DOES PREVILLE HAVE CHASTANET ON THE ROPES & ON THE RUN??

 

The thing about Claudius Preville is that we don’t know what he is made of. And that’s supposed to be a liability. But it’s actually an asset given the current political climate. The thing about Preville is that he might be the same as all the rest of the politicians in St Lucia, but he can’t possibly be worse.

Not without growing a tail and turning into the European version of Robert Mugabe.

If Flambeau wants to ‘save St Lucia’ from the evil Kenny Anthony and his minions, the delegates in seven seats are going to have to get behind Preville in a big way.

And if internal reports from Flambeau are correct, the banana belt seats of Micoud and Dennery are going to decide the 2014 contest for the leadership of the late John Compton’s beloved United Workers Party.

The race for Flambeau’s leadership is so close right now that it could come down to a single vote. Every single delegate matters the most. For the first time in history, the future of John Compton’s party rides, not on the ability of the strong to stray the weak, but on the individual motivations and goals of the average Flambeau supporter. People power is running the party for the moment. And people power will either save Flambeau from itself or divide it against itself.

As political commentator and Lulzmeister General Toot Too Booshe said in a related article, Preville didn’t count his chickens before they were hatched. And in politics, you better count your eggs or you’ll gamble your future on nonsense, just like Mitt Romney and Karl Rove did in the last American presidential election.

He launched something of a surprise attack on Chastanet, which disquieted many in the party. If he, like Chastanet, had conspired and laid in wait, collecting allies before declaring war, he would be in the same position that Chastanet was last year against King. He would have a fait accompli on his hands.

Yo, Bum Rush The Show!!!

Labour's new public enemy number one.

 

Fortunately for him, Allen Chastanet is an ass. You can just bumrush him.

But where the FLOGG predicted Chastanet’s landslide win last year in understated terms, this year, there is nothing to predict but a tough fight and a marginal victory for either candidate. This is the breakdown:

Chastanet controls six seats of delegates. Preville has pocketed five. Chastanet still has a slight edge. He maintains dominance in Gros Islet, Castries South, South-East, East , Soufriere and Babonneau. But his strength in Babonneau is split. Preville has personal loyalists in the area and many people outside of the group of delegates are fed up with Ezekiel Joseph anyway.

The problem with Ezekiel is also costing Chastanet the Vieux Fort South group of delegates. More on that in a moment. But first, in Chastanet’s own caretaker seat of Soufriere, he has been accused of rigging the delegates list in his favor to disguise disenchantment with him in the region. Preville’s supporters are now charging that the Soufriere delegates were changed after the deadline date in violation of party rules and in service to Chastanet’s agenda.

I did NOT have sexual intercourse with that...wait...
What was the question?

Preville himself rapidly achieved dominance in ALR/Canaries, Choiseul, the Vieux Forts North and South and most recently, he made some important in roads into Laborie. The southern tip of the island seems to have swung to Preville so violently that when Chastanet’s A Team visited them two Thursdays ago, three quarters of the group walked out in disgust, while five stayed behind to FLOGG and castigate Chastanet and company limited.

The Vieux Fort South group also had another agenda, however, adding proof that people power is bending the party into shape rather than leaders. Vieux Fort South’s UWP delegates want Eldridge Stephen to be Chairman of the Party.

Chastanet, however, supports Ezekiel Joseph, who is part of his A Team. The A Team was invented so that the leader and all his boys and girls could be elected as a package. It puts all other comers at a severe disadvantage. Unfortunately, this time, the A Team’s strategy backfired and Vieux Fort  South looks ready to make all of them pay for supporting Ezekiel instead of Eldridge for chairman.

One way or the other, someone is getting thrown under the bus.  If Chastanet was smart, Ezekiel would be road kill by now. But he’s not. And so he might have to wear some tread on his face on Sunday evening.

For whom the bell tolls....?

With the illusion of the A Team’s strength dissolved, over the last few days, Preville’s inroads into the remaining battlegrounds have deepened. And the A Team’s attempts to block the challenger have grown more audacious.

In Micoud North, for example, the constituency chair declared that neither candidate would have access to the candidates. A real purist move.  Except that it only blocked Preville. Chastanet still got access to the delegates.

The remaining seats are an interesting story on their own. The two renegade Castries seats, North and Central, have been pushing an injunction to stop the convention from happening at all. That hearing was supposed to happen on this week, but was postponed to Saturday.

Yes. Saturday. We think it’s odd, too.

As for the rest, Castries South was supposed to be bought and sold for Chastanet, but seems to have suffered some kind of infection of Preville supporters.

Which leaves us with Compton country: Micoud and Dennery. No one seems to be able to predict the outcome in those places, in part because of the weak command of all four UWPees over the delegates and the constituencies themselves. Under the prevailing conditions,  a united front by the banana belt can shift the balance of power in Flambeau – just the way John Compton wanted it.

Even if Castries North and Central continue to play stoosh about showing up and ousting Chastanet, the incumbent can retain the leadership by focusing on the Micoud and Dennery delegates.

If only he spoke their language, lived in their universe and identified with their struggles.

Preville does.

Which is why certain people have been frustrating Preville’s efforts to meet and greet with delegates. If Preville can convince the Banana Belt that he is the future of Flambeau, he will have the edge. And the edge is all he needs.

Chastanet, however, needs more than an edge. If he doesn’t destroy Preville as a challenger, Labour will take strength from Flambeau’s increasing divisiveness. Preville doesn’t have all Chastanet’s political baggage. Because he is new and light, any small amount of political capital turns into huge amounts of  momentum for him.

If he can get the edge, by Monday morning, he achieve something that no one else has done in the history of Lucian politics. He, as leader of Flambeau, will give Kenny Anthony the unique experience of having constipation and kakaglo at the same time.

Because Labour is prepared to face Chastanet. They already have a plan for him. But this Preville guy, for better or worse, he just confuses things for them. He’s going to send them back to the drawing board. He’s going to make them drink more rum and more antacid.

 

IF CHAS WINS, FLAMBEAU LOSES: A Victory For Allen Is A Victory For Kenny

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

CLAUDIUS SUES SINGLE PARENT IN WHEELCHAIR

It's true, it's true.

Claudius Francis is suing a single father in a wheelchair.

We'll get around to it eventually. But of course, first we must all bow our heads and give thanks for the Lulz we are about to receive.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF HACK-A-LACKERY IN ST LUCIA

 

In the beginning, there was the word. And the word was Hack-a-lack. And the word rewrote St Lucian history by infecting the independent media with partisan political bias. And as the present became the past, the hack-a-lack journalism became part of the record, part of the history.

And Rick Wayne looked upon it and said that it was mediocrity. But that’s just hypocrisy. He’s pissing in your mind and calling it brains. Which is why all hack-a-lacks hate him, as all good sons should openly hate their deadbeat fathers.

For Rick Wayne was the progenitor of all hack-a-lacks. In the 20^th century St Lucian media-verse, there was so much faggotry, bullery, cocksuckery and kakalakery that when Rick Wayne appeared on the scene with his half-assed American brand of hack-a-lacking, the scum immediately rose  to the top of the pond. So it was that young free thinkers and future journalists came to confuse hack-a-lackerism with journalism. So began the decline of the independent media.

 

Thirty years ago, the independent broadcast media began its trek to overpowering the feeble state-owned broadcast media. Now, that triumphant march is crippled by a virus that leaves politics in control of the news once more. A virus that was conceived of by no less than Rick Wayne and his co-conspirator, The Mother of All Hack-a-Lacks.

THE MOTHER OF ALL HACK-A-LACKS

No one would have guessed that Claudius Francis would be the Mother of All Hack-a-lacks when he first appeared on the scene in St Lucia.

When I first got into journalism in the 90s, Claudius Francis was just some insurance guy who was playing Rick Wayne’s sidekick while trying to fail the bar exam. Both of them were rabidly anti-Compton, but hey, it was the 90s – who wasn’t?

Given that he was Rick Wayne’s sidekick and bend over boy, much of what he said was drowned out. But Claudius found his own voice and his path to media legitimacy when he became Vice President of the media workers association under the esteemed editor/journalist David Vitalis’ presidency.

He parlayed that newfound legitimacy into a job as government press secretary, throwing David Vitalis, a real journalist who just happens to support Labour, under the bus.

He also ditched Rick once it became clear that that guy is a loser, no matter what anyone says. I mean, this is a guy who changed his exotic island name from Learie Carasco to the ordinary and inconspicuous sounding Rick Wayne. This is a guy who is clinging to Timothy Poleon’s coat tails on Newsspin.

How short do you have to be to cling to Timothy Poleon’s coat tails? With real Labour journalist and the Father of All Hack-a-lacks out of his hair, he then proceeded to take over Rick Wayne’s old show and do a job that Vitalis or someone like him ought to be doing.

And the rest is history.

He’s now senate president.

The rise of Claudius as the holy mother of hackalackeration has been accompanied by, nay given rise to new and increasingly disturbing levels of hackalackery in both Flambeau and Labour. Hence the Jadia Jn.Pierres, Frank Charleses, Tokyo Roses and Catherine Sealys of the world. Disciples. Apostles. And, of course, the inevitable apostates. Hackalackery became an industry, an entire subsector of the media in Claudius Francis’ wake. Which is not to say Rick Wayne, because we are talking about current events not medieval history.

All praise be to Claudius, who has no business posing as a talk show host, when, in fact, what he is, is a Labour Party plant, who is always ready to do his party’s bidding. And English-speaking Jouk Bois with the veneer of reason and logic. And a serpentine intelligence that makes you smile when what you should do is slash.

THE RISE OF THE 21^ST CENTURY TIM TIM

While Claudius was pregnant with Rick Wayne’s megomaniacal hack-a-lackery, another media baby was being born.  He would be hailed as the Christ Child of safe, medium, tasteless talk radio and television. Tim Poleon descended from the Radio Koulibwi in the skies into the fail-filled cesspit that was Radio Caribbean International and single-handed saved that station from DJ Iwa’s screaming, in addition to other forms of epic fail. From midday talk show host and part time reporter (let’s face it, radio news is done by midday) Timothy Poleon quickly became St Lucia’s most famous broadcast journalist. This was odd for several reasons, not the least of which is that Timothy Poleon is not, nor has he ever been a journalist. Hell, he was barely a reporter. He can’t even say the words party or banana without sticking a u after one or more of the a’s.

For fun, let’s test  ourselves: Name one story that Timothy Poleon has covered and reported on.

See? Crickets.  Night frogs. Dust bunnies. But no answers. He is a fictional journalist, at best and a bad example at worst. So of course, St Lucian society promoted him some more. They dumped endless awards of excellence to make him believe in his own mediocrity and then, the made him an editor. Of course, that station lives in the chronic delusion that they are the best news station, in spite of the fact that they have a part-time editor and the station itself lives in a place between sure financial ruin and perpetual enslavement to the banks.

Bon Dieu, Marie la Vierge en ciel, l’Espirit, Legba ek Jah Rastafari, Haile Selassie I, ever living, ever loving, ever faithful, ever pure, ever true!

There are reporters who have been in the business less than a year who are better journalists than Tim. It ain’t that hard. This is a man who thinks ABC News is, like, something to admire. This is a man who has never read the Economist two days in a row or even heard of the Trinidad Review. Plus, he doesn’t work weekends and there is no respectable journalist in the world who doesn’t work weekends.

Like I said, whatever he is, he’s not a journalist.

But during Claudius’ vice presidency, Tim Poleon started a three year winning streak as St Lucia’s Journalist of the Year. The first year it was cute. The next year, it was overkill. By the third year, the media workers association was on its death bed. Apparently, the organization itself had more integrity than that and decided to kill itself.

They still blame the suicide on Toni Nicholas.

But the truth is that the demise of the media workers association in the 90s started with the rise of the hacks, the first of whom was Claudius Francis.

And the legend of Timothy Poleon’s greatness as a ‘journalist’ is entirely a figment of Francis’ imagination. Claudius Francis practically created Timothy Poleon as a journalist. He invented Tim’s legend, at the very least. And the two of them rose up together. Totally at the expense of trained and talented people with creativity.

While Francis and Poleon were growing in privilege and stature, there was another phenomenon on the rise in St Lucia: the proliferation of the trained, unbiased journalist. Clinton Reynolds was one of those whose training and personality inclined him to go for the true story rather than play sides. He had a good run as news editor on HTS until he showed a clip of a bad boy named Jacob in a ski mask, brandishing automatic weapons, promising to shoot cops. Within a couple of months, Jacob was dead, after shooting a cop, and Reynolds was not just fired, he was blacklisted.

 

At the time, most people thought Reynolds had a duty to report the clip to the cops before airing it. With hindsight, one can clearly see that the cops need to clean up their house before they can be trusted with that kind of information.

Clinton Reynolds has now been out of the news media for a couple of years. It’s a shame because there is no editor in the broadcast media who can compare to him. But Clinton serves a different role now. He is a reminder to all of us of what happens to people who don’t play along. He is a symbol of what happens to smart asses when they mess with the hack-a-lacks.

Hack-a-lacks a run tings in the Lucian media.

And just to make the point, Claudius Francis launched a vicious, venomous, personal attack on Reynolds.

 

It was good that he did. True Colors, you know. He verbally crucified him. At the same moment, he was suing Timothy Poleon. And a guy in wheelchair down in Dennery.

Hope he’s ready for true stories to be told about him in a legal jurisdiction with actual free speech. Wonder who he’ll sue.

Maybe he’ll just put a hit out. You know, like they did on him. Because of course, the Senate President would never go crying to his gangsta friends for help to whack a jabal who dissed him. C’mon. Never. Why are we even talking about this? Who even brought this up?

THE  NEW DISPENSATION

 

When Labour came into power in 1997, things were supposed to be different. They were supposed to change the free speech, libel and slander laws. They were supposed to increase our freedoms as St Lucian citizens. They were supposed to..whatever…it didn’t happen. It ain’t never gonna happen.

Labour, basically, did what any political party would do. They promised people what they knew people wanted to hear and then gave them as little of it as possible. Over the course of the last 15 years, Labour’s interactions with the media have become increasingly stage managed to the point where now they are practically closed circuit. If reporters want to see certain ministers, they better show up early for parliament, otherwise, they will find out that the minister has an awful lot of important meetings on Skype and Facebook and Chaturbate. When the minister is in the island, that is.

In the five year Twilight zone between 2006-11, Flambeau had a shot at changing things for the better, but they used their powers for evil and are still serving out their sentence in hell. But before fucking everything up, Flambeau made one contribution to the state of hack-a-lackery in St Lucia. They created an army of hack-a-lacks and gave them posts in just about every nook and cranny of the government. They co-opted several independent journalists and promoted many fraudulent people to high positions.

The result was a sham in which Denys Springer, he of dubious political scientific qualifications and no media value whatsoever, became the king of all media. Labour might have wanted to fix that, but instead they decided to learn from it.

From the outside, it seems harmless and conventional enough to have the Kirby Allains and Jadia Jn.Pierres of the world lording it over trained and experienced professionals.

But here’s one more little tidbit to help put things in perspective.

Claudius Francis is suing a guy in a wheelchair for comments allegedly made on Newsspin. He’s not suing the loyal owners of the station. He’s suing the host, Timothy Poleon and a guy who really has nothing better to do that listen to Newsspin, because he finished cleaning and cooking lunch and the children are still at school.

Claude Ferdinand is a Dennery man who likes his politics, his news, views and information. Staying alert and opinionated is one of the ways that he stays alive. A lot of  people in his condition suffer horrible debilitating depression. Claude gets a little hot sometimes and it is not the first time he has been a thorn in Claudius Francis’ side. In fact, as far back as 2009, Claudius was bashing Claude from his bully pulpit.

But suing a guy with a spinal disease that keeps him in a wheelchair?

How hard is it to go have a couple of drinks with the guy so that things stay friendly, even when you disagree?

Suing a guy in a wheelchair.

I think that says it all.

Somehow, instead of the New Dispensation flowering and blossoming free speech, it has turned into yet another control mechanism for free speech. And it is getting petty and ugly.

And frankly, it smells like Stalinist bullshit.

 

CLAUDIUS SUES TIM....LORNE & ALVA JOIN IN GANGBANG

IS POLITICS TARGETTINGTHE MEDIA IN ST LUCIA

(OR IS LABOUR GETTING REVENGE FOR THE CORRUPTION OF THE MEDIA DURING 2006-11)

 

Sup, Claudius?
I hear you're the new fascist bastard in the block.....

The call came in a couple of weeks ago. It was on a Thursday or a Friday.

“The letter is on its way. They’re actually doing it.”

The source couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it either. They were actually going to sue Timothy Poleon. After all the mounting evidence of political intimidation of the media, three MPees were going to go all the way and make good on their threats against a local news presenter.

The list of accusers included Senate President and Hack-a-lack in Chief Claudius Francis, tourism minister Lorne Theophilus and of course, the prince of pomposity, foreign affairs minister Alva Baptiste.

 

Tim Poleon’s wrongdoing was reading a story published by a spurious ‘news’ organization called Caribbean News Now whose reports of St Lucia seem to have the sole purpose of doing Richard Frederick’s dirty work.

I want you to understand this correctly:

Tim is getting sued for going on RCI and reading a story published on Caribbean News Now, which was written by a fake person called Tori Fatal or Richard Faisal or some other nonsense.

Caribbean News Now is not being sued. They can’t be. Labour was sleeping on them and didn’t change any of the old free speech or libel laws,  so Caribbean News Now can give them the finger as many times as they like with no consequences. The results, of course, are disastrous for the reputation of journalism.

Radio Caribbean is not being sued, either. The government can sue them. But they won’t. Why? Because RCI is owned by the Gibsons and Secra Gibson is a stalwart Labour Party supporter who would never be betrayed by the party.

But Timothy Poleon is being sued. Why? Because he was a creation of Claudius Francis, a Frankenstein who was supposed to play Claudius’ game but ended up playing Richard Frederick’s game instead.

 

 

 

Talk about justice.

Ironic note: Home and Legal Affairs basketcase Victor LaCorbiniere seemed to be the main target of the story and he originally was the first person to speak out against it. Now, however, LaCorbiniere’s name is curiously not on the list of complainants.

I smell hypocrisy.

And what’s that? I smell something else. Is that…?

Yes. Yes, it is. It is the smell of government forces targeting a media personality. Ironically, it is a media personality whose legend and false greatness they created.

And Tim is not the only one.

Jadia JnFake setting up Clinton Reynolds for the shot...

 

Last week Friday, the Senate President donned his talk show host costume and used his tv/radio show to attack, vilify and malign Clinton Reynolds,  the media workers president. Government Press Secretary Jadia Jn.Pierre also led a co-ordinated attack by government facebook ‘consultants’ and their friends to ‘take out’ Clinton Reynolds in a Facebook post.

It was highly instructive.

Especially for someone like me. I had recently received news of my second set of death threats. Even scarier, I discovered that I was not the first blogger in St Lucia who was threatened. In fact, the most controversial blogger before the blog had a price on their head in April 2013. Luckily, that blogger had an American passport, so the Feds were all over it.

I was the target of a semi-successful attempt to shut down the FLOGG Blog. For ten days, the FLOGG was totally deleted by Google, until they realized that something extra-ordinary and possibly illegal had happened. Of course, that was maji for 'Me & My Friends' to fix. It only served to make the FLOGG more popular. In fact, I was disappointed that the Senate President didn't attack me the way he did Clinton Reynolds. He was going to, but he chickened out. I can't wait for him to get his courage back up to try again.

But for  those who operate entirely in the oppressive St Lucian legal environment...the noose is tightening.

Claudius is leading the charge against the most qualified broadcast news editor AND the most beloved (though least qualified) broadcast news presenter. He and others are coordinating their partisan attacks. Some in the Media Association of St Lucia can't see it, but...

Let’s put all of that together and see what we get:

1.  A blogger called Friends was attacked and robbed and then run out of St Lucia for reporting on Freedom Bay’s developments within the World Heritage Site. The FLOGG has also been warned of potential threats to the life of its writer.

2.  The FLOGG was shut down by what have been confirmed to be people who are in political office and closely associated with political power in this country.

3.  Senate President Claudius Francis, tourism minister Lorne Theorphilus and foreign minister Alva Baptiste are suing Timothy Poleon for reading an internet news article on a radio station….but they are not suing the publisher or the broadcaster.

4.  And now, the Senate President and the Government Secretary were seen to engage in a vicious,  co-ordinated, multi-media attack on the president of the media workers association.

Now, when you add all of that up, tell me what it looks like. Tell me it doesn’t look like the government is targeting media people who don’t suit their purpose.

Tell me this doesn’t stink.

Because if you don’t tell me, I will have no choice but to believe what I see, hear and know. And it is that ever since Claudius Francis first insinuated himself on the media, the power has been going to the hacks and the independent trained media people have either been sidelined, or have to compromise themselves to the purpose of the parties.

FOR MORE ON THE STATE OF ST LUCIAN HACK-A-LACKERY, CLICK HERE.

DEATH THREATS, HITMEN & LAWSUITS: THE BLOGGERS BEORE THE FLOGG

Masked men and lawyers have been attacking St Lucian bloggers for over a year.

 

 

 

There were bloggers before the Flogg.

Both got taken down. One of them was sued. A contract was taken out on the other one.

 

They tried to kill one blogger. My turn, next. I’m way past the stage where they will try to sue or DOS me. But, as the anarchists say, “All they have are bullets.” 

Free Press and FriendsofUNESCO were two anonymous bloggers who took a stand long before the FLOGG ever thought of taking the piss. 

Both of them were a thorn in the side of political, government and tourism interests. Both kept their identities secret. To this day, most people who read those blogs don't know their true identities. Both were targets of attempts to silence them. 

Neither one has surfaced since they were taken down. There is evidence that Free Press fought a brutal law suit brought by the late Ollie Gobat in the interest of the Landings. 

As for FriendsofUNESCO, the blogger who fought Freedom Bay and both Labour and Flambeau governments who were selling off the World Heritage Sites, who knows? That one could be dead: just another Negmarron ghost who haunts the World Heritage Site. A lock of hair separated from a white skull with a bullet lodged in it. For now, let us pray that Friends survived and is reading this somewhere. 

Witnesses testify that Friends was attacked at home by three masked men who looked more like trained professionals than bad boys. Computers, hard drives and mobile phones were stolen. Accounts were hacked and the blog was under hostile attack. 

Next thing you know, US Federal Agents contacted Friends and confirmed that there was a hit out on the blogger’s life. A year later, Ollie Gobat was the one who got hit in what looks like a contract, but St Lucian police insist is a crime of passion. 

Shortly after the US Feds confirmed the death threat on the blogger, FriendsofUNESCO disappeared from St Lucia and was never seen again. A ghost. A buried lock of hair. A buried white skull with a bullet hole in it. Like the blogger never existed. Ollie Gobat probably wishes he had it so good. Once Friends was gone, those who ordered the hit probably thought the coast was clear.

But that is just about exactly when The FLOGG Blog was born. 

 

 

KILL THE MUTHAFLOGGA!

I had no idea what I was getting into. I was just joking when I first published “The Most Dangerous Smile In Politics” to kixx off on Guy Joseph, the former Minister of MisCommunications and Work-outs. 

I was just joking. But apparently, I am not as much of a joker as I hoped to be. And so, so many months after kixxing off on the danger of Guy Joseph's smile, the SLP government is flogging him mercilessly for something that they dare not criminalize him for.

 

Shit got real in ways I could not imagine. Unshackled from advertisers, media managers and the most vile laws stifling free speech in St Lucia, I was suddenly imbued with all my natural powers. As a trained journalist, a kind of heartical activist and a consumer of history, I couldn't help but make the FLOGG grow from a joke into an investigative journalism machine that reinvents the language, ethics and methodology of journalism in the image of Negmarron.

 

To do this successfully, you must repeat these three words to yourself many times over and long period: "Ah, fuck it." It is also helpful to add, "Let the rest of the chips fall where they may."

I got my first death threat and law suit threat around this time in 2013. I didn't say, "Ah, fuck it."

 

I got wind of the death threat and an actual letter threatening to sue. I laid off The FLOGG for over a few months, both scared and excited that my little joke had gone so far. For more than two months, I laid low, reading history, politics and pdfs with names like “Hacking For Dummies”. I also kept gathering the news that wasn’t in the regular media. I didn’t really have a goal in mind. I was just trying to attain a critical mass. 

Once I turned the FLOGG back on earlier this year, it became the island’s most popular and controversial blog. I guess I calculated my own critical mass correctly.

 

That was more good than bad. It resulted in the illegal shutdown that caused Google to flag the FLOGG so that now, any complaint has to be escalated up the chain of power so that no little tyrant freaks and their friends can lay a hand on this blog again. Oh, and the illegal firing of ne Chrystabel Sifflet from St James Morgan Bay once management realized she was related to me. 

Oh, and: The most recent death threat, which was rumored about a week or two ago and confirmed on Thursday 9 October.

 

Sweet.

 

Cos the worst thing would be if people ignored me, the way they ignore Rick Wayne and Jouk Bois.

 

Predictably, the same death threats and lawsuits that were used to oppress the other bloggers only seem to make the FLOGG worse. More popular. More controversial. More attractive to whistleblowers. More impervious to attack from ‘anonymous’ whiners who think that calling out the tourism industry in its ‘apartheid’ is ‘HATE SPEECH.’ 

What was the difference? Why did The FLOGG survive when the others didn’t? The answer is surprisingly simple.  

I was not Anonymous.

 

I was the opposite of Anonymous. I was wearing a suit of flashing lights as I FLOGGed corrupt politicians, the Tourist Board, Cabinet, the opposition, the big hotels, the justice system...I was saying, “Here I am. Come get me for speaking the truth as I know it.” I was not anonymous and so, if anything happened to me, people would know why. And any man who can even think that thought has taken measures and developed many contingencies. Standing at the crossroads of egomania and genius, I achieved something approaching invulnerability. All I had to do was not fuck it all up. 

Which, I guess, is what I am about to do now. 

Fuck it all up. It’s what I do best. It’s a gift.

 



"Fuck it up, Rasta...fuck it all up for us...."



But before I do, let’s pay our respects to our Dead Bloggers Society:

 

May you walk free in your flesh, though some part of you haunts the internet like a ghost, searching in vain for its home. You brave and crazy fools. Thank for leaving trails of bread crumbs that will lead the rest of us home.

 

FREE PRESS VS THE LANDINGS

aka

THE DEATH OF OLLIE GOBAT

"Sup, motherfuckers..Bet you thought I forgot you?"

 

Ollie Gobat wasn’t such a bad guy. But when it came to business, he sure could act like one. Ollie was the kind of guy who protected his family, his friends and his business with everything he had. 

Everything. 

He would have made a great Roman. 

And so, when Free Press smeared the Landings with internet posts that proved that Landings was in deep financial doo-doo, Ollie didn’t hesitate to bring out the big guns. He complained to the publisher and had the offending posts (basically, the entire blog, but on a post by post basis) deleted. 

He lobbied, pressed and sued for the identity of Free Press to be revealed. The publisher was reluctant. Then, he just sued Free Press. He was going for the jugular. 

But Free Press was ready for this eventuality.

 

He knew that if he got sued in England, he would be screwed. If he got sued in America, he had a shot of protecting his identity, at least. And St Lucia? He couldn’t get sued in St Lucia. Because of the idiocy of successive St Lucian governments, all Lucian bloggers play by either American or English rules.

And the day Lucian politicians try to change those rules, they better be ready to update the regular rules on free speech so that we actually have free speech. If not, they will be exposed for the tyrant makaks we already know they are. And both they and their archaic libel laws will have to take some serious blows.

 

Ollie fought to keep the legal battle in England, but Free Press managed to drag it across the Atlantic to America. (Funny how the Great Satan becomes the Bosom of the Lord.) The American rules seem to have resulted in a clear victory for Free Press. Ollie Gobat had bigger problems, however. Instead of being the hunter, he was now the hunted. Someone looked at Ollie and saw him as just another Lucian who was an obstacle to the profiteering schemes. 

Within months of losing to Free Press in American courts, Ollie was dead. He was shot and killed in his SUV, which was then set on fire and left to burn. Rumors blossomed about his alleged relations with the Russian mafia, his debts and their threats. But the only facts are that before Ollie died, he was involved in trying to win the bid for the Landings for the Owners Consortium over the political well-connected interests at Freedom Bay. He met with Kenny Anthony and Allen Chastanet. He told those in his inner circle about the threats he received. 

And then, he drove from the Golf Club, took an unexpected turn and was gone. 

It was my first wakeup call that something was horribly wrong in the St Lucia tourism industry. 

Free Press must have been horrified at the turn of events. The blogger thought that Ollie Gobat was one of the worst things about St Lucian tourism and was out to expose him. But apparently, there was something far worse out there. And it didn’t like Ollie Gobat. It treated him worse than big tourism treats locals. It treated him with the way the mafia treats an upstart rival. With extreme prejudice. 

It killed him. It shot him. It burned him to a crisp. Whatever it is that killed Ollie Gobat is still here. It isn’t negotiating. It isn’t taking ‘No’ for an answer. It isn’t taking any prisoners. It wants money or it will wants blood.

 

It's a whole new level of small island corruption and crime. 

And the way I’m living my life, it wants me next. 

You see, I’m at least as much of an egotistical Lucian dickhead as Ollie Gobat. Maybe more.

 

THE MALFINIS OF MALGRETOUTE

Aka

 

THE MYSTERY OF THE DISAAPEARING BLOGGER

 

 

Funny how things work. 

I was looking for Ollie Gobat’s killer when I found a blogger who was considered so dangerous that US federal agents confirmed there was a hit out on this person. 

FriendsofUNESCO was an anonymous blogger who was inspired by Derek Walcott’s public stand against Freedom Bay. The old poet had been one of the first to stand up against Jalousie, decades ago. Though he was not the energetic firebrand that he was when he first pissed on Jalousie’s parade, he was consistent enough to know that Freedom Bay was the same shit as Jalousie, just on a different day.

 

Derek Walcott: DOESN'T TAKE SHIT..

 

Friends decided not to take any shit either. 

Friends had gotten 11,000 hits from 90 different countries in the very short life of the blog.  Something about that blog was so dangerous that the blogger had to be robbed, hacked and disappeared. 

And what was Friends’ blog about? What was so dangerous? 

Friends criticized the building and development in the World Heritage Site. There was a specific interest in the massive Freedom Bay development. 

Yup. 

That’s pretty much it. The entire blog was about protecting the ancient Amerindian and Negmarron grounds, which are now recognized as a World Heritage Site, from people who have nothing better to do than build more villas and more hotels that fail. 

Apparently, there is something sinister surveying Soufriere’s sacred lands. 

You see, some people will do anything for money. 

Government lackeys like Jadia Jn.Pierre had proclaimed Freedom Bay as an elite new tourism product. Former environmentalist and current Sell-Out-In-Chief Sylvester Clauzel promised that in Freedom Bay would have no negative impact on the PMA or World Heritage Status. 

But it was all premeditated bullshit.

 

 

 

The WHC was so clear in its statements about not building in the PMA that Clauzel and Jn.Pierre’s proclamations and denials were all just confirmations that the government wants money more than it wants the most valuable land in the Eastern Caribbean to remain that way. Even the St Lucia National Trust stayed quiet, just like they did when Le Paradis first took over Fregate Island and started down the road to disaster. 

The bulldozers moved in. 

When the blogger called FriendsofUNESCO started attacking the hostile developments that are destroying the World Heritage Site in February 2013, the people who loved money most decided to do something final. 

The Secret Satans in Soufriere sent three masked men to the home of the blogger, threatening a guest, who owns land near Jalousie, with death. Locking the blogger in the bathroom, they stole all the electronic communications devices and accessories they found. 

They spent the next weeks and months hacking Friends’ accounts. 

Then they ordered the hit.

 



Something sinister is stalking Soufriere...



 

Friends had been trying to protect Soufriere’s small landowners from government seizure of private property. The government was hoping to make these lands available to Freedom Bay. Which government? The last Flambeau government. Not that the current Labour government is any different, in any way. Mem bet, mem pwel.

 

 

 

Friends was part of a small band of conscious soldiers who were dedicated to protecting the World Heritage Site. Some of them initiated a 10-year legal battle to protect Zion Henry from family members who even forged documents because they wanted to sell the land so bad. 

That case went all the way to the Privy Council. Zion Henry won half of the land contested, with the rest of the ‘family’ lusting over the other four. I wrote about their victory in the February 25, 2010 issue of The STAR Newspaper 

For some reason, you can find every story in the STAR archive on the website except this one. Lucky for us, you can the full text of the story here: 

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/26956181/Privy-Council-Rules-on-Battle-for-Pitons

Whoever took down the STAR’s page about Zion, whether they are at the STAR or not, I hope it was lucrative for them. I hope they didn’t sell out cheap.

Friends also repeated warnings from UNESCO’s World Heritage Commission to stop all developments in the Piton Management Area or be listed as a site in danger. In spite of the repeated warnings, Freedom Bay was encouraged by the new Labour government to start construction in 2012. 

Like we said: Mem bet, mem pwel.

 

 

 

In February 2013, Friends unleashed the blog. 

By the time The FLOGG was in full swing after the first HOT COUTURE, FriendsofUNESCO had disappeared from the face of the island. 

No blog. No blogger. No nothing. 

The FLOGG was not even aware the blog existed until the investigation into Ollie Gobat’s death began 

Whether it is directly related or not, the research into Ollie’s murder led directly to the Mystery of the Disappearing Blogger. 

So now, there is only one thing that must be done.

I must go to the one man who keeps the old Malgretoute open to the St Lucian public. The one thing that stands between the World Heritage site becoming a private enclave. I have to go through Freedom Bay to get to him. The banks won’t tell him, but he already knows that he is the richest man in St Lucia. He was born in the shadow of the Pitons and lived his entire life there. He is a master of agriculture and a doctor of forests. He is one of the last keepers of the Negmarron flame. 

His family is Henry. The baptismal priest named him Calixtus.  But his real Negmarron name, his chosen name, is Zion. 

No one answers the phone when I call. 

Damian Marley sings my instructions into my ear. 

“Got to keep it moving on The Road to Zion, yeah…” 

I pack my bags for Soufriere.

 

Next: THE ROAD TO ZION