Rastafarins, Scientology, MK-ULTRA, Witchcraft, Fiji, Jehovah's Witnessess, Russia, Religious Freedom
All Africa: Ethiopia: Why Ethiopia's Rastafari Community Keeps Dwindling
"Rastafarians from around the world have been settling in Ethiopia for the last 50 years, after being given land by Emperor Haile Selassie. Today, life in "the promised land" is far from the paradise they had imagined.A purple tint covers the evening sky over Shashamane, home to Ethiopia's remaining Rastafarians. Inside the house of the Ethiopian World Federation (EWF), a few Rastafarians are watching a documentary about how science is threatening people of color. "Yeah, that's right", they mutter now and then. In the front row, Ras Paul, wearing a red, yellow and green beanie, is in charge of the projector.Initially, "the EWF [was] a black organization, not a Rastafarian one", said Ras Paul, the only employee of the place. The federation was launched in the US in the 1930s to support Ethiopia during the Italian invasion and to promote black unity. After World War II, Ethiopia's Emperor Haile Selassie granted 200 hectares of land to descendants of slaves who wished to find a home on the continent. The EWF was to administer and attribute the land in Shashamane. "We can only gain political power if we become self-sufficient and rule ourselves, and the only way we [people of color] can do that, is to return home to Africa", Ras Paul explained.Whereas the Rastafarians were not the only ones being targeted by Selassie's land donation, they ended up being the vast majority to undertake the journey from Jamaica and other countries to Ethiopia. Haile Selassie was widely viewed by Rastafarians as the Messiah who would one day bring them back to Africa. This belief added a strong religious component to the repatriation movement. It was encouraged by Selassie himself, who visited Jamaica in 1966 and urged the Rastafarians to move to Shashamane."The land grant was originally corporate land, but the Rastafarians spiritualized it", Ras Paul said in a British accent. He arrived in Ethiopia from the UK 20 years ago. "Religiously speaking, we were enslaved by the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Church. We learnt that for most world religions, you can find their foundations inside of Africa."Rastafarian belief is founded on an interpretation of the Old Testament. "The Bible was the only thing we were given to read as slaves, we see Ethiopia in the Bible and we identify with that. We can also identify with the story of Israelis going into Egypt and being slaves for 400 years", said Ras Paul. But for the Rastafarians, the Holy Land is in Ethiopia. In Ras Paul's office, the thin face of Haile Selassie gazes down from every wall. Rastas see him as the true reincarnation of the Christ, in accordance with a biblical prophecy."" ... Internal squabbles, economic struggles and the difficulty of integrating with the local Ethiopian community have led many Rastafarians to leave town, either to find work in the capital Addis Ababa, or to move to another country. Only about 200 still live in Shashamane. In the late 90s, they numbered approximately 2,000.
Recently, the Ethiopian government started the allocation of national residence cards to Rastafarians who have been living in the country for over 10 years. This was an important step, not only because it gave them the right to legally live in Ethiopia, but also because it stopped the payments "illegal residents" had to make in order to be able to travel outside Ethiopia. According to Ras Paul, "Now it's their chance to travel, see their families, they can come back when they want to.... I'd say about a third of the population is out of the country now".
The allocation of the residence permit, which gives Rastafarians the status of "Foreign National of Ethiopian Origin", was celebrated as a major step towards the community's recognition and integration. They now have the right to work and can legally send their children to school. But ist is not enouigh for some. "I consider myself to be an Ethiopian returned home, and I have no desire to leave this country to live anywhere else," Ras Kawintesseb, who born in Trinidad and Tobago, said."
The Underground Bunker: Scientology reels in politicians and gets photo ops out of Hurricane Dorian
"Scientology Volunteer Ministers traveled to the Bahamas this week to provide relief in the wake of Hurricane Dorian. " ... We know of one boat and one airplane that have been making the trip. The 82-foot luxury yacht Gecko which usually rents for $9,000 per day has made several trips, bringing water and supplies to the island."
"In 1954, a prison doctor in Kentucky isolatedseven black inmates and fed them "double, triple and quadruple" doses of LSD for 77 days straight. No one knows what became of the victims. They may have died without knowing they were part of the CIA's highly secretive program to develop ways to control minds—a program based out of a little-known Army base with a dark past, Fort Detrick.Suburban sprawl has engulfed Fort Detrick, an Army base 50 miles from Washington in the Maryland town of Frederick. Seventy-six years ago, however, when the Army selected Detrick as the place to develop its super-secret plans to wage germ warfare, the area around the base looked much different. In fact, it was chosen for its isolation. That's because Detrick, still thriving today as the Army's principal base for biological research and now encompassing nearly 600 buildings on 13,000 acres, was for years the nerve center of the CIA's hidden chemical and mind control empire.Detrick is today one of the world's cutting-edge laboratories for research into toxins and antitoxins, the place where defenses are developed against every plague, from crop fungus to Ebola. Its leading role in the field is widely recognized. For decades, though, much of what went on at the base was a closely held secret. Directors of the CIA mind control program MK-ULTRA, which used Detrick as a key base, destroyed most of their records in 1973. Some of its secrets have been revealed in declassified documents, through interviews and as a result of congressional investigations. Together, those sources reveal Detrick's central role in MK-ULTRA and in the manufacture of poisons intended to kill foreign leaders."
"Police have charged a New Zealand man with five counts of murder following the mysterious "witchcraft" deaths of a Fijian family last month.Husband and wife Nirmal Kumar, 63, and Usha Devi, 54, their daughter Nileshni Kajal, 34, and Kajal's daughters Sana, 11, and Samara, eight, were all found dead in the Nausori Highlands in August.According to reports and police testimony, a one-year-old baby was found alive among the bodies.The case has shocked Fijians. With no visible injuries present on the bodies of the five family members, police suspected poisoning as their cause of death.The father of the two dead children told the Fiji Sun that his father-in-law, also among the deceased, was interested in witchcraft."I never saw anyone or any family so much into witchcraft than my in-laws," he said."I used to see my in-laws and other witchdoctors making a doll from dough and poking needles in it. I always took my daughters away into the bedroom. My wife and daughters were obviously also dragged into it."On Monday, three weeks after the bodies were found and after toxicology reports were ordered, police laid charges.The suspect, who has permanent residency status in New Zealand, and his wife had been questioned by police last month, with court order issued to prevent the pair leaving Fiji."
"Two high-ranking regional officers in Russia's Investigative Committee have been banned from entering the United States for alleged "gross violations of human rights."A September 10 State Department statement said Vladimir Yermolayev, head of the Investigative Committee in the city of Surgut; Stepan Tkach, a senior investigator; and their immediate family members "are ineligible for entry into the United States."They are suspected of leading a group of Surgut Investigative Committee officers in subjecting at least seven Jehovah's Witnesses "to suffocation, electric shocks, and severe beatings during interrogation."In 2017, Russia outlawed the religious group and labeled it "extremist," a designation the State Department said was "wrongful."The statement said 60 Jehovah's Witnesses were currently awaiting trial on criminal charges and that more than 200 individuals were currently imprisoned in Russia 'for exercising their freedom of religion or belief.'"
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