It is too recent to forget that Belize hit a wall when the telephone company, Intelco, was not given “interconnection.” For the moment, let us forget the unknowns about Intelco and see it as an attempt by a progressive government to make an honest play at capitalism. For our purpose, just for a moment, we keep these things aside.
In his book, “with malice toward none”, former PM, Said Musa, wrote that his government challenged BTL’s monopoly (at the time controlled by foreign interests) because it wanted to “bring down rates…expand access throughout the country…provide a free internet in schools program.” You know that PM Musa really needs to expand on his book that holds no malice.
The first time most Belizeans learned that we had a written treaty, to treat British businessmen with great love, was when PM Musa “revealed” it to the nation on KREM’s WuB, to explain why Intelco could not get interconnection.
It is not a bad treaty. Belize really has to be honest about her birth, in 1981. We can talk about needing the British to remain in our boat. And we can talk about the fact that we are really, truly, the world’s baby. Thanks to the Guatemalan oligarchy, we did not sail into independence with all our macho. But, again, if we had, we could not have been, really, truly, the world’s baby.
Of course, the Intelco might not have been an honorable endeavor. We cannot let go of the propaganda that it was “a retirement plan for the boys”, which, on the ground, meant that Belize was about creating a few super-rich families. When we arrive there, it will not matter if our border, on any side, is a dotted line.
What we are certain of, and the evidence is on the ground, fixed, is that knowing we had such a treaty with the British, it was IMPOSSIBLE to give Lord Ashcroft majority shares in BTL. And it is IMPOSSIBLE to believe that there are people who still can’t see the disaster that awaits any country like ours that sails into the mouths of capitalist sharks.
You just don’t control these beasts. PM Said wrote: “…BTL in effect was able to smash its competition and thereafter proceeded to behave in a most arrogant and hostile way towards the government and the Public Utilities Commission (PUC).”
The UDP, with no consideration to the cost to the Belizean people, milked the PUP’s failure for cheap political gain. And that is how we ended up at the CCJ, losing millions and millions of dollars, on top of principal.
Our present government, after compounding the felonies, had a lot of face to say that Belizeans are complaining, in hindsight. Belizeans didn’t have the innards of those cases. When you have the innards of a case, and you say you are going to win, you win.
Belize has been let down by its educated elite, and they are still about their games. Lord Ashcroft should never have gained majority shares in BTL. No foreign company should own majority shares in any essential business in Belize, any monopoly in Belize, or any business in Belize that is large enough to seriously cause negative impact to our environment. People who talk “capitalist” need to understand that that system is run out of the barrel of a gun.
The end game of capitalism in non-European ruled countries is to secure cheap raw materials, for you-know-whom, and make a soft bed for the capital of you-know-whom to come in and exploit, and repatriate. Sure, a few First World educated people get cushy jobs. But the bottom line for the nation is return to colony status.
I still respect the treaty. We chose a peaceful path to independence, a great victory for civilization. All nations need allies, and you have to pay your way in this world. We have to pay for the rights we gained. To preserve these rights we have to be smart, and honest about what the world is. In this world, big business comes with a gun. They can come. But they must never control majority shares.
Harsh truth about capitalism
Nowhere is capitalism “better” expressed than in businesses that are illegal, and the best example of this is the drug trade. If people want to smoke weed, people will supply weed. People who supply weed have to take risks. The supplier of an illegal product risks all, including life, and will also kill, to deliver the goods and make their profits.
Capitalism is human expression at its most ruthless. If doctors discover, right this moment, that the coconut is really terrible for human health, and a “conscientious” government moves to outlaw coconuts, overnight we would see a change in the good, wholesome citizens who make their living off selling coconuts. This change would cause many of them to end up in jail. And that would only be the beginning of the descent for those in the coconut water, coconut oil, and kot-o-broot business. Some of them will probably lose all their decency.
Some people have questioned the value of certain religions in our country. If we are to judge by the end product, on the ground, we would say that something is wrong with us. A good demagogue might be able to nail the churches as the culprits. My gudnis, can you see clergy going ballistic if all religions were outlawed in Belize?
Jesus really more Bahá’í than Judean
The Jews of the Bible justified violence to gain their ends. They had a simple formula. When they lost, they weren’t doing right by God. When they won, it was because God was blessing their violence. The world is grateful to the Bible Jews for their many contributions. We have to be forgiven if we don’t buy into their formula. We are not to be blamed for loving peace. It’s because a Man was born of the Jews who did not subscribe to that expression of the basest human instinct.
The modern Jews justify violence to gain their ends too. These Jews haven’t known defeat because whenever they go out to fight, god is on their side. This god’s name is the United States of America. The USA has been a god since World War II, which they entered at a very strategic time. The Allies were near spent, having been in battle against the Axis powers since 1939. The USA entered the war in 1941, more than two years after it started, and they emerged a God.
The USA emerged as the greatest winner in WWII. This USA has done a lot of good things with their power, and a lot of bad things, since they gained “god” status. One of the bad things the USA has used its power for is to support everything the modern Jews do.
Understandably, it was not a great scene for all, when the world powers carved up Palestine to make a homeland for displaced Jews. The Palestinians, naturally, tried to get back land that was taken from them. The modern Jews, with the backing of the USA, beat them back.
This was a moment for the modern Jews to be magnanimous. They should have given back the land which they “won” in the 1967 war. But they don’t roll that way. They kept the land they won in the war, and then they grabbed for more, and more, and more.
Jesus the Christ condemned violence. People who call themselves Judeo-Christians go to great lengths to show the similarities between the Jews and Jesus. But they completely ignore the differences between Jesus’s Gospels, and those found in the books of Moses in the Old Testament. People are good at telling themselves things, and believing them. It really isn’t possible to be Judeo, and Christian.
All religions are related. If you read the different prophets, and Jesus Christ, their views on things are so, so, so similar. Of course, in one way the Judeans and the Christians are “more closely” related. This is because Jesus was an actual living, breathing Bible Jew. We know how this story ended up. The Bible Jews, who extolled violence, put to death the Jew who didn’t.
We know He forgave them for their crime. But we have to believe He weeps when He sees how they are punishing and murdering His Palestinian brothers and sisters. The Netanyahu Jews are doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to them. The Nazis had the guns and they murdered the Jews. The Jews have the guns and they are murdering the Palestinians.
The Netanyahu Jews (Judeans), and some Evangelicals (so-called Judeo-Christians),have no qualms about using violence for their narrow ends. These two groups supported the massacre of 200,000 of our brothers and sisters in Guatemala, just a couple decades ago. I made the separation, “some” Evangelicals, because I have to make sure that our beautiful brother, Jimmy Carter, gets no taint from these crimes. Jimmy Carter is an Evangelical, and he is not down with what Netanyahu is doing.
If you look at the Christians, the Judeans, the Muslims, and the Bahá’ís, only one of these groups can claim to have never used violence as a means to forward their religion. That group, of course, is the Bahá’ís. But maybe that’s because the religion hasn’t been on the earth long enough yet.
There are some Christians who feel very guilty about violence in their past. One such group of Christians is the Catholics. There are others. But the Catholics are especially penitent about their wickedness. A friend of mine pointed that out to me one day. He said that guilt, and Catholic, are synonymous. I believe.