A Reply to a Letter by Jomo Thomas

[Beware the seductive attractiveness of politics and religion]

Plain Talk : Beware The Seductive Attractiveness Of Politics And Religion

By Nathan ‘Jolly’ Green. August 12, 2020.

Jomo, when you are relating to events in the past, you must be honest and truthful, cut out the reckless statements. Talking or writing in a way that is confusing and can be interpreted in more than one way. Taking facts and repeating them in part, or embroidering them, or twisting them in any way whatsoever is the same as telling lies.

The truth is there is no law in the World today by which any country can be sued for events in slavery before 1945.

That is why the Jews got reparations, the Mau Mau got reparations, and the Caribbean and America got none. When the Jews got reparations, many of those people were still alive, the same with the Mau Mau, nobody who was a slave in America, or the Caribbean is alive.

The matter of reparations for past slavery events in the Caribbean and America have been tried and tested in several courts throughout the World and have all failed.

Descendants of 19th-century African American slaves filed nine lawsuits seeking reparations from corporations in various US federal courts during 2002. The plaintiffs alleged that the defendant corporations (financial, railroad, tobacco, insurance, and textile companies), or their predecessors, had ties to the trans-Atlantic slave trade and were unjustly enriched from the labour of African American slaves. In October 2002, these lawsuits were consolidated into one class-action lawsuit. In 2004, the court dismissed the claim but allowed the plaintiffs to amend their complaint. The plaintiffs submitted an amended complaint making claims of intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, civil rights violations due to the denial of property rights and consumer fraud. In July 2005, the court again dismissed these claims. The opinion noted that these claims raised a “political question”, and therefore were beyond the scope of the federal judiciary. In addition, the court found that the plaintiffs did not have proper standing to bring the lawsuit against the named defendants and that the plaintiffs’ claims were precluded by the statute of limitations. In December 2006, the US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit reversed the dismissal of the plaintiffs’ consumer fraud claims, while upholding the dismissal of the balance of the plaintiffs’ claims. The court of appeals found that questions remained as to whether consumers were defrauded by the failure of the defendant companies to reveal their alleged collaboration with slavery. In May 2007, the plaintiffs petitioned the US Supreme Court to hear their appeal of the 2006 court of appeals decision. The Supreme Court denied the plaintiffs’ petition in October 2007, declining to hear the case.

In the 1800s the British paid the World to end slavery, they paid huge sums to governments, all recorded and documented events.

They also paid all the slave owners in their colonies for their slaves; they did so because until that time slavery had been legal and they made it illegal and as part of that process undertook to compensate the slave owners.
But the whole World, did the same thing when they emancipated their slaves, they paid the owners. Some countries went even further and made the slaves pay for their freedom, whereby those that could not pay remained slaves, but their children were free. This method saw people who were half and a quarter owned and still half or a quarter slave, all recorded and documented events.

The British paid countries to end slavery vast sums of money. They also paid African kings and chiefs and endowed them with projects and signed treaties with them, the Africans generally broke every treaty. The British made treaties with the world regarding abolishing slavery, and just about every treaty ever signed regarding restricting, abolishing, and the banning of slavery included the British as one of the main signatories. They also policed the seas against slavery for a hundred years, stopping every ship and inspecting the holds and rest of the vessels for evidence of having previously carried slaves, evidence of being prepared to carry slaves, and found many to be carrying slaves. In all those circumstances they sent the ships to British Mixed Courts, when convicted the ships were burnt. All of this they did at their own expense with no other help financially from any other country. During that time, they paid hundreds of millions of pounds, today perhaps an incalculable amount. All of that is recorded and referenced.

To enforce the end of slavery in Brazil, the British government blockaded Brazilian ports and forced the ending.

When the British emancipated the Caribbean slaves, the ex-slaves soon ended up building villages and growing their own crops, supporting themselves. The free slaves, despite the nonsense written, were watched over by Magistrates, educated by Church’s who were funded by the British. In the 1890s the British government sold land to ex-slaves and other black people in Saint Vincent for 5/- a lot which ranged from 14 acres down.

I have just finished reading a complimentary copy of the book ‘When the British Paid the World to End Slavery’ by William Harriss [[email protected]] it just about blows reparation claims from the British right out of the water—written from public records and other source’s, it is fully referenced. Every date and statement can be instantly checked.

Sorry Jomo but this book is a must for you to read to save yourself from being made to look silly again.

Then your recent statement Jomo, “it was important for organizers of these events to realize that ‘young people led all-important activities, all important revolutionary activity, and the struggle for reparations, all of the great tasks.” What on earth are you talking about, what revolutionary activity, what struggle? All of that may be on your Marxist wish list but is untrue.

Then your misleading statement written in such a way that the ignorant believe all those named were assassinated while fighting for reparations, they were not.

“When Malcolm X was assassinated, Martin Luther King was 39 years, and Maurice Bishop was 39 years old,’ Sanga told the crowd. ‘Franz Fanon, who give us such outstanding works of scholarship such as Wreathed of the Earth, Dying colonialism and Black skin, White mask was only 36; Bob Marley was 36 at his death, and Fidel Castro, the great Cuban revolutionary leader, was all but 32 years old when he led the Cuban people to victory over the mighty US Imperialism.”

Here is the truth
Malcolm X, Malcolm Little (May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965), better known as Malcolm X, was an American Muslim minister, and human rights activist, during the civil rights movement. He was murdered by rival black Muslim members of his previous Mosque, one of the gunmen, Nation of Islam member Talmadge Hayer (also known as Thomas Hagan). Witnesses identified the other gunmen as Nation members Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson. All three were convicted of murder in March 1966 and sentenced to life in prison. Malcom X was murdered by blacks with whom he was previously religiously associated.

Martin Luther King Jr., an American clergyman and civil rights leader, was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968 at 6:01 p.m. King traveled to Memphis, Tennessee in support of striking African American city sanitation workers.

In 1961, Tunisian, Franz Fanon died from natural causes, he was diagnosed with leukaemia, and was sent to the United States for treatment. At the early age of thirty-six, Frantz Fanon died in Bethesda, Maryland on December 6, 1961. His body was sent back to Tunisia to be buried.

Bob Marley died of natural causes, Marley died on May 11, 1981 at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Miami (now University of Miami Hospital), aged 36. The spread of melanoma [cancer] to his lungs and brain caused his death.

Maurice Rupert Bishop (May 29, 1944 – October 19, 1983) was a Grenadian revolutionary and the leader of New Jewel Movement – a Marxist-Leninist party which came to power during the March 13, 1979, Coup. Bishop headed the People’s Revolutionary Government of Grenada from 1979 to 1983, when he was dismissed from his post and shot during the coup by his ex-colleague Bernard Coard. He was a tyrant to the Grenadian people and is responsible for atrocities.

Fidel Castro, the former First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, and President of the Council of State, died of natural causes in the evening of November 25, 2016. He was a Marxist dictator over the Cuban people and lived a life of luxury while the Cuban people earned $1 a month and starved.

Not one of the people you mentioned in your speech was ever involved in the reparation’s movement. Absolutely untrue even if only inferred. Besides that, only one was assassinated, and that was by his own people.

You said at the speech “The struggle for emancipation is a youth project and that’s why we need to train a new cadre of young people to take up and carry the struggle forward”. The struggle for what emancipation? What are you talking about and in doing so attempting to incite the Vincentian youth? This is typical Marxist rhetoric.

“This struggle for reparations and the advancement of our people is going to be long and hard. It will be a marathon and not a sprint. And that is why we need young people because the youths never get weary.” What struggles for reparations, there is no court in the World and no law in the World that will support or enforce reparations? You are filling the youth’s heads with untruthful and unachievable nonsense.

The French never made any claims against Haiti for a couple of years after they conceded defeat. The reason they made Haiti pay was the revenge demanded to pay the estate owners families in France for the estates and property grabbed in Haiti, but not just that, because the ex-slaves brutally killed in the most wicked ways every white man, woman and child in Haiti, that was the real trigger to the amount demanded.
Napoleon Bonaparte sold the American land because he needed money for the Great French War, the British had re-entered the war, and France was losing. The French could not fight the Haitian Revolution and defend Louisiana during this time, so conceded Haiti and sold Louisiana to the American government.

“There was a time when the Caribbean was the most valuable and profitable piece of real estate in the world.” Quite simply an untrue statement.

Jomo there is so much mendaciousness woven into your article which is based on a speech you gave at Syon Hill, the people should find some way of punishing you.

If you would like me to look over your future speeches and articles for mistakes, and mendacious statements and correct them for you, please let me know.

It is a worry to me as it must be to most decent Vincentians, that the way you speak and write you may be corrupting the minds of the Vincentian youth. I know the Cubans and Venezuelan Marxist elements will love your attempt to educate and convert, but most Vincentians do not.