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REPOST: John Magufuli: Death of an African freedom fighter, confronted Big Pharma and the corrupt Covid cabal

John Magufuli: Death of an African Freedom Fighter, Confronted Big Pharma and the Corrupt Covid Cabal

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Feds Have a Plan to Block the Sun — What Are the Risks?

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REPOST: Wuhan lab leak 'now the most likely origin of Covid', MPs told

REPOST: Wuhan lab leak ‘now the most likely origin of Covid’, MPs told

For fuck’s sake, like a lab leak was ever not a real possibility. What would be a true revelation is if they do anything substantial to punish those responsible for the leak – and the lackadaisical measures to “curb” the virus’s spread. Anyway, Reposted from: (https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/wuhan-lab-leak-now-the-most-likely-origin-of-covid-mps-told/ar-AARQdDi?pfr=1), originally from:…

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REPOST: After reevaluating humanity's fossil record, a group of experts designated a new species of human ancestor

REPOST: After reevaluating humanity’s fossil record, a group of experts designated a new species of human ancestor

Reposted from: <https://www.businessinsider.com/new-human-ancestor-species-proposed-homo-bodoensis-2021-10?r=US&IR=T> (more…)

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Repost: England’s Covid travel rules spark outrage around the world

Repost: England’s Covid travel rules spark outrage around the world

Reposted from: (https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/coronavirus/england-s-covid-travel-rules-spark-outrage-around-the-world/ar-AAOJ87H) Tom Phillips, Flávia Milhorance in Rio de Janeiro, Emmanuel Akinwotu, and Jon Henley in Paris England’s Covid travel rules and refusal to recognise vaccines administered across huge swaths of the world have sparked outrage and bewilderment across Latin America,…

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Repost: Unpublished data from Israel shows vaccine efficacy declines over time

Repost: Unpublished data from Israel shows vaccine efficacy declines over time

reposted from: (https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/unpublished-data-from-israel-shows-vaccine-efficacy-declines-over-time/ar-AAOrGMb) Unpublished data from Israel shows vaccine efficacy declines over time Betsy Ladyzhets For Dailymail.Com © Provided by Daily Mail MailOnline logo Unpublished data from Israel is driving the Biden administration’s push to provide COVID-19 vaccine booster shots…

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Repost: German scientists say they've figured out why AstraZeneca's and Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccines can cause rare blood clots

Repost: German scientists say they’ve figured out why AstraZeneca’s and Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccines can cause rare blood clots

Reposted from: Scientists’ Theory: Why AstraZeneca, J&J Shots Can Cause Blood Clots (businessinsider.com), 28/5/2021 Ooh, sounds like mainstream media is coming close to admitting the vaccines may not be as safe and effective as was first touted. Read on… (more…)

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But Arabic isn't their native language?!?!?

But Arabic isn’t their native language?!?!?

A few months ago some interesting morsels of information were brought to my awareness. MSALs (modern south Arabian languages) are those languages spoken by modern people living in the southernmost parts of the Arabian peninsula (especially Yemen & Oman) & Soqotra, an island located between Yemen & Somalia. 6 such languages have been identified so far: Soqotri Mahri/ Mehri Shahri/ Shehri/…

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Philosophical Musings part 7

Philosophical Musings part 7

Hi all,

Over the past 3+ years I’ve been doing a lot of introspection (even more than usual) and some new understandings and experiences have cropped up. A little summary:

While I don’t feel like I need a label for my understanding of spiritual matters, for the past 1 and a half-ish years I have identified as an actual atheist. This may seem strange considering I’ve been an ex-muslim for over 7…

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REPOST: Covid-19: Competing Theories

REPOST: Covid-19: Competing Theories

(reposted from https://dailygaslamp.com/2020/06/08/covid-19-competing-theories/)

(more…)

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So what's changed with England's quarter-assed attempt to stop covid-19?

So what’s changed with England’s quarter-assed attempt to stop covid-19?

Our hobo-looking whigger of a prime minister had caught coronavirus and was in hospital but (more…)

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A snippet of life in England's quarter-assed attempt to curb covid-19

A snippet of life in England’s quarter-assed attempt to curb covid-19

Well well well. It’s happening, pretty much as I expected. Coronavirus is culling the UK population, and not only have we been lied to about how many deaths there have been (until just this Monday, 30/3/2020, they were ONLY counting deaths in hospitals), (more…)

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REPOST: Anonymous: A Global Force to be Reckoned With

via Anonymous: A Global Force to be Reckoned With

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MORE INFLUENTIAL BOOKS

A fun little continuation of Influential Books.

Please note that many books have 2 ISBNs, a 10-digit and a 13-digit, which may be and often are completely different. Be aware that I have taken the 13-digit version and taken off the first 3 digits (978).

Listed in no particular order:  (more…)

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Founder/s: unknown (generally believed to be the Fon ethnic group in west Africa)

Approximate age: estimated to be between 6,000 & 10,000 years (original African form), 300-400 years (modern Americanised forms)

Place of origin: west Africa definitely – generally believed to be Benin, but later “recreated” in Haiti and spread to other parts of the Caribbean & mainland Americas

Holy book/s: n/a?

Original language of holy book/s: n/a?

Demonym of adherents: Vodouists/ Vodouisants/ Servants of the Spirits

Approximate number of current global adherents: 80,000,000

Place of worship name/s: n/a???

Depending on where it’s practised the name is also written as Vaodou, Vodoun, Vodou, Voudou, Vúdú, Vodú and most commonly Voodoo.

Although I know very little about this faith, I know it’s a lot more than zombies, drinking chicken blood and sticking needles in magic dolls (In fact, knowing the history of colonialism I wouldn’t be surprised if these were all European rather than African practices! According to some zombies were really enslaved Africans being drugged so heavily their free will was suppressed). Due to the extreme (& deliberate) misunderstanding throughout the centuries I will briefly list its key features:

A supreme but uninvolved god called Bondye (ie. deism) or Mawu

Innumerable spirits (loa/ lwa) who are called upon in place of Bondye, and can either help or hinder human affairs

Possession by spirits of their followers, which are usually benevolent

Souls (of the living) which can leave the body during possessions or dreams

Belief in magic (good is white, bad is red)

A set of ethics passed down from generation to generation dealing with all areas of human life like politics, education, child-rearing, etc.

Traditional medical practices (in common with most African faiths)

There are effectively 3 “sects” of Vodun – the original Wafrican form (with some Christian influence), Haitian & Louisiana. All 3 are syncretic in this day and age, sharing various degrees of original Wafrican spiritual & cultural practices, Roman Catholicism, Freemasonry, and Taíno* beliefs.  This means that it potentially has the same good & bad points of all these worldviews. I hesitate to refer to it as a single religion due to its antiquity and range of ethnic groups who practised it. For simplicity’s sake I will nonetheless, and for the rest of this post I will refer to the African form by default unless stated otherwise.

* Taínos are a subgroup of the Arawaks, a native pre-Columbian American tribe living in what’s now Jamaica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti & Puerto Rico. They’re generally believed to be extinct but attempts are being made to revive them and their ways. 

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I will refrain from judging it too harshly as it’s so badly misunderstood and I’ve never met anyone who can tell me about it from an insider perspective. Nevertheless my opinion on its “tenets” will be expressed throughout, as is the purpose of this post series.

  They do practise animal sacrifice, but not for shock value or for the sake of killing. They see it as combining the spirit with the animal’s life force and thus rejuvenating the spirit. In a sense it’s a way of using death to continue life. But at least they don’t let the body go to waste; they actually cook and eat it as part of the ritual.

Yep, really feelin’ the spirit o’ that there chickun.

While I understand the need for disguise back in the TAST/ colonial era, the Christian influence in all 3 “sects” is ever-present. The loa are often represented as Christian angels/ saints. I can let it slide for the Haitian & Louisiana sects due to loss of contact with the Motherland, but the African one still holding onto it shows the psychological grip of the West.

I fail to understand how people still believe in spirits when we can clearly see in this day and age that they don’t exist. Except if what they mean by spirits is natural phenomena like gravity, rainfall, lightning strikes, seed germination, etc. Spirits are literally the namesake of this religion, the translation of the Fon/ Ewe word vodun*. Followers believe the vodun exist side by side with the living and can be invoked for various purposes.

* The modern word loa/lwa comes from French loi which means law. 

Though “branches” of the faith may deal with God and genesis of the world, they don’t prioritise them. Instead much more importance is given to ancestor spirits, whom the practitioners interact with and ask for help with particular tasks. While some believe the Vodouists order the spirits around it’s more the other way round, and though spirits are usually benevolent it is possible for a spirit to be turned evil by being asked to do evil things too often. Nice to know mere mortals have some degree of control over the supernatural realm.

On the topic of spirit summoning, spirits are regarded as specialists in certain areas of life. For instance if you’re experiencing unreciprocated love you would ask Erzulie Freda for help on that, or Azawa to sort out your failing crops, or Ogoun for protection from violence. Having read about how polytheistic religions tended to be henotheistic (meaning they acknowledge the existence of multiple gods but have 1 or a few personal favourites) I have a newfound respect for “pagans”. Plus they’re allowed to change their minds on which deities to worship – these gods ain’t jealous! It seems more tolerant of differing & decentralised forms of worship, and if that’s how Voodoo works I respect it just as much.

Perhaps surprisingly, when possession is requested by a follower they are guided through it by a priest/-ess. Those priests & priestesses are specially trained to handle possessions and thus aren’t given free reign to make up shit on the spot. Likewise they’re not seen as the ultimate arbiters of the spirits’ will, the spirits themselves are. So at least it’s not haphazard & left up to chance as to what the possessed person gets up to. At least that’s how it works on paper.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, on the other hand, in order for the spirits to have any effect in your life (whether you’re summoning them for good or evil) you have to believe in them. You probably already know my thoughts on such blind faith.

According to Wikipedia, much of the misunderstanding of this faith comes from Europeans’ confusion of it with Bò, a related practice that draws elements from and can summon the same spirits as the Vodun “pantheon” but considered distinct. It’s referred to as an occult science, while Vodun is a whole way of life. Apparently Juju is almost completely unrelated to Vodun.

Interestingly, also according to the Wiki page creating zombies is not part of the faith at all. Zombies started off as TAST-era folklore, under the belief that dead slaves could be resurrected and forced to serve their slavers for eternity. This doesn’t really have anything to do with contacting ancestors per se, thus this point is more for information than critiquing.

And on the topic of dolls, they are used as part of some rituals. However they’re just used as focal points for the Vodouisant, and it’s his or her intentions that make its use good or bad.

Oh, and they like snakes.

My kind of woman. 

It would be good ot go on longer but it’s difficult to find much information so there’s not a lot to critique for the time being. As there are no holy books in this faith, I can’t direct you to any links thereto. Instead here are videos of some of their rituals:

And here‘s an article listing some of the spirits in the Voodoo “pantheon”. Enjoy.

In the name of God/s, part 12: Vodun Founder/s: unknown (generally believed to be the Fon ethnic group in west Africa) Approximate age…

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One thing that’s becoming more prominent to me since leaving Islām is just how Arabocentric it is. As a muslim I’d been made to believe Islām was a universalist religion that gave no priority to any cultural/ ethnic/ national background over any other, and that Allah chose Muhammad to be his final prophet for the world because he was just the right guy for the job. Even Muhammad himself was against petty shit like racism, nationalism, xenophobia, etc. In his final sermon he told the whole ummah (muslim community):

“All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over black nor does a black have any superiority over a white except by piety and good action.”

-Taken from Muhammad’s farewell sermon, full text here

Likewise, one criticism Muhammad’s detractors made was that Islām was a foreign religion that went against traditional Arab ways. Or so I was led to believe. Even if it were true that they believed that, it wasn’t necessarily true in practice. Islām has preserved a lot of the old Sabian rituals and gave them a Judeo-Christian justification.

Which brings up the question of what traditional Arab ways were…

However, since the beginning of Islām’s spread outside of Saudi borders, muslims (who were predominantly Arab) saw themselves as culturally/ racially superior. And many peoples who came within their sphere of influence were made to see them thus too. All in all, some nations/ ethnicities who’ve been muslim for a long time try to justify their links to the faith by what I call Illustrious “Arab” Ancestry™. Yes they make up their own family trees as they go along, claiming to be descendants of really famous figures in Islāmic history or somehow linked to Muhammad’s people.

Examples:

In Morocco the curriculum teaches that the Imazighen (the main ethnic group of the country) are descended from a man called Mazigh who was from what’s now Saudi Arabia. The one who told me this, a Moroccan himself, confirmed that was complete bollocks. Honestly I already knew it was bollocks from my knowledge of ‘black’ history; the Imazighen are Berbers, and as far as I can tell Berbers had nothing directly to do with Arabs before the arrival of Islām in north Africa. Their language, Tamazight, is probably unintelligible to Arabs. Even if this Mazigh guy existed, if he lived in pre-Islāmic times chances are he had no blood relations with Arabs.

In Western Sahara (as well as parts of south Asia) there are a number of people claiming to be direct descendants of Muhammad. They call themselves Sayyids. Problem is, ANYONE can say they’re a Sayyid and they won’t be questioned, critiqued or doubted in any way.

Even Italian gangstaz can in theory be Sayyid. LOL

Funny enough, from the Islāmic perspective being a descendant of Muhammad is nothing special. His “specialness” is not genetic but a result of his personality, actions and character. And devotion to Allah, needless to say. Every individual person is responsible for their own selves, and on the day of judgment no-one gets perks for having prophetic ancestry. Besides, according to the faith ALL humans are descendants of a prophet – Adam! So there’s no special status there! Obviously the fact that there’s no test of proof, or even requests for proof, from Sayyid claimants makes the claims untenable.

I recently found out that 1 group in west Africa accepted Islām seemingly without a fuss as soon as they heard of it: the Soninke. According to their oral tradition, their eponymous ancestor Dinga was from the “middle east”. As I’ve pointed out in other posts, “middle east” is a vague term whose geographical range isn’t fixed so where exactly was he from (assuming he existed)? I’ve also read he & his son may have come from Egypt, which isn’t impossible since some Wafrican groups have ancient Egyptian links (as pointed out in Cheikh Anta Diop’s analysis of Medu-Neter & his language Wolof). Furthermore, I do not claim expertise but the name Dinga sounds much more like an indigenous Wafrican name than any Afroasiatic/ “middle eastern” name I’m familiar with. So I strongly doubt this claim.

According to Wikipedia, not a single modern caste system in Africa can be shown to have existed before the arrival of Islām. That means Arab muslims (and the people they conquered/ interbred with) set up an ethnic pecking order to ensure the continuation of their domination. To be counted among the “winners”, some groups, especially in Africa and Asia, claimed Arabness, hence Illustrious “Arab” Ancestry™. Not too far removed from the ancient Greeks. According to Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World, when they were conquered by Romans they consoled themselves by claiming Romans were Greeks after all.

Why?

Because it’s better to be conquered & enslaved by your own race than a foreign one. Obviously.

You’ll notice I keep putting Arab in quote marks. That’s because, as I’ve also pointed out many times in previous posts, the definition of Arab has changed drastically over the centuries. Originally it referred to a specific ethnicity (who came to the Arabian peninsula from east Africa via Yemen and remained nomadic for quite a while after other people in the region became settled), now it’s used as synonymous with must’arab (any people who’ve been culturally assimilated, willingly & otherwise, into post-Muhammadan Islāmic sphere of influence &/or who speak Arabic as a first language. Ethnic ties to aboriginal Arabs is no longer required). Even before Muhammad’s time a number of Arab tribes were extinct, becoming extinct &/or being replaced with semi-foreigners. Not to mention most people outside the Arabian peninsula, including muslims, don’t know the difference between Arab & must’arab and don’t understand how much people have changed & migrated throughout history. For that reason, claiming Illustrious “Arab” Ancestry™ is misleading because most modern “Arabs” (& must’arabs) are very deeply mixed-race and in denial about it, thus have largely incorrect assumptions about what those Illustrious Ancestors™ were like. Especially in appearance.

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Don’t think this refers to all muslim-majority countries though. Persians (Iranians) never claim to be Arab. And back in the early years of Islām it would’ve been much harder to mistake them for each other (Arabs were still more or less ‘black’, only just becoming settled & literate, while Persians were ‘white’ and already settled & literate). Likewise Somalis don’t claim to be Arab (unless they’re unusually light-skinned in my experience) EVEN THOUGH THEY PROBABLY HAVE THE MOST RIGHT TO OUT OF ANY MUSLIM POPULATION TODAY. To cross the Red Sea for Yemen, the aboriginal Arabs would’ve had to come from the horn of Africa, and to this day Yemenis & Somalis constantly cross each other’s borders. But Arabic has more in common with other east African languages like Amharic & Ge’ez (spoken in Ethiopia) than the Somali language, so the first Arabs likely came from further inland in east Africa. Even so, on top of being the ancestors of the ancient Egyptians & Berbers, Somalis (or proto-Somalis?) have potential legit claims to being the ancestors of the first Arabs.

Yet other people, most of whose ancestors were forced to convert to the new religion on threat of death, claim them with more fervour and more fanfare. What a world we live in.

We’re all Moroccans but ALLAHU AKBAR for making us Arab!!!!!!!!!!!1!

Islām & Illustrious “Arab” Ancestry™ One thing that's becoming more prominent to me since leaving Islām is just how Arabocentric it is.

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Repost: Everyone’s Missing the Obvious About the Declining U.S. Birth Rate

(Reposted from https://hurnpublications.com/2019/01/28/everyones-missing-the-obvious-about-the-declining-u-s-birth-rate/)

Everyone’s Missing the Obvious About the Declining U.S. Birth Rate 7 COUNTERARGUMENTS IN RESPONSE TO ANYONE WHO BLAMES THE BABY BUST ON WOMEN OR MILLENNIALS.

For the past several days, my Facebook feed, Twitter timeline, and evening news have been filled with stories on the…