This gentleman, Dean Wayland (see his letter to the editor last Friday), was pretty harsh on the YES to the ICJ vote. Hn, those of us who don’t have the ledda skin kud-a-get tochiz. Anyway, let’s skip cruelty and jump to his suggestion that we populate the border.
The idea of populating the border is not a new one. I get the sense that most Belizeans are with the idea of us setting down some real roots along that border line. For sure it would deter our aggressive neighbors. But the environmentalists say we need full “tree” protection in the critical watersheds in the Chiquibul and the Columbia forests. They have prevailed.
Coming to his verdict against a YES vote, I’d like this gentleman, and others thinking like him, to give some more thought to the implications of a NO vote. Then he can come back and tell us why Guatemala is praying with heart, soul, mind, everything, that Belize says NO to the ICJ. I give the gentleman a little time. We’ll meander through some Guatemala notes, and some race talk, and things, to allow him space to check out their game.
GUAT NOTES: (1) Some time ago our neighbors sent a young man with a camera to make videos of select spots in The Jewel. I don’t know why this made some Belizeans get heati. We allow tourists to make these videos every day.
Guatemala needed a YES to the ICJ vote, for her purpose, and as everyone knows, a picture is worth a thousand words. They saw the advantage of showing the product, all the magnificence of this Jewel by the sea. The fellow did a good job. The audience was thrilled. Oh how they must have lusted, how the baaba must have drooled when they thought of the possibilities a YES to the ICJ vote might bring. The proof is in that vote. A whopping 97 to 3! We can bex if we want. When yu desirable yu desirable.
(2) Those Belizeans who keep insisting that Guatemala has “annexed”Sarstoon Island really have to check themselves. I bet these people spouting off “annexation” weren’t among the sturdy people who, under the leadership of Belizean hero, Wil Maheia, circled the island in the full view of the OAS while the belligerent Guatemalans looked on.
Cutting slack for “racist”white comedians in America
If you hate America you are advised to check out for a lee while. I must have watched Roseanne Barr in comedy, at some time, but I didn’t put her name to her face until she hib some rude words at Valerie Jarrett (a long-time aide for Barack Obama), and mainstream America decided the words were racist. I’ve followed the story, peripherally, not having the time to study it and decide if she was a bad or good person, in my books. She got off the hook when she said that she didn’t know that Ms. Jarrett was white. I didn’t know that either.
I believe that in this part of the world it is only in America that a person who is 1/16thnot Nordic,is not white. Some of those people they call Black in America, wouldn’t “pass” in Belize. Ha, their natural allies here would be the white Kriols and white Mestizos, and the Mennonites.
Some months ago I heard the artist, Ice Cube, explain to the artist, Bill Maher, why a white comedian can’t say “nigga,” but a black comedian can. Ice Cube is a great talent, but he was talking silly.
I don’t get to see everything and everybody that comes out of America, but years ago, when Richard Pryor said “n——”, there was the element of surprise. People had to pause, to think about it. We have. It was a moment in time, long gone now.
The N-word was never really a Belize thing, but I’ve read enough American literature/history and seen enough of their movies, to know that over there it has an extra painful meaning. It goes back to a time of the greatest evil perpetuated on this earth, for THREE HUNDRED YEARS.
Modern black people can’t feel the full force of this pain. So they should stop playing games. Like gays, all people have a right to do and say what they want in their bedrooms. But when you step out of your closet door, hold up your pants.
Okay, I’m a black person with slave forebears who has never lived America. But there’s less than a 1% chance they, comedians in America who are black, could make me change my views. It is disrespect to our ancestors to trivialize their pain, for a few dollars. If you toy with it, you trivialize it. If you trivialize it, don’t be hurt when others do too.
Facebook has its moments
Those of us, the thousands, who watched Fiddler on the Roof, remember when the villagers of Anatevka gathered around the one guy in the village who could read the Russian newspapers, waiting for him to read a bit of information he had told them was critical to their existence in that country. We recall how they got impatient with him as he skipped about on the incidentals, and then, finally, he said: … I read this. The “I read this” award goes to Austin Waight for this post on Yasser Musa’s fbpage: Ask the Israeli gov how they feel about an Independent Belize before u invite them into our Country.
Cooking gas is dangerous
A gas leak can lead to a disaster. That is why mercaptan, a smelly gas, is put into cooking gas. Some companies are not putting in the mercaptan. The Bureau of Standards should put in some stiff penalties for their overlooking the mercaptan, because a gas leak must be easily detected.
Time up, Mr. Wayland
First off, don’t let anyone bluff you when you know they don’t have any good cards in their hand. We know they don’t have any good cards because we have all the aces.
There are two reasons that jump out immediately when we think of why Guatemala would want a NO to the ICJ vote in Belize. One, they will still have the claim. We can think of the number of threads attached to that by looking at how they have used the claim in the past. They can actually add on to the “usage” if they win a NO vote from us.
Two, it is a diplomatic victory to die for. The most hurtful thread here is that she will say to the world, the entire world. See, we, mature we, good neighbors we, we took the path of peace to get back our land that was illegally stolen from us, and they, Belizeans, know they have no legal rights to the property so they were afraid to go to court.
Belize can kos the architects of the compromis to the ICJ. They premised on the facts of the case, solely on the facts, which are all in our favor. They did not consider the affront to the nation.
When Belize votes YES to the ICJ, Guatemala loses the claim. But she does not come out empty-handed. She will look like a nation ready to put her ugly, racist, fascist, murderous past behind her.
NO vote batting 33%
Belizeans who firmly say NO to the ICJ are standing on terra firma when they point out the “affront” built into the compromis. These people are actually forcing us to court, for our land. Ouch!
When they use other arguments to show why we are making a mistake to go to the ICJ, they are not making contact—with the ball. Guatemala’s claim to fame, based on old treaties Spain made, is just so way out there. Borrowing from the immortal Jamesie, dehn “ought to be ashamed.” The UN has already spoken, and what they said is, the Belizean people have rights here. Anyway, if they want to bring up Spain, we flat out swat that away with 1859.
When they use arguments about a cart road that they (British and Guatemala) “mutually agree conjointly to use their best efforts” to build, so that “the commerce of England on the one hand, and the material prosperity of the Republic on the other” can be “sensibly increased”, somebody has to remind them that this little business proposal was never a one-way street. Indeed, the always business-minded British could have been “bex” tu, with all the dilly-dallying in Guatemala. Seriously, this is just a “straw” the anti-treaty (1859) Guatemalans clutched on to, to keep their fever going.
I have heard some of these people throw in the unfounded fear of litigation. If we are scared because of what we see in murder cases in Belize, notice that the FACTS (and the FORENSICS) don’t reach court. If we are “litigation”-scared because our government lost every case at the CCJ, notice that our government was using the cases for cheap (expensive to us) political mileage. You would have to be as blind as a bat to not have noticed that.