Monthly Archives: May 2013

Terrorism… Blacks Have Nothing To Fear

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TERRORISM… BLACKS HAVE NOTHING TO FEAR

By N Oji Mzilikazi

Originally published in the Montreal Community Contact Volume 23, Number 10 May 16, 2013

In the aftermath of the bombing at the end of the Boston Marathon, RCMP officers arrested Chiheb Esseghaier of Montreal, and Raed Jaser from Toronto, in an alleged “Iranian al-Qaeda supported” attack targeting a Via passenger train.

I laughed. That’s right, I laughed. Not the laughter that comes out of mirth, but the snickering kind. The “there we go again” kind.

You see, I’m a student of history, and its study and unfolding in the present often expose all sorts of machinations, double and triple standards — things to make you laugh, especially at the brazenness of “vested interests” to believe people are really stupid.

On September 21, 2001, ten days after 9/11, vested interests saw the Montreal Gazette sowing the seeds for a U.S. attack against Iraq in its editorial, “An Iraqi Connection?”

The editorial said that the investigative efforts should focus not just on the prime suspect but on the states that may have supported Al-Qa’ida, and:

“A good place to start would be Iraq. This is not idle speculation. Saddam Hussein has an unfinished war against America – one that should make Mr. Bush’s father regret his decision not to take out the Iraqi leader during the Gulf War. This time, if the trail does in fact lead to Saddam Hussein, the U.S. and its allies must finally act to get him out of power.”

In 1991, neo-cons devised a plan to topple Saddam Hussein.

In 1996, an Israeli thinktank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, that included the likes of Richard Perle and  Douglas Feith, produced a paper entitled “A clean break: a new strategy for securing the realm.”

It urged Israel to abandon any thought of trading land for peace with the Arabs, and “set out a plan by which Israel would “shape its strategic environment,” beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein and the installation of a Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad.”

With several of the “Clean Break” paper’s authors in key positions in the Bush administration, America went into Iraq, toppled Saddam, and sent one of the cradles of civilization back to the Stone Age.

No connection to 9/11 was found – as there was never any.  Now, that is what you call terrorism. Hopefully, George Bush, Tony Blair, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld will one day be charged for war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

With Iraq broken, destroyed, the neo-cons turned their eyes on Iran. They begged and begged Bush to bomb Iran. When the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) produced a report saying Iran had no nuclear weaponry, Israel and her friends publicly assailed the intelligence of the NIE, and attacked the report.

When Barack Obama became president of America, the “Let’s Destroy Iran War-machinery” did their utmost to get him to go along with their bombing of Iran plans. Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu went to Washington to try and convince Obama to commit to military action against Iran if it crossed specified “red lines.”

The “Let’s Destroy Iran War-machinery” saw to it that Iran was elevated to the world’s terrorist mastermind, and its hand behind terrorism in any part of the world — India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, and Africa – and now, in the nipped in the bud, Canadian plot.

Iran is Persian, not an Arab country, and though Muslim, is looked upon as a threat — by other Muslim nations. Al-Qa’ida’s roots are Arab — Saudi Arabia in the main, but Al-Qa’ida in Iran was, according to Canadian intelligence, supporting Esseghaier and Jaser — in spite of all Iran’s internal problems, pariah treatment and sanctions against it. I had to laugh.

It was unthinkable for Esseghaier and Jaser to be members of an “independent jihadist terrorist” cell, or tied to Al-Qa’ida in Iraq. After all, American intelligence had long declared Al-Qa’ida to be present in Iraq. It just had to be Iran – “manufactured” reason for Canada to commit to the bombing of Iran.

Canada built its reputation as peace loving and non-aggressive nation. Ever since Steven Harper came into power, dreams of superpower status, empire status, and militarism, have been floating in his brains.

Apart for psychopaths, war mongers, war lords, and the vultures that feed off war, no person who witnessed the horrors and atrocities of war, or were a participant, would gladly go down that road again.

In September 2011, Prime Minister Stephen Harper visited Canadian troops in Italy, and thank them for punching above their weight in the Libyan campaign to oust Moammar Gadhafi.

Canada’s CF-18s flew over 350 attack missions and dropped over 275 laser-guided bombs on Libya.

Earlier this month, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird said that the Canadian government is ready to flex military muscle — punch above its weight again, is open to discussing a military campaign against the Syrian regime.

With Esseghaier and Jaser allegedly acting as de facto Iranian agents, Iran is in Harper’s crosshairs, and without a doubt, ready to have Canada punch above its weight when the call from Israel and/or the U.S.A. comes.

When I read that Esseghaier and Jaser were under surveillance for a year prior to their arrest, I laughed — at the brilliance of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the expediency of opportunity, his capitalization of the osmotic fear, panic, and feelings of powerlessness generated by the Boston bombing.

In arresting Esseghaier and Jaser, Harper showed Canadians that “He’s the man; he has things under control.” And I knew what was coming: new laws, more curtail to rights and liberties, new technology to further über-tracking — all in the name of security, and combating terrorism.

A couple days later, Harper dusted off his old anti-terrorism bill, presented it before the House of Commons, and the parliamentary cowards and political hacks said Aye!

Don’t be fooled. Terrorism like war is a business, big business. Wars generate employment, as well as contribute to the economic growth of the victorious.

The end of World War I brought prosperity to America. It ushered in “The Roaring Twenties.” The end of World War II brought prosperity to America. It ushered in the economic and cultural boom of “The Fabulous Fifties.” So far, World Wars have been good for America.

Wars for the most part are rooted in economics. Wars are oft manufactured or allowed to continue so profit can be had/made.

Columbite-tantalite or Coltan is a vital component in all consumer electronics products such as cellphones, computers, video-games systems and DVD players. 80 per cent of the world’s Niobium and Tantalum, the metallic ore from which Coltan is extracted, is found in the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Since the 1870’s, when Belgium’s King Leopold II made the Congo his personal fiefdom, the Congo has been site of never-ending wars and conflict over its resources. Historical sources placed the deaths of 15 million Congolese at the feet of Leopold.

Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo of the International Criminal Court list Canada, the United States, Britain, Russia, Finland and Hong Kong among countries whose businessmen and firms, in exchanging cash or weapons for diamonds from illegitimate sources, were complicit in war crimes and genocide taking place in Africa.

The same corporations and industrialists that profit from wars, that make armaments for war, also have their hand in manufacturing, the food industry, science and technology, and pharmaceuticals. Thus, they are in a position to provide materials, machinery, medicines, and food in the rebuilding of a country devastated by war — that one or some of their industries had a hand in directly or indirectly.

Consider: Prime Minister Jean Chrétien kept Canada out of the invasion of Iraq. For that, George Bush made sure Canada couldn’t profit from the lucrative contracts to rebuild Iraq.

Fiscal austerity saw Canada closing embassies and/or sharing with British Consulates. Yet, in April 2013, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird opened a diplomatic mission in Iraq to foster trade — tap into that Iraqi pipeline of opportunities and money.

Baird’s trip to Iraq was the first by a Canadian foreign minister since 1976.

The war on terrorism opened the door to a spate of new technology and weaponry, some of which would’ve never seen the light of day — approved, if “terrorism” wasn’t the boogieman it has become.

Somebody is making money from both the industry and materials needed to fight terrorism. Terrorism is thus profitable to the “Security and Terrorism Industrial complex.” As such, they have no interest in its cessation.

Business is about keeping pockets fat, not flat.

Fear and fright mentally paralyze/incapacitate. They propel the scared and timid to put their life, faith, trust, hope, and survival into the hands of the strong.

When the strong is the police and/or the government, the timid, weak, and fearful gladly relinquish vigilance and critical examination of issues and policies to them — believing they are going to act in their interests.

The fears terrorism engenders, is the greatest weapon a government can wield, use to establish and maintain social control. Terrorism is thus profitable for governments.

Terrorism facilitates government authoritarianism. Thus, we see governments instituting or proposing secret courts, secret trials, indefinite incarceration, and suspects held on Security Certificates, secret information, and without charge.

In the name of fighting terrorism there is government control of information, misinformation and disinformation, the criminalization of protests, suspension of Miranda rights, long-standing rights which are fundamental to democracy, torture legitimized, pre-emptive strikes, drones that frequently mistakenly kill civilians, and right-wingers feasting on the disenfranchisement of The Other. Something Black people intimately know.

Ever since Africans were brought to the New World in shackles, we’ve known terrorism — been terrorised, bombed in churches, hanged from trees, burned out, run out of town, had our land and property expropriated — experienced racial expulsions.

Just ask any Black Nova Scotian about July 26-27, 1784, when hundreds of white former soldiers and impoverished whites drove Blacks from Shelburne and tore down their homes.

Ever since Africans were brought to the New World in shackles, we’ve known police terrorism, and still continue to experience it through racial profiling, stops, frisk/search; known judicial terrorism — given longer sentences when crime by Blacks mirrored those by whites or were lesser.

Ever since Africans were brought to the New World in shackles, we’ve known the terrorism of racism, discrimination, and exclusion that psychologically damage and sustain economical poverty. And we still manage to survive, make it, in spite of embedded shrapnel and being badly wounded.

As such, there is no need for Blacks to get all worked up, and fear the terrorism of bombs going off. When the smoke clears, the structural and social obstacles faced by Blacks are still going to be there. So don’t get caught up in the hysteria of Bill 14, Quebec independence, and terrorism. Live your life! Live without fear!

Mother’s Day: The Case For Marriage

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Mother’s Day: The Case For Marriage

By N Oji Mzilikazi

Originally published in the Montreal Community Contact Volume 23, Number 09 May 2, 2013

Alluyh hear dis thing, one foot Vizina pick up a ring

Mama dat is ting, one foot Vizina now get a ring

From de day she married, Vizzie get left-handed

Anything dat she had to do is

Is de ring on she finger she showing you

An if yuh hear she

I am Mrs. Joseph, I’m eh one foot Vizzie again

Call me Mistress Joseph, yuh have to put handle to meh name

Now ah have a legal husband, I’m a highfaluting ooman

Allyuh look at me, Vizzie,

Today ah reach in society.

“One Foot Visina” by Mighty Duke

Trinidad & Tobago 1969 Calypso Monarch song

Quebec is believed to have the largest concentration of unmarried couples in the world. This past January, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that unmarried couples in Quebec have no right to alimony/spousal support upon their separation — no matter how many years they’ve lived together.

As unmarried spouses, they have no rights, duties and responsibilities to each other — no right to property sharing, regardless of the sacrifices made to accumulate wealth, the amount of wealth, goods or property accumulated, or their financial investment in the home, so “they” walk away with nothing.

Given the traditional template: women move into the homes of men, men are the working spouse, and given the wage disparity in the marketplace – men make more money than females, the female stays – works at home, taking care of the children and the emotional and physical needs of the man; the law in Quebec perpetuates the discrimination and oppression of women.

This past March, changes came to British Columbia’s Family Law Act. The act says that a spousal relationship begins either the day a couple is married or on the day they move in together. And once a cohabitating couple lived together for two years, they are considered spouses and have the same rights and responsibilities as married couples.

When love, liking someone, or sexual compatibility prompts co-habitation, the last thing on the couple’s mind is financial protection in event of the dissolution of the relationship. More so when both parties are working and the plan is for all expenses to be split down the middle.

Nonetheless, given the above, unmarried Quebecers living together or contemplating doing so must give thought as to their economic/financial future in the event of the dissolution of the relationship or death. “Ship” happens!

Under Quebec’s law, the death of an unmarried spouse could see a family member petition the court or come to seize your joint assets — under his/her assets, since common law couples are not subject by law to rules of property division that relate to married couples. Protect yourself and/or your assets!

Hire a lawyer and sign on the dotted line to a legally binding co-habitation agreement. It will protect “you” from exiting a failed relationship with only a broken heart, and perceptions of years of financial, emotional, and mental investment wasted on a no-good son/daughter of a … preacher man.

And if you have to sign such an agreement, you might as well get married, which in the absence of a pre-nuptial agreement gives a 50-50 split. Ironically, pre-nuptial and co-habitation agreements return marriage to its roots.

Contrary to what is accepted, believed and preached about the honour, beauty and sacredness of marriage; marriage, from its inception, was an economic institution geared towards the survival, defence and protection of the family collective.

Man is a social and sexual animal with an innate desire and hard-wiring for intimacy, and belonging to a collective. The shared-bloodline of the family structure ensures all its members knowing they have a stake in its health and fortunes.

Weak family structures, the breakdown/disintegration of the family are at the heart of the rise, growth, and influence of gangs.

Children need to feel they belong, are accepted, valued, loved, and that they’re part of something bigger than themselves. When they cannot find validation, appreciation and love within the family construct, they tend to seek it elsewhere. Also, the vulnerability created by the disconnect sets them up to be taken advantage of.

Marriage brought “outsiders” — wives, into the collective to add manpower, strengthen its genetic pool, produce, care for and groom offspring (sons).

Sons personified wealth. Fathers paid handsomely to marry off a daughter. The more sons a man had, the greater his potential for acquiring wealth and property in marriage. The more sons a man had, the wealthier he was.

Since a daughter necessitates paying dowry, and the transfer of wealth/assets outside the family reduces family prosperity, as well as the dowry demands could force a family into debt, daughters were regarded as liabilities, and too many daughters were seen as a curse.

The legacy of which are small pockets in some cultures continuing the practice of gender selection — the abortion of the female foetus.

The need to keep wealth and assets within the family resulted in first-cousin marriages in some cultures. Unfortunately, recycling the same genes weaken and predispose children of that union to genetic defects. And so, communities that engage in first-cousin marriages have a high rate of children with genetic defects.

Marriage enriched families, united houses/tribes/fortunes, and was a tool to cement peace and peace treaties. Love, being in love or finding one’s soul mate had no part in decisions relating to marriage — and is a latter day construct.

Wives were valued for the size of dowry and/or the connections they brought. Wives, and by extension women, were valued for their healthiness, strength, hard working ways, and fertility. Thus, the lamentation in the Biblical Song Of Solomon 8: 8: “We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts: what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for?”

The Bible acknowledges the joy and healthiness of sex. Deuteronomy 24: 5 instructs a man who has taken a new wife to not go to war or do business, but to stay at home for a year — to pleasure his wife.

And though marriage was about long-term companionship, ideally forever, the Bible permitted divorce and remarriage. Deuteronomy 24:1-2 is clear. “Write her a bill of divorcement…she may go and be another man’s wife.” Ergo, be pleasured and not shrivel from a lack of love and sex.

The anti-sex and anti-female ideologies of the Roman Catholic Church are responsible for its opposition to divorce and remarriage. The subsequent insertions of “till death do us part” and “for better or worse” in the marriage vows package ensured people, women stay married — put up with no-good and/or abusive and violent husbands and loveless and sexless marriages.

Giving the domination of Catholic doctrine in the affairs of men, and the suffocating nature of religious dogma, when remarriage incurred eternal damnation, men couldn’t help but see marriage as an anvil around necks, a burden, and a source of troubles and suffering — something to avoid.

Feminists and the women’s’ liberation movement saw marriage as reinforcing female domesticity, so also something to avoid. All told, people for the most part do not see marriage as necessary to be in a healthy and loving relationship or to raise children. And so marriage rates have been steadily declining over the past thirty plus years.

Co-habitation that is healthy, satisfying, enriching, and successful depends on the couple having values in common, a shared vision, and both willing to compromise and make sacrifices for the good of the relationship — and those are the exact criteria for a successful marriage. Therefore, one might as well get married rather than live together.

In the pursuit of transforming enslaved Africans into two-legged beasts of burden, Christian white men sought to uproot as well as deprive them from everything and anything that contributed to intellectual growth and reinforced traditions. The enslaved were denied marriage.

But that didn’t prohibit the enslaved from seeking to fulfil the human hard-wiring for the “special intimacy” that is marriage. They got “married.” They “jumped the broom” to legitimize among themselves, and publicly show — their pairing.

Legal obstacles to prevent people of African descent from marrying have long been rescinded, dissolved. Yet there are endless Black females who bore 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, children for the same man, and he never put a ring on her finger because he “doh” believe in marriage.

Yet there are endless Black couples who, have live together for years, and have raised children into adulthood, and who have their own family — and they never got married. “Dey eh” believe in marriage or see the need for marriage. Foolishness I say!!!

Ladies, besides the law in Quebec supporting “your” dispossession, I say, let him put a ring on it. Especially when that man “took” you when your stomach was flat, “took” you in your youthfulness and sexiness, and deformed your body through your birthing of children for him. Let him pay for it. Let him put a ring on it.

Would that our community pastors do an outreach, convince couples in our community that are living together to get married, give a date, and perform a mass wedding kind of thing for them.

Sisters, ladies, daughters and mothers, think about this:

If you’re good enough to live with, you are good enough to be married to… No?

Girls, let people who already went down the road of marriage live together. Put a value on yourself. Only move in or let him move in if he put a ring on it.

Interestingly, huge numbers of heterosexuals are against same-sex marriage. They believe marriage is between a man and a woman, but they aren’t getting married to reclaim or “defend” marriage. Walk the talk and get married. Be that example for your children. And perhaps, just doing so could save some.

Happy Mother’s Day!!!