I've never been a Union Jackie or jackbooter and even had occasion to quarrel with Cinnamon Girl when she insisted on hanging that despised rag over one of our windows. It's still there–more of a memento to a lapse in d�cor than a declaration of patriotism–which as my partner Oscar opined "is the last refuge of the scoundrel."
Maybe it's just my migrant genes, or the salutary memory that the English have either exploited, expelled or simply murdered their Jewish community (500 slaughtered in one night in my birthplace, London, during the 14th century) whenever expedient. As usurers and scapegoats Jewish shekel, 30 pieces of silver and gold men bankrolled not only the English, but many of the European monarchies, providing the filthy capital which fuelled these monarchies' development–or dirty business.
The knee-jerk response to an empty English treasury, right up to the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1380, was to levy an extortionate tax payable within a short timeframe (sometimes 24 hours, a month at the most) or suffer immediate exile. Jews were only readmitted to England in the 17th century and for less than altruistic motives–Oliver Cromwell wanted to tap into their sugar making and commercial expertise in the Caribbean.
I've long given up on attempting to explain to some of my adoptive Trini countrymen and women that just because I was born in London that doesn't make me an English. Yesterday I was chatting with a man from L'Anse Noir, who's lived in London for the past 50 years, which is longer than I lived there–so by my calculations–he more English than me.
I choose in the freedom of my mind not to identify with my mother's country mostly because of its track record in its dealings with so-called minorities both at home and abroad in the vast playing/killing fields of Empire.If you feel I making joke, I refer to the recent reparations awarded torture survivors of the Mau Mau revolt against British rule in Kenya in the early 1960s. For all its democratic chat and bluster, the inglorious British Empire was always about might with very little respect for either right or rights.
All this is not simply an apology for Anglophobia but more of a deep-seated distrust of any imperial project. I'm equally opposed to American imperialism both before and after the USA took up the baton Britain relinquished at the end of World War II.
While the Caribbean currently anaesthetises itself with American popular culture, fashion and imported foods, few recall much less realise that the beast of the north has been toying with its "backyard" ever since the Monroe Doctrine self-awarded the USA rights to protect its "interests" at the close of the 19th century.Protecting its interests translated directly into occupations of Cuba (following the end of the Spanish American War of 1898), Haiti 1915-34 and Puerto Rico, which pretty much got swallowed whole.
The American Fruit Company was also responsible for creating the infamous "banana republics" of Central and South America, while the American state maintained a measure of military and political control in this area by destabilising many democratic or populist movements in the second half of the 20th century.
Duvalier, Trujillo and a whole posse of caudillos were given carte blanche to terrorise and impoverish their own people by that affable gent, Uncle Sam, although these days it seems as though Colonel Sanders has his own fingerlickin' recipe for decimating people at home and away–but I guess that's democracy with two side orders.
Finding it hard to forget that the post-Columbian New World was founded on genocide, slavery and exploitation–all necessary accessories of any imperialism–I can't help but be wryly amused by the unfolding Edward Snowden saga. It's almost hilarious to see the imperial masks slipping and to view "democracy" with its pants around its ankles.
Not only does this episode confirm what I've long suspected–that democracy was just another ideological flag of distraction, convenient to wave while in reality trampling it–but it also illustrates the ludicrous levels of naivety all of us operate under.
Initially Snowden revealed internal surveillance–no problem, he's a threat to stateside security particularly in the post 9/11 era. Now he's blown the whistle on American surveillance in the European Union, my boys in Den Haag, Brussels, Paris, London, Berlin are choking on their whisky sours and champagne. But this is pure foolishness as everybody bugging any and everybody. Big Brother plus his Little Sister have been at it since Bible days and now we have cyberspace, privacy for the individual or state is another casualty.
Nothing is quite as nauseating as the self-righteousness of the mighty bully. But then what can be more entertaining than to witness the combined bully club of Europe and the States, who carved up the world between them, now pelting mud in each other's face.