When the powerful do not speak the truth or When the Powerful Speak Their Truth

 When the powerful do not speak the truth or

When the Powerful Speak Their Truth

He must have known that it was not, not, true when he lied about a Biblical character for a political purpose. The Bible has several leading male characters who sinned, repented and were given another chance, Pope Gregory I needed a named woman, not a hidden figure, and Mary Magdalene, who had been delivered of her 7 demon invasion, was repackaged as a woman who had been forgiven for committing the 7 deadly sins. Poetic, but false. Mary Magdalene was a disciple who came to Jesus by faith after being healed. This was not a benign lie because it stripped the New Testament of the leading woman who was there because of her faithfulness and not because of her relations. Her story became one of redemption and grateful penance rather than a story of healing that led to faithfulness and discipleship. Despite 1500 years rolling on, her name has not yet been fully cleared, but hopefully more readers will absorb Luke’s gospel more closely and learn the truth for themselves.

In 2003, Chairman of the highest military rank in the USA the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell told the United Nations an untruth that gave public support to the eight-year war that the USA waged with Iraq. His apology to the world was that he was relying on information that was shared with him and so he did not deliberately mislead. Even without putting Powell’s reputation on the line, the USA would probably have gone to war with Iraq at that time. Aside from human loss of life from military conflict, the effects of that war were felt throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world to this day. I have to also add that the situation in Iraq before 2003 was itself potentially harmful to its neighbours, so it was also a matter of time before an incident would happen that would ripple across the globe.

The Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies has stated as fact that the black people in the Caribbean are the sickest in the world on a per capita basis as a direct consequence and legacy of slavery and colonization. He said that the Caribbean is the diabetic and hypertensive centre of the world. It was stated at the From Apology To Action: CARICOM's Call For Reparatory Justice on Monday, 6 July, 2020.

Before this was said, there were some issues stated that I am grateful to say led me to read a bit more about chattel slavery. After reading, I marvel at the silence of historians at what was said at that press conference.

Said at the press conference: Beginning with Haiti in 1804 and ending with the people of Brazil in the middle of the 1880s, that is a solid 80 years of effort. It was a collective effort led by the enslaved people themselves that rose up against the barbarity of slavery. The abolitionists who used civil society moral and political platforms to demand the legal abolition of the enslaved. It was a collective effort of several generations.

The enslaved strained against their situation and this erupted into ongoing revolts across the region, and also wars, but there could not have been collective effort as there was no communication among the enslaved across societies. The two revolutions were that of Haiti which ended in 1804 and the independence movements of parts of Central and South America that culminated between 1825-1830 and led to the current states we know in that region.

Said at the press conference: The Caribbean governments have done well in confronting the legacy of harm and of taking responsibility.

The speaker raised the matter of poverty so a review of the current state of the economies would have been relevant. The World Bank in 2020 adjusted the categories to rank the economies of countries. As it stands, there are no Caribbean nations ranked as low income countries; three of the 55 Lower middle income countries are Caribbean; nine of the 55 are upper middle income; and there are 14 out of 79 countries in the high income category. However, it would also be prudent to note that Cuba and Haiti are the most populous countries in the region which would place the living conditions of the people of the Caribbean in middle income. It would also be interesting to note that the high income countries on the list includes two republics: Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago; with all the others being constituent countries as colonies, territories or within a realm.

Said at the press conference: On attaining independence, the British colonies were 60% illiterate. They left 60% of all the black people in the Caribbean illiterate .

In another Linked-In post, I mentioned that the first time a Gleaner Parliamentary Reporter mentioned education projects in the throne speech of independent Jamaica was in 1971, nine years after independence. The leaders were more interested in increasing financial revenues. The 2020 Reform of Secondary Education Report showed that in 2019, 55% of the children who completed the Primary Exit Profile (PEP) in Grade 6 were competent in English language and 33% cannot read. See page 63.

I will now return to examine that the Caribbean is the sickest place in the Caribbean.

There are several modifiers in the original statement of the Caribbean having the sickest people in the world.

The first is per capita, meaning that we are looking at countries in the same income bracket per person purchasing power.

The second modifier is countries where diabetes and hypertension are prevalent.

The International Diabetes Federation report for 2019 showed that the North America and the Caribbean region had the highest prevalence of impaired glucose tolerance of all IDF regions – over 12%; and the overall prevalence of diabetes in adults between ages 20 and 79 is 13.3%.

Countries that have highest prevalence of impaired glucose tolerance that are also middle income are basically the countries of the Caribbean. So it is like defining yourself using diabetes and GDP.

This definition ignores the website front page info of the International Diabetes federation that 3 in 4 adults with diabetes live in low- and middle-income countries and that almost 1 in 2 (240 million) adults living with diabetes are undiagnosed. Placed in that context, the Caribbean or West Indies does not stand out as the sickest in the world.

This is not a benign matter because the rhetoric is to motivate the listener to support punishment of the heirs and successors of the colonial era who live in Britain.  We are to use the past to patch up the deficiencies of the present. There are warnings against that approach!

Pause and consider the two stark cases of Haiti and Cuba, today each has a population of eleven million. Cuba's leaders scuppered its relationships with Spain and the USA which led it to become aligned with the USSR. Haiti, I had not seen a complete detachment from the major players in its strive for development. I suspect that the decisions of the leaders of both countries was not straightforward and came out of careful thought and emotional processes.

Let us return where we started, to the Gospel of Luke before the noting of Mary Magdalene. Jesus was asked by the religious leaders why he and his disciples were comfortable in the company of the unclean. Christ’s response was twofold and I will place my current thoughts what he meant and how holders of power can apply them.

 The first is the answer that he gave to the Pharisees when they asked why he and his disciples were always out eating and drinking. The lesson there is that you have to make the best of what is good in the world now, life is a feast to enjoy.

The second part of the passage to the doctors of the law is a warning against placing new wine in old wineskins and patching old cloth with new cloth. If we are moving away to a new order, all of the old order has to be put away. You have to really "move on".

Tell the stories with balance, pay respect to the hurt, focus on the joyful task of making something new.

END

Writing this made me reflect on the stories of the past that must not be forgotten in as much of their entirety as possible.

Sally the enslaved African child slave who was repeatedly raped by the owner of Breadnut Island Pen, Westmoreland and caught infections from him. She never stopped trying to run away. We must not forget that we know this because Thistlewood kept a meticulous diary for 38 years (1748 to 1786) which included the weather. This has given Jamaica an enviable document to evaluate climate change.

Juan de Bolas, Tacky, John Mansong, Sam Sharpe and Paul Bogle were trapped by Maroons and treated to death.

Coffee industry in Jamaica grew when Grande Blancs fled the revolution happening in Haiti.

Murder of 132 Africans thrown overboard from the Zong on its way to Black River Jamaica and the court and political actions that resulted from that.

The sugar industry exposed Caribbean people to technologies earlier than many other areas, and we took this to advance ourselves in the wider world.

Rigid school rules of an early period and preference for girls has allowed our culture to evolve in unique ways.

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