Mango Walk

your eye is locked upon the circling shark

so now we come to one last bit of lore

a simple word you would not say before

this solemn second so the very spark

of light on hungry tooth must make its mark

and yet you think you still might know the score

and not yet be aware of that last door

now yawning open to the angry dark

you know what brought us to this honest place

where stories come to bump against the wall

of total silence it is not a force

that shows itself on each suburban face

it is instead the power to enthrall

both the sophisticated and the coarse

John Maxwell

On my return in 1971 from five years exile in England my friends seemed to think I needed to be re-introduced to Jamaica.

They were right. My first shock was downtown Kingston, which resembled parts of Berlin as it was then. In 1966, when I went to Berlin, there were huge gaps in the cityscape caused by Allied military action – by aircraft or tanks during the Second World War.

Kingston's wounds were caused by friendly fire, the work of the misnamed Ministry of Development and Welfare and the equally oxymoronic Urban Development Corporation.

Between them, forty years ago, they were going to turn Kingston into a tropical Miami with all mod cons. Instead of proceeding one building or one block at a time, Mr Edward Seaga and Mr Moses Matalon were going to transform the city, overnight. Boom! Another one gone!

As we drove through the silent ruins of Port Royal Street, ~Harbour Street, Rumbo Lane, Little Port Royal Street and South Street, something strange began to happen. Whenever we stopped the car  by some derelict building so that I could try to envisage what had been, suddenly into the headlights erupted hordes of little boys, scuttling like rats or cockroaches in every direction, running as fast as their meagre legs would carry them.

"Why are they running?" I asked.

"They think we're the police, come to catch them and beat them up."

This was new to me. I had written a great deal about police brutality before being forced to take my talents elsewhere, but I hadn't heard, till then, of the police hunting children.

About three years later, when Mr Eli Matalon was Minister of National Security, I embarrassed him and Michael Manley's government by asking the Minister on television, what he planned to do with the dozens of children then being brutalised  in police lock-ups. He said he wasn't aware of that situation. When I provided him with some facts about the police lockup a couple of hundred yards from the JBC studios – "the Black Hole of Halfway Tree" –  he promised to get the children out of the lock-ups.  A few years later, again on TV, I asked the then Minister of Youth and Community Development, Douglas Manley the question I'd asked Matalon. He actually had been moving children out of lockups and into places of safety. The problem was that the system had not been designed to deal with 'trickle-down' development.

The police fish-pots kept trapping the small fry.

Sexual Predators?

Two weeks ago, the Miami Herald carried one of the saddest stories I've ever read.

It begins:

" At age 7, Gabriel Myers was already well on his way to becoming a sexual predator.

'He had exposed himself to classmates. He had kissed another boy. And his uncle warned child-welfare administrators Gabriel had described what he wanted to do with several little girls at his Christian private school.

'Gabriel, who may himself have been sexually molested by another boy in Ohio before moving to South Florida, had been on several strong psychiatric drugs before he hanged himself last week at a Margate foster home. "

One of the Herald's readers posted a comment that expressed much of what I felt when I read the story –

"Shame on The Miami Herald for allowing this defamatory piece of trash to post. This poor child who was utterly failed by most if not all in his life is now being further victimized in his death. This disgusts me and I will cancel my subscription. We treat animals more humanely than you have this child. I hope you will write more to uncover what travesty lead to this untimely death which I would hardly term a suicide. A child who has barely been on this earth a few years and was in the care of the state for less than a year is tragically gone due to circumstances that were not at all within his control. You have left me angered and disappointed ."

Another wrote:

"Wow. So, a seven year old child "kills himself" after behaving in a manner strongly suggestive of severe abuse ... and the Miami Herald devotes an entire article to the most salacious details of the kid's sexual misbehavior? A molested seven year old's 'suicide' is mentioned once -- as a small-print caption, no less -- though there's somehow enough article space to reference his "list of touchable classmates" twice?

"This is sensationalistic journalism at its absolute sickest. You are preying on a dead child to drum up web traffic. "

The Los Angeles Times in June last year reported

"Police said the women routinely beat the boy, [the child of one of them] forced him to put his hands on a hot stove, burned his body and genitals with cigarettes and often would not let him eat or drink.

'At a news conference Friday, LAPD Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell said that because of the burns from the stove, the boy no longer can open his hands.

Lt. Vincent Neglia of the LAPD's Abused Child Unit said in a statement Saturday that the abuse was "akin to a level of torture we hope our military personnel would never encounter."

Three weeks ago the Times of London reported

"An 11-year-old boy was left fighting for his life and his 9-year-old friend was found bleeding from head to toe after being attacked and tortured by other children. The boys’ attackers demanded mobile phones, money and trainers. When they refused they were said to have been burnt with cigarettes, cut with a knife and beaten with bricks. Two boys aged 10 and 11 have been arrested."

The Infinite evil of Infants

Fifty years ago, after completing her masterwork, "My Mother Who Fathered Me", Edith Clarke began research into social conditions in the slums of Kingston. She hadn't been able to complete the research for lack of funds, but she was uncovering a toxic stew of sexual and other physical abuse of girls and boys, mainly by itinerant 'stepfathers'.

It is of course almost impossible to get any reliable estimates of violence against children and young people especially since the victimisation of boys is concealed by homophobia and other fundamentalist lunacies. It is suggestive however, that one survey carried out in relation to campaigns against HIV, found that in the parish of St Ann 16 percent, more than one in six teenage boys had contemplated or attempted suicide. In the case of girls one Caribbean victimization survey revealed that 48 percent of adolescent girls’ sexual initiation was “forced” or “somewhat forced” in nine Caribbean countries (Halcon et al., 2003).

People like those who drafted our latest sexual offences act appear to believe, like their cohorts all over the Christian world, that children are born evil and are simply awaiting the opportunity to demonstrate their satanic proclivities.

In Britain a few months ago, the case of "Baby P"  – horrifically mistreated to death –created a huge stink, eventually resolved by finding a convenient scapegoat, the head of children's services in the London borough of Haringey.

She was named, shamed and fired, but the real author of the scandal is even now being honored – Margaret Thatcher who, with Ronald Reagan, led the western world into its terminal heresy – "there is no such thing as society" and the idea that government is the problem, never the solution. The social workers have never been given the resources they need and in places like Miami, the state transfers its responsibilities to private, so called non-profit enterprises whose humanity is expressed in religious education and  prescription psychotropic drugs

To these bozos and their acolytes like Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, the real problem is the sturdy beggars who won't work and expect the world to take care of them.

Their principals, salting away their ill gotten gains in Cayman, Bermuda and similar criminal laundromats, , refuse to pay even the derisory flat taxes imposed by people like Mr Patterson, considering it outrageous that they  be asked to contribute to the common good in some proportion to the profits they have gained from exploiting cheap labour and turning human beings into units of human resources'.

The medieval poor laws were in some ways in advance of modern capitalist behaviour. Although "sturdy beggars" could be jailed, whipped and even hanged, the society recognised that there was a case to be made to help those who could not help themselves.

In our societies. it is simpler to warehouse in prison,  half a million  black, poor, handicapped or otherwise 'sub-normal' people and to dose their women and children with psychotropic drugs to keep them from breaching the peace.

At the age of seven, little Gabriel Myers opted out.

Copyright©2009 John Maxwell

this is the limit of no sacred name

where words unspoken lose no heavy freight

your silence won't put out a single flame

once we were scared we'd be out of the game

of no account except perhaps as bait

this is the limit of no sacred name

to be upheld to nobody's acclaim

and be ignored by all who pass the gate

your silence won't put out a single flame

and all your songs will not obscure the shame

so what we do is bend our heads and wait

this is the limit of no sacred name

a home we find to wild as well as tame

the sort of thing no one would celebrate

your silence won't put out a single flame

not even here the charnel-house of fame

where all is laid to rest except old hate

this is the limit of no sacred name

your silence won't put out a single flame

this is the point at which all magic fades

into the normal business of work

so we experience life as dullish trades

when it should be a matter of parades

of dances driving dervishes berserk

this is the point at which all magic fades

while happy years turn into long decades

as old men look on with satisfied smirk

so we experience life as dullish trades

each of us finds out no long tirades

can sway the messenger or raise the murk

this is the point at which all magic fades

a force that is impervious to blades

within which some yet greater force may lurk

so we experience life as dullish trades

between the weight of light and heft of shades

we are afraid although we may not shirk

this is the point at which all magic fades

so we experience life as dullish trades

words measured in a simple steady beat

symbols of who we are and whence we came

become so soon the means of giving blame

to painful past so much is angry heat

we find that every tale is incomplete

and each hard word remains a source of shame

since it can't matter who has won the game

but only who has felt the last defeat

if this is victory and the true tale

of how we got here in so sad a shape

perhaps we should give up and let the land

be what it was before the first grey sail

came over the horizon by the cape

and the false admiral made his demand

John Maxwell

Way back in the age of Dinosaurs, when I was a young reporter at the Gleaner, I sometimes found myself sidetracked in my research in the newspaper's 'morgue' where dusty volumes of old newspapers told the Gleaner's version of Jamaica's history. I worked alongside of some of the reporters who had reported that history, names well-known then, forgotten now: Martin (M.A.G.S) Smith, Vincent Truman who went to jail and nearly took me with him, Ulric Simmonds, C.T. Walters, Calvin Bowen and the imperturbable Percy Trottman. Over a drink some almost incredible stories came out, which is how I happened on the story of the racehorse's egg.( Read more... )

A shaggy horse story

Somewhere in the mid-1930s a very plausible con-man found on a beach somewhere, a beautiful sea-stone, weighing several pounds and perfectly egg-shaped. There had to be some higher purpose to this stone than decorating a beach,  and with a little careful thought he divined exactly what that purpose was. And that insight led almost inexorably to his facing a charge of obtaining money by false pretences and a spell as the guest of HM George VI in the St Catherine District prison.

Our con-man had found – somewhere in Vere, Clarendon – an Indian gentleman, who was well off and ready to bet on anything. The con-man approached him in confidence with the story that Jamaica's leading racehorse had recently laid an egg and the con-man had at great danger and expense, managed to posses himself of said egg. Would the Indian gentleman care to buy a share in the egg?  To ensure confidentiality the con-man insisted that the egg needed to be incubated by a human being so that when the young racehorse hatched, no one else would know whence it came and it could go on to win races and money for the proud owners.

I promise you I'm not making this up.

After the Indian gentleman and his wife had spent some months taking turns carefully incubating the egg as instructed, they confidently expected to be the proud foster parents of a young thoroughbred. When said thoroughbred did not emerge and the con-man could no longer be found, they set about the egg hoping to free the young racehorse. After tentative tapping produced no result   they went at the egg hammer and tongs, discovering eventually, that the egg was solid rock.

The cops were summoned and in due course the case was before the courts.

I am reminded of the Racehorse Egg by the saga of the Falmouth Cruise Ship port which we are told, will bring floods of day-trippers to Falmouth, rendering that beautiful old town totally unfit for human habitation.

Jamaica, it seems, needs a designated super-borrower, an entity whose duty is to ensure that Jamaica is as financially over-extended as possible, no doubt to prevent hostile take-over bids from Cayman or Bermuda. In the 70s and 80s this function was admirably discharged by the UDC who issued IOUs and other promissory notes to banks all over. Now, the UDC having run out of steam, its labours have been assumed by the Port Authority of Jamaica, which, like the UDC, seems to have been called by God to perform plastic surgery on the geography of Jamaica.

It was the UDC we need to remember, that by sanitising the Negril Morass, is mainly responsible for the current vulnerability of the Morass to destructive fires and for the erosion of most of Negril's  famous seven mile beach.

The  NRCA advised by the scientists of the NRCD, told the UDC 30 years ago what was likely to happen, but the UDC, like the PAJ today, knows better than any number of ecological scientists  and 'over-educated Rasta' environmentalist activist journalists.

As Mr Moses Matalon pointed out to me: "Mr Maxwell you are not an engineer" and he was deeply hurt when I retorted by pointing out that neither was he.

I am sure Mr Tony Hylton will tell me the same thing. He is about to build a $200 US Million dollar port at Falmouth which is fated to be a disaster even more spectacular than the Doomsday Highway.

Mr Hylton probably knows more about investment finance than Mr Warren Buffet, who is either the world's richest man or its second richest. Mr Buffet thinks the world financial system is going to be in turmoil for some time to come. Mr Hylton does not think so.

Mr Hylton has tied the Port Authority's fortunes to those of the Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines which is aiming to be one of Jamaica's leading competitors as a destination.

Royal Caribbean is largely owned by the Pritzker family, who have got inordinately  rich by the simple expedient of paying little or no tax on their considerable earnings.

Royal Caribbean continues the Pritzker's  voracious appetite for money by transforming itself from a cruise line to a floating destination. You read that right.

What RCCL is doing is to transform their ships into the seagoing equivalents of Montego Bay, Negril, Las Vegas or Miami Beach.

On their newest ship, the oxymoronic Oasis of the Seas five thousand or so passengers will be housed in a floating resort town, with casinos, discos, nightclubs, dozens of restaurants, fitness centres, adventure playgrounds, bijou jungles, forests and beaches, parks, promenades, boardwalks, mini-golf courses, swimming pools, rock climbing walls, tennis courts, water sports, basketball courts, ice-skating rinks, jogging tracks, and of course, no importunate natives.

THe ship will be its own destination and its visits to places like Jamaica will be simply to dispose of waste, take on cheap water and give the staff some R&R and allow passengers to go molest some caged wildlife.

RCCL had a dreadful year last year and this year found its bonds reduced to junk rating and it was unable to find money to finance its half-built new destination/liner. The line has been rescued by the Finnish shipyard and the Finnish government who were already in the hole for hundreds of millions and figured that they might as well throw good money after bad because it would cost even more to scrap a half built cruise ship. If they completed the ship someone might buy it for a hotel.

Running Aground

Mr Hylton's vision of paradise for Falmouth is that the classic Georgian town will be reduced to an American style theme park, a la "Colonial Williamsburg" for the exclusive use of the cruise ship passengers and people with foreign credit cards. For this he is putting Jamaica in debt for between 100 and 200 million US with no guarantee that this investment will ever be repaid. One wonders what this money would return if it were invested in small farms, small business and in education. Instead, those whose education and skill-building could have been paid for by this money, will slave until their children's children's generation to pay for Mr Hylton's vision.

Falmouth will become a cultural and financial free-zone, owing no allegiance to Jamaica and paying a modicum of tax, since offshore banks will find happy havens here, to provide temporary landing pads for foreign currency on its way to its natural habitat - offshore.

But I have news for Mr Hylton. Falmouth is the estuary of the Martha Brae and the Martha Brae brings down millions of tons of silt every year. The Oasis of the Seas is going to run aground regularly in Falmouth unless the harbour is regularly dredged at great expense  . And dredging, of course, is one of the Port Authority's areas of expertise with its Belgian partners who triumphantly relocated millions of tons of Kingston Harbour's toxic waste for the greater good of Portmore.

As I pointed out in a column in February 2002, (People at Risk):

"… persistent organic pollutants (POPs) or Persistent Bio-accumulative Toxics (PBT's) remain in the environment for decades, even centuries in some cases and travel far beyond their initial points of release. And as long as they exist, they accumulate in the bodies of animals and people.

"The Port Authority admits that the toxics in Kingston Harbour include (among others) : Arsenic, Benzene, Cadmium, Chlordane, Chloroform, Chromium, Cresols, 2,4-D9 (aka Agent Orange) dichlorobenzene, dichlorethane, dinitrotoluene, Endrin, Heptachlor, Hexachlorobutadiene, lead, lindane, mercury, nitrobenzene, pentachlorophenol, pyridine, selenium, tetrachloroethylene, toxaphene , 4,5 Trichlorophenol and vinyl chloride.

"Many PBTs are associated with a range of adverse human health effects, including damage to nervous systems and deformities of the sex organs and reproductive systems generally and associated developmental problems, cancer, plus genetic impacts. They not only deform people now living, but may deform people not yet conceived.  Particular risks may be posed to the developing fetus or young child where critical organs, such as the central nervous system and the reproductive system, are under development. "

Since the Port Authority did not bother to address my concerns then I have no doubt that they will ignore them now. And when I look back at what I warned the UDC about at Negril, and my prediction of the financial and ecological disaster that is the Millennium Highway, I cannot help but wonder why I don't find some racehorse eggs to sell our Jamaican ginnigogs. And I remember that classic line in the 1954 World Bank Report on Jamaica: In practice, absolute ownership in Jamaica means the absolute right of the owner to ruin the land in his own way.

Haiti Elections and Persistent Journalistic Falsehoods

The Vichy-water government of Haiti purported to hold elections for the Senate a few days ago.

The results were disappointing and the free press of the western world reported it this way:

No winners in 1st round of Haiti Senate election,

said AP and their approach was typical

No obvious winner in Haiti's Senate poll

No clear winners in Haiti Senate elections

No winners emerge from Senate elections in Haiti; June runoff set

Reading these headlines would never lead you to suspect that there was in fact a very clear winner in the elections.

 The Fanmi Lavalas, loyal to President Aristide, advised Haitians to stay away from the polls, because it refused to accept the corrupt machinations of the electoral authority. The authority had tried to sabotage the candidacy of the Fanmi Lavalas.

SO Lavalas told the Haitians to boycott the elections. Only about one in ten turned up to vote according to the authorities.

 Lavalas says the real turnout was less than one percent.

That would seem to indicate a landslide win for Lavalas. If there was no clear winner there was certainly a clear loser: the Elite-American-Canadian-French-UN occupation authorities

The Haitian people clearly passed a massive vote of no confidence in the whole fraudulent Vichy-water mess. The free press, of course, has other ideas and its own Democratic agenda.

Copyright©2009 John Maxwell

Please Note; I am not a member of Facebook or Twitter or ANY OTHER social networking site. If you see me listed there it is some kind of fraud. Pay no attention. JM

jankunnu@gmail.com

once more the effort brings with it much dread

to read these words and see how little sense

has been made here but i cannot dispense

with justice and the kindness in me bred

by hungry years and so i will commence

once more the effort brings with it much dread

of all the ancient horrors i have read

here in this room at least there's no pretense

that there's much here that merits defence

once more the effort brings with it much dread

what's made impossible and left undone

becomes the goal of those who cannot know

how fast the little tree will have to grow

to reach its proper place beneath the sun

in this hard age some tasks are never fun

but this one is for more than simple show

it will not leave us with the sort of glow

that brings the punters to us on the run

you have the magic now or so you think

since all the focus is on how you do

this simple task not on our tired fall

from what was grace but still on the last brink

of victory you may not have your due

since none of us get anything at all

some other cretin gets to play the king

while i look on and take my turn to weep

some little moment and then slowly creep

out of the way to let you have your fling

laugh at the crowd ignore each tiny sting

of subtle words although the hurt goes deep

into my heart and is not soothed by sleep

yet other heroes must go in the ring

so much is read by you upon the page

in one short night beneath a lucky star

when all the symbols come together clear

not so well do things work now in this age

yet we have managed to do well so far

and may yet work our way into clean air