To Do With
People We live in
a post colonial slave-minded society and we must get out. We appear
at least to be literate and if we say we can read, we can. We
can reason and if we cannot reason we can count the money in our pockets
and if we do not have any we want to know why and it is because we are
deprived of our natural right to earn a living. Not many are barefooted
nowadays but the barefooted must look on their feet and walk with dignity
for we ask none for favours we demand our rights. We know what
our rights are and they know what our rights are. Roy Trotman
did it right and Cable and Wireless got surprised. He seems to
have some guts but he is still Sir Roy. He did not give himself
that and some still want their stars and garters so he may not want
to jump all the way. He asked for public support to get
meetings goings and said that he is not going take any union action
but he is doing that because C&W want to hear that and they would
do the same thing to him but that does not mean he would not, when he
is ready, call a strike. This is not a time for threats and Trotman
cannot tell them. It is a time that when Cable and Wireless get
hit they should say: “Christ you all never tell me you going hit
me.” Cable and Wireless
do not recognize how many people would like to protest from Turks and
Caicos, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Barbados and right through the English
speaking Caribbean. Doctors without Frontier and
Cable and Wireless is Communications
without Frontiers. They may be international but they make
50% of their worldwide profit out of the English speaking Caribbean
and they quietly believe that they have clout because there is no voice
in the House, no regular columnist that has tried to influence so:
“Ha! Ha! They ain’t no point in protesting.” Something should
have been done about Cable and Wireless long time ago but any one of
our leader that would have stopped the monopoly would have properly
found himself dead - a heart attack - something in the drinks. “White
man can produce but he cannot distribute.”
... North American Indian
as he watched the white man. The huge inequalities
in lifestyles in this island needs to be turned upside down. We
must face reality, get in the mix, be an example, do not think that
we can approach people like Cable and Wireless with less than clean
hands and make sure that they stay clean for the whole system is corrupt
and its hands are not encased in gloves before faeces is held. This time and
in our case, reason cannot be reduced to just brute force:
“It is a mistake to believe that revolution must be violent.”
… Angela Davis “Once
they got you violent they know how to handle you.” …
John Lennon.
Our Public Order Act of the 1960s restricted right of protest
and assembly and Cable and Wireless thrived. People can be wise
now and can look at the history of democratic development in the Caribbean
and find that every single regime has been flawed because we had no
fearless leaders; there were powerful leaders in the Bajan sense like
the little fellow: “he cannot hit me I going hit he back,
even though he bigger and going knock me down.” Bustamante,
Marryshow, Adams by two, Barrow, Manley all of them and the only leader,
who had any guts or foresight was Fidel Castro and his men. There
are so many things that go back to that time: look back to see
what was right so that now - 2009 - we can fight
for “people power” and “direct democracy.” * [*from the Cuban Revolution
] Late
1950s and 60s Caribbean students in London very much interested
in Che, Fidel, Camilio and the other revolutionaries as they fought
in the mountains, followed and felt very much a minority in Britain.
They studied hard, talked politics, wrote columns, worked at the BBC
and one set had their meeting place at the Labour Party’s office in
Fulham. The Labour Party for that area lent them and they left
the place tidy and gave the janitor a few bob. CLR James came
and talked with insight and one reporter, who had attended Combermere
took short hand notes verbatim. Some of them passed their exams,
gained their degrees, left and were told: “you go back home
and wait for us for a few more overs.” Even some people
already had a PhD. Nobody at home
really knew them; one or two had been to Harrisons College, one or two
had been Barbados scholars, some that would have been consider barefooted
black boys from Water Street and the standpipe and some that people
would never believe had joined in London. Those fellows
came back quoted James, used their notes and memory, enter politics
and pre-empted the plans. Their policies were not watered down,
sounded new because nobody in the Caribbean had heard these things,
they words were published and in Barbados some formed the Under
Forties. “The
Black Panthers were dangerous not because of guns but for its ability
to stand up to power.”
… Angela Davis. Our political
directorate feared those returning because they could have been able
to get votes so advice to: “watch they getting affiliated
with Stokely Carmichael,” was taken
and our leaders looked good in Washington; it was the popular thing;
the Americans did it and everybody did it, and across the Caribbean
people like Stokely Carmichael and C.L.R. James were banned and the
Public Order Act was passed by our government. BOLIVIA
- October 9th 1967
“the blood drenched body [of Che Guevara] had been placed on
a stretcher tied to the landing skids of a helicopter and flown over
the black hills of Vallegrande. Wearing his Bolivian army captain uniform
Felix Rodrigues accompanied it. After touching down he melted
into the waiting crowd and disappeared. Within a few days Rodriguez
was back in the United States with his CIA boss.”
… CHE GUEVARA – A Revolutinary Life by
Jon Lee Anderson.. JAMAICA:
October 16th 1968: A good day for
a demonstration, red gowns everywhere. Fresh from
North America, where Black Power was hot Dr. Walter Rodney, a Guyanese
professor at Mona Campus and promoter and expounder of socialist views
was banned from Jamaica. “Everybody ready? Lewwe go!”
From the time the students stepped out the university gate soldiers
appear in riot gear: padded uniforms, visored helmets, gas-masks, shields,
riot sticks and tear gas canisters hanging on their belt, some had big
guns in their hand. Tear gas and rock-steady reggae mingled with
the sounds of the battle; police beat up people. Eddie Kamau Brathwaite,
the poet, was amongst those that had to run from the tear gas.
Three people were killed, hands and feet were broken, for weeks helicopters
flew over the campus every day; soldiers surrounded the campus for weeks
and the trigger-happy threatened to shoot if students walked outside
the university gate. Oppression, repression and suppression
set in and the Daily Gleaner newspaper wrote that Prime Minister acted
to save the nation. The P.M. had a lot to say about
Gonzy, Ralph Gonzales, Guild President now Prime Minister of St. Vincent.
He called him an Eastern Caribbean non-Jamaican student. Nothing
come out of it: Rodney remained banned, went to Tanzania, taught, wrote
the book “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”
and in the 1970s was assassinated in Guyana. “Who will help? What can I do about this mad priest Thomas Becket.” “The king
like he want Becket dead.” So Beckett is killed; not that
the king wanted Becket dead; he just wanted to get a bit of trouble
out of the way. Old Barbadians
recite an incident at Queen Elizabeth II coronation - about the queen
of Tonga, a place in the Philippines. She very tall and stately
woman and in the procession going to Westminster Abbey for Queen Elizabeth
II’s coronation she walked barefooted. That was her tradition
and the British and the Commonwealth public loved her. She never
worried but most would have bought shoes and the reason that people
not bare foot anymore is because shoes are cheap. Our natural
resources, our land, our blood, sweat and tears, that passed from our
great grandfathers through inheritance and our investment are in hands
of people overseas. Never before has so much been owned by foreigners;
we no long own our beach land, the West Coast and Northern Coast are
owned by rich, white, foreigners. Ours must be returned and any
attempt to put an end to this will mean that we will have to protect
our society with assiduousness from the enemies, within and without.
Anything that gets in their way, any attempt to take back our resources
will be eliminate; they are many ways to expand so we have to take time
to get it right. Cable and Wireless
shows itself an example and comes up, at a time and where the whole
world is watching Latin America’s new revolution and American, under
black-white Obama, is again sending troops into Colombia. The
coca leaf does not travel well, it loses potency and that is why Morales
held up a green cocaine leaf, which we have been chewing for millenniums
and said, “It is green. It is not white.”
Obama should keep those troops at home to seek out American chemicals,
which turn our natural leaf into the white stuff for American consumers.
Solve his problems at home and there will be no pretext to prevent the
indigenous people of Latin America from reclaiming their lands and heritage. EL SALVADOR; In
1933, when the peasant in El Salvador arose to take back their
lands the landed elite - Coffee without Borders – controlled
the military governments and committed “la matanza” - the slaughter
of 30,000 peasants and eliminated nearly
all Amerindian culture. Strikes by university students that brought
the nation to a standstill and caused a dictator to resign, revolts
by young army officers, reforms housing projects, collective bargaining
rights benefited the middle class and not the poor majority.
In 1975 a dozen university students were shot to death while
protesting. GUATEMALA: In
1954, when Guatemalan government under Jacobo Arbenz nationalized
the economy and alienated the landowner, the United Fruit Company,
“Bananas without Borders,” whose idle lands Arbenz tried
to take and insisted that the company and other large landowners pay
more taxes, he was forced to resign and went into exile and the next
president went back to the same old, same old way of foreign concessions
and ownership. CHILE: In
1970’s, Salvador Allende had a democratic government with
civil liberties and due process but he ordered wage increases and froze
prices. That would have stopped inflation. He had the support
of the workers and peasants yet he was shot and buried in an unmarked
grave because he took over the U.S-owned copper companies, bought out
private mining and manufacturing and large agricultural estates for
use by peoples cooperatives. CUBA: In
the Bay of Pigs invasion, 1960, United Fruit Company lent
their ships, which U.S. naval destroyers escorted, to transport 1,500
counter-revolutionaries. NICARAGUA: The
vengeance against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua in 1979,
was covert, economic and sheer harassment. Costa
Rico, Panana and her Canal, Guatamala, Argentina were U.S dominions
and in the Caribbean “a soup of imperial
domino ruled by London, Paris and the Netherland.” Most
people do not want to die even in making it better. “What you complaining
‘bout you ain’t got a Mercedes? You are a minister why
don’t you have a Mercedes.” With understanding,
hopefully, this time will not be a footnote in a dark history of imperials
supporting the likes of Somoza in Nicaragua and Odria in Peru
and Jimenez in Venezuela. Trujillo in Santo Domingo was
very much favoured by the Americans people and admired by Franklyn Delano
Roosevelt, Harry Truman and that lot. Batista was one of the very
best allies that the Americans had. During World
War II the English and Europeans had to eat our West Indian bananas
and preferred to pay a little more – a preferential price. It
was cultural but politically the America and Europe governments ensured
inferior-tasting, bigger, more profitable Chiquita bananas is forced
down our throats and the indigenous banana industry collapse. DOMINICA
in the late 1960, Bobby Clarke, a Barbadian, one of those,
who were in England that listened and talked returned home to Dominica
and his wife, a Dominican, and children with a law degree, an understanding
of Marxism. He took on Geest’s profits, which were so much more
than the banana growers - from transportation to marketing Geest owned
nearly all the other aspects of the banana industry. At one stage
he could not leave Barbados for he had been deported or banned from
nearly all pf the Caribbean except Cuba. 1987
Antigua and Barbuda:
“The bottom in going to fall of the banana market and they [leaders
of the banana republics of the Caribbean] are not doing anything
about it.” … V.C. Bird, Prime Minister of Antigua. It is the same
old, same old by another name: in
thirty years, in the Caribbean islands, Central
America, and Colombia starting in 1899 the
Boston Fruit Company’s capital increased by
US$203,777,000.00 from
US$$11,230,000. In Costa Rica they had full
rights to hundred of miles of rail lines and 800,000 acres of virgin
land, tax exemption for 20 years and the largest of private merchant
navies. This company “exploited labourers, bribed officials,
influenced governments. United Brands still owns or leases extensive
banana plantations in Honduras, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama, and Colombia.
It also has continued to produce for the U.S. government, Jamaican sugar;
Costa Rican, Panamanian, and Ecuadorian cocoa; and abaca in Guatemala.
Throughout Central America and northern South America, it has maintained
holdings that produced tropical woods, quinine, essential oils, and
rubber.” … Britannica Encyclopedia. In the
1950s Barrow was labelled and banned from the USA as a communist;
he said that a white German would get a job in the United States before
him and he had been a navigator in World War II and fought along side
them. Being a communist is nothing to be held against
any person – any normal definition of communism In Latin America and
the Caribbean must begin with monopoly profits versus our people.
In the communist witch hunt one of the chief men that ran down people
with McCarthy was Ronald Reagan, and he became President of the United
States, twice and if he could he would have got in again. Our leaders
went along with whatever the Americans did. We had two Bushes
for two terms each, eight years - the most powerful man in the world
had been the first terrorist, when he headed the CIA, to blow-up an
aeroplane in mid-air and our government covered for him CIA. His
son, of little ability, served for eight years. They own and were
owned by Oil with Borders and we went along with them. Loyalty to
the people demands certain behaviour even if fiddlers only just joined
the band wagon. Charles I’s head was cut off for treason. Treason
is to act, betrays or endanger a nation, make war against it and to
give aid and comfort to the enemy and in Japan “acts designed to
frustrate the country's alliances with other powers.” Accusations
are not to be made lightly nor is treason to be used just because someone
wants to get rid of somebody. State is not just the political party
in power but human beings living together with methods, law and enforcement
and within geographic boundaries. We have, in
this part of the world, a history of an American government being taken
over and the British governments being used both by huge companies.
Under Einsenhower Allen Dulles was the head of the Central Intelligence
Agency and his brother, John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State.
The two were inter-connected through law firms and through the directorship
of Allan at the Schroder Bank, which they used to launder funds for
CIA covert operation - and when the people moved Eisenhowers and
Dulles sends in the CIA and between them they twisted the arms of our
governments and got the OAS’ permission to invade Guatemala.
President Kennedy fired Allen Dulles after the Bay of Pigs. The owners
of Cable and Wireless are not the people, who go up front so aim has
to be easiest at our own, those, who share information, scheme, carry
out and signed company orders. Clive of India
was governor of Calcutta, the black hole of Calcutta, a massacre that
happened when many people were crowded into one cell and they died of
suffocation. There was worldwide condemnation and accusations
of British mal-administration. Regardless of the power of the
British Empire the Raj still had money and power, was untouchable and
above all sorts of things, he was not approachable. The House
of Lords decided somebody has to be blame so they brought Clive back
from India and impeached him. He was lucky, he was proven innocent
and kept his peerage. Aristotle defined definition as analysis ad infinitum. In other words chop it all down but everywhere it comes the definition stands. Start with spying and economic crime and define them, look to the Cuba revolution and the trials that Che conducted and study them to build on what we already have.
A prima facie
case: circumstantial evidence and documents, on what happened in the
Turks and Cacois in 1993, would be as easy as a man caught with
his hand in someone’s pocket to be charged for stealing. More
than one Chief Justice was forced to resign when their connections to
Cable and Wireless and each other were disclosed. C &W will
get some lawyer to jump up and say that it is not illegal to thief because
they have clot but Franklyn Roosevelt said that nothing that is morally
wrong can be legally right and the maxim that: he who seeks justice
must do so with clean hands even the lawyers say so too; they all say
justice must not only be done it must be seen to be done. Proceeded
on for the good of the society; bring every single shed of evidence
and study it intimately and compassionately and make the punishment
fit the crime. THE END |