Some little-known facts on slavery:
Before 1800 slavery was universally practiced.
Britain became the first major power to abolish the slave trade in 1807. (Haiti and Denmark had already abolished it in 1804-5). Britain went on to abolish slavery completely in 1833, with a four year transition period.
The British West Africa Squadron of the Royal Navy patrolled the coast of West Africa for almost 60 years, stopping ships and freeing slaves from 1808-67. It is estimated that 250,000 slaves were freed.
David Livingstone was a famous Scottish missionary who went out to central Africa determined to bring Christianity to the people and to end slavery in that part of the world.
In the eighteenth century there were one million white slaves held in Muslim countries.
The US abolished the slave trade in 1808, only one year after Britain. It was not able to abolish slavery itself until it had fought a four-year civil war (1861-65). Over 400,000 men are now believed to have died in the War fighting for the Union. That’s 400,000 mostly white men who all died to free the slaves.
It was the US Republican Party that supported the abolition of slavery. The Democrats took a pro-slavery position and held back the development of African-Americans until well into the 1960s.
Since the end of the British Empire in Africa sixty years ago, slavery is back in every single African country, according to UNESCO.
The modern slave trade is considered the biggest trade in the world, accounting for over 10% of global business. The Bible talks about this universal trading system. Revelation 18:13, NIV: “cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and human beings sold as slaves.”
If the United States and Britain are brought down by riots and revolution, there will be no restraint on the practice of slavery.
The irony is that Black Lives Matter and other groups will have taken the world back over 200 years to a time when slavery was universally practiced.
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THE DANGERS OF VILIFYING ALL POLICE
“The people condemning law enforcement in America and advocating for the defunding of police are not the ones who will have to face the deadly results of their proposals, says former civil rights activist Bob Woodson.
“Let’s do a survey of these communities where crime is the highest and find out what the people there want, before we rush to accept the recommendations of people who don’t have to suffer the consequences,” Woodson said.
“The killing of George Floyd, a black man, at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis sparked nationwide protests demanding reform as well as cases of looting, arson and vandalism. Reform proposals vary, with some groups such as Black Lives Matter and Democratic Socialists of America calling for a nationwide defunding of police.
“In Woodson’s view, crime will likely increase without funding cuts, because vilification of the police as agents of white suppression makes them more reluctant to enforce the law.
“After surveying 200 officers across six agencies in the southern United States, Shetali Patil, an assistant professor of management at the University of Texas-Austin, found that when officers felt the public didn’t understand or appreciate them, they became less proactive.
“The result is more blacks being killed by other blacks, Woodson said.” (The Dangers of Vilifying all police,” Epoch Times, 6/11/2020).
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LANSING MAYOR AGREES TO SIGN POLICE REFORM PLEDGES
“Mayor Andy Schor is promising to sign national police reform pledges, increase transparency in the police department and hire a diversity officer to address racial injustice in the city.
“The announcement Tuesday follows weeks of local protests against police brutality. Some residents, including members of Black Lives Matter Lansing, have been calling for Schor’s resignation after he was criticized for defensiveness in response to questions from the group about the treatment of Black residents by police.
“Schor’s plans include: “Promoting a city employee to the position of “diversity and inclusion officer”……..improve transparency…..hire an attorney to create a citywide diversity, equity and inclusion plan…..” (Sarah Lehr, Lansing State Journal, 6/17/2020).
It should be noted that all of this will cost money, which will mean a raise in taxes or cuts to the police.
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DEMOCRACY IN DANGER
“The corruption of its democracy is one of America’s oldest yet most surprising habits. Edgar Allan Poe, it is believed, died after the ordeal of ‘cooping’: an informal exercise in getting out the vote, in which an often forcibly inebriated man was marched from booth to booth and made to vote for the same candidate each time.
“The voters of Massachusetts 4th District, compelled by a party machine to endorse Joseph P. Kennedy III, will know the feeling. Indeed, John F. Kennedy’s victory in the 1960 elections is said to have depended on the stuffing of ballots in the Chicago of Mayor Richard J. Daley – and possibly on the intervention in Cook County by the crime boss Sam Giancana. Kennedy went on to win Illinois by 8,000 votes and to take the White House.
“However endemic electoral corruption was in the past, nothing quite matches the scale of today’s disillusionment with democracy. Americans are raging against the electoral machine in a way they have never done before. Whoever wins the White House in November is going to have an uphill struggle convincing a skeptical public that he or she is the genuine choice of the American people and has got there by fair means.” (Democracy in Danger, The Spectator (US edition), March 2020).
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U.S. National Pride Falls to Record Low by Megan Brenan, 15 June 2020
WASHINGTON, D.C. — American pride has continued its downward trajectory reaching the lowest point in the two decades of Gallup measurement. The new low comes at a time when the U.S. faces public health and economic crises brought on by the coronavirus pandemic and civil unrest following the death of George Floyd in police custody.
* 42% “extremely,” and 21% “very,” proud to be an American. * Republicans’ pride is down sharply in the past year. * First time extreme pride among whites below 50%; nonwhites’ is now 24%.
At the same time, 15% of Americans say they are “moderately proud,” 12% “only a little proud” and 9% “not at all proud.”
These latest data are from a May 28-June 4 poll, which also found 20% of Americans are satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S., and presidential approval fell back to 39%. The poll’s field period encompassed the arrests of the police officers charged in Floyd’s death as well as the nationwide protests that were sparked by the incident and President Donald Trump’s controversial responses to them.
(https://news.gallup.com/poll/312644/national-pride-falls-record-low.aspx)
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THE FUTURE OF THE US
The United States of America will never be the same, it will be a much worse place to live and work. Amid a three-month pandemic there has been a three-week cultural revolution, ignited by the brutal death of African American George Floyd in Minneapolis, that has changed our country forever.
Our country is a great experiment, a diverse nation of 50 states united by a founding document that enshrines God given rights that people in other countries can only dream of realizing. The United States has become not only the world’s only superpower, but also a country that has been a beacon of hope and freedom to the world. (America is “Gone with the wind,” Canada Free Press, 6/14/2020)
Gone with the Wind has been banned by HBO.
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NORTH KOREA BLOWS UP
First, they stop taking your calls. Then they blow up the house. But this isn’t a love affair gone wrong, it’s what’s happening right now along one of the tensest borders in the world, between North and South Korea. Last week Pyongyang quit answering a daily phone call from the South that was set up in 2018 to keep the peace and further reconciliation. Then, yesterday, North Korea quite literally blew up a building just north of the border which both sides had used for the past two years as a meeting place for officials from the North and the South. And earlier today, for good measure, Kim Jong-un moved some of his troops into several recently-shuttered inter-Korean economic cooperation sites located just north of the border.
Why now?
The immediate issue seems to be Seoul’s failure to stop North Korean defectors (“human scum” as they’re known in Pyongyang’s state media) from sending anti-Kim leaflets over the border using balloons and drones.
But there’s a larger context. North Korea’s economy is suffering under crippling international sanctions tied to its nuclear program, and the coronavirus pandemic almost certainly isn’t helping. With nuclear talks largely stalled, there’s no relief in sight. (Gzero Signal, 6/17/2020)
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Virus-Immune Rioters Latest Coronavirus Con
Something the mainstream and social media hope you will never come to realize: Most everyone other than the street protesters remains under coronavirus lockdown.
While the majority of civilized society is held under government-imposed lockdown, meaning with no place to work, no place to worship, no place to go—purportedly for their own safety in a raging pandemic—hundreds of thousands of ‘protesters’ — (millions if counted worldwide) are allowed out to protest, pillage and burn cities down.
Let that sink in if only in order to clearly see how a pandemic panic can be used to help take down Western society. (Canada Free Press, 6/17/2020)
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TO THE POINT
- “Liberals will fight for the right of Marxist radicals to burn the American flag to show their hatred of it but cannot tolerate working folks flying the battle flag of the Confederacy to show their love of it.” (Pat Buchanan, 6/16/2020)
- NEW PARTY FOR AUSTRALIA: “On immigration, it says our annual intake is “unsustainably high”, multiculturalism is “cumbersome and inorganic” and refugees should be given temporary asylum rather than permanent homes. It also calls for “ethnic enclaves” in our cities and schools to be “broken up.” (The Sensible Center, Michael Koziol, Sydney Morning Herald, 6/14/2020)
- The two destabilizing events recently occurring back-to-back, the response to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic and the George Floyd rioting, illustrate well how America is now institutionally incapable of making decisions in her own best interests. That is, the overreaction to the disease and under-reaction to the rioting reflect a country long demoralized. Moreover, if that’s not troubling enough, know that this is a state of being that usually leads to tyranny. (2020-06-11, Selwyn Duke, Canada Free Press, 6/12/2020)
- Meanwhile the World Health Organization warned that the coronavirus pandemic was “accelerating” in Africa. Hitherto the continent has escaped relatively lightly, recording just 200,000 or so cases and 5,000 deaths (compared with over 170,000 deaths, for instance, in Europe). The WHO mentioned South Africa, Cameroon and Algeria as likely hotspots for the spread of the disease. (The Economist, 6/12/2020)
- British GDP plunged by 20.4% in April—by far the biggest month-on-month drop since the series began in 1997 (see main stories). This followed a 5.8% shrinkage in March, itself the previous record drop. The construction industry was particularly badly affected, showing a 40.1% fall. May’s figures should be better, as some economic activity was able to return. (The Economist, 6/12/2020)
- Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s autocratic president, sacked his prime minister, Imad Khamis. The country has been hit by five days of protests, centred around the city of Suweida, as a collapsing currency has led to stinging price increases. Civil war, Western economic sanctions, covid-19 and a crisis in neighbouring Lebanon have all helped to impoverish the country. (The Economist, 6/12/2020)
- “At the heart of the Democrats’ problems is a growing spirit of insurgency against political elites.” (Spectator, March 2020)
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