Tuesday, November 08, 2011

Past Histories and the Current World

The Mongols invaded China and caused many changed to ancient China. Chinese scholars criticized harshly Mongols for their destructive acts on people and their damage to the mainstream life of ancient China. A Persian historian from the 13th century said the Mongol caused the lands to be desolate and regions were like a desert. It is true that the Mongols lead a brutal conquest of China, Asia, and as part east as Europe plus the Middle East. North China was damaged heavily by the invasions. The civil service (or one of ancient China’s famous institutions) was eliminated by the Mongols. The ban remained until 1315. There was no long the officialdom for the Yuan Dynasty. This dynasty was the Mongols were founded in 1271 A.D. China was to the Mongols as one part of their huge empire. They made the Chinese to have a social structure that made the Mongols in the top, the non-Han in the next level (or being mostly from the Islamic population that was brought to China by the Mongols to help rule them), the Northern Chinese, and the Southern Chinese. The Confucian scholars weren’t in top positions of the ruling Mongol government, because the Mongols didn’t trust a different path for China that wasn’t pro-Mongol. Kublai Khan ruled China. He restored rituals at court that dealt with Confucian ideology, music, rituals, etc. He supported ancestor worship. He gave his son Jin Chin a Chinese style education that included the teachings of Buddhism and Confucianism. The Mongols supported the peasants since the peasants were key in the Chinese economy. They united the peasants to promote a rural cooperative to increase agricultural resources in ancient China. Censuses were done in the cooperatives. Some peasants didn’t like the Mongols public works projects in China since huge labor was required by the peasants (like the extension of the Grand Canal to Beijing). Artisans were treated with benefits in China. Cultural exchange from China to Persia existed in the Mongol rule. Many Muslims were inspired to come into China to build upon studies of astronomy, medicine, etc.


African history is interesting and fun to know about. The past is not only a reminder of what we were, but it can be utilized as a method of forming of better present and future. As time goes on, many things stay the same. African history is world history since all of modern humanity has their origin from the motherland of Africa. I am an African too. I just happen to be born in America, but my black ancestors originated from Africa. So, if you’re a human being, you must be learning about Africa beyond simple comprehension of wordplay. You have to understand the culture, history, language, geography, and a wide spectrum of social dispositions that adequately and eloquently found in the beautiful location of Africa. From the Pyramids to Presidents is a great reminder of the strength of black people. Even before ancient Egypt, ancient Nubia was a great civilization with a government, language, irrigation systems, religious structure, a potent empire, and filled of intelligent, strong black men including intelligent, strong black women. The Nubians ruled the Kingdom of Kush famous. They existed again even before the ancient Egyptians were an Empire. Back in the 7,000’s B.C, the people in Sudan had a Neolithic (or the New Stone Age) has a sedentary way of life. There were mud brick villages and hunting, plus fishing on the Nile. There was grain gathering and cattle herding. The Sahara was drying in this time, so Neolithic peoples traveled into the Nile Valley to develop agriculture, etc. In fact, both the ancient Egyptians and the ancient Nubians traded with each other. Also, the Egyptians adopted a lot of the culture form the Kushites as well. Both civilizations were based on the Nile River for transport, trade, agricultural development, the growth of cities, and a wide spectrum of reasons. Both civilizations made pyramids too, which occurred before the pyramids found in China, Peru, Mexico, Indonesia, etc. Black people live in both nations as well, so we who are black are the first in civilization and the first in human existence indeed. Now, ancient Nubia have had city capitols like Kerma, Napata, and of course Meroe. Ancient Egypt made strong accomplishments in medicine, astronomy, mathematics, literature and the arts, paintings plus sculpture, etc. The ancient Egyptians have had the black ink, paper, ox-drawn plows, organized labor, boat sails, and made the hieroglyphics. There was river culture in the Niger and Congo rivers as well. The Meroitic script was an alphabet system as well. One Queen Candace of Ethiopia held off Alexander in battle and prevented the conquest her empire. The Roman Empire was repealed by the Black Queen (or Candace) Amanirenas.

Radicalism is a part of history. The 99 percent isn’t perfect, but they are reflected in the majority view of Americans. Now, most Americans don’t support regressive economy, they believe that some factions of Wall Street have been involved in corruption, and even want a new taxation on the millionaire and billionaire brackets of U.S. taxpayers. People are being harmed by some corporations and big business. The poor has nothing to do with the corruption in our land since the amount of money spent on social programs dwarfs in comparison to the amount of cash spent on the military. The poverty rate is extremely harsh in America. The Los Angeles Times said that there are over 46 million people in poverty. Some of these people are experiencing real poverty for the first time in their lives. This is why Dr. Martin Luther King wanted an unique coalition of numerous backgrounds to fight against poverty and economic injustices plaguing the poor. It doesn’t matter is poverty exists in a city or rural areas, justice should be executed to promote liberation among peoples. Today, there is a renewal of labor militancy in response to reactionaries. Katrina van deHeuvel wants to continue food stamps for people below the poverty level, which I agree with. The Census Bureau said that 3.9 million people including 1.7 million children came out of the poverty line 2011 via SNAP benefits in addition to wages and other income. SNAP is food stamps. There are job training programs (among public and private sources) that are trying to send poor Americans to work. People want a renovation or rehabilitation of housing, so poor conditions can decrease in the first place. Housing assistance should receive adequate funds since it’s underfunded presently. Simple billions of dollars to help struggling families in food, childcare, and medical access is great. Childcare funding, having low income people to have programs to afford college, and career pathway programs can decrease the poverty rate as well. The ruling class or oligarchy realizes that people are increasingly waking up, so they try to use the Left/Right Paradigm in attempting to control human beings.



The Washington Blog is right on economics. Some people are moving money from the big banks to credit unions. Even conservative free market entrepreneurial capitalist Karl Denninger said that the money can be moved to a credit union. This union is a place where you own and it’s a mutual association of people. You own your own money. The fees are assessed to provide services to you not to bank executives and stockholders. Yet, some of these unions pay no state or federal taxes. This is one issue I have with them. One good thing is that profit earned by a credit union. We shouldn’t be like Republicans and desire the end of EPA, dismantle union, allow first responders to not have a jobs, end services, and have no policies of creating jobs (other than tax cuts alone). Also, some regulation can be good to have clean air, clean water, to have a good tax policy, end speculations, etc. People have the right to own and control capital. Big banks don’t do much traditional banking. The reason is that they embrace financial speculation. Less than 10 percent of Bank of America’s assets come from banking deposits. They are engaged in financial speculation and derivatives. Credit unions and small banks are engaged in traditional banking functions like strong deposits and making loans to Main Street. Some populists want to break up giant, insolvent banks. Politicians sometimes aren’t doing it, so churches, local governments, community groups, prominent business men, and others are divesting from the big corrupt banks. The big banks are using fascism, looting, oligarchy, and other evils. The small banks are allocating capital to entrepreneurs not hoarding wealth into their own coffers. That is why we should downsize or break up large banks and allow the small banks to thrive. Even Dr. King before he died wants small businesses and banks to help communities all over America before he died in 1968. A giant casino is a speculative system doesn’t work. The FED has been involved in creating artificial booms and busts. Should we worship the free market? The answer is no since we need some boundaries beyond just the free market to make sure that we have clean air, clean water, and economic rights given into the people. Likewise, we should not allow the giant banks to purchase Congress. Populists want the FED to not exist, which I have no issue with. If we control more our wealth mixed with common sense regulations, businesses can thrive.



It doesn’t take a genius to see that Secret societies have used symbols, codes (or ciphers) for many purposes. Some want to record their knowledge, while concealing the truth form the outsiders (or to them the profane). Encrypted documents are common today and modern day researchers still have trouble figuring them out. An USC scientist has cracked the cipher of the 18th century Secret Society. He decoded a document that describes its initiation rituals. Researchers have done it with the state of the art machine translation software and guesses. The Copiale Cipher talks about initiation ceremonies and techniques used to throw a scare into the initiates. “This opens up a window for people who study the history of ideas and the history of secret societies,” Kevin Knight, a computer scientist at the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute, said in a news release issued today. “Historians believe that secret societies have had a role in revolutions, but all that is yet to be worked out, and a big part of the reason is because so many documents are enciphered.” Now, Knight and his colleagues want to solve the puzzles of the Krtyptos sculpture on the CIA grounds, the Zodiac Killer cipher from 1969, and the 15th century baffling Voyncih Manuscript. He wants better translation tools for other languages like Pashto, Arabic, Chinese Japanese, and Korea. Knight and others used a machine to find patterns in different combinations of coded text. They use computerized statistical analysis to find languages that fit the code. When they ran the symbols through statistical analysis, they came up with a German text titled “Ceremonie der Aufnahme” … “Ceremonies of Initiation.” Soon they had pages and pages of deciphered lore. So, the Copiale Cipher is an old 1700’s book on secret society practices. The book talks about how people talk about Anton and Hans in greetings. The manuscript said that secret societies were established in England during the time of Queen Elizabeth. Some passages even take on political issues, referring to a three-headed monster as symbolizing “rule and governance which, by means of power and perfidy, deprive man of his natural freedom and enjoyment of the timely things and [that which] we human beings need.” It isn’t a secret that secret societies wanted to use revolutions to battle against the monarchy and mainstream religions’ control over the common man. Klaus Schmeh, a German crypto expert, said that even though the Copiale Cipher has been around for 250 years or so, it hadn’t gotten much attention in the past. “In my view, this cipher wasn’t known at all to the public,” Schmeh said. He saluted the researchers for their work, but echoed Pelling’s view that the effort fit the standard pattern for breaking secret codes. “It’s pretty much the way cryptography is done,” he said. “It was certainly not an easy puzzle, but I’m sure that other cryptographers would have solved it.”





By Timothy

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