H@RD TRUTHS BY GHK LALL – Venezuela: has anybody seen or heard any Arabs, other Middle Easterners

Dec 13, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News  – I have been bending my ears, but hear not a sound.  My eyes are focused, yet there is nothing to read.  My mind must have frozen.  Will somebody extend a helping hand, please?  On this white-hot Venezuelan border controversy that Guyana labours with, this mad march of Maduro towards some lunatic asylum in his mixed-up head, where are our Arab friends?  What about all those other Middle Easterners, who usually embrace and kiss my own President Ali so warmly.

I thought for a moment of including the Persians as to where they are in this Guyanese desert so barren of support, then discretion got the better of me.  There is no value in further rattling the cage of my fellow Americans.  So, I leave out the Iranians, but where are Guyana’s Muslim brothers from the Middle East?  Where are my Saharan Muslim brothers in this time of national peril, this hour of need?

I have a confession to make, this is not a time to hand out candy, not when candor is required.  According to news reaching me, I have offended Hindu Guyanese by taking one minister to task for letting down old people, sick people, and struggling people.  I have also incensed some African Guyanese (Live in Guyana) for exposing their hero, the atheist (I believe) that is the Vice President, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo.  Something whispers to me that Dr. Jagdeo is not so much of a godless atheist, but a man who no deity would accept as a worshipper.  Speak to truths like that, and his Christian defenders flay at me, with every intention to bend to the big boss’s way of thinking. Nothing doing, blokes.  I remind them that this is business, nothing personal, and that their best efforts are now going to pot. Literally, pharmaceutically, and figuratively.  Some pots give off a rank smell.  Perhaps that is why the Vice President’s nose is always in a perpetual wrinkle.  Disown his criminal friends, I urge him, but now they have secrets for him. Dem ain tekking leff.  Now it is the turn of the Muslims, our deep-pocketed brethren from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the sultans, sheiks, wazirs and emirsare all seemingly afflicted with a bad case of tonsillitis or some gum disease that inhibits their standing for Guyana. It could be that COP28 got in the way, so Guyana’s problems are of secondary significance.

Muslim brothers: Guyana needs every backing that it can get.  My Muslim brothers, I am a brother too, and a word of support would give Guyana a timely and much-needed boost.  What is the problem over there in Dubai?  Riyadh and Kuwait City, break radio silence, please. And those other Gulf kingdoms could all chip in. Please don’t turn your backs on Guyana’s cause, and Guyana’s rightness.  There is appreciation that Venezuela is an OPEC brother, a founding father to be more accurate.  But His Excellency, Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali, is a genuine Muslim brother that should not be left to the mercy of the Venezuelan wolf pack, as led by that fake alpha male, Nicolas Maduro.  Curse and condemn me, but don’t abandon Guyana’s president at this time.  Whichever Middle Eastern national desk is around here in some form, it would be appreciated if the word on alarms raised by yours truly about this support deficit is cabled back to the Sahara.

The facts are that Guyana’s President Ali went the full nine yards to embrace his beliefs and brethren before the world, for which I commend him most generously.  The full range of traditional garb was worn on more than one occasion, and I suspect that Guyana’s exuberant leader is more at home with the Arabic tongue than he is with the English Language.  All of this has to count for something in the hearts of our fellow Muslims in the Middle East, with the Iranians being the notable exception.  The President has taken decent sized loans from his brothers by the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea.  Agreements have been signed and deals done.  Something has to come down this way.  Everybody can’t take Guyana for being a sucker, and get away with it.  Something has to be for Guyana.  A little word of support from the Muslim Confederation would have some weight with Maduro.  Blood is thicker than water, and oil is sweeter than honey.  But God is greater than all the political leadership screwballs and corkscrews in Venezuela.  If my Muslim brothers pretend at not understanding, I present them with a subtitle that leaves nothing to the imagination or intellect.  Religious bonds are bigger and badder than any raging bull in Venezuela.  I believe that me and President Ali (and all Guyanese, Muslim or otherwise) are fortuitously on the righteous side of that equation.

The godless Russians have spoken.  The devout Saudis and Sunnis can’t be found lagging.  Not when Guyanese Muslim brothers (and the rest) are staring at the Venezuelan war and propaganda machines already summoned to Defcon 5 status. Some Roman Catholic Orders have taken a vow of silence.  Muslims do not. The Nawabs, Crown Princes, and reigning monarchs must all come out swinging for Excellency Ali and the good guys. They are Guyanese.  Let the word go forth.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• Arabs, GHK Lall, H@rd Truths, Middle Easterners, Venezuela

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