Apathy vs Bull Crap...Again, Where's the Rage?

When will we get angry? You know the kind of anger: where you feel your head will explode, and you want to throw things, smash stuff, roar epithets at the top of your lungs until your throat becomes sandpaper. When will we get that angry?

Newborn Andy Jones died last week, a victim of a horrendous chain of events that add up to a serious indictment of our healthcare system and its custodians. Aside from a chorus of oh-poor-things, only Amandala seems to be angry enough to say 'Bull Crap!' I think that's an excellent choice of phrase, by the way. But where's OUR anger?

One of our readers mentioned it: Roldan Trapp, a father of five, was killed in a hit-and-run. Oddly enough, even though the pickup was found, no one seems to be able to trace the owner and arrest the culprit, nor have we heard why that's not possible. Mr Trapp has, in the meantime, been relegated to the rank of stray dog -no one cares, for the dead are gone. Where's our anger?

Glenford Williams, a security guard, was shot in an attempted holdup. He lies critical in the hospital. Half a dozen or more surgeries later, he'll never be the same, if he survives. Juan Carlos Castillo and Peter Guenther, the two men murdered in Cayo in the past week might, if they could be asked, regard him as the lucky one. So might Rosa Cornejo, the businesswoman from Belmopan who was tortured and killed. What will come of all of these murders -what is it, 37 so far for 2009? Will anyone ever again hang in this country? Hell, will anyone ever again even be convicted of murder? Where's our anger?

Holdup jacking murder robbery killing mugging rape incest fraud arson shooting theft stabbing assault, it all runs together in the news, a hypnotic, mind-numbing ritualistic nightly repetition of the same damned and deathly chorus. And it has numbed our minds to anger; we're emotional zombies.We do know fear though, it is our friend and constant companion. We lock ourselves in our homes, afraid to go anywhere. We are silent in the face of controversy, afraid to rock the boat even though it's already sinking. And while the schoolyard bullies arm themselves, we cower and hope it'll be the neighbour and not us who gets it when the time comes. Where's our anger?

"Thank God I don't have to go to PG/Dangriga/San Ignacio hospital to deliver my baby. Poor Cenaida."
"That poor man, that's why I never ride my bike on the Northern."
"Ah, security guards have the worst jobs, that poor man."
"Hmm, those people must have been into something, to be murdered like that, poor things."

Not me, never me, it can't, it WON'T happen to me...we are so condescending and selfish and full of false hope in our denials. Remember this, every time something happens to someone else, the odds of it happening to you are shortened. Unless things change, your turn WILL come. And there will be little or no interest or follow-up. And no one will speak up for you...or for me.

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. 

Things That Go Bang In The Night

It hasn’t yet hit the news, probably because our local news organizations have one-track minds on Election Day, but another grenade took flight last night.  Those of us who live in the general vicinity of Buttonwood Bay felt the shake and heard the sound of the explosion.  By this morning we knew: Comptroller of Customs Gregory Gibson, or at least his house, was the target of the tosser who threw the grenade.

I’ve never met Mr. Gibson, but like every other citizen of this country, I know about the generally corrupt nature of his subordinates.  After all, who among us has not come across a customs officer who is suddenly, unexplainably wealthy?  By no means should you assume that I’m saying all customs officers are corrupt, but the ones who are really, really are.  Mr. Gibson, however, hasn't had a whole lot said about him, and when no one in this town can get any decent rumours going, well, that fact says something about you.

So basically, I figure, as do most people, that someone tried to kill Mr. Gibson merely for doing his job.  Mind you, this does not bode well for my country, when people attempt to destroy a guy for his honesty.  Remember the pseudoephedrine a few months back?  I doubt this incident is delayed revenge for that, so I’m forced to wonder what’s leaking through Customs now.

Mister Prime Minister, Members of the Cabinet, let’s quit trying to pretend that the crime situation is under control; that our forces can handle the problem.  We need to be honest about what’s happening to our tiny country, or we’ll never be able to fix it, will we?  Tonight I’m too tired and angry to be eloquent.  I just want my country back.  It's time to quit treating us like children, patting us on the collective head, telling us that it isn’t what it looks like and that we don't understand the global realities.  Get real and get on with fixing the problem before the few remaining Mr. Gibsons of our world do get blown up. 

Give me my country back!  In the name of patriotism, begin to give good people like Mr. Gibson the weapons (and the forces) they need in order to fight for our right to a decent, safe way of life.  It's time to get serious, deadly serious.

Headlines You'll Never Read in the Belize News

Increased Illegal Immigration from China -Officials Blame Deep Potholes for Providing Access

Breaking News! Insiders Confirm Zenaida's Hair is Real

Political Parties Agree...to Disagree -Public D'uh Rating Hits Unprecedented High

"Clear the Land's" Secret Twin Brother, "Clear the Sea" Identified as Gaspar Vega

Attorney General Admits Justice System "May Have One or Two Flaws"

PUC Head Agrees to Salary Decrease in Line With Fuel Price Reductions

PUP Party Postponed Indefinitely -No Cheese for Wine-rs

Honesty Not Best Policy, Survey of Belizean Politicians Reveals

Former Finance Minister Makes Statement to Court -Says "Nyah-nyah, Can't Catch Me!"

And finally...

Mayor "Just Dizzy" About Roundabouts, Says Trees in Parks are "Highly Overrated, Yuh Knoa?"

...The Harder We Fall

Well, the 2008 Corruption Perception Index is out, and the big news is…we dropped again! In just three years, our fall from grace has taken us from 66 to 99 to 109 in the number rankings. The optimists amongst us would point out that whereas we slid 33 points in 2007, at least we only slid 10 points this year. Well hurray for us then, Mr Optimist. I’d go for a drink to celebrate, but my celebratory liquor budget is pretty tight, and besides, I’m a little nervous that if I go out I might get jacked.


Clearly, Belize’s image out there could use a generous coating of the strongest deodorant. It really isn’t fair to blame Transparency International or the other star of the September Celebrations, Ross Kemp, for this. If your neighbor comes over to visit and then tells everyone about your filthy house, the worst you can say about her is that she’s a gossip, right? So what do we do about all this gossip? How do we clean our house so that our rankings climb back up the scale for next year?

I’d start by suggesting that this government set the pace for shutting down the negative buzz by aggressively taking matters in hand. Our current leaders should loudly and visibly shut down cronyism and arrest anyone attempting to offer bribes. Start by setting a few examples and everybody else will fall into line in a hurry. Insist that audits be carried out in a timely manner for both Central Government and the municipal authorities, and act on any irregularities that these audits uncover. ACB issued a release insisting on the municipal audits –I look forward to the results, as well as the results of the results, you get what I’m saying?

Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition could even make this into a bipartisan effort by endorsing whatever actions GOB takes, and let me push things here by using this phrase: “in a mature fashion.” The kind of things I’d love to see the Opposition support include the arrest of anyone trying to bribe a government official, including police officers. Everybody’d have to support the arrest of those accepting the bribes too, or else it just wouldn’t be fair.

Just check out the top five countries on the CPI. The thing I think they have in common is that they attempt to give their citizens a lifestyle that neither forces nor persuades them into corruption, backed up by a set of laws that really motivate people to stay on the straight and narrow path. And between you and me, I don’t think a Singapore prison is nearly as nice as Kolbe. We should learn from this.

Maybe it’d be easier just to bribe Transparency International.

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A Solution to Our Crime Problem

Tonight the country of Belize was treated to an episode of Ross Kemp on Gangs filmed mainly in Belize City. Objectively speaking, the show was a mixture of truth and self-serving exaggeration, with a colorful overlay of sensationalistic crap. This is to be expected, but let’s not lose the main point, which is the fact that we really do have a gang problem. We also have a weapons problem, an explosives problem, a drug problem, a crime problem, and a full assortment of sexual problems. Of late, you can even add the problem of constantly disappearing intransit ‘pharmaceuticals’ to this ever-growing list.

Fear not however, this evening’s news reminded us that the authorities are vigorously attacking the [insert name here] situation. They have pulled together all the necessary resources, asserted themselves and…held a press conference! Yes, that’s right, the new head-on method for attacking these problems is to have press conferences wherein senior law enforcement officials explain what they are doing and, uh, why they can’t quite reach that elusive goal of solving The Problem of the Day.

Let’s be fair though, the authorities can't solve all these problems by themselves, can they? If they could, then the problems would hardly be worth the price of Ross Kemp’s plane ticket. These problems won’t be solved until we can all pull together as a community and put up a unified front against crime. Bringing us together will, I realize, require truly strong, moral and upstanding leadership.

We need the kind of credible, trustworthy, nonpolitical leadership we’ve been conditioned to expect from our church leaders. That's why I’m proud to see the Council of Churches speaking up. They even issued a press release recently. In this release, they decried, in the strongest possible terms, the government’s plan to...have the Independence Day parade on, of all days, Independence Day! Yes, this sort of infringement on our collective morals had to be roundly condemned lest it damn our souls for all eternity.

Now, I’m sure that having achieved victory in this major and potentially catastrophic issue, our newly emboldened church leaders will be able to move quickly past it in order to focus on the lesser issues of murder, robbery and general mayhem ensuing in our streets.

I look forward to their press conference.

Time For A Hangin'

Greg Casildo was an animal. Oops, that was offensive and I apologize to all furry, four-legged creatures out there. Anyway, I have nothing nice to say about Casildo and think that the police need make no apologies for doing their jobs this one time. They exchanged gunfire with a dangerous criminal who has brutally and casually taken lives, and yes, in their place I would shoot to kill too.

Let me explain my point of view here, and it’s a simple one. I think the Old Testament had a point with this ‘eye for an eye’ business. If you take a human life, you ought to be ready to give yours in exchange. No, I’m not talking about a car accident or something like that. There is a price to be paid whenever you take a human life, but when you deliberately do so, you imply through your actions that life is cheap. Ergo, you should not break a sweat about giving up your life either. And tell your weeping relatives that they contributed to your downfall, okay? They who benefited from your drug dealing, didn’t attempt to curb your violent nature, wouldn’t accept that there was a serious evil streak in there somewhere; they are as guilty as you. They can keep their crocodile tears to themselves. Better their pain than that of victims’ families.

The problem I find with today’s Belize is that the breaking of laws has no consequences, or it has the wrong ones. You run up-stop in your car, and you might find a police car doing the same thing right in front of you. That cop has lost the right to tell you what to do, right? So you run up-stop whenever you feel like it. You break the speed limit, who’s going to stop you? There you’ll find a Minister’s vehicle overtaking you. Sooo…he races up to Belmopan, passes a law or two to justify his presence there, but he doesn’t have to abide by the law he made, yet he expects you to do so. Oh by the way, don’t get me started on the damned red plates again –if ever a law was dashed to pieces on the rocks of arrogance, it’s the law regarding license plate colors.

Continuing my original train of thought though, if you litter, who cares? If you smuggle Johnny Black or a couple Bensons, so what? Odds are, those who ought to enforce these laws have lost their moral authority to tell you anything, so they can’t enforce them, right? Ever checked what liquor your ministers drink, what cigarettes they smoke? Moral authority gaan, mi bredda!

So the little things become big things, and you commit a murder knowing full well you’ll never be hanged, and if you’re rich enough, cops will develop amnesia for you, witnesses will have laryngitis, and you’ll not see too much time in jail, if any at all. Hell, if you go ‘da back,’ your life ain’t all that rough anyway. Here’s the hint: just pretend a little humility, say ‘God’ and ‘Jesus’ every so often when the Big Boss is in earshot and he’ll go to the hilt for you, battle for early release, you know? Yeah, you’re penned up, but you get three squares, a turn in the air-conditioned computer lab if you play your cards right, and you can maybe even run a business on the side, as long as you cut the guards in on a percentage of the gig.

You might have figured out by now that I’m writing this because I'm angry. Last night, a very nice lady was beaten to death in her own home, the latest of too many horrific murders. Her two little girls are left with serious physical and mental trauma. Tell me, where’s their justice?

Prime Minister, Minister, Attorney General, National Security CEO, DPP, ComPol, you’ve lost every battle so far simply by not showing up to fight. Unless you wake up and get serious, you’re about to lose the war; the body count is piling up on the wrong side. And don’t quote stats back at me, neither I nor the family of Sandra Ruiz are interested. Oh, don’t wave that Preventative Detention flag at me either, you can accomplish the necessary without it, if you’re prepared to crack down and enforce the laws we already have, up to and including hanging. Let me make it simple for you: if people begin to fear that breaking laws have real and serious consequences, we’ll be making progress.

Want me to print it on a red license plate for you?

Don't Shoot, It's Mexico!

Four of our boys are stuck in Mexico and quite likely to remain there for a few years. Let’s be honest people, they were stupid. And don’t give me crap about “they were just doing their jobs.” They went into the territory of Mexico with guns and without any official –by which I mean documented— permission to carry those guns. Tell you what, if my boss tells me to break the law, especially in a country that has no sense of humor about these things, I’m gonna have to go job hunting!

Now that I’ve said that and you’re all mad at me and drawing breath to shout that it doesn’t matter and they’re not stupid, let me stop you right there and tell you that the anger you’re directing at me is really something else. You want to tell me “it doesn’t matter, these guys are our fellow Belizeans and how dare Mexico treat them like that” right? Yeah, that’s called nationalism, or maybe even patriotism.

For those of you who aren’t feeling it yet, let me give you my view here. What I personally am thinking is that yes, these guys broke the law. But remember this, they did it chasing a couple of guys who broke the law on our side of the border. These bad guys are home safe, maybe not too sound, but they are being painted as victims and no one’s talking of returning them to our authorities to face charges. Fair? I think not.

This is just the latest of hundreds of incidents that have happened to Belizeans over many, many years across the border in our favorite shopping territory. Everybody knows somebody who has some horror story to tell, right? Hey, we built Chet, and after all we’ve done for them, if we get in a car accident and the Mexican driver’s at fault, we still have to pay. Yet, horrified though we claim to be, we keep going across to Mexico to shop, watch movies, eat tacos and drink beer, paying our hard-earned pesos along the way, developing Chetumal more everyday. Obviously we’re not that bothered about how Mexican authorities treat our people, not really.

But if you are one of the few who are angry enough to actually do something, then how best to handle your outrage, how do you most effectively throw your nationalism in Mexican faces? Heck, that’s easy. Just keep your money on this side of the border, boycott Chet; don’t go there. Amandala said it, Mexico’s for the Mexicans, but we keep building up their territory for them and not our own for us.

That nationalistic outrage you’re feeling? Shove it where it’ll hurt them most, in their wallets.

Delivering Justice...When?

Chalk one more up on the criminals’ side of the scoreboard. What? What do you mean you’ve run out of space? But the cops say crime has dropped. Ha! This, my children, is a joke. Do you think the family of Angel and Marco Tulio Xis think that crime is declining? Hell, no. The fact is, justice has been denied to crime victims too many times in too many ways, and the system sleeps on. In fact, picture the entire justice system snoozing in a row of hammocks on a long, shaded, breezy verandah. Because the judges, the prosecutors, the police and all the others involved in delivering justice can’t possibly be awake to our realities.

Okay, kudos to the cops for catching those young monsters who killed the Hills for a few trinkets and a vehicle. But seriously, how many people think like I do, that it’ll be a miracle if these boys end up being found guilty at all? And of course, we know they’ll never, ever hang. Saddest of all, when they get away with it, everyone in the justice system will blame everyone else for the failure, and no one will actually fix it.

I admit, I don’t have the magic bullet solution for the crime problem. I don’t think anyone does if they’re honest about it. I do know that this country’s too small to have this big of a problem, which automatically means that somebody’s not dealing with it as they should.

These days, most cases don’t make it to trial thanks to witness tampering; this needs to be seriously addressed, through punitive measures and by providing protection if required. For those criminals who actually do land up in prison, please, PLEASE put them to do hard labour. The idea is to make sure they don’t ever want to come back to prison, and you can make them think twice about it without treating them like animals. Certainly it cannot be achieved by allowing them to live in relative comfort, playing with computers all day, until it’s time to have a weekend out with the girlfriend –what innocent child ever viewed this as a deterrent?

Incidentally, Honourable Ministers, you need to get to work rectifying that CCJ mess. No, we’re not so naïve as to think that the CCJ will automatically let us hang brutal killers with ease, but at least when their lawyers take us to the highest of mortal courts, that court won’t be the painfully expensive Privy Council.

The fact is, we live in an increasingly dangerous society, which is unhealthy culturally, societally and economically. Any politician worth his votes ought to be seriously, actively, loudly addressing it, as should the citizenry. By the way, did you think that ‘not seeing’ a crime will make it go away? When you’re tempted to play ostrich, ask yourself how you would feel if something happened to you or yours and witnesses refused to speak up. Shouldn’t victims have rights?