CABLE AND WIRELESS – The Slimey Limies!

Post date: Aug 22, 2009 12:08:07 PM

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 9^th 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 16^th 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