Mango Walk

take this and jell it as remembered light

one simple gesture laughing at a joke

in middle afternoon and at one stroke

you've got it down and kept it in plain sight

when all the other moments take their flight

or disappear behind the darkest cloak

of all forgetting where the world is broke

but yet we act to make things come out right

vision is sure and clear when you are young

so slow to fade but still the edges pale

we can't recall the colour of the stone

on the south wall nor where the laundry hung

long years have passed and recollections fail

still there is crystal fire within the bone

you tell a story made of what's well-known

not just to you but to the whole surround

the human crew the birds the very ground

has  understood each laugh and every groan

is analysed from village unto throne

for qualities of both meaning and sound

each fact is weighed to fractions of a pound

since nothing here is yours and yours alone

the common tongue we learn is one more fact

that binds into a whole the world entire

and turns dull life into a blazing art

smashes it up and remakes intact

what first was formed in the refining fire

but glows still secret in each living heart

John Maxwell

 

If you shared my pain you would not continue to make me suffer, to torture me, to deny me my dignity and my  rights especially my rights to self determination and self expression.

Six years ago you sent your Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to perform an action illegal under the laws of your country,my country and of the international community of nations.

It was an act so outrageous, so bestially vile and wicked that your journalists and news agencies, your diplomats and politicians to this day cannot bring themselves to truthfully describe or own up to the crime that was committed when US Ambassador James Foley, a career diplomat arrived at the house of President Jean Bertrand Aristide with a bunch of CIA thugs and US Marines to kidnap the President of Haiti and his wife.

The Aristides were stowed aboard a CIA plane normally used for 'renditions' of suspected terrorists to the worldwide US gulag of dungeons and torture chambers.

The plane, on which the Aristides are listed as "cargo"  flew to Antigua – an hour away – and remained on the ground in Antigua while Colin Powell's State Department and the CIA tried to blackmail and bribe various African countries to accept ('give asylum to") the kidnapped President and his wife.

The Central African Republic –  one of George W Bush's 'Dark Corners of the World'  – agreed for an undisclosed sum, to give the Aristides temporary asylum.

Before any credible plot can be designed and paid for – for the disappearance of the Aristides – they are rescued by friends, flown to temporary asylum in Jamaica where the government cravenly yielded to the blackmail of Condoleezza Rice to deny them the permanent asylum to which they were entitled and which most Jamaicans had hoped for.

Meanwhile in Haiti the US Marines protected an undisciplined ragbag of rapists and murderers to allow them entry to the capital. The Marines chased the medical students out of the new Medical School established by Aristide with Cuban help and teachers. The Marines bivouac in the school, going out on nightly raids, trailed by fleets of ambulances with body bags, hunting down Fanmi Lavalas activists described as 'chimeres' – terrorists.

The real terrorists, led by two convicted murderers, Chamblain and Philippe, assisted the Marines in the eradication of 'chimeres' until the Marines were replaced by foreign troops paid by the United Nations who took up the hunt on behalf of the civilised world – France, Canada, the US and Brazil.

The terrorists and the remains of the Duvalier tontons and the CIA-bred FRAPF declared open season on the remnants of Aristide's programmes to build democracy. They burnt down the new museum of Haitian Culture, destroyed the Children's television station and generally laid waste to anything and everything which could remind Haitians of their glorious history.

Haitians don't know that without their help Latin America might still be part of the Spanish Empire and Simon Bolivar a brief historical footnote.

Imagine, Niggers Speaking French!

About ninety years ago when Professor Woodrow Wilson was President of the USA his Secretary of State was a fundamentalist lawyer named William Jennings Bryan who had three times run unsuccessfully, for President. 

The Americans had decided to invade Haiti to collect debts owed by Haiti to Citibank.

General Smedley Butler, the only American soldier to have twice won the Congressional Medal of Honour, described his role in the US Army:

"I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long.

General Butler said: "I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. … My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical in the military service’. Butler compared himself unfavourably to Al Capone. He said his official racketeering made Capone look like an amateur.

Secretary Bryan was dumfounded by the Haitians; "Imagine" he said, "Niggers speaking French.

Smedley Butler and Bryan were involved in Haiti because of something that happened nearly a hundred years before. The French slave-masters, expelled from Haiti and defeated again when they tried to re-enslave the Haitians, connived with the Americans to starve them into submission by a trade embargo. With no sale for Haitian sugar, the country was weak and rundown when a French fleet  arrived bearing a demand for repaations. Having bought their freedom in blood, the Haitians were to be oblige to purchase it again in gold.

The French demanded, essentially, that the Haitians pay France an amount equivalent to 90 percent of the entire Haitian budget for the foreseeable future. When this commitment proved too arduous to honour, the City Bank offered  the Haitians a 'debt exchange" paying off the French in exchange for a lower interest longer term debt. The terms may have seemed better but were just as usurious and it was not paid off until 1947.

Because of the debt the Americas invaded Haiti, seized the Treasury, exiled the President, their Jim Crow policies were used to divide the society, to harass the poor and finally provoked a second struggle for freedom which was one of the most brutal episodes in colonial history.

Long before Franco bombed Guernica, exciting the horror and revulsion of civilised people,  the Americans  perfected their dive-bombing techniques against unarmed Haitian peasants many of whom had never seen aircraft before.

The Americans set up an Haitian Army in the image of their Jim Crow Marines and it was these people and the alien and alienated Élite who with some conscripted blacks like the Duvaliers have ruled Haiti for most of the last century.

When I flew over Haiti for the first time in 1959 en route from New York to San Juan, Puerto Rico, I saw for the first time the border between the green Dominican Republic and brown Haiti.

First world journalists interpret the absence of trees on the Haitian side to the predations of the poor, disregarding the fact  that Western religion and American capitalism were mainly responsible.

Why is it that nowhere else in the Caribbean is there similar deforestation?

Haiti's Dessalines constitution offered sanctuary to every escaped slave of any colour. All such people of whatever colour were deemed 'black' and entitled to citizenship. Only officially certified  ‘blacks’ could own land in Haiti.

The American occupation, anticipating Hayek, Freedman and Greenspan, decided that such a rule was a hindrance to development. The Assistant Secretary of the US Navy, one Franklin D Roosevelt was given the job of writing a new, modern constitution for Haiti.

This constitution meant foreigners could own land. Within a very short time the lumberjacks were busy, felling old growth Mahogany  and Caribbean Pine for carved doors for the rich and mahogany speedboats, boardroom tables seating forty etc etc. The devastated land was put to produce rubber, sisal  for ropes and all sorts of pie in the sky plantations.

When President Paul Magloire came to Jamaica fifty years ago Haitians were still speaking of an Artibonite dam for electricity and irrigation.  But the ravages of the recent past were too much to recover.

As Marguerite Laurent (EziliDanto) writes: Don't expect to learn how a people with a Vodun culture that reveres nature and especially the Mapou (oak-like or ceiba pendantra/bombax) trees, and other such big trees as the abode of living entities and therefore as sacred things, were forced to watch the Catholic Church, during Rejete - the violent anti-Vodun crusade - gather whole communities at gun point into public squares, and forced them to watch their agents burn Haitian trees in order to teach Haitians their Vodun Gods were not in nature, that the trees were the ‘houses of Satan.’

In partnership with the US, the mulatto President Elie Lescot (1941-45) summarily expelled peasants from more than 100,000 hectares of land, razing their homes and destroying more than a million fruit trees in the vain effort to cultivate rubber on a large plantation scale. Also, under the pretext of the Rejete campaign, thousands of acres of peasant lands were cleared of sacred trees so that the US could take their lands for US agribusiness

 

 

After the Flood

Norman Manley used to say ‘River come Down’ when his party seemed likely to prevail. The Kreyol word Lavalas conveys the same meaning.

Since the Haitian people's decisive rejection of the Duvalier dictatorships in the early 90s, their spark and leader has been Jean-Bertrand Aristide whose bona fides may be assessed from the fact that the CIA and conservative Americans have been trying to discredit him almost from the word go.

As he put it in one of his books, his intention has been to build a paradise on the garbage heap bequeathed to Haiti by the US and the Elite.

The bill of particulars is too long to go into here, but the destruction of the new museum of Culture, the breaking up of the medical school, the destruction of the children's television gives you the flavour. But the essence is captured in the brutal attempt to obliterate the spirit of Haitian community; the attempt to destroy Lavalas by murdering its men and raping its women, the American directed subversion of a real police force, the attacks on education and the obliteration of the community self-help systems which meant that when Hurricane Jeanne and all the other weather systems since have struck Haiti many more have died than in any other country similarly stricken. In an earthquake, totally unpredictable, every bad factor is multiplied

The American blocking of international aid means that there is no modern water supply anywhere, no town planning, no safe roads, none of the ordinary infrastructure of any other Caribbean state. There are no building standards, no emergency shelters, no parks

So, when I write about mothers unwittingly walking on dead  babies in the mud, when I write about people so poor they must eat patties made of clay and shortening, when I write about people with their faces 'chopped off' or about any of 8 million horror stories from the crime scene that is Haiti, please don't tell me you share their pain or mine.

Tell me where is Lovinsky Pierre Antoine and ten thousand like him?

If you share my pain and their pain, why don't you stop causing it? Why don't you stop the torture?

If you want to understand me, look at the woman in the picture, and the children half buried with her. You cannot hear their screams because they know there is no point in screaming. It will do no more good than voting.

What is she thinking: perhaps it is something like this – No mister! You cannot share my pain!

 Sometime perhaps, after the camera is gone people will return to dig us out with their bare hands. But not you.

 

Copyright©2010 John Maxwell

John Maxwell

 

First- full disclosure: Butch Stewart has been a friend of mine for a very long time and I was a buddy of his dad's – Gordon Sr  – when he was the founding Chief Engineer of the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation. We haven't always seen eye to eye, except perhaps mostly on the environment and even there we have had some serious disagreements. Butch is also the owner of the Jamaica Observer in which my column has appeared for more than a dozen years. 

All this to explain that while Butch has never tried to tell me how to write my column, I am presuming to advise him how to run his business. Butch's hotel chain, Sandals has applied for planning permission to erect some over-water rooms on an artificial island off Montego Bay.

Butch had no planning permission to create the island, but that was a long time ago.

 It is my considered opinion that these over-water rooms are a bad idea and I hope Butch abandons his application for permission to build them.

•       They provide a bad example to less scrupulous and less intelligent 'developers' who are intent on reworking the geography of Jamaica;

•       They defy logic and wisdom in an area where strong 'Northers'  – storms – are prevalent in the winter tourist season and an 'accident' will bathe Sandals and Jamaica in the sort of publicity we cannot afford;

•       Butch should remember Hurricane Allen which came ashore on the north coast shortly after he went into the hotel business. Allen made matchwood out of the Trident, a solidly built hotel on a cliff, not at sea-level. Allen’s  storm surge wrecked San San lifting the upper story of one house 18 feet above ground level and leaving it on the parochial road to the Blue  lagoon

•       At Galina, near Oracabessa,  Allen lifted an enormous rock weighing several thousand tons off the seabed and onto the road 30 to 40 feet above sea level. A pretty solid little cottage between the rock and the place it came to rest was atomised and the two old ladies who lived in the house were never seen again.

•       I was a little boy in Duncans when the 1944 hurricane came through. Among that hurricane's feats was the lifting of the perimeter verandah of the Eldon Great House and depositing it hundreds of yards away in a coconut walk in Harmony Hall/Georgia.

Not another Pear Tree Bottom?

          Several years ago some of us noticed that a Company called Tankweld had created an enormous unsightly stone-crushing arena on land at Pear Tree Bottom.  A few years later we noticed that the public road was diverted at great expense, apparently on the orders of the Great I-Nyam, and since most of us had said nothing about Tankweld's visual disaster nor about the road, we were soon greeted by news that a Spanish hotel was to be built there by the Pinero Group.

Despite protests and a court case launched by some brave women (mostly) led by Wendy Lee, the hotel was built.  The hotel's sewerage was reaching Pear Tree Bottom beach as I documented in these pages. The enterprise was allowed by some lunatic bureaucrats to inject sewage into the limestone aquifer, which means that by the time the hotel's incentives run out the land will be good only for tumble-tu'd' beetles and other coprophagic life-forms.

And then to everyone's surprise, in 2008, Mr Pablo Pinero declared his outrage at the decision of NEPA/NRCA, to stop him from concreting even more of the coastline in the interests of his bank account.

As I said at the time, the NRCA  had, up till then, managed to foul up almost every aspect of the regulation of the hotel including –  the EIA, the fact that the hotel is built on a public beach, illegally, and the inadequate sanitary arrangements and other environmental protections which ought to have been built into any permit for any hotel anywhere in the world, but especially in an environmentally sensitive and important Jamaican wetland, fronting a world famous and scientifically important coral reef.

Since then on the south coast of Jamaica, largely unspoiled, people are starting to spoil things, with a vengeance

Some time ago elements of the Bicknell family, owners of Tankweld, have built on the south coast, something even more hideous than any of their stonecrushing enterprises on the North Coast.

This excrescence, this wanton insult to civilisation and culture sits athwart the beach at Great Bay, Treasure Beach, about 9,000 tons of river stone (quarried under what licence) and placed to cock a dirty snook at the public interest and whatever else its builders may have chosen to insult.

The problem with this wall is not simply that it desecrates, defiles and devalues one of the last tranquil places in Jamaica; it is that it is so monumentally ugly, so devoid of any hint of an aesthetic sense, so vehemently and virulently hideous that it could provide an icon for some plague, some noxious affliction meant to torment and terrify frail humanity.

Its size is intended to impress, to overwhelm and oppress and if there were two of these monstrosities side by side one could easily imagine oneself in the anteroom to hell itself – "Abandon Hope, All  Ye Who Enter Here" or, alternatively, "Arbeit macht Frei""

But I don't wish to examine the existential meaning of the wall. What concerns me is the ancient doctrine of prescriptive right.

Under the Prescription Act 1882 as amended by Act 65 of 1955, the Beach Control Act:

"4.1 When any beach has been used by the public or any class of the public for fishing, or for purposes incident to fishing, or for bathing or recreation, and any road, track or pathway passing over any land adjoining or adjacent to such beach has been used by the public or any class of the public as a means of such access to such beach, without interruption for the full period of twenty years, the public shall, subject to the provisos hereinafter contained, have the absolute and indefeasible right to use such beach, land, road, track or pathway as aforesaid, unless it shall appear that the same was enjoyed by some consent or agreement expressly made or given for that purpose by deed or writing."

That seems to me to be perfectly clear, as it should be, having been drafted by N. W. Manley himself.

Although termites have been eating away at the Beach Control Act for years, they fortunately ignored the Prescription Act, possibly out of ignorance.

The situation in my non-lawyer's opinion, is that no land below high-water mark in Jamaica may now be claimed by any private or public entity. That is to say, apart from designated licenced private beaches adjacent to houses, and the public recreational beaches  including those attached to hotels with licences older than 1993, there are no beaches in Jamaica over which any entity or person, whether the Universal Devastation Conglomerate or Mr Vin Lawrence or his heirs and successors, can legally claim hegemony of any kind. The UDC's attempt to steal Winnifred Beach or any other attempt to compromise the public interest in any form, is ultra vires and null and void

Now and then I wish I had followed my father's wishes, that I should become a lawyer, like Mr Manley. Even if I hadn't become a lawyer like Manley, but just another lawyer, I would now be making life unbearable for those who trample on the public interest and human rights.

If the Spanish hotels are to attempt to  colonise Treasure Beach we now have a new weapon. The EPAs we signed under duress with the EU now allow poor litigants like me access to the European Commission for Human Rights where such enactments as the Aarhus Convention apply. That convention gives us the rights our constitution and laws such as the NRCA act say we have but sometimes can't find.

The Aarhus Convention according to the UN Economic Commission for Europe, " is by far the most impressive elaboration of Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration, which stresses the need for citizens' participation in environmental issues and for access to information on the environment held by public authorities." These principles, believe it or not, are also enshrined in the Jamaican NRCA's guide to the conduct of Environmental Impact Assessments.

"The Convention adopts a rights-based approach. Article one, setting out the objective of the Convention, requires parties to guarantee rights of access to information, public participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters.

It also refers to the goal of protecting the right of every person of present and future generations to live in an environment adequate to health and well-being, which represents a significant step forward in international law." (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe http://www.unece.org/env/pp/contentofaarhus.htm)

Mr Tufton and the Spaniards

          As I reported last week, the Spaniards are handing over to the Minister of Agriculture, about half a million US$ for a Centre of Excellence or perhaps a nice little agronomy lab. As Dr Tufton is also the MP for the Treasure Beach area, I really hope that my criticising the Spaniards has not queered his pitch with these eminent benefactors.

Copyright ©2010 John Maxwell jankunnu@gmail.com

John Maxwell

 

If you've been around as long as I, reading or listening to what passes for recent history can easily provoke the dry heaves.  Mr Edward Seaga, a centre of turbulence as a politician, remains a centre of turbulence as an old age pensioner. Some of the claims made by Mr Seaga or on his behalf are bizarre.

A couple of years ago, Martin Henry, while rightly castigating Seaga for his racist, [my word] elitist view that it is “the masses of simpletons who determine election victories and defeats. And since the people are incapable of sophisticated political understanding only simplistic messages can be delivered to them as entertaining sloganeering from the political platform." (Seaga, quashee and campaigning' July 19 2007, Sunday Gleaner)

Mr Henry almost proves Seaga's point by referring to Seaga as "the creator of the first and great Independence Five Year Development Plan, 1963-1968"– apparently blissfully unaware that the plan was the work of Don Mills, Arthur Brown and Raphael Swaby of The Central Planning Unit working to specifications laid down by Norman Manley, David Coore, Vernon Arnett, Allan Isaacs and other members of a PNP Brains Trust.

Mr Seaga has never attempted to publicise the truth. And why should he?

When he now bravely speaks of education it is from his eminence as the pro-Chancellor of the University of Technology and a Distinguished Fellow of The University of The West Indies.  Mr Seaga is quoted in a story in the Gleaner of September 2 2009:

"If the IMF is able to address [the budget deficit and the foreign exchange shortfall] and is able to lend other funds to help fund the semi-productive sector, Seaga said, the best way to use that fund is to put it into education.

"That is where I would like to see the funds go, because that is the real resource base of Jamaica that has not yet been fully utilised,"said the former prime minister …' (IMF the only option, says Seaga)

Mr Seaga's concern for education is truly touching.  Preening himself on the mistaken belief that he is the only political heavyweight of the fifties still extant, Seaga no doubt forgets the big, bold JLP campaign at the end of the fifties – "Saltfish better than education".

He similarly has no memory space for his government's unremitting campaign against the UWI in the sixties as a nest of intellectuals and subversives; the campaign against the Jamaica Teachers Association which led to wage-freezes for teachers and the desertion of the classroom by male teachers who turned to selling insurance and liquor or else fled to Britain or Brooklyn.

Turn Them Back

Seaga forgets the assaults he led on the PNP in the seventies when that party proposed extended vocational training in sophistication and coverage; and the fact that he destroyed the Vocational Training Institute and turned it into a college for cosmetologists as soon as he got the chance.

He forgets the destruction of the Jamaica School of Agriculture and any other institution created by Norman Manley by himself and others obsessed by the idea of destroying all trace of the Father of the Nation.

He forgets the corruption and destruction of the Social Welfare Commission and of its community integration and development work and the destruction of the Jamaica Youth Corps and the promise it bore for the future of our country

Mr Seaga should also remember his part in destroying the Agricultural Extension system and the network of Agricultural Experimental Stations which helped enthuse and invigorate Jamaican farming, producing, inter alia, Dr Lecky's four world class breeds of cattle, The Jamaica Hope, the Jamaica Black, the Jamaica Red and the Jamaica Brahman.

The loss in brainpower, in expertise, in biological science and in foreign exchange is incalculable. How much to restore the Library at Alexandria?

Seaga forgets the assault he led against free secondary and tertiary education and the fact that as soon as he became prime Minister he reinstated fees for poor children and boasted that these savage cuts in the Jamaican integument were the work of the government, not of the IMF.  The destruction of the JBC was a joint venture between himself and Patterson.

Mr Seaga has blamed the PNP for the dreadful state of the economy, forgetting that within three years of taking power in 1980 he had doubled the debt burden and effectively, put it forever beyond human control.

Mr Patterson, Seaga's only close competitor for the title of worst prime minister in history did his part, playing the Tony Blair to Seaga's Margaret Thatcher. Despite his faults, many and grievous, Patterson was not a patch on Lord Edward of St George's, (Grenada).

Jamaica? No Problem!!

Mr. Martin Henry in his more-or-less paean to Edward Seaga two years ago, noted that

 "The one and only time that Edward Seaga led his party to victory in a contested general election was when the critical issues at stake were starkly clear and voters/citizens, understanding those issues and their implications, overwhelmingly took a stand. Despite his participation in pandering to the quashee in Jamaicans, this country, including even Michael Manley, owes Eddie a debt of gratitude for clarifying and communicating those crossroads issues in 1980 and winning the vote which turned back a looming disaster."

It would be nice were Mr Henry to sketch, at the least, the basic parameters of the looming disaster of which he speaks.

I happened to have survived those interesting times and survived Mr Seaga's attempts to starve people like me into submission. In 1980, the election year, that year of transcendental clarity, 889 murders were registered, more than twice as many as the 351 of the year before.

Within three years – according to Carl Stone, the Gamaliel of the revisionists– Mr Seaga would have lost his majority had there been a free and fair election. Which makes one wonder about Mr Henry's  'crossroads' issues, not to speak of the Halfway Tree issues and the Time and Patience issues that bother people like me.

These issues are provoked, as is so much else, by the Gleaner's news that

          Spanish Gov't to help agriculture ministry.

The Spanish Ambassador is to hand over a cheque for $35 million Jamaican (about half a million $US) towards a Centre of Excellence in Agriculture. I can imagine what Sam Motta or Hugh Miller could have done with that or Jerry Bell or any of dozens more – some like Buddha Webster who gave their lives in the service of Jamaican farmers, not to speak of Dr Lecky and his world-class cows.

José Martí was to have been a coeducational boarding school for young farme to send qualified students over to the Jamaica School of Agriculture.  Seaga changed José Martí into an ordinary school and turned the School of Agriculture into a "Police Academy"

He sold the Research stations for a song and to build housing schemes.

And now they want to turn the Usain Bolt stadium into a battery-chicken-house for Goldman Sachs.

I tell you!  Mr Seaga is FULL of the most wonderful ideas.

Always has been.

I kid you not.

Copyright © 2009 John Maxwell  jankunnu@gmail.com

 

the turning circle of the years

is so set up that we must fail

must fall into the grinding gears

 

give up and go with one last wail

lift up our eyes and see our friends

heads bent with tears and then set sail

 

there's no great purpose that commends

itself to us no message sent

in the pale wintry light that bends

 

upon our heads and won't relent

lying on the floor in solemn bars

where the sole word is discontent

 

at night the clouds will hide bright stars

John Maxwell

We never listen to good advice. Somebody, possibly a few dozen, including me, must have warned Audley Shaw to be careful what he wished for – because he might get it. He really wanted to be Minister of Finance.

I was a few thousand miles away from Gordon House on Thursday, yet I could have sworn that despite the sound deadening effect of snow, I could hear, far away in the gathering darkness, the unmistakable sounds of the heart of another Jamaican Minister of Finance, breaking.

As we contemplate the acrobatic  expertise of Jamaican politicians doing the fiscal limbo dance (How low can he go?)  it seems that Mr Shaw has outdone even Mr Patterson. PJ imposed a tax on knowledge, on books and periodicals. Mr Shaw has imposed a tax on bullas!

It now appears that higglers, the  unsung engines of Jamaican development will now be forced to collect taxes on behalf of Mr Shaw. How Mr Shaw, in his turn, will collect tax from the higglers will need to await the next issue of the comic book anthology of the Mighty Atom and Dan, the Dynamite – mythological heroes of  the mid-twentieth century.

I can just see Mr Danville Walker's emissaries at the Old Harbour Bay Fishing Beach – once represented I believe, by Mr Golding's father – attempting to calculate the tax on last night's catch. They will soon be wearing bullet proof vests and armed with M-16s

Nothing better expresses the vapidity of Reaganite-Thatcherite-Seagaism than Shaw's announcement taxing bullas and crackers but sparing used cars

It is at moments like these that I really miss my late great cousin Richard Thelwell. I can hear him now:

"I mean, is this cat for REAL?"

As Groucho Marx might say, "That is a good question.… a very good question!"

We have watched the worldwide mindless progression into dog-eat-dog globalisation, into the nirvana of neocon nihilism and the recent European Union preference for Central American slave-produced bananas over free enterprise bananas from the Caribbean. None of that has surprised us.

But a tax on bullas! A tax on coconut drops? A tax on the famously malleable sweeties called Bustamante Backbone?

"You cannot be serious!" as John McEnroe is reported to have said.

They'll soon be installing parking meters on Skyline Drive and on the road to Port Royal!

Drive-by Development

There's always a slip between intention and execution when it comes to writing  my columns. I will go round for days, carefully composing deathless prose in my head when some human projectile, some fiscal mortar-shell like Mr Shaw explodes and rudely exposes me to the real world.

I had really intended to write about an inspired and impassioned defence of the environment by a learned friend of mine, Dr Byron Wilson, Senior Lecturer in Conservation Biology & Head, Jamaican Iguana Recovery Group, and normally an inoffensive scientist more concerned with keeping things calm than in raising hell. His ire has been raised by Jamaica's Prospector in Chief,  Mr Edmund Bartlett, who has replaced Mr Vin Lawrence in looking for unspoiled places most needing to be clothed in concrete.

I am told by an unreliable source that Bartlett, Lawrence and Patterson, along with Tony Hylton of the Port Authority and John Ashcroft, former Attorney General of the US, are members of an arcane religious group  called the Society for Elimination of Elemental Nakedness  – SEEN. This group has been uniquely commissioned by God to seek out instances of natural and unnatural nakedness and unruly behaviour among human beings, trees and coral reefs and to suppress or disguise these manifestations of life in flagrante either by pruning, felling or mutilation or by dredging or alternately, where such measures may not be feasible, to cover these indecent manifestations by clothing, by grass lawns, by mega-ships or by concrete.

Mr Bartlett, probably under the guidance of the UDC, has fixed his beady eye on Manatee Bay, no doubt having been warned off Halfmoon Bay, Hellshire,  pre-owned as it were, by fishermen.

Manatee Bay, further along the Hellshire Coast, is a prime candidate for the attentions of SEEN. Somebody has been exposing Mr Bartlett to Hellshire, and the minister for Tourism , properly excited, has declared his intention to turn Port Henderson's notorious 'Back  Road" into the equivalent of Montego Bay's comically misnamed  "Hip Strip".

The headline in the Observer was

'Back Road' to get hip strip status as Portmore looks to tourism

It may have escaped the attention of the magnates of the Back Road that as far as I can see, there isn't a single Jamaican-owned enterprise on MoBay's Hip Strip.

Mr Bartlett, according to the news item has plans:

"… tourism minister Edmund Bartlett is already examining the possibilities of developing the Manatee Bay area into an exclusive tourism product.

Manatee Bay is a prime waterfront property which extends beyond Hellshire (sic)

The minister said he has since taken potential investors there to scout out the area.

"Manatee Bay has tremendous potential for tourism development and one which could be developed into a new frontier," Bartlett said.

According to Bartlett, Portmore has great potential … as the community with its already great dormitory areas would be a good catchment for tourist workers. (As I said a long time ago, people will be trying to find a good reason for Portmore until it disappears under the sea)

Mr Bartlett's entire vocabulary is that of the real estate huckster. There is not even the hint of an environmental, cultural or esthetic consideration; it’s all about cash. A country that brazenly and incessantly  claims to be motivated by spiritual ideals , led by a government which invokes God at the drop of an expletive, finds it impossible to remember that life is not all about cash, that land is not all about property rights and commissions and fees.

Thirty years ago I had an acrimonious argument with the UDC who came close to accusing me of insanity because I contended that a UWI expedition had produced evidence suggesting that iguanas might still exist in Hellshire, contrary to the conventional wisdom which held they had been extinct for 40 years.

Thirty years ago I fought for the university's vision of a Hellshire that was managed to protect its natural wilderness, its biodiversity and to safeguard its scientific integrity. The UDC was for "Development" covering the wilderness with concrete, pumping sewage into a 500 million year old underground reservoir of pure water in a landscape devoid of springs and other sources of potable water.

The UDC's ideas for Hellshire have never been too short of nuttiness, of an arrogant disregard for facts as against public relations jargon and boosterish BS.

Since then, however, other things have changed and people have organised to protect  Jamaica's valuable patrimony. What we have is not just our patrimony, but the heritage and patrimony of the entire human race and we need to recognise that we have serious responsibilities to protect the interests of humanity.

Dr Wilson has written to the editors of our newspapers, laying out the case against Mr Bartlett's fantasies.  I haven't  yet been able to ask his permission but I will quote him nonetheless because what he has to say is too important to the public interest to be kept from the public.

•" … the Manatee Bay area has, at least until now, managed to escape the major assault that has been launched on the island’s other coastal areas.  Indeed, every white sand beach is a potential target for destruction by development interests.  From an environmental perspective, the Manatee Bay area contains the least disturbed and most valuable coastal habitat remaining on the island.  The area’s most famous resident, the Jamaican iguana, is one of the world’s rarest [animals], and its population is restricted to the dry limestone forest that borders Manatee Bay. 

•       "… in contrast to the “tremendous potential for tourism development” cited by Mr. Bartlett, the Manatee Bay area is in fact a horrible location for tourism development.        This was the conclusion reached by a joint UWI-Institute of Jamaica study commissioned in 1970; more recent research has served to underscore this assessment. 

 • " For starters, the water in Manatee Bay is extremely turbid; it’s usually not possible to see one’s feet while standing in only a foot of water.  That is not the sort of clear blue Caribbean sea that tourists want to swim in.            

• "Second, Manatee Bay and the adjacent coastal waters are a major spawning ground for the Southern Stingray.  The combination of turbid water and plentiful but “invisible” stingrays renders the area decidedly unfriendly when it comes to water sports.

          • Manatee Bay is prime crocodile habitat.  We started monitoring the population a year ago, and have already marked and released 100 crocodiles…and that is just the tip of the iceberg.  Where will the hundreds of displaced crocodiles go?

          Dr Wilson then explains why the area is scientifically important and why, although it is largely unnoticed in Jamaica, the area is recognised by the international community for its biological importance. The international community   have incidentally, invested more than a million US for protection of the manatee.  Dr Wilson continues:

          " Make no mistake about it:  the international conservation community knows all about Hellshire, and all about its precarious persistence.  They have also invested heavily in saving both Hellshire and the iguana, and they will not be happy to learn that their efforts may have been in vain.  Hellshire is no Pear Tree Bottom, because tragic as the destruction of that area was, it did not harbour any so-called site endemics.  Developing Hellshire would lead directly to the extinction of the iguana, because it occurs nowhere else.  The battle over mining the Cockpit Country for bauxite would seem like a friendly exchange among colleagues compared to any battle over destroying Manatee Bay and driving the iguana to extinction.  So please Minister, shelve these plans.  And after all, the Manatee Bay area sits squarely in the middle of the Portland Bight Protected Area, and is part of the Portland Bight Wetlands and Cays – which has been designated as a wetland of international importance through the Ramsar Convention.  Moreover, the government has already committed to protecting the iguana and the other unique natural resources of this biodiversity “hotspot within a hotspot.” 

I (JM) quoted Edward Seaga last week speaking about the social dichotomy represented in what he called the Afro-European divide. It isn't so much an Afro/European divide as it is a divide between the humane and the exploitative, between those who care for the soil and those who see land purely as a portfolio asset. This is what is at the heart of the conflict between the so-called "Developers" and the rest of us in this country. For the developers there are no 'sacred places' in this country. They are as willing to dig down Barbecue Bottom and the rest of the `Cockpit Country as they are ready to destroy anything that can be looted.

That is why,  despite solemn promises, the government of Jamaica daily shames itself by its non-ratification of the SPAW protocol which would settle most developer-conservationist disputes before they started. An ecosystem like Little Bloody Bay at Negril may not be of transcendental importance, but taken with the destruction and planned destruction of similar precious or valuable sites, its conversion to concrete would be  a disgusting piece of vandalism negating  our claim to be civilised .

Professor `Elizabeth Thomas Hope has been preaching for years about the need to care for our patrimony and specifically about the problem of solid waste. Yet, successive governments claiming to be civilised, refuse, for example, to put a deposit on plastic bottles or to tax capital gains or to reintroduce a progressive income tax, all prerequisites of a civilised society. Why?

Because people who give large sums of money to the PNP and the JLP won't like it.

So – they put a tax on bullas, on yam and on fresh fish.

Life is about to get extremely interesting.

Copyright © 2009 John Maxwell jankunnu@yahoo.com

 

The issue I have is the same one we are facing now, in the year 2734 how are we going to make sure that rules and regulations are being enforced in the court system.

In doing this the court condemned blacks to endure to mare that a half century of more social inequality.

Congressional oversight is practiced by Congress.

Money makes the world go round and keeps us striving as an economy.

So what about the people who are naturally born citizens. Those who have not yet seen themselves flourish into the individuals they all inspired to be.

The main place for racial and gender inequalities would have to be the workplace.

Is Congress doing a good job these days? Well, America certainly does not thinks so. The tragic shootings in Alabama and in Germany likely will increase calls for stricter gun control. Do Americans want that?

It is said to be believed that the Generation Ys are the offspring’s of the Baby Boomers.

Slavery is a thing of the past but there are still many African Americans who could break the cycle of poverty and crime.

Developmental theories frequently change.

Colonialism was loosing its grip in both Europe and the United States. The world was no longer a vast expansive territory.

With new problems in development, global worming, sound technologies, pollution, etc., first world countries cannot continue to pay the cost of their development.

Anthropologists, Catholics, Protestants, all have various views of human development.

On the other hand, a democracy is the representation of the people therefore political order determines the people because they have elections to decide who they want in office.

I will also make the point that if only philosophers ruled this would most definitely bridge the gap wider and longer between average individuals and these philosophers.

Plato’s assertions steam from his upbringing in a prominent upper-class family.

On that President Lincoln argued that the Civil War was a struggle for the Union but as freedom for all citizens that would bring true equality that would create a unified nation where rights would no longer be dominated.

For instant the speech was given during the Peloponnesian war as a public funeral for the falling soldiers.

Both President Lincoln and Pericles have at additional motives along with an explanation to their Counties.

Education is very important in governing the states because one has to be taught the knowledge of becoming a philosopher.

Philosophers are trained experts who sometimes now what they are doing and try to do what’s best for the state.

Plato was high in social status and his Ideology was elusive, his subjects ranged from political events to intellectual movements.

Life is unfair and not everyone can have a high sense of intelligence.

His greatest impact was Aristotle, but he influenced Western political thought in many ways.

He believes that on philosophers are suited for running the government because people don’t understand matter.

I Don’t understand how Plato can talk about a harmonious state when women and men are not allowed to be married.

My views and beliefs are more with Mencius than that of Plato because there are good and bad in people.

In retrospect, If Mencius was living during the civil rights movement he would have agreed with Dr. King, Shirley Chisholm, Robert Nesta Marley, Assata Shakur, Marcus Garvey, Simone de Beauvoir, and Malcolm X, all of which fought against the government to end racial equality between blacks, whites, women, and men.

One of the reasons why other most Muslim countries are so anti America is because of Bush not because  American citizens.

We can count this as fact not an option.

If the two of them could actually suit down and discuss his actions as a “ruler” then what would Plato say to Bush.

The writings of Plato and Mozi have a couple main differences that Plato would consider a major problem and dilemma for the formation of society.

With no set of consequence the citizens were causing disgruntlement in each other.

The Meddieveal era was an era in history when music and art took center stage as the focal point of society.

A women was never the ruler of a nation, a women was not allowed to work outside of the home and were often subject to household duties.

The elite women were what are refered to today as socialites, ie Paris Hilton.

There are still feminists, because women are still viewed as inferiors to men it just not as highly publicised as it was back in those days.

Women  should be equally as inferior as men.

Machiavelli also knows that conquer and fear may be used and that is why he states, “Thus it comes about that all armed prophets have conquered and unarmed ones fail.”

Women in the world of theory are not regarded with the same intellectual prowl as their male counterparts.

Pizan questions whether or not women should be taught education just like their counterparts and why men think women should not be educated.

Pisan learned her intellectual powers from her father.

If women had continued to listen to the men, we would not be where we are now:  educated and dependent on men.

The two philosophers are easily proven to show a suitable political category to be placed under by studying their differing views.

Han Feizi and Machiavelli both had philosophies of their own, in some ways they were similar as well as different from the beliefs of one another.

Han Feizi was born at the time when Hans state was the most weakest, while Machiavelli was born at the time when Italy was in a major political destruct.

Physical strength is the only thing that was inferior to man.

Though Cicero may not be seen as an extraordinary thinker to some people today, because of his works and how they were thought to be clichéd, during his time he was considered to be one of the greatest thinkers of the ancient era, also known as the 19^th century.

Christine de Pisan was a born in and around the palace, under the king of France in the late 1300’s.

Plato view of women differs from Christine De Pisan view of women simply because he gave women a role to play in society, whereas Pisan believed that women were just as equal to men and was not to be constricted only to maternal duties.

Women roles in society have been misunderstood, due to different cultures, backgrounds, and other rituals.

The creation of the United States as a nation was culminated on the shoulders of frontiersmen and those looking for a way out of religious persecution.

Colonists had to literally create the world they lived in, and by the time the Constitution was created there were citizens of America who had ancestors that came from Europe well over a century before they were even born. This thus gave birth to an inherent American culture, where some residents had never even set foot in the nation that held such a “tyrannical rule” over them.

The Royal African Company and Liberalism are far from one in the same.

You have no life and liberty if you are somebody’s property.

Locke refereed to slavery as a state of war continued between a lawful, keyword lawful, conqueror and captive.

On the other hand Hobbes believed that peace is war in disguise.

Hobbes is all about getting back to a state of nature, and how we must give up unlimited natural right.

 

With the ongoing competition that exists in the state of war, eventually man develops a need for rest.

Thomas Hobbes viewed human nature as individual self-preservation and as a place of constant war.

Although they all believe in the social contract theory, they all conceive the social contract theory the same in objection, but there are many differences in the way they are conceived all together. Even though they lived during different times and places, their ideals still are justifiably similar.

Like Hobbes, Locke (1632-1704) believes to get out of the state inconvenience of the state of nature we form a social contract theory.

When human give up their individual rights they are essentially relinquishing rights that they were born with and should be taken away.  A human being withought individual right cannot be described as an individual.

Nationalism is great, it is fgood to be proud of one’s nation, and revel in their prosperity but Machiavelli went about proming nationalism in the wrong way.

Hobbes was an English philosopher knows best for his political thought; he viewed the world as a prominently unusual and immobile significant to modern-day politics.

Hobbes’ myth of social contrast, he believed that everyone that will exercises sovereignty should give all their powers up, and they should only protect themselves only in defense.

Human judgment tends to be imprecise by their self-interest and by the pleasure, pains of the moment.

Rousseau argues that the development of the sciences and arts has caused the dishonesty of virtue and morality.

He was a royalist, meaning he was a supporter of King Charles I, whom ruled a monarchy.  His views are consequently, pessimistic regarding human nature.

Man in the state of nature is a society, but people who are not governed and have no set rules to abide by will only look out in their interest. Men are not equal on all levels either.

In much of today’s 21^st century, one is continuously reminded of the societal impacts of the Ancient Greek philosophers.

Of Chinese dissent, Confucius is responsible for the school of Confucianism.

Mozi said that war was crime and was more serious than any other crime. He also said that funerals and other rituals should not be carried out with little excitement.

Augustine believed that because God created man, God should run the city because men are sinful and will not live forever.

I do agree that the political thinkers of the past have nothing to say to us today because the various political thought that they were developed in the past are widely practised, studied and emulated in politics today.

In this paper the works of Plato, Mencius and The United States government will be analyzed and serve as evidence as to why the political thinkers of the past have nothing to say to us today because History have proven these thinkers have had an immense influence in politics of the past, the present and also in the future.

The laws are the curse from God.

John Calvin was a strong believer of predestination. He believed that our faiths were already decided from birth.

Edward Long has been associated with Jamaican roots for heritages.

In this book Long argues that American Negros had the characteristics of animals in which they inhabited in Africa and have no use of quality.

He was also an advocate of political theory, but yet involved with slavery.

It was because of him the concept of some type of equality is present.

These political thinkers can provide insight to those that are currently in the twentieth century since even though the physical nature has changed human nature has not progressed has equally as fast.

In the United States, President is held to a similar degree.

Han Feizi lived in China from 280-233 BC. He helped find the legalist school.

John Locke was an Oxford scholar, medical researcher and physician, political activist, economist, idealist, and stagiest for a revolutionary movement, as well as being one of the great philosophers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

All people by nature want to accumulate power. We are naturally inquisitive and we want more then we can possibly have in a lifetime.

If men are naturally inquisitive then they are going to want everything that everyone has.

If a person commits a crime they are punished for that crime and if a candidate wins votes they are rewarded for it.

John Locke believed that in the beginning of the world there was America.

Most of China ideas and thoughts come for that of Confucius.

These laws established by legislative powers must be arbitrary, but must be written into law and be publically known.

Our society lacks structure and obedience as though many teachings were engraved in.

A ruler is not bad and a bad one should not be tolerated.

No we should not reject liberalism on the basis that these men were involved with slavery and the avocation of political liberty.

Plato’s theory the “Allegory of the Cave” tells can describe some of us who are a currently a cave with no knowledge of the world around us.

Aristotle feels that democracy cannot be fair and just to the people because it is ruled by the majority in the interest of a few.

Hobbes was born on April 5, 1958 and he died on December 4, 1679.

Niccolo Machiavelli had a somewhat dissimilar thought as to the explanation and cause of “power and authority”.

But a leader who reigns humanitarianly and takes concern of the citizens is to be obeyed severely, for the generosity of his authority shows that he has been mandated by heaven.

Locke believed that when men crate property they leave nature.

Its roots can be found in the ancient teachings of Confusion when he speaks of “chinesness.”

The past political thinkers laid the foundation to which we have continued to chip away at and build on.

 

the fraction of the truth that now remains

within the bounds of what we are to speak

is current language words sodden and weak

lacking in power nothing now explains

the meaning of the anguish and the pains

that each had taken before these grey bleak

crowds of oppression forbade us to seek

the honest answers upon hills or plains

a light at noon would show no honest folk

in any corner of a world grown wild

with deepest passion of forgotten art

needing desire and raging for the yoke

to be laid on each grown person a child

once more but coals of hope burn in each heart