…talk
Growing up in Guyana, your Eyewitness is very familiar with the practice of “throw talk”. If you got a beef with someone but don’t have the cajónes to confront them, you mutter aloud some nasty allegations in their presence!! The working assumption is that your bete noir knows you’re scandalizing him – but you have “deniability” with “If the cap fits…!! More often than not, a nasty cussing match ensues – soon descending into hair-pulling and fist-throwing!! Back in the day, women in the rougher sections of G/town would bang pots and pans and pull down their underwear to taunt their target!!
Well, life goes on, times change…but human nature never does. It just finds new ways of expressing the same old sentiments that bubble up from our psyches – formed back in the caveman days!! Today “throw talk” is done over social media – which makes it so easy to insult and scandalize those who’ve earned marks in your Black Book!! Social media’s ubiquity and reach make it the perfect vehicle to get in your licks – and so it’s not surprising that politicians and political types have taken to it like crocodiles to swamps!!
It used to be that politicians would “throw talk” at their opponents from their political platforms. Oldsters would remember Walter Rodney calling Forbes Burnham a reverse King Midas – who turned to shit, rather than gold, anything he touched!! The best Burnham could come back with was to dub Rodney’s party the Worst Possible Alternative!! What can you say? – creativity wasn’t his strong suit!!
Now fast forward to the present, and we can see how the new “throw talk” over social media works by examining the brouhaha between our Attorney General and a gal called “Melly Mel”.
She’s a former Miss Mash from back in 2002 – the same year those four convicts broke out of Camp Street Jail, holed up in Buxton and announced they were “Freedom Fighters”. Six years – and hundreds of murders – later, they were wiped out to reinforce the soundness of the old folk wisdom, “Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword!!” Evidently motivated by some of the same urges of ‘the Buxton Four’, Melly Mel’s been waging war against “the man” from behind her computer keyboard – from foreign!!
It’s said that “the pen is mightier than the sword”, and the internet has made social media into a weapon of mass destruction!! Governments have attempted to control the vitriol hurled over social media through “cybersecurity” laws – but folks like Melly Mel have used the porosity of borders to escape even the long hand of the (local) law!!
And what about the content of the “throw talk”? Even more scandalous!!
…Haiti away
Poor Haiti…how long will it remain as the poster child for poverty and failed statehood?? We know that, in the beginning, it was being punished for daring to declare that it could be “free”!! At that time, any “self-respecting human being” knew Blacks weren’t even human, so how could they be free?? It was an oxymoron!!
OK…now we know that the Europeans who denied the humanity of Blacks wanted to enslave them – and sponge off their labour. But that’s 200+ years ago!! And all Black countries are now free to develop themselves!!
But we know also that that ain’t the whole story, innit?? Only in the last decade did Haiti pay off the debt imposed on them because of their freedom struggle against France. But we’re all in the same boat!! What do you think happens when the money the Third World – including Haiti – repays for “aid” exceed the aid that is sent in??
Ultimately, only Haitians can free Haiti from its plight!! If others free you, they’ll fleece you!!
…first ball!!
Last night, the new XoM Global Super League sent down their first ball – and first game – at our Providence Stadium, when our Guyana Amazon Warriors faced off against the Lahore Qualanders!! “Qualander” means one who has renounced worldly pleasures!! So, no winning??
