FIS Group: We did nothing wrong

April 13, 2005

IT is extremely unfortunate that the Mid-Ocean News has persisted in publishing "libellous," "defamatory" and grossly inaccurate information regarding my firm, FIS Group, and its work with the Bermuda Government on behalf of public pension fund investments that benefit the citizens of Bermuda.

At no time has FIS Group been involved in compensating public officials in return for contracts with their governments, or so-called "pay-to-play schemes". At no time has FIS Group sought to influence government decisions regarding investments in favour of any particular person or investment firm. At no time has FIS Group had any improper or illegal dealings with government officials or investment brokers.

Furthermore, in a letter dated March 15, 2005, FIS Group's counsel, George Bochetto, cautioned both the Mid-Ocean News and The Royal Gazette regarding several prior instances of inaccurate and unprofessional reporting.

Nevertheless, the publication of false and libellous statements regarding my firm has continued in the Mid-Ocean News' April 1, 2005, article entitled "'Pay-to-play' . . . the price of the 'circle of influence'."

Once again, the reporting in this article was in blatant disregard of the facts as well as the common journalistic practices of source verification and balanced reporting.

As a result of the false and misleading statements that the Mid-Ocean News has published regarding FIS Group and me, FIS Group has referred these matters to local counsel for responsive action in due course. Accordingly, please direct any further questions to our counsel, M.A.H. Cottle, Gibbons Company Building, Suite 104, First Floor, 10 Queen Street, Hamilton HM 11, Bermuda; Tel: (441) 278-3825.

FIS Group is proud of the results it has achieved for Bermuda's pension funds, as well as its work with other governmental entities. We are profoundly disappointed that the Bermuda press has sought to twist facts to construe our investment consulting and government dealings as anything other than upstanding.

TINA BYLES POITEVIEN

Chief Executive Officer & Chief Investment Officer, FIS Group

Philadelphia

What can Papua New Guinea tell us about Independence?

April 12, 2005

I WORKED in Papua New Guinea (with the Canadian Peace Corps) for four years from 1987 until the end of 1990. The majority of the people were wonderful, kind but very poor. However I learned as much from them as I gave.

There was endemic corruption in the government, which became worse and worse. I still hear from some of the students that I taught and apparently the country is not in very good shape. If anything it's worse off now than when I was there.

The monetary unit, the Kena, was worth more than the American dollar in 1987. Now it is worth 32 cents. I returned for a visit in the mid-1990s and there were no more roads than when I left.

When I was there, I was told there were 250 different dialects. The infrastructure is chaotic and next to non-existent. Villages are so remote that they don't know how many people are in the country.The people are very clever and there is a university, but they become so frustrated at the government with regards to pay and many other things, that they leave their professions and go back to live in the village and raise crops.

So much for the Papua-New Guinea member of the United Nations Decolonisation Committee giving information on Independence for Bermuda.

ANN SIMS, BSCN, FNP, RN

Clean up the rubble on the trail

April 11, 2005

THE article in the Mid-Ocean News on Friday, April 1, by Dr. Edward Harris, prompts me to write this letter to you.

On June 15, 2004, I wrote to the Department of Works & Engineering concerning a truckload, (yes, a truckload) of rubble that had been left on the Railway Right of Way after a roadside wall had been rebuilt.

I considered that this was spoiling an area that had just been built as a "scenic area", both for tourists and the local populace. I enclose a copy of this letter.

I take note of Dr. Harris' comments in his article, that it would appear to him that "no officials are in charge of these public areas" and that "trashing of our own backyard is being repeated all over Bermuda". I would have to agree on both counts.Since my letter to Works & Engineering was never acknowledged, and the rubble still remains, I have to assume that my letter was trashed.

LESLIE BARRETT

June 15, 2004

The Roads Engineer

Works & Engineering Dept.

Dear Sir,

I REFER to that length of the Railway R.O.W. between the Bethel AME Church and Shelly Bay.

Many months ago a length of roadside wall (opposite Commonland Point Rd.) was rebuilt. The stone of the old wall was knocked down onto the foreshore where it still remains. A few weeks ago, the Parks Department cleared away the waste that had accumulated after Hurricane Fabian on this stretch of R.O.W. This has made a great improvement and in fact, prompts me to write this letter.

I am informed that it cost Government in excess of $200,000 to create this "scenic walk" for the benefit of both tourists and the general public. In my opinion the rubble which you have left, of which there is possibly one truck load, does nothing to improve the scenic qualities of this walk.

I trust that you will make some effort to clear away this trash.

LESLIE BARRETT

Williams shows narrow vision

April 18, 2005

IRONICALLY there is much that Mr. Williams and I can agree on based on his most recent Commentary and, I certainly enjoy the discussion (Mid-Ocean News, April 15). It seems however, the "devil is in the detail". Certainly the general thrust of his argument concerning his need and, that of many black people, to identify with his black heritage and ancestry, I understand; and, that our cultural perspective and mind-set is strongly formed by the cultural environment within which we live and have been brought up.

But I must stress ( and I speak from a great deal of personal experience gained from living in other cultures, including his own), not entirely so. God gave us a mind and free will to choose for example between right and wrong. Not all Germans were Nazis.

In his case, he has a perspective and world-view of a black person living in, and resenting, a Western culture that is largely dominated by, naturally, a white European mind-set. An understandable, if not balanced, point of view to which I am partially sympathetic.

But not all black people think as he does. As I hinted at in my last letter, I would suggest that most black people in the West, while not denying their black heritage and ancestry now, quite naturally and as one would expect as time goes by, identify more strongly with, say, their American culture and see themselves as Americans who happen to be black. Similarly I would suggest, as do most black Bermudians with Bermuda.

As for alleged "British cannibalism", this is something of a flight of fantasy and a red herring; a diversion upon which I don't want to dwell; the Welsh Triads to which Mr. Williams refers and, upon which I am by no means an expert, was a mnemonic aid and rhetorical device to Welsh folklore, literature and poetry.

They encompassed such probably mythical figures as King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Facts now clearly demonstrate that the peoples of Britain in the first centuries AD were very advanced and relatively sophisticated and civilised for the time. So let's put that savage cannibals nonsense, as a tool of argument to bed.

It is to his credit that he recognises that without the connivance of the African people themselves, the slave trade would arguably not have flourished. It should also be said, and where he stopped short, was that slavery existed in Africa long before the arrival of the Europeans.

It was practised largely by the Muslims. And still is to this day. Along with the genocide against the African people in the Sudan by the Government and it's supporters, the Arab militia.

We can argue the rights and wrongs of colonialism all day long and still only ever agree to disagree, dependent on a mind-set that suits our perspective.

But I again assert, colonialism wasn't all bad and, in the light of the state today of many of the once colonial nations probably far better than what they have now. I can certainly understand the motivation behind the Mau Mau, if not the atrocities.

But to apply today's thinking to that of 200 to 300 years ago, as those from Mr. Williams perspective and those in the left wing liberal fraternity do, is to compare yesterday's apples to today's oranges.

To quote Mr. Williams own words, "cultural and social development is largely a question of time and circumstances in which we live". Precisely. To suggest that I used the examples of Newton and Wilberforce and, many many others, as isolated examples with which to deny or mitigate Britain's role in the slave trade, is not so, as a careful study of my letter will show.

What I said was, after Mr. Williams introduced religion into the discussion was that, as result primarily of sustained pressure and lobbying over a 30-year period by prominent Christians, that this evil trade was abolished.

Yes indeed there was also very much an element of enlightened self-interest on the part of the plantation slave owners but, that should not diminish or deride the role of those opposed to slavery on Christian moral grounds, and for its abolition in the British colonies. To do so is parochially mean-minded and churlish at best.

For me, their role represents and symbolises the major part that Christianity has played in the reform of cruel and evil practices such as slavery and in the general advancement and betterment of peoples lives generally.

This was and is true where ever true Christian compassion is allowed to exert its influence; despite its abuse, misuse and the corruption of its teachings by many, to justify there own selfish actions.

Christianity was at the heart of the Emancipation of black people from slavery, through the American Civil War and Abraham Lincoln and onto the Civil Rights Movement in the 60s and Martin Luther King Jnr. In place of the word reparation, Mr. Williams now substitutes the word atonement and the idea of penance. As I said, I think that the practicality of the implementation of reparation today, would make it almost impossible. There are also very strong legal arguments against which I am not qualified to expose.

But with regard to atonement, I think that Mr. Williams comes up short on his Biblical theology. Only Christ, through his sacrificial death on the cross for all, was the sacrificial atonement for our sins, including the sin of slavery. As with our personal salvation, the Bible does not teach penance as a prerequisite to forgiveness or to forgive; only faith in Christ.

Penance is a teaching and has no place in the teaching of Christ or the Bible. Forgiveness is probably the hardest of all Christ's teaching to grasp yet the most profound and liberating. Repentance, yes, but then, how can a present-day government repent for the past actions of others over which it has no responsibility, other than symbolically?

With regard to Bermuda's Independence; surely this is a question for all its people to decide by way of a referendum? But to present Bermuda as a colony suffering under the oppressive harsh boot of British colonialism, as Mr. Williams seems to infer, is nonsense and purely emotional prejudice and not reality.

And surely Independence is not a decision to be taken because of racial prejudices, after all, apart from numerical superiority, black Bermudians are no more indigenous to Bermuda than white.

So while Mr. Williams has no need to apologise for feeling emotional on the general issues of race or, to identify with black people everywhere, he should be cautious in allowing his emotion to feed his prejudices at the expense of truth and reality. I would sincerely hope that one day he reaches the point when that emotional identification is able to transcend race and colour and is applied to the plight of all humanity, for whom there is only one answer and that is Jesus Christ. But then, not knowing him personally, perhaps I am selling him short.

But I can only speak as I find, and the undoubted perception that Mr. Williams gives, is that of a narrowness of vision that, for a small island, that is Bermuda, is divisive, unhelpful and I know, largely unrepresentative. To paraphrase Mr. Williams, to say anything less would be a failure on my part.

BRUCE STEVENS

Reading, England