Diplomatic immunity for Gates in Kenya

 

While nations around the world have long treated Bill Gates as a head of state, it’s now been practically codified into law in Kenya.

Last week, the government announced that the Gates Foundation—and its “servants”—would be granted diplomatic immunity, a privilege normally given to foreign officials, like ambassadors. The foundation’s new ‘special status’ includes “immunity from legal action for acts done in the course of official duties,” according to Kenyan news reports.

Across the nation, the decision has raised alarm bells. One public advocate petitioned the government for documents undergirding its decision, noting that Gates’s diplomatic immunity has “implications for Kenya’s sovereignty and for national interests.”

Outside of Kenya, many worry that the decision will create a domino effect, as other nations are pressured to follow suit, offering immunity to Bill Gates’s private foundation to entice the billionaire to direct more resources into national social programs. Kenya’s decision could also set a broader precedent for allowing other billionaire philanthropists to secure, or demand, legal immunity.

Gates’s diplomatic immunity comes just weeks after farmer organizations and religious leaders across the African continent called on the foundation to pay reparations for the damage it has caused through its interventions in African agriculture, as reported in Forbes and The Continent.

Daniel Maingi, coordinator for the Kenya Food Rights Alliance, believes the Gates Foundation, working with its corporate partners, now has a license to test out new technologies in Kenya—with impunity— under the banner of charity.

“Gates, himself, has been walking into Kenya—in and out like it’s his kitchen,” Maingi told me. Now that the foundation enjoys a level of immunity under the law, Maingi says, “Kenya becomes the testing ground…That is a big, big concern. It’s a big red flag.”

Kenya has long been a testing ground for Gates’s high-tech interventions, and serves as the home base of Gates’s most important, and most embattled, agricultural project, AGRA—to which the foundation has given at least $872 million. A political organization, AGRA boasts having worked on 68 policy reforms across the African continent, aimed at expanding a technology-driven model of farming that uses new seeds and agrochemicals. Independent research shows that these interventions have failed; in some places, Gates’s work has actually presided over an increase in hunger.

Because Gates’s diplomatic immunity appears to broadly apply to all of its work in Kenya, Maingi believes it also covers the work of AGRA. It could also cover the work AGRA does with corporate partners, which have historically included Bayer, Syngenta, and Microsoft (which Bill Gates co-founded).

“In terms of food sovereignty, as we give Gates these privileges and immunities, Africa is going to be——not food sovereign, not seed sovereign—- we’re going to be slaves and masters of the big corporations,” Maingi told me.

This critique speaks to the way that Gates’s charitable interventions often work through corporate partnerships and often focus on technological interventions and commercial commodities. This work has long drawn criticism around conflicts of interest, for example in 2010 when activists uncovered that, while the foundation was pushing African farmers to adopt GMO seeds, the foundation also had financial investments in GMO giant Monsanto (now owned by Bayer).

The larger concern Maingi cites relates to “ethics dumping”—the Gates Foundation conducting research trials in poor nations that would not be allowed under the rules and regulations of wealthy nations. The foundation has many times been accused of such behavior. Activists and scholars, for example, have long raised questions about a Gates-funded malaria intervention program involving genetically engineered mosquitoes, citing problems with informed consent and conflicts of interest.

Activists and scholars have also challenged the ethics of Gates’s circumcision campaigns. These campaigns, including in Kenya—an attempt to reduce HIV transmission—have raised sharp critiques around colonialism, as African bodies are instrumentalized in service to the goals of Gates and other wealthy funders.

Maingi points to a controversial philanthropic project the foundation funded in India a decade ago with HPV vaccines, which raised questions related to research ethics and human rights. The scandal generated international news coverage. As I reported in my book, “The Bill Gates Problem”:

During the course of the Gates-funded HPV demonstration project in India, seven school-age girls died, prompting the government to shut down the trial. A government investigation found that the study had failed to get proper consent from the parents of underage schoolgirls. The researchers had also not set up an adequate reporting mechanism for harmful side effects related to the vaccine. The government stated that the deaths were not related to the vaccine, but questions continued to surface when it was reported that no autopsies had been conducted.

The alleged ethical missteps in the Gates-funded study unleashed a major backlash, with public health professionals accusing Gates’s partner, PATH, of using Indians as “guinea pigs.” A parliamentary inquiry condemned the study as a “blatant violation by PATH of all regulatory and ethical norms.” It also cited the appearance of financial conflicts of interest …Noting the “monopolistic nature” of the HPV vaccine—controlled by Merck and GSK, which donated six million dollars’ worth of vaccines to the Gates-PATH study—the parliamentary report described a “well planned scheme to commercially exploit a situation” through “subterfuge.”

…The fallout from the scandal may have created public distrust in Indian medical regulators. Public health experts noted at the time that the HPV uproar would make it harder to do clinical trials in India. This, in turn, could make it harder to bring new lifesaving drugs to market.

The Gates Foundation and its partner, PATH, deny any wrongdoing, but you can read more details of the scandal in my book——or in accounts published by Science, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, and other legal scholars.

To be clear, the moral of the story here is not that the HPV vaccine, or any other vaccine Gates works with, is bad or dangerous or kills people. Rather, the moral of the story is that the Gates Foundation has a history of highly questionable, colonial behavior, and this history indicates a need for more checks and balances, not fewer. Giving the foundation even greater unaccountable power, through diplomatic immunity, may have serious, harmful consequences, like driving vaccine hesitancy. Or hurting farmers. Or creating distrust in public institutions. Or eroding democracy.

The Gates Foundation did not respond to my press inquiries, but it did issue a statement in Kenya, apparently in response to growing public criticism. The goal of the response, clearly, is to minimize the gravity of Gates’s new diplomatic immunity, describing it as part and parcel of “the typical agreements Kenya makes with other foundations and nonprofits.”

Yet if diplomatic immunity is so normative and so common, why is the Gates Foundation only now—decades into his history of work in Kenya, at a moment when it is facing calls for reparations—claiming this ‘special status?’ (Also, I found no evidence of any other billionaire foundation having diplomatic immunity in Kenya.)1

To the extent that Kenya does give diplomatic immunity to non-governmental organizations, like, say, relief workers responding to a humanitarian crisis, there is plenty of room to argue that this 1) should be reconsidered or 2) that such examples are categorically different from Gates.

The Gates Foundation is an overtly political organization with far reaching commercial ties and conflicts of interest. It’s not simply trying to solve succinct problems, or empower poor nations to roll out their own solutions; rather, the foundation is inserting itself into the body politic of foreign nations, engaging in nation-building and world-making activities that, over a period of decades, have significant influence on the lives and livelihoods of billions of people around the globe. The foundation is not an innocent, non-profit, humanitarian body. It is a powerful and largely unregulated political actor.

The good news is, a robust, public debate appears to have sprung up in Kenya, with many voicing opposition to the Gates Foundation’s special privileges and immunity.

Ice Cube - Friday (Official Video) [Explicit]

The consequences of war and the Fruit of Peace

On this, the seventh anniversary of the Million Man March and the month of the 40th anniversary of the Cuban Missile crisis, we are approaching a tremendous crisis that will be initiated by the present administration.

But it will bring to the world a war that the prophets dreaded, a war that ultimately would end all wars—the war that is called Armageddon. I want to talk to you tonight in a very sober, reasoned way and appeal to your intelligence.

Advertisement

No one in his or her right mind wants to be opposite the President of the United States of America. He’s the most powerful, it appears, human being on our planet and he is the head of the house (country).

The Qur’an and the Bible teach us to respect those in authority over us whether they respect us or not, because the idea of Allah (God) is always to have an ordered society. You cannot have an ordered home, an ordered school, an ordered church or an ordered community if there is no respect for law and respect for authority.

The only time we ought to rebel against authority, even if it is our own mother, is if our mother asks us to associate a partner with Allah (God) and to worship that which is unworthy of worship.

Then we are to disobey mother, but still with respect. If we can disobey our own mother, who brought us into the world, then we can disobey authority when authority asks us to do that which is against the principle of our faith.

The scripture says, “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.” If the peacemakers are blessed, then [cursed] are the warmongers for they shall be called what they are, the children of Satan.

The scripture says that the serpent would deceive the whole world. He starts off in the Genesis of the Bible as a serpent and he’s also called a serpent in the Qur’an, but in the Revelation he’s a dragon. He’s grown so huge in power.

Enemy of democracy?

(The late President Richard M.) Nixon once said that the real enemy of democracy is not communism, it is fundamentalist Islam. He said that the Third World War has already begun and we are losing it. What do you mean, Nixon? Nixon was the type of president who saw the Constitution as a stumbling block and he had a secret government that was operating. (President Lyndon B.)

Johnson, his predecessor, knew how to manipulate Congress. The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was passed, but it was based on a lie and Congress signed that resolution and gave the president the power that he was looking for to send 500,000 American soldiers into combat in Vietnam.

What Americans do not know is that the foreign policy of America has always dealt very wickedly when it came to oil. In Iran, Mohammed Mosadeq nationalized the oil industry. The CIA overthrew him and put the Shah of Iran in power, and America used the Shah as their policeman in that area of the world.

At that time Imam Khomeini was in Iraq, then Khomeini went to France, and from France he inspired the revolution. When the Shah was overthrown and Khomeini came home, he had all of that weaponry that America had put there with the Shah and he began to talk as an Islamic zealot that there is no king in Islam. And that’s right; Allah (God) is the King.

Imam Khomeini said he was going to move down that Persian Gulf and if he had moved and taken over the Gulf and Saudi Arabia, Iran would have controlled all the energy power of the Western world. America could not abide that. Nearly 20 years ago (1983), the (Iraq/Iran) war was already on and it was going badly for Iraq. So guess who was sent as special envoy (to Iraq) from President Reagan?

It was Mr. (Donald) Rumsfeld, who is now the Secretary of Defense. What did he go to Baghdad for? Rumsfeld offered Baghdad help in the war. Why? Because America did not want Iran to succeed with the Iranian revolution. How did you aid him, America?

It came out in a magazine that America gave Iraq weapons intelligence and fed Iraq some of the germs that developed into his program because at that time America wanted Iraq to stop Iran so that the Gulf and Saudi would be free to keep giving oil to the West. America made Saddam powerful and strong.

After the war, Iran was weakened and so was Iraq, but Iraq still had more power than any Arab nation and was considered a potential threat to Israel. The cornerstone of America’s foreign policy is Israel. Israel and the United States are locked together.

I don’t have time to go into all the details of that marriage, but suffice it to say that since 9-11, President Bush’s war on terrorism has served the purpose of Israeli Prime Minister (Ariel) Sharon.

Now Sharon can say that the Palestinians—who are suffering tremendous suffering in their own land—are not freedom fighters, they’re now terrorists. Sharon has conveniently used Bush’s war on terror that is legitimate from 9-11 as a cover to destroy the Palestinian leadership and the Palestinian Authority.

Sharon does not want to live side by side in two states with the Palestinians. So, the Bible teaches you that when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, that’s a sign of the end. The end of what? The end of this system of things.

Notice how the country was the day before the attack on America, on Sept. 10. The country was divided. People were claiming that the presidency was stolen.  Many Democrats were upset because Al Gore had won the popular vote. Then September 11th took place. Right after that, the country was united.

In less than a week, they had the picture of 19 Arabs in the paper. I asked the question: How did you know so much the day after but didn’t know anything the day before? Cynthia McKinney raised this question.

They said she was unpatriotic and marshaled their forces against her. But now we learn there were 32 or more intelligence tidbits sent to the intelligence gathering agencies of the government warning of something like this.

Now it was convenient to blame Arabs. It could have been. I really don’t know, but I looked at who the beneficiaries were. And the beneficiaries were what (President Dwight) Eisenhower warned the country against—the military industrial complex. Right after 9-11, there was a rush to give the President the power to make war.

Weapons of mass destruction?

Here’s a man (Saddam Hussein) that they say has weapons of mass destruction and that the U.S. has to go there and disarm him. But America and England have been bombing Iraq for the last 12 years and they say that in 12 years Iraq couldn’t knock down one craft.

If this country is a threat to America and has been bombed for 12 years and has not been able to knock down one American or one British plane, how then are they a threat to their neighbors?

Brothers and sisters, I’m telling you that within the next three months I believe we’ll be at war. I feel sorry for the soldiers, the sailors, the Marines, Black men, Black women, Brown men, Brown women, White men, White women who love this nation and they are made to believe that they are under a threat.

Senator (Robert) Byrd asked the question, how much money is it going to cost? Where is the money coming from? When Gore and Bush were debating during the presidential campaign, they were talking about several trillion or more dollars that was a surplus.

Now all of that is gone. The country is nearly $6 trillion in debt. And I have a document from the Federal Reserve that says no way America can climb out of debt. There is no way, no way, no way!

The country is spiraling downward and the Bush administration is trying to make it appear that everything is all right. They can print money and it costs hardly anything to print. They don’t have enough money in circulation that if we got it all back, America still couldn’t pay her debt. And it’s not backed by anything substantive. So you’re looking at hard times coming real hard times.

Forty years ago, the American generals wanted a war with Cuba so bad they could taste it. And they came up with a plan to shoot down a plane and get a boatload of Cubans and blow it up and blame it on Fidel Castro to anger the American people.

Forty years later, they know that if they had attacked Cuba, that Cuba had nuclear weapons already there facing American cities. If President Kennedy had listened to his generals, many American cities would have been nuked.

Now look at the reverse, 40 years later. The generals are telling the president, don’t do this. And you have people in the Bush administration that never saw war now committing your children to war. I think we have a problem and it is serious.

What is the consequence of this war? I told President Bush in a letter that he was going to run into something that he and his planners had not figured on. I read something in the Qur’an the other day that all planning is Allah’s (God’s).

So they plan and they think it is they who are planning, but it is Allah (God) who is planning it all. The sad thing is that our planners are blinded in the arrogance of their power. When you are arrogant, you don’t see little things. You stumble and fall.

President Bush has a heavy pro-Israeli lobby around him. These people are more loyal to Israel than they are to the United States of America. Iraq cannot threaten America, but Iraq will always be a potential threat for Israel.

Iraq is to the Arab world what Germany is to Europe. What is Germany to Europe? They are the most disciplined; they are the most scientific and technologically prepared of all the Europeans.

So it is with Iraq. Iraq is the most disciplined, scientific and technologically developed country of the Arab world. Look at what they want in their new UN resolution. They want the scientists of Iraq to come out so that they can be questioned.

Lies! They want to take those scientists and use their science and rob the Arab world of any scientists that could develop any weapon to bring detente to that region. Israel already has many weapons of mass destruction and she is not afraid to use them.

No Arab nation can be allowed to have weapons of mass destruction to challenge Israel. That’s the whole idea: Make an example of Saddam. They are going to go into Iraq and look at what they are saying.

Senator Byrd asked, what are you going to do when you get there? There was no answer at that time but now the answer is coming out. They are going to occupy Iraq like they occupied Japan. They are going to control all of the oil that’s coming out of Iraq—112 billion barrels.

The second largest oil reserve in the world will be in America’s hands. And right now they are bargaining with China, with France and with Russia.” You go along with us and when we take the oil, we’ll give you so much,” and you so much. But I warn you China; I warn you in the Name of Allah (God).

I warn you France and Russia, in the Name of Allah (God). The Qur’an says the devil promises only to deceive. When he has it (oil), I guarantee you that he will not give it to you, Russia because he fears you will rise again.

The consequence of war is that all the nations are going to be afraid of the United States of America who is justifying a pre-emptive strike. She’s the aggressor but she’s making herself look like she’s being attacked.

What are the consequences? No nation will feel safe; therefore, as it is written in the Bible, “Proclaim ye this among the Gentiles; Prepare war, wake up the mighty men, let all the men of war draw near; let them come up:

“Beat your plowshares (means of cultivation of earth and people) into swords (instruments of war), and your pruning hooks into spears: Let the weak say, I am strong.

“Let the heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat; for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about.”

The nations now have to seek weapons because they don’t know where America is coming next. It’s Iraq today, Iran tomorrow, Libya the day after. But America really wants a regime change in China; they want one in North Korea; they want one in Russia, if Russia doesn’t go along.

 

It's My Ego | Ice Cube

Alb Miki - Mystic Weapons

 

African defense chiefs meet to discuss rising tensions

African defense ministers met in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, for a conference on security and peace at a time when several of the continent’s countries are embroiled in conflicts.

The three-day event, the first organized by the Ethiopian Ministry of Defense, commenced on Oct. 15. Representatives of regional organizations, senior military officers, military attachés in Addis Ababa, and researchers engaged in military affairs are also participating, according to the state-owned Ethiopian News Agency.

In an opening speech, Ethiopia’s defense chief, Aisha Mohammed Mussa, stated that Africa’s security situation has become increasingly complex.

“We are acutely aware of the many security challenges that confront our continent, from the threat of terrorism and insurgencies to the rise of organized crime and human trafficking,” she stated.

Advertisement

“For Africa to achieve peace and global security, we must be united,” the official said, emphasizing the significance of security partnerships and cooperation among African defense forces.

Ethiopia is hosting the summit at a time of rising tensions in the Horn of Africa. The East African country and its neighbor, Somalia, have been at odds since the beginning of the year, following Addis Ababa’s controversial agreement with breakaway Somaliland to lease part of its coastline.

The Jan. 1 pact would allow the landlocked country to gain access to the Red Sea and build a marine base, allegedly in exchange for recognition of Somaliland’s independence.

Mogadishu, which considers Somaliland part of its territory, has declared the deal illegal and has won Egypt’s support against Ethiopia. The two Arab League states have accused Ethiopia of violating Somali territorial integrity and fueling regional instability. Cairo has since shipped military equipment to Somalia and offered to contribute troops to a new African Union-led mission in the conflict-torn nation.

In June, Mogadishu threatened to expel thousands of Ethiopian soldiers fighting the Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group Al-Shabaab in Somalia ahead of the deployment of the AU peacekeeping force if Addis Ababa failed to revoke the maritime agreement.

On Oct. 15, the head of the AU’s political affairs and counterterrorism directorate commended Ethiopia for remaining one of the top troop contributors to missions led by the union and the United Nations.

“As far back as 1951, Ethiopian personnel have left an indelible mark of courage and sacrifice as part of the United Nations, multinational force in Korea and now play a lead role in Somalia as part of the African Union’s peace mission in the country,” Babatunde Abayomi Taiwo said in an address at the conference.

He warned that rising tensions between governments could undermine joint efforts to address underlying causes of conflicts across the continent. The official advocated for a collaborative approach to strengthening Africa’s defenses against threats and enhancing its global position. 

 

Come As Many, Leave As One

 

I, today I have written no notes. I thought that I should like to come today and stand before you and let Almighty God have His way with me and guide the words of my mouth and my heart, that I might speak to your minds and your heart, that we may have come in as many, but I pray that God will allow us to go out as one.

As I look at humanity, it is as though no prophet of God has ever appeared among us because, as human beings, we are filled with hatred for one another.

Advertisement

We are destroying each other, and at this very moment in Egypt, the Palestinians and the Israelis are sitting down with President Clinton and King Abdullah of Jordan and President Mubarak of Egypt to try and work out a peace in that troubled area.

We have witnessed, in the last 16 days, unparalleled brutality. We have witnessed, in the last 16 days, the destruction of religious houses, holy places belonging to the Jews as well as the Muslims.

Whenever we are so embittered that we would destroy places that are set up for the remembrance of God, this is a sign of madness. And the madness that we see in the Middle East has a basis.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us that the stars in the heaven justify our belief in God, and therefore the star has always been used to represent justice.

So the Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us that where there is no justice, human beings begin to act savagely or have a sense of insanity because of the deprivation of this vital principle of life, the principle of justice.

There can be no peace in that troubled area that is a lasting peace unless that peace is structured on the principle of justice—justice for the Palestinians, justice for those who suffer in the world, justice for the poor and the weak, justice for the sick and the imprisoned, justice for those who have been locked out of society.

Unless justice comes, there can be no peace. Even in this great nation, we will be at each other’s throats as long as the principle of justice and equity are denied.

So today, as I look at the children of Abraham—Muslims, Christians, and Jews—Abraham would be totally upset that we would recognize him as a father and God as a father, and then turn around and slaughter each other, as is going on even as we speak. God would be displeased.

In the Holy Qur’an, it teaches us, Abraham was not a Jew or a Christian; he was an upright man. So, we cannot claim Abraham by blood lineage alone. We can only claim Abraham as a father if we live uprightly, as Abraham did, and worship nothing or no one but the one true God.

Not yet human

If you look at the human family— now, I’m talking about Black, Brown, Red, Yellow and White—we all seem to be frozen on a subhuman level of existence. I want you—I’m going to say it again because I want you to think with me.

I said, humanity seems to be frozen on a subhuman level. In Islam and, I believe, in Christian theology and Jewish theology as well, there are three stages of human development. The first stage is called the animalistic stage of development, and all of us have animal passions.

But when we submit to animal passions, then we can do evil things to one another in that animalistic stage of development. But when moral consciousness comes and we have a self-accusing spirit, it is then that we become human beings.

Right now, we have the potential for humanity, but we have not reached that potential, because we are functioning on the animalistic plane of existence. Allah says in the Qur’an, We created you into tribes and families that you may know one another and, parenthetically, not despise one another.

My question to you today is, what do we know of each other but the worst of each other? We have not yet seen man and woman as man and woman were created to be.

We are a caricature of what God intended. If in Genesis He created the man and the woman in his own image and after his own likeness, he created us, then, to be reflections of himself, and David, the psalmist, said.

“Ye are all God’s children of the most high God.” But look at our behavior. Satan has turned us completely around where we can say, “Ye are all dogs children of the most low Satan.”

My question to us as human beings is, whose children are we, and how will we know that we are children of God, except that our actions and our speech is a godly action and a godly speech, otherwise we have to say we have been devoured by Satan. (Cheers, applause.)

The poison of ‘I am better’

I respectfully say to you, my beloved brothers and sisters and members of the potential human family, that a poison exists and it starts with the thought that I am better than you because I’m black; or, I am better than you because I am white; or,

I am better than you because I’m rich; or I am better than you because I am more highly educated; I am better than you because I have something that you don’t have. These are false yardsticks used by human beings to justify their ill-treatment of one another.

In the Holy Qur’an, Iblis, which is another name or characteristic of Shatan, was told to bow down to a man that was made of dust. And Iblis refused to bow down. And God asked him, “Why didn’t you bow down when I commanded you?”

And Iblis said, “Because I am better than he. I am made of fire, while he is made of dust.” Whenever you start thinking you are better because of some characteristic that you have that sets you apart from somebody else, this is the beginning of a satanic mind.

I want you to hear me, because there is a yardstick that we can say one is better than the other; but it’s not your race, it’s not your color, it’s not your creed.

The thing that makes one human being better than another is our duty to God and our righteous conduct. 

Look at these beautiful flowers. (To staff.) Hand it to me, please. Now look at this. What is more beautiful than a bouquet of flowers, different colors, but growing out of a common earth, needing a common water, growing into a common atmosphere?

Who would be stupid enough to say the rose is better than the orchid? You just won’t talk like that. Nature won’t let you say the rose is better than the orchid. The rose might be your preference, but who said it’s better? I think it’s ignorant. Don’t you?

Now look at the earth out of which we grow. There’s black earth. There’s brown earth. There’s red earth. Yes, there’s sand that is white, sand that is pink. And we who live on the Earth rejoice because we grow our food in the black earth, we make our bricks from the red clay.

We put our foot in the sand when we go to the beach, and we’re not thinking of sand supremacy—(laughter)— or black earth supremacy; we’re just enjoying what God has given us, and we give Him the praise. 

God is the author of color. Why are you going crazy because you see color in the flowers, color in the rocks, color in the Earth, color everywhere you look, and color in the human family, and now we can accept the differences in rocks, in stones, in earth, but we cannot accept the differences of color and characteristics in one another. That says that the human being is sick.

Symbols limit human potential

Every organization that’s here is represented by some symbol. As an Omega, you have your symbol. As a Delta, as a Kappa, as an AKA, you have your symbol. As an Elk, as a Moose, as a Lion, you have your symbol. As a Crip and a Blood you have your color.

None of these things define you. All of these things limit you because your symbol and mine create divisions among us. I am a Christian, you say, but you are a Muslim. You wear your cross, I wear my crescent, so I’ll be over here and you’ll be over there. Wrong, wrong, wrong! (Applause.) That is wrong.

I am a Christian. Did you hear me? Farrakhan said, I am a Christian. I am a Jew. I am a Muslim. I am Pentecostal. I am of the Church of God in Christ. I am a Jehovah’s Witness.

I am a Mason. I am a Shriner. I’m all of that and then some, because I refuse to let things limit me as to who I really am, and you should not allow that, either.

When I say I am a Christian, I delight in the cross. It means a lot to me. The cross is not a symbol of wood with a horizontal and a vertical bar; the cross is a symbol of the dual nature of the human being.

He has a horizontal nature, which is animalistic. He has an upright nature, which is vertical. The cross represents our struggle to overcome the horizontal and grow into the vertical.

The Star of David is two equilateral triangles, one pointing up, one pointing down. Six sides, six angles. The Bible says, Count the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.

But the man is God’s man, and the beast is also under the same number, because the beast is a man that has fallen down, and the God-man is a man that is looking up and gets instructions from above.

And the fallen man is he who gets his guidance from the lower extremities. We follow our sexual appetite. We follow our lust for material things, for power.

The crescent represents equality. The star represents justice. The sun represents freedom. That flag is up above our heads, and the God who created—He doesn’t let the sun shine on White people and miss Black people. Does He?

He doesn’t let the rain fall on the Native American and not fall on other members of the human family. God is just, and he’s no respecter of persons. It doesn’t matter what your color is, what your race is, with God it is righteousness that He is after.

And so, my family, these symbols must give way to that which God will bring and make new among us. I say to all of these symbols, they make us symbols, and we don’t have the substance of a human being created in the image of God. 

As I come to a conclusion, I want to address three problems.

Family life: Any policy, rule, regulation or program that does not promote the growth of the male and female, the sanctity of marriage and family, is a rule, a regulation or policy that is not a good rule, regulation or policy. The family is the basic unit of civilization; therefore, everything must be done to care for the family unit.

Two. None of us can become human beings and divine beings without knowledge. Therefore, the access to knowledge should be what government is spending money on, not more weapons. There is no nation on this Earth that can defeat America militarily.

There is no sense of saying to the American people, “We need Star Wars because somebody is going to shoot a rocket at us.” They’re not insane; they know if they shot one rocket, you (U.S.) could shoot a hundred.

So war and the threat of war is a pretext to take the taxpayer’s dollar and make more and more weapons, while the American people have insufficient education, insufficient teachers, insufficient qualifications to come into a modern society. This thing needs to be reversed.

Education is not a privilege. Education is a human right. In your education, you must exalt the woman. (Applause.) Any system of education that does not give us a healthy respect for the female is a failed educational system.

Any system on this Earth that says that a woman is only for pleasure and procreation is a backward system, and any system that says the female are our natural partners in every act of the building of home, school, systems, and institutions of government, then we are properly educated. The woman is the cornerstone of the family.

I respectfully say, to everyone that’s here, all of our religious institutions need reform. (Applause.) I’m going to say it again. All of our religious institutions need reform. It is not God that has relegated females to this inferior position; it is our misunderstanding of the word of God.

When Jesus was on the cross, most all of the male disciples had run away. Only one was there. That was John. But there were three women at that cross, and one of them was His mother. 

When He was resurrected, according to Christian theology, the men were somewhere in the upper room, talking, but it was women that discovered that He had been raised. I ask you a question. Do you think any pulpit made by man is better or more important than a female created by God?

And if you love Jesus because, you say he died for you, then look at the female that has given birth to your son or your daughter. Do you know that when she lays down to give life to us, she experiences the same pain of death as the pain of giving birth?

Look at the hours sometimes that she is in labor—one hour, two hours, four hours, 10 hours, 14 hours, 18 hours—and then she gives us life. Well, if you can love Jesus because he died for you and me.

Then you better grab your wife and the woman that gave birth to your children and hold her tight because she died for you and me, and she suffered in labor for you and me, that the human family could continue to grow and flourish.

Gain knowledge and fly

We (the people) can make a difference. So, I want to ask you, in the words of (singer) R. Kelly, I really believe we’re going to have to fly. And when I say fly, the Bible say one day we’re going to take on wings. Wings doesn’t mean that you’re going to grow wings out of your back.

Wings means that the wisdom and the knowledge of God and the understanding of the Word will give you power to rise out of the gravitational pull of the Earth, out into space.

If you have the wings of knowledge—when you have a book and you open the book, it looks like wings. The Bible is a book of heavy knowledge. Open it, and take on wings. The Holy Qur’an is a book; a healing for the nation. Open the book and take on your wings and fly away.

It’s only when you put on wings that you can rise above blackness, rise above whiteness, rise above color, rise above national origin, rise above ethnicity, rise above sexuality, rise above materials—when you take on the wings of knowledge, then you can rise above all the things that have kept us divided as a people.

Alb Miki - Brother Mayor

Alb Miki - Mile High