sentiment has taken away his birthright of humanity, erased his name from the catalog of men, and made him an anomalous creature--neither man nor brute. When a kind master recognizes his humanity, and treats him as a humble companion and a friend, there is no end to the devotion and gratitude which he thus excites. He is to the slave a deliverer and a savior from the curse which lies on his hapless race . Deprived of all legal rights and privileges, all opportunity or hope of personal advancement or honor, he transfers, as it were, his whole existence into his master's , and appropriates his rights , his position, his honor, as his own; and thus enjoys a kind of reflected sense of what it might be to be a man himself. Hence it is that the appeal to the more generous part of the negro character is seldom made in vain.... "Society has yet a need of a great deal of enlightening as to the means of restoring the vicious and degraded to virtue... "Recent efforts which have been made among unfortunate females in some of the worst districts of New York show the same thing. What is it that rankles deepest in the breast of fallen woman, that makes her so hopeless and irreclaimable? It is that burning consciousness of degradation which stings worse than cold or hunger, and makes her shrink from the face of the missionary and the philanthropist. They who have visited these haunts of despair and wretchedness have learned that they must touch gently the shattered harp of the human soul, if they would string it again to divine music; that they must encourage self-respect and hope, and sense of character , or the bonds of death can never be broken.... "When Christ speaks to the soul, does he crush one of its nobler faculties? Does he taunt us with our degradation , our selfishness, our narrowness of view, and feebleness of intellect , compared with his own? Is it not true that he not only saves us from our former sins, but saves us in a way most considerate , most tender, most regardful of our feelings and sufferings? Does not the Bible tell us that, in order to fulfill his office of Redeemer more perfectly, he took upon him the condition of humanity, and endured the pains, and wants, and temptations of a mortal existence , that he might be to us a sympathizing friend , 'touched with the feeling of our infirmity,' and cheering us gently on in the hard path of returning virtue?" P.50-53, "Topsy," KEY TO UNCLE TOM'S CABIN by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1853)

THE TRUMP BUMP

When nothing that the President says is worthy of credence, due to his myriad discovered lies; when his executive appointees are either unqualified by experience for the jobs to which they were proposed; and/or have been proven to be historically hostile to performance of the appointed jobs' core functions; then.nothing good can come of this alleged leader in the regular course,ever .

THE SUMMER OF 1787, EXCERPT

"Lack of revenue was the ultimate indignity for the Confederation Congress. Congress could impose no taxes; it could only make 'requisitions' for funds from the thirteen states . Its requisitions met with very mixed results.... "Congress seemed to grow weaker with each month. '[No] respect is paid to the federal authority,' Madison wrote. 'Not a single state complies with the requisitions, several pass over them in silence, and some positively reject them.' Government without revenue can scarcely go by the name. The Confederation Congress owed tens of millions of dollars on the bonds and bills it sold to fund the war against Britain. The debt festered, destroying the nation's ability to borrow again. "A potent symbol of Congress's was its homelessness. It fled Philadelphia in June of 1783 when mutinous troops demanded their pay and the Pennsylvania militia was slow to provide protection. Princeton , little more than a hamlet, was Congress's next home. After a spell in Annapolis, the fugitive legislature lodged for a time in Trenton, finally coming to rest in New York City. Vagabondage is not the hallmark of a great government.... "Consistent with the primacy of the states, the Articles established neither executive officers nor courts. Congress managed all public business through its clumsy one-vote-per-state rule. Few governments in history--and none of any duration --have so disdained the executive and judicial functions. In 1787 no American state followed that peculiar one-branch structure: every state constitution provided for an executive and a court system . Only the national government lacked those essential offices. "The powers that Congress actually possessed--declaring war, entering into treaties, coining and borrowing money--could be exercised only with the vote of nine states. Because absenteeism was rife, only infrequently were that many states present in Congress. As a final guarantee of state supremacy, the Articles could be amended only if all thirteen states agreed, a requirement that doomed attempts to empower Congress to impose taxes or enforce treaty provisions . "The weakness of the Confederation Congress, combined with the practical impossibly of amending the Articles, meant that many delegates in Philadelphia agreed with Madison and Washington that America needed a new government with 'energy.' One New England delegate lamented that the Confederation's 'deranged condition,' while another warned that without action, '[the] present phantom of a government must soon expire.'" P. 22-24, "A House on Fire," THE SUMMER OF 1787 by David O. Stewart (2007)

FLASHBACK!

Seeing a photograph of 2nd graders all adorned in blue Howard University sweatshirts reminded me that in that grade I was already passing love notes to female classmates, until Mrs. Jones intercepted one and read it aloud to all!

NOT EVERYTHING IS FORESEEN

Not everything can be foreseen. In the current United States Constitution, for example, there have been 27 Amendments added to the original base document, that was first drafted in 1789. The national Constitution itself was drafted to remedy the weak and the ragged "states' rights"-laden "Articles of Confederation," the first national government document which came into being in 1781, the year that the British surrendered to the colonies to end the American Revolution. Thus, Britain giving her surrender gave birth to this new nation of diverse state traditions, cultures, vested interests, principal economies, geographical locales. That first government document was designed to be weak by state interests who were distrustful of centralized authority. However, the warm spirit of "citizen democracy" had filtered all the way down to the farmers of western Massachusetts, whose land-based interests were given short shrift by the big wigs in Boston until the farmers marched under arms to the Springfield , Massachusetts armory, in the winter months, where they were repulsed by the mouths of cannon, supplied by Massachusetts, the Confederation Congress lacking funds, due to an inability to tax. New York, then the new national capital, took due notice of "Daniel Shay's Rebellion" in 1787, enough notice and alarm to be convinced of the need for a strong national defense against enemies, foreign and domestic of any occupation. "God forbid we should ever go twenty years without such a rebellion [Shay's Rebellion, 1787]. The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time by the blood of patriots; it is its natural manure." Thus wrote Virginia's Thomas Jefferson from Paris, France, a diplomatic post, far away from the rasping fears assailing all others, nearer to men seeking land. --Thomas Jefferson. Quoted in THE SUMMER OF 1787 by David O. Stewart (2007), p.18. https://nccs.net/online-resources/us-constitution/amendments-to-the-us-constitution/amendments-11-27/amendment-27-changes-in-salaries-of-senators-and-representatives

BARACK OBAMA WAS OUR "AWL"

Barack Obama was more like our awl than our all-in-all; our beginning, our punctuation, puncturer, not our completion.

in me

if it is to be, it must begin in me.

Friday, January 26, 2018

COMMENSURATES BEGET

COMMENSURATE SUBJUGATION BEGETS COMMENSURATE ALLEVIATION Friday, January 26, 2018 African Americans (that is: all Africans in the Americas) are here by reason of an international collaborative effort by Western European nations from the 16-19th centuries, from all parts of Africa. This vast Euro-Christian collaboration continues through the present 21st century, wherein science, religion, commerce, finance, military, all other vectors, have been contributory to this African assault/insult. Its all-encapsulating scope was continent versus continent; was cognition versus cognition; was matter versus matter; was conception versus conception. It yet is. Because African subjugation has been international, continental, collaborative, subjugation’s alleviation must also be continental, international, collaborative. This international, continental, collaborative recognition of African subjugation, exploitation, expropriation, enslavement, also reaches Western Asia, from which 8th -20th centuries’ Muslims (Western Asians) first began their all-African assault. If these historical premises are true, then, it necessarily follows that any viable solution must be commensurately as vast; meaning, international, continental, collaborative; in science, religion, commerce, finance, military, cognition, matter, conception; also energy arising from the combining/recombining of all the above. https://blavity.com/naacp-sues-dhs-over-protections-for-haitian-immigrants?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Blavity+Daily+Newsletter+12618&utm_content=Blavity+Daily+Newsletter+12618+CID_63f891e13ca1a2ca3ddba74d10981400&utm_source=Campaign+Monitor&utm_term=the+NAACP+is+suing Amen.

Thursday, January 25, 2018

RECOGNITION

RECOGNITION "Well, I believe that's Bro. Larry," our paternal grandfather, Mitch Coleman, replied to an inquiry, in the blackness of night, November 1971. I had exited Uncle Earl's truck on their Mississippi farm. Seeing in the dark is one thing. Seeing through Mississippi blackness is quite another ! But, he could see me, he did see me, and knew me, instantly! My love, respect, admiration for him then soared! For, I had not seen him, nor he me, in years. Neither had he known that I would be visiting from DC. Being recognized is affirming, assuring especially coming within a dark place.

Wednesday, January 24, 2018

RACISM'S COERCIVE POWERS

RACISM'S COERCIVE POWERS Racism is a form of coercive power. Historically, racism was designed to commute the prior, profitable, exploitative system that was first used to gain native mineral wealth, which cost native lives and culture. For, after all the gold and silver of the indigenous American peoples were plundered, and they too were slaughtered, there was no one to be coerced to work exploitatively. So, as a "humane gesture," given the Indians' deaths, a future Dominican Catholic bishop named Bartholomew Las Casas, a former Indian exploiter and enslaver, who became later known, ironically, as "Indian Guardian," proposed that Africans be substituted for Indians, in order to carry on as a cheap form of chattel labor, to exploit the New World's latent resources for the King and Queen of Spain; who approved the bishop's proposal for imperial importation of Africans in 1515 to their American colonies. Plunder, wars, destruction, disease had indeed decimated, eliminated, the Indians of Hispaniola (Haiti/Dominican Republic) where Italian Christopher Columbia first landed in 1492, Cuba, Florida, Mexico, to such an extent that a new, much hardier labor force, the Africans, were needed to continue the by now-Western European exploitation of the islands' and the mainland's agricultural products; as well as to mine for what few metals remained after the Indians' were drained to the point of extinction post-1600s. Many myths, lies, fables of all genres, plus alleged "scientific" studies, and popular and religious traditions all collaborated about the inherent inferiority of the Africans and Indians and the inverse "white" supremacy of Europeans. Such was falsely propagated by persons employed especially to rationalize Western European enslavement of Africans, and Indians, in the New World, baptized or not, Christian or not ; literate or not; free or not! As an expedient consequence, a feral, viral, system of legal racism devolved into, was developed into the principal process for depriving all non-white persons living within the Spanish, French, British, Dutch, Portuguese colonies in the "New World" of any individual freedoms of liberty, expression, personal choice with respect to their human associations: marriages, devises and legatees, grantees, vendees, in order to advance the profitability of the exclusive royal charters, issued to favored cabals, traders, whose profits embellished a Royal Power. This legally coercive power was strictly enforced and implemented by all ruling policing power. Racism and colorism were justified by the colonial judicial power. Racism was ever commercially perpetuated by prevailing economic powers, who were beneficiaries of its coercive deprivations under the law that was enforced by the police power. This police power includes taxation and military subsidiaries, that enforced regnant cultural hegemony based on a charade of political whiteness. "Charade" is used because the whites were proportionally coerced to the same extent as the blacks to abide by racism's regime of judicial, political, legal decrees, rulings, and laws. If "whites" did not obey, they too would be victimized, fined, ostracized, criminalized, amerced. Most whites preferred to "look away, look away, look away, Dixie land," so long as their white perquisites were forthcoming; but, when these disproportionate benefits were threatened by equal opportunity laws that they feared, that threatened them in their minds, they electorally recoiled against the "liberal" equality laws by voting for, electing demagogues like Donald Trump. In promising to make America great again, he truly meant "white privileged " again to the exclusion of Africans, Indians, Mexicans, Muslims, all others. Of course, racism itself is illegal! But, laws are for losers. Winners take what they want, when they want, from where, or whomever!

NEITHER COLOR NOR KINSHIP

Neither color nor kinship determine character or virtue. One's blackness is as meaningless as one's whiteness. Ties by blood are equally illusory. Commitment to Truth and Excellence are the keystones of anyone's integrity.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

MAN IS AGENT/PRICIPAL

MAN IS BOTH AGENT/PRINCIPAL Is man both an agent and a principal ? This resolution of man being "both" agent and principal in essential make-up may answer the "free will" versus "deterministic" philosophical schism that has bedeviled so many over time. Yes. So it seems. Plotinus states: "But: if the evil in man is involuntary, if their own will has not made them what they are, how can we blame wrongdoers or even reproach their victims with suffering through their own fault? "If there is a Necessity, bringing about human wickedness either by force of the celestial movement or a rigorous consequence set up by the First Cause, is not the evil a thing rooted in Nature? And if thus the Reason-Principle of the universe is the creator of evil surely all is injustice? No: men are no doubt involuntary sinners in the sense that they do not actually desire sin; but this does not alter that wrongdoers of their own choice, are, themselves, the agents; it is because they themselves act that sin is their own; if they were not the agents they could not sin. "The Necessity (held to underlie human wickedness) is not an outer force (actually compelling the individual), but exists only in the sense of a universal relationship. "Nor is the force of the celestial Movement such as to leave us powerless : if the universe were something outside and apart from us it would stand as its makers willed so that, once the gods had done their part, no man, however impious , could introduce anything contrary to their intention. But, as things are, efficient act does come from men: given the starting Principle, the secondary line, no doubt, is inevitably completed, but each and every principle contributes towards the sequence. Now men are Principles, or, at least, they are moved by their characteristic nature towards all that is good, and that nature is a Principle, a freely acting cause." P.146-147, THE ENNEADS by Plotinus (1991) Therefore "acts" make men "agents," as "nature" makes man "principals." This entanglements of statuses, itself invokes the "Heisenberg "Uncertainty Principle" of physics; as well as the rational-irrational divide on arithmetic; and the dyad of all living dichotomies!

THIS NONVIOLENT STUFF'LL GET YOU ... EXCERPT

"Indeed, the organizing efforts in Southwest Mississippi confirmed what Ella Baker and Amzie Moore had already stressed in their conversations with [Robert] Moses and SNCC: that there were people in rural communities, like Steptoe, who had been waiting for --even expecting--them. The nature of the relationship, however, was 'totally unexpected,' Moses recalled: "'I had become part of something else besides a civil rights organization in Mississippi. Everywhere we went I and other civil rights workers were adopted and nurtured, even protected as though we were family. We were the community's children, and that closeness rendered moot the label of 'outside agitator'...Importantly, as is always true in close families, our young generation was dynamically linked to a rooted older generation who passed on wisdom, encouragement and concrete aid when possible. This was empowering, enabling SNCC and CORE field secretaries to move from county to county across a network that provided different levels of support. A network made up of people offering whatever they could within their means." P. 174. THIS NONVIOLENT STUFF'LL GET YOU KILLED by Charles E. Cobb , Jr. (2016) [Reading this, I was reminded of similar experiences that we faced in Alabama and in Mississippi in 1970 and 1971, when bands of 86 and 90 students, respectively, traveled from Howard University in Washington, D.C., on busses to campaign for Dr. John Cashen who ran for Alabama governor against George Wallace; and who poll-watched for Charles Evers, Medgar Evers' brother, in his Mississippi gubernatorial race. We received much of the same love, as described above, from the black community, wherever we went, be it in Birmingham restaurants or in a Mississippi cotton fields, where a farmer and his son, kindly showed me how to pick cotton with their long sack. [I lasted about 3 feet!] But, I was then 'grounded with my brothers,' as Walter Rodney wrote! More ominously, however, I was also pushed in the chest by a two-gun toting, big hat-wearing, short white sheriff in Itta Bena, Mississippi (who had pushed Stokely Carmichael down in the street in 1966). The sheriff had falsely accused me of "standing too close" to white women as I was poll-watching. He knew he was lying. I knew it. The white women knew it too. So, when I responded by stepping back up to him , while citing the relevant Mississippi constitutional provisions as mixed in with bits of profound profanity, he left as abruptly as he had come. I stayed. And continued poll-watch. Later that night in the office of a Money, Mississippi, cotton gin, then still poll-watching, now with a very good friend from Howard, who is also now an attorney, we heard a truck pull up outside and heard feet hitting the ground. Then, a shotgun-wielding white man entered the office and stood on one side of the door ; soon another knife-wielding white man entered and stood on the opposite side of the door. Lastly, about 20 brothers trooped in to the voting table (there was no voting booths), marked their ballots and exited. Then , the two armed white men respectively turned and walked out. Not a single word was spoken during this entire drama. I looked at Bill Lightfoot. He looked at me, and we both booked! We left the place where legendary Emmett Till was killed, glad to be alive ourselves! In fact, the very next day, still reeling from prior experiences with poll-watching, I caught a bus south to Madison County, Mississippi, my birth place, to visit my maternal grandmother in Canton, and to visit my paternal grandfather, in Pickens, for some peace , love, familial rejuvenation!]

Monday, January 22, 2018

MUSICAL MATTERS

"Psychedelic Shack" by the iconic Temptations diverted black music ergo black culture from stone-soul to drug-pop in 1969. This new black music's mind altering psychedelic imagery, followed Marvin Gaye's iconic bass-riven reveille "Heard It Through the Grape Vine," in 1968. This hegemonic musical and cultural change paralleled Motown's move to Los Angeles from Detroit . It also tragically opened up the entire black community to a drug-driven, pill-popping, trafficking, hippie-like saturation. It popularized getting high. Many people were unable to self-correct their values in time to spare their families much grief . One wonders what might have been but for these change in the musical genre? The novel, THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED by Joseph Smith is a thinly disguised commentary on the era's vulnerability, susceptibility, to such massively alien pharmacological inputs. It reinforced the fact that drugs were introduced to stop the black revolution that was then sweeping the black community as Black Panthers and black rights activists recruited from the same pool . In due course, drug addiction's mania is said to have overtaken even Huey P. Newton, Black Panther Party co-founder, and many more, ironically. They were all victimized by the same cultural pharmacological inputs, that had sparked gangs, death, mass incarceration, black-on-black crime in quest of ghetto money!

TOXINS

If there is no magical way to "draw out" toxins from the body, there is probably no magical way to "draw out" toxins like racism, fascism, avarice, atheism, militarism, from the global body politic , other than by diet and exercise like the human body must do to attain and to maintain health in the ordinary course. So, diet, or consumption must consist of truth, accurate information in every species; and exercises that move the body and the body-politic in the path of empathetic righteousness and balanced living, individually, collectively, mentally, spiritually, physically, socially, naturally.https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/dec/05/detox-myth-health-diet-science-ignorance

Sunday, January 21, 2018

THINK, SAY, BE.

THINK IT! SAY IT ! BE IT! IT COMES! Schools, parties, families, creeds, businesses, governments, that abhor, adjure, disdain: racism, fascism, atheism; but, are they that rather lift up nature, science, truth , mathematics, music, poetry, arts, crafts, literature and love, though now lacking, need not lack always. Aspiration precedes articulation, which precedes all manifestation. Think it. Say it. Be it. It shall come! 

AMEN

GOD IS. AMEN. Brush fires , pestilence, disease , floods, life, death, destruction, desolation, exculpation, torrential storms , freezes, snows, droughts, earthquakes, tsunami, typhoon, hurricane, tornadoes, thunder, lightening, meteorites , comets, asteroids, windstorms, ice, rescue, relief, blizzards, sunshine, warmth, moonlight, dews, frost, rain, fertile soil, deserts, seas, rivers : Which of these is not the work, power, glory, majesty of God? "Which of these favors of Allah, favors of God, would you deny" asks the Qu'ran? God is. Amen.

MY ARISTOTLE

BOLDLY INTERNALIZING ARISTOTLE [YESTERDAY. Upon my first reading of this essay from Aristotle, on justice and injustice, I had reacted brusquely, officiously, lordly. "How dare he," I asked? How dare he assert that action does not imply injustice? Surely, nothing better than action describes injustices, I fumed, internally. Then, I read on. In reading on, I found aspects of myself in reading Aristotle's words. Indeed, "all mankind has sinned, fallen short of the glory of God !" So Aristotle's further inquiry into the nature of man's unjust actions, actually relieved me of the burden of being who I am, or once was! The common tendency is to teach error in others, while excusing our own delicts, deviations, or errors! Aristotle separates the doer from the deed, by inquiring further into the man and the motivations that made the man do the things that he has done to others and himself. I am surely indebted to Aristotle for sharpening me, for strengthening me, for blessing me with the mercy to see that making further inquiries into myself, initially; then, looking back over my own life's mistakes, errors, indiscretions, and "unjust actions," then, from the wellsprings of mercy found for me to extend it to fellow men on earth as to me!] Aristotle, student of Plato, tutor of Alexander the Great, and the sage of Alexandria wrote these words: "Since acting unjustly does not necessarily imply being unjust, we must ask what sort of unjust acts imply that the doer is unjust with respect to each type of injustice, e.g., a thief, an adulterer, or a brigand. Surely the answer does not turn on the difference between these types. For a man might lie with a woman knowing who she was, but the origin of his act might not be deliberate choice but passion. He acts unjustly, then, but is not unjust; e.g., a man is not a thief, yet he stole, nor an adulterer, yet he committed adultery; and similarly in all other cases... "This is found among men who share their life with a view to self-sufficiency, men who are free and either proportionally or arithmetically equal, so that between those who do not fulfill this condition there is no political justice but justice in a special sense and by analogy. For justice exists only between men whose mutual relations are governed by law; and law exists for men between whom there is injustice ; for legal justice is the discrimination of the just and the unjust. And between men between whom there is injustice there is also unjust action (though there is not injustice between all between whom there is unjust action ), and this is assigning too much to oneself of things good in themselves and too little of things evil in themselves... "The justice of the master and of the father are not the same as the justice of citizens, though they are like it; for there can be no injustice in the unqualified sense towards things that are one's own, but a man's chattel, and his child until it reaches a certain age and sets up for itself, are as it were part of himself, and no one chooses to hurt himself (for which reason there can be no injustice towards oneself). Therefore the justice or injustice of citizens is not manifested in these relations; for it was as we saw according to law, and between people naturally subject to law, and these as we saw are people who have an equal share in the ruling and being ruled . Hence justice can more truly be manifested towards a wife than towards children and chattels, for the former is household justice; but even this is different from political justice. "Of political justice part is natural , part legal--natural, that which everywhere has the same force and does not exist by people's thinking this or that; legal, that which is originally indifferent, but when it has been laid down is not indifferent...." P.1012-1014, "Nicomachean Ethics," THE BASIC WORKS OF ARISTOTLE (1941, 2001) 

Saturday, January 20, 2018

HUMILITY

IDEATIONS IN HUMILITY Viewing some colorful watercolor art, as smooth jazz pulsates in my ear, in the comfortable confines of home, my mind turns to "ideation," the presentation of ideas in various genres, media, formats by humans. But, almost as suddenly, I saw a bird, who sings, builds a nest, and artfully attracts a mate to share it. Then, I thought of ponderous, built ant hills, beehives, termite mounds, birds' nests, and elephants, which draw beautifully. It then stuck me, again, that ideas, ideations, are not unique to humans, but essentially are insinuated into all forms of life. That further insight inspired this monograph on "ideations." For we earthly human beings are merely another idea formed by God, along with uncounted others, who sense, serve, celebrate, a life bestowed by the divine minds, clothed in flesh. Amen 🙏

Friday, January 19, 2018

POWER OF ONE

THE POWER OF ONE EXAMPLE One man sinned. Therefore mankind is sinful. Is inductive reasoning: it extrapolates from a specific to a general. It may be something likened to the Chicken Little fable about the "sky is falling." It is inductive, thus, illogical . But, in living practice, it is common. In another example, one man attempted to board a commercial aircraft with explosives in his shoes, now millions of people who fly each day must take off their shoes to pass through security screening each day, worldwide . Another man put explosives in his underwear, boarding a plane. He too was caught. Now everyone boarding an airplane is subject to body searches , even strip search, along with personal x-rays of carry on items. All from one example. In truth, no similar assaults on airlines' safety have succeeded, after the prevention measures were adopted . That is great gain to all! Such preventative examples have now convinced me, ironically, that induction may not be so illogical after all, as I was once taught as a college freshman. One example may be a forewarning, which one dare not ignore, at its own peril. This revision to my own thinking now calls to mind a bit of history. During the "Punic War" between Rome and Carthage for commercial supremacy of the Mediterranean Sea, some sailors from Italy were caught in a storm and were carried to Africa, to Libya, just outside of Carthage . There, they were treated hospitably. Their craft repaired, and rendered seaworthy. After they had their full of partying, wine and wassail, they sailed home to Italy; when there, they told the authorities about their Carthage adventures, how storm-tossed they had landed near the African home of Hannibal, the great tormentor of Roman legions and had lived to tell the tale. Hearing this, a Roman armada was outfitted to sail, to invade Africa, Carthage , to force Hannibal back home! It worked! The Carthage Senate was fearful of its own sovereignty and safety, so it recalled Hannibal, its brilliant black general, with his troops, mahouts and war elephants from Italy to home. There at Zama, Hannibal was defeated by Scipoo Africanus, when Hannibal's African allies, the fierce Numidian cavalry switched sides from its African neighbors, Carthage, to aid the Roman invaders' general, ending the war, and making Rome: Mediterranean master of commerce and military. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Zama   So, I was wrong about inductive reasoning, in retrospect, once can be more than enough to require an efficacious response preventing its recurrence or worse, your defeat!

PRE-BIBLE, PRE-KORAN AFRICA

"It is not from the Bible or the Koran that Black Africa got the idea of one God, unknowable and transcendent. Quite the contrary: from as far back as pharaonic Egypt, Africa has known of the concepts of divine unity ('Amon is One') and transcendence ('He hides from the gods, so that none knows his appearance '). In fact, the Bible and the Koran came many centuries after the articulation of ideas concerning the nature of Divinity in ancient Egypt." P. 544, AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY: THE PHARAONIC PERIOD 2780-330 BC by Theophile Obenga (2004)

BRAINWASHED

I WAS BRAINWASHED! It is not just white people, nor certain white judges @ the female Canadian judge, who admitted after a lecture, that she had been intimidated by throngs of "dark" people to whom she had spoken. I was also such black racial infidel myself. As a pubescent black boy who grew up amid a small minority of black people in an otherwise overwhelmingly white context, I had similar apprehensions to those among whom I usually assimilated. I learned to ice skate, before I ever learned to roller skate, for example. But, the prettiest black girls roller skated; and our roller-skating rink, named "Steinberg," was located in Forest Park, downtown, in the City of St. Louis, Missouri. It was the haunt of throngs of "dark" people in the summer months, who were gaily skating away in sync with the latest soul music, rhythmically, synchronously, fluidly. First, I scouted it out from the confines of my car, which was no fun, at all. Finally, throwing caution to the wind, I got out, closed the car door and entered the thrall, secretly fearing that "they" would know that I was an interloper, an intruder! Au contraire! No one noticed me at all. Then, I became indignant. Can't you see that this is me; that I am not one of you, technically; that I am different than you dark people! Nope! They skated, dated, "conversated." So, I rented some skates and found out there is more to roller skating than just walking, like there is more to rapping than just talking. Be that as it may, I merged with the masses of my beautiful black people that night, the pretty one, ugly ones, skating ones, non-skating ones. Then, I later realized that I too had been brainwashed, history books, notwithstanding, soul music or not! 

Thursday, January 18, 2018

MATHEMATICAL SCREWS

We have been screwed mathematically for centuries, not merely in America, as black people; but much sooner in back in Africa where mathematics began. When we lost our mathematical mastery we devolved to situational physics. We now lack precision, concision, decision-making assiduity, consequently, due to mathematical fears! https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-00661-x?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20180118&spMailingID=55794956&spUserID=MjI1NzY1NDYzMzk0S0&spJobID=1322936986&spReportId=MTMyMjkzNjk4NgS2

Wednesday, January 17, 2018

CIRCUITOUS "SHITHOLE" CIRCLE: ABRAHAM LINCOLN TO DONALD TRUMP

FULL CIRCUITOUS "SHITHOLE" CIRCLE: ABRAHAM LINCOLN TO DONALD TRUMP Pledging allegiance to a political party, rather than to a nation, is blasphemy, at least, or treason, more probably; but this nation has so many undesirable people who are still descendants of "shithole countries" who are now counted as its citizens, by virtue of wars, that discriminating minds must choose whom to serve: party or the nation. The Trump GOP has chosen party over country, as had the Democrats before them, when the Democrats were Dixiecrats, Confederates; and the Reconstruction's GOP was the short-lived "Radical Republicans." Even the abolitionists who fought to end slavery, fought against equal rights for black men and women, whom they deemed to be inferiors. Of course, the Confederates, cum Democrats fought to keep slavery, because their "white" superiority, was in the Africans' 'best interests.' What a political paradox for black people to be in! Despised by their friends as inferior, while beloved by their enemies: enslaving-superiors. Both were and are white. The issue was whose 'white' was more right ? Abraham Lincoln took a whopping in the press, as on the battlefields, for as long as he could! He tried to come up with an emigration plan for Africans to Haiti and to Central America, as late as 1863, but black leaders said "hell no! We won't go," as they had told the Liberia-touting African Colonization Society before them! So Lincoln fired his warning shot across the bow on September 22, 1862, warning that unless the South stopped fighting and came back to the national white fold by January 1, 1863, he would hit them hard where it most hurt, in their tender private parts: black slaves! Finally, Lincoln pulled the plug on official American slavery with his wartime measure, the executive order "Emancipation Proclamation," which carefully excluded border states like Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and parts of Louisiana, like New Orleans, that had not formally self-declared as enemies of the United States. He had had to free the slaves or suffer defeat in the war, because the South was using their beloved slaves to grow, harvest, process crops, at home; to take care of white children, to tend to Mama , grandmother, sisters, cousins, everything, everywhere; while "Johnie" marched off to war. Slaves were used to build fortifications in the field, cook, clean, handle latrine duty, serve as messengers, scouts, spies, servants, nurses, washers. The slaves did not revolt during this "ideal" time to revolt. They worked, watched, read, listened, prayed, whispered, winked, nodded, sang, from 1861-1862. But, whenever the Union Army came nearby, they fled to the Union lines by the hundreds, soon by hundreds of thousands. So many Africans came, so fast, in fact, during 1861-1862, the Union Army and national government had to figure out a name for them, and a new status for them, too, to justify retaining them, from their former "owners." They called them "Contraband of War," since they were property like livestock or grain that had been captured in battle. Soon enough, white men in the North came to realize that a black man's body could stop a bullet as readily as their own! White men in New York infamously revolted against the draft law and burned down black homes, businesses, churches, including a black orphanage, and lynched dozens (some say hundreds of black people), in 1863, in protest. No one went to jail, of course, for these heinous acts of terrorism, against innocent black people! No financial reparations were ever paid, by the government of New York, nor the by the United States to the black persons' family victimized by this. This long-winded digression brings me, and us, back to where I began: discussing the priority of political party values over national country ideals . "Country" is the nascent idea, the soaring is ideal, that is reposed in our original founding documents, many of which were written by Thomas Paine, the colonial propagandist who was brought here to America to decry King George III usurpations' against the landed elite, who were Paine's sponsors, coadjutors, editors. Englishman Thomas Paine's legendary electrifying, pamphlet documents, included the "Declaration of Independence," (usually falsely attributed to slave-owner, Thomas Jefferson ) "Common Sense," and others pamphlets that were lesser known. These refined, highly polished documents came from the brilliant, fertile, fiery pen of the revolutionary itinerant writer, and 'non-slave holding' "Founding Father," Thomas Paine, who left for France, a few years after the American Revolution, where he wrote the "Rights of Man," for the French Revolution, where he was as piquant there, as he was here! These documents, edits and all, are the verifiable corpus of the American ideal. It is the aim reached for rhetorically by scholars, lawyers, preachers, politicians, judges; and which are as surely evaded, avoided with respect to certain people, those primarily from "shithole countries" in Africa or Central America, per Donald Trump, as previously per Abraham Lincoln. Full circle, again! 

YEAR 2019 PRESENTIMENTS

MY YEAR 2019 PRESENTIMENTS It occurs to me that we are in the throes of "The New Kingdom" of America. The "Middle Kingdom" ended with Barack Obama @ 2016. The Old Kingdom began in 1789 and ran through 1876. The Middle Kingdom began in 1877. These three periods of American history are roughly equivalent to the three tier kingdoms in ancient Egyptian history, just substantially shorter. The Old Kingdom in ancient Egypt (Kemet) ran from 2860 BC-2000 BC; the Middle Period from 1900 BC to 1200 BC; and the New Kingdom from 1000 BC to 330 BC. These divisions are approximate, not actual; that debate is unsettled. The point being made is that each period reprises its predecessors'. Egypt was overrun by a succession of conquests beginning with the Macedonian known as Alexander in 330BC, and continuing through the Muslim occupations extant today. It is doubtful that America will be overrun by foreign invaders, given its geography , economics, military might. More likely is an implosion brought on by its internal vacuity, inanity, hypocrisy, immorality. The vapid governmental lawlessness of America is its worst foreign enemy. We shall soon see before 2019, if what will be, will be, with American sovereignty: capitulation or victory! 

Monday, January 15, 2018

NO BOOHOO

DO NOT BOOHOO MAN, GOD, NOR REV. DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR To say that Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was "just a man," is to diminish man, to under-appreciate man, is to be scornful of mankind. There is nothing that is ordinary nor common about mankind, but much that is extraordinary and much that is uncommon about mankind or us. The Bible says, "ye are gods, " in Psalms 82:6. Notwithstanding, the scriptures, there are many religious people who struggle to convince anyone who will listen to them that man is 'just' this or that; that man lacks this or that, in some particular respect. Those holy people who boohoo man, also boohoo God who made mankind, male and female, in God's own image and likenesses. Jesus also said, "Be ye, therefore, perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect." Matthew 5:48. These same alleged religious folks will attempt to argue you down that man cannot be perfect, ever; when Jesus plainly says that man can be perfect ! Now who's lying? Whom do you believe? Prefer to believe? Jesus Christ himself typifies that truth whereof he speaks within his own life, death, resurrection works, and continuing power in the lives of men and women who produced us, as fortified by their faith in the laws, life, legacy, redeeming Holy Ghost power of Jesus Christ. He said, as their "Teacher" and "Lord" whose dirty feet he had just washed, "I have come to be an example unto you that you also should do as I have done to you . John 13:15-16. "Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them."

RESTORATION

RESTORATION OF CIVILIZATION Natural order, natural balance , natural truth, natural love, living, understanding, shall once again overspread the earth, as before, when mankind reemerges from its midnight of magnanimity that has obscured its natural orientation for God the past thousands of years. After nightfall comes daylight ; after rain comes dryness; each orbit is a new annular calendar, counting down each natural cycle, that carries mankind back to where humans began: resets, restores, reboots, if you will, earth's natural order that was first preset by God. Mankind's magnanimity is also part of that perfect inevitability cycling through all the possibilities of time, space, energy, numbers and forms. In the "end," should end there be, all that is or was must return, revert reprise, resurrect, in natal essence: ethereal, immaterial, divine, eternal.

Saturday, January 13, 2018

KNOW TRUTH

KNOW TRUTH'S REWARD It strikes me as strange that racism is not a "sin" in Exodus 20. There were physical differences among men and women back then. There were other differences recognized among them, but colorism, racism, does not seem to have existed. That may mean that modern racism is an "evolved" evil based upon, the sibylline ideal, idea, that Godhead is "whiteness;" "sibylline" is used to suggest paganism, mysticism, romanticism, rooted also in other sins like graven images, likenesses; like greed, covetousness; like bearing false witness; having no love nor honor for father, mother, sister, brother, nor truth; like taking the Lord's name in vain, killing, stealing, committing adultery, worshiping idols and false Gods, instead of, in preference to, the true original God of nature, not the falsely contrived "white" construct. Inasmuch as we are dealing with an ideal, idea, rooted in occult white mantics, it must be countermanded on the same plane of ideas, ideals. This means that history, geometry, sciences, music, philosophy, art, crafts, astronomy, physical must reunite with spiritual, to restore that former epic balance, as mankind, anciently once had, at least, 2500 years before the birth of Jesus Christ, as relics, as monuments, as glyphs, writings, artifacts, attest. Truth is its own reward. Know truth! 

THOU SHALT NOT

Exodus 20King James Version (KJV) 20 And God spake all these words, saying, 2 I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. 3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; 6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. 7 Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. 8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: 10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it. 12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. 13 Thou shalt not kill. 14 Thou shalt not commit adultery. 15 Thou shalt not steal. 16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. 17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's. 18 And all the people saw the thunderings, and the lightnings, and the noise of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed, and stood afar off. 19 And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die. 20 And Moses said unto the people, Fear not: for God is come to prove you, and that his fear may be before your faces, that ye sin not. 21 And the people stood afar off, and Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was. 22 And the Lord said unto Moses, Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, Ye have seen that I have talked with you from heaven. 23 Ye shall not make with me gods of silver, neither shall ye make unto you gods of gold. 24 An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep, and thine oxen: in all places where I record my name I will come unto thee, and I will bless thee. 25 And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. 26 Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon. King James Version (KJV) Public Domain [Matching scripture with history is rough; matching same with mythology is easy. Man writes scripture, history, mythology.]

Friday, January 12, 2018

POPPA ON TRUMP

DADDY ON TRUMP Daddy was a died-in-the-wool Democrat. I was passing out fliers in grade school, door-to-door, to protect his Democrat patronage job, in the late 1950s. In the 1960s, he bundled us all up and took us to see then-candidate John Fitzgerald Kennedy speak at new Crestwood Plaza, outside of St. Louis. We were so far away, all I could see was the shock of his sandy hair, from time to time. Daddy despised Richard Nixon, whom he pejoratively referred to as "that ole bastard," in 1960. And when Kennedy won, you talking about rejoicing! Our family literally danced a jig, when he won! Daddy worked as a volunteer at the Rock Hill, Missouri polls, at iconic Steger Junior High School, that we eight Coleman kids all attended, unless our two youngest siblings were bused elsewhere to school , other than the great school at our doorstep due to pernicious politics of desegregation in the '70s. Daddy was such a Democrat that whenever he referred to the GOP , he would always called them "damn Republicans!" He knew that they were out for the rich white people, not for the poor black people like us; though we owned our home, where both parents worked and went to church , every Sunday, including during the week for choir practice and for prayer meetings. Daddy knew politics. Daddy did not have much formal education, merely up to 6th grade, growing up in Mississippi in the 1920-1930s on a farm. But, he never stopped learning, listening, reading, newspapers, television, radio, and magazines, to the point that he was as well-informed as most folks are, on many, if not all, of the pertinent national issues, especially the issues related to our race's, family's and community's economic and political well-being . Daddy loved "Luther King" as he called the esteemed Rev . Dr. and cried like a baby when he was killed on April 4, 1968, in Memphis TN. Daddy passed in September 1998, being born January 20, 1920. Had Daddy been alive today to have heard Donald Trump's caustic reference to Haitians, Salvadorans, and Africans as "shitholes," Daddy, who really could swear, I declare , would have rejoined, that President Donald Trump was some kind of a blankety-blank "shithole" himself, along with his entire family tree!

THE OFFAL, THE AWFUL

In "The Haitians," an issue of my now -defunct newsletter , THE NILE REVIEW , I used the phrase "like offal from the sea," to describe "the bloated black bodies" being washed ashore on Florida beaches, when their overcrowded, rickety boats and crews went down into the sea, claiming hundreds of lives. Haiti in the 1980s had to be a very desperate place, for so many of its people to undertake the danger of being consumed in shark-infested waters and legal uncertainty here, or deportation here, if they landed! A similar scenario is playing out in Africa, now, in 2018, as folks from Nigeria, Eritrea, Ghana, Niger, and many African countries are leaving in watercraft from Libyan beaches in overcrowded boats, trying to land in Italy. Each day we see news reports of numerous deaths of varying numbers of these African refugees who are seeking better lives, seeking life itself seemingly! Today, President Trump referred to the Haitians and Africans as having come from "shit hole countries." He said that in rejecting a bipartisan bill on immigration, which did not discriminate against Africans and Haitians in favor of "Norwegians," whom he favors. His statement was awful, brazen, typical, tripe! Obviously Trump's comments are racist, nor were they even the least bit nuanced or opaque; but they were 'bigly," sickly-orange refuse just like him! Clearly people in need will naturally try to get to wherever they can to find food, shelter, safety, clothing, schools, health care, jobs, ,regardless of whatever, whomever. Trump's immigrant forebears themselves, are such proof. The whole world would do well to reach out to these Haitian/African people in situ, where they come from, to fix the problems that have given flight to so many!

Thursday, January 11, 2018

TRUMP'S IGNORANCE OF HISTORY IS ABYSMAL

Haitians and Africans made America great long before Donald Trump's KKK parents were born, much less had emigrated here from Germany or Prussia or Deutschland . The Haitians defeated the French, who were ruled by Napoleon, Spanish, English too to secure their new homeland. France then sold its American mainland colonies to the young United States of America, a land mass that was twice its size for about 3 cents per acre, the Louisiana Territory. As for the Africans themselves, their hard work, skilled hands, inventions, wisdom, faith enabled them to make America the greatest global imperial power on earth. So crawl back into your fetid tower 'n shut up! https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/donald-trump-derogatory-description-african/?utm_source=just-in&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletters

AN ON-TIME GOD

AN ON-TIME GOD! Life apportions allotments of common sense , knowledge, physical ability, discretion, tact, taste, to us as we grow along. Nothing is deposited whole, only in bite-sizes increments, pre-cooled to the tongue and alimentary tube. We are grateful to God for this wonderful way of feeding us. Too much too soon is as bad as too little too late, respecting anything! "He's an on-time God, yes he is!"

MISCALCULATION

MISCALCULATION MISCARRIES Our disproportionate focus upon Adolf Hitler's Nazism is blinding us to the fact that Hitler and Benito Mussolini both learned, borrowed from the United States of America. Here in America, fascism/racism, being elements of Nazism and white supremacy were historically applied to Africans and Indians well before either European leader was born. Doubtless such knowledge emboldened their conquests of Europe. Surely, America given its racist history would identify with De Fuhrer and El Duce's minions! But alas ! They miscalculated and their blitzing European conquests miscarried, thanks in great part to the very same descendants of the Africans and Indians who fought for America and its allies against the Germans and their Italian cohorts. History informs more than ideology. Moreover, what may seem to be so, may not necessarily be so, in the dynamics of historical movements.

SANCTUARY TALENTS

Don't allow the sanctuary to become your hiding place! Boldly go forth into the market place of ideas to trade and exchange your "talents" with others, buying and selling. Burying talents in a napkin in the cold grounds profits no one, least of all you! Too many talents are already buried in the Holy temple!

Wednesday, January 10, 2018

ARISTOTLE: JUSTICE IS COMMENSURATELY MONEY

JUSTICE IS COMMENSURATELY MONEY "Some think that 'reciprocity' is without qualification just, as the Pythagoreans said; for they defined justice without qualification as 'reciprocity.' Now reciprocity fits neither distributive nor rectificatory justice--yet people 'want' even the justice of Rhadamanthus to mean this: 'Should a man suffer for what he did , right justice would be done.' "--for in many cases reciprocity and rectificatory justice are not in accord... For it is by proportionate requital that the city holds together . Men seek to return either evil for evil--and if they cannot do so, think their position mere slavery--or good for good--and if they cannot do so there is no exchange that they hold together. This is why they give prominent place to the temple of Graces--to promote the requital of services; for this is the characteristic of grace--we should serve in return one who has shown grace to us, and should another time take the initiative in showing it. "Now proportionate return is secured by cross-conjunction...For it is not two doctors that associate for exchange , but a doctor and a farmer, or in general people who are different and unequal ; but these must be equated. This is why all things that are exchanged must be somehow comparable. It is for this end that money has been introduced , and it becomes in a sense an intermediate; for it measures all things...All things must be measured by some one thing, as we said before. Now this unit is in truth demand, which holds all things together...but money has become by convention a sort of representative of demand; and this is why it has the name 'money' (nomisma)--because it exists not by nature but by law (nomos) and it is in our power to change it and make it useless . There will then be reciprocity when the terms have been equated so that as a farmer is to a shoemaker, the amount of the shoemaker's work is to the farmer 's work for which it exchanges...This equation therefore must be established....Now the same thing happens to money itself as to goods--it is not always worth the same; yet it tends to be steadier....Money, then, acting as a measure, makes goods commensurate and equates them; for neither would there have been association if there were not exchange, nor exchange if there were not equality, nor equality if there were not commensurability. Now in truth it is impossible that things differing so much should become commensurate, but with reference to demand they may become so sufficiently. There must, then, be a unit, and that fixed by agreement (for which reason it is called money); for it is this that makes all things commensurate, since all things are measured by money." P.1010-1012, "Nicomachean Ethics," THE BASIC WORKS OF ARISTOTLE (1941, 2001)