A good friend and mentor of mine from a foreign land once told me that in his country the law profession attracted people who wanted education, but were too dumb to do the sciences. Not so in Belize. There is no shortage of lawyer “brains” sitting in our courtrooms, running the system.
So, how did we arrive at a society where murder and robbery and rape are commonplace? So, how did we arrive at a society where people who are poor think that if you want justice, you have to take the law in your hands?
Yap, our best brains are sitting on top of the system. No, the problem is not with the “brains.”
Jesus can’t be a Christian
Jesus argued that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to gain heaven. Wealthy Christians know a lot of speeches to explain why they get to keep their riches on earth.
The capitalist system is an excellent system if the capitalist’s joy comes from creating wealth, and in hiring people. When the rich man’s joy comes from having wealth and all that silver can buy, not sharing it with the masses, the capitalist system is in trouble.
If Jesus’ philosophy is to share it…and the rich man’s philosophy is to keep it, how can they belong to the same party? We know that they are Christians, so…
Waiting for the empowered Senate
The NGO’s made a brilliant choice when they elected Mr. Greg Ch’oc to be their man in the Senate…the new Senate that the new GoB promised. In a time like this it is important for us to hear a voice like Greg’s, a voice that has not been compromised by the…compromises of electoral politics.
Fourteen months after the 2008 elections, we still don’t have our new Senate. The government wanted to make some changes, increase the powers of the police, increase GoB control over oil and minerals, and other things (include the new Senate) and they tied them up in a package called the Sixth Constitutional Amendment Bill. That package has been bogged down in the courts almost a year now.
Did the GoB know that the empowered Senate would get tied up in the courts because of the other Bills? Treachery, or ignorance, we still don’t have our new Senate, the one we voted for. The UDP is crying out for some real opposition. They won’t get any in the House, where they hold a 25-6 majority. And the Senate can’t give them any because that tired old rubber stamp is still in place.
With the pressure mounting because of world economic woes, the worst thing our government can do is squander its political capital. They should split that Bill and give us our empowered Senate. Pronto.
Pro abstinence
There was a spot of trouble with my piece last Friday (about condoms to prevent abortion). A draft version made it to print, and the last two (or is it three?) paragraphs got guillotined. Anyway, I want to say that I support abstinence, with emphasis, as the primary option for young people who want to remain not pregnant, and free of deadly venereal diseases (we are obligated to our children to give them the best chance possible; that is why in child bearing/producing years especially, we have to be pure). But, young people who go to dances, or to spots where they are in quiet spaces with the opposite sex, should keep a condom close by. One thing can lead to the next.
Demons wild in BMP
Last week the operative word from top police brass to junior police brass, and workers, was “mum”, kip unu mouth shet, re- demons on the loose at the Police Training School. Plus TV reported (tongue-in-cheek) about pastors being called in, and a witchdoctor writing 666 on the ground and burying a blue bottle filled with the names of females living at the Training School. One hot story about was that of the witchdoctor’s chicken, caught up and flung by invisible hands against a wall, and cock cold dead before it hit the ground.
Demon stories are commonplace in BMP/Cayo South. When I took up residence in my village in the early eighties (last century of the last millennium), there was a particularly bad one living “up the road” who would climb into trees and rain down nails and other materiel on rooftops.
Most every family out here has a demon story to tell. No, attacks on persons, like the one that had (has) the brave police at Training School scurrying for pastors and witchdoctors, are not rare. Ha, lesser pastors called in to deal with demons getting their kicks by tormenting individuals, have been roughed up and chased out of yards. (No, no Catholic priests have been trounced so)
Those wretches grabbed ahold of one of our super talented girls one time. One of my church sisters, who is one hundred percent all there, went to lend a hand one night. She told me what she saw she would not tell me because I would not believe.
I told my smart-alecky brother, who is a doctor, about the case, and “numerous” others. He laughed in my face and said, bull, those bad demons are Tourette’s Syndrome.
According to the net, this Tourette’s Syndrome is a condition named after a French physician, Georges Gilles de la Tourette, who was the first to describe it, in 1885.
One Dr. David E. Comings, in a paper called “Tourette Syndrome and Human Behavior,” wrote that it is one of the most common genetic conditions affecting humanity and many more carry the trait.
Dr. Gilles de la Tourette described an attack on an elderly lady, Marquis de Dampierre (who showed the disease from the age of seven), thusly…In the midst of an interesting conversation, all of a sudden she interrupts what she is saying…horrible screams…and with words that are even more extraordinary than her screams…and…
My smart-alecky brother can talk his crap. What Tourette described sounds just like demons to me.
Borly, Goons…
…looking for an agent. Any retired schoolteacher, or person in the book business interested in promoting Belizean literature in the schools, can, for their efforts, get a twenty-five percent share in Borly and the Slick Jaymz Gang, and Invasion of the Mangrove Goons. The reviewers say the books are ready for the traffic. Contact the author at [email protected] or at 622-0441.