Going with…the US of A!!

Yesterday your Eyewitness wondered whether the Yanks were gonna put their money where their mouth was – and give their arch rivals (enemies?) the Chinks a run for their money here in our good ole Mudland!! For the longest while, your Eyewitness feared that while they were huffin’ and puffin’ and breathin’ smoke about the Chinks stealing their supper in Latin America and the Caribbean – he didn’t see them doing much, if anything, about it!! Where was their Belt and Road??
Well, it looks like they’ve finally woken up to the challenge – apart from pressuring countries like Panama to squeeze out the Chinese from their canal or taking out Mad Maduro and controlling Venezuelan oil through his ambitious lieutenant, Delcy Rodriguez!! Nothing wrong with that – because history’s shown that when you come right down to it, your friends gotta fear you a bit lest they take you for granted and sell you down the river!!
Back in the day – when they were fighting off the Commie challenge in these parts – after they’d squeezed the PPP out and installed Fat Boy Burnham in power, they plunked down some real cold cash to start our modernising drive by constructing the Georgetown to Linden Highway in 1968!! The plan was to take that all the way to Lethem and then into Brazil to open up the largest economy in South America to us. The Brazilians did their part by building a bridge across the Takutu River – but the Yanks lost interest when Fat Boy double-crossed them and flirted with the Commies!!
Well, looks like with their oil major Exxon striking it rich here, we’ve caught the attention of the Yanks once again!! It didn’t hurt that Trotman had given Exxon one hell of a sweetheart deal!! So now that the head of their EXIM Bank is visiting to check out the US$500M+ loan to kick-start our delayed industrialisation by funding 300MW of power generation, a fertiliser plant and a natural gas plant – he clearly liked what he saw!!
He offered the Government funding for the Deep Water Harbour off the mouth of the Berbice River that was always part of the plan with the Georgetown–Linden Highway!! Not only would we now be able to accommodate larger ships to transport all OUR agricultural products like soya, corn and rice that we would be shipping – but we’d be making oodles of money by offering the industrialists in Manaus, Brazil, a shorter and cheaper way to ship their products to their markets up north!!
In this way, the Yanks wouldn’t only be pipping the Chinks on an infrastructural project – but also have a say in them not shipping out Brazilian goods!!
Talk about having your cake and…!!

…the US space programme
Your Eyewitness has gotta admit, he was pretty chuffed about the Artemis splashdown off the coast of San Diego in the Pacific Ocean!! Hey… What can he say?? Here it was: we’ve been human for hundreds of thousands of years looking up at that orb in the night sky we call “the moon” – but only being able to see one side!! The rotation of the moon matched ours so that at no time was it possible to see the “back”!!
Even when Armstrong went on that “one small step for man; one giant step for mankind” walk back in 1969 – and we all knew where WE were on that day, don’t we??!! – it was on the side facing us!! For all we knew the other side could’ve very well been made of green cheese!! Well, now that the crew of Artemis did fly over – lord knows the engineering skills THAT took! – We know it’s the same as OUR side – filled with craters and all!!
Welcome home, Artemis!! Next stop, Mars??

…pushing around??
We were informed that Suriname has reneged on their years-old commitment to grant 150 fishing licences to Guyanese fisherfolk. The Minister of Agriculture says talks are “still ongoing”!! What the heck??
The Surinamese have gone fishing??