THE attack in the House of Assembly on the, attributed to Ashfield DeVent under the umbrella of Parliamentary privilege and published inon Saturday, June 7, only served to underscore exactly what the print media has been reporting about the Progressive Labour Party Government's activities of late.

Not only has it a Cuban agenda but it now wants to impose a Cuban-style clampdown on the Press. If Mr. DeVent was to have his way Special Branch, or what little, if any, is left of it, would have been raiding the office on Monday, June 9.

The joke is that Mr. DeVent is employed as a reporter for an organisation whose freedom of speech rights have often been tainted by less-than-substantiated stories which they have run over the airwaves.

Of course, this same operation is also renowned for reading articles virtually word-for-word from the and other newspapers, happily helping itself to the self-same "nonsense" Mr. DeVent decries to pad out its "news" reports.

So let's get down to some of the "nonsense" Mr. DeVent is talking about.

The British maintain the finest public records system in the world. Every day of the week, time-embargoed documents are released for public consumption. So, for a fee, Mr. DeVent could do some investigative reporting of his own, track down these and other documents and study this "official nonsense" as well.

Anyone can. That's the joy of open Government - "the sunshine of public scrutiny" is a reality, unlike in Bermuda under the Jennifer Smith Government.

Is Mr. DeVent implying that all of the written records compiled during the eight-year term of Governor Lord Martonmere were "nonsense". (Lord Martonmere was held in high esteem by the vast majority of Bermudians).

Don't forget the reports Mr. DeVent so cavalierly dismisses quoted members of the Berets verbatim. The only "nonsense" reported in the most recent"Secret Files" instalment came straight out of the mouths of the Berets themselves, as best as I could make out.

What is "nonsense" is Mr. DeVent's pathetic attempt to legitimise the Black Beret Cadre.

The reality is that this bunch of violent racist agitators and thugs were Bermuda's of the years 1969 to 1973.

During that time Commissioner George Duckett was murdered in his home, his daughter wounded in the same attack; Governor Sir Richard Sharples was assassinated along with Captain Hugh Sayers, murdered while on an after-dinner stroll in the Government House grounds; and poor Mr. Victor Rego and Mr. Mark Doe were tied to chairs and executed gangland-style at the Shopping Centre. A taxi driver was shot and almost killed near the Botanical Gardens when the Berets he was driving didn't feel like paying the cab fare.

Only two of these victims could be deemed political targets.

The shootings of the five others did not constitute strikes against the "Establishment" by even the most perverse yardstick. They were cold-blooded murders, plain and simple. No extenuating circumstances; no mitigating revolutionary circumstances.

So this is all nonsense is it Mr. De Vent?

Behind this wave of killings and shootings was the Black Beret Cadre. And there were a lot more names on their hit list.

Having conditioned confessed killer Erskine (Buck) Burrows and, to a lesser degree, the career criminal and violence-prone Larry Tacklyn, to commit the murders the two principal Beret organisers jumped ship and fled the island. They were never brought to justice; those they manipulated like puppets were abandoned and paid the ultimate price.

Mr. DeVent says "many Black Berets were in respectable positions". If that is the case, and yes there were traitors in the Establishment's camp, no wonder Bermuda faced its largest internal terrorist threat in its almost 400-year-old history.

If these Berets, 30 years on, can explain away all of this "nonsense", let's hear from them. Those of us with long enough memories are very familiar with their history - it is written in blood; the memorials to its activities are the tombstones of its victims, including Buck Burrows.

Did you shed any tears the night Buck Burrows was hanged, Mr. DeVent? I did. So did more than a few others who knew him. Buck was truly the Berets' last victim.

Buck Burrows was a child-like soul, very kind, very naive, very trusting.

As a caretaker at Prospect Police Headquarters in the early 1970s, he was well liked and trusted implicitly by the policemen and civilian staff, so much so that many hired him as a babysitter at weekends so he could supplement his janitor's pay.

Then two rogue officers who, in another time and place might have channelled their anti-social and sadistic impulses into, say, a unit of Nazi concentration camp guards, took Buck into a little room at Prospect.

And there they tortured him.

Ultimately, he confessed to a series of crimes he did not commit to stop the beating - breaking and entering police officers' homes in the Prospect area. He was jailed.

His body recovered from the brutal beating he received. His spirit never did.

His confidence in the police - who were the closest thing he had to a family - was shattered.

While in prison, he was recruited by the Beret leadership - some of whom were then doing time for subversive activities.

He was indoctrinated with Beret propaganda, conditioned, brainwashed. When he was released, he was welcomed back to Prospect by none other than George Duckett, who happily gave Buck back his old job having discovered he had been framed by two uniformed thugs.

Then, once he was back in place at Prospect, a gun was put in his hand. He was primed to use it against those who the Berets convinced him, -style, were enemies of the people. A few months later Buck targeted his first victim.

On the night of September 9, 1972 he shot his friend and protector Duckett to death.

The day after the killing Buck, in his capacity as police janitor, mopped up the blood he had shed at Duckett's house. Later he attended the funeral of the man he killed. He was seen to be weeping. If ever there was a man conflicted about what he had been recruited to do, it was Buck. Read his confessions. They are heartbreaking.

On the one hand, you have the programmed killer parroting the Black Power propaganda he had been spoonfed: "I, Erskine Durrant Burrows, as former commander in chief of all anti-colonialist forces in the island of Bermuda, wish to willingly reveal the part I played in the assassination and murder of the former Governor Mr. Richard Sharples and his ADC Captain Hugh Sayers . . . The motive for killing the Governor (his aide-de-camp was not our objective, he was shot only because he happened to be with the Governor at the time) was to seek to make the people, black people in particular, become aware of the evilness and wickedness of the colonialist system in Bermuda."

On the other hand, you have the overgrown Sunday School child repenting his crimes: "Killing is wrong and sinful . . . I give thanks that I have been given eternal freedom from sin and death through the love and mercy and forgiveness of Jesus Christ my Lord and master and Saviour forever."

Commander in chief of the revolution? No. Poor Buck Burrows was cannon fodder, used by those in the Beret leadership who did not have the courage of their own revolutionary convictions.

Everyone old enough knows who they were - and are.

Mr. DeVent should ask them about all of this "nonsense". All that he has to do is look around his own Government benches; there's even a former female teacher from the Berets' Liberation School sitting there. While the Berets may have traded in their dashikis for three-piece suits when some of them entered the political arena, they clearly never dropped their extremist views - as is demonstrated at every sitting of the House of Assembly.

Plain and simple, the Beret leadership was intent on creating a terrorist organisation and they have the murderous track record to prove it. Someone once said there's nothing more dangerous in this world than a fantatic with a cause and a gun - and that was certainly Bermuda's experience during the Black Beret-inspired reign of terror.

It would make sense that Cuba was bankrolling the organisation, either directly or through one of its front organisations, just as it did the Jamaica People's National Movement, the New Jewel Movement in Grenada and every single radical extremist organisation operating in Latin America during the 1970s. The Berets prided themselves on not accepting drug money. But did they draw a similar line when it came to pocketing Castro's blood money?

Is all of this "nonsense", Mr. DeVent?

So let Mr. DeVent's cronies raid the and clamp down on the Press. What a field day CNN, BBC World, and the international print media would have.

Mr, DeVent needs to wise up and join the real world because he cannot rewrite history. Visit the graveyards, Mr. DeVent, talk to the surviving family members of the victims. The Berets' grim and cowardly handiwork cannot be undone simply because you choose to deny the self-evident facts in the House of Assembly.

As for Dame Lois Browne Evans' no-holds-barred attack on capitalism during the same Parliamentary session, why does she not take the moral high ground, go to her bedroom drawer, pull out the insignia of the "Dame of the British Empire" and post it back to Buckingham Palace with a note relinquishing her title on a matter of principle.

In the process she should advise the 20-odd Progressive Labour Party activists who have accepted Queen's Honours in the past to do likewise. Bermuda can then conform to Cuba's "heroes of the revolution" honours system.

LET'S look at a hypothetical situation that happened in a hypothetical country 30 years ago. There's a group of young men and women, most just a bit too old to use the excuse of youthful exuberance to explain or justify their actions.

This group is set to stage a revolution in the country, and to effect this they put a gun in the hands of a man of diminished mental capacity, filling his head with instructions of mass murder which result in the slaughter of some of the country's appointed authority-figures.

If our hypothetical country were some tin-pot place in South America, it would be possible to believe that the members of this group not only got away with their conspiracy of 30 years ago, but even prospered to the extent that some of them became today's political leaders.

How many of us would believe that this could happen here?

Living in 'Little Zimbabwe'

WHEN I grew up during the years of entrenched white privilege, the Front Street aristocracy and officially sanctioned segregation, I was one of those who hated the and used to refer to Bermuda as "Little Rhodesia".

Now as I approach retirement under a Progressive Labour Party Government that routinely covers up scandals, protects criminals in high places who loot public funds and openly threatens those who dare to question its abhorrent and sometimes dictatorial policies (a secretly negotiated "pact of steel" with Castro, for heaven's sake?), I am increasingly convinced that I am living in "Little Zimbabwe".

A "New" Bermuda? No. Just a new set of faces pulling the same dirty old tricks I thought had died out in the 1950s.God help poor little Bermuda.

God help us all.

@TIMES-18:Destroying island's beauty

AS I understood the regulations in Bermuda about advertising, any public display or sign had to conform to a particular size - certainly concerning the size of the lettering - in order to prevent the eyesores that are endemic in other countries from proliferating.

Recently, it seems, anything goes so long as it is printed on some sort of banner as opposed to a permanent fixture, such as a hoarding.

As a result we are being invited into stores we wouldn't dream of visiting to see what has "Just Arrived", or to spend a few hundred dollars for the chance to win a car we don't need, but whose sporty lines are printed large enough on the banner for it to be a visual exclamation.

We've certainly reached the point where an annual competition should be held to proclaim "Bermuda's Ugliest New Building". Why is there such a lemming-like pursuit towards destroying the beauty of this island?

I'S SORE

Southampton

@TIMES-18:Celine's a big turn-off

June 6, 2003

I DON'T normally watch much television, but the other night I happened to catch a progamme on ZBM charting the lead-up and first "live" performance of Celine Dion's new show in Las Vegas.

Although my experience of Ms Dion's work is limited to listening to her sing a few songs in a lovely voice, I was amazed at how badly her advisers had attempted to package and market her talents in a way that simply showed up her limitations.

Surely they should have recognised that her somewhat horsey face wasn't flattered by the new "gamine" hair-cut. Or perhaps this was just to accommodate the amount of work she had put into dance routines that made the chorus behind her shine?

A glitteringly tacky, heavily sequined d?colletage had been lumped with layers of red chiffon for her to vamp through her opening numbers, and when she changed into bull-fighter's black pants with suspenders this was equally unfortunate.

I don't mean to be cruel, but why not just dress her up as the back half of a bull and have done with it?

My television is on the "Off" channel again for an indeterminate time.

@TIMES-18:Doc's junk goes in the trash

THIS week I received a letter from a local doctor who I visited once about six months ago. I didn't visit his practice for treatment, but to have a type of test done for which my own doctor did not have the ancillary equipment.

His letter came in the form of information as to how much I had been missed by the doctor, how important it was to take care of my health, and how speedily I should phone him in order to make an appointment, because this opportunity would quickly be gone. As the letter was just as generic as any other form of junk-mail, it rapidly ended up in the trash. And I thought there were laws that covered solicitation from professionals, whatever their particular calling.