When this newspaper began publication almost forty years ago, it did appear that the version of white supremacy with which Belizeans would have to contend in the future, was that of the United States of America. Great Britain having granted British Honduras self-government in 1964, and the U.S. having commenced a limited program of foreign aid for B.H., including Peace Corps and the Michigan Partners for the Alliance, and an American lawyer, Bethuel Webster, having been appointed in 1966 to mediate the Anglo-Guatemalan dispute over British Honduras, all these signals and others suggested that the United States, in accord with her Monroe Doctrine and in line with the United Kingdom’s seeming willingness to yield her hegemony, would, down the road, be running things in Belize.

Make no mistake about it. Wednesday morning’s developments at the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital represented a full blown crisis in the Ministry of Health, which is to say, in the Government of Belize. Indeed, the fact that Prime Minister Dean Barrow felt it incumbent to go to KHMH to see for himself what was transpiring, is definitely a bad sign.

The Opposition PUP is not a democratic party. It is an oligarchy, ruled from the top by a long established syndicate. Until 2004, the PUP essentially managed to run with the hares and chase with the hounds, as it is said. It had become a neoliberal, oligarchical organization, but it retained the reputation of being a roots, populist group, which it had been at its foundation in 1950.

Before we go to the subject matter, let’s set the table. The majority of us Belizeans are locked in a poverty cycle, because we have adopted lifestyles where we cannot do without things which we do not manufacture in Belize. We believe that we simply must possess cars, refrigerators, stoves, washing machines, dryers, fans, air conditioners, telephones, television sets, computers, etc. We have convinced ourselves that we cannot be happy without these pieces of equipment and appliances

Some people say that the very big people on the planet have been working towards a one world government. We don’t know about that, but we know that about 20 or 25 years ago, the “experts” began to say that nationalism was dead, that everything was interdependent, above all, and so on and so forth.

We think the morale of the Belizean people is presently the lowest we have seen it in our lifetime. In the 1950s and 1960s, we were all poor together in British Honduras, but we had love. Beginning in the 1980s, money began to pour into Belize to purchase our citizenship and our real estate. More money poured into Belize in the 1990s to purchase our public utility infrastructure. And then there had been, beginning in the 1970s with the weed and graduating in the 1980s to the pills and the powder, there had been and there was the drugs. Then came the oil, which should have been icing on the cake.

The American automobile giant, General Motors, will be filing for bankruptcy today, Monday, June 1, 2009. The symbolism of this is awesome, as is the significance. General Motors, like U.S. Steel and Standard Oil, for example, represented, both within the United States and internationally, the essence, the mountain top of the American industrial and manufacturing might which emerged so dramatically after World War II.

What has become as clear as the Belizean skies is that our national health system has failed those most in need of its protection – the poor. A reader has called for a commission of inquiry into the tragic death of Baby Jones, which occurred 9 days ago, last Tuesday.

The media business can be very rugged terrain at times. Everyone expects us to get them the news, and sometimes those very people who want to use our media organs to get their message out are the same ones who try to block us, stonewall us when it’s time for us to get the job done and we have to go looking into their corridors.

At the risk of barging in on the Prime Minister’s kitchen and interfering with his bubbling political pot, it is timely to point out to him (and his assistant cooks) that the ingredients in this nasty BTL entanglement could make a magical stew for UDP re-election in 2013. If Mr. Barrow seeks a succulent electoral dish – a serving in equal parts of the national interest and UDP re-election – then his government should acquire BTL immediately and end the current impasse in the telecom industry. Call the acquisition “conservatorship,” as the Americans do, if nationalization is too socialist a term.

The initial response of the UDP government, in the person of its newly appointed Executive Sports Director, to the announced CONCACAF expulsion of Belize from the CONCACAF Champions League tournament, does a lot to reinforce long-held suspicions that indeed, there is a cozy relationship between Football Federation of Belize (FFB) president, Dr. Bertie Chimilio, and the political leadership of the governing United Democratic Party. If the government does not quickly prove otherwise by its actions, the evidence will be convincing.

This week, the education sector will be marking major milestones and reflecting on pressing challenges and issues confronting them on a day-to-day basis, but the population that needs attention most is that population from preschool to standard VI, those important first two phases of formal education that all too often separate children by their family’s ability to afford education, leaving many fallen by the wayside for reasons beyond their control.

Belize’s population is just over 300,000, and while we are often caught up mostly with what is happening inside our own borders, the recent swine flu scare has forced many of us to look at the global picture, and particularly the plight of so many around the world who can ill afford to care for themselves in these perilous economic times.

Not because we don’t believe their cause is just; and not because we think that every ethnic group in the nation of Belize has its gripes and its concerns that should be addressed with fairness and consideration for all; and surely not because some highly respected legal minds have gone to great lengths in twisting and turning things around to make them seem complicated and impossible — no, not for any of those reasons do we not say, “Give the land to the Maya.”