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U Must Learn

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Bruce Lee as Chen Zhen Fist of Fury (1972) dir. Lo Wei

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Book Of Revelations

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Political Ponerology

Psychopaths have played a disproportionate role in the development of civilization, because they are hard-wired to lie, kill, cheat, steal, torture, manipulate, and generally inflict great suffering on other humans without feeling any remorse, in order to establish their own sense of security through domination. When you understand the true nature of psychopathic influence, that it is conscienceless, emotionless, selfish, cold and calculating, and devoid of any moral or ethical standards, you are horrified, but at the same time everything suddenly begins to makes sense. Our society is ever more soulless because the people who lead it and who set the example are soulless - they literally have no conscience. 

Andrzej Lobaczewski

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PAUL NEWMAN MASTERCLASS: US-ISRAEL HYPOCRISY

Washington has long applied double standards when it comes to the rule of law, particularly in relation to Israel.

In this 1983 video, actor Paul Newman brings up another hard-to-argue-against example. The U.S. downplayed Israel’s downing of Libyan-Arab Airline Flight 114 in 1973, but caused an uproar when the Soviet Union downed Korean Airlines Flight 007 in 1983. The incident was used to justify astronomical US defence spending.

Well, forward wind to today and not a lot has changed. While demanding Russia’s president is prosecuted for war crimes in Ukraine, the US defends Israel’s war on Gaza, despite the ICJ warning of plausible genocide.

Watch Paul Newman get a round of applause on the Phil Donahue show, as he highlights Washington’s selective moral outrage.

Washington #DoubleStandards #RuleOfLaw #Israel #Libya #Korea

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—Did you know that Juneteenth is also celebrated in a part of Mexico? Nacimiento Mexico was once home to thousands who escaped slavery in the US. As many as 10,000 slaves followed a clandestine Southern Underground Railroad to Mexico. —To date, many Black Mexicans from the Texas area retrace a portion of the same route their African American ancestors followed in 1850 when they escaped slavery. —Descendants of slaves who escaped across the southern border observe Texas’s emancipation holiday with their own unique traditions in the village of Nacimiento. —Slave hunters would patrol the southern border for escapees, led by the Texas Rangers but the Mexican army would be there waiting for them (the slave hunters) to turn them away.

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Learn about Nakba

📚🇵🇸 While there is no shortage of books on the #Nakba, the huge choice available can easily overwhelm those who want to understand more about the ethnic cleansing of Palestine, and the near-total destruction of Palestinian society in 1948. With that in mind, Middle East Eye suggests five books to understand the issue. The list is by no means exhaustive but offers a casual reader a strong foundation in understanding how the Nakba came about and its continued impact on Palestinians

✍️ by Shafik Mandhai

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Researching African American Ancestors

Due to the long history of slavery in the United States, family history research can be challenging for many African Americans.

Census takers rarely recorded the names of enslaved people and seldom listed family members together. Enslaved people were often subjected to forced name changes, family separation, and other injustices that continue to cause challenges when finding people from the past.

But some strategies can help. 

Getting started

Download our guide to African American family history.

Gather information:

Family Bibles

Journals, diaries, and letters

Photographs

Obituaries and newspaper clippings

Birth, marriage, and death certificates

Family group sheets, pedigree charts, and books of remembrance

Interview your family members and ask whether they have any records. Take note of names, dates, and places. 

Start a family tree and add anything you've discovered. 

Search family trees by clicking the Search tab and selecting Public Member Trees. To narrow your search results, add information one field at a time until you get results you can use. 

Follow the strategies below. 

Tracing your family backward

In the United States, federal censuses are taken every 10 years. Trace your ancestors backward in censuses starting with your immediate family, recording each detail you find.

Enslaved people were not usually named in censuses. Slavery was abolished in 1865, so the first census that included the names of most African Americans was the 1870 U.S. Federal Census.

If you can trace your ancestor back to the 1870 census, you've got a good start. The next step is to find out whether they appeared in the 1860 U.S. Federal Census.

In 1860, about 10% of African Americans were free. If your ancestor was free in 1860, they should be listed in the census. If you can't find them in the 1860 census, they were likely among the 90% of African Americans still enslaved.

Look too for your ancestor in the Mortality Schedules. These are indexes of people who died during the 12 months before the census date. Mortality schedules are available for the 1850–1880 censuses. These schedules often included the names of both freedmen and enslaved people, but sometimes the names of enslaved people were excluded from the index.

Trace your ancestors backward until you can't find them anymore. At that point, it's time to find the name of the last enslaver.

Finding the last enslaver

To find pre-1870 records that include your African American ancestor, you may need to find records for the enslaver.

If your ancestor has an uncommon last name, search censuses for white people with the same surname as your ancestor in the same area. When you find them, make a list; these are possible enslavers. Only about 15% of formerly enslaved people took the enslaver's surname. Start with the 1860 U.S. Federal Census. 

Search the Freedmen's Bureau for your ancestor's name. The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands was established in 1865 to help newly freed African Americans transition to life outside slavery. The names of former enslavers were often included in labor contracts, sharecropping agreements, and marriage records. Read more about the Freedmen's Bureau Records & Freedman's Bank Records.

Search the U.S. Colored Troops Military Service Records and the Civil War Pension Index. First, identify an ancestor in the Colored Troops Military Service Records, then use the information you find to locate the same person in the Civil War Pension Index, which often lists the names of enslavers.

Search the Freedman’s Bank Records. The Freedman's Savings and Trust was an institution chartered by Congress to benefit of newly-emancipated people. This publication reproduces fifty-five volumes of signatures and personal identification data of thousands of depositors who maintained accounts with the bank. These records usually show account numbers, dates of application, and the depositor's name, age, complexion, place of birth, place raised, occupation, spouse, children, family members' names, remarks, and signature. These registers of deposits sometimes included the name of a formerly enslaved person, their family members, and the former enslaver.

Search the Wills and probate records. Enslavers’ wills and probate records often list enslaved people by name.

Search U.S. Interviews with Former Slaves, 1936-1939. This database contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of people who were formerly enslaved. It’s searchable by any word, so references to specific names can be found easily. Enslavers were often named in these narratives.

Searching slave schedules

If you know the enslaver's name and your ancestor's likely year of birth, try searching for the enslaver in the 1850 slave schedules and 1860 slave schedules. For help searching or understanding slave schedules, see Searching Slave Schedules.

More resources

The African American history page on Ancestry contains information about our DNA test and links to search databases.

The African American Historical Record Collection features interviews with people who were formerly enslaved, slave manifests, slave emancipation records, and more.

AfriGeneas provides resources for African-related genealogy with a vision of finding and documenting the last slaveholder and the first African in each family.

Cyndi's List has an index of genealogy sites about African American research.

The National Archives contain both African American research and links to resources.

The Hutchins Center for African & African American Research is a Harvard research center that supports research on the history and culture of people of African descent and provides a forum for collaboration.

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I can’t wait to hear how the bees are also Hamas.

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1.The Promise of Heaven The most important aspect of Christianity for the enslaved was the promise of heaven — a promise made by plantation owners. This idea preached the notion that for all the suffering that is done in the physical world, your soul will be preserved and you will experience a hardship-free spiritual life, according to Slave Resistance, A Caribbean Study. What this did for enslaved Afrakan people was give them hope for the future. Converted enslaved people’s belief in heaven allowed some to passively resist their plantation owners and focus on the afterlife. With that belief, all of the beatings and lashings meant nothing because in heaven the enslaved person would be rewarded and the master would be punished.

 2. Constant work. The vigorous, constant plantation work assigned by owners left the enslaved people hardly any time for themselves, and that included religious activities, according to christianitytoday.com. Some plantation owners required the enslaved to work even on Sunday, an intentional move to break them away from their religious regimen and softening them over time to accept whatever religion was presented to them by the plantation owners.

 3. Blocked communication. Plantation owners separated the enslaved people who spoke the same tribal language so they could not worship together and could be taught Christianity at the same time, according to an article titled The Inconceivable State of African-American Christianity on christianitytoday.com. 

 4. Separated Families! Moving family members from one another broke down the spirit of the enslaved, as they believed wholeheartedly in worshipping together, according to academia.edu in a study on the role of religion in Africa. With their family units broken, their African beliefs were broken, too, making them more willing to accepting another religion. 

 5. Demonstration of power! When Africans were captured and brought to America by the Europeans, they often attributed the Europeans’ power to the power of the Europeans’ God. Therefore, it was often easy for some enslaved Africans to begin to worship the victorious Christian God in place of their own gods. 

 6. Catholic conversions! When Africans were captured and brought to America by the Europeans, they often attributed the Europeans’ power to the power of the Europeans’ God. Therefore, it was often easy for some enslaved Africans to begin to worship the victorious Christian God in place of their own gods. 

 7. Mixing of religious practices! Symbols and objects, such as crosses, were conflated with charms carried by Africans to ward off evil spirits. Christ was interpreted as a healer similar to the priests of Africa, according to PBS’ Slavery and the Making of America. In the New World, fusions of African spirituality and Christianity led to distinct new practices among enslaved populations, including voodoo or vodun in Haiti and Spanish Louisiana. Although African religious influences were also important among Northern Afrakan people, exposure to Old World religions was more intense in the South, where the density of the Afrakan population was greater. 

 8. Missionary work in the West Indies! Missionaries — from the Moravians, the Baptists and the Methodists — all engaged in the process of Christianization in the West Indies, according to an article by Jeffrey K. Padgett titled The Christianization of Slaves in the West Indies. By the middle of the 18th century, Moravian chapels and mission houses were in populated areas of many of the British-controlled islands. Missionaries argued to planters that the enslaved needed religion and that planters also would benefit from the conversion. 

 9. Social control!  In the Caribbean colonies of Cuba and Saint-Domingue, religion was taught to enslaved Africans as a means of social control more than as a means to edify their souls, according to an article titled Slave Religion in Central and South America. Especially in the colonies’ early days, while the plantations were small and the enslaved population was not huge, plantation owners used religion to teach obedience. In Cuba and Brazil, Catholic saints were often equated with gods from Africa — generating familiarity for the enslaved. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu0z6zyc2J8

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Let’s dive into the human psyche Think about this, before ANY religious text were created our ancestors were communicating thru various markings and cuts. The question is, did the authors of the bible conspire against these African tribes because they could not understand their means of communication and ultimately shunned it to demonize our original culture…Pardon me if I went to deep… THE WAKE UP IS REAL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu0z6zyc2J8

CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM IS ANTI AFRICAN

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DID JESUS USE MAGIC AND SORCERY?

According to the Talmud, the source of power and the authority by which Jesus performed miracles was from Satan. Rabbi Daniel Asor claims: “Jesus was indeed a false prophet as he acted only by using powers of sorcery.” He also claims that Jesus “was himself the embodiment of Satanism.”

Claims like those of Rabbi Asor are based on a myth of the Sages that Jesus learned the arts of sorcery in Egypt.

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Most Christians are taught that there is only one way to be saved. However, their source for this, the Bible, actually records more than twenty diverse ways, many of which are clear contradictions. What basis did you use to pick yours?

Paul says in Galatians 2:16 & Romans 3:20 that it’s by faith alone. James 2:21–24 states that it is by works. Acts 2:21 & Romans 10:13 says to just call on the name of the Lord and you will be saved, HOWEVER, Matthew 7:21 states that not everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Matthew 25:34–46 teaches that heaven is obtained only by helping the poor and needy and without doing so, one is eternally condemned.

Romans 8:29–30 & Romans 9:15–16 makes it very clear that salvation is only the result of election and predestination by God regardless of what anyone does. Yet, in the same book we are instructed in Romans 10:9 that we actually must confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord AND believe in our heart that God has raised Him from the dead. Can someone truly believe something that they have no evidence for? Is believing in Jesus any different than the billions of other people who believed in one of the other thousands of gods that history informs us of? Almost all believers of any religion simply believe that what their parents and culture taught them was true. Pure and simple.

Mark 16:16 declares you must be baptized, but then in 1 Corinthians 1:14 we hear the great missionary Paul thanking God that he didn’t baptize any of them, except for one or two. Romans 2:13 teaches that you must keep the law. Then we have Matthew 10:22 & Mark 13:13 saying that only those who endure to the end will be saved. Philippians 2:12 warns the reader to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling while John 3:16 says all you need to do is believe. James 2:14 makes it clear that faith alone is of no value while Galatians 5:4 says you are damned if you do not use faith alone.

John 6:53–54 So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” And yes some, mainly Catholics, take this verse as literal.

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Goliath (/ɡəˈlaɪəθ/ gə-LY-əth)[a] is a Philistine warrior in the Book of Samuel. Descriptions of Goliath's immense stature vary among biblical sources, with the Masoretic Text describing him as 9 feet 9 inches (2.97 m) tall. Goliath issued a challenge to the Israelites, daring them to send forth a champion to engage him in single combat; he was ultimately defeated by the young shepherd David, employing a sling and stone as a weapon. The narrative signified King Saul's unfitness to rule, as Saul himself should have fought for Israel.

Modern scholars believe that the original slayer of Goliath may have been Elhanan, son of Jair, who features in 2 Samuel 21:19, in which Elhanan kills Goliath the Gittite, and that the authors of the Deuteronomic history changed the original text to credit the victory to the more famous character David.

The phrase "David and Goliath" has taken on a more popular meaning denoting an underdog situation, a contest wherein a smaller, weaker opponent faces a much bigger, stronger adversary

Goliath's name

Tell es-Safi, the biblical Gath and traditional home of Goliath, has been the subject of extensive excavations by Israel's Bar-Ilan University. The archaeologists have established that this was one of the largest of the Philistine cities until destroyed in the ninth century BC, an event from which it never recovered. The Tell es-Safi inscription, a potsherd discovered at the site, and reliably dated to between the tenth to mid-ninth centuries BC, is inscribed with the two names ʾLWT and WLT. While the names are not directly connected with the biblical Goliath (גלית‎, GLYT), they are etymologically related and demonstrate that the name fits with the context of the late tenth- to early ninth-century BC Philistine culture. The name "Goliath" itself is non-Semitic and has been linked with the Lydian king Alyattes, which also fits the Philistine context of the biblical Goliath story. A similar name, Uliat, is also attested in Carian inscriptions. Aren Maeir, director of the excavation, comments: "Here we have very nice evidence [that] the name Goliath appearing in the Bible in the context of the story of David and Goliath… is not some later literary creation."

Based on the southwest Anatolian onomastic considerations, Roger D. Woodard proposed *Walwatta as a reconstruction of the form ancestral to both Hebrew Goliath and Lydian Alyattes. In this case, the original meaning of Goliath's name would be "Lion-man," thus placing him within the realm of Indo-European warrior-beast mythology.

The Babylonian Talmud explains the name "Goliath, son of Gath" through a reference to his mother's promiscuity, based on the Aramaic גַּת (gat, winepress), as everyone threshed his mother like people do to grapes in a winepress (Sotah, 42b).

The name sometimes appears in English as Goliah

Elhanan, son of Jaare-Oregim the Bethlehemite (Hebrew: אֶלְחָנָן בֶּן־יַעְרֵי אֹרְגִים בֵּית הַלַּחְמִי‎ ʾEl��ānān ben-Yaʿrē ʾŌrəgīm Bēṯ halLaḥmī) is a character in 2 Samuel 21:19, where he is credited with killing Goliath:

"There was another battle with the Philistines at Gob, and Elhanan son of Jaare-oregim the Bethlehemite killed Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver's beam."[1]

In 1 Chronicles 20:5, he is called Elhanan son of Jair (אֶלְחָנָן בֶּן־יָעִיר‎ ʾElḥānān ben-Yāʿīr), indicating that Jaare-oregim is a garbled corruption of the name Jair and the word for "beam" used in the verse (ʾōrəgīm). The passage in 2 Samuel 21:19 poses difficulties when compared with the story of David and Goliath in 1 Samuel 17, leading scholars to conclude "that the attribution of Goliath's slaying to David may not be original,"  but rather "an elaboration and reworking of" an earlier Elhanan story, "attributing the victory to the better-known David.