Forgetting…the past?

Your Eyewitness is all for forgiving folks for hurtful things done to him in the past!! But forgetting them?? Naah!! “Forgiving”, after all, is more about our own mental wellbeing, innit?? In putting aside feelings of resentment or anger toward individuals who’ve done us wrong in one way or another, we’re freeing up our own minds for more positive feelings!! It certainly doesn’t mean accepting or excusing the ones who put us down!! That would be crazy to do!! Remember Santayana’s caution? “Those who forget the past – especially the hurtful ones – are doomed to repeat them!!
And this brings us to the recent love fest expressed with that has-been, ex-St Vincent PM Ralph Gonsalves – which your Eyewitness already kvetched about – and with PM Mia Mottley of Barbados!! For rapacious Ralph, he’s already yesterday’s news – so no more need be said. But Mottley?? Mama Mia!! How could we decide to have her Bajans now having the right to just show up at our ports with their Barbados IDs – and be accepted to enter our fair land to do as they please??!!
Have we forgotten how they treated us back in the day when Burnham had made us hungry, homeless and broke? Even if you were just passing through – in transit, as your Eyewitness was on several occasions – they’d put you on that “Guyana Bench” where you’d be forced to cool your heels for hours!! And when some official eventually showed up, they would treat you like dirt as they tried to dig up dirt on you by asking the most demeaning questions!! THEY, of course, had forgotten when they were in the same boat after the abolition of slavery; we’d allowed thousands and thousands of them to immigrate here to enjoy our higher wages!!
The question is: what are we getting for giving them the privilege once again? For us to travel to their speck in the Atlantic where their tourism industry was fatally wounded by COVID?? Why should we pump our money into their comatose economy?? Trinidad, of course, had also done us in when we showed up at their airports. But right now they’re backing us to the hilt against the machinations of Devious Delcy and her Venezuelan hordes ready to occupy our Essequibo!! And we’re just allowing them to invest!!
In the meantime, the militant Mia has been burnishing her liberal credentials by taking pot shots at the US removing our western nemesis, Mad Maduro!! She’s got her eyes set on the UN Secretary General post – and is playing to the Third World votes!!
Our waiver of visas for Bajans signals that we’re trusting them in addition to forgiving them. Let’s not forget, however, that while forgiveness is given, trust is earned!!

…AI usage spending!
As your Eyewitness has been highlighting, AI is having its moment – as trillions of US greenbacks are being poured into the data centres supporting it!! Pressie was able to attract Cerebras – one of the cutting-edge companies in the cutting-edge industry! – to commit to a 100 MW data centre to anchor our gas pipeline in Berbice!! And their recent IPO raised US$5 billion in cash that valued them at US$40 billion!!
Well, two grandaddies of the compute business – Anthropic (Claude) and OpenAI (ChatGPT) – are about to follow Cerebras and launch their IPOs!! Anthropic, the comparative newbie after just five years, just raised US$65 billion with a US billion-dollar valuation – leapfrogging the pioneer OpenAI!!
However, the news that one company accidentally spent US$500M in one month on Anthropic’s Claude, which generates code, has created a backlash!! Companies such as Microsoft are now placing caps on how much their employees can spend on these Charbots!! This, of course, means less revenue towards the bottom line!!
Is a shakeout pending??

…retired furriners?
Pressie recently made a pitch for foreign-based retired Guyanese to return with their pensions!! But maybe he should also follow Panama, where non-citizen pensioners can earn residence rights – if they have a US$1000 pension!!
They’re attracted by our tropical vibes!!