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The Salvation Army: Pimping Blacks For $$$

By N Oji Mzilikazi

18 May 2015

The mass surveillance, information gathering and analysis of data that qualifies the internet tailor advertisements for users.

Since I dismiss those ads as price for the “free” service; reading an article or browsing a website, I don’t see them. It was a different story yesterday.

An article headline in a British newspaper website caught my attention. When I went to the page I was greeted with the following advertisement:

salvation army ad

I was pyssed.

As per Statistics Canada 2006 Census, Canadians identified as Black constitute 2.5 % of the entire Canadian population. Still, the Salvation Army had no qualms about choosing a Black face to represent poverty, rather than someone from the majority population. Talk about exploiting a Black stereotype to secure donations.

Furthermore, according to any and all metrics that define poverty, First Nations/Aboriginal communities experience higher levels of poverty than everyone else.

As detailed in Poverty Trends Scorecard Canada 2012: “The rate of poverty among Aboriginal peoples living off-reserve was 15.2% in 2010, compared to 9.0% for all of Canada.14. In 2005, according to the Census, it was estimated the poverty rate for the entire Aboriginal population (i.e., both on and off-reserve) was 18.7% among Aboriginal families and 42.8% among unattached individuals.”

Pimping Blacks to raise funds for “white” institutions is nothing new.

The Montreal Gazette is a broadsheet format sized paper. Its Saturday November 16, 2002, paper featured a full-page advertisement soliciting donations for its Christmas Fund.

The photograph in the ad was that of a young Black kid with a football under his arm, with the following slogan: “Your donation is being kicked around.” Ergo poor Blacks are being helped.

Racism has it that all must believe that poverty and incarceration are the preserves of Blacks.

A December 2008 study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences revealed: “Changes in social standing such as falling below the poverty line or going to jail made (white) people more likely to be perceived as black and less likely to be seen as white.”

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Good Morning Vietnam! America’s Ill-Fated War of White Supremacy

By N Oji Mzilikazi

30 April 2015

Today marks the 40th anniversary of America’s disastrous incursion into Vietnam. And much like George W. Bush WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) based invasion of Iraq, it was a war predicated on lies (the fight against communism) by one U.S. president, and expanded to include other South Asian nations, by another.

On April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon, then the capital of South Vietnam, forcing the American juggernaut; the world’s superpower to flee with her tail between her legs, ending a decade plus war with the North to unite Vietnam.

Vietnam was once the jewel of the French empire. There came a time when the Vietnamese were no longer accepting of French Imperialism and armed resistance was the order of the day.

When the French, bankrolled by America lost at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, American pride was hurt. America was more than willing to step in and teach those “yellow bastards” a lesson.

The Geneva Accord of 1954 stated that Vietnam would remain separated for two years, and then reunite in a free election. Afraid that North Vietnam would win the 1956 elections, President Ngo Dihn Diem of South Vietnam, refused to allow South Vietnam to participate. North Vietnam then decided to remove Diem from office.

America was not a party to the Geneva Accord of 1954. Rather than let the Vietnamese work out their problems; view the desire of North Vietnam to reunite the country as being in the same spirit as that which sparked the American Civil War (Some Southern American states seceded from the union.), America transformed Vietnam’s war of unification as protecting the democracy of South Vietnam from communism of the North.

America had learnt nothing from their involvement in Korea, and the needless deaths of thousands of U.S. soldiers.

In keeping with the American propaganda machinery telling that brave American soldiers were fighting in Korea for democracy and freedom, Americans at home were told it was the same with Vietnam.

More bombs were dropped on Vietnam than what was dropped in World War II.  Mind you, World War II was spread over areas far and wide, while Vietnam was a fixed area.

Thanks to Agent Orange, Agent Purple, and Agent White, Vietnam has the largest dioxin contamination in the world.

America used those toxic chemicals to destroy the forests and deprive the Viet Cong from a place to hide and launch an attack.  The severe and unparalleled bombardment of toxic chemicals resulted in residue diffused throughout Vietnam’s food chain.

Forty years later, children in Vietnam are still being born poisoned, blind, deformed, and handicapped because of those toxic chemicals, while the manufacturers of those poisons and their stockholders continue to enjoy the profits brought on by their usage.

Vietnam was a failed war of American aggression; a failed war of white supremacy.

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Where Is Your Integrity Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr

By N Oji Mzilikazi

20 April 2015

As an issue of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and European colonialism; people whose roots and cultural DNA white people sought to deliberately excise, and to a great extent successfully did, I enjoy the PBS documentary, Finding Your Roots.

I marvel how researchers can pick up the broken paper trail of their subjects; delve deep into the crevices and recesses of the past and bring forth clearly astounding information. I get a kick out of their subjects’ reactions, especially when they recognize they have the same internal drive/predilections as one of their newly discovered ancestor.

Although I am glad for them, every time I watch Finding Your Roots, my mind is temporarily invaded by thoughts of the millions of people of African descent whose roots are permanently lost; broken in many places by historical forces over which they had no control.

Since descendants are not responsible for the actions of an ancestor, one would think that Finding Your Roots would be truthful and honest, even if the path to discovery reveals painful episodes in an ancestor’s past. That was not the case when Ben Affleck was a subject.

Viewers were told Affleck’s people participated in the American Revolution and the American Civil War, and that his mother was a Freedom Rider in the Civil Rights era. Ergo, Ben Affleck is from “righteous” stock. Not publicized was that one of Affleck’s ancestors owned slaves.

As revealed in Wikileaks posting of leaked Sony emails, Ben Affleck wanted the producers of Finding Your Roots to edit out details of how his ancestors were slave owners even though it was a breach of PBS editorial rules.

Interestingly, the careers of Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were launched in School Ties (1992), a film about a student hiding his Jewishness to fit into prep school.

Rather than demonstrate testicular fortitude and say, “No, can do,” Henry Louis Gates Jr, the producer and host of Finding Your Roots reached out to Sony chief executive Michael Lynton for advice.

Lynton’s email to Gates reads: “I would take it out if no one knows.”

Gates is a professor at Harvard. Gates also makes his living from African American and race issues. He of all persons knows the deliberate historical vagueness that envelops slavery, and that peeling back the curtain — especially when not from a shaming perspective is good.

Gates of all persons knows there should be no equivocation in that regard. Yet, her suppressed the slave ownership in Ben Affleck’s ancestry.

What a betrayal by Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr!

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Empire: The Idiocy of Terrance Howard

Empire: The Idiocy of Terrance Howard

By N Oji Mzilikazi

22 March 2015

Empire, the Fox hip hop soap drama, starring Taraji P. Henson and Terrence Howard is without a doubt the breakout television show of 2015, as evidenced by its unprecedented eight-week growth streak in the key demo, adults 18-49.

And per Variety, viewership gains for a tenth straight week and a demo delivery not seen by any broadcast series in nearly six years.

In a March 16, 2015, interview with hosts Kit Hoover and Billy Bush of “Access Hollywood Live,” Howard opined that the N-word should be used in Empire to make the show more authentic, and queried, Why is it that we don’t hear it on TV anymore?

When Hoover asked, “What does the n* word mean to you though?” Howard response included that “It could mean love.”

Terrence Howard should be the last person to endorse the N-word.

In a December 2011 filing in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Howard stated that his ex-wife, Michelle Howard, who isn’t black, on several occasions called him a monkey and the n-word and threatened to have him killed by a group of Russians.

Jews were the original ghetto dwellers; ghettos were coined and made for them, yet you would never hear any self-respecting Jew “big-up” the ghetto or express love for the ghetto.

For all the stereotypes associated with Jews and slurs used against them, you’d never see them portrayed or expressed in films or on television, while Jewish producers and directors in film and television continually uphold Black stereotypes in their works.

For all the stereotypes associated with Jews and slurs used against them, you’d never hear a Jewish actor employ them to disempower them or to have a conversation about them.

Terrence Howard is one clueless kneegrow…

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Taber, Alberta: Canada’s First Police State

Taber, Alberta: Canada’s First Police State

By N Oji Mzilikazi

17 March 2015

Last month, the town council of Taber, Alberta, passed the Community Standards Bylaw that bans public swearing, spitting and yelling. The bylaw was recommended by the police commission and the Taber Police Service.

The police have body armour and the world of sophisticated law-enforcement technologies not to mention weaponry at their disposal. All John Public has is their mouth to swear and yell — at the police (and others), and those acts are now criminalised. And to know the government want to prevent radicalization…

I guess the legislature don’t see anything oppressive in the bylaw.

The bylaw also grants power to peace officers to break up assemblies of three or more people.

Interestingly, in May 2011, Curtis David Paradee, the chairman of the police commission in Taber, was arrested and charged with child pornography offences by Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team’s Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) Unit, and Taber Police Service.

Given that the tip came from the US Department of Homeland Security, the Taber town council ought to focus more on its police force than on draconian bylaws against its citizenry.

Then again, bylaws like those are enacted by municipalities as a tax-grab.

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Netanyahu Reveals His True Colours

Netanyahu Reveals His True Colours

By N Oji Mzilikazi

17 March 2015

Fighting for his political life in a tight parliamentary election, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to shed his veneer of statesmanship and dive headfirst into the politics of hate and the nastiness and divisiveness of tribal/ethnic and religious politics…