There’s an interesting debate going on in the press – for the umpteenth time – about beating children in schools. Several parents had complained that their little darlings had been whipped on their hands — which, in the age of smart phones, had been recorded in black and blue — to literally and figuratively “straighten” them. Like most of what we do in the modern world, beating children has a biblical origin: “He that spares his rod hates his son: but he that loveth him chastens him betimes”, Proverbs 13:24. This was poetically condensed into “spare the rod and spoil the child”.
So, as the Christian Church followed the Christian armies, the colonised folks were convinced that “sense” had to be BEATEN into children. For instance, historians and anthropologists have found no evidence that physical discipline of children existed in precolonial West African societies – prior to the Atlantic Slave Trade. In addition to “good sense”, the Devil had to also be beaten out, since being bereft of souls, Black children were more susceptible to his baleful influence! The Spanish and Portuguese had long practice with the Inquisition they’d devised for this purpose!!
Anyhow, even the term “beating pickneys” comes out of our slave history – when there was a special name for African (then called “Negro”) children – picaninny. Imagine that!! In line with the European legal categorisation of Africans as sub-humans, their offspring couldn’t be called “children” like theirs!! So as their parents were regularly whipped in the fields to “motivate” then to greater productivity – this gave them something to look forward to as they grew up! Racks from the Inquisition were also used – as was “drawing and quartering”. After abolition, the task of civilising them through the “wild cane” that substituted for the European Birch was passed on to the various state-sponsored Christian denominational schools. The Portuguese, Indian and Chinese children inherited this condign administering of the “rod of correction”!!
And so it remained after independence. Even though the schools had been taken over by the Government, the methodology of imparting “education” was retained. Of course, from the previous generations of men taking their education seriously, the salutary beatings were inflicted in the home on their wives and children. The man, after all, was “head of the home”, according to the Bible.
The point of this long intro is to make it clear that the outlawing of beating in schools ain’t gonna happen just like that!! There are several generations of successful people who’re now leaders in all sections of our nation, who’re convinced it was the beatings they received that made them successful!!
And if you think that’s strange, how many among us don’t think that white skin is “better” than black skin.
…COVID-19
Ever since COVID-19 exploded straight out of Wuhan, China back at the end of 2019, they instituted a policy called “Dynamic Covid Zero” (DCZ) – taking action wherever COVID flares up, in order to eradicate it. A complete lockdown was immediately imposed on entire cities with tens of millions of citizens, and this in the face of obvious negative economic consequences. In the most recent outbreak, the DCZ policy was again unleashed – but this time, there were some protests.
Now, in the West, they didn’t go this route. While it was rationalised as “not interfering too deeply into individual freedoms”, there’s more than a sneaking suspicion that economics played a greater role than science. Gotta make profits!! So what are the results from the two approaches? It was found that 82% of Chinese support DCZ because, over 3 COVID years, China’s GDP grew 13.8%, with 7,000 deaths and 38,000 long COVID cases.
Meanwhile, in those same COVID years, US GDP grew 3.4%, with 1,000,000 COVID deaths and 3,000,000 long COVID cases!!
…Marx
Pushing back at critics of his recent agreement with PVDSA and Chevron, to resume shipping oil to the US, Maduro insisted that trading relationships “cannot be ideologised. Energy relationships cannot be ideologised.”
So, ideology has no material base?
