The views expressed herein are those of the writer and do not represent the opinions or editorial position of I-Witness News. Opinion pieces can be submitted to [email protected].
It is clear to me that our education, justice and political systems are all dysfunctional.
Education, you must get it by going to school and cramming things into your brains that are quite often irrelevant to our way of life. Setting up young minds to think that some important functions in society are beneath their feeble educated minds. In fact, the current system is designed to prepare our young people for the corporate plantations of North America, Taiwan, Australia and the EU. If we do not find a way to abandon the current path that we are on, we will forever be divided by class and continue to turn out servants for the countries mentioned above. I suggest that we begin to restructure our education to be unique to us, to incorporate everyone and everything about us — Our Culture.
The Woman who is a caretaker of children or a grandmother who never went to the corporate school is looked upon as uneducated. But in fact, this is where early childhood education begins. This area is completely ignored. The fisherman is looked upon as nasty and always smelly, but we have enough fish in our waters to make all of our people self-sufficient if we pay attention and do it right. The fisherman is an important educator. The men and women who put their hands into the dirt to plant the seeds that produce our food, These most important educators are frowned upon as dirty and the corporate students will tell you that they don’t want any dirt on their smartphones.
Great educators are the musicians, mas men, artists, people of culture, the builders, garbage engineers, everyone must be part of the new thought pattern and viewed as important educators who make us uniquely who we are. We will not aspire to be like T&T, Barbados, USA or anyone else.
I am especially proud of the people of North Leeward and Bottom Town who take great pride in their environment and have started the clean-up process. The rivers must be cleaned and protected with environmental laws if the Politicians only have the will to do it. Signs must be posted to protect the cleaned areas and to discourage dumping. Recycling will go a long way in farming and protecting our land. The politicians can do important work to make our home better, but instead they choose to be agitators of civil warfare pitting ULP against NDP. The DRP and the Green party may seem insignificant now but they are the ones that the people will turn to as they grow fed up of the two failures. My fellow citizens, the civil servants, from the Prime Minister down, are your employees. You pay their wages and you chose them to do your work. You must hold them accountable and fire them when they are not working in your best interest.
I have suggested on a number of occasions that the Budget must be equitably divided by districts and run by the elected official of that district. Why would you elect them just to sit in Parliament and argue all the time and pay them high wages for it? So far I have not seen a single response from Government or the Opposition about this idea. Maybe they just don’t read. If the Budget is divided in this way, it is possible to have all of the representatives working for all of the people. Neither of the two front running parties wants this, because the Opposition cant wait to get power so that they could rub the faces of the ULP in the dirt like it was done to them. Thereby, the civil war continues. Their arrogance is on full display in the Parliament.
The Justice System continues to operate by a set of rules left to us by our former masters. It’s as if they never left, and in many instances they have not. This is a huge failure after 34 years of Independence.
Youths are sentenced to prison for non-violent offences and turned into hardened criminals with no hope of rehabilitation. Quite often, it happens as a result of foolish laws on the books from colonial days. Young people will get into mischief when they are idle, so judges should use common sense in some instances and not destroy the lives of our most precious resources simply to satisfy some out-dated law that your oppressor left for you to destroy yourself.
The educators of the church are the most disappointing of all. You do not hope to continue to feed the people your steady dose of lies and think that you will get away with it in this age of Enlightenment. No one has to pay you anything, no 10 per cent for your lies. You must teach the children how to connect their spirits with the spirit of God that they may think for themselves and know who God is. For the man from Nazareth was only known to a few for three years from age 29 to 32 so you don’t know anything about him, just like the ones who wrote books about him don’t know anything. No one is coming from anywhere to save anyone. You live right and do right or your light will never shine. I will like to know where the name Jesus came from, for there is no letter J in the Hebrew language and there was no J in the English language until the 1500’s. So no lord Jesus came to die that we might be saved. The man from Nazareth came to teach us how to live and we assassinated him. So you are not washed in any blood but his blood is on your hands for you had had a part in it. Bless all Rabbonai.
Lance
The opinions presented in this content belong to the author and may not necessarily reflect the perspectives or editorial stance of iWitness News. Opinion pieces can be submitted to [email protected].
While this writer is saying that he has not had a response from government and Opposition about dividing the budget among the districts for better equity. This idea, based on our political, physical and economical make up will be difficult to implement. However the NDP Constituency Development Fund is an idea that is pointing in the right direction. On the other hand the ULP has persons getting paid as local government officers and doing absolutely nothing in that respect.
Urlan, Your input is well appreciated but we must realize that anything worthwhile is not easy and I will like someone from NDP to put the Constituency Development Fund idea in print on this site so we could keep it in the Archives for reference.
You are the one that is dysfunctional and delusional. Get a life loser!
Jason, you don’t really deserve a reply because you are paranoid. Try and wean yourself off of whatever dope you are on.
Dear Lance,
The Gospels and the letters of Paul were written in Greek, not Hebrew. The name “Jesus” comes from a Greek transcription of a Hebrew name, of which the nearest transcription in English is Yeshua. Hebrew does not use the alphabet as we know it. The alphabet western Europeans passed on to us can be traced back, with several modifications, to the Greek alphabet. In the original Greek ‘Yeshua” becomes “Iesous”, – with pronunciation something like Yeah-so-oos. And again this is using the western European alphabet – in Greek it looks like this ?????? – not very English looking until you change it into the letters we now use, Iesous. That was the closest that Greek speakers could come to the original Hebrew pronunciation of the name. That Greek “I” moved into Latin and then into various European languages as either “I” or “J”. In languages like Spanish or German the letter “J” is still pronounced as the letter “Y” is pronounced in English. So Julius Caesar would be pronounced in both Latin and German as “Yulius”. Johan Sebastian Bach, the great German composer is not Johan as in English but “Yohan”. And the female name Julia is “Yulia”
There is also no word “Christ” in Hebrew. That too is a Greek word that attempts to convey the Hebrew concept of a “Meshiach” – Messiah in the western European spelling. The expected Hebrew Messiah would be an anointed ruler. So the translators of the a widely used Greek version of the Hebrew scriptures called the Septuagint, used a Greek word that meant someone on whom holy oil is poured, an “anointed” person – “Christos” (??????? often shortened to the first two Greek letters ? – chi and ? – rho, that you can still sometimes see on church vestments with the rho that looks like the letter “p” for us, superimposed on the chi or X; and that Greek initial letter is also the source of calling Christmas “Xmas”, much to the annoyance of some Christians).
So you see, although there is no Jesus or Christ in Hebrew that is because we are using names and concepts that were originally Hebrew, then turned into Greek, then turned into Latin and then into various European languages that were influenced by the language of the Roman Empire. Much the same thing happens today when we try to turn something written in Chinese into written English – first of all there is a difference in culture, and some meanings might not transfer exactly from one culture to another, then there is a different way of writing and we have to use the letters conveying an approximation to the sound of the words in Chinese. Sometimes we get close to the Chinese and sometimes we don’t – as in Beijing which used to be written in English as Peking. And even “Beijing” depending on how an English speaker pronounces it, might still not be exactly how the Chinese pronounce the name of their capital city. But we all know which city we are speaking about. And so whether the name of the man from Nazareth is pronounced Yeshua or Yesoos or Jesus, it’s the same person we are talking about.
Pat, I really appreciate your detailed explanation for the origin of the word Jesus. This is what this website is intended for us to do. I am quite sure that all who read this has received valuable knowledge as I certainly have. I also accept opposing view points because that is how we learn as iron sharpens iron.
JASON, careful now that granny doesn’t smack your legs again.
Dear IWN Conversations
Many thanks for a useful forum.
Lance raised some worthwhile issues and P. Comissiong provided some useful details about translation.
But to say it is the same person is incorrect as the Greeks translated specifically to claim Hebrew concepts as their own,including considered distortion, that some may bluntly call lies, very much as the KJB was produced to do.( check it out for yourselves, there is no intention to insult anyones beliefs).
Luckily there is plenty of research material to substantiate there is much more to the premise that translation alone accounts for any disparity in the spelling of names.
Unfortunately most people will not have the inclination or patience to seek and confirm for themselves.
To them it is far easier to accept what has been put in front of them or be abusive to people like Lance, who is clearly eager to learn about our collective history and admirably shows concerns for the Islands administrative infrastructure.
Remember conquerers tell their own story, not the whole story.
Well done to the other considered contributors, let us have constructive forum debates.
Johnny
Johnny, I want to let you know the very point you are making about him not being the same person is what was troubling to me all day long. I have noticed that an image came along with the translation that depicted Jesus as a white man contrary to the description of him with wool on his head and feet like bronze. And if he was a black man, then that speaks to us being Hebrews, Jews, Israelites. Respond and let me know what you think