EMANCIPATION 2013: BEYOND RUMSHOP POLITICS
By N Oji Mzilikazi
Originally published in the Montreal Community Contact Volume 23, Number 15 July 25, 2013
Emancipation Day: August 1, 2013
Category: Published Articles
Cut Out The Foolishness And Embrace Success
CUT OUT THE FOOLISHNESS AND EMBRACE SUCCESS
By N Oji Mzilikazi
Originally published in the Montreal Community Contact Volume 23, Number 14 July 11, 2013
This past Carifiesta weekend made it abundantly and irrefutable clear that despite individual brilliance, personal achievements, this community to which I belong, we — as a people, are both scared of success and clueless as to what it takes to succeed, to win. If that wasn’t the case, leadership, our entrepreneurs, our dream merchants, our organizers, and hustlers would talk to one another, build productive alliances, collaborate, and not continue to engage in adversarial politics and sabotage…
CARIFIESTA 2013: POLITICS IN MEH PARADE
Ah Want To Wine But Ah Cyah Wine…
CARIFIESTA 2013: POLITICS IN MEH PARADE
By N Oji Mzilikazi
Originally published in the Montreal Community Contact Volume 23, Number 13 June 27, 2013
Musical intoxication, musical inundation, bacchanalia spirit possession…Suzuki (Victor), Cassian, Gold teeth, Short man, Inshan, Chen, Ferdie, Stacy, Linda, Pat Dillon, Dixie-Ann, Catherine, Penny, wifey, Colville, Maddy, Molly, Arnold Paris, and Doggy daubed with mud, grease, and engine oil…
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This article was crafted with lyrics taken from the following 2013 Trinidad & Tobago Soca Hits:
Iwer George – Bubble
Blaxx – No Getaway
Blaxx – Leh Go
Machel Montano, Kerwin Du Bois ft. Ladysmith Black Mambazo – Possessed
Machel Montano – She Ready
Patrice Roberts – Permission Granted
Drupatee & Machel Montano – Indian Gyal
Denise Belfon – Winning Queen
Fay-Ann Lyons – We Doing This Owah
Our Deaf And Jail-Happy Federal Govt.
OUR DEAF AND JAIL–HAPPY FEDERAL GOVT.
By N Oji Mzilikazi
Originally published in the Montreal Community Contact Volume 23, Number 12 June 13, 2013
…In the face of the Tories multibillion-dollar prison expansion program, and Statistics Canada 2010 findings that Canada’s crime rate had dropped, Senator Pierre-Hughes Boisvenu said that “someone, somewhere, is manipulating the numbers.”
The decrease in crime was of such, Yvan Delorme, Montreal Police Chief (2005-2010), created a “commercial services” arm that rented out cops; manage their private hiring for parties, sporting events, traffic control during film shoots, motor escorts during parades, guards to businesses, and the like.
To further assail the reliability of the decreased crime statistics from StasCan, execute the Party’s agenda and serve up a “red herring,” Stockwell Day, the Treasury Board president voiced there was “an alarming increase in unreported crime.”
Are there crimes that go unreported? Certainly! But how can anyone “gusstimate” as to quantity when “unreported” implies unknown?… By Day’s logic, “unreported crime” justifies prison expansion.
Stockwell Day was never a bright political bulb, just a political opportunist. During his tenure as Opposition leader (Canadian Alliance Party) – in May 2001, Day condemned Canada for taking anti-Israel positions without public debate. And like a ventriloquist’s dummy, reiterated the #1 song on the playlist of the day (no pun intended): “Truth of the violence in the Middle East is distorted by television coverage.”
…On July 30, 2008 – when Day was the Public Safety Minister, he went on record saying that the government “Push for longer jail terms will not result in overcrowded prisons or ballooning corrections costs.”
It is impossible to have one without the other. Adding to the idiocy, Day also opined that longer sentences for drug and gun offences will be a deterrent — which has not been the American marketplace reality.
In October 2010, the federal government announced prison expansion in Ontario and Quebec to the tune of $155 million. Also, it will be spending $2 billion over the next five years to ensure the nation’s jails can handle the expected surge in inmates.
…We imprison to our peril. Incarcerated citizenry are eventually going to be freed. And society stands to pay for the extra wrath and scars imprisonment left on souls.
Thanks Tyrone!!!
By not “Taking care of business” we contribute to lingering plight of “blackness.”
THANKS TYRONE!!!
By N Oji Mzilikazi
Originally published in the Montreal Community Contact Volume 23, Number 11 May 30, 2013
Even though no person is the standard upon which his or her race, ethnicity, or religion is to be judged, slavery’s imposition of cultural singularity upon Blacks, the monolith narrative, in conjunction with the legacy of racial criminalisation; tainting all members of the race with the crime of an individual member, have Blacks living in “non-Black” countries weighted with the burden of race.
Thus, when accomplished and successful Blacks, Black professionals, Black role models, Black leaders, and Black politicians engage in wrongdoing, make an ass of themselves, are obstacles to progress, or the Black criminal is front page and/or makes the evening news, members of the race are prone to experience psychological dislocation – to cringe, feel shamed and ashamed — tainted by the infractions of a complete stranger…
Terrorism… Blacks Have Nothing To Fear
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?”…