Pearl Harbor

Dec 09, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard truths…

By GHK Lall 

Kaieteur News- Last Saturday was December 7th.  Eighty-three years ago, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto unleashed Japan’s divine wind on America while it slept on a Sunday morning.  The place of attack was Pearl Harbor, what President Franklin Roosevelt called a “Date which will live in Infamy.”  Most Guyanese may ask what does that have to do with Guyana, with them.  The question has its merits, given that today America is this country’s right hand and right ventricle.  Everything it seems, and not much of it right for Guyanese.

What December 7, 1941 was to America at the hands of the Japanese is what 75 years later happened to Guyana at the hands of a treacherous and dangerous Exxon.  On October 7, 2016, two months shy of 75 years since the first Pearl Harbor, Exxon Pearl Harbored Guyana with its devastating Production Sharing Agreement (contract).  Though the APNU+AFC Government executed that contract, the mother of all that is repulsive, by that one stroke of the pen, many parts of Guyana died on that October day that will live in infamy.

The spirit of Guyanese died.  Even a passing glance startles at how the government and opposition grovel before Exxon, as though it is the American war machine.  Look at Guyanese leaders: their togas fall off, sensitive parts of their anatomy peek out, their intellect and self-respect all but destroyed, so low they have tumbled.  One set of Guyanese shelter behind the fig leaf of sanctity of contract; the same instrument that emasculates them, they revere.  It is their story for consumption by the naïve and gullible.

Government and leaders no longer connect to what puts the interests of Guyanese first, what makes Guyanese tick.  During World War Two, the Americans imprisoned 120,000 Japanese because of suspicions about their loyalty.  Under the sovereignty of the 2016 Exxon contract, 750,000 Guyanese (minus a few) are imprisoned because local leaders have no convictions, are so lacking in passion.  About oil.  About anything.  Study the leaders-the bristling and the boisterous, the braindead and the belligerent-and they are all walking on eggshells when around Exxon?  Which one of them isn’t?

Post Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had Supreme Commander Douglas MacArthur as their American Shogun.  Post Guyana’s Pearl Harbor (October 7, 2016), Guyanese quickly came to know their own Oil Shogun, another vainglorious American, Alistair Routledge.  He conquers without a shot being fired.  His atomic bomb is made of paper and ink.  It is the explosive 2016 Exxon contract.  Dare to touch it and be ready to lose an eye and a hand.  Probably some guts and all that is below the groin, if there was any of those left.

Instead of Guyanese political, commercial, and civil leaders step forward and negotiate, they search for new ways to abdicate.  Their patriotic duty.  Their duty to the people.  Their duty to the Motherland.  In December 1941 America took a blow to head, quivered to its knees, and then rose with the rage of a sleeping giant disturbed.  In October 2016, Guyana’s leadership absorbed a kick to the belly, fell on their faces, then decided that the most profitable course of action was to bury their noses in the mud, and pretend to be dead.  There is no pretense involved; they are dead.  Deadened by their fear of Exxon.  As good as dead by their ambitions and lusts for power.

American leaders were single-minded in their determination to conquer the forces responsible for Pearl Harbor.  Recall the savagery of the fight to the death across the islands and archipelagoes of the vast Pacific.  From Manila to Tarawa to Okinawa, there was that death struggle that culminated in the two atom bombs.  For a quick departure, there was more than a hint of racism in the all-out war waged by America against Hideki Tojo and his kamikazes.  America dug deep and marshaled its might to reverse the ignominy of a second-rate power dealing it a crippling blow.  Americans made sacrifices, sons and daughters giving of their blood to be rid of a scourge.

What has been the response of Guyanese, be they leaders, friends and countrymen?  Be they neighborly or adversary?  With Guyana’s Pearl Harbor smashing in the face?  Instead of rising up and standing tall and fighting back against this contract pornography, Guyanese have backed away and buckled under.  The leaders of one powerful group are so shameless, so cowardly that they garland sanctity of contract around what injures and enslaves Guyana.  Amid the cowardly leadership ranks, there is the foxy: how to maintain or attain power.

Instead of sacrifice, there is surrender.  Instead of Guyanese men and women impassioned by an inextinguishable ferocity in their blood, their blood has turned to mud, their sinew to straw.  Two national leaders wage war against their own brothers.  Their preference is for the safe way.  That is, use the might of the state to suppress, so that Exxon can take Guyanese oil and oppress them.

This is how far they go to prove to the white enslavers, the new American colonizers, that they know their place.  They drag on their behinds before Exxon’s Woods and Routledge to prove the inferiority of the Guyanese race.  From Tora!  Tora! Tora! over Pearl Harbor in 1941, it has been thunder and lightning over Guyana since 2016.  And this is what Guyanese applaud.

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

(Pearl Harbor)

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• Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, APNU+AFC Government, dangerous Exxon, Japan’s divine wind on America, Pearl Harbor

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