Sweet, Sizzling Summer [Song]

SWEET, SIZZLING SUMMER
Kurt Allen Feat. Dr. Roy Cape

Sweet sizzling summer
Sweet sizzling summer

Welcome to my island home, beautiful place I call my own
Welcome to my island home, beautiful place I born and grown.
We have coconut water [Inna me island]
Sasparilla [Inna me island]
We have sweet brown sugar [Inna me island]

We have some people who pocket fat, while some people like sewer rats
Selfishness, boldfaced greed, citizens can't get basic needs
Like health care in the red
Minor surgeries killing you dead
You sick, no bed to rest your head
In labour, use toilet instead
People seeing stress in so many ways, can't get water for days
Eight and nine year-olds getting grays, by ten, becoming strays
In a glee, boast we independent and free
I'm asking how could this be?
When more than ninety percent of you and me -
We ent free from poverty.

Still a liability yet we live meretriciously
With we coconut water [Inna me island]
Sasparilla [Inna me island]
We got sweet brown sugar [Inna me island]

Murder, violence and crime, citizens can't get peace of mind
Dial 999, waste of time!
Mama tell dem kiss where the sun don't shine
Justice completely blind, defense and prosecution wine and dine
No cent, five cent and no dime
Give them dollar, dollar, dollar and they super fine.

Our youth, future of the country
Cocaine hook some like laglay, reduce them to vagrancy, not to mention HIV
While some study and earn a degree, frying chicken for KXC
Some turn to banditry to support their family.
You see plagued in illiteracy
You see many of them making pacoti.

With we coconut water [Inna me island]
Sasparilla [Inna me island]
Sweet brown sugar [Inna me island]
Let's go!

Day, me say day, me say day-o
Day, me say day, me say day-o
Day, me say day, me say day-o...

We got steel drum, calypso and mas
All we focus on is oil and gas
When the wells run dry and we eating grass
We go watch one another and scratch we arrr....

Real kicks, traffic light politics - red, yellow and green fanatics
Nyam the tricks like cheese and Crix
And in the mix, can't get a quick pick fix
At a loss, we on a collison course, shortage of moral resource
Double standard is we boss, mediocrity is we cross
Yet we chill, everything is a wining pill
That is why we prison cells fill
And exactly like Jack and Jill, we wining down the hill.

But still I suppose it is a thrill to have we
Coconut water [Inna me island]
Sasparilla [Inna me island]
Yam and cassava [Inna me island]

We got e-mail, them-mail, AG-mail, Hotmail,
One female like a slimy snail
And if you think Mister Jack-fish getting scale.... Fail!
Not one night in jail.

People, people like they comatized
Real eyes cannot realise the lies
Rely on a guy with the pie in the sky
Lie, lie, lie and mamguy.

How low, how much lower we must go?
Consecutive presidency had such difficulty to find integrity
Yet we smile for a mile and stay positive
Easy to forget and forgive, this is just the way that we live
Some say, "What a privilege!"

Privilege, privilege, some say what a privilege
Privilege, privilege, folks in the village say sacrilege.

With we coconut water [Inna me island]
Sasparilla [Inna me island]
Sweet brown sugar [Inna me island]
Ahhhh! [Inna me island]

We have rum, roti and black cake
We have bake and shark, shark and bake
The prettiest women that you could find
Street children in a Conga line
Street children in a Conga line

With one woman in front, ten man behind Yeah!
Ten to one, ten to one, ten to one, ten man behind
Ten to one, ten to one, but everybody live so super fine.

Day, me say day, me say day-o
Day, me say day, me say day-o
Day, me say day, me say day-o...

Source: The lyrics posted on this blog are often transcribed directly from performances. Although it is my intention to faithfully transcribe I do not get all the words and I have a knack for hearing the wrong thing. Please feel free to correct me or to fill in the words that I miss by dropping me a message via e-mail. I'd be forever grateful. Thanks in advance! ..............................................................................................................................
 
  A Note From The Gull

Thank you, Kurt Allen. The juxtaposition of the inviting tourist brochurese and the not so pleasant realities of life on the ground will always evoke dismay and encourage questioning so this composition has succeeded on that level. The music is messy at times but then maybe the sometimes discombobulating arrangement was intentional in order to amplify this jarring and unsettling message?

"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.

Blessed is all of creation
Blessed be my beautiful people
Blessed be the day of our awakening
Blessed is my country
Blessed are her patient hills.

Mweh ka allay!
Guanaguanare

Pious, Poor but Proud [Song]

Uploaded by IsDePanInMe
PIOUS, POOR BUT PROUD
By Cro Cro

Poor, pious but very proud.

So many years you take to build up your name
Now, to prostitute the art form you ent have shame
Kaiso was born to protest on the plantation
So who is you to suppress the kaisonian?
When I hear your comments, brother, I get weak
You in particular, you cannot speak
But you so dense, dumb, daft, deceitful and slack
Is why they give you that baptism in Skinner Park.

You see they give me big money if for them I should sing
They give me keys for a Vigo and a piece of land up in St. Madeleine
But I take mih phone, I call God. I say, Jesus, hear whey going on
These people and them want me to prostitute the art form
And then I tell Moonilal flat, I say, Moonilal, I not doing that
Five years I in the doldrums taking mih blows
I ent licking dem thing like Sugar Aloes
I tell Lincoln Douglas plain. I say, Lincoln, I go take the strain.
I here in the doldrums taking mih blows
I ent licking nothing like Sugar Aloes.

Sat Maharaj put he own self in trouble
He disrespected the pan people
All GB and ------ redoing the song
Is to tell Sat Maharaj, well, you damn well wrong
But it's amazing how people does change
Since he sing "She is royal" the boy rearrange
He used to be a good --------- here in the land
But now he is ---------/kaisonian.

I say they give me big money if for them I should sing
They give me keys for a Vigo and a lot of land up in St. Madeleine
So I take mih phone, I call God. I say, Jesus hear what happen to me
They want me to sing for them so they offer me a bag of money
And then I tell Moonilal flat, I say, Moonilal, I not doing that
Three years I in the doldrums taking mih blows
I ent sucking nothing like Sugar Aloes
I tell Lincoln Douglas plain. I say, Lincoln, I go take mih strain
Me ent have money to buy soap to wash mih clothes
But I not prostituting like Sugar Aloes.

Sit back, relax and listen my friends
And remember the good days of PNM
It didn't have discrimination, it didn't have hate
Everybody used to get something on their plate
They used to keep pan, Phagwa, kaiso and chutney
Joan Yuille used to give Sat  Maharaj and all money
But these people today so vindictive and bad
The worst government to pass through Trinidad.

You see they give me big money if for them I should sing
They give me keys for a Vigo and a lot of land up in St. Madeleine
So I take mih phone, I call God. I say, Jesus, please hear what I say
These people and them ------ to mash me up today
And then I tell Moonilal flat, I say Moonilal, -------- not doing that
Five years I in the doldrums taking mih blows
I ent licking nothing like Sugar Aloes
I tell Lincoln Douglas plain. I say, Lincoln, I go take mih strain
Me ent have money to buy soap to wash mih clothes
But I not compromising like Sugar Aloes.

Source: The lyrics posted on this blog are often transcribed directly from performances. Although it is my intention to faithfully transcribe I do not get all the words and I have a knack for hearing the wrong thing. Please feel free to correct me or to fill in the words that I miss by dropping me a message via e-mail. I'd be forever grateful. Thanks in advance! ..............................................................................................................................  

 

A Note From The Gull

Thank you, Cro Cro.

"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.

Blessed is all of creation
Blessed be my beautiful people
Blessed be the day of our awakening
Blessed is my country
Blessed are her patient hills.

Mweh ka allay!
Guanaguanare

A Political Affair [Song]

Uploaded by Kesta Stoute

A POLITICAL AFFAIR
By Queen Victoria

Hey-hey! PNM posse! ILP posse! UNC posse!
Allyuh come! I have a mark to buss!
Woy! Bacchanal!

Never in my life, I thought this could happen
Oh, mih man walk out mih house and leave just like nothing
And I am beautiful and so photogenic
When mih man was home, I was ecstatic
I never had to think about mih front gate
Because he is a man, he never come late
We used to sit down together eating one plate
Celebrating anniversary date after date.
He is an action man, lord, he can create
Left, right and center, he facilitate
In that man, I have plenty faith
In my cabinet, he used to give and take.

Jack, come home! [Come home!] I love you. [Come home!]
Boy, I miss you. [Come home!] I need you.
Jack, I sorry I tell the country 'bout you. [Come home!]
I want you. [Come home!] Boy, I miss you. [Come home!] I love you.
Jack, I sorry I call you a lagahoo.

[Kamla] Kamla, I ent coming back, oh gad! [Kamla] I ent coming back. Uh-uh!
[Kamla] You start the attack. You was going to get this monkey off of your back?
[Kamla] I sorry for you, gyul, hmm. [Kamla] I sorry you. [Kamla] I sorry for you.
Next year you going to get a ride from this lagahoo.

Woy, somebody pinch me. Ey! Who call mih?
Woy! Bacchanal!

Boy, you know I have a country to run
And who I have in mih house they better than none
You don't have to bother what Suruj say
Because he only running he mouth like a soakaway
A woman need a good, real man by her side
So Jackie, boy, from now I will abide
When I think how we used to walk side by side
Oh, I does hold mih head up to watch the sky.
Look, mih country going down the drain
The heart of every mother is filled with pain
And crime on the increase again
They shooting like the Wild West in Port of Spain!

Jack, come home! [Come home!] I love you. [Come home!]
Boy, I miss you. [Come home!] I need you.
Jack, I sorry I tell PNM 'bout you [Come home!]
I miss you. [Come home!] I'll adore you. [Come home!] I'll protect you.
Jack, I sorry I call you a lagahoo.

[Kamla] Kamla, I ent coming back, uh-uh. [Kamla] I ent coming back!, Oh gad, oh gad!
[Kamla] You start the attack. You was glad to get this monkey off of your back?
Your pocket get deep, gyul, huh! Your pockets get deep. Your pocket get deep.
Laga-who?? Your whole cabinet can't sleep!
Woy, yesterday was yesterday, today is today!

Ey! I say who call mih?
Oh lawd! Bacchanal! Oy!

I know you 'fraid dem boys in the cabal
Especially Moonilal Coonilal
But he's not a threat, he studying Range Rover
While T&T, my country is in danger
Oh boy, you know that I am very slick
That's why me and Anand give weself silk
Boy, like you want PP ship to sink?
Come home, I'll forgive you, don't even think
You ride out and leave mih heart here in pain
I may not win election again
To hide that firetruck was real strain
Doh make me beg so much in vain.

Jack, come home! [Come home!] I love you. [Come home!]
Boy, I miss you. [Come home!] I need you.
Jack, I sorry I tell Parliament 'bout you [Come home!]
I need you. [Come home!] I'll protect you [Come home!] I'll adore you.
Jack, I sorry I call you a lagahoo.

[Kamla] Kamla, I ent coming back! [Kamla] I ent coming back, oh gad!
[Kamla] You start the attack!
You was going and get this monkey off of your back?
[Kamla] Gyul, not me at all! uh-uhm, uh-uhm! [Kamla] Gyul, not me at all!
[Kamla] Gyul, not me at all!
My dear, I 'fraid you and your cabal.

Oh! Jack, come home! Hey-hey!
Woy! Bacchanal!

Remember the good times right from the start
When we used to romance in Rienzi car park
Now you leave and gone, tell me what to do?
Oh, and it look like mih children following you
Jack, is you who pull me out of the fountain
Ey, when I was high like a kite on top ----- mountain
Me alone can't handle all of this money
Do fast, I need you back home here, honey
Corruption, I know you do not like
You don't want to see FIFA in your sight
I'll give you a part from that money plight
I will surely protect you with all mih might.

Boy, come home! [Come home!] I love you. [Come home!]
Boy, I miss you. [Come home!] I need you.
Jack, I sorry I tell Khadijah 'bout you [Come home!]
I miss you. [Come home!] I'll protect you [Come home!] I love you.
Jack, I sorry I call you a lagahoo.

[Kamla] Kamla, I ent coming back! [Kamla] I ent coming back, oh gad!
[Kamla] You start the attack! You was glad to get this monkey off of your back?
[Kamla] Gyul, not me at all! Uh-uhm. [Kamla] Gyul, not me at all!
[Kamla] Gyul, not me at all!
I 'fraid Suruj and Moonilal... Moonilal Coonilal.

[Come home! Come home! Come home!]
Oh gad, allyuh go send man crazy
I say today is today. Yesterday was yesterday
Give me a chance nah! Hmm!
[Come home! Come home! Come home!]
Hey! Huh!

Source: The lyrics posted on this blog are often transcribed directly from performances. Although it is my intention to faithfully transcribe I do not get all the words and I have a knack for hearing the wrong thing. Please feel free to correct me or to fill in the words that I miss by dropping me a message via e-mail. I'd be forever grateful. Thanks in advance! ..............................................................................................................................



A Note From The Gull


Thank you, Queen Victoria. Smoooooth like butter.

"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.

Blessed is all of creation
Blessed be my beautiful people
Blessed be the day of our awakening
Blessed is my country
Blessed are her patient hills.

Mweh ka allay!
Guanaguanare

Call Dem Out [Song]

Uploaded by KMP MUSICLAB
CALL DEM OUT
By Brian London

...live and alive on tweet tweet, talk yuh talk 97.7 FM
So today, today, today, call us and tell us when last you see your MP.
Remember keep it clean, keep it clean, else you go get the click.
When last you see your MP? Call in!

Listening mih radio one day, I hear the announcer say
Allyuh call in and tell we when last you see your MP?
I was in mih living room, I turn up mih volume
Is now I listening 'cause this thing sounding interesting.
Then he say, this have nothing to do with your party or who you vote for
But call and talk the truth 'bout your MP
Whether you from East, West, North or South
Allyuh know what we talking 'bout
The lines are open, this is your chance to call them out.
The first caller call in...

Moonilaaaaaaaal!!!
I doh see dat man at all
Last time I was on Mosquito Creek,
A van pass light up like a police jeep
Then I hear the taxi driver saying,
Allyuh know that is Moonilal passing?
Up to now, boy, I can't get mih road fix
Hello, hello? The man give she the click.

Next caller, next caller...

Sharmaaaaaaaa!!!
The MP for Fyzabad
Boy, to find that man it is so hard
Twenty years now he in the post
I does call him Caspar, the friendly ghost.

Miss lady, next caller ...

Collin Partaaaap!!!
Not me and that fella
I from Toco/Manzanilla
See him? I can't remember when
Wait, wait, I think it was outside Zen.

Miss lady, look yuh MP! But whey?
Look yuh MP! But whey?
Look yuh MP, look him dey
Look he dey, look he dey, doh let him get away!
Look yuh MP! But whey?
Look yuh MP! But whey?
Look yuh MP, look him dey
Look he dey, look he dey, doh let him get away!

So let your calls keep coming in. Call us.
When last you see your MP? Remember, keep it clean!

The announcer was in shock, he say look how the lines lighting up
But I getting a feeling they go call  in and say some good things
They was going to take a break
Then he say, some more calls let we take
But listen carefully, to you your MP have a duty
Whether or not you voted for them
They supposed to attend to the constituents' problem
For you they supposed to make time
They shouldn't be so hard to find
Allyuh keep calling in, call in and talk allyuh mind.
Back to the lines...

Gypssssssssy!!!
My MP for Mayaro
Like he feel this thing is extempo
He does pass with he glass wind up
When yuh try to stop him, he doh stop
He doh make no time for we, you know
Better he go back to singing calypso.

Oh gosh, back to the lines, back to the lines...

Prakash Ramadhaaaaaaaar!!!
Well, boy, we doh see him
Nowhere in St. Augustine
Last time I think was on TV
They wanted to kick him out the COP.

Caller? Caller?

Lincoln Douglassss!!!
Lopinot/Bon Air West calling
Not even on TV we does see him
By the way, if you see him before me
Tell him I want the money he promise me.

Miss lady, look yuh MP! But whey?
Look yuh MP! Whey?
Look yuh MP, look him dey
Look he dey, look he dey, doh let him get away!
Look yuh MP! But whey?
Look yuh MP! But whey?
Look yuh MP, look him dey
Look he dey, look he dey, doh let him get away!

So let your calls keep coming 97.7 talk yuh talk, tweet tweet, talk yuh talk
When last you see your MP?

Boy, I couldn't believe it although I was hearing it
I listening real good, nobody saying nothing good
They took a break to come back and while they was doing that
I sit down and thinking like most MPs good for nothing
Then he say, let we get back to the business
A woman call in to big up Alicia Hospedales
She say that woman does work real hard
Arouca/Maloney, we love she bad
But boss, I doh know 'bout the rest of MPs in Trinidad.

Leh we head back to the lines...

Keith Rowleeeeeey!!!
This is Diego Martin West
You know the man doh treat we the best
And while flooding did killing we
The man gone and remove Penny
By the way, you have a number for Manning?
I want to know if he working or ent working...

Miss lady, I doh have time for that, not today...

NiLeung Hypoliiiite!!!
This is Laventille
You know another person just get kill?
Since mih brother get shoot on mih step
Up to now I can't see the man yet.

Caller, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry...

Paulaaaaaaa!!! 
Yes, MP Gopee-Scoon
Boy, I hope to see she soon
I wonder if she listening
By the way, I calling from Point Fortin.

Boy, look yuh MP! But whey?
Look yuh MP! But whey?
Look yuh MP, look him dey
Look he dey, look he dey, doh let him get away!
Look yuh MP! But whey?
Look yuh MP! But whey?
Look yuh MP, look him dey
Look he dey, look he dey, doh let him get away!

So let your calls keep coming in
Call us and tell us when last you see your MP
This thing serious you know
Call in, call in, call in.

He say hold on a little bit, I want to tell allyuh this...
Just as he start talking, a next caller calling
She say I from Tobago
I want everyone to know
Delmon Baker and and Vernella Toppin
We doh see dem often.

Then he say, well, it is up to you and me
To make sure that we MPs serve we
And if they ent doing the wuk, it is alright to speak up
At some point in time, this nonsense have to stop.
Back to lines...

De Coteauuuuu!!!
We does call him Clifton
MP for Moruga/Tableland
Roads up by we , boy, they so so rough
You does swear that you on the Bocas
To get the road fix, boy, you can't see he
The man have more tricks than Houdini.

Oh gosh, not today. Next caller...

Suruj Rambachaaaan!!!
Like the invisible man
I quite from Tabaquite, please understand
You can't even find the man by he office
Because the cabal he trying to fix

Miss lady, next caller, next caller...

Kamlaaaaaa!!!
My MP for Siparia
Last time I see she was by the bar
I not sure but boy, I think
She was outside waiting on a drink.

Oh gosh, look yuh MP! But whey?
Look yuh MP! But whey?
Look yuh MP, look him dey
Look he dey, look he dey, doh let him get away!
Look yuh MP! But whey?
Look yuh MP! But whey?
Look yuh MP, look him dey
Look he dey, look he dey, doh let him get away!

So let your calls keep coming in
Time is almost up for our programme but the lines blinking up
Call me. When last you see your MP?
Whey's yuh MPs ?

Jack Warner!!! Calling, calling Kamla!!!
Glenn Ramadharsingh!!! Calling, calling Donna Cox!!!
Calling, calling Stacy Roopnarine!!! Whey yuh?
Calling, calling Ian Alleyne!!!... wait... but he's not a MP?

Source: The lyrics posted on this blog are often transcribed directly from performances. Although it is my intention to faithfully transcribe I do not get all the words and I have a knack for hearing the wrong thing. Please feel free to correct me or to fill in the words that I miss by dropping me a message via e-mail. I'd be forever grateful. Thanks in advance! ..............................................................................................................................  

 

A Note From The Gull

Thank you, Brian London! Great message! Wonderful, infectious beat! Yes, it is a challenge to dance while transcribing but I have proven that it can be done. This song is bringing down the house and melting the snow round here.

"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.

Blessed is all of creation
Blessed be my beautiful people
Blessed be the day of our awakening
Blessed is my country
Blessed are her patient hills.

Mweh ka allay!
Guanaguanare

Wey Yuh Think? [Song]

Uploaded by Chucky Gordon
WEY YUH THINK?
By Chucky Gordon

Wey yuh think? Wey yuh think?
Wey yuh think? Wey yuh think?

Allyuh really don't know what it is to be a Prime Minister
Pressure for so, is pressure for so!
Always on the go, trying to keep things together
Is pressure for so, is pressure or so!
Allyuh feel this thing is a big, big joke
In getting a coalition to work
And you know when we people under stress and strain
You doh see we crying in the rain
But we would call some friends together and bring out a flask
So why allyuh say we PM can't knock a glass?

'Cause everyday she have to hear something gone wrong
Why you must say she can't have anything strong?
Always on call, with plenty papers to go through
Man, after all, the lady PM is folks too.
Is several meetings she skips as around the world she zips
With plenty overseas trips, you would think she deserves some sips?
Wey yuh think?

Wey yuh think with she government on the brink, the Partnership ready to sink?
I think she deserves a drink
Wey yuh think? Hah! Wey yuh think? Hey! Wey yuh think?
Oh, you tell me?
Wey yuh think?
I wanna know, I wanna know [Wey yuh think?]

A set of wayward men she have to keep in a straight line
Is pressure for so, is pressure for so!
Most of them done bend but she smiling as if all is fine
Pressure for so, is pressure for so!
And when the COP faction start to vent
She does get really frighten for she government
So when tension rise up, tell me which Trini
Does run and calm he nerves with a cup of tea?
Day and night we Prime Minister find sheself under the gun
So you ent think she entitled to fire one?

'Cause everyday she have to hear something gone wrong
Why you must say she can't have anything strong?
Always on call, with plenty papers to go through
Man, after all, the lady PM is folks too.
Every Monday she have to face the AG looking to fight some case
Going off on a wild goose chase
You would think she deserves a taste?
Wey yuh think?

Wey yuh think when in she armour there is a kink
Them Range Rovers causing a stink?
I think she deserves a drink
Wey yuh think? Bacchanal!

Wey yuh think?
I wanna know, I wanna know, I wanna know, I wanna know now
Wey yuh think? Tell me nah!
Wey yuh think? Ah! Wey yuh think? Kaiso!

Four elections she lost and the people calling for fresh mandate
Pressure for so, is pressure for so!
Her ship like an albatross as she struggling to navigate
Pressure for so, is pressure for so!
Say look, David take off he MSJ and and he gone
But when Jack leave it feel worse than a horn
So to keep this coalition from falling apart
This lady PM for sure has the art
After local government night, our lady PM real boast
So why to her success she can't lift a toast?

'Cause everyday she have to hear something gone wrong
So why you must say she can't have anything strong?
Always on call with plenty papers to go through
Man, after all, the lady PM is folks too.
She really deserve some support, look how many battles she fought
Even bring Panday to nought
Why they must hide 'way she petit quart?
Wey yuh think?

Wey yuh think, with she support starting to shrink
The people no longer hoodwinked?
I think she deserves a drink.

Wey yuh think? Ah! Madam Prime Minister, I really hope they understand you know. After all you are a Trini, right?

Ha! Wey yuh think?

Pressure for so, is pressure for so!
Pressure for so, is pressure for so!

Source: The lyrics posted on this blog are often transcribed directly from performances. Although it is my intention to faithfully transcribe I do not get all the words and I have a knack for hearing the wrong thing. Please feel free to correct me or to fill in the words that I miss by dropping me a message via e-mail. I'd be forever grateful. Thanks in advance! ..............................................................................................................................  

 

 A Note From The Gull

Exarrrkly! Thank you, Chucky Gordon.  Whether you are judged to be a success or a failure at it, being a PM is one lonely, punishing wuk that I would never dream of seeking or accepting. So I hesitate to point fingers at those who do when they need to reach out for comfort/courage from whatever source.

"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.

Blessed is all of creation
Blessed be my beautiful people
Blessed be the day of our awakening
Blessed is my country
Blessed are her patient hills.

Mweh ka allay!
Guanaguanare

BOIS! [Song]

Uploaded by McKeLLY J
BOIS!
By Mistah Shak
Performed in Skinner Park, San Fernando, at the Calypso Monarch Semi Finals, February 22, 2014.

This bois man ent 'fraid no demon
I come to sing in rebellion
[They done in the grave already.]
Me ent 'fraid no stick man
[They done in the grave already.]

As a young culture lover, I get in the kaiso thing
And quickly discover this thing just like a stick fight ring
And in the kaiso gayelle, you must be fearless and forward
'Cause you could get real buss head if you careless or coward
Lord, so with mih kaisos as mih bois, I step in the arena
And start to deliver licks left, right and center
Without fear, without favour, I never falter or waiver
Dread young kaiso warrior... From whey?...down Siparia.
So let dem know this year I more dread
When I gone in the gayelle, whoever be wounded could dead.

Is bois! In the morning I pelting [Bois!]
In the evening I flinging bois!
I go beat dem with kaiso bois [Real bois!]

So tell this ruling Partnership, in this gayelle they gets no mercy
Not the COP, the UNC, neither NJAC or TOP
'Cause if you line up their first letters, read between the lines carefully
That spelling C-U-N ...... but wait T&T yuh see?

They need some bois! So when I meet them, I pelting bois!
As I see dem I flinging bois
I go beat dem with kaiso bois, [Real bois!]

And tell their leader, Mrs. Clueless, Mrs. "I've been so advised."
We fed up of she mamguys and we sick of the blatant lies
If she make one more misstep in this gayelle, she in trouble
So best she find the truth and distill it and start to drink it by the bottle.

Or is bois! When I brace she, I pelting [Bois!]
Man, as I face she, I flinging bois!
I go beat dem with kaiso bois [Real bois!]
I doh business who dey are, they all getting real, real bois
Tell dem to stay real, real far. Why?
This here [year?] is kaiso bois!
[They done in the grave already.]
This bois man ent 'fraid no demon
[They done in the grave already.]
I come to sing in rebellion
[They done in the grave already.]
Me ent 'fraid no stick man
[They done in the grave already.]

When I first make mih debut in 2007
And they hear what I could do, bois men start to get frighten
They say this Mistah Shak, he intend to cause trouble
And if we ent hold him back, this fella could kill people
Boy, so they set out to shut me down, some even try to cut me down
But Jah is mih protection, mih shield and direction
So I maintain mih focus, I never forget mih purpose
I am a kaiso bois man, a voice for the population
So let them know they will feel the pain
If they really think that they could silence me?... Think again!

Is bois! In the morning I pelting [Bois!]
In the evening I flinging bois!
I go beat them with kaiso bois! [Real bois!]

That shameless attention seeker, Mr. Crime Watch, the drama queen
You love to give people wetting, well, grab yuh bois and step in
All the talk 'bout you not for sale, in the gayelle all that will end
Because now we know for the right price and the right men, you willing to bend.

[Bois! Bois!]
When I see him, I flinging bois [Real bois!]

The same party you used to mash up, look how they support you strong
But they drop you like a bad habit when St. Joseph turn you down
You ent learn nothing from yuh sister in Club Zen. Something wrong.
How yuh family always ending up in party allyuh doh belong? Eh?

Bois! When I see dem I pelting [Bois!]
As I meet dem, I flinging bois!
I go beat dem with kaiso bois [Real bois!]
I doh business who they are, they all getting real, real bois
Tell dem all to stay real, real far 'cause this here is kaiso bois!

[They done in the grave already. ]
[They done in the grave already.]
[They done in the grave already.]
This bois man ent 'fraid no demon
[They done in the grave already.]

Soon enough they realise me ent so easy to beat
Because I don't compromise, I doh surrender or retreat
Any time I recognise ------- folly or deceit
Well mih kaiso bois will rise and they all fall in defeat
That's how I make mih name in South, man, I beat them all about
Then I take mih stick fight crown and leave and gone in town
But certain town bois men find I was a threat to them
So they try to pressure me in an attempt to censor me
But now they know me ent making joke
'Cause they bawl for murder when they see the worries they provoke.

Is bois, bois!
In the evening I flinging bois!
I go beat dem with kaiso bois [Real  bois!]

This stick man dey tell himself nobody couldn't touch him at all
Until he own team mates kick him like a FIFA football
When he was part of the stick fight cabal, they was thick as thieves
So when they hold him and hang he Jack, he and all couldn't believe.

Was [Bois!] If you see how they hit him [Bois!]
Man, they hold him and give him [Bois!]
Well, they nearly kill him with bois [Real bois!]

Well, the man get green with envy when he get dismissed
Suddenly he grow a conscience and start to talk the cabal business
If he think that he fooling we, bois go make him ss-ss-ss-stutter
And if he want sympathy, tell him ask he m-m-m-mother.

[Bois! Bois! Bois!]
I go beat dem with kaiso bois [Real bois!]
I doh business who they are, they all getting real, real bois
Tell dem I say stay real, real far 'cause dis here is kaiso bois
[They done in the grave already!]
[They done in the grave already!]
This bois man ent 'fraid no demon
[They done in the grave already!]
Well, I come to sing in rebellion
[They done in the grave already!]

So, I want them all to know, I'm a force to reckon with
From the gayelle of kaiso, none of them can't make me quit
Because now, more than ever, we need truthful defenders
'Cause the gayelle under siege by ruthless pretenders
Boy, this ent no time to pussyfoot or to beat around the bush
All who creating problems, we have to confront them
But some bois men in the town suddenly get blind and dumb
Too busy eating a food to address the real issues
But tell dem all I'm never afraid
I will sing it as I see it and I'll call a spade a spade.

[Is bois, bois!] Skinner Park, what we giving them? [Bois!]
We go beat with kaiso bois! [Real bois!]

Well, it have a badjohn bois man, I eager to deal with he
They say he nickname is AG 'cause he Arrogant and Greedy
He does boast how he wearing silk and he know every stick fight law
But somehow he doh know the word extradite or the number 34.

So is [Bois! Bois!]
When I see him, I flinging bois!
I go beat him with kaiso bois [Real bois!]

All your big shot friends who you give Range Rover, can't save you at all
And you can't fight in this gayelle with no pre-action protocol
You sure to lose 'cause you doing things wrongside for your whole life
You suppose to put licks on the ram goat and make love to your wife.

Bois! When I see dem ah pelting [Bois!]
I go beat dem with kaiso [Bois!]
I go lick dem with kaiso bois! [Real bois!]
I doh business who they are, they all getting real, real bois
Tell dem all to stay real, real far 'cause dis here is kaiso bois!

Skinner Park! [They done in the grave already!]
This bois man ent 'fraid no demon
[They done in the grave already!]
Well, I come to sing in rebellion
[They done in the grave already!]
This bois man ent 'fraid no demon 
[They done in the grave already!]
If I buss dey eye, doh cry
[They done in the grave already!]
If I buss dey head, doh dead
[They done in the grave already!]
If I break dey neck, doh vex
[They done in the grave already!]
If I break dey foot, doh steups
[They done in the grave already!]

Skinner Park, dis bois man ent 'fraid no demon!

[They done in the grave already]
[They done in the grave already]
[They done in the grave already]
[They done in the grave already.]

Extra verse from this recording

From the Ministry of Security, we get four different stick fighters
First was Brigadier Sandy, then they send in Action Warner
They give we Hurricane George, now is Captain Griffith
Them sound like four super zeroes from a Partnership comic strip.

Is bois!.....

And the top brass in the police service in the ring wasting time
'Cause the Commissioner still acting as if he could fight the crime
And the foreman DCP, that slow, stick fighting dunce
Some e-mail beat him for months but he tackling Rapid Response?

Is bois!

Source: The lyrics posted on this blog are often transcribed directly from performances. Although it is my intention to faithfully transcribe I do not get all the words and I have a knack for hearing the wrong thing. Please feel free to correct me or to fill in the words that I miss by dropping me a message via e-mail. I'd be forever grateful. Thanks in advance! .............................................................................................................................. 



A Note From The Gull

Thank you, Mistah Shak... "Because now, more than ever, we need truthful defenders."

"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.

Blessed is all of creation
Blessed be my beautiful people
Blessed be the day of our awakening
Blessed is my country
Blessed are her patient hills.

Mweh ka allay!
Guanaguanare

False Papers [Song]

Uploaded by foreignmovies
FALSE PAPERS
By Bodyguard

It easy to say, "Sat will be Sat." and try to ignore people like that
But Sat Marahaj controls a large group in society
So when he makes a definitive declaration, it carries a lot of clout
We feel he know what he talking 'bout
But time has a way of recycling the things we say
And holding them up against logic and reason
So when Sat say Indian children beating book while black children beating pan
No, cousin, is better you didn't say nothing.

'Cause recently one set of Indian people get caught with false papers, false papers
I'm yet to see one single African in the lot
And not one of them fraudsters ever face a court.

So your theory have more holes than a water can
Like is better some of dem Indian did beat a pan
When you feel they was beating more book than the African
They was fabricating degrees, defrauding the land.

Mudada did really introduce the idea that papers ent no use
He really tell we that connections is the bottom line
How you feel Reshmi jump over twenty-two people
To sit on top of the SIA as the monarch of all she survey?
And the same allegation was made about Omar Khan
Who run from T&TEC in the same manner
He was managing the Red Force cricket team
Who knows what scheme he had onstream
That liar, thank god he's no umpire.

'Cause recently one set of Indian people get caught with false papers, false papers
And it's funny, not one African in the lot
Sat Maharaj, boy, you real have me in a spot.

Because PTSC had to fire Jadoonanan
From the Deputy General Manager position
He was fired from Airports Authority beforehand
At this rate he could qualify as a fireman.

I bussing mih brain to get mih degree at COSTAATT and at Cipriani
To add more market value and to elevate myself
While these scamps knocking down governmental status
With papers that made of crepe from under some university step
So how could we stop crime when time after sorry time
People see public fraud at the highest level?
No assets seize and they don't repay
They just dust their pants and walk away from trouble
And just change their name and their title.

In T&T, one set of Indian people get caught with false papers, false papers
You count with me, not one African in the lot
According to all the media reports.

They printing degrees as if is Express, Newsday and Guardian
So Sat withdraw that stigma from African
From Birju to Ali Mohammed, they all over like Pacman
With questionable, quack qualification.

So "Boo, Sat Maharaj, boo!"
Your own Indian people contradicting you
When you feel they was beating book to get through
Some of them was cooking qualifications like fried alloo.

Doh bother to say that I on race
Such red herrings are well out of place
I'm simply putting Sat's statement on the altar of truth
For too long, so called leaders in this country
Have abused media access, causing divisiveness and unrest
If Cudjoe or Kambon should rage and say something that's off the page
You will jump up to defend your race and religion
So your poison pen I can't condone
Stop pushing that racist undertone and lies
The evidence says otherwise.

So you tell me how so much Indian people get caught with false papers, false papers?
While conversely not one African in the lot
Plenty black people study and work hard for what they got.

A good degree could stand scrutiny for decades after
But the false ones disappear like nougat sweetie paper
Like they trying to put a African inside dey caca
But they bounce dey head because Wade Mark is a dougla.

Source: The lyrics posted on this blog are often transcribed directly from performances. Although it is my intention to faithfully transcribe I do not get all the words and I have a knack for hearing the wrong thing. Please feel free to correct me or to fill in the words that I miss by dropping me a message via e-mail. I'd be forever grateful. Thanks in advance! ..............................................................................................................................
 
A Note From The Gull


Thank you, Bodyguard. To answer your question, it's called division of labour and I am a bit surprised that you have not been cautioned, at least by Nizam Mohammed, that it is politically incorrect to discuss such matters in T&T. He once made the bold statement that Africanly Trinbagonians had cornered the policing profession. Well, maybe the unfortunate Indianly Trinbagonians about whom you have been singing were left with no choice but to corner the other side of the law. Just saying.

"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.

Blessed is all of creation
Blessed be my beautiful people
Blessed be the day of our awakening
Blessed is my country
Blessed are her patient hills.

Mweh ka allay!
Guanaguanare

#LaSalida? Venezuela at a Crossroads.

#LaSalida? Venezuela at a Crossroads.

The protests this week have far more to do with returning economic and political elites to power than with their downfall.

By George Ciccariello-Maher

February 22, 2014

An anti-government demonstrator in the Altamira neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela, Friday, February 21, 2014 (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Ukraine. Bosnia. Venezuela.

Tear gas. Masks. Water cannons.

Ours is an age of riots and rebellions, of radical self-creation in the heady streets: Spain’s indignados, the Occupy movement, Mexico’s Yo Soy 132, and of course the Arab Spring. We are understandably excited when we see people in the streets, and our pulse may even rise at the sight of masks, broken glass and flames, because for so long such images have represented the shards of the old world through which we can catch the perceptible glint of the new. Recent protests in Venezuela against the government of Chávez successor Nicolás Maduro might therefore seem to be simply the latest act in an upsurge of world-historic proportions.

Not so fast.

Despite hashtags like #SOSVenezuela and #PrayForVenezuela and retweets from @Cher and @Madonna, these protests have far more to do with returning economic and political elites to power than with their downfall.

Venezuela’s “Bolivarian Revolution” leapt forth from the historical collision of radical social movements against a repressive, neoliberal state. Fifteen years ago, Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela amid the collapsing rubble of the old two-party system, but the “revolution” over which he would preside has far deeper roots. For decades, armed guerrillas, peasants and workers, women, Afro- and indigenous Venezuelans, students and the urban poor struggled against a system that—while formally democratic—was far from it in practice. These revolutionary grassroots movements, which I document in We Created Chávez, blew a hole in what Walter Benjamin would call the continuum of history in a massive anti-neoliberal riot that began on February 27, 1989.

This event—twenty-five years ago this week—was henceforth known as the Caracazo, and irreversibly divided Venezuelan history into a before and an after. Its importance is not limited to the resistance to imperialism that it embodied, however, but also the slaughter that marked its conclusion. Numbers often fail us in their false equivalence, but there is much that they can make clear: some 3,000 were killed in 1989, many deposited unceremoniously in unmarked mass graves. But the movements struggled forth, building popular assemblies in the barrios and making increasingly militant demands against a flailing state, which responded with targeted killings and the occasional massacre. The mayor of greater Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, who today positions himself as an opponent of repression, himself presided over the murder of dozens of students in the streets in the early 1990s, not to mention a notorious 1992 prison massacre at the Retén de Catia.

It was into this gaping wound in history that Chávez stepped, first with a failed coup in February 1992, and with electoral victory six years later. Even then, however, there were still no “Chavistas” but only “Bolivarians”—a loose and all-encompassing reference to the great liberator, Simón Bolívar—or more simply: “revolutionaries.” The revolution predated Chávez, and it was always about more than the individual; so too for Maduro today. The state has become today an important terrain for hegemonic struggle, but it is far from the only trench, and those who felt the searing heat of state violence in the past have not been today miraculously converted to naïve faith. Instead, the movements persist alongside and occasionally in tension with the government: supporting Maduro while building autonomous spaces for popular participation.

The protests that have exploded across Venezuelan cities in recent days—whose most prevalent hashtag calls for #LaSalida, the departure of Maduro from power—have nothing to do with this arduous process of building a new society. While the protests are ostensibly about economic scarcity and insecurity—very real concerns, for the record—these do not explain why the protests have emerged now. Behind the scenes, the protests are a reflection of the weakness of the Venezuelan opposition, not its strength. Reeling from a serious electoral defeat in December’s local elections, old tensions have re-emerged, splintering the fleeting unity behind the presidential candidacy of Henrique Capriles Radonski who was defeated by Maduro last April. Amid the maneuvering so common to this opposition, more hard-line voices, impatient with the electoral game, have outflanked Capriles to the right: Ledezma, as well as María Corina Machado and Leopoldo López.

Rather than a breath of fresh air, the names are all too familiar, not only for their political histories but also because they represent the very thinnest sliver of Venezuela’s upper crust. Machado is most notorious for having signed the “Carmona decree” endorsing the April 2002 coup against Chávez, and for her friendly 2005 sit-down with George W. Bush. But it is López who best exemplifies both the intransigence of this opposition as well as its halfhearted attempts to connect with the poor majority. The very picture of privilege—in a country where Chávez was considered by elites to be unacceptably dark-skinned—López was trained in the United States from prep school to Harvard’s Kennedy School, an elite scion if ever there was one.

The political party in which both López and Capriles cut their teeth—Primero Justicia—emerged at the intersection of corruption and foreign intervention: López would later be barred from public office for allegedly receiving funds from his mother, a state oil executive. Less deniable is the FOIA revelation that the party received significant injections of funding from US government ancillaries like the National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, and the International Republican Institute. López is no stranger to street violence, nor does he flinch at taking the extra-institutional route: during the 2002 coup—of which he has said he is “proud”—he led witch hunts to root out and arrest Chavista ministers amid a violent opposition mob.

With a clever bit of theatrics, López has placed himself at the forefront of these demonstrations, garnering the title of “opposition leader” in domestic and international media alike. But where are the protests headed? From the beginning, the numbers have not been particularly impressive by Venezuelan standards, and certainly far fewer than the opposition is capable of mustering. But more problematic for the opposition is the makeup of the protesters and the very predictable geography of the protests, largely confined to the wealthiest neighborhoods. Even the ferociously anti-Chavista blogger Francisco Toro of Caracas Chronicles put it bluntly: “Middle class protests in middle class areas on middle class themes by middle class people are not a challenge to the Chavista power system.” Capriles himself has similarly insisted that the opposition will fail if they do not manage to attract the “humble people, the people of the barrios,” and that demanding Maduro’s extra-constitutional ouster will not accomplish this. In other words, even many Maduro opponents recognize that this “exit” hashtagged from Blackberries is nothing of the sort, but instead a callejón sin salida, a dead end.

Hyperbole seems to be the rule of the day on both sides, and among the fearful exaggerations of the opposition, none looms larger than the colectivos. While officially designating the more organized radical sectors of Chavismo, here signifiers float freely in proportion to the fear they represent, with the term colectivos applied to anyone on a motorcycle, anyone wearing a red shirt, anyone too poor-looking or dark-skinned. This is nothing new, either: the 2002 equivalent was the term “terror circles,” a slanderous pejorative used to denigrate members of grassroots popular assemblies who served as the backbone of resistance to the undemocratic coup. These popular grassroots organizers constitute the most direct, organic expressions of the wretched of the Venezuelan earth, the most politicized segment of the previously discarded human mass that the opposition has never cared about for a second.

Even Chavismo is not immune to the deep-seated hatred for the poor barrio residents that such terms represent, and to a certain degree the feeling is mutual. Against the caricatured view that insists that radical popular organizations like colectivos are either blindly devoted or cheaply bought off, these are in reality among the most independent sectors of the revolution, those most critical of government missteps and hesitations, those most familiar with the repressive force of the state and those who demand above all that the social transformation under way move faster.

These forever victims of the state have nevertheless bet on its potential usefulness in the present, or at the very least have insisted that the alternative—handing the state machinery back over to traditional elites and voluntarily returning to a life on the defensive—is really no alternative at all. This is not a decision undertaken desperately or nostalgically, however, but instead with the most powerful optimism of the will, not premised on the good faith of individual leaders—although there are some who deserve this—but instead because to bet on the Bolivarian government is to bet on the people, to wager on the creative capacities of the poor that always exceeds that state.

Many loose threads remain, but few can be easily disentangled from this broad back-and-forth of revolution and reaction that spans decades. If the experience of April 2002 has taught us anything, however, it is to avoid facile explanations fueled by mediatic imagery. Every passing day reinforces this lesson—yesterday’s hyperbole is today’s discredited exaggeration, and while regrettable, the deaths that have occurred on both sides fall far short of what one would expect from reading Twitter. Despite opposition claims of impunity, an official from the Sebin, the government intelligence agency, has been arrested for firing his weapon and the agency head has been sacked. Leaked conversations have suggested coup plots, and even López’s wife admitted on CNN that the Venezuelan government had acted to protect her husband’s life in the face of credible threats.

The media question itself will be urgently debated in the coming days as the conflict between the government and CNN comes to a head. Here too the role of the private media in actively spearheading the 2002 coup looms large in the effort to strike a balance between press freedom and media responsibility (a tension that is not avoided by acting like it doesn’t exist). But these loose threads do not negate the urgency of the phrase that the revolutionary grassroots reserve for those who once governed them, and who today try to do so again, regardless of the death toll: no volverán, they shall not return.

Venezuela is indeed at a crossroads, having—in the words of the militant-intellectual Roland Denis—“llegado al llegadero, arrived at the inevitable.” It is the point at which the Bolivarian process itself—socialism in a capitalist society, thriving direct democracy in a liberal democratic shell—cannot survive without pressing decisively toward one side or the other: more socialist, more democratic, in short, more radical. This is not a crossroads simply between two possible forms of government from above: the Maduro government or its hypothetical right-wing alternative. It is instead a question of either pressing forward the task of building a revolutionary society, or handing the future back to those who can think of nothing but the past, and who will seek to fold the historical dialectic back onto itself, beaten and bloody if necessary.

The only salida is the first, the exit personified in the more than 40,000 communal councils blanketing Venezuela, in the workers’ councils, popular organizations, Afro and indigenous movements, women’s and gender-diverse movements. It is these movements that have struggled to make Venezuela, in the words of Greg Grandin, “the most democratic country in the Western Hemisphere.” And it is these movements that—shoulders to the wheel of history—are the only guarantors of progress.

-------------------------------------------------

Eva Golinger: 'Don't be fooled by what most media outlets are telling you about protests in Venezuela'

February 22, 2014 -- The Real News -- Gregory Wilpert discusses the right-wing protests and their goal overthrowing the progressive gains of the Bolivarian Revolution.

For more on Venezuela, click HERE.

By Eva Golinger

February 21, 2014 -- Postcard from the Revolution via Venezuelanalysis.com -- For those of you unfamiliar with Venezuelan issues, don’t let the title of this article fool you. The revolution referred to is not what most media outlets are showing taking place today in Caracas, with protesters calling for the ouster of Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro. The revolution that is here to stay is the Bolivarian Revolution, which began in 1998 when Hugo Chavez was first elected president and has subsequently transformed the mega oil-producing country into a socially focused, progressive country with a grassroots government.

The demonstrations taking place over the past few days in Venezuela are attempts to undermine and destroy that transformation in order to return power to the hands of the elite who ruled previously for more than 40 years.

Those protesting do not represent Venezuela’s vast working-class majority that struggled to overcome the oppressive exclusion they were subjected to during administrations before Chavez. The youth taking to the streets today in Caracas and other cities throughout the country, hiding their faces behind masks and balaclavas, destroying public buildings, vehicles, burning garbage, violently blocking transit and throwing rocks and molotov cocktails at security forces are being driven by extremist right-wing interests from Venezuela’s wealthiest sector.

Led by hardline neo-conservatives, Leopoldo Lopez, Henrique Capriles and Maria Corina Machado -- who come from three of the wealthiest families in Venezuela, the 1% of the 1% -- the protesters seek not to revindicate their basic fundamental rights, or gain access to free health care or education, all of which are guaranteed by the state, thanks to Chavez, but rather are attempting to spiral the country into a state of ungovernability that would justify an international intervention leading to regime change.

February 21, 2014 -- Democracy Now! -- George Ciccariello-Maher looks at the recent history of the US role in Venezuela opposing both the Chávez and Maduro governments. He is author of We Created Chávez: A People’s History of the Venezuelan Revolution and teaches political science at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

Before Chavez was elected in 1998, Venezuela was in a very dark, difficult period with a dangerously eroded democracy. During the early 1990s, poverty swelled at around 80%, the economy was in a sinkhole, the nation’s vast middle class was disappearing with millions falling into economic dispair, constitutional rights were suspended, a national curfew was imposed and corruption was rampant. Those who protested the actions of the government were brutally repressed and often killed. In fact, during the period of so-called “representative democracy” in Venezuela from 1958-1998, before the nation’s transformation into a participatory democracy under Chavez, thousands of Venezuelans were disappeared, tortured, persecuted and assassinated by state security forces. None of their rights were guaranteed and no one, except the majority excluded poor, seemed to care. International human rights organisations showed little interest in Venezuela during that time, despite clear and systematic violations taking place against the people.

Those in power during that period, also referred to in Venezuela as the “Fourth Republic”, represented an elite minority -- families that held the nation’s wealth and profited heavily from the lucrative oil reserves. Millions of dollars from oil profits belonging to the state (oil was nationalised in Venezuela in 1976) were embezzled out of the country into the bloated bank accounts of wealthy Venezuelans and corrupt public officials who had homes in Miami, New York and the Dominican Republic and lived the high life off the backs of an impoverished majority.

Hugo Chavez’s electoral victory in 1998 shattered the opulent banquet the Venezuelan elite had enjoyed for decades, while they ran the country into the ground. He was elected precisely to break the hold on power those groups had harnessed for so many years, and Chavez’s promise was revolution -- complete transformation of the economic, social and political system in the country. His electoral victories were solid, year after year, each time rising in popularity as more and more Venezuelans became motivated to participate in their governance and the construction of a new, inclusive, nation with social justice as its banner.

Blow to Washington

Chavez’s election was a huge blow to Washington and the powerful interests in the United States that wanted control over Venezuela’s oil reserves -- the largest on the planet. In April 2002, the Bush administration backed a coup d’etat to overthrow Chavez, led by the very same elite that had been in power before. The coup involved mass marches in the streets of Caracas, composed of the wealthy and middle classes, calling for Chavez’s ouster. Snipers were used to shoot on those in the marches, creating violence and chaos that was immediately blamed on Chavez.

Television, radio and newspapers in Venezuela all joined in the coup efforts, manipulating images and distorting facts to justify Chavez’s overthrow. He became the villian, the evil dictator, the brutal murderer in the eyes of international media, though in reality those overthrowing him and their backers in Washington were responsible for the death and destruction caused. After Chavez was kidnapped on April 11, 2002, and set to be assassinated, the wealthy businessmen behind the coup took power and imposed a dictatorship. All democratic institutions were dissolved, including the legistature and the supreme court.

The majority who had voted for Chavez and had finally become protagonists in their own governance were determined to defend their democracy and took to the streets demanding return of their president. Forty-eight hours later, Chavez was rescued by millions of supporters and loyal armed forces. The coup was defeated and the revolution survived, but the threats continued.

A subsequent economic sabotage attemped to bring down the oil industry. 18,000 high level technical and managerial workers at the state-owned company, PDVSA, walked off the job, sabotaging equipment and causing nearly $20 billion in damages to the Venezuelan economy. After 64 days of strikes, barren supermarket shelves due to intentional hoarding to create panic, and a brutal media war in which every private station broadcast opposition propaganda 24/7, Venezuelans were fed up with the opposition. Chavez’s popularity soared. A year and a half later, when the opposition tried to oust him through a recall referendum, he won a 60-40 landslide victory.

New destabilisation

Leading efforts to overthrow Chavez were the very same three who today call for their supporters to take to the streets to force President Nicolas Maduro from power. Leopoldo Lopez and Henrique Capriles were both mayors of two of Caracas’ wealthiest municipalities during the 2002 coup -- Chacao and Baruta, while Maria Corina Machado was a close ally of Pedro Carmona, the wealthy businessman who proclaimed himself dictator during Chavez’s brief ouster. Lopez and Machado signed the infamous “Carmona Decree” dissolving Venezuela’s democratic institutions, trashing the constitution. Both Capriles and Lopez were also responsible for persecuting and violently detaining members of Chavez’s government during the coup, including allowing some of them to be publicly beaten, such as Ramon Rodriguez Chacin, former Minister of Interior in 2002.

All three have been major recipients of US funding and political support for their endeavors to overthrow Chavez, and now Maduro. The US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its offshoots, the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) provided start-up funds for Machado’s NGO Sumate, and Capriles’ and Lopez’s right-wing party Primero Justicia. When Lopez split from Primero Justicia in 2010 to form his own party, Voluntad Popular, it was bankrolled by US dollars.

Over the 10-year period, from 2000-2010, US agencies, including the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and its Office for Transition Initiatives (OTI), set up in Caracas in 2002, channeled more than $100 million dollars to opposition groups in Venezuela. The overall objective was regime change.

Student right

When Chavez was reelected in 2006 with an even larger margen of victory, nearly 64% of the vote, the US shifted its support from the traditional opposition political parties and NGOs in order to create new ones with youthful, fresh faces. Over one third of US funding, nearly $15 million annually by 2007, was directed towards youth and student groups, including training in the use of social networks to mobilise political activism. Student leaders were sent to the US for workshops and conferences on Internet activism and media networking. They were formed in tactics to promote regime change via street riots and strategic use of media to portray the government as repressive.

In 2007, these student groups, funded and trained by US agencies, took to the streets of Caracas to demand Chavez’s ouster after the government chose not to renew the public concession of RCTV, a popular private television station known for its seedy soap operas. The protests were composed of mainly middle- and upper-class youth and opposition politicians, defending corporate media and a station also known for its direct involvement in the April 2002 coup. Though their protests failed to achieve their objective, the “students” had earn their credentials as a solid fixture in the opposition. Later that year, their organising helped to narrowly defeat a constitutional reform package Chavez had proposed in a national referendum.

Maduro targetted

After President Chavez passed away in March 2013 following a brutal battle with cancer, the opposition saw an opportunity to snatch power back from his supporters. Elections were held on April 14, 2013 in an extremely tense and volatile environment. Nicolas Maduro, Chavez’s chosen successor, ran against Henrique Capriles, who months earlier in October 2012 had lost the presidential election to Chavez by 11 points. This time, however, the results were much narrower with Maduro winning by a slim margen of just under two points. Capriles refused to accept the results and called his supporters to take to the streets in protest, to “get all their rage out”. During the two days after the elections, 11 government supporters were killed by Capriles’ followers. It was a bloodbath that received no attention in international media, the victims just weren’t glamorous enough, and were on the wrong side.

As 2013 wore on, the economic crisis in the country intensified and the old strategy of hoarding products to provoke shortages and panic amongst the population was back again. Basic consumer products disappeared from the shelves -- toilet paper, cooking oil, powdered milk, corn flour -- staples needed for everyday life in Venezuela. Inflation began to rise and speculation, price hikes, were rampant. While some of this was related to government controls on foreign currency exchange to prevent capital flight, a lot had to do with sabotage. A full economic war was underway against Maduro’s government.

Problems persisted throughout the year and discontent grew. But as the electoral period came around again in December, for mayors, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) had sweeping victories. 242 out of 317 mayoralties were won by the PSUV, showing a solid majority of the country still supported the government’s party.

Maduro called opposition governors and newly elected mayors to a meeting at the presidential palace in late December in an attempt to dialogue and create a space to work together to improve the situation in country. The meeting was generously received by a majority of Venezuelans. Nevertheless, extremists, such as Machado and Lopez, saw the meeting as a threat to their goal of ousting Maduro well before his term ended in 2019. Once again they began to call for street protests and other actions against his government.

Crackdown on economic sabotage

In January 2014, as Venezuelans arrived back from their Christmas vacations, economic difficulties continued. Maduro began cracking down on businesses violating newly enacted laws on price controls and speculation. Towards the end of January, new measures were announced regarding access to foreign exchange that many perceived as a devaluing of the national currency, the bolivar.

Sentiment built among opposition groups rejecting the new measures and calls for Maduro’s resignation increased. By February, small pockets of protests popped up around the country, mainly confined to middle and upper-class neighborhoods.

During the celebration of National Youth Day on February 12, while thousands marched peacefully to commemorate the historic achievements of youth in the nation’s independence, another group sought a different agenda. Opposition youth and “students” led an agressive march calling for Maduro’s resignation that ended in a violent confrontation with authorities after the protesters destroyed building façades, including the Attorney General’s office, threw objects at police and national guard and used molotov cocktails to burn property and block transit. The clashes caused three deaths and multiple injuries.

The leader of the violent protest, Leopoldo Lopez, went into hiding following the confrontation and a warrant was issued for his arrest due to his role in the deadly events and his public calls to oust the president. Days later, after a lengthy show including videos from a “clandestine” location, Lopez convened another march and used the event to publicly turn himself over to authorities. He was taken into custody and held for questioning, all his rights guaranteed by the state.

Lopez became the rallying point for the violent protests, which have continued to date, causing several additional deaths, dozens of injuries and the destruction of public property. Relatively small, violent groups of protesters have blocked transit in wealthier zones of Caracas, causing traffic delays and terrorising residents. Several deaths have resulted because protesters refused to let ambulences through to take patients to the emergency room.

Media disinformation

Ironically, international media has been portraying these protesters as peaceful victims of state repression. Even celebrities, such as Cher and Paris Hilton have been drawn into a false hysteria, calling for freedom for Venezuelans from a “brutal dictatorship”. The reality is quite different. While there is no doubt that a significant number of protesters in the larger marches that have taken place have demonstrated peacefully their legitimate concerns, the driving force behind those protests is a violent plan to overthrow a democratic government. Lopez, who has publicly stated his pride for his role in the April 2002 coup against Hugo Chavez, continues to call on his supporters to rally against the Venezuelan “dictatorship”.

While dozens of governments and international organisations, including UNASUR and Mercosur have expressed their clear support and solidarity for the Venezuelan government and President Maduro, Washington was quick to back the opposition protesters and demand the government release all those detained during the demonstrations. The Obama administration went so far as to threaten President Maduro with international consequences if Leopoldo Lopez were to be detained. In the aftermath of the first wave of violent protests, Maduro expelled three US diplomats from the US embassy in Caracas, accusing them of conspiring to recruit students in Venezuela to engage in destabilisation.

As the violence continues in some areas around the country, Maduro has made widespread calls for peace. A movement for peace was launched last week, led by artists, athletes and cultural figures, together with organised communities seeking to end not just the current chaotic situation, but also the high crime levels that have plagued the country over the past few years.

Most Venezuelans want peace in their country and a majority continue to support the current government. The opposition has failed to present an alternative platform or agenda beyond regime change, and their continued dependence on US funding and support -- even this year Obama included $5 million in the 2014 Foreign Operations Budget for opposition groups in Venezuela -- is a ongoing sign of their weakness. As a State Department cable from the US embassy in Caracas, published by Wikileaks, explained in March 2009, “Without our continued assistance, it is possible that the organisations we helped create ... could be forced to close ... Our funding will provide those organiations a much-needed lifeline.”

During the past decade in Venezuela, poverty has been reduced by over 50%, healthcare has become free and accessible to all, as has quality education from primary through graduate school. State subsidies provide affordable food and housing for those who need it, as well as job training programs and worker placement. Media outlets, especially community media, have expanded nationwide, giving more space for the expression of diverse voices. Internet access has increased significantly and the state also built hundreds of public infocenters with free computer and Internet access throughout the country. Students are given free laptops and tablets to use for their studies. The government has raised minimum wage by 10-20% each year leading Venezuela to have one of the highest minimum wages in Latin America. Pensions are guaranteed after only 25 years of work and those who work in the informal economy are still guaranteed a pension from the state.

While problems persist in the country, as they do everywhere, most Venezuelans are wary of giving up the immense social and political gains they have made in the past 14 years. An opposition with nothing to offer except foreign intervention and uncertainty does not appeal to the majority.

Unfortunately, the capitalist media fails to see this reality, or chose not to portray it in order to advance a political agenda.

In Venezuela, the revolution is here to stay and the interests of the 1% are not going to overcome those of the 99% already in power.

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Analysis | How the Western media is getting (almost) everything wrong about Venezuela.

Lee Salter argues our understanding of the recent upheavals in Venezuela must be placed in its proper, larger context. It's not about economics, corruption or crime, he insists, but about the ultra-rich and their supporters trying to overthrow the will of the people.

New in Ceasefire - Posted on Saturday, February 22, 2014

By Lee Salter

Thousands of Chavistas marched through central Merida, ending at Plaza Bolivar. Chants condemned the recent spate of violence and called for support for Nicolas Maduro. (Ryan Mallett-Outtrim/Venezuelanalysis)

To explain events and developments in Venezuela at the moment is no mean task. Like most things, this is a complicated, vast subject, and regardless of the attempts by myriad political protagonists, human rights groups and news media outlets to paint things in simple, starkly black and white terms, they are not. In order to fully understand what is happening in the country, one must delve deep.

Take, for instance, a recent, particularly galling video on YouTube which explains that millions of students took to the streets to protest against the crime and security situation. The online comments left by a number of Venezuelans on the video are themselves quite telling, specifically in that they are mostly made in English and, bar the usual exceptions, English-speaking Venezuelans tend to generally be from the rich minority that has been fighting to overthrow democracy since 1998. Another curious thing about such comments is that they know what terminologies to deploy, as well as where and when to use them. They know, for instance, to mention “communism”, “Cuba”, “democracy” and “human rights”.

Naturally, the Venezuelan elite’s cultural networks of communicative power give them an enormous ability to set the news agenda (the Venezuelan news media has traditionally been controlled by the ultra-rich minority, of around 5-10% of the population), especially as there has been no real alternative to this media dominance beside the odd under-funded community radio station. Needless to say, in order to become a journalist in the first place, one needs the sort of training and contacts afforded only to the rich, alongside the cultural associations and linguistic ability that accompany such privileged backgrounds. As the U.S. political scientists Ronald Sylvia and Constantine Danopoulos explain, the availability of such cultural capital is restricted: ‘Weekend shopping trips to Miami were the order of the day for the bourgeois classes. The oil riches, however, did not trickle down to the bottom of Venezuelan society. A sizeable portion of Venezuela’s population remained desperately poor’.

Moreover, Venezuela’s ultra-rich have historically been well connected to Miami – and the US more generally – as well as to the international jet-set world. They have media interests and media contacts and they dominate international communications about Venezuela. So when a story needs to get out about, for instance, alleged abuses of journalists, the lines of communication are open, and a primed international media is ready to accept anything that conforms to expectations. (On one occasion, I noted a human rights group’s release about such an abuse. Upon investigation, I found that the original footage of the incident was of a camera operator being jostled on a picket line.)

In this context, the views and opinions of the vast majority of Venezuelans continue to go largely unreported, as coverage focuses on those of the – generally well-off and ‘on message’ - international diaspora. A few weeks ago, I read comments by such an ’exile’ to the effect that “Chavez hates the people, he hates anyone with money. He is trying to stop the dams from producing electricity so that rich people can’t have televisions and things. In Caracas they only have 4 hours of electricity per day”. To which I pointed out that I had just come back from ten days in Venezuela, and experienced a single power cut of about 20 minutes. Another time, I found myself sharing a Caracas cable car with an English-speaking Venezuelan. She and her partner began talking to me and to my Irish friend about lightbulbs: “you know anything about Venezuela, about Chavez? He’s a communist, you know? He’s trying to destroy the country. He’s trying to force everybody to have energy-saving lightbulbs…but this isn’t Cuba”. After five minutes, my friend felt compelled to point out they used energy-saving lightbulbs in Ireland, too, and that he didn’t feel particularly oppressed by them.

I found the fury about electricity and lightbulbs rather baffling. After all, the situation is rather reasonably easy to explain: Venezuela was experiencing a long, extended drought and water levels in the hydro-electric dams were therefore low, impacting upon the country’s power generation figures. To compound matters, there were not enough engineers with the right expertise working on the dams and rivers to ensure proper maintenance. The key factor, however, was the jump in sales of consumer electrical items, such as refrigerators, encouraged by the government to improve the quality of life among the population. As such, adopting energy-saving policies as a short-term solution seems quite straightforward.

When quizzing Thomas Muhr, a researcher on Venezuela at the University of Bristol, about the lightbulb stories, he told me that it was all led by a rumour that Chavez was placing video cameras in them to spy on people at home. Quite.

Such stories go on and on and on. One of the most striking things, however, is that when one gets to the subject of corruption and crime, there is general consensus among most Venezuelans. Almost everyone I’ve ever spoken to, including in and around the Venezuelan government, says the same things: there’s too much corruption, we don’t seem to be able to do anything about crime, the revolution isn’t fast enough, the people don’t seem to realise what they can do, and so on. Clearly, neither the government, nor the Bolivarian movement at large, is blind to these (or other) shortcomings and issues.

The other big problem facing the country is one over which the ultra-rich probably don’t lose much sleep: How to stop the CIA, and reactionary forces inside Venezuela, from overthrowing the democratically-elected government. This is the lens through which the situation in Venezuela must be understood. Most of the coverage of the country in the Western corporate media plays on what is called the “exceptionalism thesis”: the idea that Venezuela is historically different to the rest of Latin America insofar as it was stable and democratic. This thesis has been challenged by Steve Eller and Miguel Salas, alongside an array of other Latin American scholars such as Princeton’s Kelly Hoffman and Miguel Centeno who pointed out that before Chavez ‘Venezuela was marked by extreme poverty set against a narrowly constituted elite of 5-10% of the population’.

Indeed, there’s very little in the data that distinguishes Venezuela from the rest of the continent in this regard: According to Julia Buxton, of Bradford University, between 1975 and 1995 poverty increased dramatically in Venezuela, with the percentage of persons living in poverty rising from 33% to 70% of the population during that period, (the number of households in poverty increased from 15% to 45%). By 2000, wages had dropped by 40% from their 1980 levels. By 1997, 67% of Venezuelans earned less than $2 a day. Add to that the historically airbrushed atrocity of the Caracazo Massacre, where thousands of poor people were slaughtered – in the same year as Tiananmen Square – for protesting IMF dictats. In short, for most Venezuelans, contrary to the exceptionalism myth, there is very little if anything in the country’s pre-Chavez past to hark back to.

And yet, such an understanding is virtually lost in international media coverage, which instead continues to reflect back on an imagined era, prior to Chavez, when the country was “unified” (presumably happy in poverty and oppression) and “stable”. Indeed, my own research has outlined the narrative that the BBC inadvertently plays on, which masks the history as experienced by the majority of Venezuelans. (I say “inadvertently” partly because one of the correspondents whose work makes up the bulk of the sample we analysed is a committed Chavista)

This narrative begins way back in December 1998 – before Chavez had a chance to do anything – when the BBC told us that “Venezuela is proud of its democratic record”; that “many” see Chavez as a kind of autocratic military leader (remember that he had hardly done anything by then); and that in the good old days a high proportion of government spending went on social programmes. (Amazing, really, that so many were still in poverty or voted for this demon from hell). It took less than a year for the Beeb to remind us that “There is a dictatorship” in Venezuela. For those idiots who thought Chavez’s elected-status gave him legitimacy, the BBC was quick to remind them that “Adolph Hitler was elected too”. This framing of Chavez, and the Bolivarian Revolution, went on unchallenged for the ensuing ten years: Chavez came from nowhere, he’s a grave danger for Venezuela and the world, and … oh wow, how did he get elected again?!

By 2002, the emboldened “opposition” – a term inherently understood by Western outlets as conferring legitimacy – had deployed its vast private media access to launch a bloody coup. That they did so with their allies in the private media is incontestable: with characteristic arrogance, right-wing reactionaries in Venezuela explicitly told us so on air. And yet, for the BBC, Chavez had “quit” due to his “mishandling” of “strikes” (in actual fact, a management lockout) and a demonstration in which Chavez had apparently decided to murder his own supporters. Fortunately, the BBC explained, “Venezuela … looked not to an existing politician but to the head of the business leaders’ association”, Pedro Carmona.

In the world of the BBC, the coup was actually “Venezuela” forming a transitional government and “restoring democracy”. On this account, democracy appears to be something that involves the ultra-rich shooting people and seizing power. (To be fair to the BBC, its coverage was substantially dependent on international news agencies, which in turn depended on local journalists, who in the main work for the private media that helped launch the coup… and so on)

The situation never changed. No matter how many democratic elections Chavez, the movement he led or the party he helped form won, no matter what level of electoral legitimacy Venezuelans (rather than the BBC’s “Venezuela”) bestowed on Chavez, the government could not stand, and the implacable reactionaries would not cease until the Old Order was restored (unless, of course, they are talking to the rest of the world, in which case the line tended to be, “oh, I’m sure they’re well-meaning and the social programmes are good, but there are too many bad people around and too much mismanagement”).

In this context, the most recent protests are indeed about a lot of things, and no doubt reflect a plethora of voices, just as there’s a variety of voices within the movement itself. Indeed, Venezuela still has problems, a lot of problems. Yet the “opposition” is as concerned with poverty today as its leaders were when they presided over massive levels of it. They are as concerned with human rights today as they were during the Caracazo Massacre. They are as concerned with democracy today as they were when there was a de facto exclusion of most of the population from political life. It is this fear of the “plebs” that drives the “opposition” today.

There’s a familiar story about states that sit outside the sphere of US hegemony – they tend to face campaigns of destabilisation, coups and invasions where necessary. The invariable response to such threats is to “clamp down” on previously enjoyed freedoms. The notion of a “strategy of tension” demands that a government is put in a defensive position – a “state of emergency” as it’s called in a friendly state. It is also this reaction, the context of which is rarely mediated, that motivates a number of the protesters.

It is worth reflecting how other states of emergency are mediated. After the 2011 riots in the UK, 3000 young people were swept up in a dragnet and sent to kangaroo courts for what would no doubt be called in Venezuela, a protest against an out of touch and corrupt government. The repressive clampdown was cheered on by the British media. Yet if the current President Maduro, or Chavez before him, had received as small a proportion of the vote as Cameron, Venezuela would probably have been invaded by now.

Contrast the conduct of broadcast media in the UK with that in Venezuela. It’s not simply that the private media in Venezuela have been “biased” in their coverage of national politics, which British broadcasters are forbidden by law to engage in, it is that they actively initiated a coup against democracy in 2002 that led to the deaths of hundreds. Were a TV anchor to appear on ITV News and counsel the army and navy to rise up against the government, he’d be gone in the blink of an eye. Were his bosses to support his position and continue to encourage such action on a daily basis for years, (as happened in Venezuela,) it would be hardly outlandish to suggest that the ITV licence would not be renewed.

In a sense, the Venezuelan government is playing into the hands of the reactionaries and their supporters in the US. Some of the measures taken to ward off coup threats and enable a government – that has never garnered less than 50% of the vote – to carry out its mandate have been clunky to put it mildly. Yet at the same time, it is difficult to see how else, other than through such emergency measures, the will of the people could be fulfilled in these circumstances.

Indeed, this is the crux of the situation in Venezuela: It is not about a sudden emergence of economic problems, corruption or crime. It is about the ultra-rich and their supporters, especially among the middle class, who for 15 years have spent their time, energy and resources trying every possible measure to overthrow the will of the people. Again, there are problems aplenty in Venezuela, but the trick is to understand these in the context of the bigger picture.

A version of this essay first appeared on the author’s personal blog.

Lee Salter is a lecturer and researcher at the University of the West of England. His research focuses on activism, protest and its representation in the media. His research on Venezuela looked at 10 years of BBC News reporting, finding that there was a clear and systematic misrepresentation of the Bolivarian revolution that stems from the class and cultural background of the BBC, ideological frameworks and the communicative power of the old elites.

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A Call to Americans

Support Non-violence and Democratic Institutions in Venezuela

by DANNY GLOVER

“Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars”… Martin Luther King, Jr.

As a Citizen-Artist, I have always assumed a responsibility to take public positions on difficult and controversial domestic and foreign affairs issues that challenge honest people of principle to find positive negotiations to justly resolve passionately held opposing positions. In this context, I urge my fellow citizens to join me in calling for a stop to the violence now perpetuated by some disgruntled sectors of Venezuelan society and foreign supporters. I firmly believe that honest passionate debate is indispensable to a progressive participatory democracy. Please take a stand and communicate with your networks, the media, and the U.S. State Department.

Resorting to indiscriminate violence inflames passions to the point of incivility and assaults the highly acclaimed transparent, fair democratic process that Venezuela has been perfecting for a decade. Neither Venezuelans nor foreign governments or citizens should attempt to supplant through violence or manipulation the electoral will of the Venezuelan majority.

I urge citizens of the United States and the United States government to stand with the 33 countries of the Community of Latin America and Caribbean Nations in their support of the Venezuelan government and the Constitutional democratic measures by which they manage the self-determination of their country. As citizens of the Americas, we and our government should support the recent resolution of Latin America and the Caribbean to be region of peace and non-interference in sovereign affairs.

Join me and millions of others inside Venezuela, across Latin America and the Caribbean, and around the world to call upon the perpetrators and supporters of public violence against the elected Venezuelan government to cease and desist with violence and all non-electoral means to overrule the majority electoral voices of the Venezuelan people.

Danny Glover is an actor and activist.

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"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.

Blessed is all of creation
Blessed be my beautiful people
Blessed be the day of our awakening
Blessed is my country
Blessed are her patient hills.

Mweh ka allay!
Guanaguanare