Melville Cooke My people are in a mess
But nobody wants to know
Cos when you're down and out and oppressed
You've got to fight your
battles from the
Lowest of the low....
Babylon makes the rules
Babylon Makes the Rules, Steel Pulse
WHEN A leader is overthrown, you can have a very good idea of who supported or did not support him or her by where they go into exile.
Ferdinand Marcos ruled The Philippines from 1966 to 1986. When his day of judgement came, February 25, 1986, he fled to Guam. Aboard a US Air Force plane, one might add. He died in exile in Hawaii, another US outpost, and in 1990 his wife Imelda, she of the many shoes, was cleared of embezzlement in a US court. Estimates of the amount the Marcoses looted from The Philippines? US$5 billion.
Closer to home much closer - also in 1986, Jean-Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier fled Haiti. He went to France where, according to a story by Marjorie Valbrun the on-line version of The Wall Street Journal last year, he lived in a villa in Cannes and had a BMW and a Ferrari Testarossa. Conservative estimates of how much money he stole during the last decade of his rule, which began in 1971 as a hand-me-down from his father, are US$500 million.
RAN TO THEIR FRIENDS
Like Marcos, nothing has come of his theft, or the murders committed in their pursuit of power. They ran to their friends, who supported them in power and provided refuge when they were finally deposed.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide has ended up in the Central African Republic, more broke than Mike Tyson. I do not think I need to say more. Babylon makes the rules.
I listen to BBC Radio a lot, not because I think that when all is said and done they are any less committed to keeping white people on top of the world and stroking than the CNNs and Foxes of this world, but paradoxically because they have mastered the art of 'polite violence'. (I wish I could take credit for that exquisite phrase, but I heard it used at a talk on Haiti at the UWI in early February).
The Americans have not learnt and will never learn the art of beating up someone thoroughly and then convincing them that they not only deserved, but needed it. Their leaders are simply a crude bunch who think that the only thing better than a 10-gallon hat is a 20-gallon hat. (Hey, I wonder how many pints KD Knight's felt holds?)
Last week, BBC carried a story saying that the "rebel forces" were advancing on the capital, while "armed gangs" supporting Aristide had vowed to defend same. Ahhh! Such polite violence against our perception of the situation! 'Rebel forces' vs. 'armed gangs'! Obviously, the 'armed gangs' need to be trampled. Babylon makes the rules.
And then, after Aristide is out of the picture, in come the troops from these white countries to 'restore calm'. In other words, to shore up the coup leaders. I am against them being there at all, but if they had to come to 'restore calm', why could they not have done so when the democratically elected leader was in place and keep him in place? Because they wanted him gone.
Furthermore, if a group of persons had armed themselves and gone to Haiti to defend Aristide's presidency, they would have been labelled terrorists, even though they would be doing what CARICOM should have done in the first place. Hell, what are Jamaica's soldiers doing of substance right at this moment? The people are properly pacified with 'Passa Passa' and 'Blase Blase', in addition to any number of sessions around the clock around the week, so there is no need to call them out to keep the social structure in place. They are trained to fight, so send them to fight.
NEGLECT
But no. Not at all. Babylon makes the rules, so we wait until the US and French have sent troops and then complain bitterly. CARICOM is much like a man who, having neglected his wife's sexual needs for a long time, finds out that she has got pregnant for another man and demands that the sperm be separated from the egg so that he can go on neglecting her again.
And our own PJ Patterson is, at the moment, the head cuckold.
Frankly, all these CARICOM meetings are a waste of time. The only thing that they can do is refuse to recognise those now in charge in Haiti and that would only mean more punishment for the Haitian people. The only appropriate response is to tell the US, French and Canadians that this is unacceptable and they have been complicit in yet another battery of a Caribbean and Latin American democracy, but that will not happen.
You see, sycophants must speak very carefully when they have our mouths very close to the exit end of the digestive system.
Babylon makes the rules and those who have sat by and treated our Haitian brothers like someone else's problem, with Cuba being the only country to give much of their little to Haiti, have to obey.
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
