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Bob Marley

Fred Zindi Music
On May 11, 1981, the world was bombarded with the shocking news of Bob Marley’s death. At the time of his death, we were told that Marley had succumbed to cancer which had developed from his toe since 1976.

Thirty four years after his death, stories are beginning to emerge about how the reggae icon died. Now, Bunny Wailer with whom Bob Marley worked in the Wailers Band, maintains that Bob Marley was murdered by his wife, Rita Marley and his manager, Chris Blackwell who connived to steal $30 million from his royalties as well as the rights to his music.

That aside, many other conspiracy theories have emerged. It is claimed that the CIA artificially induced cancer into Bob Marley’s toe. Surviving a failed attempt on his life by a well-armed death squad at his 56 Hope Road home in Kingston, Jamaica, Bob was later given a ‘gift’ of a new pair of boots by Carl Colby, son of the late CIA director, William Colby. When the unsuspecting Marley put them on, something pricked his foot. He then reached into one of the boots and pulled out a piece of copper wire. Coincidentally, that same toe later became the source of malignant cancer that spread throughout his body, killing him.

Many of his closest friends suspected that the wire contained some carcinogenic substance, since Marley contracted cancer shortly thereafter.

From there it is a tiny leap of the imagination to think that if powerful people wanted someone dead, and they wanted the death to be completely deniable, they could give the person cancer, very specifically, and then assure that treatments would fail to cure the person of cancer. Eventually the person would die, a slow death full of suffering.

There has since been widespread belief that the CIA arranged the hit on Hope Road. According to reports, Marley was viewed by the CIA as the most dangerous Black man on earth because of the songs he wrote which were likely to incite the people.

Neville Garrick, a Marley insider and former art director of the Jamaican Daily News, had film of “suspicious characters” lurking near the house before the assassination attempt. The day of the shooting he had snapped some photos of Marley standing beside a Volkswagen in a pool of mango-tree shade. The strangers in the background made Marley nervous; he told Garrick that they appeared to be “scouting” the property. In the prints, however, their features were too blurred by the mango tree shadow to make out. After the concert, Garrick took the photographs and prints to Nassau. Sadly, while the Wailers and crew prepared to board a flight to London, he discovered that the film had been stolen.

However, on December 5, 1976, a week after the assault on Hope Road, the Wailers appeared at the Smile Jamaica festival, despite their wounds, to perform one long, defiant anthem of rage directed at the CIA — “War” — suggesting the Wailers’ own attitude toward the “Vampires” as they called the CIA.

As the whole world knows, Bob Marley followed an “ital” diet of primarily fruits and vegetables, and he loved to play soccer. Good diet and exercise. In his own words: “Ital is vital” So he was a healthy man in his prime. He was just very unlucky then, to get cancer in his toe?

Born on February 6, 1945, he died in 1981 at the age of 36, too young to even see Zimbabwe’s independence and the country to which he dedicated a song, come to fruition.

To our mind, it is absolutely plausible and extremely likely that cancer can be artificially induced on a specific target. Is that not how cancer ‘always’ develops? Something causes it. Either your genes; your diet; your failure to exercise or your failure to quit smoking. Certainly we must realise that the causes, the mechanism of how various pollutants cause cancer, has been studied and understood with some of the billions and billions of research monies devoted to cancer over the past hundred years? Good luck doing everything right and avoiding the invisible cancer-causing particles coating everything you touch and breathe. Sorry about those invisible particles. Unfortunately, that is nobody’s fault.

In fact many believe that is exactly how Bob Marley died. Cancer was inflicted through his toe. The only thing you have to entertain is whether you think it is possible; whether the technological understanding exists; whether the malice exists to give someone cancer and whether you think it was possible to do those things in the 1970s.

According to other sources, Bob himself felt that during his cancer treatment, a very ‘telling’ conversation took place when his doctor, Dr. Joseph Issels told Bob a story about a German friend who had advised Issels not to treat him, saying that Marley was the most dangerous black man on the planet. Joseph Issels was an officer in the SS a colleague of Joseph Mengele and had served a jail term for manslaughter. Mengele survived the war and enjoyed the protection and employment of the CIA. It is believed that Issels injected Marley with poison.

Frankly, we are not sure what part of that is not suspicious. We are not sure how Marley died either, but all we know is that he was a true revolutionary who taught the world many beautiful lessons through powerful songs such as “Get Up, Stand Up For Your Rights”, “A Blackman Redemption” to “Natural Mystic” and “Redemption Song”.

We remain with that beautiful memory.

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