RIP Hon Dudley Thompson

[R_C]

Re: Comrade Dudley Thompson is dead

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: franksterr</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: R_C</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: frankster</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The CIA often did not say who should be killed or burned or where to shoot up, what it did was to find a couple a dissatisfied hunger and angry &quot;rude bwoys&quot; provide them with money and guns, in an already volatile situation and then leave them to their own devices.

The entire thrust was to discredit the Manley Government, and any violence no matter how or committed by whom would aid in accomplishing this end....especially if you can implicate Manley or his Government directly.</div></div>

So Winston Blake, George Spence, Anthony Tingle, George Phang and Tony Welch were CIA agents ? </div></div>

Not agents but most likely pawns....thought I recognize them as known PNP enforcers.
These are individuals who if given the funds will do what is asked regardless of political affiliations. </div></div>

Can you point me to a <span style="font-style: italic">Jamaican</span> source, scholar, historian, journalist or ideally, one of these PNP thugs themselves, who have validated your position that they were paid by the CIA while simultaneously operating on behalf of the PNP ?

Thanks

[franksterr]

Re: Comrade Dudley Thompson is dead

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: R_C</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: franksterr</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: R_C</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: frankster</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The CIA often did not say who should be killed or burned or where to shoot up, what it did was to find a couple a dissatisfied hunger and angry &quot;rude bwoys&quot; provide them with money and guns, in an already volatile situation and then leave them to their own devices.

The entire thrust was to discredit the Manley Government, and any violence no matter how or committed by whom would aid in accomplishing this end....especially if you can implicate Manley or his Government directly.</div></div>

So Winston Blake, George Spence, Anthony Tingle, George Phang and Tony Welch were CIA agents ? </div></div>

Not agents but most likely pawns....thought I recognize them as known PNP enforcers.
These are individuals who if given the funds will do what is asked regardless of political affiliations. </div></div>

Can you point me to a <span style="font-style: italic">Jamaican</span> source, scholar, historian, journalist or ideally, one of these PNP thugs themselves, who have validated your position that they were paid by the CIA while simultaneously operating on behalf of the PNP ?

Thanks </div></div>

Not exactley what you are looking for but here is what I have as a response - take it or leave.....The facts speak for themselves.




According to Gary Webb’s book,”The Dark Alliance,” Norman Descoteaux, the CIA station chief in Jamaica began a destabilization program of the Manley government in late 70s. Part of that plan was assassinations, money for the Jamaican Labour Party, labor unrest, bribery and shipping weapons to Manley’s opponents, like Lester “Jim Brown” Coke.

Author, Daurius Figueira writes in his book, “Cocaine And Heroin Trafficking In The Caribbean,” “In fact, it meant that illicit drug runners linked to the JLP were integrated into a CIA linked illicit drugs guns and criminal trafficking pipeline.”

Former CIA agent, Philip Agee, said “the CIA was using the JLP as its instrument in the campaign against the Michael Manley government, I’d say most of the violence was coming from the JLP, and behind them was the CIA in terms of getting weapons in and getting money in.”

One of Lester Coke’s associates, Cecil Connor, would claim that he was trained by the CIA to fight political wars for the JLP through killing and spying. Connor would stuff ballot boxes and intimidate voters to help the JLP win elections. Connor would go on from being a political thug to being part of the international Jamaican based cocaine ring known as the Shower Posse. He wound up testifying against Lester Coke and his cohort Vivian Blake, only to return to his native St. Kitts to become a drug kingpin who almost held the country hostage.

Christopher “Dudus” Coke’s father, Lester Coke has also been accused of working with the CIA. Timothy White speculates, in his biography of Bob Marley, “Catch A Fire,” that Jim Brown was part of a team of armed gunman that attempted to assassinate Bob Marley led by JLP enforcer Carl “Byah” Mitchell. Authors Laurie Gunst and Vivien Goldman also make the same assertions in their books, “Born Fi Dead” and “The Book Of Exodus.” Marley’s manager Don Taylor claims that one of Marley’s attackers was captured and admitted that the CIA had agreed to pay him in cocaine and guns to kill Marley.

Lester Coke would later be burned to death in a Jamaican jail cell, while awaiting extradition the the United States. Many people have claimed that he was killed so he wouldn’t reveal his secrets dealing with the CIA, JLP and criminal activity.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=19696

[franksterr]

Re: Comrade Dudley Thompson is dead

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Tuff Gong

You do not want truth you still fighting a long dead partisan war

My friend I am a <span style="font-weight: bold">PNP</span> Supporter. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black'">I do not know one Labourite</span>. I was born and raised in a PNP Garrison. I lived there most of my life. My address in Jamaica is still there.
I have<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black'"> never</span> lived in a JLP Garrison.
I am not fighting no war. This is a Bulletin Board, one is free to discuss anything.
I did not introduce the JLP vs PNP.
In my long association with this Board I can say without contradiction, that 9 times out of ten when 70s or any Politics comes up is always the rabid Comrade sympathizers who continue to fight the tribal political battles.</div></div>

I have lived my entire life in Jamaica in a strong JLP neighborhood.
I was JLP for most of my life in Jamaica
Unlike you I know both PNP and JLP supporters and members.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I care not whether you are JLP. PNP or no P. Lay some arguments on, but come with facts. Your only recourse is to now say the truth .....that all along you had plan to continue a tribal political battle....<span style="font-family: 'Arial Black'">As your chief cheerleader had said</span><span style="font-style: italic"> (paraphrasing)</span>, you brought the weapons...<span style="font-size: 20pt">you win!</span>
</div></div>

The facts is all I have.
Is the fact the JY said I won bothering? in your anguish did you note my response?


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Yes it is the same question.
You didn't have answer, but considering the fact that you werewere the one that occasioned the questions. That you have posted tons of arguments that are mere conjecture and does not answer the questions in any way shape or form, of whether or not the CIA was responsible for Green Bay; Eventide; Orange Lane; Rema; Gold Street, Top Hill, Spanish Town. Then the only other recourse is to continue to ask the same questions.
</div></div>

My position on the above has been made known to you many many times already in this thread.


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
•Did the CIA light a fire that killed old folks in their sleep.
•Did the CIA toss babies forward into a fire set in the Community of Orange Lane.
•Did the CIA shoot up a Dance at Gold Street.
•Did the CIA commit arson at Rema.
•Did the CIA shooot two little girls at Top Hill.
•Did CIA the shoot up Spanish Town.
•Did the CIA kill 5 men and injured a number of others at Green Bay.</div></div>

Same reply given above applies here as well.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">That is your argument.
The Post started with the death of Dudley Thompson and his involvement in Green Bay.
You were the one who brought the CIA in.
So far you have provided zero proof that the CIA killed those men at Green Bay and injured the others.</div></div>

NO.....I have provided proof of the CIA being involve in one particular heinous and violent act in Jamaica, as well as other evidence of them doing the same in other countries - as part of a destabilization effort.

Why are you inventing fictitious arguments - AT NO TIME DID I SAY THE CIA KILLED THOSE MEN AT GREEN BAY - the Jamaican soldier already admitted doing that

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">If you have something to say on Jim brown; Zackie; Biya; Massop, go right ahead say it, no one is stopping you.... abortively no one but you! </div></div>

I have nothing to say beyond that they were enforcers for the JLP.

[R_C]

Re: Comrade Dudley Thompson is dead

I’ll take that as a “no”.

Meaning, you are unable to come up with a single <span style="font-style: italic">Jamaican</span> source who can corroborate your assertion that PNP thugs were operating on the CIA’s behalf….. and not the PNP’s ….as they lay waste to Labourites and the communities in which they lived.

Thanks.

[franksterr]

Re: Comrade Dudley Thompson is dead

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: R_C</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I’ll take that as a “no”.

Meaning, you are unable to come up with a single <span style="font-style: italic">Jamaican</span> source who can corroborate your assertion that PNP thugs were operating on the CIA’s behalf….. and not the PNP’s ….as they lay waste to Labourites and the communities in which they lived.

Thanks.
</div></div>

Yes.....here is a Jamaican source that speaks to the CIA in Jamaica - somewhat closer to what you are looking for.

This year we should also talk about whether the United States' national security strategies have changed. In the 1970s, ex-Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent Phillip Agee spoke out in Jamaica about the typical CIA strategies, some of which he said were at play here. These strategies included disinformation, ideological warfare, fomenting demonstrations, fomenting violence, targeted assassinations and assisted coups.

http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20100418/focus/focus4.html

[R_C]

Re: Comrade Dudley Thompson is dead

The article doesn't address your assertion that I referenced. Worst of all, Robert Buddan uses Philip Agee, former CIA agent turned operative of the Cuban Dirección de Inteligencia and by extension the Committee for State Security (aka KGB) of the former Soviet Union as a source.

I am simply asking you to point me to a local source who can prove that PNP thugs were operating on behalf of the CIA, and not the PNP, as they went on their rampages in the 70's.

[Tuff Gong]

Re: Comrade Dudley Thompson is dead

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: franksterr</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The facts is all I have.
Is the fact the JY said I won bothering? in your anguish did you note my response? </div></div>
No I am not bothered, in fact I have accepted that you won. You brought out all the high powered weapons and blew everything away.......from sanity!

[Tuff Gong]

Re: Comrade Dudley Thompson is dead

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: franksterr</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Why are you inventing fictitious arguments - </div></div>

Sir....I leave that up to <span style="font-weight: bold">you</span>. <span style="font-size: 17pt">You</span> are the master, the only purveyor of <span style="font-family: 'Arial Black'">fictions arguments</span> in this discussion. I am just trying to get at the <span style="font-size: 20pt">truth</span>.

[Tuff Gong]

Re: Comrade Dudley Thompson is dead

This was where you introduced the CIA.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: franksterr</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Green bay killing is regretable but in a time of near civil war and rampant foreign interventionist policies, via CIA operations one will never really know what happen there.
Who would believe that the CIA would burn old people as a means to discredit Manley's government - EvenTide Home fire. Who is to say that this is not more of the same - CIA paying elements within the JDF to lure and kill members of a community known to oppose the government.
There have been killings before and after green bay by government forces.
It was not done in the name of &quot;socialism&quot; but in the name of &quot;crime suppression&quot;</div></div>

It is on page 2. Here is the link


So are you saying the CIA committed and/or funded the following crimes? Paid PNP thugs <span style="font-style: italic">(including MPs)</span>, to commit the following crimes?

<ul style="list-style-type: disc">[*]Did the CIA light a fire that killed old folks in their sleep.[*]Did the CIA toss babies forward into a fire set in the Community of Orange Lane.[*]Did the CIA shoot up a Dance at Gold Street.[*]Did the CIA commit arson at Rema.[*]Did the CIA shooot two little girls at Top Hill.[*]Did CIA the shoot up Spanish Town.[*]Did the CIA kill 5 men and injured a number of others at Green Bay.[/list]

[franksterr]

Re: Comrade Dudley Thompson is dead

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: R_C</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The article doesn't address your assertion that I referenced. Worst of all, Robert Buddan uses Philip Agee, former CIA agent turned operative of the Cuban Dirección de Inteligencia and by extension the Committee for State Security (aka KGB) of the former Soviet Union as a source. </div></div>

Its still a Jamaican source, the fact that they sourced it from else where is typical in media.
Veracity of Agee information is corroborated by the history of CIA behaviour in many countries.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">I am simply asking you to point me to a local source who can prove that PNP thugs were operating on behalf of the CIA, and not the PNP, as they went on their rampages in the 70's. </div></div>

From the book making of a Jamaican don.

Don't watch foreign observers who visit the country when there is an election, to monitor results. They can't see the organisational work that is done underground. Even the CIA plays its role in the election by financing and sabotaging the outcomes. I was paid to steal ballot boxes and intimidate my opponents.
http://books.google.com/books?id=ITOnqll...ica&amp;f=false

There you have it..

[R_C]

Re: Comrade Dudley Thompson is dead

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: frankster</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Veracity of Agee information is corroborated by the history of CIA behaviour in many countries.</div></div>

I am interested in direct evidence of what the CIA allegedly did <span style="font-style: italic">in Jamaica</span> in the 70's.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: frankster</div><div class="ubbcode-body">From the book making of a Jamaican don</div></div>

Clifton Cameron?? Are you kidding me?

Obviously frankster you have either not taken the question seriously or cannot back up your assertions so I am going to bow out of this thread. Before I go however, I want to share with you some things that Michael Manley himself said before he passed away in regards to why he lost the election in 1980.

Please note that he (a) did not blame the CIA and (b) accepted responsibility for promulgating policies (his own as well as those of the IMF) that ultimately lead to the ruin of the economy and defeat of the PNP at the polls.

The first quotes are from an interview with Hans J. Massaquoi, the Managing Editor of Ebony, in the February 1990 issue. I don’t have a link for you as this issue is not available on the web but if you happen to have a way to get a hold of it, the entire interview is very illuminating. It starts on page 110.

Here is a representative excerpt:

<span style="font-style: italic">Ebony: Looking back to October 1980 when you lost the election to Mr. Seaga, what do you think were the causes of your defeat?

MM: Where to begin? I think part of it was just the passage of time. Jamaica has a sort of ten-year tradition for changing governments, and that would have been a factor. But much more importantly, [our] society had to face enormous difficulties from 1977 onward when the first of the major adjustment programs had to be faced because of the collapse of export prices, the tremendous increase in oil prices and the effect that this had on the economy. And that meant that Jamaica went into a period of painful adjustment that in fact lasted for 11 years.

But by the time we faced the 1980 election, the people were for the first time experiencing the weight of that kind of crunch, through 1978 and 1979, and there were falling standards of living, <span style="font-weight: bold">as has been true all over the Third World</span>. And when people experience a falling standard of living, they tend to kick out whichever government is associated with that process. <span style="font-weight: bold">I think that was the main reason</span>.</span>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is another interview he gave, this time with Manning Marable a professor of history and political science and director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University. The journal is called ‘Progressive’. (It is available on the web but only with a subscription.)

<span style="font-style: italic">Progressive; July 1993, Vol. 57 Issue 7, p23

Q: During the late 1970s, your relationship with the International Monetary Fund got a great deal of play in the United States and in the Western media. Could you briefly recapitulate the basic problems you encountered and your negotiations? I recall that in April 1977, you accepted very harsh terms for addressing the balance-of-payments situation. Then later there was a reversal of your position vis-a-vis the IMF. How would you characterize those murky and complicated negotiations?

MM <span style="font-weight: bold">The great error I made was I grossly overestimated what the state could do</span>, how I could use the state as an economic machine, as a form of shortcut to development. <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="text-decoration: underline">I learned that I was wrong</span></span>, and I'm never afraid to say so. The other thing I did was to fail to make an adequate connection between perceptional problems arising from the ideology of concern for the masses, for poverty, equality, and foreign policy, and its effect on the mind of the private sector. When working with the private sector, I am almost begging them to invest and produce and I am assuring them that we see them as a critical part of the engine of development. But they looked at the state activity and saw a threat. They looked at the egalitarian ideology and perceived a threat. They looked at the foreign policy and perceived a threat. And so they became part of the problem instead of part of the solution.

Q: It was, in effect, a kind of capital strike.

MM: It was like a capital strike. And as one accustomed to strikes from the other side, I understood that. My God, I thought, you really have to rethink this. If you really pull this out for the state, then you might regard the private sector as marginal, but you don't want them to be marginal because they are part of your philosophy of a mixed economy.</span>

[franksterr]

Re: Comrade Dudley Thompson is dead

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Tuff Gong</div><div class="ubbcode-body">This was where you introduced the CIA.

[quote=franksterr]Green bay killing is regretable but in a time of near civil war and rampant foreign interventionist policies, <span style="font-weight: bold">via CIA operations one will never really know what happen there.
</span>Who would believe that the CIA would burn old people as a means to discredit Manley's government - EvenTide Home fire. <span style="color: #FF0000"><span style="font-size: 14pt">Who is to say </span></span><span style="text-decoration: underline">that this is not more </span>of the same - CIA paying elements within the JDF to lure and kill members of a community known to oppose the government.
There have been killings before and after green bay by government forces.
It was not done in the name of &quot;socialism&quot; but in the name of &quot;crime suppression&quot;</div></div>

You clutching at straws, as that is question and not a statement and a possible scenario given CIA past behaviour within other third world countries. I started out by stating that green bay killings were regratable and one will never really know what happen there....
The Term &quot; who is to say&quot; is a question....&quot;this is not more.....is also a question.
And Have stated on more than one occassion already that I can only tie CIA directly to eventide.

It is on page 2. Here is the link


<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">So are you saying the CIA committed and/or funded the following crimes? Paid PNP thugs <span style="font-style: italic">(including MPs)</span>, to commit the following crimes?

<ul style="list-style-type: disc">[*]Did the CIA light a fire that killed old folks in their sleep.[*]Did the CIA toss babies forward into a fire set in the Community of Orange Lane.[*]Did the CIA shoot up a Dance at Gold Street.[*]Did the CIA commit arson at Rema.[*]Did the CIA shooot two little girls at Top Hill.[*]Did CIA the shoot up Spanish Town.[*]Did the CIA kill 5 men and injured a number of others at Green Bay.[/list]</div></div>

Dealt with such type queries already.

[franksterr]

Re: Comrade Dudley Thompson is dead

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: R_C</div><div class="ubbcode-body"><div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: frankster</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Veracity of Agee information is corroborated by the history of CIA behaviour in many countries.</div></div>

I am interested in direct evidence of what the CIA allegedly did <span style="font-style: italic">in Jamaica</span> in the 70's.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: frankster</div><div class="ubbcode-body">From the book making of a Jamaican don</div></div>

Clifton Cameron?? Are you kidding me? </div></div>

Whats wrong with Clifton Cameron?
As to direct evidence of CIA activities in Jamaica when it comes to violent acts - Eventide.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Obviously frankster you have either not taken the question seriously or cannot back up your assertions so I am going to bow out of this thread. Before I go however, I want to share with you some things that Michael Manley himself said before he passed away in regards to why he lost the election in 1980.</div></div>


Informant a Thorn in Justice Dept.'s Side

BASSETERRE, St. Kitts and Nevis — Back in the heady '70s, when alleged drug baron <span style="font-weight: bold">Charles &quot;Little Nut&quot; Miller was living in Jamaica's slums</span>, he was Cecil Connor, <span style="font-weight: bold">a political enforcer.</span>

Today, Miller is the target of one of the U.S. Justice Department's most intensive and frustrating extradition efforts--a two-year court battle in this tiny Caribbean island nation that is made all the more confounding for U.S. law enforcement officials because, <span style="font-weight: bold">they acknowledge, Miller was once one of theirs</span>.

<span style="font-weight: bold">Working for what he called &quot;the underworld section&quot; of Jamaica's Labor Party in Kingston, he stated, he stuffed ballot boxes, intimidated voters, shot and wounded a clerk during a robbery and spent years in prison.</span>

As Connor, he told the jury, he smuggled marijuana and cocaine, attended gangland executions and laundered drug money..

Miller insists that he has been targeted in a political plot <span style="font-weight: bold">after working for the U.S. government for years.</span>

He would not confirm or deny during a telephone interview last week that he was once Connor. Asked about his testimony at the Shower Posse trial, Miller replied: <span style="font-weight: bold">&quot;I was used by the Americans originally in Jamaica and all the politics stuff there in Miami, and I just don't want to talk about it.&quot;</span>

http://articles.latimes.com/1997/dec/07/news/mn-61615

But another more recent Times news story appeared to confirm our more sinister interpretation of the CIA's clandestine history in Jamaica. Convicted drug baron Charles &quot;Little Nut&quot; Miller is a native of, and currently residing in, the tiny Caribbean island of St. Kitts. Times writer Mark Fineman posted an article dated December 7, 1997,<span style="font-weight: bold"> which detailed much of <span style="color: #FF0000">Miller's activity as a CIA </span>operative active in Kingston during the tumultuous 1970s. Miller operated under the cover of Cecil Conner, a &quot;political enforcer.&quot; </span>The article, which contained a number of devastating revelations similar to the &quot;Dark Alliance&quot; series (CIA links to crack cocaine sales in California), written by Gary Webb and originally posted in the San Jose Mercury News, contained the following accounts of covert U.S. intelligence activities in Jamaica and elsewhere:

http://www.libtv.com/7MAC/academy/CIA_reggae5.htm

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
Please note that he (a) did not blame the CIA and (b) accepted responsibility for promulgating policies (his own as well as those of the IMF) that ultimately lead to the ruin of the economy and defeat of the PNP at the polls.

The first quotes are from an interview with Hans J. Massaquoi, the Managing Editor of Ebony, in the February 1990 issue. I don’t have a link for you as this issue is not available on the web but if you happen to have a way to get a hold of it, the entire interview is very illuminating. It starts on page 110.

Here is a representative excerpt:

<span style="font-style: italic">Ebony: Looking back to October 1980 when you lost the election to Mr. Seaga, what do you think were the causes of your defeat?

MM: Where to begin? I think part of it was just the passage of time. Jamaica has a sort of ten-year tradition for changing governments, and that would have been a factor. But much more importantly, [our] society had to face enormous difficulties from 1977 onward when the first of the major adjustment programs had to be faced because of the collapse of export prices, the tremendous increase in oil prices and the effect that this had on the economy. And that meant that Jamaica went into a period of painful adjustment that in fact lasted for 11 years. </div></div>

All of the above is true.....but not the whole truth - He has been beaten so he now toed the line.
To deny the CIA destabilization efforts in Jamaica is pure naivety.

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Quote:</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
But by the time we faced the 1980 election, the people were for the first time experiencing the weight of that kind of crunch, through 1978 and 1979, and there were falling standards of living, <span style="font-weight: bold">as has been true all over the Third World</span>. And when people experience a falling standard of living, they tend to kick out whichever government is associated with that process. <span style="font-weight: bold">I think that was the main reason</span>.</span>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is another interview he gave, this time with Manning Marable a professor of history and political science and director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University. The journal is called ‘Progressive’. (It is available on the web but only with a subscription.)

<span style="font-style: italic">Progressive; July 1993, Vol. 57 Issue 7, p23

Q: During the late 1970s, your relationship with the International Monetary Fund got a great deal of play in the United States and in the Western media. Could you briefly recapitulate the basic problems you encountered and your negotiations? I recall that in April 1977, you accepted very harsh terms for addressing the balance-of-payments situation. Then later there was a reversal of your position vis-a-vis the IMF. How would you characterize those murky and complicated negotiations?

MM <span style="font-weight: bold">The great error I made was I grossly overestimated what the state could do</span>, how I could use the state as an economic machine, as a form of shortcut to development. <span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="text-decoration: underline">I learned that I was wrong</span></span>, and I'm never afraid to say so. <span style="font-weight: bold">The other thing I did was to fail to make an adequate connection between perceptional problems arising from the ideology of concern for the masses, for poverty, equality, and foreign policy, and its effect on the mind of the private sector. When working with the private sector, I am almost begging them to invest and produce and <span style="color: #FF0000">I am assuring them that we see them as a critical part of the engine of development. But they looked at the state activity and saw a threat.</span> They looked at the egalitarian ideology and perceived a threat. They looked at the foreign policy and perceived a threat. <span style="font-size: 17pt">And so they became part of the problem instead of part of the solution. </span></span>

Q: It was, in effect, a kind of capital strike.

MM: <span style="font-weight: bold">It was like a capital strike. </span>And as one accustomed to strikes from the other side, I understood that. My God, I thought, you really have to rethink this. If you really pull this out for the state, then you might regard the private sector as marginal, but you don't want them to be marginal because they are part of your philosophy of a mixed economy.</span> </div></div>

Again all true.......but not the whole truth.

[Blackstar*]

Re: Comrade Dudley Thompson is dead

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[Tuff Gong]

Re: Comrade Dudley Thompson is dead

This is the ninth in a series recounting close encounters with death by Jamaicans.

WHEN Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) soldiers slaughtered five men from the Central Kingston community of Southside in the early morning hours of January 5, 1978, Jamaica reacted with shock and disbelief.


<span style="font-style: italic"> GRIFFITHS… It was cold-blooded. I was very afraid </span>


<span style="font-style: italic">GRIFFITHS… I was crawling on my hands and knees when the firing started</span>

Five other men escaped the incident, known later as the Green Bay Massacre. Now, one of three surviving members of the group of 10 that made the trip to the rugged St Catherine terrain located in the Hellshire hills is counting his blessings, as he relived the epic drama that unfolded.

The men were caught in the middle of a covert military operation that lured them into an ambush in the promise of getting jobs paying $300 a week and the possibility of acquiring guns, a coroner’s inquest heard later.
“Green Bay is the worst thing that ever happened to me,” Delroy Anthony Griffiths, the only one who still lives in Jamaica, said.

“People are still talking about it, even though so many have died in Garden (Tivoli Gardens). Sometimes people stop me, wanting me to give them history. Sometimes they will give me money,” said the man who was 23 years old when the incident occurred.

Griffiths, now approaching 58, still lives in Southside and frequently traverses the Foster Lane, Laws Street, and Ladd Lane areas of the bruising inner-city community.
“They promised us jobs paying $300 a week, which was big money in those times,” Griffiths, who is also called ‘Jadda Brag’ and ‘Green Bay’, recounted to the Jamaica Observer in an interview last week.

“Them times I used to run Ladd Lane. After watching a show the night called Godfather, I heard the men talking about the trip and saying who don’t come meet a big man who giving out work, can’t come again. But that was a trick to draw out everybody. You were going to die, you were not going to get any work. It was just a trick,” stated Griffiths.

Initially, 14 men were recruited to make the trip, but only 10 went, as the others either had a change of heart or slept late. But Griffiths remembered the gory details of the operation that left a stain on the JDF.
“I said I didn’t want to know that there is work and I don’t turn up for it, because I had my children going to school, so I said I was going for myself,” he related.

“They woke me up the morning and I told my baby mother that I would soon return. One of the youth was sleeping and I pushed my mouth up to kiss him and said ‘Paulette, me nah bother kiss him, me soon come back’ and I put him down.

“They brought an ambulance and a van. I went into the blue van at Laws Street. When we reach, my teeth were hurting me. They took us to a spot at Hellshire and told us to stay ya so. They said that every man should stand one place and they set us up in front of the (high-powered) general purpose gun, which we didn’t know about. Then they took away the head one, ‘Saddle Head’ (Winston Hamilton) to where the big gun was, give him one shot and then turned the big gun on everybody,” said Griffiths.

“Anybody who was not hit by that gun, the macka (prickles) that you had to run into would rip you up and tear you up. I run away when the shooting started and while I was going through the macka, I met up on a soldier, so I turned and run off. He shot at me and I ran away on a lonely road until I reached on a little hill with the sea below,” he said.

“I spent the entire day in the bushes and made my way down from the rocks toward the sea, when I saw some fishermen way out, went on a rock and signalled an X sign to them. I took nearly 20 minutes to make the X sign and I saw a man put up his hand. The fishermen came towards me and said I had to tell them what’s going on. I said that the soldiers were coming and if they saw us, they would spray us with bullets.
“The water over that side was cold and shark-infested. My knees were knocking,” Griffiths recalled.

“I jumped off in the cold water, got into the boat and they took me toward Greenwich Farm. When I reached there, I took off toward Caymanas Park, before realising that I should be going the other way towards Southside. It was like I had lost my mind,” he said.

“I saw some men at a betting shop at Harbour Street and told them that they had just killed some men and they said I was joking. By this time, the other men who escaped went through the macka and into the hills. As it turned out, every man who was killed had a bullet wound in his head,” Griffiths said.

“I escaped because I went to watch a movie called Honour Thy Father the night before, and seeing the guns and people saying hit the dirt, so I was crawling on my hands and knees when the firing started.
Is that me use pon dem,” Griffiths stated.

Griffiths believes that the move was politically motivated, as Southside had always been known as a stronghold of the Jamaica Labour Party, and the ruling People’s National Party at the time was preparing for fresh elections, which came two years later and resulted in defeat for the then Michael Manley-led regime.

“Is because election was coming on why dem kill the man dem,” Griffiths maintained.
“Right after the shooting, police and soldier curfew the place (Southside). They had a curfew in the Barry Street/Ladd Lane area, but them other man (survivors) a fool because them put on black as them come back. The police and soldier them detain every man who wear black,” he said.

“I was just walking around, passing the soldiers (who did not recognise him), then I sit in my yard eating some fish and rice and I saw them coming, so I opened the door wide, but them didn’t say anything to me. I was trembling.

“The next Sunday morning, they had another curfew. They said that nobody can cross from one side to the next, but I beat them still and cross over, even with a draw of weed (ganja) in my pocket. I then went to Manchester to hide at my auntie, but after that Sister Benedict from Holy Family school contacted me to come and give a statement to Mr Brown from Flying Squad in her office. She said that no police could trouble me, so I went back into Kingston and gave the statement,” he said.

“After that (lawyers) Winston Spaulding and (Abe) Dabdoub took up the case and started to carry us to court in the mornings,” Griffiths said.
Ten members of the JDF, some of them members of the Military Intelligence Unit, were later slapped with charges related to the incident.

Seven of them were charged with murder, while three were charged with conspiracy to murder. Two of the murder accused, including the head of the operation Major Ian Robinson, were also cited for conspiracy to murder, after the coroner’s inquest held in Spanish Town found that persons were criminally responsible for the men’s death.
The JDF maintained that the men went to the firing range to collect guns smuggled into the island and were surprised by a special strike force which returned gunfire after the men shot at them. Residents of Southside demonstrated against the act, which prompted the inquest and later the trial.

All 10 were freed by a jury at the end of a trial in the Manchester Circuit Court between June and July 1982.
It also emerged in court that the JDF had used an L8 General Purpose Machine Gun (GPMG), as well as Self-Loading Rifles and Sterling sub-machine guns in the operation. The court heard that the GPMG was rarely used by the army.

Griffiths, who before had other run-ins with law enforcers, maintain that the Green Bay incident was the most devastating.
“Dem kill dem others fi nothing. It was cold-blooded. I was very afraid. I was trembling. I didn’t believe that I would have made it out alive,” he told the Sunday Observer.

“Even when I was running away and heading towards the sea, I kept hearing ‘bow, bow’, all single shots to the heads of those who were lying on the ground. The soldiers went over them and shot all of them who were lying on the ground,” he alleged. “That was wicked. The general purpose gun is one that them use in war and can fire over 600 rounds in seconds. When that lick yu, yu can’t move,” Griffiths argued.

“No man no have no time fi bawl out, because when the gun turn on, you just a scatter. When they fired it, is pure blue flame you see, the place just light up. It was a wicked gun.
“When I was crawling away on my belly, sand was stinging me in my face. The soldier was firing at me and missing and I couldn’t run back to the (entrance) gate at the firing range, because they would have killed me,” he said.

The men slaughtered were identified as Norman ‘Gutto’ Thompson, an outstanding Santos Football Club and Jamaica footballer, who had a previous conviction of shoplifting while the Jamaica team toured Bermuda; Glenroy Richards; Martin Howard; Winston Hamilton; and Trevor Clarke. Only Hamilton did not have a conviction.
Apart from Griffiths, those who survived were Rudolph Nesbeth, Anthony Spencer, Ian Brown, and a man known only by the alias ‘Fire Booger’.

Griffiths appeared to be closer to Thompson, a Rastafarian, who law enforcers presented as a man who had several acts of indiscretion.
“Me and Gutto Thompson were close. We used to cook, eat and sleep. We used to go jail all the time for vagrancies,” Griffiths stated.

“I went to jail for store lifting (shoplifting) too boss, me naw hide and talk, but me never used to trouble poor people things. I went to jail two times for store lifting,” he said.
“Is nuff time me go through death and come back. You see this (pointing to a missing left little finger), is a machete do this. A man chop me straight through me hand, but me wrong still. Him chop the finger deep and them finish cut it off a hospital.

“Me tek way something from a firm, straight up, me naw lie, but I don’t bother with them things anymore. Me a behave miself now,” Griffiths insisted.

<span style="font-style: italic">TOMORROW: Green Bay Massacre
survivor makes an appeal to the
Government</span>