January 28, 2006

GREETINGS in the name of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie, King of kings, Lord of lords, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah and Root of David.What is your problem, Alvin Williams?

You say in your latest Commentary that the contents of the letter of Eritrean Berhane Araya must have surprised me (Mid-Ocean News, January 27). Why are you trying to shift the emphasis from yourself?

That letter was addressed to you, Mr. Williams, not me. I know the history of the Horn of Africa. I know the history of Ethiopia's relations with Somalia and Eritrea. And I know the history of Cuba's brutal military oppression in the region as well as what Castro does to persecute Afro-Cubans at home. It is you who clearly do not know what you are speaking about.

For Berhane Araya wrote to scold you for misrepresenting the downpressor role of the heathen-Marxist Cubans in Mother Africa. Brother Berhane Araya rightly pointed out that the Cubans were the "Gurkhas of the Russian Empire" — godless mercenaries who went where their masters told them and killed African people for Moscow's gold.

He went on to say Eritrea did not gain its freedom from Ethiopia because of Cuban intervention, Mr. Williams: Eritrea's Independence was repeatedly delayed because the Cubans fought alongside the heathen-Marxist forces of Mengitsu Haile Meriam, who overthrew Emperor Haile Selassie and attempted to re-impose the "yoke" of Addis Ababa on Eritrea.

It is you who have repeatedly described the Cubans as allies of the African people in their struggle for liberation, not me. It is you who have called the Cubans friends of Ethiopia, despite the fact they murdered His Imperial Majesty. It is you who speak of Fidel as your hero despite the fact his Cuban soldiers desecrated Emperor Haile Selassie's body and hid it beneath a toilet.

Bermudian youth loves and venerates the Rastafari culture and people and music. Bermudian youth want to know about Jamaica, not Cuba. They want to hear the positive Rastafarian message of black enlightenment and black empowerment.

So why does Bermuda's Government enter into a cultural agreement with Cuba? What will the Bermuda youth learn of uplifting from the heathen-Marxist Cubans you want to bring here, Mr. Williams?

What will they learn of love and tolerance and acceptance from a regime that not only murdered the Emperor but now is trying to wipe out the Rastafari people in Cuba?

What will they learn of re-education, truth and justice for black people from Castro and his secret police who believe in none of these things?

In 2002 the first — and last — major Rastafarian gathering was held in Cuba. Between March 22 and 29 the Rastafarian congregation left Havana and crossed the island from west to east to reach the mountains of El Cobre and establish the Official Rastafari House in Cuba.

This resulted in a major crackdown against Rastafarianism and the Rastafari people, some of whom are still in Castro's jails after being arrested almost four years ago.

Sister Lily Mihirete Amlak keeps the Rastafari community around the world informed of events in heathen-Marxist Cuba. She said this in her newsletter about what followed on from the Cuban event: "The repression against the Rastafari people has been very evident. After this event, police started to question some of the Rastafari brothers and sisters. Some brothers have been put in jail for carrying ganja, losing their locks and freedom. A brother and his queen, in front of their two children, were beaten up by the police because their Rastafari values.

"Waves of tribulations and repression have covered Rastafarian people in the Cuban island. Many ones have been put in jail, the system is using the excuse of the herbs to keep Rastas locked up without a trial, without a proper legal defence lawyer, and even in many cases without physical evidences against them.

"So again and again, the hand of Babylon is using any excuses to try to eliminate the Rastafarian spirit of Community and Oneness. The outcome in the spiritual aspect of it is that, we all know, through tribulations we can become a better and wiser person. We can learn and grow into higher levels of overstanding. Something positive will come out anyway from all this. With HIS Blessings.

"It has been nearly four years since many ones from the Rastafari community in Cuba, valuable and positive ones, were taken captive by the police. The conditions inside the jails are unbearable and do not allow the ones to practise the Livity of Rastafari. Their rights have to be considered and acknowledged by the Cuban government, something that is not at all manifesting itself right now. We will fight in anyway to help this happen, and justice can manifest at last for Rastafari people over there.

"We pray for our brothers and sisters that are suffering the harsh and factual brutality from the enemies of the Almighty. May His Imperial Majesty guide the ones and give them strength to keep the faith high, to maintain the Vision of Freedom, Redemption."

Think about Sister Lily Mihirete Amlak's words, Alvin Williams. Think about your oppressed brothers and sisters in Cuba before you give yourself to false Oneness with Fidel Castro and his heathen-Marxist ways.

And as for the last lines in your Commentary, Alvin Williams — "Ras Judah needs to do some more reading and studying of the world in which we live because often what we believe to be truth is not the truth." — are you sure you are not speaking to yourself? For I do know the truth about Cuba. It is you who continues to believe that which is not true. You go to Cuba and see how long you are allowed to use the "free black mind" you boast of having, Mr. Williams. Freedom of thought and freedom of expression are against the law. Just ask the Rastafari brethren in Castro's jails. And this is what you and Alex Scott and Dale Butler want for the youth of Bermuda? The outlawing of free thought and upliftment?

I have said it before and I will say it again: If you and Mr. Scott and Mr. Butler want to live under that kind of "culture", then get a one-way ticket and go to Cuba and we will take the persecuted Cuban Rastafarian brothers and sisters in return. For no one wants Fidel to export his downpressor culture to Bermuda except you, Mr. Williams, and Dale Butler and Alex Scott.

Your support for Fidel and your willingness to ignore his persecution of black people in Africa and in his own country brings to mind something His Imperial Majesty once said: "Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph."RAS JUDAH

PembrokeDestructive influenceJanuary 27, 2006

I REALISE that not very many black people read your scathing Opinions. But for those of us who do, they would be both more readable and more convincing if you did not inject into them such remarks a: "Clearly corruption now exists in Bermuda on a scale hitherto unknown in the island's modern history." (Mid-Ocean News, January 27).For one thing it makes it very evident that you still do not have any understanding of the evil, corrupting and destructive nature of the racist system I grew up under. Nothing that this Government has done — even if it is guilty of every crime that you rage against — is as corrupting and destructive as the racism that destroyed so many of us and — no matter how far we have come — continues to exert a destructive influence on the Bermuda that exists today.

I am not prepared to excuse the wrongdoing of any Government but if were prepared to do so, I would point out that many in Government today spent their early years growing up under a Government that cared only for their own kind and cared nothing for them and theirs. Evil, corrupting and destructive lessons are all too easily learned.DR. EVA N. HODGSON, Crawl

No sense of decencyJanuary 29, 2006

THANK God somebody has the guts to point out what is going on in Bermuda today. Your last two Opinions, "Behold The Man" and "The Man (Who Would Be King)" (Mid-Ocean News, January 29) spell out in forceful and compelling terms what everyone in Bermuda is privately talking about — that the money this Government is not wasting, it is stealing from the taxpayer. That's what we have, folks — a Government with no sense of fiscal responsibility, no sense of accountability and, it would seem, absolutely no sense of decency. Welcome to a "New" Bermuda that is making the old one, whatever its flaws and failings, look increasingly good by way of comparison.

QUO FATA FERUNT, Sandys Parish

Czech it out . . .January 30, 2006

GIVEN Bermuda only spends a very tiny fraction of its enormous wealth supporting its own arts and artists, I am among the many Bermudians who remains perplexed as to why we have entered into a "cultural agreement" with Communist Cuba. This agreement results in the outflow of Bermudian taxpayer dollars to that dictatorship to support state-sponsored "cutural" (read propaganda) programmes deemed to be "friendly" to Fidel Castro's revolution (artists who follow their own muses rather than Fidel Castro — the novelists, film-makers, poets, musicians, dancers and photographers who don't celebrate Castro's programme in their work — are routinely turned into non-people and/or jailed).

As Gavin Shorto points out of his Pondblog web site this week, Castro remains a villain who runs an ugly, totalitarian state in which personal freedom and personal expression are constantly endangered. Gavin linked to the following story which would be laugh-out-loud funny if it wasn't so sad — and so sadly representative of the oppressive "culture" that Castro encourages and which Bermuda now wants to both encourage and subsidise: "Czech supermodel Helena Houdova was detained by police in Cuba after she was caught taking photographs in a poor suburb of Havana, she said in an interview published Friday. 'They held us for 11 hours, it was not nice at all', the blonde former Miss Czech Republic told the daily Dnes by telephone from the Cuban capital. 'They did not allow us to contact our embassy."

Houdova, now living in the United States, said she went to Havana on a humanitarian project for poor and handicapped children. The police 'even shouted that we were terrorists', she said. 'We are now under house arrest and we cannot go out of Havana before we leave Cuba.'

Relations between Prague and Havana are rocky as the Czech Republic is one of the leading proponents of a tougher international stance against Fidel Castro's regime."CULTURE VULTURE, City of Hamilton

Absurd statementJanuary 24, 2006

IN your last edition your columnist Mr. Alvin Williams makes some broad and sweeping statements which are not true. Strange, for Mr. Williams usually thinks before he writes. The broad statement that black and white in Bermuda are utterly different is, of course, absurd.We are all members of the human race, homo sapiens. In Bermuda most of us speak English. A great majority are Christians. We all have cassava or farine pie as our national dish, and we all enjoy salt codfish, particularly when eaten with all the fixings.

We all have a small island outlook. Nearly all of us attend or attended schools which were run in more or less the same way, and were faced with the same sort of major exams. Sailing is not just a white sport, and cricket and football are not just black sports. The fact is that we all belong to the same culture.

Nowadays more people are erasing racial boundaries by marriage. It is not true that white people failed to help the integration movement. The movement in its various manifestations was led by black people, but whites participated, particularly after the success of the theatre boycott — otherwise we would not have reached, peacefully, the happier culture we have today.

There were public meetings of blacks and whites, and private ones in private houses as well. Of course, there were whites who were opposed, just as in the United States the civil rights movement faced white foes, and the result was not reached without intermittent bloodshed.

A question about Cuba — if the education and medical systems are so good, why do so many want to risk their lives by leaving the island illegally? And why, anyway, is it illegal to leave Cuba without a permit?

What does "black" mean and what does "white" mean? We have no legal definition, for all legal definitions were ended by statute in the middle of the last century. There are no encompassing statements, for there are exceptions to them all. Did white people invent nasty meanings for "black" because of black people? It is far more likely that "black" gained its associations from the night - in the past a dangerous time to travel or work outdoors.

And, hey, Mr. Williams, if black is so bad, why do businesses and governments like to be "in the black"?W.S. ZUILL, SR. , Smith's Parish

Put up or shut up

January 26, 2006

AS someone who is sufficiently well educated to understand and enjoy your more esoteric editorials, I was particularly delighted with your Opinion "Behold 'The Man''" (Mid-Ocean News January 20) It is, as usual, forthright, well researched and far more down to earth than you usually are and therefore more understandable to the man in the street.Except by implication you did not, however, make the point that "P" and his cohorts are constantly telling us, the Bermudian people, that we do not understand:

1. What we are thinking / talking about.

2. How misguided our criticisms of Government/Bermuda Independence Commission, etc. are, and

3. What goes on in the big wide world around us.

What "P" and his supporters signally fail to understand is that: An Island /Country /Nation (!) of our size and population is never going to have a big voice in the corridors of World Power. There are many people in Bermuda (of all races, colours and creeds, including those who signed the paper supporting the Referendum on Independence) who are better educated, better qualified, with considerably more business experience and who have a very good idea of the benefits (none that are not emotional) and the dangers (of which there are many) of Independence.

"P" now says that he and his Government are going to tell us in 2006 why we should become Independent.

Really? Is he going to tell us:

[bul] What the real cost of Ambassadorial / Consular representation will be and where the Bermuda Independence Commission obtained its information on the cost of real estate / living etc. in, for example, the United Kingdom and the United States?

[bul] How we are to be represented in the many countries, where, without the UK, we will have no consular representation — and at what cost?

[bul] What Government plans to do to provide education / experience in Europe when that ability disappears on Independence — and at what cost?

[bul] Where Government is going to find the money even to fund the initial cost of Independence let alone the annual cost thereafter? Withdraw the $11 million from cricket?

[bul] How Government without the protection of the UK is going to fend off the predatory machination of e.g. the IRS of our major trading "partner"?

[bul] How Government is going to fund all the other things that are infinitely more urgent — housing, the elderly, education, etc., etc. — in other words how to finance Bermuda's future? Excessive borrowing, Income and/or Corporation Tax (including international business in spite of the Exemption letter of 2016)?

[bul] What checks and balances will be put in place to permit ever increasing corruption?

I could go on — and on — but these are the sort of things that we will want to know. Not more claptrap about Independence marking the end of slavery, giving Bermudians a pride in our country (most of us have that already). It is time for Government to put up or shut up — hopefully the latter.COPERNICUS, City of Hamilton Unadorned crapJanuary 28, 2006

FOR what it's worth, here's my two-cents on the latest Alvin Williams' flare-up. I used to enjoy Alvin Williams' columns even when I disagreed with his conclusions about Bermudian or international affairs. But it seems to me that Mr. Williams is now intentionally courting controversy and confrontation because he realises such ructions temporarily disguise the fact his Commentary has become little more than a vehicle for his discredited second-hand radicalism and his know-nothing first-hand observations. The concept, the execution and the content of the Alvin Williams Commentary column have become,simply put, unadorned crap.

Let me stress that, Mr. Editor: CRAP (we can use that word in public now the Premier has). His Commentary column is now crap if you care even moderately about truth or accuracy or fairness or being courant. His Commentary column is now also dangerous and hurtful crap in that it balms the ego of a man whose idle hours compel him to create this cesspool in the first place, in blind denial of opposing points of view, the historical record and rationality.

Providing him with a column is a stupid idea, allowing him to celebrate and perpetuate the urban myths and Nation of Islam-inspired racial / cultural myths he subscribes to along with his own increasingly illogical personal twitches.It is the raising to the level of notice the blathering and meanness of one who formerly would have had to make do with a perfectly adequate soapbox on a street corner but who now has, with your aid and abetment, an island-wide audience. You are enabling an ill-informed autodidact who truly believes every paranoid conspiracy theory he foams up in his brain-basin is worthy of dissemination and is as "valuable" as real facts and well-researched information.

His increasingly grotesque and off-target racial stereotypes (of all whites and those blacks who do not think like him — i.e. subscribe to his own militant philosophy) are as offensive as they are inaccurate. His sweeping and lazy generalisations are equally off-base. For instance, recently he claimed no whites took part in the effort to desegregate Bermuda in the 1950s and '60s? Really, Mr. Williams? Is that so? The fact we had largely peaceful social evolution rather than violent revolution during that time would seem to entirely invalidate this charge.

But since you actively continue to demonise all white Bermudians, it would never occur to you that when Sir Henry Tucker forged his pact with Sir Edward Richards to move Bermuda forward, he simultaneously commenced hostilities against the Victorian throwbacks on Front Street who wanted to keep the island a segregated and racist bastion. That he succeeded in defeating them and their reactionary views benefited all Bermudians, Mr. Williams, black and white.

And since you persist in characterising United Bermuda Party as a hotbed of unreconstructed racism, it would also never occur to you that the "Young Turks" who contested the 1968 General Election — the first under the two-party system and Universal Franchise — like Russell Eve, Ralph Marshall, David Wilkinson, Haskins Davis, Flip Galloway, Harry Viera, Kit Astwood, Bill Cox (who publicly renounced his father's segregationist beliefs to join the UBP and run under its banner) actively worked to rehabilitate and improve Bermudian society.

Someone like Dr. John Stubbs, in particular, was a tireless proponent for desegregation and the advancement of Bermudians' civil liberties from the 1960s right up until the day of his death. The fact that Dr. Stubbs defeated then-Progressive Labour Party leader Walter Robinson in 1968 in a constituency that was three-quarters black demonstrates his progressive views appealed to — and were supported by — blacks as well as whites. But when facts and events and individuals like Dr. Stubbs come along who challenge the veracity of "The World According to Alvin", Mr. Williams simply writes them out of history. I don't doubt that this will be the case as regards John Stubbs.

Alvin Williams is no longer even remotely credible as the moral arbiter he likes to present himself as. By trying to paint every white person in Bermuda as a potential Archie Bunker, he has only succeeded in making himself into the island's George Jefferson — an unintentionally ridiculous character who speaks, yes, pure crap.TERMINATOR, City of Hamilton