TRUE CONFESSIONS OF A WIFE BEATER by Jason Sifflet

This is not satire. This is not parody. This is not a joke or a literary gimmick. This is for real.

A MEDITATION ON VIOLENCE BY SOMEONE WHO WENT TOO FAR

A recent post on Facebook by the prime minister’s press secretary ostensibly aimed to discuss domestic violence and turned into a kind of organized Facebook political assassination of a known terrorist.

It was sad to see domestic violence become a victim once again, this time, not in the household, but in the political arena.

I had hoped that the abuser in question would face down the specific allegations honestly, sub-textually daring the rest of the men on the post to deny that they are any different than him. He didn’t. He scored some political points, took some political hits (including what might be a death blow) and totally avoided the question of his abusive behavior when confronted by his peers.

Unfortunately, I had not forgotten Jada Jn.Pierre’s original challenge to have an honest discussion of domestic violence. With her intended target on the run, I picked up his blindfold and stand now before the firing squad.

If you’re looking for a guy who beat his wife, you found him. It’s me. I am guilty of what you accuse Amatus Edwards of. The details might be different, but in substance, we are the same. Domestic violence is not just the doing of deranged heavy drinkers with penis issues. Sometimes, it’s nice guys you would never expect it from. Sometimes, it’s someone you hoped would know better.

Most importantly, in this article, sometimes, when you heard your neighbor screaming as her husband abused her…sometimes, it was me.

Before you shoot me, I want to make a true statement. This is not some kind of allegory. Everything that follows is an actual fact.

 

DAYS OF THE DOG: 2000 WORDS OF PAIN

I’m trying to be a lion. I was raised as a lion. But somewhere along the way in my life, I became a dog.

I will waste no words on the reasons or excuses for my actions. The story begins where MY violence begins...

THE BROKEN GLASS: She held the thick glass mug her hands just above her head. I wrestled it out of her hands easily and smashed it violently on the floor near her feet. It was my first taste of violence. She pretended to be strong, but it shocked her. I was not angry and shouting. I was calm as the early morning sea. I had never tasted violence like this. Violence without fear.

I didn’t think it then, but with hindsight, it was the first time I began to understand the addiction of violence that grips psychos and gangsters and cops and soldiers and…but I’m diverting attention from myself. As she walked away silently to the baby in the bedroom, I picked up the shards on the floor, retrieved the torn and crumpled novel she gave me for my birthday and resumed reading.

 

THE BEER BOTTLE AND THE FLOOR: She sat at the computer, opening files of St Lucian girls who had taken their clothes off, some of them specifically for me. Very recent pictures. She grabbed the beer bottle by the side of the computer and small part of me thought, “Oh man, the one beer you drink all year is going to burst your head. This is why people put things away before they go to bed.” The rest of me grabbed her hand and dis-lodged  the bottle.  It fell to the floor as I grabbed her by her neck and dragged her from the bedroom into the living room,  explaining all the legitimate reasons why I was going to do something wrong. We weren’t together anymore.  She didn’t live here. She had humiliated me with violence enough. I wasn’t her bwa. I was tired of being a pussyhole.  Blah, blah, blah. I could see myself, as though I was watching myself, panicking and helpless at what could happen next. But I was also powerful and domineering, asserting myself in a way I never had in any relationship. I threw her to the floor, thinking, “She’s a lot lighter now than when we have sex.” Then, as she cowered, screaming for help or attention or whatever, I sat on her chest, straddling her and choked her with one hand as I slapped her with the other.  I slapped her hard enough that my hand hurt.  But I didn’t stop slapping her. I cursed and spat and strangled, watching the veins around my eyes rage in the reflection of her eyes.

Watching myself commit these crimes from above myself, something screamed, “Jason, WTF, Rasta? You were not raised like this.  What will Aunty Martha say when she hears about this? Aunty Cynthia? Aunty Julita? Women who raised you. Women who could never be hit by a man. Jason. Jason!”

But she was screaming and I was cursing and the floor was wooden, reverberating with the fighting, so I could hear myself trying to stop myself. I can’t remember why I stopped. I think I realized that I had what it took to kill her. And it wasn’t that I didn’t want to kill her. I just didn’t want my son to grow up without his mother. When I got off her, I threw her shoes outside. I threw the bag. I grabbed her from the floor and dragged her to balcony and down the steps to ensure that she did not remain sobbing within my range.

You see, I was filled with rage, my voice was an insensible growl, my blood filled with strength I never knew before, my emotions like horses stampeding out of control. But somehow I had not lost control. I was not crazy. I was still in my right mind. Which means that every time I hit her, I chose to do it.

I could have thrown her out from the beginning. But I wanted to beat the shit out of her. It didn’t feel good afterward. But it felt good at the time my hands were constricting her trachea. It felt good when I tossed her like a rag doll. I like I experienced something about ‘being a man’ that I never knew before. I felt like I was showing her something about me that she had not taken account of needed to know.

Somehow, in the midst of being the worst version of myself I have ever been, I felt like I was right.  I felt like I was both the victim and the goddamn hero.

THE PHONE AND THE FLOOR: She was living with my mother and I spent the night because she and I were going to lose something important the next day. In the early morning, I got a call. To save money, I made the person call the landline. She came at me with a pair of scissors. I grabbed her wrist so that the scissors were disabled and tripped her so she fell backwards.  I straddled her and holding her neck, I banged her head into the floor. I didn’t use all my strength because I didn’t want to wake up the baby. The baby woke up anyway. I didn’t soothe him. I left them both alone to lose that something valuable by themselves as I comforted myself in somebody’s daughter’s vagina.  I realize now that she was trying to cut the phone line. She wasn’t trying to attack me at all.

 

THE WET DIAPER AND THE FLOOR: This is after the wedding and before the second baby. I was in bed.  She in was in my phone.  She threw a wet diaper at me and it hurt a hell of a lot. It hurt for weeks on that side of my face. But it wasn’t the pain that sparked me off.  It was that she was accusing and punishing me unjustly. I grabbed the wet diaper and flung it at her. She dodged, but that was part of my wicked plan. As she dodged, I lunged forward and braced her on the wall.  My hands were at her neck again. I head butted her a few times while whispering what I was saying very calmly.  She screamed as I threw her to the floor. In my mind, I was already slapping the shit out of her.  My two-year-old son took hand and said, “Ok, Papa, calm down. Let’s go inna room.” My son had never spoken a complete sentence before that. He wouldn’t even put two words together unless it was absolutely necessary. The first sentence my son spoke was to stop me from beating his mother.

THE MOST UNPROVOKED VIOLENCE: I was angry with her about something else, but I hadn’t told her what it was or that I was furious inside. When she accused me of exactly what I knew she was guilty of, I flipped out and left the living room, went to the kitchen, put her down on the ground and started hurting her. I wasn’t using punches or slaps or choking. I was pinning her down and hurting her with the pressure. I remember that after weeks, even months, of being repulsed by her, I was suddenly aroused.

Disgusted by my own perverse, rapist erection, I relented. I stopped. She was still pregnant with my daughter. I wanted to hurt her, but I didn’t want to hurt my daughter. But…I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to hurt her for what I thought she did to me. Sometimes, I think I still do. Sometimes, I still have violent fantasies involving real people for no good reason. I am consoled only by the fact I am far more interested in pain and death than in sex. Imagine that.

THE REVERSE SLAP: For some reason, there was a time when she had taken a preference to slapping. Having had a conversation with myself about the rewards of turning the other cheek, I resolved to walk away. I was scaring myself. And while this demonic side of me was growing, I was also finding out that I’m not a bad father at all. The good guy in me had the best reason to live.  To not hurt others. One day, I came up with a slightly different strategy. When she slapped me, I grabbed her hands and started slapping my face violently with them. It soon got to the point where her hands hurt far more than my face. She closed her fists,  but that was a mistake. I started punching my face with her fists. I think I was hoping to break her fingers or something. I told her that when she is telling people I hit her, to describe to them how I broke her hands with my face. So much for the good guy.

THE PHONE, THE SLAP AND THE OTHER SLAP: I tried to take the phone away from her but she grabbed it in a way that accidentally broke my finger. I didn’t hit her then, but she went outside and made our argument very public, including saying some truly scary things about me. Inside, we fought and I slapped her so hard, it stopped time for a moment. I picked up my son and walked out of the house. She came to the balcony, as the neighbors gathered, screaming, “That’s how you’re treating me. You’re punching me! You’re punching your child mother!” I turned back to her and said loud enough for everyone to hear, “I didn’t punch you, I slapped you. Like this.” And I slapped her so hard, it stopped time again. While she and the neighbors stood paralyzed, I said, “Want to see it again.” Pow. I slapped her again and walked away with my son. As I walked away, I felt somehow vindicated. I don’t know from what. I had just demonstrated to my neighbors that I was  a wife-beater.  Lucky for me, I live in a place where no one cares. That day, my son didn’t talk very much. We just kinda limed around in silence.

There were other incidents of violence, some quite public, but as these are not stories of MY violence, I don’t feel like those are my stories to tell. I don’t consider myself a victim and so while the memory of those incidents fill me with shame and hurt, I don’t consider them relevant to the discussion of the violence of the male abuser.

I meant to analyze this stuff a little bit more. I have some principles I learnt from the entire experience that I want to share. But I’m exhausted from remembering this stuff.

Being a wife-beater must be like being a drug-addict, where no matter how long it’s been since you last did it, what matters most is that you now know you are the kind of person who does that.

I can never again be that loveable, innocent boy who never abused a woman.  I can never look at a public service announcement about domestic violence without thinking, “They’re talking about me.”

Perhaps because I was not convicted of anything, I will probably never really be free of the guilt…

All I have left in this moment is to be a man about it and admit that pretty much everything said about Amatus Edwards is true about me.

And because I didn’t think I was even capable of this, now, sometimes, I think maybe I’m capable of worse than that.

Telling this story did not make me feel better and I don’t know if it will do anyone any good. I don’t know if other men will identify with this or if it’s just who is this sick inside.

But you know what?

This is my small contribution to the ‘Honest Debate on Domestic Violence’ started on Facebook by Jada Jn.Pierre. This is what I know firsthand. Statute of limitations be damned.

Let the chips fall where they may.

It’s bound to be better than the little lies I told myself yesterday.

This is not your hero

 

The Black List: PEOPLE WE NEVER WANT TO SEE IN POLITICS AGAIN

People want to know if we’re starting a revolution by naming names, creating fantasy cabinets and igniting a discussion about a future with Labour and Flambeau.

We are not starting a revolution. There’s going to be a least one more election of LAB-FLAM before the real organizing of St Lucia’s new political  reality takes hold. In fact, in the historic sense of the word, there will be no revolution. Just a bunch of people changing their mind about the role of Labour and Flambeau  AT THE SAME TIME.

We are not starting a revolution.

We are just thinking a thought.

We are thinking about a St Lucia that has no need for the two political parties that have robbed us, betrayed us,  mamaguyed us, raped our island’s resources and its economy and stunted the growth of entire generations of Neg Marron.

It’s a beautiful thought. Think it with me.

Think about the people  who are currently in politics who, in five years, should be relegated to Trotsky’s dustbin. Think about all the people we would be better off without:

NIGGERS  WE NEVER WANT TO SEE IN GOVERNMENT AGAIN:

ALLEN CHASTANET: I mean, we’re being ridiculous. This is never going to work. If the United Workers Party cares about St Lucia,  they will get rid of the fast talking,  free-wheeling big spender and find some leadership that we can respect. No one will ever have confidence in this person we’re promoting as a future prime minister. Not even his own daddy. We have to take this guy off the list of options that St Lucians have if we truly want to rescue St Lucia.

KENNY ANTHONY: We don’t even have to get into the current state of the economy. I was there when Kenny Anthony promised to do only two terms. I was there when that the first term limits came into force  for a Labour Political Leader and Deputy Leader. But Kenny Anthony broke his promise to deliver term limited democracy to the Neg and I will never be able to forgive him as long as he remains in office. Wrap it up, buddy. Time to go.

GUY JOSEPH: How did this guy even get into politics in the first place? Oh right. It was Kenny Anthony’s fault for not listening to THE WHOLE DAMNED WORLD when they were telling him to call the elections in 2005. So he and his creator Kenny Anthony can both go to the same place.

RICHARD FREDERICK: See above.  And then dress in sack cloth, sit in ashes wailing and gnashing your teeth, lamenting your evident God-forsakenness.

ALVA BAPTISTE: He sounds good, but he doesn’t taste that great and he’s very fattening. Not good for the health of the government at all. Alva Baptiste is the fakest, most empty social democrat ever.  If he was a real  communist, he would have been promoted to head of government in China long ago. As far as I’m concerned,  they can have him, because he’s spending a whole lot of money doing the country no good whatsoever..

MUSA: Fail. Epic fail. Put a trained agronomist to run the agriculture and you expect at least incremental progress. Instead, it’s just fail after fail. Musa’s failure to restore Neg Marron agricultural power and independence is the most fundamental stumbling block to the success of the Labour Government and the progress of the nation of St Lucia.

VICTOR LA CORBINIERE: Don’t worry. He eh never winning an election. When Kenny goes, he’s going, Leo’s going, a whole species of loyalist nonsense will just flush down the drain.

EDMUND ESTEPHANE: Da mun still deh. Aaaa-A! Anyway,  with no Marcus Nicholas, we need some kinda entertainment in the House of Assembly,  right? So maybe Estay can hang around a little longer. I mean anyone who can make Harold Dalson look like a Shakespearean orator has to be worth something. Lol.

LENARD ‘SPIDER’ MONTOUTE: Ever heard the cautionary tale of a guy with good intentions who got into politics and became just like THEM?  Politics isn’t spiritual but you better have your spirit well defended, because in politics, your friends will do your soul more damage than your enemies.  You will become embittered, angry, self-interested, selectively blind,  goal-oriented to the point where the goal is more  important than the general  well-being. In the end, the good guy turns out to  be one of the worst of the bad guys. In fact,  he’s better at it than most of the guys who were just bad guys in the first place. Evr heard that story. Ask Spider about it. He knows that story all too well.

EZEKIEL JOSEPH: File under “Useless.”

RUFUS BOUSQUET: Of all the people on this list, there is only one that you need to take active measures against. The rest of them will either expire or self-destruct,  some more  fabulously than others. But Rufus Bousquet, he’s something different. No matter how many times you kill that cockroach, it just keeps coming back, laying eggs in the media, getting all into your stash and not just taking some, but polluting what he leaves behind. Politics is a thing where the best men take support from the worst. And Rufus Bousquet is the master of supporting the people that he wants to usurp. When you have a guy like Bousquet on your team, you have tricks and gimmicks your enemy never heard of. But you  also have to watch your back, because those very tricks and gimmicks are coming to slit your throat in the political night.

HONORABLE MENTION

STANLEY FELIX: Thanks for nothing.

KEITH MONDESIR: Do we do exorcisms in St Lucia?

MARCUS NICHOLAS: If Parliament is going to continue to be the maji it is today, I want Marcus Nicholas. Because that fool was more professionally foolish than anyone who ever stood in St Lucian parliament before.

 

THE REAL JOHNNY WALKERS: MORE FANTASY CABINET MEMBERS

 UNUSUAL SUSPECTS

They’re talking the talk but they’re not walking the walk. In fact, more and more, it seems they’re not even talking the talk. Flambeau and Labour are having a conversation that is completely divorced from the solutions St Lucians need.

When John Compton died, it seems he sucked all the goodness out of St Lucian politics. Ironic. John Compton was one of Nietzsche’s supermen – he made his own morality, for better or worse. But when he died, we learnt that he made even Kenny Anthony a better person just by being alive.  With Compton and Odlum both gone to where old politicians go, with Hunter Francois and Neville Cenac both not playing again, St Lucian politics not longer has Men, much less lion kings.

St Lucia politics is a party for rats. Big rats. Of all colors, genders, races and ideological persuasions. The rat party reached its height in 2011 when the big rats (Flambeau) committed political suicide, just for the lulz.

Then came Labour, promising to end the party and get to work cleaning up the crack-infested squalor. Two and a half years later, the mice of St Lucia are finding out that while they are suffering increased taxation, decreased salaries and benefits, a derth of job opportunities and a tough prospects for any private initiative, the big rats of Labour are still having a party.

In the foreign affairs ministry. In the St Lucia Tourist Board. In SLASPA. Anywhere that Leo Clarke and Peter Foster show their face…party time.

But mice are not invited.

Well, my friends, Lucians, mousey men, I say we should look to each other for leadership. Let them have their parties. We just want our country.

In the continuing effort to liberate St Lucia from the political monopoly of the usual suspects in the FLAY-BOUR Party, the FLOGG presents some more  unusual suspects for national leadership.

THE REAL JOHNNY WALKERS

MARIO MICHEL, Good Boy, Badass, Chief Justice of Something or The Other: 

Just because he never admitted to smoking weed and he looks down his nose at us even though he’s a short ass bastard doesn’t mean Mario Michel is ‘one of them.’

Michel is one of the very few politicians who prefers to be right than popular, who will stick to his guns when the whole wrong world is against him, who will listen to good advise, change his mind when he is wrong and who has flawless, I mean, completely and perfectly impeccable taste in women.

If he was American, he would be set. But he’s St Lucian, so he’s screwed.

LESMOND MAGLOIRE, Scientist, Occupational Safety Consultant:

As China teaches the world that human rights abuse and hazardous working conditions are just factors of production in the success of true capitalism, St Lucia needs Lesmond Magloire more than ever.

As one of the senior members of St Lucia’s de facto science think tank, Magloire has spent his life waging a silent war not against the upper classes or the pinljo communists, but against unseen things that slowly, stealthily damage, cripple and kill people. His work has identified a litany of poisons, toxins, hazardous chemicals all buried or stashed or forgotten in fields, in garages, in abandoned houses and factories. B

ecause he’s such a scientist and not in love with playing the political game, his name gets overlooked a lot. But try this. Go around your neighborhood looking for signs of hazardous chemical threats. If you find a legitimate one, post it to one of St Lucia’s group pages. I guarantee you that if you don’t hear from Lesmond Magloire you will hear from someone he influenced.

He’s like that superhero that no one knows he even exists except the weird kid who runs that crazy blog. Conclusion: This guy has been saving our lives from things we didn’t even know about, for decades.

FATHER LINUS CLOVIS, Personal Mathematician to God:

How is it possible to have a Nobel Prize Winner for Literature in a nation of sub-literates? The same way it’s possible to have a Linus Clovis in a nation of people who can’t do math unless money is involved.

Father Linus Clovis, like the ten million coconuts and mangos that rot every year, is one of St Lucia’s most tragically under exploited resources. There is no factual way to tell you how great a mind you’re dealing with here. Only schizophrenic allegory can begin to describe the genius that many rightly think is the single greatest thinker alive in St Lucia today. And so:

When Jesus was having trouble with CXC Math during the Lost Years, God created Father Linus Clovis for the sole purpose of getting the best assistance for His Boy. It was such a good plan that it worked too well and Jesus accidentally invented the internet using some pai, a frog and a goat skin drum.

You can imagine the consternation that caused in the space-time continuum where it is a well established fact that the internet was invented by the American military in the late 20^th century for making people sign up to get spied on.

Luckily, God found out before the first email was ever sent and had a little pep talk with The Boy about how less is more. Jesus became so advanced that God decided he couldn’t just leave a thing like Linus Clovis lying around in the ancient Roman Empire.

That would be against Star Fleet Federation rules.

And so, God gave Father Clovis a ticket to the 20^th/21^st century…where they are still not ready for him and his very presence continues to disturb the status quo, if not the space-time continuum.

And what’s better than a priest who likes people but pisses bishops off.

Don’t dig nothing, Father, there are some of us who are ready for you. Some of us have always been on the Latin Mass, Advanced Calculus, higher civilization trip. The Lord has a great work for you in this nation. Well, greater than the stuff you do, almost on a daily basis.

SPOILER ALERT: As for Jesus, he dropped out of college, invented the phrase ‘taking one for the team’ and the rest was legend.

KENDEL HIPPOLYTE, Poet, Teacher, Lucian Shaolin Neg Temple Flame Keeper:

If one person is the keeper of the soul flame of St Lucia, it is my teacher and yours, Kendal Hippolyte. He’s like what would happen if Che Guevara played a flute instead of  a trigger.

He is the only person on the list of tomorrow’s leaders who is already doing exactly what he needs to do and should not be disturbed for any reason other than to provide financial assistance to what he’s doing now and what he’s doing next.

He is also the only St Lucian writer of note to have stepped completely out of the shadow of Derek Walcott. Hippolyte was the shortest ‘Straw’ of the classical generation of Lucian thespians, of whom the Walcott brothers were the best known exponents. Somewhere along the road to his personal, regional and international achievement, Hippolyte decided to spend a few years raising a new generation of thespians. The generation he raised is now training another generation.

Without people like him, theater, like dance and music, would have devolved into a tourism shelf mess. But because of him, everyone still looks at St Lucia as though theater is no joke here, no comedic pappyshow like in J’a and T’T, but a high art like ballet and classical music and the motherfucking blues.

More than Derek or even Roddy Walcott, this one man has become the artistic heartbeat of the nation, pumping life giving artistic empowerment into people who have no idea that the humble ‘bab sal’ man who is helping them is larger, grander and more godlike than anything they ever met in their life before.

BONUS NON-FACTUAL LEGEND: Hippolyte also has a cult of worshippers whose temple he must destroy every couple of weeks in order to avoid becoming a god. He also has a team of hackers who take down sites that cyber-venerate him a la St John Coltrane, and a crew of bad boy Baptists, criminal Catholics, ignorant Islamists and asshole atheists who are assigned ‘persuade’ persistent Kendal worshippers that anyone – and I mean, anyone – except Hippolyte, is God. Though this could not be confirmed at press time, the multi-demoninational bad boys are said to work on commission, (that is they get paid more every time they get someone to worship something else besides God…I mean, Hippolyte!…oh snap! Here they come to get me…)

VINCENT MCDOOM, International Celebrity:

Say one, say two, if we give Vincent something to do, it’s going to get done and well done too, with global press coverage coming out your butt instead of doo doo.

Say two, say three, if you give him something to achieve, he won’t give the world a chance to breathe. You’ll be reaping meg-media because you believe that until he proves his worth, he ain't taking no leave.

(That last line was not meant as pawol jettay for Louis Lewis, who coincidentally went on leave during the week that the Royal Shakespeare Theater Company performed the historic SHAKESPEARE IN THE RAINFOREST at Fond D’or. Any incidental truth told was entirely incidental.)

HENRY CHARLES, Trade Unionist, International Consultant:

You mean to tell me that after all the bobol that has gone on in both Labour and Flambeau, people still believe that Henry Charles did anything wrong or illegal in the so-called NCA Scandal?

Really?

Charlo is one of the few true believers of the St Lucia Labour Party, one of the few who understand and identify with the ghetto youth, who can comprehend the Gordian knot of poverty, illiteracy and historic conspiracy that contrive to keep the high risk youth in the position they’re in.

Charlo had a feasible plan to turn short term employment projects in job training and entrepreneurship when Labour threw him under the bus in a callous act of political expediency. Both Labour and Flambeau have half-heartedly continued Charlo’s plan but with much less success, because THEY JUST DON’T GET IT. They have neither the vision nor the background to expedite the transformation of the marginalized urban youth and underexploited rural human resource.

Charlo does.

It is, in the final analysis, THE ONLY THING he really wants out of life. Let him do the damned thing so we can un-garrison the city of Castries and find a profitable reversal to our urban drift.

PHILIP JULES, former Chief Economist:

The old man sits on the sidewalk in Gros Islet. “I heard they’re going to get their cut paying some foreign firm millions to dredge the dam,” he said, sipping a rum and coke with the appreciation that only a retiree could. “I could dredge that dam faster for less without bringing in any equipment.”

The old man is an engineer. He was also chief economist of St Lucia before his minister tried to bribe an investor. The next day, said minister got a dressing down and a resignation letter. It is said that on his death bed, George Odlum summoned Jules and passed the mantle on to him.

“Fuck the mantle,” Jules says of politics in general. “Where’s the progress? Where are the ideas? Where’s the growth? A little island of less than a quarter million people and you have an unemployment problem? Something’s not wrong with the country. Something’s wrong with the leaders and the people who put them there.”

Castor oil, Commonwealth scholarships, cheaper new vehicles, renewable energy… Jules has an idea for just about every ministerial portfolio that could revolutionize St Lucia. The withering old bastard has all our tomorrows perfectly planned in his head.

But I must stop, because writing about Philip Jules is its own article. Article? Hell, Philip Jules is a whole manifesto and blue print for the future.

PETER LANSIQUOT, Ambassador, Healer of the Blind:

Yeah, I said it. 

I can’t help but notice that while Pel was Ambassador to Cuba, the blind were being healed left, right and center as though Christ had turned miracle healing into a national health care program.

I can’t help but notice that Pel is no longer Ambassador to Cuba and the blind can see for themselves. He is also one of Labour’s last remaining bona fide Neg Marron.

There’s a lot more to that story, but I’m not promoting Pel any more because when I’m trying to get the low down dirt on the secret meetings of Labour, he is of no use to me whatsoever. He takes pride in defending the bastards, even though I know full well that inside the secret meetings, he is on their case saying exactly the same thing I’m saying and sometimes even worse.

Just like Pip.

Good Labourites are such strange creatures. Exotic, in a headachy kind of a way.

 

FORGET FLAY-BOUR, HERE'S WHO SHOULD LEAD SLU

THE NEXT LEADERS OF 21^ST CENTURY ST LUCIA

A FANTASY PARLIAMENT

Even if Labour and Flambeau were not a bunch of conniving, power-hungry, blue-swilling profiteers, both parties have to admit that they have been left behind by history.

Labour moved to the center while practically all of the sensible Third  World was moving to the Left, with a new democratic socialism.

Flambeau, meanwhile, was free market party back in the days of protectionism. They have not quite gotten over the fact that clique-ism, nepotism and other cousins of protectionism are no longer part of the game.

And while Labour learns Flambeau’s dirty right kakalakery, Flambeau has become quite adept in Labour’s sloppy left winger faggotry. Each continues the other’s worst policies while wiping out their best.

Having reached the conclusion that neither major party is the leadership factory that it used to be, the FLOGG, in the interest of the nation, now presents a preliminary list of the best people to lead St Lucia in the 21^st century. A kind of fantasy Cabinet.

The FLOGG is currently accepting all criticism, condemnation and a limited number of fatwas for not having published this 20 years ago, when we first needed it.

This list is by no means exhaustive and additions to the list are welcome.

 

THE FANTASY CABINET OF 21^ST CENTURY ST LUCIA

THEODORA MORILLE-HINDS, Molecular biologist: If you know her as Merle, then you already know that this Gros Islet girl is one of St Lucia’s best kept intellectual secrets. She has done with her life what St Lucia has a nation should have done with agriculture and fishing – she boosted the science end off the charts. The result is that when you Google her name you find a 21^st century fishing village girl who is an internationally recognized molecular scientist who has been near or at the top of her field at Kraft Foods, Kelloggs and other giant brands. In becoming a scientist, she became a global corporate mother of food safety for the world’s biggest food processors. Frankly, I’m tired of Musa’s lack of results and Ezekiel Joseph’s blatant fraudulence as an agricultural activist. I want some of what Merle has to offer.

JON PETERS, Engineer: Some people are still stuck in a universe where engineer Jon Peters is some kinda partisan. But if you read Peters’ articles over the years, you don’t find a partisan. You find a thoughtful planner who is ever willing to strip the politics from planning, redrawing the design and economics in the favor of the tax payer.

PHILIP J PIERRE, Self-made Man: The longest serving member of Parliament is also the only current MP who would survive the purge if we were running a bloody revolution. In fact, Pierre wouldn’t just survive. He would be promoted. We already lost one good Labour prime minister (Mario Michel) to Kenny Anthony’s self-service. Given the state of Flambeau, Pierre is actually the nation’s single best shot at stability and sensibility that exists in Lucian politics today. Everything else is either more of the same or the fire outside the frying pan.

NIGEL ‘Rosethorn’ MITCHELL, All Round Genius: He is gentlest, cuddliest, thorniest, prickliest thing. He’s not a tenth man, disagreeing just to see it another way. He’s finding cracks in theories, preparing broad stroking planners for all the unforeseen eventualities and consequences. He’s smart as a whip and he loves Jesus. One of the few people who could actually be PS or minister of anything. Almost anything.

MARY FRANCIS, Human Rights Activist: To any intelligent 21^st century center left government, Mary Francis would be a gift from God. While all the dinosaur brains in the Caribbean legal fraternity are rushing to the Caribbean Court of Justice to preserve their ancient feudal monopoly on violence, in particular, capital punishment, Mary Francis has become an international hero, standing for everything right despite what anyone says. If I were an ostensibly social democratic prime minister named, say, Kenny Anthony, I would be riding Mary’s train to increased grants from Europe and America, to a multi-million dollar stream of speaking engagements and a hot publishing contract. I'd be standing on her giant little shoulders. But PhD-award winning morons in government can’t see her as anything but a pest. Francis eh digging no horrors on them, tho. She knows that she will live forever while they are already dead in the water.

EMMA HIPPOLYTE, Vatican Banker: Did I say Pip was the only person who would survive the hypothetical Maoist Purge fantasy that lulls me to sleep at night? I take it back. Emma is definitely made of good stuff. She might be a little compromised by the current lot, but I still think she’s something good. I mean, there’s a Jesuit in the Vatican changing the world from moment to moment and we have his Vatican banker on our staff. If I was Kenny Anthony, I would have backed down from finance to make room for her. But instead he has her making float and bakes in the commerce ministry canteen. Genius, I tell you. Pure unadulterated genius.

POUG VALMONT, Neg Marron Businessman: Now I know what you’re thinking and so does Poug. He’s wondering why I’m making him a lightning rod. But neither you or Poug have taken account of the fact that he is one of the last functional symbols of the great 20^th century Neg Marron businessman. The greatest of them was not a Valmont, but old man JQ. Unfortunately, JQ’s descendants don’t count as Neg Marron anymore, not by a long shot. And so Poug, with all his problems, is kinda the last remnant of the Great Money Neg of the 20^th century. We’re going to need that to balance some shit out, you know what I’m saying, bro. His sistren Ingrid Skerrit gets to be on the list, too. She's smart. But from the street, the only word worth anything in the local black bourgeois is Poug.

LETON LAMONTAGNE, Heritage Tourism Honcho: In the beginning, God created St Lucia. And the Amerindians said, “It is good,” and they didn’t change a thing. But you know how that turned out. And Europeans said, let’s plant export crops on it. But they messed that up. And then the Neg said let’s plant export crops AND do tourism. And that seemed to work for a moment, except that to sell the high density tourism, you sometimes need to cut the toes off a Piton or kill an entire bay in Gros Islet. So God was sad. But then, one day, Leton Lamontage created Fond Dou, the most authentic heritage tourism experience you can have without being in danger of getting robbed by your own jamette and thrown from the top of Gros Piton in the dead of night. And God look at the old cocoa plantation,  the restored architecture and agriculture, the local cuisine and home made chocolate. And the Lord said, “I don’t care if you’re a dirty Flambeau. This is exactly the right kind of tourism for islands like you. It is good.”

MIKEY PILGRIM, Financial Revolutionary: George Odlum’s revolutionary in charge of the dollars never really got his chance to shine in St Lucian politics. After the demise of the ‘revolution’ Pilgrim swung back and forth giving him a bit of a reputation as a partisan Tarzan. The truth is that Mike Pilgrim, like most good PLPs gave up on politics after the way the 1982 campaign went. Everything you saw of him in politics after that wasn’t Mikey Pilgrim. He was and probably still is the best qualified person to resolve any seeming contradictions between an economy that competes aggressively and one that cares consistently.

AUSBERT D’AUVERGNE, Scary Brilliant Guy: Okay you don’t want him near your money or near your power, I get it. Me neither. But the more I look at that National Quadrant Vision Plan or whatever, the more I see that as a nation, we can’t just throw that talent away. We can still profit from this fer de lance.

DAMIAN GREAVES, Friendly Brilliant Guy: There is something sly and calculating about Dr Greaves. And at the same time, there is something simple, straightforward and honest about him. There’s something honorable about a guy who will take one for the team and then watch the new team screw things up from afar and not turn on them, but try to help them. And finally, like Felix Finisterre, Damian Greaves is one of the few people who has already proven that he has what it takes to change a community with one good project. Speaking of which….

FELIX FINISTERRE, Angry Brilliant Guy: He’s still vex with me because I was part of that whole ‘cost overruns’ chorus. But in hindsight, we can see that Finisterre gave us something good for our money while Guy Joseph and the rest of the cost overrun chorus did not. He’s currently working on a project in Gros Islet that will make his success at the Soufriere Marine Management Area look like a primary school production by comparison. He always was the ultimate project manager. He’s so good at it that even his hubris cant undermine his ability. And that is truly phenomenal. It means that you could make him PM and when the power goes to his head, he’ll still do something right.

EVERISTUS JN MARIE, Conservative Brilliant Guy: He walks like an independent, talks like an independent, writes like an independent, but I always though he smelt a little center right to me. Still, it takes all kinds and as the center right goes, Everistus Jn Marie is one of the few conservative people to make any sense at all and perhaps the only one who makes a whole lot of sense.

DR MARTIN DIDIER, Doctor, Philosopher: Some men rouse others to revolution. Some men are one man revolutions and lead themselves to where all of us need to go. Dr Martin Didier does not seek followers but he doles out the kind of wisdom that ALL ST LUCIANS need to hear. Anybody could follow that guy.

DR MARIA GRANDISON-DIDIER, Doctor, Philosopher: Hmm. I don’t think she caught it from him. But whatever he has she has it, too. I hope it’s contagious.

JOAN DIDIER, HIV/Human Rights Activist: Yeah, it’s probably contagious.

CUTHBERT DIDIER, Dick: It’s definitely contagious. Let’s hope Soter doesn’t catch it, otherwise, this country is gonna get screwed the right way for the first time in its life. And like it.

LEN ISHMAEL, Executive, Organizer, Researcher: You don’t have to like a person to recognize their worth. And also, it’s good to have proof that hot legs and a well flaunted ass DO NOT,  in any way, diminish a person’s intelligence or value.

MARTIN ‘BOB’ PHULCHERE, Inventor, Activist: In Gros Islet, by the bay, there is a man in a beautiful wooden house who is singlehandedly inventing St Lucian technology. His innovations are part of a project he calls the Master Builders Workshop which has already made a few well-established industry practices too costly and time-consuming. His focus on LOW TECH innovations that improve the quality of life of poor and rural people with the minimum amount of investment could change St Lucia, if someone pays attention. But between his international contacts and his community work for his beloved Gros Islet, Bob has little time or patience for the mainstream of St Lucian economic and political life. In fact, he’s so fed up, he was one of the founder members of the Lucian People’s Movement. Definitely the best minister of We Can Do This For Ourselves. Low tech scientific solution making is a key ingredient of development not just or St Lucia, but for all small and poor communities in countries big and small.

FORTUNA ANTHONY, Educator: Someone once said to me, “Fortuna built Kenny Anthony. If she was still in charge, we would have a different Kenny today.” So I replied, “If Fortuna built the best version of Kenny, what the hell do we need Kenny for? Let’s go get Fortuna.”

ANDERSON REYNOLDS, Entrepreneur, Promoter, Publisher: In spite of all the cock-blocking in the world, Vieux Fort’s Anderson Reynolds and his crew of artists, organizers and activists are determined that the South rise again…and again…and again.

DR STEPHEN KING: If there is one person outside politics who needs to be Prime Minister of St Lucia right now, it’s Dr Stephen King. He proved it over a decade ago in an article he wrote about the balance between the spiritual, the physical and the financial that defines good, overall health. The moment I saw that I knew he was top of the list of people who should lead. The time is coming soon for him. His name is calling…

Peter Thomas says: "NO MORE VAT, STEP UP YOUR GAME, STEP UP OUR GROWTH"

YOU CAN’T DIG A HOLE TO FILL A HOLE

By Peter Thomas

Peter Thomas is the man in charge of Not For Party But for Country, St Lucia’s most consistently thoughtful and even-minded facebook page. He is also one of the top five people in St Lucia who make sense on a daily basis.

 

You cannot dig a hole to fill a hole. Increasing VAT to 17% should be DOA as an option. We have seen that the timing for the implimentation of VAT could not have been the worse. It was implimented in an economy that had just began to hemorrhage businesses and jobs and further stymied any possibility of growth.

There can be no doubt that a double dose of that laxative would cause greater economic hardship. A 5% reduction in salaries of a section of the working population... will have less impact on domestic spending than 17% VAT on the entire population.

However this should not be seen as the elixir that will take care of everything that contributed to the deficit. Further cuts in spending must be sought by the government as well as the possibility of divestment of certain government held assets must be part of the overall plan of deficit reduction.

A long term plan to increase exports in the future must be implemented to increase our foreign exchange earnings and shore up the reserves. The attempt by the Ministry of Agriculture to revitalize the coconut industry is a step in the right direction. That should be complimented by the revitalization of production and processing of cocoa. The high demand that still exists for Windward Islands bananas must be exploited to maximum capacity.

Reducing the food import bill and increasing our exports will result in lessening our negative balance of payments problem. These seemingly obvious prescriptions have been offered before the glaring lack of political will to implement and execute is our greatest impediment.

If this economic crisis should teach us one thing as a nation it is that we should step up our game. We must utilize all the intellectual and academic capacity we have acquired over the last decade to come up with imaginative solutions.

I refuse to believe that we have reached the limits of our imagination.

 

Charlo Says "STOP MAKING MARY ISAAC A NATIONAL HERO!"

Editor’s note:They blew their shot to make Mary Francis a national hero and ride her train to human rights acclaim. Now, the St Lucia Labour Party is making another Mary ensette with antagonistic glory. Former trade unionist, die-hard che-Labour Henry Charles takes pause as his party charges in where John Compton feared to tread.

 

STRATEGY AND TACTICS: WILL MARY BE MADE A HEROINE?

 

By Henry Charles

Trade Unionist, Regional and International Consultant

 

In any struggle the often mis-understood science of STRATEGY and TACTICS plays a critical role. Victory or defeat is usually determined by  by competent application of STRATEGY and TACTICS or lack thereof. The same holds true for achieving compromise, mutual respect and settlement of disputes. Unfortunately the desired appreciation and grasp of the science of STRATEGY and TACTICS is usually in short supply.

 

This ongoing struggle between the Government of Saint Lucia and Public Sector Trade Unions accentuates this reality.

Personally I don't think THE PRIME MINISTER has totally abandoned his early WRM teachings on STRATEGY and TACTICS but can the same be said of his LOYALISTS and FOOT SOLDIERS?

Methinks not.

Whether you admire or not, agree or not, with The President of the Civil Service Association, Mary Isaac, the truth is that the ill-advised, politically inspired attacks on her personality and perceived alliances are turning her into a victim and possibly a heroine. TANTO, TANTO! 

The Government, ruling SLP and operatives must not underestimate the extent of the despair among especially the MIDDLE CLASS about the possible negative impact of a proposed salary cut on their fragile economic status. It is not that they do not appreciate the economic challenges facing Saint Lucia. They do but are genuinely frightened by the prospect of a decline in their socio-economic standing. 

Tactically, if GOVERNMENT is to secure the support of Public Workers for the proposed cuts there must be a greater demonstration of empathy towards public workers on the part of the PAY CUT PROPONENTS. Perhaps, Sir Julian Robert Hunte can teach them a thing or two about empathy.

STOP these un-productive, ill-advised attacks and unmitigated display of hubris. MAKE HASTE SLOWLY! 

 

MAKING US PAY FOR THEIR MISTAKES

UNION LEADERS, CIVIL SERVANTS & POLITICIANS ARE FIGHTING...BUT NO MATTER THE OUTCOME, WE'RE THE ONES WHO WILL FOOT THE BILL

As government bring unions to the table to discuss the decision to cut wages whether anybody likes it or not, St Lucia is facing a divisive political crisis in which everyone, it seems, is to blame. While agriculture flounders, marijuana remains illegal, yachting goes under-service, castor rots and mangoes and coconuts become food for rats, the government, the union leaders and the civil servants are busy talking about their personal pockets.

The current talks are pointless. The Labour governmet has already decided that the poor will pay for the mistakes of the rich and the poor realize that the sooner they pay Kenny’s ransom the better off they’ll be. The United Workers Party is of no use in this hostage crisis, because everyone knows that they themselves are a terrorist group that only recently held St Lucia hostage and were intent on turning it into a drug trafficking, beach-selling, golf clubbing private club for criminal multi-millionaires.

What is most striking, however, is the betrayal of the St Lucian people by the unions.

One expects Labour and Flambeau to betray poor people once they get into power.

But unions…unions are supposed to protect us from the terrible consequences of management’s recklessness and heartlessness. Nowadays, it seems, unions are only about pushing for salary increases and fighting salary cuts. Deep.

Let us meditate for a moment on these three socio-political forces that are dragging our country down.

FLAY-BOUR: The United Workers Party led by Allen Chastanet is painting a picture of the Labour government’s incompetence and lack of vision that amount to the truth about Labour. This government cannot deliver what the country needs. They are only digging the hole deeper. Unfortunately, the UWP was only just voted out for failing to deliver exactly what Labour is failing to deliver, even though they had tens of millions of Taiwnese dollars at their disposal- which Labour, through their own stupidity, does not. So when assigning responsibility for the fiscal pit St Lucia is in, Flambeau is no less culpable than Labour. In fact, they might be more so, which is why Labour’s natural enemies, like Taiwan, still want nothing to do with them. As for Kenny and them, these guys have no basic principles, no working strategies, no vision, no nothing. They only thing they have on Flambeau is that they are more educated and they are not in any position to teef the Taiwanese money.

UNIONS: The unions have a lot of gall trying to fight the pay cut. They betrayed St Lucia when they pressed for and got a 14.5% increase in wages and salaries from the idiot prime minister of the last Flambeau. Rather than reasoning with themselves that this was bad for the nation, they took the money and then, when Labour tried to make some mathematical sense, they’re crying. If Mary Isaac and the rest of the good unionists had truly good intentions they would do a helluva lot more than take a pay cut. They would be laying out the cost cutting agenda for the government. They cut out all the useless political appointments that burden the foreign ministry. They would attack the luxurious lifestyles afforded at the taxpayers expense in the St Lucia Tourist Board. They would be asking for more than 5%. And they would be asking for Foreign Affairs and Tourit Board on the chopping block. The savings you make there would equal hat you get from cutting civil servants salaries.

CIVIL SERVANTS: What a bunch of chickenshits. Most of them don’t give the nation value for money. They watch in silence as their professional superiors and political leaders pollute, corrupt and misguide the government, wasting resources and fucking time. It doesn’t bother them one bit that government after government fucks time and wastes the nation’s resources. They can tolerate infinite amounts of dirtiness without so much as a yellow flag being raised in the unions. But tell them there’s a wage freeze and you go see war. You go see activism. You go see Lucians flying into action. What a bunch of hypocrites these 21^st century union members are. Why would anybody be on their side when they constantly fail to be the first line of defense against corruption, nepotism and waste? Why would anyone are about them when they have proven, time and again, that, fuck the country, the only they care about is their pockets.

In the axis of evil that now exists in St Lucia, each party says that the others are not thinking of the big picture and protecting their ‘cheese’. In the big picture, this is true of each of them – the union leaders, the civil servants and the politicians. In a better St Lucia, they would not be discussing the ‘either/or’ of cutting expenditure. They would cut salaries AND cut staff AND cut spending AND cut waste AND lop the heads off all those people who got jobs in the foreign service just because they’re Labour.

But they’re not going to do that.

They’re going to make US pay for their bullshit.

THE NEW GEORGE ODLUM & THE MINISTER OF SHOPPING

THE NEW (not improved) GEORGE ODLUM

What’s short, fat, pompous and wants to be George Odlum when it grows up?

Okay. Let’s try another one.

Who is the Minister of Shopping?

And finally, which minister has presided over the largest growth in salary expenditure in this time of cost cutting?

The answer to all of these questions is the same.

Alva Baptiste, orator, actor and Head NIC of the People’s Republic of Laborie always reminded people of George Odlum. In spite of the fact that he is slightly more Velon John that George Odlum in his writing style, his platform performances made him a star in the Labour Party long before he found himself in Parliament, where, in his mind, he rightfully belongs.

When Alva speaks on the Market Steps, the crowds alternative between hanging on his words and exploding into cheering when his well-timed literary fuses spark of the dynamite he plants in their minds.

So when Alva Baptiste first became foreign affairs minister, it was odd that anyone would have expected anything better from him than they expected of good old George.

You know the stories about George. Bottles of booze in the desk drawers. Constant serving of the kakalak constituency. A real Napoleon in the Orwellian sense of the word.

Well, Alva Baptiste is different than that. And yet, somehow, the same.

For all his leftist rhetoric, Alva Baptiste has effectively allowed his foreign ministry to become the most nepotistic thing in the current Labour government. Where other governments found local jobs for the boys, Alva Baptiste has facilitated a most unwarranted and unproductive expansion of the foreign affairs ministry that doles out millions and millions a year in wages, allowances and frivolities, for what?

For what, Alva?

Odlum brought a stadium in the end. What have you to show for your time in office apart from well-constructed, but somewhat disingenuous speeches?

The difference between Alva’s rhetoric and his actions widens into a maw when one considers the scandals swirling around him, some of which are of his making and some of which existed long before him but continue unabated, under his leadership.

Take for example, Yasmin Walcott…okay, fine, we dealt with that and we’re waiting for him to deal with it. Next!

Take the growing concern over a visa scam in which Haitians are paying up to $2500 to get Lucian visas, where, when they arrive, they simply slip into Martinique through the back door.

Take the Sri Lankans who arrived here during their last period of national violence. They reported paying up to $20,000 for St Lucian passports with names on them like Elibox. Vigilante customs and immigration officials red flagged the overly-accented coolies, but their status in St Lucia was soon quietly regularized without any investigation into their $20,000 passports or any report to the public.

Then, there’s the question of results. If you give a guy a horrendously excessive million dollar entertainment allowance and he comes back with a hundred million in investment, you might be tempted to ask him if he needs a bigger allowance. But anybody you give a quarter who keeps coming back for another quarter eventually becomes a nuisance.

Alva is also personally responsible for malpalaying the one friend St Lucia has with money to spare. Taiwan’s close friendship could inject entire percentage points of growth into the St Lucian GDP. It save the last government from collapsing, even though it couldn’t save them from electoral suicide. Taiwan’s friendship could have been a most critical partnership at this time, but can’t because Alva was one of those who, while in opposition, wouldn’t get off Tom Chou’s dick, jacking him and jacking him, in an effort to persuade Lucians that the Taiwanese were just as corrupt as Flambeau.

If Alva had any diplomatic or strategic skills, he would have flayed and flogged Flambeau without ever touching Tom Chou. He would never have rushed off to Beijing before sitting down with the incumbent Chinese Embassy to discuss what accommodations could be made between them. It would definitely have made life easier for him, his party and his country, right now.

If he had any integrity, he would fight tooth and nail to clean up the foreign service. If he had any smarts, he would not be making a pompous ass out of himself while aiming to be the next Labour leader after Kenny Anthony retires.

Instead, he has earned a reputation among his friends and closest allies as The Minister of Shopping.

Why, you ask?

Because he not bulling. He not jaballing. He not drinking drunk. He not smoking. He not achieving. He not stealing. He not trying. He not doing nothing, except shopping. The only thing he really achieves apart from making words sound nice, is shopping.

The reason why Alva Baptiste’s foreign ministry gets nothing done is because all he’s doing is shopping.

Talk is cheap. And the foreign affairs ministry can buy a lot of stuff with the money he saves with his cheap talk.