Posted on 02/06/2008 12:08:18 PM PST by Between the Lines
If you are a Christian, the worst place to live in the world is North Korea, according to Open Doors’ 2008 World Watch List released Monday.
The annual country persecution list ranked North Korea in the No. 1 spot for the sixth year in a row. There were more arrests of Christians in the country in 2007 than in 2006, according to Open Doors.
In North Korea, considered by many the most repressive regime, citizens are strictly banned from worshipping any other gods beside those enforced in the state religion – a personality cult revolving around current dictator Kim Jong Il, and his deceased father, Kim Il Sung.
Moreover, Christianity is considered a serious threat to the regime’s power and there are many reports of Christians being publicly executed, tortured or imprisoned indefinitely simply because of the discovery of their faith.
It is estimated that there are at least 200,000 underground Christians and up to 400,000 to 500,000 believers secretly practicing their faith in North Korea. At least a quarter of the Christians are imprisoned for their faith in political prison camps, from which people rarely get out alive, according to an Open Doors local source.
“It is certainly not a shock that North Korea is No. 1 on the shame list for the sixth year in a row,” said Carl Moeller, President/CEO of Open Doors USA. “There is no other country in the world where Christians are being persecuted in such a horrible and systematic manner.”
In second place behind North Korea is the kingdom of Saudi Arabia where fundamentalist Wahabbi Islam dominates society and oppresses believers. Under the kingdom’s strict interpretation of Islamic law, apostasy (conversion to another religion) is punishable by death if the accused does not recant.
Following close behind in third is Mideast neighbor Iran. Although Christians are officially recognized as a religious minority, believers regularly face discrimination and persecution.
Islam is the predominant religion in six of the top 10 countries: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Maldives, Afghanistan, Yemen and Uzbekistan.
This year, several countries moved up in the list including Bhutan (No. 5, up from No. 7), but mainly due to Somalia and Yemen’s decrease in persecution.
Afghanistan also rose from No. 10 to No. 7 due to the South Korean Christian hostage drama last summer as well as other events that contributed to its worsening persecution status.
Two new countries were added to the 2008 list: Uzbekistan at No. 9, up from No. 11, and China at No. 10, up from No. 12 last year.
Three of the top 10 countries – North Korea, Laos and China – have communist governments. Bhutan is the only Buddhist country on the list.
Improvement in human rights occurred in Somalia (from No. 4 to 12), Vietnam (from No. 8 to 17), Burma (from No. 19 to 25), Ethiopia (from No. 37 to 43) and Colombia (from No. 43 to 50).
The World Watch List ranks countries based on the intensity of persecution Christians face for actively pursuing their faith. The list is compiled based on answers to 50 questions covering various aspects of religious freedom from Open Doors’ indigenous contacts, field workers and persecuted believers.
Open Doors encourages Christians to join its prayer campaign for North Korea and participate in North Korea Freedom Week, April 27 - May 3.
2008 World Watch List
1. North Korea 2. Saudi Arabia 3. Iran 4. Maldives 5. Bhutan 6. Yemen 7. Afghanistan 8. Laos 9. Uzbekistan
Much of what you say is factual, and is the sort of background information I quickly alluded to. Much of it is explains what the situation to be exploited. But it’s such a prepostrous white-wash, ignoring the absurd, embarassing and criminal.
What’s astounding about what you’ve written is you write as if you’ve accepted every ounce of spin some pot-headed Marxist university professor ever spun. You’ve even adopted the language, in spite of it being anathema to your own religious beliefs.
“In his prophetic mode... he foretold...”
He “foretold?” That word states that something TRUE happened which was told of beforehand. So, was Black Man saved the world over by King Selassie? Of course not, that’s why he can’t be dead. In his “prophetic mode?” That wording indicates he was prohetic! How about, “in his exiled mode?” Prophets may have been outcasts, but not every exiled convict is a prophet.
Yes, Marcus Garvey’s was the initial criminal enterprise to which I referred. Marcus Garvey wasn’t stupid; he just knew other people were. So he built his belief system on a profitable enterprise: drug runners would be his twelve apostles. Sure, drugs were exactly the last thing blacks neeeded, but he didn’t care. He didn’t even care that one day his “religion” would be exposed, since thats the concern a philosopher might have... but he’d have a new angle if he ever needed.
Selassie was worshipped as God incarnate, so when he died, there had to be a conspiracy born to explain it. Many “Rastas” today don’t even know that he ever was said to be the Second Coming. But like crackpot religions, the culture of the religion supplanted those initial core beliefs, which now seem secondary.
>> Musicians and artists always seem to like pot and radicalism, so many of the urban R&B musicians and singers in Kingston bought marijuana from Rastafarians and also bought into their beliefs. They even began incorporating Rastafarian percussion and chants into their music. <<
That’s the only reason Rasta survives. It’s the emotionalism of religion with the promise of marijuana.
Too bad all RTism means to most people is drugs and militant "leftist" Pan-African nationalism.
Rastafarian history and ideology is patently absurd. I didn't think I needed to point out that Haile Selassie isn't God and that there is no documentation for the claim that the mythical Menelik took possession of the Ark.
I definitely pointed out that Garvey was a criminal convicted of mail fraud.
i also pointed out the involvement of Rastafarians in the street gangs that terrorized Kingston in the 1970s and ever since.
What’s astounding about what you’ve written is you write as if you’ve accepted every ounce of spin some pot-headed Marxist university professor ever spun.
How so? Please cite some evidence for this sweeping claim.
That word states that something TRUE happened which was told of beforehand.
No, it means that someone made a prediction.
That wording indicates he was prohetic!
No, it indicates that since he was a failure as a political force, he decided to adopt the mode or style of a prophet as a face-saving alternative.
No one reading my post objectively would conclude that I was arguing that Marcus Garvey was actually a prophet.
But like crackpot religions, the culture of the religion supplanted those initial core beliefs, which now seem secondary.
As I stated above, Rastafarianism is completely disorganized. No two Rastafarians ever seem to have had the exact same doctrinal beliefs.
A lot of Rastafarians have actually gone on to convert to traditional Monophysitism, due mostly to the doctrinal confusion of Rastafarianism.
That’s the only reason Rasta survives. It’s the emotionalism of religion with the promise of marijuana.
You don't need religion to have an excuse to get high.
Rastafarianism survives because it appeals to certain people's sensibilities. It will always be a small cult - even in Jamaica less than 10% of the population subscribe to it.
I wish more people would pay attention to how "rightwing" (a la the mystical nationalism) the "Left" has become. Third World leftism is indeed closer to the ideology of WWII Japan than to that of the USSR. What is "pan-Africanism" or "Afrocentrism" but rightwing Pat Buchanan blood-and-soil nationalism for Blacks? And what is Barack Obama's Afrocentric church but the counterpart of the "rightwing" kinists, reconstructionists, and identity-types to whom America is the regathered tribes of Israel and the Founding Fathers literally inspired by G-d?
Excellent example! Let's examine.
Verse 1: "Preacherman, dont tell me, Heaven is under the earth.
I know you dont know What life is really worth.
Its not all that glitters is gold;
Half the story has never been told:"
What he's saying here is that traditional Christianity of the type Marley grew up in (Church Of God) has uninformed preachers. They preach about a heaven that doesn't exist - in Rastafarian thinking the sky in under the earth as well as above. It's not special. This is because the preachers have never revealed the whole story.
Verse 2: " Most people think, Great God will come from the skies,
Take away everything And make everybody feel high.
But if you know what life is worth,
You will look for yours on earth:"
Here he puts forth the Rastafarian teaching that the Christians are wrong about a Second Coming in which Jesus will descend from Heaven, as well as the notion that the earth will come to an end. Here he argues Rastafarian teaching that God is physical, not spiritual. That he exists in the person of Haile Selassie, not as an invisible being external to the world. The life we are living is exactly the kind of life we will always have: salvation is not going to heaven - it is living on earth in a paradise that will be realized when Haile Selassie's righteous rule over the whole world comes to pass.
Verse 3: " We sick an tired of-a your ism-schism game -
Dyin and goin to heaven in-a jesus name, lord.
We know when we understand:
Almighty God is a living man.
You can fool some people sometimes,
But you cant fool all the people all the time.
Here he argues that the various branches of Christianity are all a scam "an ism-schism game" - and that the notion of dying and going to heaven is false. Paradise is an earthly phenomenon given to the righteous in Zion (the Rastafarians call the ancient city of Axum in Ethiopia "Zion") by a physical God - Haile Selassie, who is "Almighty God" and also "a living man." Christians are deceived by this false obsession with invisible spirits, but Rastafarians cannot be fooled.
So Marley is not properly an atheist - he believes that Haile Selassie is God, the same God spoken of in the Bible and that "heaven" is really just everyday life on earth in the perfect kingdom that will one day be established by Selassie.
It's similar in some ways to the Jewish notion of life in the age of Moshiach, similar in some ways to the Christian belief in a Messiah who is God, and similar in other ways to the Five Percent Nation group among blacks in the US Northeast in its reject of the reality of the spirit.
>> Back off, dangus. <<
OK, I certainly didn’t mean wideawake was a Rasta. I was harsh on him his language because I knew it didn’t match his beliefs.
>> What is “pan-Africanism” or “Afrocentrism” but rightwing Pat Buchanan blood-and-soil nationalism for Blacks? <<
Communism. When you are starving and others are wealthy, seizing others’ wealth has a decidedly strong appeal. But the poverty and pining for unity has typically been exploited by Soviet-backed and US-intelligentsia-backed communists. And the pan-African movement was certainly Stalinist-backed. The best-selling book in America today is explanation how Hitler was simply a communist in a nation which was much more ethnically homogenous than the Soviet Union or the USA.
As to wideawake’s refutations to my criticisms: “Foretold” does explicitly and intrinsicly mean that something which did happen was predicted before it happened. If I tell you that an ancient Chinese mystic foretold the collapse of Chin Empire due to famine, it is understood that I am asserting the Chin Empire collapsed due to famine.
Also, “prophetic mode” implies that the mode was prophetic, not just adopting the style of a prophet.
And while I’ll regularly concede that wideawake did mention several negatives of Rastafarians, he makes it seem like an ancillary problem that developed long after Garvey’s influence. Those street gangs were the organizing principle of Rasta; hence its sacramentalization of a commodity which could only be supplied by such street gangs.
In the bigger picture, you rebutted by description of Rasta with a piece that doesn’t so much describe Rasta as explain its social context for its development. THAT’S what seems so much like a Marxist professor. And I was harsh on that because I presumed wideawake couldn’t possibly believe in the relativism, determinism and social deconstuctionism that he seems to be echoing.
>> You don’t need religion to have an excuse to get high. <<
Actually, they *do.* Marijuana is illegal. And it would be much more controlled in Jamaica, if not for the influence of Rastafarians. But because of Rasta, pot is readily available in Jamaica.
>> As I stated above, Rastafarianism is completely disorganized. <<
Well, its central tenets have been disproved; its creed was absurd nonsense; and its adherents are all pot-heads. But that hardly negates the former central beliefs. And be careful! If you wipe it clean of all essence besides pot-smoking, you are left with pot-smoking as its sole essence.
>> We sick an tired of-a your ism-schism game -
Dyin and goin to heaven in-a jesus name, lord.
We know when we understand:
Almighty God is a living man.
You can fool some people sometimes,
But you cant fool all the people all the time. <<
I think this is clever forked-tongue speech: it sounds like Lennon enough for the college-campus Leninist/Lennonist fans, but to his Jamacian base it sounds like an assertion that He has returned. But the point is unmistakably Marxist/materialist: “don’t live to prepare yourself for heaven, but rather focus on earthly things; Jesus ain’t up there.” Of course, this isn’t necessarily any more leftist/atheist than many Catholic missionaries I’ve heard, but I’ve told them that they were Marxist tools to their faces too, and directed them to read genuine Catholic literature like “The Soul of the Apostolate.”
Again, I look at it in terms of the Five Percent Nation, Ausar Auset, and a number of other black nationalist ideologies. They have a common thread of divinizing the earth and black people, while denying the existence of spiritual beings as "spook" philosophy invented by whites.
It would seem to dovetail nicely with Communism in som,e regards, except that even Communism and its abstract concepts like "dictatorship of the proletariat" and "dialectic" are considered too theoretical and inauthentic to express pure blackness.
>> It would seem to dovetail nicely with Communism in som,e regards, except that even Communism and its abstract concepts like “dictatorship of the proletariat” and “dialectic” are considered too theoretical and inauthentic to express pure blackness. <<
1. I was talking about Marley and his potentially cynical salesmanship to the US market, which is 30 times larger than his home market of Jamaica.
2. By the 1970s, Soviet-friendly regimes existed in all corners of Africa, so I’d hardly argue that communism doesn’t fit with African nationalism. There certainly are difficulties meshing it with certain beliefs and belief structures, but if it can take root in Christian Orthodox lands, it can take root in Africa... and be twisted into something that seems uniquely African.
3. I’m not at all familiar with Ausar Auset, but the 5%NOI is completely alien to Rasta, is it not? Rasta sees Islam (correctly) as an Arab (white) intrusion into Africa, which is why they DIDN’T see Egypt (for instance) as being independent. I would state that NOI is purely a US phenomenon, and not indicative at all of African pan-African movements, wouldn’t you?
Colombia?
Communism started getting into nationalism with the rejection of Trotsky and has been into it ever since. Only “first world” leftism is universalist and pacifist. Meanwhile the “oppressed” nations are hopped up on mystical nationalism till they have it coming out the wazoo. This includes various white nationalisms in Europe too, btw. For example, the Maoist Scottish National Liberation Army wants to run every “Englishman” out of Scotland (ethnic purity)—never mind that the Angles were in Scotland a century before the Scots were!
Marley's US success took him almost completely by surprise. No Jamaican artist had ever been more than a one hit wonder in the US (Desmond Dekker, "Israelites"), but Jamaican music sold well in the UK in urban markets. He took reggae and added funk and rock elements in the hope of breaking into the UK market.
That's why he signed with Island, and recorded in England and toured England instead of Jamaica.
Soviet-friendly regimes existed in all corners of Africa, so I’d hardly argue that communism doesn’t fit with African nationalism
True. But in the case of Rastafarianism, Haile Selassie was their deity and he opposed Communism, and he was deposed by Communists. Rastafarians, unlike some other black nationalists, had issues with Communism for that reason and there was a big rift in Rastafarianism with different factions taking sides when Michael Manley sent Jamaican soldiers to fight with Castro's troops in Angola.
I would state that NOI is purely a US phenomenon, and not indicative at all of African pan-African movements, wouldn’t you?
Well, neither is Rastafarianism. Rastafarianism exists only where Jamaicans live, mostly in Jamaica, the UK and the northeastern US. Very few non-Jamaican black people are Rastafarians. There are no actual Ethiopian Rastafarians that I know of.
The Nation Of Gods And Earths, known as the Five Percenters, are very different from the Nation Of Islam.
Their founder, Clarence 13X, was expelled from the NOI. 5%ers smoke, drink, do drugs and eat pork if they want to. They don't care about the usual NOI rules about abstaining from crimes like mugging and robbery.
More significantly, they reject NOI theology. The NOI teaches that Allah is an all-powerful spirit who directly created black people only (while white people are actually an experiment by an evil black scientist that went awry), who loves the black man and who raised up prophets and leaders for the black man like WD Fard, Elijah Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan to lead them from the wilderness of North America to one day take their place in the African homeland.
5%ers do not teach that Allah is an external creating spirit that loves only black people: they teach that the black man is God. I wish I could explain how radically bizarre this theology is.
They are saying that each and every black man physically alive on earth is in himself God and Creator of the Universe. 5%ers pray to themselves. They believe, and I am not joking, that the word "Allah" itself is a secret code revealing the truth of this proposition - that it is code for a black man's physical body: Arm LegLegArmHead.
They call one another "God" - "What's up, God? How ya livin'?"
They believe that every word is a secret acronym that can be interpreted by a system they call "The Supreme Alphabet" and every number is a secret equation that can be interpreted by a system they call "Supreme Mathematics."
They believe that Manhattan is a holy place and call it "Mecca." They believe that Brooklyn is also a holy place and they call it "Medina."
5%ers are far more different from the NOI than the NOI are different from Sunni Islam.
5%ers are not only nonexistent outside of the US as far as I know, they are almost nonexistent outside of the DC-to-Boston corridor and I would guess that more than 50% of all the 5%ers in the world live in NYC, Philadelphia, Newark, Camden and Trenton.
There is an entire subgenre of northeastern hip hop entirely dedicated to rhyming in 5%er code.
Ausar Auset is pantheistic black nationalist philosophy which sees the black man as the natural offspring of the earth and ancient Egyptian texts like the Book of the Dead as a source of rituals wherewith black people can reconnect with the earth and reclaim their status as its masters and keepers.
That is more popular on the West Coast, especially the Bay Area, where there are several Ausar rappers.
Marley's US success took him almost completely by surprise. No Jamaican artist had ever been more than a one hit wonder in the US (Desmond Dekker, "Israelites"), but Jamaican music sold well in the UK in urban markets. He took reggae and added funk and rock elements in the hope of breaking into the UK market.
That's why he signed with Island, and recorded in England and toured England instead of Jamaica.
Soviet-friendly regimes existed in all corners of Africa, so I’d hardly argue that communism doesn’t fit with African nationalism
True. But in the case of Rastafarianism, Haile Selassie was their deity and he opposed Communism, and he was deposed by Communists. Rastafarians, unlike some other black nationalists, had issues with Communism for that reason and there was a big rift in Rastafarianism with different factions taking sides when Michael Manley sent Jamaican soldiers to fight with Castro's troops in Angola.
I would state that NOI is purely a US phenomenon, and not indicative at all of African pan-African movements, wouldn’t you?
Well, neither is Rastafarianism. Rastafarianism exists only where Jamaicans live, mostly in Jamaica, the UK and the northeastern US. Very few non-Jamaican black people are Rastafarians. There are no actual Ethiopian Rastafarians that I know of.
The Nation Of Gods And Earths, known as the Five Percenters, are very different from the Nation Of Islam.
Their founder, Clarence 13X, was expelled from the NOI. 5%ers smoke, drink, do drugs and eat pork if they want to. They don't care about the usual NOI rules about abstaining from crimes like mugging and robbery.
More significantly, they reject NOI theology. The NOI teaches that Allah is an all-powerful spirit who directly created black people only (while white people are actually an experiment by an evil black scientist that went awry), who loves the black man and who raised up prophets and leaders for the black man like WD Fard, Elijah Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan to lead them from the wilderness of North America to one day take their place in the African homeland.
5%ers do not teach that Allah is an external creating spirit that loves only black people: they teach that the black man is God. I wish I could explain how radically bizarre this theology is.
They are saying that each and every black man physically alive on earth is in himself God and Creator of the Universe. 5%ers pray to themselves. They believe, and I am not joking, that the word "Allah" itself is a secret code revealing the truth of this proposition - that it is code for a black man's physical body: Arm LegLegArmHead.
They call one another "God" - "What's up, God? How ya livin'?"
They believe that every word is a secret acronym that can be interpreted by a system they call "The Supreme Alphabet" and every number is a secret equation that can be interpreted by a system they call "Supreme Mathematics."
They believe that Manhattan is a holy place and call it "Mecca." They believe that Brooklyn is also a holy place and they call it "Medina."
5%ers are far more different from the NOI than the NOI are different from Sunni Islam.
5%ers are not only nonexistent outside of the US as far as I know, they are almost nonexistent outside of the DC-to-Boston corridor and I would guess that more than 50% of all the 5%ers in the world live in NYC, Philadelphia, Newark, Camden and Trenton.
There is an entire subgenre of northeastern hip hop entirely dedicated to rhyming in 5%er code.
Ausar Auset is pantheistic black nationalist philosophy which sees the black man as the natural offspring of the earth and ancient Egyptian texts like the Book of the Dead as a source of rituals wherewith black people can reconnect with the earth and reclaim their status as its masters and keepers.
That is more popular on the West Coast, especially the Bay Area, where there are several Ausar rappers.
Well, that is progress if you're not a Chinese Christian.
Maybe it's because of the Olympics.
5.56mm
>> Marley’s US success took him almost completely by surprise. No Jamaican artist had ever been more than a one hit wonder in the US (Desmond Dekker, “Israelites”), but Jamaican music sold well in the UK in urban markets. He took reggae and added funk and rock elements in the hope of breaking into the UK market. <<
Yeah, but we’re talking about a particular song written after he was making inroads into the US market. I checked before posting; that song was on a 1973 album. Marley hit the big time in 1972. Besides, were UK hippies that different?
>> True. But in the case of Rastafarianism, Haile Selassie was their deity and he opposed Communism, and he was deposed by Communists. Rastafarians, unlike some other black nationalists, had issues with Communism for that reason and there was a big rift in Rastafarianism with different factions taking sides when Michael Manley sent Jamaican soldiers to fight with Castro’s troops in Angola. <<
We agree; I meant to represent the two as different groups which could read into Marley’s songs.
As for the rest of what you wrote; it doesn’t contradict what I had believed at all about the 5%ers, but reading a little more depth was very interesting.
Its goal is to rid Eire of the Sassenach and to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat.
The 10 worst places in the United States of America to live as a christian?
By inference, these would then be the 10 best places in the United States of America to live as a non-christian, no?
Thanks....
Its goal is to rid Eire of the Sassenach and to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat.
Exactly. Please see my post on the Scottish National Liberation army and John Maclane above.
Other leftist nationalist European movements exist among the Welsh (Plaid Cymru), the Bretons, the Cornish(???!!!), the Basques, the Castilians (what the h---?), the Greeks (the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement) and probably the Manx as well.
Every nineteenth century nationalist movement, from Ireland to Armenia, was socialist. The "indigenous people" were oppressed by foreign devils who introduced foreign languages, religions, and economic systems (capitalism), and after the revolution the sacred mother soil would be ethnically purified, revert to the common ownership of the "children" who crawled out of her very bosom, and the indigenous religion (exempt from Marxian critique) restored.
The leftism of "the oppressed" is so different from the self-hating leftism of the West that one can legitimately ask if they are indeed the same ideology. In fact, I say they are not.
So true.
BTW, one of the UK's most respected underground techno artists - The Aphex Twin - is a Cornish nationalist. He titles many of his songs in Cornish.
The Cornish socialist/nationalist party is called Mebyon Kernow.
The leftism of "the oppressed" is so different from the self-hating leftism of the West that one can legitimately ask if they are indeed the same ideology. In fact, I say they are not.
I agree with you.
The socialist movements of the majority populations in Western nations are self-hating: they want to erase the majority culture and replace it, they find patriotism to be shameful, etc. While the socialism of minority Western populations and all non-Western populations is self-aggrandizing and boastful, usually containing an exaggerated historical framework about the greatness and nobility of its people and the horrible suffering they have been forced to endure.
The IRA, the ETA and the PLO are the prototype organizations for this nonsense.
This is why people who are clearly of the majority culture in the US all of a sudden develop a magical minority identity: they have visually undetectable native American ancestry, or they are now a Celt, or they are now a Melungeon, or a Huguenot. This feel-sorry-for-me-my-noble-ancestors-were-victims-of-oppression is a signal feature of the white Southern nationalist movement too, though its members don't like to admit it.
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