MUSING For MAY

Post date: Jun 4, 2009 12:51:15 AM

1. Eugene Bariteau, the once head of gender relations at the university is a national but not born in Barbados. She says that she was a little poor girl and she was given the opportunity and now she is the deputy principle of the Cave Hill campus. She takes her example as a normal explanation of how any Kittician or Vincentian or St. Lucian can rise to the top in West Indian society but that is not so - it depended on values for Dr. George Belle is a Barbadian and from a more affluent class, knowledgeable and did not make it as deputy.

Reminds me of a joke: little Rosemary up in tree and mischievous brother runs and says mommy Rosemary up in the tree and she got a hole in her panties and Rosemary laugh because she does not have on no panties - it is a crude version of the emperor clothes. They do not know where they vulnerability and feel that they appear in public fully dressed.

2. All of a sudden Hilary Clinton cannot go along with the same policy, where Americans are obligated to Israel because Jews have the monetary system and most American’s foreign policy is about placating Israel. There is good opportunity, it seems, with Obama. He has got to a stage now that if Israel tries to assassinate him, it shall be worse internationally than Little Rock. The big question is will Obama do anything about man-made cocaine and heroine or will he keep the money laundering from them at home.

3. Frank Alleyne is said to be a brilliant man; all of his children have scholarships - for what it is worth - but his loyalty to the Democrats throws off his credibility. He props up every argument the party produces, when he should keep his mouth shut. That is what is so annoying with Dale Marshall and Mia, they pick at the unnecessary, they have got to cross the party line, when people say things, which sound good and are good.

4. Liz Thompson was put on television by Mia to answer question about the recent budget. She embarrassed herself. Most of her statements should be crossed out but in the debate in the Senate she said that there needs to be a serious look at probation, to be careful with convictions and the way the death penalty is imposed because people can go to the gallows on confessions beaten out of them. If the DLP says that is a BLP attitude where can we go, are we to leave these suggestions to independent members, who have no clout at all? If we continue that way we going nowhere, we have to cross the party line, when it comes to doing the right thing, to go for the general good not the party.

5. Owen Arthur, in his budget speech last week talked above everybody’s heads especially the thirty people there including the Prime Minister, even Mia. It was cleverly worded and delivered for undergraduates - all Barbadians were undergraduates. He talked economic folderol (shenanigans associated with the theatre, to do with the glitz and glamour of the theatre, the part not to be taken seriously.) He made a sorry sight. He should have attacked the holes in Thompson’s policy, instead he delivered a theory.

When he turns up in a classroom he is at home with himself; all of his students will listen to him. Many of the questions he puts in exams he would have said and his students will repeat and turn a handle, like a Gestetner, on the degree mill - and an exact copy of the original comes at the other end and that is how a degree is got.

He is getting a pension for life his father’s rum shop is doing very well but he does not have any power; he is under Mia’s petticoat and he does not seem to realize it.

6. Ken Hewitt, in this week’s guest column in the Nation quoted at length and in full – that as all it was - almost plagiarism – the same thing Jesus said: “You saw me hungry and fed me not, when you saw me naked you clothed me not and you did not come and visit me.” Hewitt could get a place for typing. He wrote beautiful prose but it was by another author, Kahlil Gibran. As a successful accountant he can add figures but does he have the skill to write a column? After all it is poetry. It is sad to see certain people, who achieved a certain amount of education and progress because of their education allowed to be least than erudite. Like the emperors clothes it depends on, who says that they got on a good suit, when they are naked.

Such books are to be read for what they are worth, only a way of looking, not to prove a formula or solve our problems. Mahatma Gandhi had a vision, his vision was that India, Pakistan, Bangladesh was to be one country, he believed it, he fasted for it and he died for it. It was a philosophy for him and his followers but the world and his own people did not take that solution.

7. The Nation Newspaper can be hoaxed into nonsense – get some clown to find some old fables, put them together, write in perfect English, and it will be accepted and slipped passed for there will be nobody on staff sufficiently educated.

The paper is worst and hands can be wrung as much as is liked but that is what is wanted. People very critical of the Nation use the excuse to say that, at least, Harold and Roxanne did something because they kept it going but it would have been better if it had died. The number of pseudo-intellectuals occupying its columns is alarming. Intellectual priaprism, is what someone called it, a mental erection, which cannot be got rid of for satisfaction is so great with thoughts that it causes a permanent, useless erection for unlike masturbation that gets to orgasm there is nothing in priaprism. An erection can be got from not even anything physical, merely looking at a picture, not even intellectual, it is just part of the brain’s function or mal function.

The criteria for columnist is only an ability to maintain a flow of words. So many times, with the introduction of computers, they fill a space because a block of words fits. No longer is there sub-editing with things crossed out and arrows and such things - that went out with paste up - give them a telephone directory and say put it on page two and they will cut it up an put it on page two and it will look good.

8. I’Akobi Maloney’s death has been turned into a Rastafari paraded show and an attempt to legalize marijuana instead of a fight for justice. It is a hard thing to tell somebody that: “Your son was killed and you do not want to do anything about it.”

Too many in the lower order of classes are afraid to stir things up for justice because they lack courage and they rely on other people. They will say blindly: “I do not want to start anything.” They want someone to pull their chestnuts out of the fire. Some body else must do the stirring up for them especially when something is understood, which looks plausible about the wrong person in the sense that the person is felt to be inaccessible.

It requires a certain amount of moral courage to even pull up your children. So many these days live vicariously through their children and so find it very difficult to correct them; to correct them is to admit that they need correcting and not every body has that maturity.

The question is - is it human nature and are we built to be brave, when to be brave is not the easier way out? Is it human nature to flee and not be confronted with reality? It is a lot to do with apathy, ignorance and low self-esteem, not thinking they are deserving, academic qualification makes no difference for that is seen as an achievement, an investment.

That is why there is the leader of the pact and very often the leader should decide if it is safe for him to go in the front. A leader’s skills should be valued more than the people he leads and therefore there is no point to have his head cut off accidentally.

Bravery has to do with moral fibre. Unison Whiteman was in Barbados when Maurice Bishop was under house arrest and most people warned him not to return to Grenada for he would be surely killed but he said that it was his duty, he went back and he was butchered. Acts of bravery such as these are not to be known by the people.

The traditional right of passage in Africa, where a man must kill a lion is a test of bravery. The Zulu in South Africa gave up because if they had continued their fight with the Boers would have killed them all. Zulu still carry swords but for ceremony.

Some people are brave because they have not had a chance to think out the consequences of their action. They do not know Sharpsville, Tianaman Square. All sorts of people behave bravely under certain circumstance. Blanca Jaeger was in Nicaraguan with a United Nations team and rebels lined up men to execute them and she stood in front of the firing squad and said you will have to shoot me too. She was internationally known but that does not take away from her bravery or some people may say that she was stupid.

What interferes now is awe for law - retribution and penalties. If penalties are enforced people will not break the law if they are not enforced then people flout the law.

There are so many things called unsolved murders but somebody has the solution all it needs is a look in the right direction.

8. Things That Should be Left Alone

a. People want Pilly otherwise it would not have passed the first episode. Philly last show - Altman said that they all came here on different boats and now we are in the same boat. Are we in the same boat yet?

b. The BLP started an Independent Parish competition and now the DLP has to run out and do Heritage Festivals all over the island, just ritual.