HERE is nothing like a full-blooded attack on the opinions of a columnist to test your mettle. Quite frankly, it has long been a disappointment of mine that more readers don't challenge my views; after all, I do not consider everything that I produce to be Holy Writ ? the last word in newspaper commentary.

However, I have always maintained ? and this goes back to the days when I was a frequent writer of Letters to the Editor ? that I ought to be able to defend my opinions at least once should I should come under fire, otherwise I shouldn't express an opinion at all.

So it is in that spirit that I respond to the comments of my two detractors that appeared in last week's edition of the , a letter writer who signs himself "Iconoclast" and Mr. Khalid Al-Wasi.

Let me begin with "Iconoclast" and his views on that thing that I do around Christmas, where I take considerable licence with lots of people around here ? mostly the political leadership of this country. I would like to take credit for the style in which I write my Christmas gift-giving but I won't out of respect for the man I pioneered this type of seasonal column.

I am speaking of the late Mr. Walter Robinson, lawyer, civil rights advocate and former leader of the then-Progressive Labour Party Opposition. Mr. Robinson is one of my Bermudian heroes, who kept the faith in terms of seeking the further democratisation of this country right up until his death.

Mr. Robinson used to write as a columnist for the now defunct newspaper. Those older Bermudians who remember him will tell you that he did not mince his words and his Christmas column was a lot more barbed than anything I have attempted in the years since I have been writing for the .

In any event, even though my Christmas column was written in a tongue-in-cheek manner, I "gave" Premier Alex Scott a trip to the United Nations with a clearly serious intent. I am an advocate of Bermudian Independence.

And it is my opinion that the Progressive Labour Party Government, despite what it says about the prospects of Bermudian Independence, is no longer a serious proponent of sovereignty in the true sense that it taught me when I was a political novice hanging around the then-PLP HQ in the '60s and '70s and being educated as to why this country should seek its Independence.

So, yes, every time I consider it is the right time to push Bermudian Independence, I am going to do just that in any form which I choose. And, yes, I do continue to support the United Nations, made up as it is by a majority of ex-European colonies which now have their national Independence.

"Iconoclast", wrapped up as he is in his sense of moral superiority, chooses to forget that the whole world said No to the war in Iraq but the Americans and the British went ahead anyway in a raw demonstration of the arrogance of power.

, Saddam Hussein is a monster but yesterday, when he played the role of a buffer state between Iranian Islamic revolution and the interests of the West in the Arab oil states, he was armed to the teeth by the US and UK, sold all manner of weapons by the leading producers of arms.

Now the US and UK find themselves to be in what looks like a strategic quagmire in Iraq. The British, in particular, should have known better having unsuccessfully attempted in the early 20th century to pacify the same country after it was carved out of the former Ottoman Empire at the end of World War One.

"Iconoclast" talks about two-thirds of the UN's member states being corrupt dictatorships. But he does not speak about the many dictatorships and murderous regimes supported by those Western countries like the US and UK which wanted strategic footholds in nations or regions where they had economic or military interests.

The US and UK put puppet regimes in power to loot the natural resources of poor nations. Which countries supported the Shah of Iran, Marcos of the Philippines, the military leaders of Indonesia and Noriega of Panama before he fell from grace? Which countries wanted to have a "constructive engagement" with apartheid South Africa even while Nelson Mandela remained imprisoned? Those who pretend to be morally superior to the world's emerging nations, people like "Iconoclast", only need to go back one or two hundred years and look at the countries they hold up as beacons of democracy and liberty to see they went through growing pains, too.

Where was a respect for human rights and the so-called rule of law when it came to the work houses and child labour in a newly industrialised Britain in the 19th century? And what, really, was the difference between the grief of an African mother who lost her child to the slave trade and the grief of a mother in England who lost hers to the hangman's noose for stealing a piece of bread because the child was hungry?

Even if we do see an outpouring of aid from the wealthier parts off the world in the wake of the disasters in Asia today, will this bring down the trade barriers that keep the poor nations of the world poor? These trade barriers create the effects of a thousand tsunamis every day for what the anti-colonial, liberation theorist Frantz Fanon called, the wretched of the earth.

let me turn to the opinions of Khalid Al- Wasi. Mr. Al-Wasi, I am afraid that we will have to agree to disagree on this aspect of black Bermudian history. For I do not see any distinction between the story of born black Bermudians and those who originally hailed from the West Indies. One segues directly into the other in a seamless manner as far as I am concerned. There are two great movements which came out of the black community which led to the further democratisation of this country ? the trade union movement and the political labour movement. But Mr. Al-Wasi seems to want to deny history. He has come up with a third force which he contends has never received proper credit for the role it played in the evolution of both the black community and Bermuda in general, namely the black business community.

But the black business community, just like the black community as a whole, has for a long time been politically divided. And it is an open secret that in the 1950s and '60s some in the black business community believed the only way forward was to collaborate with the political status quo. They did so while other black entrepreneurs who remained with the political struggle paid a heavy price. Did I ever state the history of black people in this country began with the arrival of West Indians? I don't think so. And neither does Ira Philip's official history of the Bermuda Industrial Union. Mr. Al-Wasi is indeed confused. There is no historical evidence that the nascent black business class had the potential to liberate the black community as a whole. It was the labour-based political struggle which has brought us this far.

However, if Mr. Al-Wasi remains concerned about the portrayal of born black Bermudians in Bermuda's history books, let me share this with him. At the same time the official history of the BIU was being written, I was involved with a co-author in writing another book ? this one on the theme of the development of the broader trade union movement in Bermuda beginning with the Teachers Union, the first one set up here,