|
|
|
  |
| Sunday, 13 February 2005 |
 |
|
 |
Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
Reparation Blues Make the British Pay! "The tourist cold in his safari-suit calls again in this tropical eatery of a Grand Oriental Hotel thinks he can just tip the uniformed waiter, throw an unclad coin at the smiling beggar, (and not pay the bill). Oh he looks so swell! Pay it, man, pay it, or add it to your will! Pay it, man, pay it, or we'll add it to your will! Yes, we will!" S. (from the Banda Boy's "Reparation Blues") Dark hands reach out for 'aid', brown and yellow bodies shove each other aside to grab smiling and earnest 'white' largesse off a whirling helicopter as it perches: a dull blue fly amidst bloated corpses strewn aplenty rigid as gesturing mannequins: The last three weeks of repetitive and saturating televised full colour imaging extends a familiar imperialist media theme to the 21st century, of us as a forever fractious lot of beggars, a walking dead that cannot govern without the help of the white man. And beggarly cadavers we remain, for we still refuse to 'count the cost, and heal the wounds,' of the 500 years past, and get on with the living metamorphing these soft outstretched palms into fists of raw determination not against each other, but against the true agents of unnatural calamity. In post-tsunami Sri Lanka, all this televised talk of humanitarian aid and debt 'postponements' and even of 'debt forgiveness' (as if it was we who committed the sins), happily forgets the most important axiom of the higher mathematics of reality - that the British government owes trillions of pounds, shillings, and pence in reparations to the Sri Lankan people, enough to temblor the jewels off the Queen of E's noggin. Reparations Yes. The true rep - reparations! if you ask the 'educated' English speaker or wannabge - 'Rock and Roller' in air-con Colombo whether schooled 'internationally' or not - what the word 'reparations' means, or what its wider implications connote - the word would probably draw a blank on their 'pale and lovely' faces, as wide as a slice of white bread. Uva Provincial Council Yet, not so in the 'dark backward' provinces. The Uva Provincial Council, a few years ago, passed a bill presented by the People's Liberation Front (JVP) which called on the British to pay remuneration to the people of those parts, for the legacy of the destruction, particularly the Vellassa - seen in the destroyed tanks and canals evident even today, if not just in the under-capitalised agriculture and almost non-existent technologist industry in that region. So now that the JVP is part of the government, one imagines they are in better position to tally-clerk and fax forward the costs for the whole country for these last five hundred years. Chartered Accountants For with all the 'chartered' accountants trained on the promise of greater employment over the last decade, all garlanded with highly-expensive London-judged CIMA degrees, no one it seems has added up these costs, factoring in the Dutch and the Portuguese destruction, to help present a unified bill to the European and North American treasuries and their parliaments. Or will we once again, let this smiling tie and suited customer escape with just a tip and a tithe, without paying the bill. No Imperialism For let us not forget, without the combined capitalist slavery and genocide on the continents of the Americas, Africa and Asia, there would be no 'Europe', let alone the notion of 'race' let alone a 'white race'. SO now that they finally have true 'European Union'. Let them pay for this privilege, and then we too can forgive them their trespasses. To be continued |
|
| News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
| Produced by Lake House |
