Godwin said (at GoB press conference Wednesday morning) that there is no loan. What we understood was that we were the GUARANTOR of a loan. Our GoB didn’t BORROW; our GoB GUARANTEED. We know that many, many, many GUARANTORS have been left holding the bag.
Picking sense out of nonsense, a group favoured by the then government, the PUP, failed in the hospital business, and the government, which had been wanton with DFC and SSB funds, so couldn’t go there, went out on a madabig limb and guaranteed a loan for them at the Belize Bank.
Fast forward to political trouble, and the people who failed with the hospital, sold or gifted the paper ownership to a new group, headed by a man from foreign. Enter a new government, handed the stewardship of the country so they could make things right. This new government stood by and for a decade or so allowed the new entity to run the hospital, collect profits if any, and most likely not make payments towards the loan our GoB guaranteed.
Our GoB has to explain why it didn’t take over the paper ownership of the hospital in 2008 and, why it didn’t take the bank to arbitration over the onerous interest on a suspect loan.
Jamaican beauty queen escaped her task
It is a wonder to me, why all the girls in these pageants are so tall. Tribes that don’t drink a lot of cow milk, get no consideration. Countries that have few tall females have a small talent pool to choose from. But, it is the people who own these pageants who determine the beauty standard; I have no vote there.
I think if I were a tall male, I would have been blown away by tennis star, Maria Sharapova, maybe. She isn’t high on my list. Tennis star, Venus Williams, isn’t high on my list either. Those girls could make a backcourt tandem in the NBA. I respect “Nero” when he looked at the girls through his pink lens and said: Too narrow in the hip. Beauty resides forever in the eyes of the beholder.
If I’m not watching a big ball game or reading a good book, I might watch a pageant. There’s a lot of glitter there, and the girls are all beautiful.
My, of the group on stage at the Miss Universe pageant, I thought Miss Jamaica, Davina Bennett, “had the body”, but I worried about the Joe McGanns and the Nick Dujons. These Jamaicans have plenty enough to feel breggin about already. It didn’t take me long though, to put aside my fear of those with the big chats from Kingston, Trenchtown, and Montego Bay. Jamaica was, and in some ways still is, the capital for here. I’m no ostrich. I handle the truth. And the truth here is that this Jamaican girl had the body. Go Jamaica!
You really have to wonder about some of the minds that lead Belize. In the movie, Field of Dreams, the writer says that if you build the ball field the great players will come. The writer did not say that a pretty stadium will “make” great players. The great players were already there. You there, you’re building the house from the roof down!
I’m not going to fight over a beauty contest, so I didn’t cry when Miss JA didn’t win. I was more concerned for a task I had set for her, after she got the crown. I was going to write her and ask for her to take on another cause, besides her championing improving conditions for the deaf.
There are good things in every culture, and there are bad things. Only a fool will perpetuate things that are not wholesome, things that do not, not serve the human race. Look, not everything that comes out of Jamaica should be repeated.
I disagree with women much of the time, but when one of them told me that she found the term, “blood klaat”, extremely offensive, and she explained to me what that is, I wholesale agreed with her. That is no way to talk. A tampon should not be a part of the everyday conversation of males. I think we should done wid dat.
Boat of Kerm and Scott dead flat in the water
It was very nice to see next to no one at the Evangelical show at the National Assembly steps on Tuesday. They were there to protest things they believe are going wrong in our country. Sometimes, it is a matter of traction. A subject has to be brought to the fore, and you have to show that you have the capacity to get things done. The matters on their agenda had been discussed for countless hours. And they, the pastors, know every leadership tactic in the book.
Kerm Thimbriel and Scott Stirm and their gang were advised to get off the hard line, but they had no give. On the matter of the Gay thing, why would a sane male CHOOSE to fall in love with another male? It is quite likely that many of them in that parade just need a little guidance. But it is clear that a few of them are WIRED.
A closet wasn’t designed for nefarious activities, but so many things in this world fall into misuse. I think we all prefer for there to be no elaboration on that score, so let’s get to the deal. Belizeans support the rights of Gays to a safe whatever-they-do inside a closet. Most Belizeans don’t support this whatever-they-do, but we are not going to exert ourselves there.
On this matter of the decriminalization of marijuana, for more than a generation the Evangelicals sat by and watched some of our young people get jailed, smeared for life, because of a little transgression with weed. They did nothing. If we judge some of the comments we have heard from that quarter since the decriminalization, we get the sense that they were totally happy with the total status quo.
You will understand why I’m so happy that they got no support on the weed matter in particular, when I tell you a little story about a colega of mine, from Toledo. We don’t know how God will judge souls; that’s not our turf. We human beings, we look at a person’s character. From my vantage, my colega, a poor brother with a lot of children, was a good man. But he had 20 or so marijuana plants. And that made him a guest at the institution on the Boom-Hattieville road for THREE sakin YEARS.
The miraculous 8th wonder of the world
My encyclopaedia says that the seven wonders of the ancient world are: the Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt; the Hanging Gardens of Babylon; the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, Greece; the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus; the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus; the Colossus of Rhodes; and the Lighthouse at Alexandria, Egypt. You know there’s an 8th wonder. I don’t know if it is an original comment, but I’ve heard Bill Lindo introduce USURY that way.
The 8th wonder is often referred to as “the pound of flesh.” In Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, Shylock, a person from the Jewish tribe, provided a loan and took a promise of a pound of flesh as guarantee. When the borrower defaulted, Shylock went to exact payment. In the story, Shylock considers the pound of flesh as literal, and to extract such payment will mean dismembering, or physically killing the borrower. This story ends with Shylock losing his case.
The German (and its allies) defeat in WWI led to the Versailles Treaty, which dismembered their lands, forced them to make reparations for the cost of the war, and limited their standing army. Jewish bankers were blamed for much of the economic woes in Germany after the war. The Nazis stoked their hatred of the Jews with the accusation that they were usurious.
The 8th wonder is an essential component of the capitalist system. Capitalism is a story of individuals amassing great wealth, a middle class, and great poverty. In capitalist countries that are super rich (they are the ones that profited hugely off the full scale rape of Africa and the Americas), their poor have enough to eat, a roof over their heads, and decent medical services and education for the masses. In capitalist countries that are materially poor, only the hope of the poor for a better tomorrow keeps these countries from falling into full scale chaos.
Take away the 8th wonder, and that system collapses. But, sometimes it is downright rapacious. Money grows off usury faster than it grows on trees.