THEY THINK WHAT WE KNOW IS JUST WHAT THEY TELL US…Part III
Reflections on the Greek and European Financial Crisis; PBS’ “Small Island” mini-mini tv series; and the UWI’s Rasta Studies Conference, in light of Jamaica’s on-going paroxysms of passion and pain, at the turn of the 21st century.
By Don Rico Ricketts
As “‘Mothers’ Day” approaches, a wider and deeper look at the spiritual, philosophical, ideological, socio-political, economic, and personal impact of the role of Mothers and “Mother Cultures” become more relevant than ever; as the ‘profligate’ socio-economic behavior of Greece — “Mother Country” to worshipper of South European culture — threatens to drag Europe into another, less friendly, kind of relationship; particularly so in contention with the socio-economic ‘discipline’ of the Northern European Germanic “Fatherland.”
Whose Judas Mentality, Mr. Gee?
Another revealing example of post-Breton Woods Jamaican mind-setting is the recent self-congratulatory ‘bio/tell-all’ book by marketing/public relations/advertising (propaganda/) “don,” Gerry Grindley. Such revelations of post ‘Independence’ consent-engineering are hardly of much use, however; apart from showing (to those who weren’t paying attention over the past half-century) one more way that Jamaicans were mind-f***ked, facilitated with the help of the afore-mentioned legendary ‘Greece-ing’…literally and metaphorically.
Judas Mentality, in-deed…
Mr. Grindley…Gerry…lissen nuh! Those of us – especially those of us who survived high school, and emerged with an enhanced indigenous creative and artistic ability, and with a well-taught command of the English tongue (nuff thanks, Mrs. Sybil Prescod) – have (and have had) an entirely more holistic view and experience of that strategic 50-year period since so-called ‘Independence’…but from “down pon the low,” as hip Kingstonians of my father’s generation use to call the slums from which I&I come..
And like all Jamaicans, I&I are also truly multi-lingual, Mr. Copy-writer Grindley. Always have been, all-ways will be. Someawi chat patwa; wi also talk Jamaican ; we use English, and plenty odda people longwidge, tu! (Spainish, Franch, Jerryman, even Jahpanease). And moreover, pan tap a alla-dat, wi also know how to speak Spokey, when wi ready…
But our ghetto familiarity with the “lingwa” couldn’t overcome the burden of our ghetto addresses, could it, Mr. Marketeer?. …Mr. Employer? You see, Mr. Gerry/Joshua/Blinds/Bruce or Whomever…too many of us insisted, and still insist, on being born to people living below Cross Roads; and we long know ‘bout “how dat go!” – long before Marley reggaelarize and partly-sanitized that painful reality.
Presently, the lived sufferation of the Jamaican “massive” is being sanitized and “sexified” (but not corrected) before our very eyes, for the name-branding of Jamaican misery for the consumer marketplace. This enables the likes of Peter “PSOJ” Moses (an old football opponent from Real Mona) and the very-Reverenced Al Miller (a former youth club leader like myself) can tiptoe with trepidation along the edges of the Kingston slums and claim that “dem neva know…” that people in Jamaica live so!! Holy Shiirt!
Say What Again??!!
Downtown Sounds and Jamaica’s Intelligentry-ism
Embarrassingly for those of the Euro-Jamaican mentality and their “devil philosophy,” however, the likes of Marley and the other arthentic roots activist, employing “Selassie Force” along with other arthentic musical artists-philosophers, and really organic italactualists, I&I, the under-privileged ones abide and endure (yes, ‘under-privileged’ was actually how the Jamaican Establishment referred to most of us who were from south-of-the-Cross-Roads-border, and attending high school via Common Entrance in the 60’s). Yes, Grimax, we are the ones who insisted (then as now) on helping the other dispossessed and oppressed children of African-Jamaica to tell Maslow, his disciples, and their spiritual-cultural ponzi-scheme, pyramid-of-needs, hierarchical bullshiirt this: Frack off!
How many examples do the allegedly ‘educated’ need for them to see thrue that kind of nonsense? Or for them to face the realization that the ‘uneducated’ “massive” has long peeped their game.
Similarly, I&I did not need university-ensconced self-serving psychologists (Jamaican or otherwise) to explain the high-level racist “frackry” of such as Williams, or Shockley which was standard text for the Psychology Dept at UWI during the early 1980’s. To be sure, for a very long time, the UWI has provided long-term shelter and tenure to various Jamaican versions of that racist ideological idiocy. Believe I; I-man know.
Seriously though, seventy-five years after alleged ‘Emancipation’ and almost fifty years after so-called ‘Independence,‘ at the very least, still I-Man-See-Pendence! Moreover, it is still an on-going alien and pusillanimous pendence, tightly guarded by an abiding colonial-mental presence, privilege, and entitlement.
It is that Gordian-Guardian Knot which is sipple-central of the tightening noose around the neck of Jamaica and Jamaicans…and the rest of the imperialies-ed and imperiled planet and its peoples.
To those ‘educated ones’ at UWI (and elsewhere) who are getting ready (again!) to try a Saul-Paul Schematic redux on the RasTafari Nattyral Mystic, I-man say this: 62 years of alleged intellectual and socio-economic independence of UWI and the Brown Pelican People doesn’t seem to have empowered or enabled you to solve the Caribbean’s co-mingled spiritual-socio-economic-political problem; to which you have been party (again, pun intended) to creating.
Now, 2010, you waan come hustle Rasta…again? Please…try uunu bes’!! I&I well recall the lessons learned from 1st century Churchianity and what that unleashed… and the global implications of Brahmin Abraham’s hustle at Mach-Pelah another couple of millennia before that.
Jamaican Leadership Lap-Dance; Whose Money?
And when Bra Bruce the Golden did come “a-farin” come push him NDM mockery few years back, I-man, for one, did try alert him (via a call-in to a Caribbean radio show in Florida) that him/wi collective past a-go come back come haunt wi. Admittedly, him did sound a bit nervous. Maybe him did realize how much of a “ullo” him wanted Jamaican people fi swallow. Maybe him shoulda did quit while him was still ahead. Unfortunately, like the revamped Michael Manley of the late 80’s with his re-baptism into so-called Free Market Economics, it seems that the ego-proddings to be an “uber leader” got the better of him as well.
So, now that the Jamaican “private dancers” are, at best – at last; and not the first time – looking for new “pipers” to play them (and Jamaica) a tune, should we expect anything but the bare-faced, dry-eye, outrageous un-repentance displayed by the banksters of Goldman-Sachs before the US people and Congress?
Given the so-called ‘exposure’ of the capitalistic spirit that spawned the ideological and social excesses of the Greenspans, Rubins, Geithners, Benedicts, Paulsons (John and Henry), Bernankes, S&P’s, Moody’s, Goldman Sachs, Federal Reserve, IMF-World Banksters et al of the global socio-economy; and given the (expected?) exposure of their wholly-owned Jamaican and Caribbean “Vampire Squid ” subsidiaries and lackeys – the ‘local/ Jamaican’ banksters, fund-managers, and other local capitalists – what should people realistically expect from them and their counterparts in the Caribbean?
The Em-bedded Jamaican Media
Given all this, maybe the UWI Brown Pelican People will forcefully and honestly answer the question posed by the editorial in the Observer recently, to wit: “Demise of the activist scholar: where is the UWI Economics Department? ” (Jamaica Observer, Thursday, February 18, 2010)
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/editorial/editorial-for-feb-18_7423157
Apart from its mocking tone, it is interesting to notice how that editorial not only ignored the very real presence (at least then) of any alternative thinking to the bogus duality of “planatation dependent fossils” and “free-market religionists.” Funny, but all the political, economic, historical evidence indicate that those two are esssentially the same thing.
It is quite unsurprising, though instructive, that the fossilized and embedded thinking of the writer(s) of that Observer editorial doesn’t allow them to mention any particularly radical economists. They conveniently side-step the fact that the crackdown against activist-scholars in the 60’s took place under Bustamante’s (Jamaica’s own “Alexander”) JLP; that is, during the rule of the same party that is in power presently.
Not that the so-called ‘other side’ was any better where Rasta people were concerned. Norman Manley’s PNP had the same attitude of determined opposition to Marcus Garvey, and later to Rasta people, despite what the 1960 Report on The Rastafari Movement by Professors Smith, Augier, and Nettleford may induce post-Marley Rastas and Reggaefarians to conclude. The infamous Coral Gardens incident would likely have played out in the same way, regardless of which party was in power. And no-one (especially Rastas) should miss the fact that the buldozing of Back-O-Wall/Ackee Walk took place only a couple of months after the “State Visit” of RasTafari/Haile Selassie I to Jamaica.
Maybe the present Jamaica Reparations Committee will want to consider the deeper implications of local (Jamaican) reparations (involving private as well as public culpabilities) regardless of what Prof. Henry Louis Gates may claim in his obfuscatory remarks re Reparations and “Blame” in the US.
The fact is; state-initiated-and-sponsored violence, as well as privately-initiated-and-sponsored violence, carried out by security agents, police, military, and para-military forces, death squads, and self-righteous vigilantes have been (so far) essentially par for the course in Jamaica, as for much of the rest of the planet. Such is the nature of the Beast.
Nevertheless, it was a bold-faced insult to history and intelligence for the Observer editorialists to ignore the murderous intimidation that became part and parcel of economic/political/social landscape in the 70’s. Who doesn’t know (or can’t find out) about the brutal stabbing of UWI professor/activist Trevor Munroe resulting from his stance in the socio-economic struggles of Jamaica’s working class. Anyone with any familiarity with what was unfolding on UWI’s Mona campus in the 70′s and 80′s knows how the politics of intimidation and terror played out on the campus, and in the surrounding communities of Hermitage, August Town, Papine, Tavern, Gordon Town, Industry Village, Standpipe, etc etc etc.
To paraphrase Marley’s observation; Many more did have to suffer, many more did have to die…and we all know why…
By now, anyone who still holds to the academic fiction of an objective, impartial media community (in Jamaica or anywhere) need to have their slate and slate-pencil re-examined, if not confiscated…
I tried (via the Observer comment feed-back box) to suggest – at the risk of appearing to be defending the “campus ghetto” – that those particular media “dons” at the Observer were being seriously and deliberately disingenuous; a real false-flagging attempt. But my comments didn’t seem to ‘take’ or ‘make the cut’ and so didn’t get into their newspaper. Not to worry, though, some of I&I long been fairly skillful users of various media. And I&I know a bit about media ‘magic’ and mental manipulation.
In Sum; Some Accounting A-Come…
If ones can accept this; The moral arc of the universe may be long, but it does indeed tend toward Justice, as pointed out by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and entirely in sync with the thinking of Marcus Garvey. Which is why, by the way, Mr. Garvey clearly outlined how leader-embezzlers (and their wives!) should be dealt with.
As I hinted previously, I&I will have to honestly, and fearlessly, examine the role of Female-Power in shaping (or re-shaping) The Jamaican Question(s), to have any hope of helping to provide Jamaicanswers…soon.
As the so-called accountants and auditors at Enron and Arthur Andersen, and now the SEC and the CFTC (US) and the other so-called regulators of crony capitalism have been finding out: Accounting fraud is, literally, a bitch. So is real accounting and auditing. For we all have to give account, about something, big or small, sooner or later. Let’s see how long The Real Vampire Squids, the “Mr. (and Mrs.) Really Big” and their spawn can hide behind the ‘sins’ of their low-level henchmen – whether uptown, downtown, down the lane, round de avenue, or ‘pon the corner, intra-nationally, or internationally…
As the song say: Poor people fed up! And tired of the fracking fraud!
Walk Good, Pelicans and Other Academicians; if you can, and while you still can.
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BTW: Since the evidently ancient access to knowledge of the universe (despite the racist disrespect by White ‘cosmologists’ such as Sagan et al) by, for example, the Dogon of Mali, suggests (at least) that there are (have been) other ways of ‘traveling’ the cosmos; and in light of the ‘successes’ of computer-driven “virtuality” that have enabled creative visualization and realization of ‘alternate realities’ (multi-universes?!) and modalities (e.g. the movie “Avatar,” and the development of 3D, holography, etc) – just Who’s to Say Who Went (or Goes) Where, and When, and How…to travel the physical or non-physical universe?
Fundamentally, is It all mental? Or simply Nattyrally Mystic? Whatever It is; It may be something I&I want to think about. Who knows, maybe the intellectual don-gorgons at UWI will allow that there exists thinking, despite their various vanites, which makes it clear that …
What I&I Know is Not What They Tell I&I…!
There’s long been a Nattyral Mystic blowing thrue di ear…long long time, Brown Pelican People. (Again, apologies, Bra Bob)
I&I, RasTafari, Way Beyond Intellectualism… I&I Forwarding with italactuality.
Thrue Talawadada Guidance and Nuff-Nuff Protection.
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Copyright © Don Rico Ricketts / The Maudhonna & Gilbert Findlay Foundation / The Art&Glory Foundation
