Dear Editor,

I am responding to an article that was carried in the Jamaica Observer that spoke to “political cronyism” in Caribbean politics. The article went on to warn that should Caribbean countries not move to stamp out corruption, the security agencies from our larger neighbours may move to do so on our behalf, to our embarrassment.

I am assuming that the neighbouring country to which the article refers is the US, since no other developed country in the hemisphere has been as historically brazen to openly interfere in the internal affairs of smaller sovereign states. I should advise the writer to tell those people in the US who are making these threatening noises, that our Caribbean politicians learned the art of “drug trafficking” when in 1989, they saw President Reagan and George HW Bush, his vice-president, allowing Noriega to transport cocaine to the US in DEA-operated planes once he delivered weapons to Contra bases in Northern Costa Rica first.

Our politicians learnt about “money laundering” from the big international banks like HSBC, whose CEO recently got just a slap on the wrist for this crime. They learnt the art of police killings from many US lessons, the most recent being civilian murders in Afghanistan by military managed by Blackstone Corporation. They learnt “tax evasion” from the “tax avoidance” practised by the top 0.1% of the US richest who continue to evade taxes through legal loopholes that are never fixed. They learnt to bribe politicians from the art of “special interest lobbying”, the “legal” US variant.

They learnt “human rights abuses” from the US who, by passing laws like the National Defence and Authorisation Act, their president can have a US citizen like Bradley Manning, imprisoned and denied due process with a wave of his pen for exposing their war crimes, like the many prisoners in Guantanamo who have no legal rights; they learnt “corruption in governance” from the US who invented a ‘revolving door’ that allows free access to and fro, between those who are regulated who, passing through the door, become regulators to regulate themselves.

The US Government can offer doctorates in corruption and Orwellian newspeak. How many US ambassadors have bought their appointments with “campaign contributions”. Instead of the Jamaica Observer indulging the US government’s hypocrisy, they should be telling the Caribbean people that Mr Obama has been field-testing US drones in The Bahamas and that surveillance drones helped in the arrest of ‘Dudus’ Coke in their own country. Rather, they waste their time trying to imitate mainstream US media and their twisted propaganda.

Steve Smith

20 Herrera Street

San Fernando, Trinidad