The Liming House

Good to see you again. Glad you enjoy the Limes.

Read it and weep.

And then pick up your pen, your camera, your guitar…

Normalizing the Unthinkable

John Pilger, Robert Fisk, Charlie Glass, and Seymour Hersh on the failure of the world’s press

When in the course of human events, the oppressed find it necessary to dissolve the political and psychological bonds which have joined them to the oppressor, revolutionaries have a choice to pick up either a pen or a gun. The true revolutionaries pick up a pen because they realize that violence truly begets violence and that any solution that is brought about by bloodshed will only be temporary; the powerful will change positions and the gorillas are in charge again.

[Geoffrey Philip, "Happy Birthday Sam Selvon", May 20 2006]

That paragraph hit me for six.

Getting towards 5am. Still can’t sleep, what with the incessant coughing and the ludicrous tea drinking. Hmm. Does that mean I am drinking tea that is ludicrous, or rather, is it ludicrous that I am drinking tea? Hmm.

Think am wired. Hmm.

iTunes on shuffle. Currently Mighty Sparrow – Witch Doctor.

But it was the titular track that got me thinking.

See them fighting for power
But they know not the hour
So they bribing with
Their guns, spare-parts and money
Trying to belittle our integrity
They say what we know
Is just what they teach us
Through political strategy
They keep us hungry
When you gonna get some food
Your brother got to be your enemy

Jamaica in 1976, Trinidad in 2006.

Have we learnt nothing? Will we (n)ever?

Get up, Stand up, dammit.

This bloody country – bah! bah, I say. Political apathy isn’t laziness, isn’t cowardice, it is, for me, a manifestation of the disgust and the contempt that I feel for these pseudo-politicians, these wheelers and dealers, this kleptocracy, this excuse for a democracy. Don’t talk to me of PNM or UNC or Team Unity. Don’t speak to me about Maha anyone, or Ralph whoever, or this bribe, or that airport, or that bank account. Let’s talk about not wanting to read the newspaper, because of all the reports of the murders, and the deaths, and the kidnappings and the robberies and oh look at that, another minister indicted.