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Shottas

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Messenger: Ras KebreAB Sent: 6/25/2007 10:38:43 AM
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Blessed I,

I man love to see the sistren reason so, unfortunately, i dont have the time to thoroughly read the posts or to reply at the present. So keep it going, i hope to partake soon.

Blessed Love
Rastafari Is


Messenger: Yaa Asantewa Sent: 6/25/2007 10:45:44 AM
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Blessed Love Virtuous woman!

"Its one thing to talk when you are in a position of power to determine your own life, but when you've struggled with poverty all your life and things change for you, you've gotta give thanks for that."

Hmm... yeah, of course. Because house slaves are better priveleged than field slaves right? Because spiritual desolation and material wealth is better than the vice versa, right?

Because it's better to eat? Of course. Especially when the food filling your belly is being taken from the mouths of your brothers.

Let's be grateful.

Oh please.

If the I thinks that the situation between Saartje Baartman and Zahra Redwood, or more to the point, Alek Wek, are so polar opposite, then as I said before, it is wishful thinking. We are in Legacy. It is as simple as that. To embrace the legacy is to embrace the structural foundation. The outcome for InI is the same.

As I always say, I'm not into this compromise stuff, Sis. Ten. And I don't apprilove you jumping down my post, without so much as a greeting, just because you're looking out for how a few black individuals can get rich. That's easy, it's been happening for centuries... a few choice manipulable black people being lured away from the unified process of salvation because of Babylon sweets & treats. They are sacrifice, so that the rest of InI stay downtrodden. Poison. It is wickedness. There's nothing for me to grateful for... neither those poor.

The only privilege I have to my position is InI see through the illusion. It would be easy enough for me to gobble up sweets & treats too. To assume otherwise is presumptuous of the I.

I suppose you are grateful for "positive black role models" like Puff Daddy. Or Tyra Banks maybe? And what do you think of the potential black US Presidential candidate? Good huh?

I'm being facetious. But, the point is... this is all the same machine. Refute it.

I'm looking for the healing of the nation. We bun placating, compromise, blah blah blah. If it ain't Garvey-esque... we done with that!

We've tried everything else. From now, it has to be self-determinate or else it absolutely will not work. And you can't tell me about the ethos of "Face of Africa" being self-determination. Really think about it?

I mean, it's kinda cool, it's more pop culture to dose up the people. Whatever. But like I say, it's not for RasTa to endorse it.

My main point relating to the body markings issues, that you seemed to slightly miss, is based in response to the habit of comparing the ideals of livity we are inspired to trod in this time, and within the context of socio-cultural appropriation by Babylon, with those trodden by InI in a different time, and more irie socio-cultural context.

Many seem to think there is a one size fits all approach to salvation. Hence all the questions about who wears locs, and who doesn't, and winning beauty pageants as a cultural "victory" for Fari dawtas... but our livity is the salvational RASponse to the impositions of anti-christ livity in THIS time, and the spiritual psychological effects of mystery babylon, which we directly suffer, as a result of being a direct target group within their Babylon society.

People who are not fighting this in the same way, need not do exactly what we need to do to escape it.

People act as if I think either that, the village of natives in Amazonian rainforest should bun out for not wearing locs (if they do or don't, I don't even actually know). But they can do what they're doing, cos they are already in Zion, they're already in heaven, living amongst and with and of the elements. Same as Sistrin who adorn themselves in traditional beads and grass skirts. Even if they are in the city in the strong working as bank clerks, but when the relevant ilabration comes round, they dress in their traditional set up... it's all good. They are celebrating a time, a place, a condition of iritical freedom, and nature blessed grace that is now an aspiration of return, to that state of being. Hence it's celebration into modern times. They have a cultural ownership of those ivels, hence it is genealogically and physically theirs. Not mine, and not Zarah Redwood's. She has no innection to the feminine values being ilabrated by the Swazi maidens. If she did, she wouldn't be in the beauty pageant. Sight?

We have to hold an order and principle when WE are the ones dealing with the real and lurid details of Babylon life & death. We, in this context, have a need to adopt a protective livity. What we have to do to protect our ivels from the contaminations of the societies we live in are not to be compared to what the "Shangani, Tonga and Chewa peoples of Mozambique and Zimbabwe" did traditionally. Simply we are to take strength in the glory of our common ancestral cultural history, and see it as an aspiration that our forward movements gathers strength from ancient and iritical practice.

But the ivels to which Ms.Redwood is testifying by wearing locs does not support wearing belly button & breast out dress up. It would have been more comely for her to testify to her overstanding of her African inheritance by wearing a more regal choice of attire. And being that her people are more likely to be West African, Aso Oke or Kente (to name a few of the most common) would have been more becoming of a RasTa Queen.

We supposed to use our heritage to strengthen the conviction in our sovereignity, not as an excuse to let it all hang out, Sistrin.

But I'm sure that since you think that beauty pageants and international modelling contracts have much to do the liberation of our women... or even contribute positively to liberation ideals, I look forward to reading the reasoning.

Love love.


Messenger: Bro Dominiq Yehyah Anbesa Sent: 6/25/2007 12:34:20 PM
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Ises

First of all, I do give thanks for such a blessed reasoning and lovely way how to deal with eachother right here. Give Thanks.

Empress Yaa, it is truely a blessing to read your post. To me as a non-native speaker, reading your discription of Shottas is so professional you should write articles for some movie mags. no joke that. Big respect how the Sistren is able to conduct her speech.

Yes, and there's not much left to say. I just agree, it was a blessing to read your long post Empress, so I don't have to type all the same again. lol (you see, I never before typed these kinds of internet language, but the Sistren does even this in a royal way, so I might start that too, lol ;)

Just one thing about this Beauty Queen. I have no time to be up to date on such things. I have never seen how this competition was running, how this Sis was behaving, what she was wearing, etc.
So it is your good right Empress to have your own opnion on that, since you seem to be much better informed on that topic than I am.

But one thing still. The I Sis said something like, I n I do not have to try to be accepted by Babylon.
Of course not. Absolutely right.
But maybe see it the other way round. It's not like Babylon shall accept Rasta style, but Rasta beauty come to conquer over and mash down all of THEIR artificial beauty conceptions.
When I step through the city in my Suit I don't do it to be accepted. But it is a victory and punch right into their face with all them stereotypes. Nothing more wonderful when Black people in the most expensive suits step through the city with thick DREADFUL locks down to the hips, or wrapped up inna turban. And all the people turn around.... and in one second you've mashed down all ah their stereotypical kind of thinking. This was what Haile Selassie I did at the UN. Those guys couldn't believe their eyes when the whooly head was named best dressed. I won't do anything to feed their stereotypes.
Not to say that I n I need that, like I said. We don't need that to define who we are. This is just a tool, I regard it always as a working suit.... You know I don't drive a car (since I don't need it living inna city)... but I wouldn't have anything against driving the biggest and most expensive car like HIM drove his Royce. And then we know private he was living a frugal life. That's the way.

When you look to Empress Menen you see her often with head uncovered and things like that. Just as reminder.

Selah


Messenger: Yaa Asantewa Sent: 6/25/2007 1:05:19 PM
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Aw shucks Bro. Dom...!

Yes Iyah. Always remember the Empress still.

Give thanks.


Messenger: Ten Sent: 6/25/2007 3:10:24 PM
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Greetings Empress Yaa
Forgive I for having begun reasoning with the I before having addressed you as should be done; Greetings unto to the Empress in the name of the Father of all Iration, JAH Rastafari, King Sellasie I. I pray that the strong-end was blessed for the I and JAH has given you more strength to begin this strong. If I may, I shall begin my response in reasoning with the I by saying its blessed to be able to reason on this topical issue with the sister. A correction must be made by I; Alek Wek is Sudanese not Somali for some reason I was thinking of Somalia at the time.
Concerning beauty and the workings of power in this world the I am not saying you should be fawning over in gratitude to those that, a slave in the house is not less a slave than the one in the fields - although their burden’s are different. I find it interesting the I says “when the food filling your belly is being taken from the mouths of your brothers” I wonder if the I also practices this principle. I wonder how many of Babylons “sweets n treats” you’ve bought that are not ethically made and have denied a brother/sister/community a plate of food. We use computers whose parts are mined for by children in the Congo, cobalt goes for a high price but these young mine workers get a pittance or nothing at all for their labour. How many people are we indirectly impoverishing through the means modern technology provides us? And if the I wears sneakers or clothing made in Asia how many children were enslaved to make that garment or put the laces on those sneakers? (I'm not talking about all stuff from Asia but big Amerikkkan corps who use cheap labour) Are we any better than these women we are discussing? Its not a personal attack and I hope I’ve not offended you, but I know this to be true of myself and of other people too that we take the moral high ground when we have comfortable distance from an issue. But if the mirrors were to be turned on us is, our positions would change as our own human shortcomings would be revealed.
...For Sartje Baartman she was imprisoned, studied by scientists, paraded as an animal and even when her spirit passed from this earth they would not let her body rest and scientists continued to dissect her body. The kind of hardship and denigration she suffered is not the same as someone who chooses to go on stage for competition and neither can you equate the effects of this. Sartje Baartman is historically a figure of how the Black female body has been abused and constructed as the hyposexual figure for male consumption. Her femininity was denied to her, she was paraded in zoos, prostituted in Paris and forced to turn to alcohol as a form of mental escape. Her story is one of brutality and shows the evils of racism.
With these women their situation is wholly different; in these pageants they wilfully seek to display their femininity. The manifestations of power over one’s physical body are very different from one who is held captive. And if Saartje is legacy for how women’s bodies are abused then we have to see how that some pageants seek to humanise the Black body and restore its beauty, for example Miss Black America.
Furthermore we have to remember that for a long time Black women were not permitted to participate in contests because they were Black. Even recently in 2001 Cosmopolitan SA chose not to put Face of Africa runner up Lenah Zinyama on the cover of their mag because she was Black and they thought sales would not be as high since it was the Jan issue. All kinds of stupid reasons are used to keep Black women down and they have to fight for their place, fight for recognition and enter those very places that have been held sacred and white. The first Ms Jamaica was white and now there is Zahra who stands as opposite to that, from a long line of Black beauty queens, she like them is taking back what history has denied. Why should women be told they cannot enter a competition because of their skin colour? And in Zimbabwe, Miss Zimbabwe was banned by the govt for many years because they did not want women exposing themselves. I see this as nationalist and patriarchal silencing of women. Why can't women speak for themselves? Why can't they represent their own interests, provided of course they are conscious of what they are doing?
I know a betshu (grass skirt) is not the same as a body hugging canary gown, but I asked to over what makes one better than the other. Its a bitter pill to swallow, even for I, but I’m trying to be fair because you cannot say one is ok but burn fire ’pon the one garment because its not culturally endorsed and not the ancestral practice. And because we are talking about beauty contests in Black societies we have to accept its a practice of Black culture in this time - whether we like it or not is besides the point. If its wickedness to give a chance to Alek Wek whose established Aids foundations, children’s charities and raised awareness on political and health issues in the Sudan then surely wickedness has a benevolent face too.
Although said in jest Tyra Banks actually is a role model, there are not many Black supermodels and even far less who’ve been as successful as Iman or Naomi Campbell (controversial as her private life might be, I hate to admit she is a fashion icon of this time). Puff Daddy well the man works hard and he is a shrewd business man - but he’s the King of Bling and I can't support what he's abt. A college dropout, he built his own company and he’s signed on some artists that were a huge success like the late BIG, 112, MJB and I’m not saying this absolves him from the illusory images of fast money, fast women n fast cars n flashy life the music biz portrays. Even in bad there is good, life is not all black and white, most people live in the grey areas as everything has circumstances and a story attached to it.
An absolutist approach only seeks to eliminate and exclude - history has done that to us enough times I. Better to embrace that which links us to our divine selves as the I rightly says and you put it quite nicely too. But we also have to realise that parallel to that are roots growing in this modern iwa. Roots whose beginnings are of a horrific past, but have been reclaimed through many ways; one might be through finding ancestral links another might be in finding your place here in this world with the everyday technologies, luxuries and social practices of Babylon. And all this is in search for happiness; Zion. Zion is here and now and to each their own, if Zion is on the catwalks for some, in the mountains for others or just the pleasure from a honest day’s work then that is one’s blessing. Its livity and what makes one feel irie in spite of what people might say - have they not said and done enough to keep good, strong women down? Can we not find freedom and liberation in those very things designed to make real women feel less of themselves and aspire to a twiggy ideal - an industry that in this era is instrumental in the construction of beauty.
By entering contests n such its also about changing things from within and opening doors for others - when Alek Wek first started out she recieved so much prejudice because her looks were totally unconventional but now how many people would agree jet black skin is beautiful? How many young girls (Rastas dawtas too) will see Zahra as an example and if she speaks the word of JAH livity is she not giving a positive image of herself and the Jah whom she praises? Against the exclusionary tactics of Babylon, against the belief that Afro-centric images are the singular images of African beauty, against the silencing of women by male (and female) patriarchs and against the culture of the eroticising and exoticising of women let women define femininity in their own ways and via their own means, let them stand in contests and prance upon those catwalks that have long misrepresented them. Blessed love.













































Messenger: Ten Sent: 6/25/2007 3:53:30 PM
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So how do ones and ones feel about Givan Freeman, the Rasta banker from New York who worked for JP Morgan who says "I'm a Rastafarian but also a capitalist". He has now retired to Shashemene and plans to open up a resort called the Jamaica Inn (apart from the other things he's done like helping to build a medical centre.)


Messenger: Bro Dominiq Yehyah Anbesa Sent: 6/25/2007 4:55:21 PM
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Ises

"Aw shucks Bro. Dom...! "
Don't know what that is. What does it mean?

Sistren Ten, I've never heard of that. But I wouldn't wonder, considering all the strange things going on in Shashe. And Ras Kebre, you wonder about an Ethiopia map where it says "lil Jamaica".... how else when you have things like a "Jamaican Inn" down there...

But I can't say anything about that, since I've never heard anything of that. But basically it depends on how that man is keeping the balance. His Majesty was not against that, on his US visits he always informed himself about US banking and things like that. You can do many useful things in such positions. But of course you can be also the slave of the system. But apart from that Jamaica inn, if the man really built a medical center I say respect. Like there are always people who diss Twelve Tribes for matters of faith (with which I too do not agree of course) but then they do things like Nurses of Israel, building schools, hospitals and I say if you don't do such things too, then stop having such a big mouth to all those over there in the west and in europe.

So personally for me, I wouldn't like that. I have to be free working for myself and don't make any bloodsucker rich, but only Iself and the poor and needy Iyah. But fact is that many of our people don't have the chance to decide what they work but they just need to have a job to feed their family. But if I have the chance, I will always prefere to be independent. Anything else has no future. You know if you are independent in that you do you can take it to Zion one day so that people benefit there. But if you don't, they lock you here in low paid jobs and you never get the chance to make it over to Zion. I know some Rasses who did that. And at the moment this is the only way to get a permanent resident visa to stay in Ethiopia. They only want the rich people and no more hungry mouths which need to be fed.

Selah


Messenger: Ras power Sent: 6/25/2007 6:09:21 PM
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Every man think his burden is the heaviest. Ini should always hold to principles.but Who feels it know it but not even when his majesty went brok he did not sell out and that is ini example. Rasta is not one who have locks but one who try their best to hold to the principals his majesty demonstrated. I don't belive ini should demonstrate unrighteousness in no form the consequence is to great


Messenger: Elijah Sent: 6/25/2007 6:20:31 PM
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Greetings

Bro Dominiq. I really appreciate the I opinion about independence.

I am in the situation of being employed. I change the jobs so many times, I've never worked for a people that I could really respect, so finally I get down on my standards of work, which is bad (thinking is not worthy to try hard for people that will not appreciate that). I was unemployed for 2 moths after I left the job, where I was constantly abused. Thanks to JAH I found new job and still (even for better money and more interesting job) I can't find respect of my employers. I can't believe that people who has lot still want more and for little money, them priority is to safe money on peoples work.

I am looking for I way to independence, but for immigrant it is very hard way in this babylon, especially if I want to make ethical business, those who use dirty tricks are supported by this babylonian system.
I know it is the only way and I know that JAH support everyone on that way.
I think that problems of work, self independence are crucial for all I and I in this time, would be very good to reason more on that topic, as I know that so many people need guidance in that matter, I need it too.
Matters of credits/debts (gridits/deads) taxes (bloodsuckers) competition (rat race) are the tools of babylon, making rich richer and poor poorer.
I have a plan, but its will take about year until I will start it.
I can't stand this master-slave relation (feel it very painfully), its putting I down.
Some people like to be told what they have to do in them life.
Free man can't handle that.

I pray to JAH to help I with patience and humbleness, and strength for all I and I in the struggle for freedom and independence on The Way To Holy Mount Zion.
JAH Bless Brothers and Sisters.
JAH Guide I and I

Blessed Love

Love Rastafari


Messenger: Ras power Sent: 6/25/2007 6:23:43 PM
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Every man think his burden is the heaviest. Ini should always hold to principles.but Who feels it know it but not even when his majesty went brok he did not sell out and that is ini example. Rasta is not one who have locks but one who try their best to hold to the principals his majesty demonstrated. I don't belive ini should demonstrate unrighteousness in no form the consequence is to great


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