NOW that the Bermuda Independence Commisison (BIC) is pow-wowing with the United Nation's Decolonisation Committee, it has met (or will be meeting) with a French Canadian (at least Quebec holds free and fair referendums on the subject of Independence from Canada); a Cuban (not much voting of any kind there); a Bolivian and a Syrian (a country that has dominated Lebanon as an unofficial colony since the military invasion and where opposition to the dictatorial Assad regime at home is frequently stifled by the secret police in the form of summary executions).

Ahead of the BIC lie similar experiences with representatives from Somalia (less a country than a warring collection of rival, gangster-led fiefdoms), Cambodia (home of the notorious and genocidal Khmer Rouge), China, Cote D'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Liberia, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Mali, Chad, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Libya, Zimbabwe and, of course, Haiti, the Poor Man of the Western Hemisphere which can boast of very few successes after more than 200 years of Independence from France.

The UN's Decolonisation Committee is a sick joke. I could write volumes on the status and instability of the countries that compose it.

Yet they are going to lecture us on the benefits of sovereignty? They are going to talk to Bermudians about how to create a civil society where the rule of law prevails? It's as self-defeating as getting Jack The Ripper to conduct a women's self-defence course.

Communist China, even now threatening the future Independence of Taiwan, is attempting to bribe Caribbean islands for their votes in the United Nations.

Communist Cuba (now a favourite playground for some PLP politicians and their supporters) is a society that relentlessly squashes human rights, individual liberties and freedom of expression (although Fidel Castro does run the largest state-sponsored sex tourism industry in the Western Hemisphere; maybe that's the appeal of Cuba to some Bermudians).

The dictatorship in Syria not only clamps down on individual rights at home but exports terrorism by supporting the Islamic fascists operating in its colony Lebanon, among them Hamas and other terrorist groups that regularly blow up innocent women and children.

The civil wars and cornucopia of corruption that plague the Ivory Coast, Congo and Sierra Leone are in the headlines every day.

Fidel Castro's pal, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, is exporting arms to Colombia's narco-terrorists and other groups that constitute a grave transgression against that country's national sovereignty.

Even the well-intentioned but weak UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has, through his chief of staff and primary adviser, Mark Malloch Brown, admitted changes have to be made to stop the flagrant and widespread legal and human rights abuses committed by member nations if the UN is to maintain a shred of credibility.

To accept advice and "assistance" from the United Nations Special Committee on Decolonisation, you have to be either crazy, deluded or suicidal. There are no other explanations. I am perplexed that Chairman Bishop Vernon Lambe, a Christian, would even sit at the same table with representatives of some of these Communist and totalitarian dictatorships ? tyrants, crooks and atheists to the man.

Instead of talking to the henchmen of psychopaths like Castro and Robert Mugabe, his commission would do well to interview the refugees from their regimes. They are not hard to find. There are millions of them who fled the homelands and are now living in the UK, Europe, US or Canada.

So far the of the BIC has confirmed my belief that its final report is predictable. That most of what we learn from its deliberations will be misleading or irrelevant. That it was formed to give a veneer of respectability to the Premier's grand passion. I had hoped these were some sensible members of the Progressive Labour Party Government who would speak up against Bermuda committing suicide. But all we get is embarrassed silence.

My daughter would like to attend the public meetings. I have discouraged them. Firstly ? the rent-a-crowds turning up at these meetings are stacked in favour of pro-Independence activists. They are being dominated by the vocal minority ? or mobocracy.

Secondly ? the venues chosen. Fewer and fewer families attend football games at these sporting sites on weekend afternoons; the hooliganism and criminality are becoming pandemic. Women should certainly not to be encouraged to set foot at these clubs at night ? the nature of criminality in Bermuda today has made many of us prisoners in our own homes after dark. Even there our safety is uncertain.

IT is 10.30 p.m. and I have just returned from the public meeting on Independence hosted by the Bermuda Independence Commission for the benefit of the United Nations' Decolonisation Committee ? and still in session at the St. George's Cricket Club as I write this.

Repeatedly we were told that this and future meetings at other venues were for the benefit of Bermudians wishing to make verbal submissions to the Commission and the visiting UN Committee.

There was much talking, mostly from the stage. There was a heavy TV camera and reporter presence ? somewhat intimidating for the average soul. There were many mutually congratulatory and ingratiating laterally addressed statements from the stage.

Every UN committee member responded to each submission from the floor (such as there was time for between the interminable ? and largely irrelevant ? how-my-country-achieved-Independence-and-managed-the-costs stories).

Thrice over we heard from Papua New Guinea and of its many tribes and languages (by the way, do they still occasionally eat one another there?) Then there was St. Lucia and its highly praised bananas ? highly praised from the stage and, later, highly praised from the floor.

After a lengthy introduction, the meeting was opened to the floor and immediately the first contributor railed against the Press, in particular , for not publishing "verbatim" reports of the long, meandering and emotional submissions made at the previous meeting.

Then came this meeting's long, meandering and emotional submissions ? monologues, really ? by those who were deeply ashamed of being a colonial Bermudian.

One man stood up and complained of the intimidating force the Bermudians For A Referendum group was applying to poor (brainless?) Bermudian passers-by, who were regularly being pressured into signing a petition predicated on defending their democratic rights!

Then came several (in my personal opinion quite obviously pre-selected) submissions neatly covering those areas the BIC wanted covered.

I too had plucked up the courage for a short but positive submission to make about all the really good things which accrue to those of us who, irrespective of the pigmentation of our skin, have made the most of Bermuda's ties with the UK and, by extension, the European Union. But short of wrestling the microphone from someone ? no chance, sir! None whatsoever. Nil, rien, nada, nichts. Finito.

I believe what we have here is a case of a commission and the visiting committee actually filibustering its own public "fact finding" hearings.

There is some good news, though. At least the UN committee is paying for its own trip here.

Could someone let the UN committee know that it was not actually Britain which was responsible for imposing segregation on Bermuda in the 1920s, '40s and '50s, as one visiting gentleman attested: it was, in fact, Bermudians who did this to their fellow Bermudians.

YOUR columnist Alvin Williams writes (, March 24) that "since some believe that it is in Bermuda's best interest to remain a British Overseas Territory, then logically we should embrace the HSBC take-over (of Trimingham Brothers) . . ."

The other side of that coin, equally inconsistent as those who do not want "Independence", is the Progressive Labour Party position. It has always had "Independence" in its platform, yet it was under the PLP ? and of the PLP ? that both the Bank of Bermuda and Trimingham's have been sold to HSBC. It is also the PLP that has increased our dependency on foreign labour by 1,500 at the expense of Bermudians by 1,372 (according to John Barritt's also in the March 24 edition). Certainly the PLP has shown asgreat a willingness as the United Bermuda Party to depend on non-Bermudian "experts" rather than Bermudian expertise.

It is clearly not only those who do not want Independence who are inconsistent, as they insist that they are "Bermudian", born and bred.

Many of the decision-makers who profess to want Independence are as contemptuous of other Bermudians as any "Limey" and their arrogance is just as intolerable as that of any "Limey" ? and a major disincentive to this call for "Independence".

Since many Bermudians see themselves as being treated with even more disrespect by "their own" than outsiders, is it any wonder they have concluded the arrogance of these decision-makers is only likely to increase under "Independence"?

ALVIN Williams' portrayal of HSBC as a British bank is hardly an accurate reflection of the facts (, March 25). HSBC originally stood for the HONG KONG and SHANGHAI BANKING CORPORATION and, in fact, was originally a local Hong Kong bank before it opened a branch in Shanghai.

Since those early days it has acquired banks all over the world and is now represented in 77 countries.

It happens to be heaquartered in London for geographical convenience but to intimate that HSBC take-over of the Trimingham building is a British plot to gain control is simply nonsense.

That particular take-over has nothing to do with British Government and everything to do with the Progressive Labour Party Government as the MInister of Finance had to approve the deal. My personal feeling is that the case for Independence is so weak that pro-Independence advocates have to resort to contrived scenarios to make their points.

ALLOW me to remark on the stupidity of the letter appearing in Saturday's signed "Animal RIghts Advocate", which, in fact, was about the author's illogical promotion of Independence by hijacking the anti-dolphin "oasis" cause as some bizarre metaphor.

Clearly the author is not in the least interested in the rights of man or animal but only an advocate of the notion held by powerful Cabinet politicians: those fighting against permission being granted for the "oasis" are part of the "old" Bermuda. Clearly, he thinks he is being very clever when in fact he is not in the least.

Like many Independence advocates, he believes that the political connotation "Independence" actually has something to do with the real meaning of the word in the English language. It does not. It will mean chaining Bermudians to The Rock.

In the same dishonest way, the promoters of placing captive dolphins on display have selected the word "oasis" to suggest some sort of sanctuary for dolphins, mammals which have the habit of ranging hundreds of miles with great speed as part of their natural daily routine.

It does not, and here the word "oasis", just like "Independence", actually translates as "prison."

AT the Cat Show in March 2004, Harry, a young white cat with one blue eye and one yellow eye, escaped from the Number One Shed venue and was seen running up Queen Street. The following week, he was seen in the grounds of the Cabinet Office.

A trap was set there at 10 p.m. to recover him. At 5 a.m. the next morning, the towel over the trap was missing and the trap was shut, suggesting that someone had possibly released him or taken him.

Even with extensive advertising and e-mailing, there was no luck in finding him. Some months later, I was told that a white cat was rescued alive from the harbour. I did not see the article, which was supposed to be in the newspaper. There was a hunt for it without success.

This is one year after his loss and I am still concerned about him. If someone has rescued him and given him a home, I will be only too happy to hear this. Whatever information people have about Harry, I would be glad to have resolution.

You may call me at 236-6837 with any information.

Thank you everyone.