There is a world right around us, out of sight and just out of reach where life goes on and death takes place and people you rarely, if ever, come in touch with live and move and have their being. I am not talking about the spirit world. I am talking about the world of e-commerce, the world of big business, the world of international trades and traders.
Most of us drive a car and shop at the corner store for a few items a couple of times a week. Names like Martha Stewart, who will go into court this week for insider trading just blow by us on the evening news. Parmalat, the milk giant that is being accused of over ten billion dollars worth of illegal infractions barely registers on our consciousness.
Local banks that you pass on the street everyday are raking in indecent profits ever year even as the economy worsens. Big businesses everywhere are stealing more than Al Capone and Jesse James and the governments of the world are either unprepared to stop them or are in business to help them.
In fact, governments everywhere are just about powerless in helping its citizenry. The best governments are seriously on the defensive and the worse are sharing power and profits with rebel factions.
In this shadowy world bombs go off daily that you never hear. Murders are committed in secret and labelled as suicide. People go missing never to be heard of again. And it all does not happen over there. A lot of things are going on right here.
The Internet has changed the world, and no one is in charge. There are legal gambling casinos on Paradise Island and in Freeport; there are illegal gambling casinos on Wulff Road. One pays the government, the other pays itself. And the government can’t do a damn thing about it.
As life becomes more complex and uncertain it also becomes more demeaning. People are locking down and locking in a survival mode. We are slowly but surely going back to the laws of the jungle where the fittest and the most dangerous will survive.
This time it can just as easily be a terrorist with bombs strapped to his body as well as it could be your neighbour sitting at his laptop a door away.
Those Damn Boats
Reverend Simeon Hall said it at the pulpit two Sundays ago. “Get those damn boats out of here,” he shouted.
Of course he was talking about the Korean fishing boats that were supposed to have been seized by Customs and forced to exit the country.
And of course the damn boats haven’t left the Bahamas and in all probability they probably never will.
Street talk has it that more than one big fish is involved in the boat deal and that given the complexity of the deal and the dollar value involved, the boats will have to go fishing or some big names just might end up cutting bait from the dock of the bay.
Better Late Than Never
It took more than fifty years to do it, but the Progressive Liberal Party has finally gotten around to thanking William “Bill” Cartwright for the contribution that he made to that organization when it was yet an infant.
I have always maintained that people show more of their character by doing what they don’t have to do than by doing what they have to do.
The PLP as an organization should have long ago honoured and assisted Bill, but the PLP is slow, lazy, disgusting, selfish and self-centred. No wonder Mr. H. M. Taylor, another co-founder of the PLP said that they created a monster when they created the organization.
The FNM Stupidness
The Free National Movement and its leaders seem to think that the world is the same as it was in 1992 and all they have to do is wait around long enough for the PLP to fall on their own sword and the FNM can move back centre stage and become the government again.
The world is a different place in 2004 than it was in 1992 when a crafty, wily and hardworking Hubert Ingraham swept the PLP from power. For one thing, Tommy T. is no Hubert Ingraham. The other thing is that voters are increasingly fed up with all politicians – FNM and PLP.
There is every possibility that the FNM can win the next election. But, if the FNM expects to win and to be able to govern, they need to come out of their hiding places and do the ground work now, not after they win.
By Rupert Missick, The Bahama Journal
