Posted on 02/06/2008 12:08:18 PM PST by Between the Lines
No, they do.
There is no tolerance for Islmic extremism in Ethiopia and the EPRDF invaded Somalia to forestall what they saw as attempts to radicalize Ethiopian Muslims.
They are also pretty nasty toward Rastafarians as well.
Congratulations on the least cogent analysis I’ve seen on FR today.
Uhh... You did notice the </sarc> tag, didn't your?
Seriously, I blame the current lack of religious freedom in Afghanistan entirely on the United States corporately, and on George W. Bush personally.
Yeah, I'm sure the Taleban had nothing to do with any of that. The Afghanis were so happy and free under Taleban rule. < /sarc>
Indeed, I did.
You wrote "Yeh, America has really brought liberty to the Afghani people" and followed it with a sarcasm tage, which tells me that your true opinion is that America has not brought liberty to the people of Afghanistan.
Seriously, I blame the current lack of religious freedom in Afghanistan entirely on the United States corporately, and on George W. Bush personally.
Presumably, since it does not carry a magical sarcasm tag, this statement reflects your true sentiments.
And the statement betrays an utter lack of cogency in your analysis.
I didn't know Ethiopia had any!
Sounds like the "Derg" has never been out of power.
Rita Marley made the Rastafarian equivalent of aliyah in the 80s and hundreds, maybe a couple of thousand, Rastafarians followed her there.
They squat on land in Shashamane which their deity willed to them, and which the government considers to be state property.
Sounds like the "Derg" has never been out of power.
Actually, the EPRDF killed most of the Derg - different ethnic group from the Tigrayans who are the mainstay of the EPRDF.
I thought the Amharic and the Tigrinya were the two ethic groups that traditionally made up the indigenous church.
I'm sure it's just a coincidence. After all, we are repeatedly told that socialism is the truest freedom, and that Islam is the Religion of Peace, and that all those terrorists are just terribly misunderstood and that they are only DRIVEN to be murderers by their capitalist oppressors. If we (by which I mean YOU) would only acquiesce to the unquestionable truth that the government should really own and control everything (but we have to get the right socialists in charge first, yes THEN it would be paradise!) and to the pinnacle of rational enlightenment that quaint concepts of "right" and "wrong" are simply social constructs and nothing more (and after the revolution WE get to decide what those mean... imagine the power!) then the world would be truly at peace! And whoever dissents, we can just kill them and then they'll be out of our hair. See how those enlightened muslims got it right all along? PEACE and TOLERANCE in their purest forms!
< /moonbat rant>
Yes, it does.
Do you dispute these facts? Do you feel that Afghanistan is a country where liberty abounds? If the US is not responsible, who is?
Both the Amhara and the Tigrinya are the most Westernized peoples of Ethiopia (I have a few CDs of jazz fusion records made by the hip soulsters of swinging 60s Addis Ababa) and were therefore the segment of the population most likely to be introduced to Marxism by elite members who went to Oxford, the Sorbonne and Turin for their education.
Think of them like the Italians they despise (and resemble) - some are extremely pious Christians and some are hardcore Red Brigade types.
These might be the most openly hostile to Christians, but if God wants you in North Hollywood or Seattle then anyplace but their would be the worst.
The current government in Afghanistan adheres to a far more lenient code of sharia law than the Wahhabist code in place previously.
When confronted with a test case last year of a Muslim who converted to Christianity, the government of Afghanistan did not enforce the death penalty.
This is enormous progress for a country in which summary execution would have been the rule less than four years ago. Ancient traditions that are part of the air Afghanistanis breathe are not changed overnight.
Afghanistan was never a tolerant country - it is now far more tolerant than it has ever been under its own domestic governance.
Moreover, the incident highlighted in the report refers to the actions taken by criminals against foreign visitors, not official actions of the government in Kabul.
Afghanistan is a much freer and more open place now that it was before and this is a direct result of military intervention. Women are allowed to attend school, hold jobs, uncover their faces. All citizens are allowed to read newspapers, watch television programs and films, read Western books and use computers - activities strictly banned under the Taliban.
If you imagined that a couple of years of US military intervention was going to produce a nation of American suburbanites you are disconnected from reality.
Slandering your country and its armed forces from your cowardly niche of safety is ignoble and foolish.
Wow. Berkeley, Boston, New York, Ann Arbor and Washington, D.C. didn’t even make the list.
Only the last from my list of facts is, by any stretch of the imagination, subjective. Yes, there are degrees of freedom. Yes, the people of Afghanistan are marginally more free than they were under the Taliban.&nbap; This does not mean that Afghanistan is a free country. If this is a subjective judgment, then so be it.
If you imagined that a couple of years of US military intervention was going to produce a nation of American suburbanites you are disconnected from reality.
I compare Afghanistan with Japan at the end of WWII. General MacArthur realized that:
We could not simply encourage the growth of democracy. We had to make sure that it grew. Under the old constitution, government flowed downward from the emperor, who held the supreme authority, to those to whom he had delegated power. It was a dictatorship to begin with, a hereditary one, and the people existed to serve it.General MacArthur imposed a Constitution on Japan which included
The new constitution violated Japanese traditions. It was a radical change from the way things had been for centuries. The Japanese leaders did not like many of its provisions, but MacArthur demanded that they accept it. And once accepted, they honored it. And, because of this new involuntary constitution, Japan has become a modern nation, and a friendly nation.Article 20.
Freedom of religion is guaranteed to all. No religious organization shall receive any privileges from the State, nor exercise any political authority. No person shall be compelled to take part in any religious act, celebration, rite or practice. The State and its organs shall refrain from religious education or any other religious activity.
Japan was a formidable enemy. Exceot for the atomic bomb, the military strength of Japan was comparable to our own. l; MacArthur had the backbone to take charge, and do what needed to be done.
In the case of Afghanistan, military victory was never in question. But Bush did not do what needed to be done. He accepted a new Afghani constitution which condemned the Afghani people to continued oppression.
Article One
Ch. 1. Art. 1
Afghanistan is an Islamic Republic, independent, unitary and indivisible state.Article Two
Ch. 1, Art. 2
The religion of the state of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is the sacred religion of Islam.
Slandering your country and its armed forces from your cowardly niche of safety is ignoble and foolish.
In no way did I slander, libel, or, indeed, make any derogatory remarks whatsoever about the armed forces of the United States. The US Armed Forces performed bravely, honorably, and victoriously in Afghanistan.
The sacrifices of the Armed Forces were betrayed, however, by their Commander in Chief. The Emperor has no clothes. It is foolish to pretend that hi does.
I never said it was. I said it is a significantly freer country than it was before, in that half of its population is no longer condemned by law to live their lives as illiterate chattel.
I compare Afghanistan with Japan at the end of WWII.
There's your problem right there. Japan in 1945 was not a tribal society, but a modern industrialized nation.
In no way did I slander, libel, or, indeed, make any derogatory remarks whatsoever about the armed forces of the United States.
I quote you verbatim from above:
I blame the current lack of religious freedom in Afghanistan entirely on the United States corporately
Are the US Armed Forces not part of the United States, corporately? Are they not US citizens and residents? Are they not, in fact, the most prominent US actors in Afghanistan?
The Rastafarians are, contrary to the media portrayal of them, a criminal enterprise which exploits religious freedom as a cover for drug running. At the time, Ethiopia was the only independent African state (i.e., independent from colonists as well as Arabs, who are white and who dominated Egypt.) Given that Ethiopia had a serious claim to holding the Holy Grail, the “Lost” Ark of the Covenant, an African emperor (Haile Salessi (sp?)), was at the time held to be the birthplace of Man, and was home to a black tribe which had held for 2500 years the claim that they were the lost tribe of Israel (and which even Israel would eventually grant status to), it was a natural choice for invented religious mysticism. So the Rastas declared that the Ethiopian emperor was the 2nd coming of Christ and built their religion around him.
The Ethiopian emperor, however, was a very devout Christian, and was greatly offended. Of course, such foolish claims were also a political embarrassment. So, he treated the Rastas like the criminal enterprise they were. Naturally, the American communists and academics who loved the pan-Africanism (and excuse for pot-smoking) represented by the Rastas, deeply hated the Ethiopian government for this. But they and the Rastas portrayed this as corruption that the emperor would eventually rout. (The commies expressed love for the governor while hating his policies.) When their god-king died, the Rastas simply invented a conspiracy that he was simply in exile until peace was established on earth, while the commies blamed the decline of Ethiopia on the big, bad Capitalist West.
And the Rasta way to establish this peace? Buy copious quantities of drugs from the Rastas, of course.
So there was a legitimate law-enforcement purpose to suppressing the Rastas that had nothing to do with religious oppression. Without meaning to concede that there may have been abuses, I don’t mean to suggest that the ACLU or the John Birch society would have approved of the emperor’s crime-fighting techniques; I just don’t know. It certainly is plain that the communists loved the opportunity to rally guerrilla forces around an African emperor: once chaos is created, they can establish control. I don’t believe the emperor desired such chaos, though.
And the Rastafarians are not an "enterprise" - there are few religious movements that are more disorganized and uncoordinated than Rastafarianism.
I hold no brief for Rastafarianism and I agree that large numbers of Rastafarians make their living growing and dealing marijuana and partaking in all the violence that such a lifestyle implies - but crime is not the sole purpose of Rastafarianism.
Basically, in the early 1900s Jamaica was a very poor colony of the UK that had an all-white government and a 0.5% white population. In Jamaica there had been a long tradition of social unrest from slavery times on down, and there was also a large number of rural Jamaicans living in the country's interior who were descended from slaves that had not yet really been fully Westernized before they were freed.
These were the ones who traditionally cultivated marijuana, who mixed African notions with the Bible taught to them by itinerant preachers and who did not really fit into the modernization of the British Commonwealth's economy. They were agricultural day laborers living in shanty camps etc.
Then three things happened to completely radicalize them between 1930-1955.
The first was the emigration of a Westernized, educated Jamaican named Marcus Garvey from Kingston to New York. Marcus Garvey organized the first serious black nationalist movement, the United Negro Improvement Association. Garvey created a personal empire on his doctrines of black self-sufficiency, rejection of white values and power and a triumphant return to Africa. Garvey became world famous, was prosecuted for mail fraud and disgraced and remade himself in the image of a wronged prophet crying in the wilderness.
In his prophetic mode he returned to Jamaica and founded the PPP - the first ideologically black nationalist political party. He foretold that a king would come from the East to save the black man the world over.
In 1930, Ras (Prince) Tafari Makonnen defeated the other rival Rases to the throne of Ethiopia and was crowned Negusa Negast (King of Kings) Haile Selassie ("Power of the Trinity").
In 1935, Ethiopia was attacked by fascist Italy and Selassie became internationally famous (like Garvey) for entering into the heart of the white man's world (in Garvey's case NYC, in Selassie's the League of Nations) to defend his people from oppression. Like Garvey also, he was initially defeated but made a comeback.
A lot of rural Jamaicans, including many who had moved to urban Kingston after WWII in search of opportunity, began to see themselves as Africans, to see Garvey as a prophet and Selassie as an African savior.
A fascination with Ethiopian culture led to the popularity of the Kebra Negast ("Book Of Kings") an ancient Ethiopian document which asserted that the first Negus Negast of Ethiopia, Menelik, was the son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and that Solomon had given the Ark of the Covenant into Menelik's hands for safekeeping - making the Royal House of Ethiopia the true Davidic line.
Obscure black nationalist writings from Jamaica that referenced Garvey in a religious way came into vogue, like a book called "The Holy Piby" and "The Royal parchment Scroll Of Black Supremacy."
Then, in 1952 Jomo Kenyatta began making the Kingston papers with his "Mau Mau" group of Kikuyu guerilla warriors.
The traditional Kikuyu hairstyle of long, matted locks became known as "dreadlocks" and were adopted as a badge of African identity.
So, by 1960, there was a decent-sized underground movement in place in Jamaica that was unified by its love for marijuana as a mystical intoxicant associated with African religious practice, its affinity for traditional African drumming, its adoption of Garvey and Selassie as prophet and savior as well as mentors, and its identification with the worldwide pan-African movement, including through their new hairstyles and modes of dress. They called themselves followers of Ras Tafari or Rastafarians.
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.
In 1962 Jamaica became independent. In 1966, Haile Selassie made a state visit to Jamaica and was mobbed by worshippers, and thousands and thousands of Jamaicans converted to Rastafarianism.
Over the next few years the movement grew in size and its signature music - reggae - became a worldwide smash due to the enormous international popularity of convert Bob Marley.
When Selassie died/was murdered in 1975, the movement split into various factions.
At the same time in the mid-70s, the national elections had become highly aggressive and Rastafarians and street gangs sided with Michael Manley's PNP. Many prominent gang members converted in order to increase the size of their crews.
It was at that point that recording industry money, drug money and Rastafarianism became inextricably intertwined.
Since then there are splinter Rastafarian groups (like the Bobo Ashanti) that do not believe in the morality of buying and selling "holy" marijuana but raise their own for community use.
But there are thousands and thousands of Rastafarians who are actively involved in the drug trade.
This does not mean that Rastafarianism is not a serious religion for many adherents.
Ironically, Marcus Garvey was a "right wing extremist" who sympathized with Hitler was hated by the left in his day. The fact that Black nationalism is today considered "left wing" (ie, Michael Manley) illustrates just how much the contemporary Third World left has moved from emulating the USSR to emulating WWII-era Japan.
It was my understanding that Bob Marley was not a real RT at all but an atheist political revolutionary.
I have long remarked that the attachment of poor Jamaican Blacks to Ethiopia is similar to the attachment of American Fundamentalist Protestants to Israel.
No, he was for real. In the 1978 election he refused to endorse either of the parties and he also publicly disapproved of the PPP's decision to send Jamaican troops to Angola to fight alongside the Cubans. And he was formally received into the Ethiopian Monophysite church before he died - his funeral was presided over by a Coptic priest.
In interview after interview to the secular British press he made explicitly religious references - knowing full well that his white fanbase in Britain were urban punk rockers.
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