Thursday, May 21, 2015

Convincing Untruths and Bold Faced Lies....

Well known novelist and story teller Stephen King once said "the trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.'

In his witty ditty 'King Liar,' calypsonian wordsmith Lord Nelson referred to a man who was the best liar in the lying kingdom, able to best everyone in the annual lying competition. In the song he remarks of one well known challenger who told of a tailor who was capable of making clothes for people without measuring, and who claimed 'just show him a man standing on a corner, and he could make a suit and don't even measure,' which of course brought the crowd to its feet thinking with a lie like that surely King Liar would be losing the crown. But in trademark fashion the King Liar zinged how his tailor was far more qualified and did not even need to see the man before taunting – 'Don't show him the man my tailor is class, just show him the corner where the fella pass, and he could make a suit, that is tailor, yuh hear lie? King Liar?'

That exchange came to mind listening to the spin being put on the remnants of the emailgate hoax by Keith Rowley and his trusted sidekick Faris al Rawi, and when the Prime Minister held up a glass of water in the Parliament to describe the fuzzy logic being applied to the request for continuing an investigation where no substance exists, when she asked, if the glass was no more, what would hold the water it finally made sense, Yet Keith Rowley is asking you to ignore the absence of any glass and focus on the water, but how can you? What would give it shape, form and mobility? How can a bus filled with children drive off a cliff if there is no bus? Yet Keith and Faris wants you to name the children and contact their families. How can a rocket deposit astronauts on the surface of the moon if the rocket does not exist? But to Rowley and al Rawi that does not matter, let's put moon rocks on sale. How much more can I belabor this analogy to make the point, that it is impossible to make a suit for someone based only on the information that he walked down a street?

But I have been toying with the idea of the conspiracy behind the emailgate hoax now out of morbid curiosity simply because this was not done by small children with idle time, but by grown up professionals of high stature seeking to commit the most heinous of crimes, to snatch power via subterfuge and trick. The question is not so much 'who did it?' The investigators at crime scenes usually ask, as the first question, who stands to benefit most for this crime to identify the most likely suspects. No, we have a fair idea as to who did it, the real question is not who, it is WHO?

Which human beings sat down together and drew this up? I want to know that information just out of dark respect for minds so devious.

WHO in this country has that type of talent, and why are they not writing scripts for Hollywood Blockbusters?

When the Integrity Commission took it upon itself to return the matter to the complainants out of a lack of evidence the complainants refused to accept that and instead are insisting on drawing the Integrity Commission INTO their conspiracy. They are not saying 'here is something, investigate it,' they are saying 'here is nothing, help us prove it,' to which the Integrity Commission is saying we are having none of that. But is that why His Excellency the former President refused to even look at it much less comment? Is it why the Judiciary is staying far away from it? Out of an abundance of caution so as not to be drawn into political machinations as unwilling pawns in someone else's conspiracy?

Which begged the biggest question of all. Did Keith Rowley as complainant in chief refuse to take the matter to the police out of fear that he could be and would be charged with wasting police time?

I find the desperation in the antics of Rowley and al Rawi laughably pathetic now. Every talk show host that gives them a hearing is actually demonstrating a willingness to discuss that clothes can be made for people based on where they might have stood, and this I find most dismaying. At some point the media is going to have to take a real and subjective look at what it is reporting, what it is being drawn into and ask, is this really worth it? Is this what my carer has been reduced to? Passing on someone else's lies?

Keith Rowley and Faris al Rawi are coming dangerously close to bringing the Integrity Commission into odium by their grandstanding and they are charging up their minions to go the whole hog. I would like to caution them both if for no other reason out of respect for the stability of our nation. The Integrity Commission has not adjudicated but has said there is not enough substance upon which to mount an investigation. Regardless of how they might feel about that the responsibility is not on anyone else to help them construct their fantasies and they need to stop it now.

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Moving on... (Closing Email Gate)

It appears that, for the first time in our independent history, a political organization has been able to best the People's National Movement at its own games and the people behind the People's National Movement seem to have no clue as to what to do about it.

So now they attack who disagrees with them and quote who agrees, whining to everyone if things don't go their way when all they are trying to do is topple the democratically elected government or, failing that, attempting to smear the names and reputations of its members so badly that, despite and in spite of how much good work they may have done while in office, to the electorate, because of the tsunami of scandal and shaming allegations being mounted against them, the voters would have no choice but to vote for the PNM.

Problem is, it doesn't seem to be working. Worse, it seems to be backfiring, and instead of people losing taste for the People's Partnership and turning to the PNM, the public is turning away from the whole damned thing, disgusted by the shenanigans and fed up of it in its entirety. The most common cry to be heard is, can't we do better? Can't we find something else?

Now the rug has been pulled out from under them in the form of two lines from the Integrity Commission they swore would be the resolution they were seeking, and now that the top has rubbished what the bottom had already rubbished two years earlier, the whining has begun in ernest. Now PNM talking head Faris al Rawi is burning up the airwaves skating dangerously close to maligning the Commissioners of and the entire Integrity Commission as a whole, creating a new dimension to the scenario, and emphasizing that, if the PNM does not get their way, they are prepared to tear the whole thing down.

I think the public is fed up of that. Aligned media workers and journalists, tired of being ignored by a public fed up of biased journalism are inching their own way back to the center, leaving the few obviously biased and beholding practitioners isolated and glaring and answering unasked questions as to what the voters/consumers can really do.

The same PNM led by the same Keith Rowley sanitized and publicly baptized by the same St. Faris of al Rawi that had no problem with Keith Rowley as Leader of the Opposition and prosecutor-in-chief meeting surreptitiously and clandestinely with the then Chairman of the Integrity Commission Ken Gordon cast in the role of Judge in this scenario as laid out by and called for on the behest of the PNM, is daring to question the means by which the same Integrity Commission might have arrived at the conclusion that there simply isn't anything in the allegations to investigate?

It appears that what the PNM wants is not so much investigation as validation for their position and seem unprepared to accept anything less regardless from whom it comes or what they have to do to get their way. In a world where he who alleges must first prove Keith Rowley got away with the complete opposite, 'chaining up' an entire country and all of its high institutions on a fool's errand turned wild goose chase (if the emails don't work, investigate the contents still), causing at least one high office holder to step outside her crease.

Today though, the sun rose on a nation where emailgate is behind us, save and except for the whining.

Many are expressing relief, glad to have this sordid chapter closed as am I, and the entire country should be tired of the nonsense, the double speak and the sleight of hand politicking we have been witnessing from Balisier House ever since PNM supporters tossed their former leader aside ignobly and crowned his slayer their new leader.

This king slayer though, has quickly developed the reputation of being all hat and no cowboy, of having plenty noise and odor but no substance, and has caused the country to say enough.

No amount of grandstanding and belly aching is going to prevent the coming investigation into the origins of emailgate, and I suspect chapter two is going to be far more revealing and possibly career ending than chapter one ever was.

Before we get to there I do hope for all of our sake the entire country is fed up of Faris al Rawi and his whining.

I know I am.

Saturday, May 2, 2015

House of Thrones... (Because Game of Cards was already taken)

The Leader of the Opposition has accused the Prime Minister and senior members of her government of having conspired, among other things, to murder a journalist to kill a story. In response, the government, through one of its members, accused the Leader of the Opposition of being a rapist and of being himself the product of a violent rape. All of this done in the sanctity of the highest space in the land, the seat of Parliament, and broadcast to the world at no risk to either side of slander, libel or defamation. The government through its spokespeople have accused the Opposition Leader of being corrupt and of hiding pertinent information from the Integrity Commission, the entity that is supposed to keep public officials corruption free. In response the Opposition Leader has accused the Minister of Finance of insider trading when he was the head of the nation's third largest bank. Two former Attorneys General from two former administrations have accused the former Attorney General of the current administration of serious abuses of Office amounting to billings totaling almost a half billion dollars, in response to which the current Food Production Minister has responded by asking the Integrity Commission to look into a list of suspicious actions of both accusers while they were in Office.

My mother just got back from a long trip to Canada, and told me that her friends want to know why I don't write anymore. As a creative writer of fiction, tell me, after reading that opening paragraph, short of introducing an attack on the Parliament by zombies or revealing that the Prime Minister may in fact be pregnant with the Opposition Leader's love child, how do I top that? Even the news stories these days are sometimes so impossible to believe that they require taking with a pinch of salt. Take for example the chair that the Chairman of the country's electricity commission sits on, rumored to have cost the country almost thirty thousand dollars, and while the Chairman has never admitted or denied sitting in the chair, she has distanced herself from its purchase. It gets worse. The leader of another political organization who now fancies himself a corruption buster has offered to purchase the very chair, ostensibly for political purposes, but this same leader was fired from this same government for corruption on an international scale, and who cannot answer for authorizing the retrieval of a crashed fire truck at more than five times the replacement cost of the truck. The chairman named in the chair scandal is married to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, which many claim is the reason why the chair story is a story in the first place, while others are of the view that purchasing outrageously expensive furniture for the use of state officials with state funds is the issue in and of itself.

Where was I? Oh yes, my mother. I had to explain to her that my weekly commentary was hired by a weekly newspaper under a former editor (who is now a candidate in the upcoming election on the same team as the Opposition Leader), and that up until recently, my weekly contributions went there primarily. A few weeks ago after the Opposition Leader was accused in the Parliament of being a rapist and that he himself was a child of violent rape, the new Editor of that old weekly announced that henceforth, nothing that showed the Opposition Leader in a bad light was going to be published, and because I found it almost impossible to write something good about the now made over, newly gentle, formerly garrulous and bitter combatant, I resigned. Funny thing though, that same Editor of that same weekly did not seem to have that same integrity when it came to others or those she and he (her leader) might consider political adversaries, because while she had a serious problem with articles referring to the Leader of the Opposition as an alleged rapist, she had none whatsoever publishing a full page fully nude image of a deceased politician on the front page of that same newspaper with a headline that alluded that he died while on a sex romp.

How do I contribute to that mom? How do I write knowing that the allegations made against the Prime Minister that she was a willing and conspiring murderess came in the form of a series of email exchanges that were never verified before they were put scandalously into the public domain but which have since taken years in the digital age to determine if they were in fact real? Or the fact that the Commissioner of Police is rumored to have received correspondence from the largest Internet Company on earth weeks ago but still cannot reveal their contents, while the Prime Minister insists that she too received the same information that exonerates her in any murderous enterprise, leading to the Opposition Leader's chief spokesperson saying straight faced to the public, ignore whether the emails were in fact authentic or not, pay attention to what the (fake?) emails contained. And while you are wrapping your head around that, wrap it around this as well. That same spokesperson is currently courting the former Minister of National Security of the current government to join their team despite they having accused him of being a willing coconspirator in the same murderous conspiracy, his name called in the same Parliament by the same Opposition Leader now courting him.

Isn't this all too bizarre?

And doesn't all of this suggest that either the Opposition Leader's spokesperson knew full and well that the emails and all they contained were rubbish when they were read in the Parliament? Or is it that everything is fair game in this House of Thrones and he is willing to play fast and loose with his own personal safety, consorting with an alleged murder conspirator for political reasons?

And (believe it or not) it gets even more interesting.

In response to and in defense of the allegations that the Opposition leader was a rapist, the same spokesperson for the Opposition Leader 'produced' a video that he said that they had in their possession since last year in anticipation of such an 'attack,' a video starring the very woman that the Opposition Leader is alleged to have raped when she was still a minor and the child of that rape, now a full grown thirty nine or forty year old man (they were having difficulty in the video deciding which), despite the fact that the purpose of the video was to debunk the allegations. But ignore that for a bit. To hear her tell they the story they were in love, drunk with puppy love, and that the child of that union was conceived in love.

Isn't that just too romantic and cute for words?

And while I am even willing to accept that, what I found remarkably interesting about that video is, while the Opposition Leader's spokesperson claims that it was produced since the year before (2014), and that they have had it in their possession for over a year, no one has been able to explain how is it that is comes to refer  to events that only took place in 2015, trumping my zombie plot with a possible time machine and perhaps a working crystal ball.

Mom, the real reason I am not writing anymore is that, while I am a veritable virtuoso in creative writing and fiction, seriously, how do I top that?