I had been occupied with understanding the core basis for people to identify with countries of birth, flags, anthems and the rest of the propaganda of imperial history. I considered whether the popularity of these symbols represent more than a way of identifying, of belonging, of feeling secure, of being part of the gang. Not that being part of a gang or any of it is any small matter. I considered the removal of old statues of Columbus, Rhodes and their gang; as against the politics and economics they left, and is still, in place. And I have had to consider whether it is something more material; as who controls the land, and who owns the idea of the nation, and how the two make for the present crises of displacement and enslavement.
I was writing this essay for some time and going nowhere with it. I wanted to challenge the level of commitment individuals show towards the notion of their ‘country’. Country is not the only grouping. It extends to religion, race, ethnicity, gender, party or gang. Often it is difficult to tell the difference and worse when they merge with each other and especially with country. I wanted to show it being used against its members and the damage to them and the whole environment; the land and its dependents. Otherwise good people were willing to lie because the truth made their country or group look bad. They were willing to risk reputations with misrepresentations and to stay on message. Then the UN General Assembly voted ‘yes’ against moving the Israeli capital from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem[1]. The vote helped me regain perspective on who ‘owns’ the land, why the idea of ‘nation’ persists and the damage to the land and all its dependents. It is time to move-on.
Nationalism has its own mystique. People seem easily persuaded by it. Colin Powell’s 2003 weapons-of-mass-destruction speech to the UN is one of the best, or worst, examples. A lone soldier sacrificed to save the face of his comrades and country. One writer described that type of selfless commitment as being emotionally connected: maybe he meant like a parent to a child, maybe, like those parents whose children are never wrong, or the other way around, or a child whose parent abused them but the child remains loyal, silent, or, on message as required. It’s a kind of ‘love’[2].
Had we not known better you would think we were born with a nationalism gene that releases a hormone or grows the organ to produce it. Or perhaps our lands-of-birth infused us with it somewhere between our first scream and ritual burial of our umbilical cord. Perhaps the cord remains wrapped around our bodies and, our brain in particular, still attached to the land making breathing on our own difficult. This condition worsened in the aftermath of Columbus’ journey of conquest.
How ever this emotional connection developed, we hardly remember that these borders were drawn by men like Columbus and Rhodes, acting under the auspices of women with names like Isabella and Victoria, and have adopted them as our very own. When we signed off at glittering independence ceremonies, we thought it a gift. It was not. We would have had to forget the new flags we wave so vigorously represent the same pieces of land where these same men and women murdered native inhabitants and kidnapped others and forced them to work for slop. And when they could no longer sustain it, offered indenture: money in exchange for fixed hours and periods of labor. The money was not enough to change the balance of economic and political power. It is still the case.
Borders are not all bad. It is understandable that one could dance and wave on the land where genocide happened and as a celebration of the work ancestors endured so that we may contemplate a new way forward. There may be ways of organizing these imposed forms, yet. But it’s a recipe for disaster if you do not remember the history or the people who lived on these lands, its caretakers, before the people who came and took.
As empires break-up, former colonies claim independence and rename themselves but only as a way to continue the same social, political, and economic structure set up by the colonial rulers. That was part of the independence deal. As Protoje said,
Dem gi we flag
dem gi we anthem
No even gi we half a wha we need to execute de plan dem
So we can still dependent pon dem
Just a wait fi we fi come back and long out we empty hand dem [3]
These renamed borders were born, and remain rooted, in terror and a place to hide history. Monuments commemorated the colonial experience as heroic. The post independence strain of malaise was credited to local corruption and not a history of occupation. We occupied the land but were ruled from abroad. The residual effect is that these lands are not as equipped to deal with trauma as those who colonized them. These borders, shaped by force, are now like holes in golf with degrees of difficulty and a promised reward for entry.
Serious hazards protect these borders. The presence of armed personnel is a sign you are close, but may yet fail: and even drown in a hazard. The Mexico/US border will soon see the ultimate old-school power play with a man-made hazard: an actual wall. To play you only need claim your border and defend it. For empires as always, that defense extends way beyond its walls, sometimes around the world on some flimsy pretext, and all for increased security of the homeland, but usually to shore-up an aging grasp.
This is not independence at all. This is an acceptance of the very thing that enslaved you. A battle to defend your structural colony against another structural colony is a battle to strengthen the empire. A battle between Crips and Bloods gives strength to the police. They build houses on the overtime. Arms factories ramp up production. Attempts to draw commonality, commonwealth, from our history are usually to rally troops against any threat to the empire, instead of healthcare for troops and their families. Wars come and go without any real commitment to change in the colony and with local leadership that echoes the same sentiments that had created them. The UN vote is much the same. The UN is the police: with its own motto and occupying force to effect its mandate of peace and security. The opposite is everywhere.
As the lands of its members come under threat from natural, unnatural and human causes, people flee their homes without much hope of return; we look at their faces and read the names of their countries with familiarity and resignation. They seem the same as the persecuted throughout history: huddled, underfed, afraid, and with no place else to go but to another country. There is neither common space to go to nor common wealth to share in. In that other country, its nationals raise their flag with pride, the same as did these huddled masses not so long ago and before the bombs.
The old adage ‘no place like home’ has been reconfigured. Emphasis is on the ‘No’ place like home. And the refuge seekers find themselves detained, in prisons and camps, in open fields exposed to the elements in countries that had voted the same as theirs’ on UN resolutions. Some are experiencing this at home without leaving their countries of birth.
The reason for these refuge seekers is the failure of their home countries to provide resources for a sustainable life. Non-sustainability is not an abstract. It is not the land itself. It’s the few people that control the land with force. Natural disasters worsen unnatural ones; and vice versa. These are lands where blackout is the norm; water is sporadic, floods endemic, food insecure, security uncertain, political power a promise, and war inevitable. Almost always it’s the culmination of a history of unsustainability. Their sustenance was never theirs, but that of the armed colonizers. Some have never left or have stepped-in to create ‘stability’. Some welcomed it.
I know. It’s a tired story. Those countries despite their failures, still sit together at the UN, claiming independence, dressed in fresh suits and heels as if nothing was wrong back home, and to affect policy elsewhere. This needs to end.
I know. It’s a tired story. Those countries despite their failures, still sit together at the UN, claiming independence, dressed in fresh suits and heels as if nothing was wrong back home, and to affect policy elsewhere. This needs to end.
Reluctant hosts have pushed back with their own nationalism and religion against those fleeing across the Mediterranean Sea. It’s the same everywhere as in Germany; as at the Mexican, Sudanese, Myanmese, Israeli and Turkish borders. The disenfranchised who could, have taken to their feet. Enfranchisement is much broader than the vote. The vote won’t help us in this crisis. Opportunists scapegoat new arrivals as reason for economic downturns and point locals away from the true reasons and from who owns the land where they stand and from where the refuge seekers come and why those lands can no longer sustain its dependents. The blackouts, light bills, brown water, black rain, coral death, white phosphorous, carbon emissions, white privilege and their diverse derivatives form a toxic mix everywhere. No one is exempt.
No place is exempt. Africans have become the face of the refugees to Europe. It is not an accurate reflection. Newcomers are from everywhere and going everywhere. No one is recording the Chinese trekking across Africa and the Caribbean; fleeing from their second largest economy in the world, and across the least. At the same time, Chinese public-private partners ship its citizens everywhere to build projects in those dry lands. These workers look much like the refugees elsewhere: living on the work site, cots jammed together to save space, communal bathrooms and cooking. It has always been important to put a familiar face on suffering. The powers can exploit a well worn belief system, almost like religion but with a face used like an on-button with national and UN votes as periodic tests to determine levels of faith and that the button works. The darker the face the better but, at its core, anyone will do.
Nationalism, is a way to organize people in support of an idea. That’s what Columbus did in Spain. The border is for ease of control. Nationalism can be substituted, and often is, by race: White, Yellow and yes, Black too. It may be ethnic Asian, European and Caribbean and can then be subleased to countries and called German, or American or Jamaican. It does not matter the variety of groups that live in the country: Catholic, Protestant or other. They are squished into one corny motto of one destiny; for better manipulation. It could be ideological too: and promises a reward for loyalty like heaven or heaven on earth. But none of it is working well. The fit is never right. Politicians, with help, skillfully slide swords into the seam of the differences to carve themselves a reliable piece. These new arrivals further threaten the already unsettled order: a threat to making America great again.[4]
The goal is always about more power: imperial, inter-national, national, hill, dale and gully. Even the newcomers would be used if they could be relied on to vote for a competing group. It is not just colors and nations, but nations and colors within nations. Groups within countries like Hutu and Tutsi, Muslim and Hindu, Indigenous and not, find themselves in conflict and sometimes further sublease their differences to political parties. Often, these beliefs and suspicions of one group of another are inherited stereotypes that have persisted and made worse by the borders drawn and occupied by former empires.
Empires have not changed their strategy. They have simplified it. It is reflected in its own colorful designations within its walls of red states and blue ones: urban and suburban, ghetto and gated. Nations, political parties, and other groups choose various colors in a false show of independence.
It does not matter that a group is a relative minority; however large or small and diverse the grouping. It is more important to be assured of its allegiance. It’s a political weapon used like, and sometimes is, religion. It operates under the guise of unity. The effect is the opposite: if not the goal. The word ‘unity’ used in any name is a signal that should draw further scrutiny. The punishment is individualized if you ignore the call. You are a traitor, deplorable, and a non-patriot. The purpose is to take control of the hill or gully and to use force, if necessary, if aid and threats fail.
The strategy is both global and local. It is local because of the promised rewards and the leadership properly briefed. In the painful aftermath, individual members often do not admit to being part of the group or their role in it. The vote has always been a secret; democratic and for our own good. Others blow it off like a game: and they a fan, or team support, not a player. Every night they stage ideological battles on TV. I am not sure whether they are being smart: or stupid, or really do not know enough to be either. Any dissent is swallowed up in a sea of color. The faithful dress in the colors and with the children in their care wave flags at the arrival of a foreign dignitary or on holidays and other symbols of oppression. It begins with the very young and in the most innocuous of places: and generally without any thought of hurting anyone. What could be wrong with that? The baptism begins long before your first mass, game or rally.
The Olympics is propaganda for rabid nationalism, with all its beauty and pageantry and with a torch as the only exchange of fire. Cease-fires in real wars have been called to allow combatants peaceful enjoyment for the duration of games. Yet, we are told sports are to be kept free of politics. Numerous summer and winter events are sold as global. Some involve no countries: just professional teams. Without the spectacle to distract us, we might direct our attention to real problems and solutions.
The 2017 World Athletic Championships in London featured a similar display of athletes in national colors and winners draped in their country’s flag for emphasis. It did not matter that some were in full, declared and undeclared, war with other flags on the same field. A blockade is war too: even if undeclared. Again, that could be a good thing - not the blockade- the playfield as a common space for peace. But, some of these athletes had only months earlier qualified to represent countries other than the ones of their birth. At some point in that process they had to renounce allegiance to one and pledge to another. It was that easy. It is not the greatest reflection of patriotism if special skills allow you to jump the line. The differently-abled is disadvantaged again and a sign of how fickle is nationalism, patriotism and citizenship. It is up for sale if you have something to offer: like running fast or splitting an atom, or cash.
A group of athletes even competed as independents, stateless, under no national flag, as in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil. These athletes hailed from places too weak from war and want to mount a team or did not share the type of nationalism on offer. Some had crossed the hazards of the seas, deserts, mountains and worse, but evidently not soon enough or good enough to be initiated into another country’s team.
Perhaps, the stateless team represents the next level of our existence and is a real opportunity to lose our emotional attachment to nations, flags and the rest of it. Instead of being patriotic mercenaries hired to fight assorted battles on the playfields and the battlefields of undeserving nations, we should pursue a global nation in service to no one and everyone. Until then, question all that has happened in the making of this whole thing. This is the concept the UN fails to implement and has allowed a hierarchy that cripples any progressive movement.
I was lifted by Chronixx's recent challenge to students at the University of Guyana. The music of this popular reggae artiste could be heard blasting in every minibus all over the planet. He urged the students with words he credited to Emperor Haile Selassie I,
“We must become greater than we have ever been. We must become something that our schools, our churches and all these institutions have ill prepared us to be. We must become members of a new race, overcoming petty prejudice, owing our allegiance not to nations, not to countries, not even to flags, but to our fellow human beings”
Yes! I agonized for weeks to find the right thousand words to say the very same thing said in less than one hundred. I immediately posted on social media. I should have stopped then and there. He went on to point out that music could be a vehicle and as a musician he had much more reach potential than the politicians. Imagine a public intellectual with music.
Popular social activist Cornel West often cites ‘The Blues’ as a kind of theology from which he draws strength: the foundation of the civil rights movement and the larger movement for equity and justice. I did not always follow his reasoning, but I began to see Reggae as a branch of ‘Blues’, and more theological with its heavy use of biblical verse. Bob Marley’s "Talkin Blues" is confirmation. Marley called for Africa to unite and globalized the concept of ‘One love” which is a parallel to the call for global equity and justice. We are not there yet.
Athletes of African ascent more and more, now represent historically White-identified countries. The reverse is rarely true. Some of those countries had relay teams made-up entirely of African ascendants. Some of the events saw fields entirely of African ascendants. This may not be all bad: if only groundwork for the next level of ‘One Love’.
But it is not that yet. It is driven by global racism, inequity in power and economics among nations. Love of nation still rules: and even if it means stealing any resource, including humans, from another nation. No clearly identified African ascendant has, in post-Columbian times, been head of state or monarch of these European countries and their settler satellites. It could not be tolerated given Columbus’ founding ideology of White-European supremacy as ordained by the Church. The US did have that one exception in its 240 years. However, the medal count is listed according to country, not racial identification, ethnicity, ideology, or even country of birth. The powerful and more developed nations with larger numbers of representatives topped the list; even if they used Africans to get there, again.
The UN Security Council has 15 members. Five are permanent members and only that five has veto power: China, France, Russia, United Kingdom and United States. The rest are elected. It is no coincidence that these names were the same as the top five medals winners of the 2016 Summer Olympics with the exception of France in 7th place. And they are the lead five of all-time, France included, of Summer Olympic medals won. The US has almost twice as many as its nearest rival. It is the most powerful richest economy and empire on the planet. Sport is political. And to protect those precious medals, this group also leads in similar position and ratio with nuclear warheads.
The same cast of characters that competed at the London hosted 2017 World Athletic Championships competed against each other less than two weeks, and a two hour drive, later at the Diamond League in Birmingham. The Diamond League as in its name is a series of meets as opposed to World Championships that is more like a tournament. Without governmental support there were fewer athletes. They competed in their own name and for money -with its own religion- not fake gold. What could have changed in such a short time? They didn’t seem any slower and the level of competition and excitement remained the same. It did diminish the number of flags. Why then the flags, at all?
Both meets are held under the auspices of the International Association of Athletic Federations. Very few competitive sports teams and their administrative bodies of any kind have much to do with countries. Even when wearing the country’s colors, as in the Olympics, the team is selected by some group of people most of whom are not selected by the people of the country or even the government of those countries. A local Olympic committee answering to the International Olympic Committee selects the selectors. It’s like a UN for each country’s Olympic committee. Few argue whether these teams are representative. No one argues whether Usain Bolt should represent Jamaica. There is consensus he is the best. But there are more questionable choices and for which there is no mechanism for the people of a country to challenge; something they had no say in creating. No one even questions the legitimacy of the international bodies. This one founded in France and headquartered in Switzerland. They are accepted as if ordained by some higher power that can ban contestants and whole countries too. Yet people go crazy at the appearance of their country’s color at any competition. And it is a little crazy. I am amazed by it. I too am caught-up in support of teams from all my adopted nations. I know. It is foolish.
One need only look at the equally rabid support of professional, non-national, high school, and village teams and to realize rabid support of a national team is nothing special. This makes the nationalist thing seem crazier. There is something else at work here. Fans show support for their teams and heroes because it brings joy? Teams that haven’t won anything in forever have rabid supporters too. They could only be rabid. If you ever stood in a packed stadium screaming the name of that day’s hero, then you know the feeling. It is that power, that unity, that has worked to infuse purportedly national activity with some special importance. It is like music: infectious, a choir.
Elsewhere people scream the names of goats, camels, drones and other non-humans, some only on a screen; robots too. Hundreds of thousands show up at the annual Epsom Derby. Millions more watch on television around the world scrunching their racing sheet before throwing it with disgust as ‘their’ horse fails to impress again. They’ll be back. Bronze statues are forged and films made to remember horses. It is not all about wins and losses. It is to be part of something.
Soccer fans have rioted across the capitals of Europe in pitch battles between fans and inside stadia too. Many have died for wearing the wrong colors. Malicious fires and stampedes have killed hundreds. In the US, college and professional sports fans riot from time to time: burning cars and defying the police. This is serious business and involving no nations: except if you consider the racist names like Braves, Indians, and Redskins as actual native nations.
The merchandising of private teams in all sports is a business of immense scale. LeBron James has a lifetime deal with Nike worth a reputed One Billion dollars US. It won’t be so bad if it remained entirely in private hands. Actually no, because the enslaved make those shoes.
But power goes further and taps into that religion, connects it to country, exercises more control, and extracts more resources from ordinary people and the land. The medal count reflects the winner and country in gold, silver and bronze. It is not gold; just a symbol, another trinity. Michael Jordan first then LeBron James were recruited for a needed boost to the flagging hopes of their national team. It was the patriotic thing for them to do. Their names adorn shoes that have sold the most pairs in the history of shoes. Jordan’s mother Deloris had said that even as a child Michael told her he would be an Olympian. The hero and nation merge. Sport is one of the training grounds for children and in any emergency are drafted as soldiers in service to the nation state.
It begins easy enough. It may come at a bar mitzvah or a first visit to the stadium with your dad. It was boys mostly, but not so much now. No one argues against gender equity and especially if equity means equal exploitation of the same people, by the same people, and for the same people. Or it can be as serious as a flag stuck to your helmet, with a weapon in your arm as you cross a country’s border in a military operation to bring democracy. What is so wrong about that? Our recent ancestor Dick Gregory once quipped, “I don't know why America always thinks she has to run all around the world forcing people to take our way of governance at the barrel of a gun. When you've got something really good, you don't have to force it on people. They will steal it!”
One would think unity easier in largely homogenous populations, and peace more possible and national feelings justifiable. As a laughable example, Chris Gayle the most famous Jamaican born cricketer in the world was booed at Sabina Park, his native home ground, because he appeared there on a team based in a neighboring island, St. Kitts and Nevis, to play against a team based in Jamaica. Don’t laugh; the name of his team was the St Kitts and Nevis Patriots. It did not matter that both teams were privately owned professional teams; and not owned by Jamaicans or Kittitians or Nevisians. The boos may have been tongue-in-cheek but one can’t be sure. It is worse for those countries, particularly in the new world with settler populations that continue to enjoy the residue from the supremacy Columbus used as justification. The future does not look good and even where the population looks alike or one group dominates. There is always some other schism lurking with intent.
We distorted the meaning of ‘diaspora’, a perfectly good word, into something describing people who ‘fled’ from hardships back home and to be used as a mark against them; traitors. It's worse if deported. The politicians give lip service to the value of those in the diaspora. World bank numbers show remittances[5] as a substantial part of the local economy. Barrels roll to the old country stuffed with food, clothes, utensils and uncounted dollar value from the diaspora to the home economy. Being born in a place drawn up by force and maintained by force somehow is reason to die in it, die for it, vote for it, pray for it, and kill for it. But if you leave to explore your options elsewhere, as people have done since there were people, then somehow you become less. Lets be clear. Countries are not underdeveloped because of the people that left. It is much more. Ask Cuba. Movement is a right.
There is a call to return home. Returning home won’t save home if you don’t understand why you left. It is important we understand the purpose of this characterization: it’s to impose a point of separation and conflict. Local pundits publicly resent those who fled the hardship and especially when they try to weigh-in on local decisions. The intent is to silence all voices of dissent: to weaken both local and diaspora voices, and the debate, and to avoid scrutiny. It is kin to asking two prominent African thinkers to have their debate privately: to shut down threats to expose the real deal because one is of us, and one is not.
Empire is for empire’s sake, not yours’. It is always painful to watch heads of state and representatives trudge to address the UN General Assembly, every year, with the same tired platitudes to democracy and equality, paying homage to the institution, when the institution allows veto rights to a select few: its Security Council five. All flags are not equal, some are more equal: and for your own good. Of the less equal ones, each year, one rotates in and gets to sit with the more equal ones on the Security Council like an honorary White under apartheid. Father knows best and especially on security. Maybe nuclear power whitens yellow, but is not that powerful to whiten black.
It’s more understandable when you realize many of those annual visitors were placed, or helped, into power by one or more of the members in the Security Council. As a result, the needed resistance to the imbalance is unlikely from these men and women. The political interference and help comes as a kind of aid like a virus crippling the real feelings of ordinary people. It extends well beyond the UN but to all interactions and inequalities across the globe. It does not always work as intended and history recorded many challenges to this hegemony.
In addition to these powerful governments, there are various aid groups; NGOs that operate as surrogate branches of these governments that assist in their global influence. This aid often acts as hush money, not just to the people's representatives, the government, but also to individuals within communities. This is what President Trump warned he would review after the recent UN vote. The Security Council is useless in a situation as this: it cannot police itself: the big five. They cancel each other out.
So in this context, there is no great honor in being a member of such a body and, in the UN General Assembly, voting overwhelmingly ‘Yes’ to condemn the US decision to recognize Jerusalem and not Tel Aviv as the capital of Israel and to move its embassy there. This is especially the case where the General Assembly has no power to enforce its resolutions. Such a vote should be easy. Everybody is against apartheid. Right. Moreover, the UN has consistently voted against the Israeli government’s advances and claims to more land: and rightly so. If you look carefully, you'll see that you too are under blockade: your votes and your economy. Others will measure the degrees of completeness
Consequently, even less honorable are the abstentions; and even less so the ‘No’ votes, in favor of the US and Israel’s move. Some who had shouted their independence and waved their flag at every opportunity around the world decided to abstain: and includes Canada and Mexico, that make-up the NAFTA troika, as well as Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Haiti, and Rwanda.
Champions of human rights and peace everywhere should not rejoice about the vote. It won’t change Israel’s plans and US support in the region.
But those countries and other nationalists who have sneered at the abstentions and ‘No’ votes should not feel too smug about being on the right side of history. Perhaps abstention is, at some level, independence: the neoliberal individual kind. But the key is that you the citizen had nothing to do with it. You were not consulted. The Turkish people were not consulted though their government tabled the resolution. They may have agreed if consulted, but had no opportunity.
To be clear, I depend on and applaud the various UN panels and commissions and the important science in their reports. Though its conclusions are hampered by the same problem I describe here, I do draw heavily from its findings to make my points. But that is not its primary function. It is world peace and security, which is a battle we are all losing. The UNDP in its 2013 report, Humanity Divided: Confronting Inequality in Developing Countries, page 1, claimed of inequality that, "It has been limiting opportunities and access to economic, social and political resources. Furthermore, inequality has been driving conflict and destabilizing society."
So many of the people from those ‘Yes’ countries are fleeing from home and without any protection on offer. There are levels of problems, but in every country people are under siege; the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ alike including the US as the 'most unequal society in the world'. Globally, women and men too, if with less restrictions, cannot move freely without male comment or company; and, in the dark, without threat of bodily harm. For example, in the first 10 days of 2018, Jamaica witnessed 40 murders, Trinidad and Tobago 23, Puerto Rico 32, and Chicago 8. The workplace is a minefield for women. Domestic violence is out of control, police violence too. Mutilation of women’s’ genitalia, under cover of culture, is still permitted to control women’s desire while men’s run rampant. Despite the UN’s pronouncement to end the practice by 2030, its own reports show 200 million have undergone some form of female genital mutilation and a fourth of that number are under the age of sixteen. Huge populations are on auction blocks, or close, across the planet; an estimated 40.3 million worldwide. Black lives matter less. Governments deny its citizens any review of public contracts. Our water quality is a secret and services privatized, if not officially, unofficially. A bribe will get you connected faster. The high cost of electricity and infrastructure means we live mostly in the dark, even in oil rich countries. Puerto Rico post-hurricane Maria is a stunning example: still 40 percent in blackout after 100 days, and still can’t vote at the UN or the US congress. Governments permit drilling offshore for oil with no care for any life and land when all the evidence cautions against it. Corruption is rampant. Government procurements are kept secret. Infants die at rates twice that of the country you just voted against. We share 66 million refugees among us. Mass layoffs are normalized. Women die in childbirth. I can go on. But it wouldn’t change anything anymore than your vote did. So don’t feel so smug. You had no input in your countries vote. You were not consulted. And had the leadership voted differently, there would be little you could do about it. And little they could do about it. We have to change that.
Nevertheless, it is no small matter to defy an empire with real influence on your economy. We must not forget the suffering of others even if we are suffering too. In fact, we must say and do stuff. It is our willingness to identify with the very power that is denying us and that prolongs these unsustainable conditions. None of this condones Israel’s determination to seize the whole thing, redraw its border accordingly and without care for what the UN says. It has its own power and sees its power in the land. Was not the UN the original and convenient backdrop for the formation of Israel? Vote as you see fit. But we should be informed about what it would take to make a different future: the removal of all borders.
Since his visit to Guyana, I later learned that Chronixx had visited Israel and at a time when progressive forces are calling for a boycott. And Israel has responded with its own boycott, of those forces, organizations and its members. And is reportedly paying countries to accept mostly African 'infiltrators' living in Israel. I am sure Chronixx has his reasons. I have to struggle to place it in some context. Perhaps, its biblical and therefore beyond my comprehension. He was the first to add the ‘C’s to reggae music: capitalism and 'capture'd land. Babylon had been the code word. Perhaps his visit is a prelude; like the stateless runners of the world, where they, he and I envision a future without borders; a world without flags and nations as Haile Selassie proposed; and where we would be able to visit Jerusalem again and the Wailers Wall and wail.
Should not the borders
And walls
his gang drew, fall too.
All are monuments to terror and occupation
If Rhodes must fall, and he must
Should not nationalism
Like dust
Free the land, us too
and the rest will follow through
[1] Gaouette, Nicole, Despite Haley threat, UN votes to condemn Trumps' Jerusalem decision CNN Politics Friday December 22, 2017 Accessed January 7th 2018. In addition to 35 abstentions and 9 ‘No’ votes there were 21 absentees.
[2] Mathews, Gordon; Ma, Eric K; Lüi Tai-Lok, Dale, Hong Kong, China: Learning to Belong to a Nation, Routledge, New York 2008. P.153
[3] Protoje, Take Control released in 2011 as a single on The Message Riddim. Patois transcript is subjective and sole responsibility of this author.
This explains increasing rates of deportations, its US reluctance to accept new migrants, and its withdrawal from the UN Compact on Global Migration because it would be 'a threat to US sovereignty'. The compact is intended to address the crisis in a more humane manner. It’s the underlying causes we need addressed.
[5] World Bank Data for 2016 shows remittances at almost 30 percent (29.4) of Haiti’s GDP. Imagine almost a third of a country’s production comes in the form of remittances. This does not include barrels. Comoros, The Gambia, Kyrgyz Republic and Nepal are all in the same percentage zone but voted in favor of the UN resolution. Of course anything the World Bank says is to be taken with a grain of imported salt. It lists remittances as 0.0 percent of US, and North American, GDP. And does not count corporate profits earned abroad and repatriated, or not, as remittances. Accessed, Jan 4, 2018
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