MIA > Archive > Tim Hector
Fan the Flame, Outlet, 13 June 1997.
Online here https://web.archive.org/web/20120416011318/http://www.candw.ag/~jardinea/fanflame.htm.
Transcribed by Christian Høgsbjerg.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
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Words without thoughts never to heaven go Upon his brow shame is ashamed to sit |
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I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder not to see them ashamed |
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And ‘tis remarkable that they |
It should be immediately obvious that all the above quotations apply to one man and one man only. And no reader from near or far should have any difficulty in guessing who that man is.
That man whose words transmit no thoughts and therefore do not go upwards – to heaven, that is to enlightenment. Always his “words without thoughts” go downwards that is to hell, namely to deceit and fraud.
And needless to say upon his brow shame itself is ashamed to sit. Even shame shuns him and avoids sitting on his brow, as you would avoid sitting on an open sewer.
Since the man cannot be ashamed, there is little wonder that we see his wickedness, and not his shame.
For he is one of those slaves set free, his chains struck off, but he did not follow free. For even now he is as much slave as ever. A slave to foreign interests. For his slavery was not in his chains, but most definitely in himself. He is slave to tricks and dissimulation.
Dissimulation is the stock in trade of the slave. What exactly do I mean by dissimulation? It is a big word you say. The dictionary meaning will not suffice. Illustration is best.
C.L.R. James in the Black Jacobins describes the phenomenon among slaves known as ‘dissimulation’ and which the man of words without thoughts, himself calls “guile”. C.L.R. wrote this: “A slave is accused of stealing a pigeon. He denies it. The pigeon is discovered hidden in his shirt. “Well, well, look at that pigeon it take my shirt for a nest.” Through the shirt of another a master can feel the potatoes which the slave denies he has stolen. They are not potatoes, he says, they are stones. He is undressed and the potatoes fall to the ground. Eh! Eh! Master. The devil is wicked, I put stones and look, you find potatoes.”
And so the modern day slave talks most, because they have the least to say. Talk, talk, and each word conceals a fraud.
And in their mountain of words, not a grain of truth is to be found. All is lies. Damned lies. Abominable lies. Lying is a way of life. It is the essence of an inauthentic lie. He says one thing now and does precisely the opposite amount later.
Says the man, on June 6, 1986 “Many of my detractors particularly people within my own party, have put it about that ‘Lester Bird only love foreigners.’ It is not Tim Hector or the Outlet, to be fair, that tried to create this image of me.” No, not Tim Hector or the Outlet who tried to create this image of him. It was his very own colleagues who put it about that “Lester Bird only love foreigners.” It was a simple truth, simply told.
The subject of this truth, unable to distinguish between truth and falsehood, like all political psychopaths, denounced this truth told by his very own colleagues as a lie, a slander. For those he wrote on June, 6, 1986, who “malign me for seeing foreigners” failed to see that the country would suffer. Were he to stop seeing foreigners he wrote himself “Antiguans would be without jobs and the quality of life in the country would decline. That is the reality. Full stop. And nothing said by anyone will change that reality.”
I hope you got the point? The writer said “If I were to stop seeing foreigners ... this country would suffer – tourism would dry up and investment would come to a standstill –. Consequently Antiguans would be without jobs.”
Got the point if this man, this big tub of words without thoughts, were to stop seeing foreigners, cooking-up deals with them, Antigua would crumble into the dust. Tourism would dry-up, if not instantaneously, then definitely and finitely. Antiguans would be without jobs. And nothing said by anyone will change that reality. It is really ‘unreality’.
The reality is, according to this man, that all our jobs depend on this man, this tub of words without thoughts. It is obvious, immediately obvious that these words he wrote on June 6, in his own Herald, are entirely without thought.
For the reality is, not a single job here depends on him seeing foreigners, or on him seeing himself, or on him, period. His own words without thought led him to a grandiose misconception of himself. It is with that illusion and delusion he lives that he, and he alone, with his foreign friends, are the basis of our existence here.
The simple truth that there was tourism before him, there will be tourism after him, and there will be tourism and jobs, more tourism and more jobs without him, escaped him altogether. He is a complete stranger to truth. Truth knows him not.
And continued this ceaseless windbag choc-a-brim with words without thoughts.
“I have chosen” wrote this wordsmith “to do my duty [namely, wheel and deal with foreigners] by the people of Antigua and Barbuda regardless of the criticism [‘of my detractors, particularly people within my own party’] of those who are incapable of recognising the damage they do to the country.”
Did the point escape you? The Man said, that to criticise him, is at one and the same time to “do damage to the country”. He is the country and the country is him. He is the source of all tourism. Without him “tourism would dry up”. “Investment would come to a stand still.” Jobs would cease. We in Antigua & Barbuda the product of great African civilisations, though enslaved in between, would eat each other in ceaseless cannibalism, for the first time, were it not for him. Take away him from the national equation and what would we have left – cannibals. Sans lui, la déluge! Without him the deluge.
The man does not only reveal that he is a tub of words without thoughts. He reveals too, that he suffers from delusions of grandeur. That without him wheeling and dealing with foreigners Antigua and Barbuda, would slide, even against the laws of geology and geography, off the edge of the earth, into dark and abysmal chaos. Such a man has got to be mad. Mad as a hatter. Madder than hell itself. Yet, mark you, it is his own words without thoughts that reveal him as such!
“However,” said this mad bird who should be left entirely to the birds, “I have thought long and hard about Antigua and Barbuda’s relationship with foreigners in terms of the economy of the country and I have devised a plan of action which, if sensitively implemented, could protect this country from foreign domination, while retaining foreign participation in the development process.”
Phew! What a torrent of words without meaning. Imagine him thinking long and hard, while playing with piles and piles of yankee dollars in his bedroom, all ill-gotten gains, so ill-fares the land, to hastening ills a prey. He who never thought a thought, never mind him doing so long and hard! Had he thought long and hard in Antigua and Barbuda’s interest Venus and Mars would have collided, and there would have been another Big Bang, and evidently, a new earth, and if not a new heaven, then new bird constellations.
But said he his thoughts were basic.
“Basically” wrote he in his own Herald of June 6, 1986, “The plan has four elements: (1) Limitations on ownership by foreigners of land for any purpose [Don’t laugh, I beg you!]: (2) Limitations on ownership by foreigners of the productive sectors of the economy [Please, please do not take up an axe to split this hypocrisy in two and so strike it dead. There is a better way!]; (3) imitations on nationals of sister-states of the Caribbean community. [This thought is left hanging, limitations on non-nationals of CARICOM countries on what? Just limitations. The wordsmith cannot think for long, let alone hard!]
You will have noted that he said “basically the plan has four elements.” But basically we could only find three! This Atlas, this Giant Malt on whom tourism, investment and jobs depend, cannot even count! Not even count from one to four, after long and hard thought, besides. The only thing he can count, and that with or without thought, is loot.
Then he returns to his basic plan to repeat what he has said already. “The first part of my plan, therefore, would stipulate that no foreigner (other than CARICOM nationals) may own land in Antigua for any purpose.” Pellucid, ain’t it?
Yet the same man, on February 18, 1997, agreed with Asian Village Ltd “to sell, transfer and lease (as the case may be) free from all encumbrances and with vacant possession and with the necessary approvals/consents by the relevant authority for the development of the Asian Village Resort Project in accordance with the Company’s Development plan”. The Giant Hypocrite, the national hypocrite of hypocrites stands exposed. And by his very own words.
And all these lands, Guana Island, Rabbit Island, Crump Island, Hawes Island, are to be sold outright. “Plus all the lands known as Jeff Hadeed’s land at Coconut Hall. All that is to be sold for a total purchase price of $15.5 million.”
Plus all the lands of the Melon Farm, to be leased for 149 years, with an option to buy for the peppercorn sum of EC$2 million for more than 600 acres of land!
All sold to foreigners, by the same man who wrote to the public and said “no foreigner is to own land in Antigua and Barbuda for any purpose.”
Yet the man not only put this in writing, he took it to Cabinet “at the next meeting!”
Remember the plan had only four parts. But the man careless and scattered-brained as ever, and full of words without thoughts, at the end forgot his own beginning and got to the fifth part of the plan, even though there was no fourth part!
Wrote he:
“The fifth part of my plan would stipulate that there should be a more vigorous implementation of the work permit scheme in Antigua and Barbuda in order to ensure that foreigners employed here bring skills and qualifications which are needed in the society. In fact, I would urge the establishment of a committee of three persons, who would be changed regularly, to examine and verify work permit applications subject to appeals to the Minister of Labour.”
Now the same man, the same author of the words above, put before Cabinet on November 13, 1996 the following: “To grant permission to employ expatriate labour over and above suitable availability of local personnel” on the Asian Village Resort Project in Guana Island.
After Outlet exposed what was contained in this Cabinet decision, the Agreement between the Government and Asian Village was changed so as to obfuscate the clear meaning up above. Namely, that expatriate labour will be employed on the Asian Village Project “over and above suitable and available local personnel.
But the fact remains that the Agreement with the Asian Village states that there will be by the Government of Antigua and Barbuda “the granting of work permits and/or visas for expatriate sub-contractors and construction workers and employees for the management and operation of the project.”
Clearly, apart from expatriate sub-contractors there will be expatriate construction workers and employees who must automatically be granted work permits and/or visas. It cannot be hidden. Truth will out.
Construction workers will not be involved in the management of the project. Managers, manage. Workers, work. Employees are employed. These Asians will be granted work permits automatically. These foreign workers, no doubt mainly Asians, will enjoy this privilege of work permits as of right, without examination or verification by any three man committee, and with the very opposite of the “rigorous implementation of the work permit scheme” so solemnly urged by this preternatural political crook.
One may never wonder to see this man as wicked, but one must often wonder if this man could ever, ever, ever be ashamed. To see his own words so sharply, and so absolutely contradict his very own actions. Any other self-respecting person, who after long and hard thought, outlined to the nation a basic plan, which he took to Cabinet “at its next meeting”, and flagrantly violated his own plan, would on the instant of his exposure have vacated office. Not so this big tub of words without thoughts. Who talks so much yet has the least to say.
Not so this man upon whose brow shame itself is ashamed to sit.
This Basic plan to prevent “foreign domination, while retaining foreign participation in the development process,” was not written by the man, when he was out of power. It was not written, as the cynical would say, just to gain office. He was already in office when he wrote it on June, 1996 in his Herald. It was a herald of unvarnished fraud.
The man himself concluded his own “long and hard thought” piece thus: “I firmly believe that the government must take every step to ensure that Antiguans and Barbudans have the option of owning the land in their own country. For while all other property perishes, alters or is lost, land endures.”
Therefore “no foreigner may own land in Antigua and Barbuda for any purpose.”
Yet the same man has given away the largest single portion of land ever alienated from Antiguans and Barbudans! More than that he has given foreigners the right, the unhindered right, the inalienable right, to “sub-divide land to build condominiums and villas for sale to foreigners without any restriction whatsoever.” It is clear that this man is for the complete foreign domination of Antigua and Barbuda. His actions speak louder than his hypocritical words.
It is clear that this man who said he “firmly believes” that no foreigner must own land in Antigua and Barbuda for any purpose” never ever held such a belief. And far from firmly. Everything with him is soft, never firm. His orality and verbosity, hides his lack of firmness, and so all his discourse and intercourse with the people, is but that of a pathological fraud, impotent in the service of the people of Antigua and Barbuda and potent only in the service of foreigners.
This slave is one definite case where his chains fell off, but he never followed free. For he is as much a slave as ever – a slave to foreign interests! His slavery was not in his chains but in himself. It is his nature, to serve and subserve foreign interests. Forever subverting the national interest, for foreign interest. So that every day he can be in his counting house, counting up his filthy lucre. Filthy lucre got from Jew, Gentile or Asian, and with the saliva running down his chops he laughs at the nation he betrays to foreign interests. He must be got rid of politically, or politically he will get rid of this nation to foreigners.
His entire article never intended to tell the truth. It was pure dissimulation. The dissimulation of a slave to foreign interests. It was a clear case of him telling the public that he put potatoes, in the national interest but the devil turn them into stones fired at the local public in foreign interests. It was dissimulation, pure and simple, from start to finish, in foreign interests.
Antigua and Barbuda needs to overcome this pathological fraud, this man with words without thoughts, this man on whose brow shame itself refuses to sit, this slave without chains, but nevertheless, slave to foreign interests.
If Antigua and Barbuda does not do so now, it will find that all other national property has perished, altered or was lost and not even land itself will endure. It will be all foreign.
In conclusion I am most grateful to Selvyn Walter who unearthed this piece by this pathological liar, who has put the national patrimony up for sale for a mess of Asian pottage, while he proclaimed “no foreigner must own land in Antigua and Barbuda for any purpose.” Never was Antigua worse fooled, by a fool to national interest and an external slave to foreign interests.
Time now to rid ourselves of this huge tub of words without thoughts, all said in, of, and for, foreign interests. Time to put the national interest first.
Last updated on 30 May 2022