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Mar 08, 2019 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
In my thirty years of newspaper commentary, last year was the only year I did not do my customary year in review series. At the beginning of 2019, there just wasn’t space to accommodate the series. The mighty Atlantic was dumping too many debris on the shores of Guyana with tempestuous high waves for me to ignore the new debris and reflect on the old garbage that flowed in Guyana in 2018.
But there was one thing that caught my eyes as 2018 drew to a close. I had planned to analyze this thing at the beginning of January but the powerful Atlantic waves keep dumping so many things on the landscape that it completely missed me.
This is how I remembered it. I went into this supermarket and saw a big cranberry juice sale. Half price was the offer and people were buying it. Minutes before, I had bought a half gallon plastic bag of sorrel juice at the Demerara Distribution Service, the supermarket branch of DDL. The price was $550. Sorrel juice and its cranberry counterpart have the identical appearance – deep red.
As I watched at people buying the cranberry thing, it occurred to me that maybe sorrel has the same medicinal usefulness that we are told cranberry has. But sorrel is a Third World product so western scientists have shown no interest in ascertaining its properties. We, former colonial subjects have been brought up to accept that cranberry is good for flushing out your kidneys and cleaning the urinary track. We were told that red wine for your health but why not red sorrel?
So what is this thing that caught my eyes as 2018 drew to a close and that the cranberry sale reminded of? It was a statement by the Foreign Minister, Carl Greenidge, who said that in 2019 there will be emphasis on copyright legislation because too many CDs and DVDs are being copied here. When I read that I laughed not because this gentleman has foreign citizenship but for the example he used to justify copyright laws in Guyana – selling pirated CDs and DVDs,
I am willing to bet that if you go to Taylor Swift and tell her that a country named Guyana is pirating her albums and selling them in stores , she will show two reflexes. She would ask where or what is Guyana? Secondly, she would say she couldn’t be bothered. Seriously, you think Hollywood studios would suffer even an infinitesimal dent to its trillion-dollar-based profit system if Guyana sells pirated Hollywood movies?
Now I am not using the reaction of Taylor Swift and the Hollywood movie industry to argue against copyright legislation in Guyana. I am simply asking those two questions.
So Greenidge is concerned with pirated CDs and DVDs selling in Guyana. As our foreign minister, I am wondering what else he is concerned about. Before I suggest some topics for him, I am politely asking if he intends to go the route of Lennon Shuman and relinquish his foreign citizenship.
Why I am curious about this is because the court has clearly stated that you cannot sit as a member of the National Assembly if you hold foreign nationality and since then Greenidge has not shown any reaction to the ruling.
In this article here, I am not going to argue if copyright law is relevant to Guyana. I have done that in three previous columns; “Who will benefit from copyright legislation?” Sunday, November 4, 2018; “Copyright law: Is colonial brain-washing still alive in Guyana?” Sunday, November 18, 2018; “Is Aurora company’s beef policy, a violation of Guyana’s copyright law.” Sunday, December 16, 2018.
In those three columns I outlined my argument for its irrelevance to this country and I used polemical angles involving history, economics, sociology and culture.
Let’s return to some suggestions for the Foreign Minister. Can a country declare a person the president of another country if he is not elected? This is what the Trump administration has done in relation to Venezuela. I am no admirer of Maduro. I am not even a supporter of Maduro in the remotest of ways, but is international law not in violation here?
What does the Foreign Minister think of the fantastic treatment Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman received in Egypt and Pakistan? Did Pakistan and Egypt show concern about his involvement in the murder of the Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi?
They are acting in their countries own interest. Trump dislikes Maduro but not bil Salman. Trump says he will not sanction Saudia Arabia. Does Greenidge know why Egypt, Pakistan and the US have this attitude? A schoolboy knows the answer.
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