₦airaland Forum

There is no proof that Jesus was a carpenter.
The word used to describe him was "tektron". This means that he was probably a stone-mason or a builder and not a carpenter.

So banom. Do you still want your furniture?

To those who make claims about Freemasonry being Satanic or evil:
This is a fallacy handed down by the churches. Freemasonry promotes the right of every man to believe in his own god - be that god Christian, Islamic, Judaic or whatever. The churches don't like that. They think every man should worship their god and despise any group which promotes freedom of worship.

Look at the vast majority of Islamic countries and you will see that Freemasonry is banned. The authorities simply don't want people to think for themselves. Take a look at any dictatorship and you will see that the same thing occurs. Freemasonry only survives in countries where people are allowed to think for themselves.

FREE MASON IS A SECRET OCCULTIC SOCIETY. It is one of the few groups in the world that both Christians, Muslims and Jews forbid their members from joining. A Catholic that openly join the masons is automatically excommuicated. Masons don't mention God by name, they refer to God as a supreme being.

Freemasonry is neither secret nor occultic in the sense of the word that you have used it (I doubt if you know what occultic actually means though). Chirstians, Jews and Muslims are not forbidden from joining unless they live in a despotic country. The excommunication thing does not happen any more but is a throw-back to the days when the Catholic Church was the tyrannical dictator of peoples' lives. God is referred to as a Supreme Being because a Lodge may be made up of many faiths. There is no point calling him Allah when there are Christians present is there? By calling Him the Supreme Being, everyone understands that he is the god of their faith.

The 14th level master mason is believed to have seen devil face to face!

There is no such thing as a 14th level master mason. All master masons are holders of the 3rd degree.

freemasons are very rich people,just like any organisation/fraternity or what have you,there are levels and you are only multiplied by what you bring into it,if for instance you came in with nothing,then more often than not you will prolly end up being modestly rich at best

Simply not true. Freemasons come from all walks of life - from street sweepers to royal princes, from captains of industry to lavatory attendants. No freemason makes money from the fraternity. If he did so, he would be thrown out. To the contrary, Freemasonry costs the member money - he will pay fees to his Lodge and he will pay monies to charities - Freemasonry being one of the largest donators to charity in the world.

I also happen to know that in london most black cab drivers and a hell of a lot of policemen are freemasons.

I don't know about cab-drivers (although that wouldn't suprise me), but in London the vast majority of police officers are not freemasons. Something like less than 5% of the judiciary are members. That's a lower figure than for almost any other profession. The fallacy that most police officers are freemasons is spread by those who want it to be seen as some sort of organisation working secretly for the authorities.

Google Manly P.Hall and Alaistar Crowley for more in formation.

Manley Hall wrote his works before becoming a freemason so can hardly be considered an authority on the subject. Alistair "The Great Beast" Crowley never was a freemason. He tried to join but was refused entrance.

they changed the name to ogboni confraternity and the headquarters is in either st pauls or st peters

Ogboni confraternity has nothing to do with Freemasonry. What you may find though (and this happens a lot) is that other fraternities take Freemasonry ritual and adapt it for themselves. There are hundreds of fraternities out there that style themselves as either masonic or psuedo-masonic but have absolutely nothing to do with recognised Freemasonry.

This thread has nothing to do with Israel.

It's about Darfur and the murder of indigineous Africans by the Sudanese governement and it's support of the supporter of APC Muslim militias.

That genocide is not "unfair". It is a barbarity beyond comprehension for the vast majority of people.
@Richie. Consider the "scale and proportion" involved in Darfur and then stick to your pathetic claim that it is merely "unfair".

I will respect you based on your faith and knowledge.

Look at this mongrel. He cowers behind his religion to discriminate against people.

Heh!!! Don't keep me hanging guy.

However, I sincerely do believe that Republicans may have found Hillary more palatable because she was a known quantity.

Of course, it's possilbe that a lot jumped ship because the McCain/Palin ticket was about as far right wing as the GOP could produce but I kinda reckon you're gonna tell me I'm wrong there too.

He won't "recover".
But you can guarantee he'll come back with more crap.

Take for example his use of the Darfur "flag" to prove that Darfur is Arab land.
That flag wasn't adopted until very recently, well after the Arabs started pushing out the African population out. A direct comparison would be the Yanks planting the Stars and Stripes in Iraq after the invasion and stating that it was now the new flag of that country.

The Sudanese national flag wasn't even adopted until 1970 and even that was specifically created to show the Arab conquest of the country.

IMO the point of Acts is to establish Paul as the successor to Jesus (to the detriment of Peter and James)

You've almost got it, but not quite.
Paul never tried to be the succesor of Jesus but it was probable that he was trying to overthrow the power of James as head priest of the new Christian movement.
Reading through your post, I would say you've taken Acts at face value as a "stand alone". Try taking it in conjunction with Paul's Letters and things should become a little clearer. You say "Paul's letters make it clear that James (who he calls the brother of Jesus) was the unquestioned leader of the early Christian movement, and that they were at odds". The trick with this one is to look for the consistency in Paul's work and not the contradictions (which the Bible is riddled with anyway). He is definitely an enigma - some think him a conniving self-server while others think him a great free-thinker. The truth is you have to make your own mind up about him.
I must admit, I have swayed backwards and forwards many times!!!

As for his consistency with Jesus? Again, it's a personal take but I see nothing that is out of place when one remembers the circumstances in which Jesus was preaching. You've got to remember, Jesus was teaching in a time when the vast majority of his audience would have been Jewish. "Gentile" was not a word that would have taken up a lot of his time. In fact the only non-Jews he would really have interacted with would have had negative connotations as they would have been the Roman occupiers.
Paul came from a much more cosmopolitan time. Not only were "gentiles" common-place, but he himself was a Roman citizen.

Nobody but a fool would believe that the New Testament was written by either the disciples or by actual eye-witnesses.
The general thought (even amongst most churches) is that the Gospels were written by people who had the information handed down to them. The only exception to the rule is the work of Paul (who was not a disciple nor had he ever met Jesus).
Evangelicals would beg to differ, but since when have they been party to any sort of logic?

Israel's response will probably not be as "severe and disproportionate" as many would believe.
First: They have an election in 9 day's time. The governing party got their votes with the action against Gaza a couple of weeks ago. Hitting hard now isn't really going to gain them anything more.
Second: They're probably still sounding out Obama and will want to know how far they can go.

The real question at the moment is "How far is Hamas prepared to push it?". Hamas are pretty much in the same boat at the moment and also watching the new American administration. Push it too far and they risk alienating themselves even more. Push it not enough and they lose their reputation as "freedom fighters".

Are you aware that at some stage in the DNC primaries some Republicans jumped ship to vote for Hillary?

There's a one word answer to that - "Bill".

Electorates in democracies tend to be creatures of habit - be they Republican or Democrats there is always a tendency to maintain a sort of status-quo. Hillary's political reputation was associated with her husband and was therefore seen as a known quantity.

I am trying to inform you that the Sudanese Government is not responsible for so called "GENOCIDE" please do not mistake me with saying There was no Genocide in Darfur, because I simply don't know that.

Then you disagree with the dozens of United Nations reports, the hundreds of Human Rights reports and the hundreds of thousands of eye witness reports. What a cretin.

I understand that the Rebels are fighting for secession of the region because of the Oil which is located there, therefore, I am not against their secession, but why most they slaughter, rape, and kill innocent people before they get their Independent?

slowpoke. The fighting is because the Baggara Arabs have pushed South into Darfur and are taking indigineous black African land. They are the ones who "slaughter, rape and kill" innocent people.

The fighting in Sudan is NOT about Black and White or Arabs and Non-Arabs, or Muslims and Christians, the fighting in Darfur is a mere POLITICAL crisis started in 2003!

Genocide is a mere political crisis? You dumb mugu.  
It did not "start in 2003" as you so ignorantly claim. It is a continuation of the war that started in 1955 and it most certainly is between Arabs and Africans and Muslims and Christians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Sudanese_Civil_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sudanese_Civil_War
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Darfur

The West (especially the USA) are in one way or the other supporting these rebels in Darfur, there are hundreds of evidence on that including the Weapons in which they are using and the sophistication of their communication.

You talk complete crap. There is no evidence to show Western support of the "rebels". In fact the evidence points to the West being totally disinterested in Darfur. You claim that seccession is because of oil. Dipshit. It's purely because the West wants the oil that it tolerates the genocide committed by the Sudanese government.

You're a total and utter idiot and completely ignorant.

Sure. The people in the towns are like that.
The people who have been forced to move out of the towns and villages by the militias look like this:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/North_Darfur_IDP_malnourished_child.jpg/397px-North_Darfur_IDP_malnourished_child.jpg

And this:

https://www.marclamonthill.com/mlhblog/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/darfur_child_starving.JPG

Racist idiot.

I think they were being corny because for them to suddenly elect  a black man

I don't believe so. I think it was a genuine move.
First, the election is over. If it was a manipulative move, it would have been made before the vote. Obama has a full term in office so this isn't really going to make a difference to the electorate.
Second, Steele was really the only moderate on offer. I believe the GOP recognises the fact that it has to become less right wing and reclaim some of the middle ground.

Conservatism, economic conservatism at least has been totally discredited.

No it hasn't. Only the regulatory area of conservatism has been discredited. The idea of the free-market is still the best that is on offer and it is far superior to socialist economics which inevitably lead to boom and bust.

1. Can you name one example of this country apart from Afghanistan.

Sure.
In Europe there was Serbia and Bosnia when Yugoslavia broke up. Then you've got places like Chechnya when the Soviet Union broke up.
In Asia, you had Cambodia.
In Africa, Somalia.
In the Middle East, Lebanon and Iran.

And that's just a couple of examples without even bothering to look for any. Only a dreamer thinks that the Middle East would have peaceful transitions of governments if their regimes were to fall. Look at your history books.

If you mean religious extremism now that is relative and a big debate however if a peaople say that is who they want i think their wish should be respected.

Their wish should be respected? Unfortunately, extremists don't respect anyone else's wishes. They tend to want to expand thier areas of influence - especially religious extremists.

An example is Hamas the only democratic elected govt in the whole arab world wasnt recognised by the US and EU and this are the same people that say they want to spread democracy and freedom.

A democratically elected government which forced out the opposition in a violent coup. A democratically elected government whose people are now afraid to say anthing negative about it (read Palestinian opinions, you'll see this is true). A democratically elected government whose charter calls for the explicit destruction of the State of Israel.
And you call the West hypocrites and the Israelis warmongers?

There is one fact majority of the world dont like US impearilist style and the US has to change because in 20 -30 yrs the balance of power most probably would certainly shift to another part of the world.

What fact? The majority of people don't give a crap about US "impearilist style" simply because it doesn't affect them. The only ones who do whine about it are the idiots who would, in the most part, like to see the whole world governed by their religion.
If the balance of power shifted their way in 20-30 years then there is at least one good thing that will come about and that is that nobody will have to read the crap that you write. Simply because freedom of expression will be a thing of the past.

US should pull their bases into their borders and have a more peaceful foriegn policy.

Yeah, great idea. That's assuming that the world is a Utopia that lives in peace.
Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. The people of the Middle East may hate their regimes, but the alternative is extremism. Don't believe me? Take a look. Everywhere that an established regime has been overthrown, extremists have either taken hold of government or stolen a disproportionate voice. Or do you think that these countries will naturally progress to democracy? Iraq is a pointer that they will not.


So yeah, it would be nice if the US could pull everything back into their borders but you can guarantee that if they did, there are many more people who would lose their lives or exist in misery without the Yanks there to keep the extremists in check.

Time and matter is existence.

No. Time and matter is only perceived existence. It's all we have to compare with but there's absolutely no evidence that it's the only conduit for existence. You've got to think outside of the box and there may well be something outside of that box that can be referred to as God.
Science cannot disprove God just as Faith cannot prove Him.

the white house should be renamed, if it was housing a Nigerian President.

Not only would it be renamed but it would also be rebuilt.
First on the list would be a massive garage area to house Rolls Royces, Ferraris, Porsches, etc.
Next would be an extra 30 bedrooms so the girlfriends could stay overnight.
Then there would be the biggest room in the house. The one used to store all of the money stolen through corruption.

Obama is not the anti-Christ.

He's Elvis.

My hope is that Barack will break away from decades of childish "I hate you and won't let you touch my barbie doll *cry like baby*", ota akara foreign policy the US has adopted

Whatever the uneducated may think, US foriegn policy over the last decade has been reactive not pre-emptive.
The Barbie doll quote tends to come from other countries:

Iran: "I hate you and won't let you touch my barbie doll"
North Korea: "I hate you and won't let you touch my barbie doll"
Syria: ""I hate you and won't let you touch my barbie doll"
Zimbabwe: ""I hate you and won't let you touch my barbie doll"

US policy is: "I'll stick that Barbie doll up your ass"

It's the other guys who are whining and crying. The US position is to come and beat the crap out of them when it hears them.

Except for Hamas.

US policy there is: "We'll let Israel stick that Barbie doll up your ass"

Nobody is punishing anybody. It is exacting justice against the actions of their forfathers.

Of course it's about punishment. To exact justice you've got to implicate punishment. And if you're taking money from someone because of something their forefathers did, how is this not punishing them for those earlier sins?

This belief is addressed in the US constitution and demands that people be given due process.

It's only applicable to US citizens. Africans have no rights under the US Constitution.

There are people on fugitive lists for crimes committed in the 40s and I bet you if the government can find them now they will exact justice against them

Yes, because there's the chance that they are still alive. But the slave owners of 140 years ago are dead. The comparison is irrelevant.

I guarantee you IRS will levy their estate and draw the amount plus penalties and interests.

Again, you're talking about recent history. The IRS will not levy on estates of estates which would be the case here.

Likewise you must exact justice against those forefathers who sought to protect the innocence of their sons and daughters but violate that of the slaves. unishment it will be if you pack their descendants and lock them up or take them through the same tragedies that their forefathers visited upon another human.

Then you're no better than them. But let's get one thing straight here - there are degrees of punishment and you're still advocating one. Financial forfieture for something your great great -grandfather did 140 years ago is a punishment.
But open up that can of worms and you indict the whole human race. Who doesn't have somebody in their ancestry who hasn't committed a crime for which compensation couldn't be claimed in your scenario?

But here, thats is not the objective. The objective here is to reconcile the ethics with the obligations and see if anyone was hurt in the process. If they were, how do you heal them?

You can't. Some things are beyond redemption or healing and slavery is one of those things. It's something that has to be faced, remembered, stopped from ever happening again, but it can't be reconciled in any way other than by the healing process of time.

Its not about guilt. Rather, it is a lesson for better understanding.

Again, of course it's about guilt. If there was no guilty party there would be absolutely no basis for a claim for compensation. The problem is that the guilty party is long gone. Reparations can't be made on that basis. No guilty party, no-one to claim compensation from.

Ahmadinejad is doing nothing more than playing to the home audience. There are elections coming up and he's badly screwed the Iranian economy. Turn the focus onto the US and play the hard man and he hopes to gain a few votes but he's not seriously expecting an apology. It's doubtful wether his tactic will work though - surveys in Iran show most Iranian people preoccupied with the failing economy rather than with any enmity with the US.

However, on the subject of apologies, if the US is to apologise to Iran then Iran also has to apologise to the US for originally siding with Nazi Germany during World War 2 despite it's claims of neutrality.

US was in existence when the trans-African slave trade occurred. UN is not in the equation at all. You can claim from individuals and the estate they have inherited. If the descendant of Confederate soldiers can claim legacy of the American civil war, then he can equally be made liable for the atrocities of his ancestor in that era of American history.

It existed in name only when compared to the entity that exists today. As you've stated, there was the Confederacy and the Union. They were in effect, two different countries with different laws and governmental systems.
You claim that descendants are liable but this is a very, very tenuous argument. Firstly the moral aspect is questionable - punishing people for the actions of their forefathers is treading on very dangerous ground. Secondly, the practicalities of such a claim are beyond action - how do you judge which descendant should pay what? What if the descendant is someone whose forefathers only owned one slave but who is now immeasurably rich? What if the descendant is someone whose forefathers owned hundreds of slaves but who now lives in a shack by the Mississippi? How do we even know who did what? And if you claim from the US government itself to give money to Africa, you're taking taxes paid in part by the descendants of slaves!!
The variables make the question of compensation irrelevant.

But let's say that we can overcome all of that and that we have a guilty party who we can make pay. Who then do we get him to pay out to?

It has plenty if you bother to read the links at the bottom of the page.

To deny Sudanese government involvement in the Darfur crisis is utterly ridiculous.

You see, using this comparative analogy you can draw out the ethical violations and claim that as the basis for the damages.

No. There's a major problem with the comparison and that's because it's based on two different cultures, thousands of miles apart. We can't say that there are "levels" of slavery that reparation should be adjusted to accordingly. By doing that, we run the risk of giving some justification to less severe examples when the truth is that all slavery is equally as abhorrent.

And as I've already stated, some of the nations that those cultures were based in don't even exist nowadays.
You can't claim compensation from the US because the US didn't exist. You can't claim from the UN because you're then asking innocent people who had no party to slavery to pay compensation. You can't claim from individuals because they can't be held responsible for the actions of their anscestors.

Lagosboy stated earlier that modality of payment is not an issue but unfortunately it is the issue. Even if you can make a concrete claim that money is owed, you've got to have the payee and the receiver otherwise there's no legal case to answer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Sudan

A damning indictment of Sudan's government that can't be seen in any other way but state-sponsored terrorism.

Slavery itself as an institution is usually not the focus of high talk on reparation. It is the abuses that went with it.

The problem there is that you leave yourself open to accusations of generalisation and you can't make a legal claim for reparations without specifics.
In this case there were two kinds of abuse - those against the individual and those against African nations.
As I've stated, making a claim on the basis that African nations were abused has shaky foundations. Any claim is going to be countered with some of the arguments that I've previously given and then we have the problem of who pays out the cash and who receives it.

Any claim made on abuse in an individual basis is going to run into an immediate problem - the fact that the recipient of that abuse is long dead. Again, who pays, who receives?

So my question to you. Who should pay compensation and who should receive it?

If you say that British was once enslaved by Africans, then it would seem logical that British has exacted its reparation on account of its violation across Africa and instituting Crown ownership over our most precious natural resources.

My point exactly. The claim could be that reparations have already been claimed by both sides. Ethiopia became a rich and powerful nation with it's alliance to ancient Rome and they were the "asset strippers" of their day - exporting slaves and resources. It thus negates a large percentage of the "moral argument". We can't say "you owe us" because they could just turn around and say exactly the same.
But it's a moot point. Ethiopian enslavement of Britian is never going to be an argument that will be used as a defence of the enslavement of Africans. I'm just pointing out that if you base your claim on morality or lost resources, there is normally a counter-point.
My main critisism of the argument for reparations is simply that they are unworkable. No direct guilty party to pay them and no direct innocent party to receive them. Add to that the complications (such as the aid issue) that may arise if there was some workable plan that could get around that and it's a minefield.

but I disagree that we are not impacted by the encounters of slavery.

Hang on. I'm not claiming that slavery didn't have an impact and is something that should be overlooked or erased from the history books. What I'm saying is that we cannot blame it for the majority of Africa's woes. Without a doubt, tribalism is the over-riding factor there.

And that's where the crux of the matter is. Tribalism has to be controlled for Africa to ever be able to move forward. Globalisation of society is the only way the continent is ever going to be able to stand on it's own two feet. People have to see past being Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, etc and then take an even further step and see past being Nigerian and look upon themselves as Africans. Only then will they be on a level pegging with the other continents. That doesn't mean we lose our identities but rather that we stop relying on those identities to dictate our interaction with others. Until then, Africans are just going to keep screwing each other - even without the white man's interference. I wish it were as easy as to be able to place the blame at someone else's feet, but the truth is that Africans have been their own worst enemies for centuries and still are. Until tribalism is pushed aside, Africans will also be their own worst enemies for the forseeable future.

There is tribalism in every race and every continent.  Why is ours different?

Because it's on a much larger scale. There are many more tribes in Africa who don't see eye to eye with each other.

If you take a look elsewhere on the planet, in the most part, tribalism isn't as severe. Although it still exists, it only does so in a much more watered down version.
Take a look at Europe and you'll see that even the nation state is being supplanted by the EU and they're becoming an indistinguishable mass. They don't war with each other because the main reason for warring (tribalism) has been removed. One could counter and say that they're destroying their identity but in reality, their society is evolving. In Africa, tribalism not only dictates how nations deal with each other but even how individuals within those nations interact.

It's a dynamic discussion.  We are at the beginning.  I have discussed reparations with the initiators of the idea, that doesn't stop me from participating when I come across the topic.  Join us and share your points as we go along.

I appreciate that but reparations are unworkable. You're asking for compensation for something that happened hundreds of years ago. History has over-ridden any justification, however much we would like to claim otherwise.
I'll give you an example:
Did you know that Africans enslaved the white population of Britain a couple of thousand years ago? Britain was ruled by a black Roman governer and the population were kept in check by black legionairres for hundreds of years. Does this mean that the British are entitled to reparations from Ethiopia (which is where the legionairres came from)?

And who can be prosecuted? The United States of America, which was the main slaving country didn't even exist at the time of slavery. Legally, the US isn't liable. And as given in the example above, if blacks claim reparations for slavery, why can't the whites? Are we setting a time-scale?
Who gets reparations? Africans? Why? Like I said, there were plenty of Africans who were complicit in the selling of slaves. Are they to be rewarded too? The African-Americans? Give them reparations and they have no justification to be able to call themselves Americans, it separates them from the rest of the population - and it's way too late for that as they're already a part of the fabric of US society. What is whitey going to say - "Here's the cash, now get the hell back to Africa"?

So yes, I appreciate your idea about discussing the topic, but unfortunately, there are way too many pitfalls, contradictions and unworkables for reparations ever to be an option. Slavery is a smear on mankind and to make it worse, it's still going on. The way forward is to stop it from happening now and to stop it from ever happening again.

What is this? Africa and Black people all over the world are where we are today because of external influence that destroyed our continent and our people.

Total and utter crap. Really. It's complete bullshit.
Africans are where they are today because of tribalism. Recognise that and you can make a start picking up the pieces but keep blaming others and you're part of the problem - not the solution.
Take a look at any country in Africa and you'll see that the vast majority of it's negatives have been caused by tribalism (and still are). And we can't blame that on whitey - tribalism was around long before he came along. Blaming external influences is to deny reality. The problems started at home well before whitey set foot on the continent and are still there now he's (in the most part) gone.

As I've stated elsewhere, there are major problems with reparations. Do we take into account the billions of dollars that the West has given to Africa and is still giving? And what about the African connection itself? Do we get reparations from the tribes who sold their brothers into slavery? The white-man rarely captured slaves for himself - they were delivered by their fellow Africans. If we ask for reparations from the whites, then shouldn't we also ask for reparations from our fellow Africans?
Reparations are nothing but guilt money. The West pays it now in the form of aid. Do you think that a final lump sum is the way to go? I certainly don't. If the West pays reparations and then turns the aid tap off (and it's absolved itself of guilt so why not) Africa will go down the pan quicker than you can blink.