Why not be tested?

May 29, 2004

Dear Sir,

Virtue! Sweet virtue.

To see our Parliamentarians, yea! shining like knights of old. Bravely the UBP throws down the gauntlet. ?Will you be tested? Do you have virtue? Or are you tainted?? The challenge finds the noble PLP not daunted, nay! Back they cry ?Be tested for alcohol! It is you who may be tainted by hideous drink!?

So the contest continues ?pon high Parliamentary hill, in Sahshuns House. And we who are led by this noble band gaze on enraptured, saying each one to the other, ?Who are these brave who would test their virtue in this dire contest of their morals??

A cynic pokes up his awful head and says: ?Better that they should reform the drug laws that give us our huge prison population, than pretend to have standards few believe in. Better they should educate children than give them absurd examples. Better that they should do something than trumpet their ridiculous virtue. Better they should formulate something resembling a plan than bellowing at each other. Better someone should protect our privacy than send spies out to cocktail parties and clubs. and intrude on people?s lifestyle.?

Good citizens of Bermuda, this thorny miscreant, he disturbed our viewing of our lordly leaders in the lists. We as your agents Oh Bermuda! did lift him bodily and throw him in the harbour, where fish may hear his ribald nonsense before we will do anything about it.

Thanks to the youth

May 25, 2004

Dear Sir,

So often we hear about the negative activities of our young people therefore it is with great pleasure that we have this opportunity to point out some of the positive.

To those students of East End Primary School, St. George?s Preparatory School, Elliott Primary School and Purvis Primary School who turned up to assist in the Keep Bermuda Beautiful Island-Wide cleanup in St. George?s on Saturday May 22, we say ?thank you?. You showed such enthusiasm while working that the adults were encouraged to press on in the heat. To all the teachers who took the time to hand out the invitations to the children and show up on that morning and to the parents and friends, we also say ?thank you?. We appreciate all the efforts put into making this event a success.SENATOR KIM SWAN

SENATOR KENNETH L. BASCOME

A big no-brainer

May 13, 2004

Dear Sir,

I have respected your excellent columnist Calvin Smith?s ability to reason and argue effectively since we were colleagues in the civil service in the 1970s. But in chiding me for my thoughts about Cuba in his column yesterday, I think he?s backing a very lame horse.

He says that instead of paying attention to American expressions of discomfort about our relationship with Cuba, we should fight for the principles of democracy. We have an obligation, he says, ?as a Christian nation striving to create a viable democracy to resist attempts by any power to undermine the basic principles of democracy?.

I have some difficulty with that language. The principles of democracy were enshrined in Bermuda?s constitution in 1968. There wasn?t much difficulty, as I remember it, agreeing among ourselves that a democracy was what we wanted to be, and we?ve been about as stable an example of the breed as can be, ever since. So ?striving to create a viable democracy? is not a fair description of Bermuda?s political state at the moment. Mr Smith was using emotive language in order to make it look as if that nasty old American Consul General was trampling on a very much more delicate flower than we can claim to be, when he took us to task over Cuba.

Neither is it fair to suggest that the United States, in warning us off, is trying to ?undermine the basic principles of democracy?. The American government?s difficulty with Cuba has an historical, cold war dimension too well known to need recounting. Now that the cold war is over, the US is understandably uncomfortable with a country on its doorstep whose government, unlike its one-time Soviet allies, still clings to its communist ideology and still routinely violates its citizens? human rights in order to retain power. The US feels that countries in the region that enter into agreements with Cuba are, by implication, themselves undermining democracy by lending legitimacy to Mr.Castro?s tyrannical way of doing business.

The United States has a right to tell us what it thinks about our friendship with Cuba, and has a right to back away from its relationship with us if it thinks we?re making the wrong choice. If Bermuda feels the US Consul General used undiplomatic language in pointing that out to us, it might be reasonable to complain about him and ask for some official US clarification of our position. But it is not reasonable to huff and puff and say he was trying to undermine democracy in Bermuda?that?s childish and obviously false.

Choosing what to do about Cuba has everything to do with common sense and self preservation, and nothing to do with standing up for rights and freedoms ? we?ll be no less free no matter what we choose to do. But if we choose to continue to thumb our collective nose at the United States, there is a possibility that we might find ourselves still free, but broke and struggling for survival into the bargain. We gain nothing of any great value from a relationship with Cuba. We stand to lose everything if we lose our friendship with the United States. As decisions go, based on those political factors that are in plain sight, this has to be one of the biggest no-brainers of all time.

Mr. Smith said that in my column, I based my description of ?Mr Castro?s wickedness? on the claims of Cuban exiles and information from US intelligence agencies. That?s not correct. I used material from Human Rights Watch, Reporters Sans Fronti?res, the United Nations, the US State Department and the Global Policy Forum, which I thought was a reasonably well-rounded group. I could have used dozens of other sources to shed light on Mr. Castro?s activities, because there is pretty widespread agreement in the world that despite his image as a quaint and charismatic old tilter-at-windmills, Mr. Castro is a villain who has no respect for human rights or the principles of democracy.

Yet Mr. Smith, apparently without any sense of irony, wants us to fight on Mr Castro?s behalf against the United States, which was the birthplace of modern democracy and is one of our oldest and most valued friends. For what it?s worth, Mr Editor, I think my characterisation, a few days ago, of the PLP Government?s Cuban policy as ?breathtakingly careless of our future? was just about right.