On Saturday 05 February, parents in Barbados wondered out aloud – complete with protest banners and poignant placards – whether their children will be going back to face-to-face learning come Monday 21 February or will be facing more online learning for which many – both students and teachers – are still ill-equipped.
As this is the return to school season, it is perhaps useful to reflect on the seriocomic nature of Jabberwocky, a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll circa 1871.
Lewis Carroll, some may recall, is also the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
One is moved to engage in this reflection, particularly because of recent revelations/ interpretations of another familiar satirical poem called Humpty Dumpty. We shall return to those revelations in another instalment of the Jabberwocky Files.
The purpose of satire or parody, like calypso in the Caribbean, is to mock or ridicule those things in society which we might not want to attack directly but on which we need to get urgent action or attract serious attention.
Another purpose is to hide something in plain sight of everyone thus mocking those who cannot engage beyond the facade of the artistic creation:
“Now you see us, now you don’t!”
As a piece of poetry, Jabberwocky illustrates some of the basic literary devices which many may have forgotten or were not taught at school simply because their teachers deemed them as inappropriate material for the literature class but adequate fodder for the business or secretarial programme.
But the most important and overarching theme of Jabberwocky, at least for our purposes here, is the fact that in verse 2, the father was able to convince his son of the existence of the mythical Jabberwock:
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
Three verses later, the son confronts the Jabberwock with the business end of his “vorpal” sword:
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
Having “taken out” the imaginary creature, the boy returns to a rapturous paternal reception:
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
Carroll then ends the poem by repeating the “nonsense” of verse 1:
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
In stark contrast to the triumphant boy in the poem, children in Barbados are being primed to be “slain” by the Jabberwock.
This is a seriocomical way of looking at the recent announcement by the Chief Medical Officer of Barbados, the Honourable Dr. Kenneth George that children in the 5 – 11 age group are to be vaccinated against the covid-19 disease.
Does he not mean the super-charged flu? Whatever!
Since then, Friday 4 February to be exact, the honourable gentleman was reported by the NationNews as stating that covid-19 should not be making frontpage news and that it should be regarded as history.
‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves….
Okay, Okay!
Of course, he is telling that to the mainstream print media- which Barbados Uncensored is not! Neither do we have a front page. LOL!
So, it remains to be seen in the days, weeks and months ahead whether the editorial policy of the NationNews, Barbados Advocate and Barbados Today – those with print or quasi-print entries in the media marketplace- will conform to the wishes of this government bureaucrat.
Reading between the lines, it is perhaps the case that what Dr. George really wants to do is to ease himself (and hopefully the Barbados government) out of the strictures of this pandemic because surely they can see the fast retreat being beaten from this scamdemic across the world.
Then there is the plain-as-daylight local hypocrisy regarding wearing masks, which was duly noted, satirized and sanitized by parents and children in the Saturday 05 protest.
The honourable gentlemen is surely going to have to wipe all the fans in sight as clean as a whistle. Perhaps that is the price he will pay for the honour that the government recently and strategically bestowed on him.
We await the approach of the newly minted Minister of Health and Wellness, Mr. Ian Gooding-Edgehill and the Minister of Education, Kay McConney on the issue of the pandemic and back to school protocols.
Meanwhile, if you have been following Dr. George’s utterances on this covid-19 pandemic you will know that the CMO is basically parroting the recently prescribed narrative of the WEF (World Economic Forum) the advocates of the Great Reset which is the current globalist programme for the post-covid world.
Their brazen motto is: “You shall own nothing and be happy about it”
If you have never heard this before it is time to reach for your favourite coffee brand and brand name eye salve. But don’t take our word for it; check it out here.
Coming out of all of this are several key questions:
- If, according to Dr. George the covid-19 pandemic should not be “frontpage news”, why is the government still publishing a daily covid-19 dashboard? Where should the newspapers put it?
- And since, according to the CMO, “covid-19 is history” (we assume that is what he means by “history”), when are we going to have an end to the state of emergency? Countries are beginning to abolish mask wearing, mandatory vaccines, vaccine certificates and even covid-19 testing. What do the bureaucrats in Bridgetown know that those countries do not know? Does the CMO follow the news in any other part of the word except for news about Pfizer in the USA?
- As the American truckers are planning to do, must we have a protest similar to the successful Canadian trucker protest which incidentally, is all set to topple the globalist prime minister, Justin Trudeau?
- Finally, and most importantly at this juncture, why is the Mia Mottley lead government wanting to jab our 5 – 11 year old children with, of all things, a Pfizer vaccine especially now that we know that covid-19 is just a deliberately supercharged version of the flu. Why?
We at the Barbados Uncensored have expended the time and effort to apply WHO covid-19 statistical analysis to the population of Barbadian children and found that there is no justification for prioritizing or vaccinating 5 -11 year old Barbadian children against covid-19.
We invite parents, guardians and teachers to carefully study our analysis here and draw their own conclusions.
As Thomas Jefferson once said: the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
It remains to be seen, however, whether parents are going to “chant down Babylon” – as Bob Marley would say- and cull the Jabberwock or have their precious freedom taken away by the globalist minions in our midst.
YOUR OPINION HELPS!
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Dr. Aldon Tull, the author, is a retired educator who holds a Master of Science in International Marketing and the Doctor of Education.
He can be reached at editor@barbadosuncensored.com at 246-228-3720 or on Whatsapp at 246-846-3191
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