COLONIAL MENTALITY: THE CATALYST FOR AFRICA’S POVERTY

Subject: Re: COLONIAL MENTALITY: THE CATALYST FOR AFRICA’S POVERTY
From: Bambay Lans Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 09:55:18 01/04/06 ()
Email Address: [email protected]

Message:
Mr. Mohamed A. Jalloh, is one Africans life more important or better than the other African’s life? Apparently, you are saying that Colonial Mentality.
You stated: “In my humble opinion, as I have consistently maintained since 1979, the only rational explanation for this pathetic spectacle is a testament to the historic virulence of Western European public immorality. Specifically, over the past 500 years, Africans have been led by immoral Europeans to believe that they are NOT as endowed as their fellow human beings. As a result, the typical Africans so afflicted have been reduced to a regressive mental state wherein they uniformly look NOT to themselves to improve their lives — as any rational person would — but to foreigners.”

Though I agree with you but if I am to take my case that has been unfolding for almost eight to nine years now since I started discussing on African forums, where I constantly talk about it, which every African on the planet and non-Africans alike have agreed is abstract abuse, mental anguish and total slavery yet, Africa and the Africans have themselves subjected to inflict a more adverse torture by failing to step to the plate and reject the same slave-like treatment that was meted to our ancestors. So where is the difference here? Should I blame the Europeans for such neglect? Mind you though the Whiteman was trying to make believe that I had done nothing significant in life, an effort that Africans themselves were propagating, if they are not propagating it currently, while at the same token barricading my effort to continue the things I had embarked upon, yet the Africans fail to see my pains, is that stemming from Colonial Mentality? I am using myself as the center piece here because I was the one celebrated to remind the world of the heinous brutality that was meted our people. This is where I draw the parallel between what I have witnessed as an individual African and Sengbe Piere who was sold into slavery. So therefore, is one African’s life better than the other and is all Africans who are sincere to themselves to acknowledge awareness of the abuses meted to me but fail to even discuss it for one reason or the other also guilty of Colonial Mentality? Some will cal it a personal affair but it involves the world to which Africa�s attention was triggered. It is as personal as any individual Slave or person that was within the Colonies during the colonial era. But all Africans are looking up to the Whiteman to salvage the enslavement of their fellow African in the 20th., 21st. Century. So is it a demonstration of how slavery took place and most of us were quiet about whatever we know that would have stopped it and even sold our people ourselves? Therefore, is one African�s life better than the others or less important than the others?
Can�t read over. Humbly awaiting your response.

Subject: Re: COLONIAL MENTALITY: THE CATALYST FOR AFRICA’S POVERTY
From: Chez Winakabs Europe
To: All
Date Posted: 08:38:08 01/04/06 ()
Email Address: [email protected]

Message:

Mr. Jalloh, I honestly agree with all you have purposefully made mention concerning our plight. it is all true as that is what ‘their’ grand design dictates – to pursue progress and continuity of their kind. I will not envy the west for their preconceived strategies on how to take us on. The ‘WHY’ to me is for their survival. They had more bloody wars than we have ever seen. Through dialogues and treaties they have come out of those wars.
I envisage the peoples of Sierra Leone to have an outward-looking attitude to those countries and continents that lie beyond the boundaries of Sierra Leone. I am an internationalists and reject emphatically this so called �colonial mentality� that currently predominates on our minds. In the age of e-commerce and ever faster and cheaper transport it seems bizarre that there is an obsessive, out-of-date push to limit our progress by reconstructing our past to paint our future. Mr. Jalloh, i did ask a question, “Did Egypt not enslave the Israelites?” Were their minds not doctored? I do agree with all what has happened and those hisorical acccounts should continue to echo but should not be a force to deter progress. progress can only come if we embrace such occurrences and learn from them. What have we learnt from those occurrences?

We need to discipline and trust ourselves in order to have a taste of collective economic freedom. Let me refer you to some ideas we coined up when some of us first came to this forum:

TO CONTINUE FROM THE LAST ISSUE ON PUTTING SIERRA LEONE ABOVE ALL ELSE

Posted by Chez Winakabs Europe on September 19, 2005 at 00:08:01:
I refer to our earlier discussion about having a body on the net to work towards a strategic agenda for our country before the next general elections (in 20 months time). I am proposing we set up an online body to garner forces with the ultimate aim of influencing the electorate as to what they should look for in a candidate. This body, if we all pledged and agree to form will also champion development in the country. i can see it working – I see a lot of brains on this forum and if we direct some of our time to this project, I fervently believe we will all be happy. I was up from 5am, thinking about our country and the people I have met on this forum. I am sincerely and profoundly happy that we can agree and disagree without too much fuss. i trust such will continue if we someday meet face to face. I have come up with these names for the online body. Others may come up with more names with the hope of choosing one name for our online body. If thirty of us come together on the net at an appointed time and date – we can bring back the laurels our country once had or aspired to have.
It is true that the secret of a successful nation in our existence is for the citizenry to know and understand their rights and obligations to the state, and the state to know and understand its responsibilities and obligations to its citizenry. For this can only come through an enlightenment process – educating the masses.
We all know both the state and its citizenry are not fulfilling their obligations. it is now time we endeavour to work towards getting our people to understand that they are the government and the government is them.
For those with website development skills – come together and plan out a site for our body.
For those with economic skills – come together and work out a finance committee
For those with legal skills – come together and work out a governing instrument in consultation with the rest of the body
For those with development skills – come together to identify, recognise viability and develop projects
For those with management skills – come together and look at the best ways of running the body and its agencies to be created.
Guys, please let us take this seriously – our success on this project will influence the way our nation will go. i trust it will not fail. The planning should not take us one month. I implore all to contribute and have people responsible for all aspects involved in the delivery of this project. If any body has more meaningful and beneficial contribution/s please do not hesitate to come up with it/them. I believe in complimentarity.

These are names I came up with – please make your contributions:

Council of Sierra Leoneans development corporation � COSLODEC

Council of sierra Leonean people � COSLOP

Council of sierra Leonean nation � COSLON

Council for the advancement of sierra Leonean people � CASLOP

Council for the advancement of sierra Leonean nation � CASLON

World council for the advancement of Sierra Leoneans � WOCASLON

World council of Sierra Leoneans � WOCOS

God has given us different talents to help ourselves and those incapable of helping themselves. Let us come together and use them. We have to have laws to protect us from misapplication of our development stratgies and processes.

Subject: Re: COLONIAL MENTALITY: THE CATALYST FOR AFRICA’S POVERTY
From: Mohamed A. Jalloh
To: All
Date Posted: 03:47:13 01/05/06 ()
Email Address:

Message:
Chez Winakabs Europe wrote on January 04, 2006:
“I am an internationalists and reject emphatically this so called �colonial mentality� that currently predominates on our minds. In the age of e-commerce and ever faster and cheaper transport it seems bizarre that there is an obsessive, out-of-date push to limit our progress by reconstructing our past to paint our future.”

Chez Winakabs Europe:

Thank you for your rejoinder. Your obvious patriotism towards SL is truly commendable. In the interest of accuracy, kindly permit me to state that:

Being an “internationalists,” is NOT incompatible with being convinced of the existence of Colonial Mentality among Africans. In order to see this, it is sufficient to recognize that Colonial Mentality is a state of mind imposed upon unwitting Africans by immoral Westerners, which puts Africans at a distinct disadvantage in dealing with the West. However, recognizing the existence of Colonial Mentality does not imply withdrawal by Africans from any dealings with the West. On the contrary, such recognition merely enhances the Africans’ ability to deal with Westerners on an EQUAL basis. Specifically, it disabuses afflicted Africans of the porous notion that they — and all ideas and other things African –are inherently inferior to any Westerner and all things Western.

So, one can still be an “internationalists,” and at the same time accept “emphatically this so called �colonial mentality� that currently predominates on our minds.”

Subject: Re: COLONIAL MENTALITY: THE CATALYST FOR AFRICA’S POVERTY
From: Critical Thinker
To: All
Date Posted: 09:28:53 01/04/06 ()
Email Address:

Message:
In addition to your proposal, someone else had proposed that we do something to help our hospitals or our schools. Constructive responses: None. Over the course of time I have realized that many Sierra Leoneans love to ‘talk the talk’. Very few a willing to ‘walk the walk’. While it is very possible that some of us are already helping out in our own ways, I find it disturbing that, as a people, we are yet to demonstrate that we can take collective actions that can have a positive impact on the destiny of our nation. Is this a consequence of colonial mentality? Perhaps it is, but until we start talking solutions and taking concrete actions to implement these solutions we will continue to walk in circles while we depend on the �guesstimates� of external actors who tell us what will work for us and what will not .

Subject: Re: COLONIAL MENTALITY: THE CATALYST FOR AFRICA’S POVERTY
From: Guma valley boy
To: All
Date Posted: 10:28:42 01/04/06 ()
Email Address: [email protected]

Message:
Great Thinker,
Takling and doing nothing,I think merely illustrate the colonial mentality of “obey and complain” that people generally espouse.

Subject: Re: COLONIAL MENTALITY: THE CATALYST FOR AFRICA’S POVERTY
From: CT
To: All
Date Posted: 13:36:00 01/04/06 ()
Email Address:

Message:
I see your point. As Sierra Leoneans, we need to be a little bit more proactive that we have been in the past.

Subject: Not guilty: Sierra Leone and diam
From: Cornelius Hamelberg
To: All
Date Posted: 16:40:36 01/03/06 ()
Email Address:

Message:
http://216.239.57.104/search?hl=en&lr;=&q;=Cyril+Kern+-+Sierra+leone+-++Sharon&btnG;=Search

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=95989

Subject: Re: Not guilty: Sierra Leone and diam
From: Saj Morgensten
To: All
Date Posted: 18:43:25 01/03/06 ()
Email Address: [email protected]

Message:
Cornelius,This posting is very interesting.For the purpose of making a contribution to the subject introduced,It would benefit forumites to understand clearly, the thesis of your argument on this particular thread?.

Subject: Re: Not guilty: Sierra Leone and diam
From: Cornelius Hamelberg
To: All
Date Posted: 19:30:18 01/03/06 ()
Email Address:

Message:
Shalom Aleichem,

Saj Morgensten,

I thought that � Progress� would be interested in the news item. He does not have progressive thoughts about Pan-Arabism in conflict with other nationalisms.

Of course you are probably regretting that you were not there in your country with a little big of buying money after reading this allegation : �The diamonds were to be collected in Sierra Leone, where they were to be sold to the Israelis at a price significantly lower than the official price on the London diamond exchange�

I have no thesis or argument or investments related to Sierra Leone diamonds. Diamonds are forever , sure and it�s always a case of more and more being taken for less and less.
This is old news and it’s a long way to the Israeli elections even as things heat up and people want to score some political points by throwing as mud as they can at Sharon the warrior and former bulldozer – to score some points.

I just listened in to Israel National Radio to a programme on the Crypto Jews of Brazil , and the programme ends with some shaky prediction of Peretz winning the election��

There ‘s no point in supporting anyone who wants to give away an atom or even a single millimetre of Jerusalem – that’s what I say.

In the meantime SaLoneans can stay focused on the Road to 2007�� by which time no one will be going to bed hungry but before then, anything CAN happen � especially when people have some mud to sling ��.

We cannot continue to be munkus and fools all the time even if we�ve only been exporting diamonds , gold, bauxite, iron ore, Rutile and fish for some years now as an independent nation.

Some people are more sophisticated than others. Some have five-year development plans others 44 year development plans � look at China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia. Others have no plan at all��. If you have time to take a look at this, do so: if you care to care to go back to 1979:

Subject: Re: Not guilty: Sierra Leone and diam
From: Allie Rainbow
To: All
Date Posted: 20:19:47 01/03/06 ()
Email Address:

Message:
I am of the opinion that it is an international conspiracy to deny Sierra Leoneans access into the profit making cartel that controls the diamond industry.

The Israeli happen to lucky players in the game because they control vital areas areas of cutting,polishing and marketing in Antwerp,Tel Aviv and New York.

What Sierra Leoneans should clamour for is a right to benefit from the opportunities that exist in the many sectors of the industry. I think that as international producers of the valued commodity,it is our God given rights to access all the opportunities and benefits that the diamond industry provides.

Subject: Re: Not guilty: Sierra Leone and diam
From: KLA
To: All
Date Posted: 12:29:56 01/04/06 ()
Email Address:

Message:

GREAT Research from a Raray man!!Diamonds from Salone are highly prized for their Clarity and as you noted,
the MRU has been the play ground for various wealth seekers.

At some point in the future we are going to demand compensation for Wealth that has been stolen from Afrika,BY EITHER JEWS,Arabs OR GENTILES.

tstm
xx

Subject: Re: Not guilty: Sierra Leone and diam
From: Allie Rainbow
To: All
Date Posted: 13:57:08 01/04/06 ()
Email Address: [email protected]

Message:
Let me caution you KLA that one does not have to be a raray boy,a square,an educated person or an illiterate to qualify for participation in the affairs of Sierra Leone.

It is colonial mentality that demand OTHER requirements like education and property in addition to basic CITIZENSHIP AND INTEREST from participants in State matters.

Regarding the professional spins given to the facts of issues that affect us Please be assured that “TRUTH NAR LEK SMOKE PERSON NOR ABLE HIDE AM
NAR IM POCKET”,because”POTTY LONG TAY EE GO CUT”

Subject: Re: Not guilty: Sierra Leone and diam
From: Chez Winakabs Europe
To: All
Date Posted: 06:31:21 01/04/06 ()
Email Address: [email protected]

Message:
Allie, as you correctly stated:

“What Sierra Leoneans should clamour for is a right to benefit from the opportunities that exist in the many sectors of the industry. I think that as international producers of the valued commodity,it is our God given rights to access all the opportunities and benefits that the diamond industry provides”.

As a people, we should aspire for greater heights in our global village. I see no collective ambition, all I have come across is individual and crony-interests ambitions. I know many Sierra leoneans who have qualifications in Gemmology, mineralogy and geology. I think we have to help ourselves by compiling a database of all Sierra leoneans with qualifications relevant to our development goals. We have to have an ambition. Through this database we can, through a consultative process, assess and identify those with the required talents that match our development goals. We can then work out what can be done to practically enhance their talents to be of use in our development goals. Only through collective eforts can this be done. We need to discipline and trust ourselves in order to have a taste of collective economic freedom. Let us go back to some of the ideas we coined up when some of us first came to this forum. If I will remember I posted this piece some months ago:

TO CONTINUE FROM THE LAST ISSUE ON PUTTING SIERRA LEONE ABOVE ALL ELSE

These are names I came up with – please make your contributions:

Council of Sierra Leoneans development corporation � COSLODEC

Council of sierra Leonean people � COSLOP

Council of sierra Leonean nation � COSLON

Council for the advancement of sierra Leonean people � CASLOP

Council for the advancement of sierra Leonean nation � CASLON

World council for the advancement of Sierra Leoneans � WOCASLON

World council of Sierra Leoneans � WOCOS

Subject: Re: Not guilty: Sierra Leone and diam
From: Critical Thinker
To: All
Date Posted: 21:50:33 01/03/06 ()
Email Address:

Message:
Allie, I agree with you that our people need to derive more benefits from our minerals. However, your suspicions of an international conspiracy against our diamonds may not be justified. Why would they conspire against Sierra Leone when Botswana has more diamonds than we have? It may make more sense for us to focus on managing our minerals as well as some other African countries do. If we do that well we will not have to worry about the actions of international consipirators.

Subject: Re: Not guilty: Sierra Leone and diam
From: Allie Rainbow
To: All
Date Posted: 10:17:43 01/04/06 ()
Email Address: [email protected]

Message:
Critical Thinker,
You are missing the critical point;For the records,I say no diamond producing country has or ever had total control over it’s diamonds.

Even before you and I were born,diamonds have been and continue to be controlled by the diamond cartel,a powerful group headed by DeBeers with historic ties to Great Britain and other powerful western governments and institutions.

Botswana is endowed with mostly kimberlite which is easy to control and Sierra leone has mostly alluvial which is found allover the country and very difficult to monitor and control.

The following excerpt from a book “the Diamond Invention” by Edward Jay Epstein,who wrote for the Wall Street Jornal,lends support to the historical contradictions,I am talking about regarding the business.

READ AND ENLIGHTEN YOURSELF ABOUT THE COLONIAL MENTALITY THAT OBTAINS IN THE DIAMOND BUSINESS.

Through the brilliant financial maneuvers of Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, the diamond cartel had succeeded in gaining control of virtually all the diamond mines in the world by the early 1950s. It had made its arrangements with the government of South Africa, the colonial administrations in Angola, the Congo and Sierra Leone, and with Dr. Williamson in Tanganyika. It was fully backed by the British, Belgian and the French governments, and it was recognized by every other government concerned as the official channel for the diamond trade. There were still unofficial channels, however, that the diamond cartel did not control: the smuggling routes that led from the diamond mines and diggings in southern and western Africa to entrepots such as Monrovia and Beirut. Since the African governments did not have either the techniques or resources at their disposal to interdict the diamond smugglers, Sir Ernest decided to recruit his own diamond soldiers. In December of 1953, he instructed his London office to track down and contact Sir Percy Sillitoe.

Sillitoe had been, until November of 1953, the head of the British counterespionage service known as MI-5. During the Second World War, he had organized one of the most ingenious spy operations in the history of espionage. It was called the double-cross system, and it involved converting all the German spies in England into British double agents. Since the Germans accepted the reports of these spies as bona fide intelligence, Sillitoe and his double committee, which included Harry Oppenheimer’s tutor at Oxford, Sir John Masterman, were able to feed the Germans a false picture of British activities. After the war, Sillitoe worked closely with American and French intelligence. In 1950, however, the British government was severely embarrassed by the defection of two of its diplomats from Washington “Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess” to Moscow, and the British security services came under increasing criticism. Sillitoe, who had reached the age of sixty-five, was allowed to retire in the midst of the scandal. Since retired intelligence chiefs are expected to fade quietly away, Sillitoe moved to the seaside town of Eastbourne in southern England and worked in a local sweet shop owned by relatives, selling chocolates and other confectioneries.

When Sillitoe received the invitation from Oppenheimer, he was behind the counter of his sweet shop. Within a matter of days, he had abandoned the confectionery and was on a plane flying to Africa.

At the airport in Capetown, he was met by Oppenheimer’s chauffeur and immediately driven to the village of Mulzenberg on the Indian Ocean. He arrived at a beautifully landscaped estate where Oppenheimer and his family were spending their Christmas vacation. In their initial meeting, Oppenheimer briefed Sillitoe on the smuggling problem. He explained that the smuggling of diamonds not only deprived De Beers of the value of the stolen diamonds, but far more serious, it threatened to undermine the monopoly prices for diamonds that De Beers had established. He estimated that somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of all the diamonds reaching cutting centers were smuggled goods. These illicit diamonds were undercutting De Beers’ prices. Moreover, if diamond dealers and cutters had an alternate source from which to buy their diamonds, they would be less willing to accept De Beers’ rigid conditions for doing business in the diamond trade. Oppenheimer was emphatic: He wanted the smugglers stopped.

Sillitoe admittedly had no knowledge about the diamond business, but he suggested that the techniques of counterintelligence that he had employed during the war against the Germans could effectively be used against smugglers. If some of the Individuals who illegally bought and sold diamonds could be identified, they could be “turned” into double agents for the cartel. These agents then could be used to manipulate the diamond smugglers higher up in the chain. To accomplish this feat for De Beers, Sillitoe suggested that he hire a half dozen top intelligence officers from the British secret service. These men would form the nucleus of a private intelligence service for the cartel.

After giving the matter some consideration, Oppenheimer accepted Sillitoe’s proposal. De Beers would provide the financial support, and Sillitoe would have carte blanche to recruit an elite core of agents for the “International Diamond Security Organization,” as it was eventually called.

Sillitoe’s education in the diamond business began in 1954 with a tour of the mines. At the Kimberley mines, De Beers security officers briefed him on the various ways in which employees had smuggled diamonds out of the mining areas in the past. The methods ranged from using rubber band catapults to fling the diamonds over the barbwire fences to having a surgeon hollow out a niche in an ankle bone in which diamonds could be concealed under a bandage. The most common means was for individuals to simply swallow diamonds and then recover them once outside the compound. Because of the minute size of diamonds, it was virtually impossible to detect them except by X-raying the entire body. However, employees could not be subjected to constant X-rays without exposing them to lethal doses of gamma rays and thereby endangering their lives. X-ray examinations, therefore, could only be given to a small proportion of randomly selected workers each day. At best, the X-rav machine was a psychological deterrent to theft. Like the closed-circuit television cameras that conspicuously scanned back and forth at the mines, X-rays were another demonstration to black workers of the white man’s magic. But once the employees understood that these electronic devices had only a relatively small chance of detecting smuggled diamonds, their value as deterrents was seriously impaired.

Sillitoe found that these security procedures were far too passive to prevent sophisticated thefts. He suggested instead that De Beers employ more aggressive and imaginative methods; for example, radioactive paints had been successfully used for the surveillance of enemy agents in England. (In one case, this paint had been applied to the shoes of a Soviet diplomat in London, and then his trail had been followed by means of a Geiger counter.) Sillitoe proposed that a few diamonds be radioactively “labeled” with an invisible paint and then be conspicuously left around in areas where employees were likely to steal them. Assuming that the radioactive bait would be snatched up, a Geiger counter would click the moment the diamond passed through the gates of the compound. The thief then would not be arrested but followed, and in time the radioactive diamond would be sold to an intermediary. The intermediary could then be followed with the Geiger counter. Once located, he could be turned into an informer.

Such exotic security measures resulted in the recovery of only a few diamonds, however. Sillitoe next learned that the cartel’s problem was not the trickle of diamonds being stolen from its South African mines but the flood of diamonds that were smuggled out of west and central Africa every year. With two of his staff assistants, Sillitoe traveled to areas outside South Africa from which most of the diamonds seemed to come. He went to Aquatia in Ghana, Freetown and Yengema in Sierra Leone, Bakwanga and Luluaburg in the Belgian Congo, and Dar-es-Salaam and Mwadui in Tanganyika. In each of these countries, he was able to make contact with the intelligence officers whom he had previously worked with in his capacity as head of British counterintelligence. Most of these countries were still British colonies in 1954, and his former comrades in arms were willing to extend him a good deal of unofficial cooperation. The first objective, as Sillitoe’s deputy explained, was “to set up an intelligence network which would penetrate this underground railroad round the world.”

In South Africa, most diamond mines were volcanic pipes, which could be isolated behind electrified ten-foot high barbwire fences. In central and west Africa, however, most diamonds were “mined” from streambeds that meandered over tens of thousands of miles of jungle. To recover these diamonds, natives needed only a shovel and a pan. Even though the governments had granted concessions to various diamond mining companies associated with De Beers, and had in theory banned anyone else from digging for diamonds, it was in practice impossible to enforce these regulations.

The problem was particularly difficult in Sierra Leone, where the river banks were littered with diamonds. Not only was the government unwilling to police this vast area to prevent illicit digging but the local authorities explained to Sillitoe that most natives believed “the soil of Sierra Leone belonged to the Sierra Leoneans,” and not the diamond companies. At night, gangs of “pot-holers,” as they were called, would dig up the river banks and disappear at daybreak with the diamondiferous gravel. The pot-holers would then either sell their diamonds to Lebanese traders or directly to Mandango tribesmen, who, in turn, smuggled them across the open border to Liberia. By one means or another, it was estimated that more than half of Sierra Leone’s diamonds were sold in Monrovia as “Liberian” diamonds. Even though Liberia had in reality no diamond mines of any significance, fictive “mines” were created in the jungles to account for this enormous production of diamonds.

After carefully studying the situation, Sillitoe concluded that it would be futile to attempt to end the illicit mining in Sierra Leone by pot-holers. Even if Sierra Leone’s under staffed colonial police could be induced to arrest thousands of these diggers, other natives would take their place panning the rivers and mudholes. Instead, he decided to concentrate his efforts on controlling Lebanese middlemen who were behind the illicit traffic.

Initially, Sillitoe’s men recruited a number of clandestine agents in Sierra Leone and Liberia who would pretend to be independent diamond buyers. After making contact with the Lebanese, these agents offered to buy large quantities of smuggled diamonds at much higher prices than the cartel’s real competitors were offering.

The quantity of diamonds available on the illegal market staggered Sillitoe. He found he needed more than $5 million in “buy” money to maintain the intelligence operation, and to obtain such a large amount of hard currency in a British colony required the permission of the British government. Sillitoe managed, however, to persuade the British authorities that diamonds were an important factor in Britain’s precarious balance of payment equation, and he was then quickly granted permission to spend hard currencies to buy up smuggled diamonds.

By making major purchases of diamonds in black markets, Sillitoe’s agents were able to ferret out the middlemen trafficking in diamonds. Then, through surveillance and intercepted mail, they traced the traffic from the diamond fields of Sierra Leone through the entrepots of Liberia to the wholesale markets in Belgium. It turned out that reputable European merchants, who were also customers of the cartel, had been surreptitiously financing the African smugglers and one of the principal buyers of the smuggled goods was the Soviet Union, which then critically needed industrial diamonds to retool its factories.

Sillitoe realized that the illicit diamond traffic could not be ended decisively as long as the smugglers had high rewards for their goods and only minimal risks of being captured. He therefore decided to raise the stakes for the smugglers by hiring private armies of mercenaries to ambush their diamond caravans in the jungles.

The most resourceful of these mercenaries was Fred Kamil, a Lebanese trader then in his twenties. Kamil had for years extracted money from smugglers on the route that led through the swamps from Sierra Leone to Liberia and which was known as the “stranger’s trail.” With a group of gunmen, he also waylaid merchants and travelers who came down the narrow trail. In 1956, Sillitoe’s organization offered Kamil a highly attractive deal. He would be supplied with information from undercover informers about the exact movements of diamond shipments from Sierra Leone to Liberia to facilitate his ambushes. In return, he would turn the diamonds over to a De Beers subsidiary, and he would receive one-third of their value in cash. Kamil agreed to the alliance, since it would also mean that he would have police protection in Sierra Leone.

Many of the ambushes were bloody affairs. A caravan of a dozen or so Mandango tribesmen would emerge from the jungle in Sierra Leone and head for the bridge across the Mao River, which was the Liberian border. Suddenly, mines and flares would be detonated all around them. Then Kamil’s mercenaries would open fire with hunting rifles. The tribesmen, who were not hit, would instantly surrender and turn their diamonds over to the mercenaries. It was a “diamond war,” Kamil later explained in his account of these exploits.

As the risks of smuggling diamonds to Liberia greatly increased, and caravan after caravan was intercepted and plundered by mercenaries, the Lebanese dealers saw little alternative but to sell their contraband diamonds in Sierra Leone. This meant that the dealers had to pay a tax on the diamonds. The Sierra Leone government facilitated these transactions by lowering the export tax on diamonds.

Once the illicit diamonds had been contained in Sierra Leone, De Beers established a string of buying offices in the jungle. Each buying office was no more than a corrugated iron hut with a barred slit through which their agent did business with the pot-holers. Each agent was given a set of sample diamonds, with which he compared those diamonds offered for sale, and a strongbox full of Sierra Leonean currency. When he ran out of currency, he radioed the cartel’s office in Freetown, and a plane was sent out to drop another box of currency next to his trading post. De Beers sent some of its most promising recruits in London into the jungles of Sierra Leone to train as diamond buyers. In short order, the potholers became fully accustomed to dealing with these well tailored buyers in the strange huts.

By 1957, Sillitoe decided that he had successfully completed his mission for the cartel. He quietly disbanded his International Diamond Security Organization, though many of his agents and mercenaries continued working directly or indirectly for the cartel, and he returned to his chocolate shop in Eastbourne.

Subject: Re: Not guilty: Sierra Leone and diam
From: Critical Thinker
To: All
Date Posted: 13:30:48 01/04/06 ()
Email Address:

Message:
Alie thanks for the article. It was informative. Your point that no country has had total control over its diamonds may be true but, in my opinion, we are still properly managing the little we control in order to derive the optimal benefits from them. Let me give you one example. Angola recently purchased state-of-the-art cutting and polishing equipment that would help them to increase the value of the diamonds they export. Why is it taking us a long time to do this? Our gem stones may be difficult to monitor but the little that we can monitor does not benefit us as well as they should. Thanks again for the article.

Subject: Re: Not guilty: Sierra Leone and diam
From: Allie Rainbow
To: All
Date Posted: 14:31:41 01/04/06 ()
Email Address: [email protected]

Message:
Remember Thinker,that Sierra Leone had a similar venture in the late 1960’s….the rest is history.
Knowing how the industry works,it highly improbable that the Angolan government or local interest are in control of the “state-of-the-art cutting and polishing business in Angola.

Subject: Re: Not guilty: Sierra Leone and diam
From: SELL OUT
To: All
Date Posted: 12:30:17 01/04/06 ()
Email Address: [email protected]

Message:
Thank You for the Epstein article Allie;

I think that colonial mentality has prevented our own eminent researchers in diamonds from presenting the whole picture of the diamond industry’s background to Sierra Leoneans.

How can we expect otherwise? Considering that it is the cartel’s culture to hire PAID AGENTS to rob and cheat inorder to enable it’s strategic control of the business.

LIKE SLAVERY EN WITCH,IF HOUSE NOR SELL YOU,STREET NOR GO BUY YOU.

Subject: Re: Not guilty: Sierra Leone and diam
From: NAIMBANA
To: All
Date Posted: 19:28:15 01/04/06 ()
Email Address: [email protected]

Message:
LEH GOD JUDGE ALL DEM WAN DEM WAY DAY JOIN FOR DESTROY SA LONE KNOWINGLY,EN DIRECT DEM WAN DEM WAY DAY HELP DESTROY SA LONE UNKNOWINGLY.

Subject: Re: Not guilty: Sierra Leone and diam
From: Cornelius Hamelberg
To: All
Date Posted: 20:53:13 01/03/06 ()
Email Address:

Message:
Weep not child: The diamonds are yours as well as Alhaji Mohamed Swarray Deen�s. Business is business and Sierra Leone is probably doing good business. No one is denying your rights to �access all the opportunities and benefits that the diamond industry provides.�
There�s also China and India among many other players. I read the Rapaport news regularly. Here�s the latest : http://www.diamonds.net/

Lev Leviev has been doing a lot of good in Sothern Africa.

There�s Namibia:
http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search?p=Lev+Leviev+in+Namibia&prssweb;=Search&ei;=UTF-8&fr;=fp-tab-web-t-1&fl;=0&vc;=&x;=wrt&meta;=vc%3D
In Angola:
http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search?p=Lev+Leviev+in+Angola&prssweb;=Search&ei;=UTF-8&fr;=fp-tab-web-t-1&fl;=0&vc;=&x;=wrt&meta;=vc%3D
In Botswana
http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search?p=Lev+Leviev+in+Botswana&prssweb;=Search&ei;=UTF-8&fr;=fp-tab-web-t-1&fl;=0&vc;=&x;=wrt&meta;=vc%3D

Subject: TODAY’S QUOTE
From: WISE ONE
To: All
Date Posted: 13:04:25 01/03/06 ()
Email Address:

Message:
1/3/2006

Today’s Quote

To the world you might be one person, but to one person you might be the world.

-Unknown

Subject: For Mr. Jalloh: Colonial Mental;ity
From: Bambay Lans Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 10:50:23 01/03/06 ()
Email Address:

Message:
Mr. Jalloh I am posting some information that I find very comforting and encouraging that I need to discuss. However, I do not have time at this moment to do so but would want readers to gain something from your encounter with Rev. Emile.
“That day, right in front of Trinity Church, Emile stopped me as I was
hurrying to catch a poda-poda to take me to Model School, from where I would
eventually get back to campus at FBC. Fixing me with his familiar bearded
stare, he said: “Borbor Jalloh, you nor dae ‘fraid for you life, enh?” I
replied, feigning ignorance of the reason for the question: “Waetin ar do
now, Rev.?” Without missing a beat, he said: “Nar you dae go challenge Shaki
in govt., borbor?!”
I eventually convinced Emile that I had not only patriotic, but also very
selfish reasons for taking that risk: I wanted to protect my own future as
well as those of my fellow S/Leoneans. And, as I pointed out to Emile,
previewing a strategy that I would later use in my 1985 public lecture at FBC
against Momoh’s APC govt.’s intended floatation of the Leone in 1986, I never
mentioned even once Shaki’s name or the APC in my article. I merely laid out
the nature of devaluation and why it would be a predictable disaster for S/L.
Rev. Emile Jones eventually agreed with me that mine was a risk worth
taking when I pointed out that, if Sam Metzger (Editor of “We Yone”) had
thought that I was openly challenging the APC, he would never have agreed to
publish my article in the very APC’s party paper, “We Yone.” Only then did
Emile say to me in parting: “God go wit’ you, Borbor Jalloh.”
Would you agree that if the majority of Sierra Leoneans had your spirit and approach we would have never had the devaluation, inflation, greed and poverty that led our nation to an eleven years brutal war?

Subject: Re: For Mr. Jalloh: Colonial Mental;ity
From: Bambay Lans Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 15:51:54 01/03/06 ()
Email Address: [email protected]

Message:
Mr. Jalloh, I want you to please understand that I take great delight in this very revolutionizing artwork of yours to engage in a debate with one, your junior in age and wisdom, something that most Africans see as demeaning to their integrity, but the fact remaining that you value people�s readiness to be informed and their level of understanding, makes me respect you the more. So please be patient with me as I do my best to give you the opportunity to elaborate on the phantom that has and is steadily destroying our continent and peoples. In view of that therefore, I will take my time to respond to the following well expressed thoughts so that we see what is best for Sierra Leone. In the paragraph following you wrote:
Bambay Lans Kamara:
�As usual, you make valid points above. In order to advance the discussion, kindly permit me to focus only on the areas that I humbly believe require clarification.
1. Whereas slavery did exist in Africa before the Europeans instigated the Atlantic slave trade, and even today, among some segments of the African population, the key distinction between the Atlantic slave trade and the others is one of scale. As I put it in my last posting:
“However, in my humble opinion, the primary blame continues to rest upon those who instigated the LARGE scale trafficking in human beings — the European slave traders.” [Emphasis added]. �
Sir, let me humbly, once again, acknowledge this very ecumenical fact that scale and the nature of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade was barbarous. That trade paved the way for the African sufferings endued among the precipices of an inaccessible mountain.
However, this fact haven been established by the visible visitations of inadequacies or unavailability of life essentialities that has and is constantly resulting in massive sufferings and deaths, which has been discussed over and again, makes it timely prudent therefore, to give alternate solutions to salvage the problems. What is the way out for Africa should be our focus now. As we have established the causative agents, I am of the hope that we should by now proceed to outlining the possible solutions to the problems, the alternative to what we now have: the IMF, World Bank, devaluation, Inflation, bad governance or what have you.
Secondly, you stated in the statement/s following that: � Africans are not blameless in the problems that afflict Africa. As I have consistently maintained in my published writings on the subject of Africa’s underdevelopment, African politicians, particularly those in leadership in post-independent Africa, are unwitting co-conspirators with foreigners in the pillage and plunder of our continent.�
This also is an indisputable fact . The politicians are collaborators in the problems that afflict Africa. However, we are missing the reason that turned politicians the way they operate? Let us think of the numerous coup-de-tats that have deposed African leaders. Let us start with people like Osagifo Nkwame Nkruma of Ghana, think of Thomas Sankara, Samuel Kanyon Doe. Haile salassie, Patrice Lumumba. Of course in Nigeria they were camp de coup-de-tat. The African assemblage became a Parapet of Military personnel. ECOWAS, particularly, had in her charter, authorized coup de tat as a means for the removal of governments that are viewed as corrupt governments. When junior officers started taken power, the use of arms to remove governments, in some cases, non-corrupt governments were dismantled, replaced by military governments. This in itself brought a kind of a pendulum in the African political stage. It brought a discontinuation of initiated programs and brought a sense of insecurity on the minds of a majority of, if not all African leaders who saw themselves as fouls in hammocks. In discussing the leaders as collaborators, we must not forget to address their insecurities caused by the array of coup-de-tats, which sometimes left most countries coffers empty that precipitated into their participation as collaborators. These coups that created these insecurities for the most part, is responsible for their partaking in the deals they received from International Organisations such as the IMF and World Bank.
Moving on, in the following you also stated: �Indeed, as I have also written, even the general population of do-nothing, “how-for-do; God-dae” ordinary citizens in African countries have unwittingly contributed to their own problems by effectively acquiescing in the rape of their own future.� Here there is a slight contradiction for the facts these people have no alternative. If there are alternatives one would characterize people as you have as: do-nothing, “how-for-do; God-dae.”
Prior to 1980 Sierra Leoneans were largely hardworking people because majority Sierra Leoneans are proud people who would not wish to be looked down upon. But when the jobs left, the prices went skyrocketing, school and college tuitions went caboose, prices for books went (excuse me?) farm equipments and tools went unaffordable, food went (you are not my type,) people could hardly get what to eat let alone what to plow. When transportation went higher and higher each day, then where was the alternative? We have to thank our starts and our families who sacrificed for us to go to college and graduate. Some of us have to congratulate ourselves to have graduated from high school and college at all. Nonetheless, I see your point that Africans contributed towards our problems but the majority especially Sierra Leoneans do not have alternatives.
Following are some key areas Africans must start making drastic but cautious changes:
The African Union must devise a method by which African Democracy must be improved. Over the years we saw a transformation of some Military Heads of States in to democratic governments. But the African countries must first and foremost stop rewriting their constitutions to suit their dubious intensions and means to accomplish them. This rewriting of constitutions is what arms most of them to lead corrupt lives. There has to be established constitution the must take reasons for their amendment and the Institutions that Amend these constitutions must be disallowed from doing so for personal reasons.
Secondly, ECOWAS must re-examine the section within their charter that stipulated the manner by which corrupt leaders must be deposed. Also, they must include in their charter mandates that allows them not to recognize personnel who come to power through brutal means as they did when Johnny Paul Koroma took power in Sierra Leone and was disallowed in the 1997 ECOWAS meeting. Disallowing him would send a clear message to military personnel that they have to find democratic means to come to power. But as they set precedence, they must stick to it and not do it to just a cross section of people while they allow others in their midst. That will be the cradle for instability due to dishonesty. Countries must ensure their constitutions are respected and effective by giving the appropriate bodies who themselves will be held accountable by the what is within the constitution and not a President�s powerful message or some parastatals message to prostitute or rape the constitution.
Countries must re-energize their national�s love of their countries in them, which for the most part had long gone.
Now I live you to give us the Economic alternative to the IMF.
Once again thank you for enduring me. It is our country; it is our right and responsibility therefore, we must contribute in any little or special way towards her development. In your encounter with Rev. Emile, you said : �I eventually convinced Emile that I had not only patriotic, but also very selfish reasons for taking that risk: I wanted to protect my own future as
well as those of my fellow S/Leoneans.�

Subject: Re: For Mr. Jalloh: Colonial Mental;ity
From: Bambay Lans Kamara
To: All
Date Posted: 18:18:14 01/03/06 ()
Email Address: [email protected]

Message:
Mr. Mohamed A. Jalloh, please be reminded that you are putting your case across with the utmost civility, responsibility and seriousness it deserves, and as such, I would advice the readers that I am not in any way challenging you but as your message was not receptive in 1979 must have stemmed from some reason that I am trying tooth-and-nail to unveil in our dialogue. So I would admonish you to stay the course and not to divert in your approach at all. For if you do, readers would conclude that your message was not received due to the reasons that caused you to divert your course. So please stay the course as you have magnificently made most readers think. I am sure your exercise on this issue will serve as a lesson to our government and all African governmental personnel who read our dialogue. I thank you. Do you know a Mr. A. B. Bah from Kamakwie? He too is a graduate from FB.C. I believe he graduated in 1978 or 1979. We taught in the same school from 1980-83.

Subject: ALTERNATIVE TO WESTERN UNION?
From: Bossman2
To: All
Date Posted: 08:55:38 01/03/06 ()
Email Address:

Message:
Does anyone know whether there are other companies that transfer money to Freetown from the US apart from Western Union?

Subject: Re: ALTERNATIVE TO WESTERN UNION?
From: Banker
To: All
Date Posted: 03:46:18 01/04/06 ()
Email Address:

Message:
Yes, Money Gram

Subject: Re: ALTERNATIVE TO WESTERN UNION?
From: Bossman2
To: All
Date Posted: 08:27:58 01/04/06 ()
Email Address:

Message:
Thank you very much.

Subject: VERY , VERY HOT MENTAL
From: CHIEFDOM SCHOOL TEACHER
To: All
Date Posted: 14:05:00 01/02/06 ()
Email Address:

Message:
–1. WHAT VERY COMMON WORD IS SPELLED THE SAME WAY IN NINE LANGUAGES ( English, French, German, Swedish, Spanish, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, and Portuguese) ?

–2. LIST THREE WORDS (with a minimum of 14 letters) THAT HAS ALTERNATING VOWELS AND CONSONANTS .

–3. WHAT SEVEN LETTER WORD CONTAINS ELEVEN WORDS SPELLED WITH CONSECUTIVE LETTERS ?

–4. WHICH WORD IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE IS THE ONLY WORD WITH EWE ORIGIN (Ewe is spoken in Ghana and Togo) ?

–5. LIST FIVE WORDS (of less than 10 letters each) WITH ALL THE VOWELS LISTED IN ALPHABETIC ORDER.

Subject: Re: VERY , VERY HOT MENTAL
From: APH
To: All
Date Posted: 17:50:41 01/02/06 ()
Email Address:

Message:
1. SAUNA

2. Hamamelidaceae

3. Therein…could be 11 or 13 depending on the Google source.

4. Voodoo

5. abstemious, adventitious, caesious, facetious, and sacreligious.

Subject: WISE ONE
From: TODAY’S QUOTE
To: All
Date Posted: 11:23:11 01/02/06 ()
Email Address:

Message:
1/2/2006

Today’s Quote

Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.

-Alexis Carrel

Subject: Re: WISE ONE
From: Cornelius Hamelberg
To: All
Date Posted: 15:42:49 01/02/06 ()
Email Address:

Message:
Words come to mind, and they are words to share: T.S�s:

Murder in the Cathedral (1935)

Destiny waits in the hand of God , not in the hands of statesmen.
They speak better than they know, and beyond your understanding.
They know and do not know, what it is to act or suffer.
They know and do not know, that action is suffering
And suffering is action. Neither does the agent suffer
Nor the patient act. But both are fixed
In an eternal action, an eternal patience.
To which all must consent that it may be willed
And which all must suffer that they may will it,
That the pattern may subsist, for the pattern is the action
And the suffering, that the wheel may turn and still
Be forever still.
Men learn little from others’ experience.
But in the life of one man, never
The same time returns. Sever
The cord, shed the scale. Only
The fool, fixed in his folly, may think
He can turn the wheel on which he turns
Purpose is plain.
Endurance of friendship does not depend
Upon ourselves, but upon circumstance.
But circumstance is not undetermined.
Unreal friendship may turn to real
But real friendship, once ended, cannot be mended.
Sooner shall enmity turn to alliance.
The enmity that never knew friendship
Can sooner know accord.
All things become less real, man passes
From unreality to unreality.
God is leaving us, God is leaving us, more pang, more pain, than birth or death.
The last temptation is the greatest treason:
To do the right deed for the wrong reason.
Servant of God has chance of greater sin
And sorrow, than the man who serves a king.
For those who serve the greater cause may make the cause serve them,
Still doing right: and striving with political men
May make that cause political, not by what they do
But by what they are.
Saints are not made by accident. Still less is a Christian martyrdom the effect of a man’s will to become a Saint, as a man by willing and contriving may become a ruler of men. Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity. Not so in Heaven. A martyr, a saint, is always made by the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. A martyrdom is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, not lost it but found it, for he has found freedom in submission to God. The martyr no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of martyrdom. So thus as on earth the Church mourns and rejoices at once, in a fashion that the world cannot understand; so in Heaven the Saints are most high, having made themselves most low, seeing themselves not as we see them, but in the light of the Godhead from which they draw their being.
You shall forget these things, toiling in the household,
You shall remember them, droning by the fire,
When age and forgetfulness sweeten memory
Only like a dream that has often been told
And often been changed in the telling. They will seem unreal.
Human kind cannot bear very much reality.
The church shall be open, even to our enemies.
We are not here to triumph by fighting , by stratagem, or by resistance,
Not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast
And have conquered. We have only to conquer
Now, by suffering. This is the easier victory.
You would bar the door
Against the lion, the leopard, the wolf or the boar,
Why not more
Against beasts with the souls of damned men, against men
Who would damn themselves to beasts. My Lord! My Lord!
You think me reckless, desperate and mad.
You argue by results, as this world does,
To settle if an act be good or bad.
You defer to the fact. For every life and every act
Consequence of good and evil can be shown.
And as in time results of many deeds are blended
So good and evil in the end become confounded.
It is not in time that my death shall be known;
It is out of time that my decision is taken
If you call that decision
To which my whole being gives entire consent.
I give my life
To the Law of God above the Law of Man.
Those who do not the same
How should they know what I do?
We did not wish anything to happen.
We understood the private catastrophe,
The personal loss, the general misery,
Living and partly living;
In life there is not time to grieve long
But this, this is out of life, this is out of time,
An instant eternity of evil and wrong.
In the small circle of pain within the skull
You still shall tramp and tread one endless round
Of thought, to justify your action to yourselves,
Weaving a fiction which unravels as you weave,
Pacing forever in the hell of make-believe
Which never is belief: this is your fate on earth
And we must think no further of you.
We praise thee, O God, for thy glory displayed
in all the creatures of the earth,
In the snow, in the rain, in the wind, in the storm,
in all of thy creatures, both the hunters and the hunted,
For all things exist as seen by thee,
only as known by thee, all things exist
Only in thy light, and thy glory is declared
even in that which denies thee;
the darkness declares the glory of light.
Those who deny thee could not deny, if thou didst not exist;
and their denial is never complete,
for if it were so, they would not exist.
They affirm thee in living; all things affirm thee in living;
the bird in the air, both the hawk and the finch;
the beast on the earth, both the wolf and the lamb.
Therefore we, whom thou hast made to be conscious of thee, must consciously praise thee, in thought and in word and in deed.
O father, father
Gone from us, lost to us,
The church lies bereft,
Alone,
Desecrated, desolated.
And the heathen shall build
On the ruins
Their world without God.
I see it.
I see it.
Wherever a saint has dwelt, wherever a martyr has given his blood for the blood of Christ,
There is holy ground, and the sanctity shall not depart from it
Though armies trample over it, though sightseers come with guide-books looking over it;
From where the western seas gnaw at the coast of Iona,
To the death in the desert, the prayer in forgotten places by the broken Imperial column,
From such ground springs that which forever renews the earth
Though it is forever denied. ”

(T.S.Eliot

Ash-Wednesday (1930)

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the ag�d eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?
Because I do not hope to know again
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the bless�d face
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen.
Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.
This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.
White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.
Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated