“Babylon System is a vampire, sucking the blood of the sufferers.”
I’m getting increasingly intolerant of those ignoramuses that still abound whose brains and bellies are tagged ‘product of the USA’ or ‘made in the UK’ schooled in classical *‘Perkinsian’ economics, believing Britain better, trained to smooch the nether parts of political and religious empire, who scoff still in 2024 at the righteous cause of Reparation.
Reference to Wilmot Perkins Jamaica’s most celebrated Afro-Saxon painus (short for ‘pain in the …’) and apologist for the British Empire in the 20th century.
Without vision, conscience or agency, they like the rest of us witness the exponential polarization of global wealth, the slow and subtle but sure disappearance of the middle ground of the continuum and the insane power gap driving the mass of humanity into persistent poverty while creating a perpetual paradise for a few. Yet these thought leaders are content to kowtow unquestionably to the institutional designs of the imperialist impulse, never once asking, from Guyana to Jamaica, isn’t it enough that we’ve exerted ourselves and almost taxed our people back into slavery? Our debt to GDP ratios are trending toward all time lows, our productivity towards highs not seen for a long time; exactly when can we expect our dignity and dollar back?
Some of us in Jamaica remember a time when we looked at Guyana and wagged our tongues, their worthless dollar on the cusp of replacement for toilet tissue. Back then our dollar was stronger than the USD. Somehow, we relentlessly followed suit and now, like our Caribbean sister, no matter how we hop, skip or jump, we seem to have accepted the perpetual devaluation of both dollar and dignity as our lot in life. In fact, here in Jamaica it was when we were in the middle of one of our finest economic performances for a long time that we were suddenly and inexplicably ‘finsacked’.
For Guyana’s part, who finally has crawled to number one at the top of the pole of South American economic performance after 60 long hard years, during which length of time Venezuela invariably was king (who has now finally descended in deep dive to take Guyana’s traditional seat as dead last) you would think their dollar could reflect this economic feat and show a little reflation, even for the sake of their rural poor who use it so much? Still stuck at 200/1 against the USD? Give us time G, looks like here in Jamaica we’ll get there soon enough.
No applause from our so-called First World coaches and mentors so ‘heavily invested‘ in ‘helping out’? (whether us or themselves should have been abundantly clear by now). No instead, the bloodsucking, warfomenting, manipulators are here again, as all throughout the 70s and 80s, fomenting strife subtly through their corporations, turning traditional allies into enemies, stoking confusion in order that in the end, their bellies should be swollen with the natural resources of peoples they regard at best as exterminable pests should it come to that, in order to have their way.
We should by now, all of us, be able to sniff the tea. Know what’s up. Recognize who is on our side … and who is not. The ones I am beginning increasingly to despise are the local lackeys with the foreign mind who cowardly contribute absolutely nothing in the way of resistance, content to worship their green cards and contemn their countrymen. ‘From Haiti to Jamaica, why cant we just behave?’ Bad, unruly us.
Dunderheads, you really perceive no external connections here? None? The past is passed? Really? My patience is running thin, but lock away for a day and try cram the following self-respect course:-
We need to repair. Sooner or later, somebody will have to deal with the foreign and domestic threats to Caribbean viability, continuity and unity.
YeKengalé 