Mango Walk

John Maxwell

Almost everything you thought you knew about bauxite is a lie, beginning with the Authorised Version of how the Industry began. 'Although deposits of aluminous red earth have been known to occur in the Tertiary Limestone areas (which covers two thirds of the land surface of Jamaica) since the 1820's, it was not until the 1940's that their economic significance as an ore of aluminum was recognised."

That's not as bad as the garbage disseminated in various quarters, including schools, which attributes the 'discovery' to one of Jamaica's merchant barons in the 1940s.

According to that story the merchant, who owned land in St. Ann, noticed that his crops were not doing well on red earth and sent some away to be analysed. And presto! a bauxite industry.

The very first Government Geologist, J.G.Sawkins, had mapped some of the major deposits and discussed their possible importance in his official Notes of 1867. And Aluminium Ltd of London had had its agents mapping and getting options on land in Jamaica since 1936.

The discovery of mineral wealth in the Third World has usually been the precursor to communal strife up to and including civil war (Nigerian oil, Congolese cobalt, uranium, oil, etc., etc.,) and social dissolution. Jamaica has been no different, only slightly less bloody.

Mining usually destroys the environment, fragments communities, intensifies inequality and enhances criminal activity. Bauxite has disfigured the landscape, opened land to illegal deforestation and increased soil erosion. The dust nuisance from mining and transportating bauxite is spread wide as are the asthma and other collateral medical conditions.  The fallout is much greater and more severe in the neighbourhood of alumina refineries. The toxic effusions of these hellholes destroys the roofs of houses, furniture, livestock and most shameful of all, the lungs of childre Red mud polluted water contributes to hypertension, stroke and early death

But all this is just a start, a sample, of the enduring curse of bauxite, that magic mineral that only 50 years ago was going to be the engine of our development, was going to make us all rich and happy.

Suicide in the Garden Parish

I spent four years, from 8 to 12, at a school in Claremont,  the centre of St Ann, the so-called Garden Parish of Jamaica.  On Sundays we went for long walks past groves of cedar, bastard cedar, guango and mahogany, past ponds and their blue and white gaulins, past trees full of  anis and doves and brilliant, yard-long green lizards  It was a verdant gentle landscape, fertile and productive. The big landowners had their 'penns' – cattle ranches – but small farmers  produced the sweetest oranges, grapefruit, tangerines, ortaniques and 'uglis' known to man, corn and yams and gungoo peas.  There was peace, self-sufficiency and little idleness.

You get the picture.

I thought I remembered a green place called Inverness. Can't fnd it anymore. Can't really find Aboukir and much of Alexandria has vanished as well as most of the dales and greensward, the scrub and bird-rich 'ruinate of my youth.

Whole districts have been wiped out, whole villages have ceased to exist, replaced by huge holes in the ground – some 'restored' to grassland – if they happen to be alongside a public road and therefore open to scrutiny.  But fly over St Ann and the mindless, chaotic destruction becomes clear.  Huge craters remain, 'unrestored', raw, gaping wounds in the flesh of this once green garden. The people were not considered in this planning; only bauxite; but wait till you get to south Manchester. At Roxburgh, birthplace of Norman Manley – the destruction has a quality of fascist brutality and sadistic revenge about it. Only so-called 'civilised' human vultures could even contemplate ravaging the earth in this way.

A survey of teenagers in relation to AIDS/HIV, a few years ago, disclosed that in the parish of St Ann,  Jamaica's most literate parish and probably most prosperous and peaceful parish in 1955, sixteen percent (16%) – nearly one in five male teenagers – had either attempted or seriously considered suicide.

Some of the people I left here in 1945 moved to Kingston, some to London and New York, leaving behind children and destroying extended families, communities and social capital. The villages changed, new kinds of bars, nightclubs and 'guesthouses' to service the newly rich millwrights and dump-truck drivers.

The Natural Resources Conservation Authority/National Environmental Planning Agency – NRCA/NEPA – say they  have delegated their environmental protection and regulation responsibilities to the Jamaica Bauxite Institute. I find nothing in the law to allow this delegation, and I believe it is illegal and ultra vires. As Wendy Lee of the Northern Jamaica Conservation Association (NJCA) points out, it involves a severe and inherent conflict of interest.

And since the JBI some years ago seriously proposed to establish in Jamaica one of the world’s most dangerous industrial plants,  a facility to incinerate imported PCBs and dioxins, I doubt whether the JBI understands the meaning of ecology – or of environmental integrity.

The JBI's environmental  competence must be further questioned when one of their principals was quoted in November 2006 as saying that the flora and fauna of the Cockpit Country could be 're-located".

At that time I asked:

"If Mr Parris Lyew Ayee believes that he can relocate the flora and fauna of the Cockpit Country I would ask him to give us an explanation of how he would deal with just one species - the beautiful Blue Swallowtail butterfly.

The Blue Swallowtail is a seriously endangered species. It is one of the world's largest butterflies and is the largest butterfly in the western hemisphere. [One] is big enough to cover most of the palm of a normal hand. "

I didn't get any answer then and I won’t get any answer now, because Mr Lyew Ayee's proposal is unscientific and impossible.

Planning and Expropriation

The  JBI and its sidekick the Commissioner of Mines – CMG , – claim the power to relieve landowners of their property rights by a simple declaration. This is the most dangerous and corrupt nonsense.

If Jamaica is, a nation of laws it is clear that people can lose their rights only by due process. The law, despite P.J.Patterson, Q.C., is a shackle.

Under the Mining Act and its Regulations, applicants for Prospecting Licences, Mining Leases and Special Mining Leases must provide the commissioner (CMG) with detailed information including surveys (mapping) conducted under strict conditions .

Section 24 of the Regulations requires the applicant for a lease to survey the area for which the lease is requested and requires the application to be advertised in the Gazette and in a Jamaican daily newspaper.

"Mining Regulations

“Sec 25.-(1) Upon receipt of an application for a mining lease the Commissioner shall cause a notice setting out the main particulars of such application to be published at the expense of the applicant once in the Gazette and once in a daily newspaper circulating in Jamaica and shall give notice of the particulars of such application to any person who to his knowledge has any interest in the area contained in such application.

(2) No mining lease shall be granted until at least three weeks have expired after the publication of the notice in the Gazette as required under paragraph (1).

No legal bauxite mining

If the law means what it says it is not only possible but probable that there is not a single legitimate mining lease in existence in Jamaica.

 In  my view, both the `JBI and the `CMG are operating outside of and contrary to the law. If the CMG operates as he told the Access to Information he does there is no question tat the law is being flouted and has been flouted for several years. (see last week's column – Public Mischief and the Public Interest).

I believe on the basis of the facts above, that people affected by theJBI/CMG attempted expropriation have the right, the opportunity and the duty to shut down the mining industry in Jamaica by application to the high court.

We could do it tomorrow, and we probably should.

If the CMG/JBI were operating the Mining Act as they are required to, Jamaica would have earned millions more from bauxite than it actually did

The Act requires mining companies to compensate Jamaica for every hectare of land mined but not restored.

Currently there are at least 2,669 hectares on which the companies owe us US$ 66,725,000 in one time compensation,at the rate of $25,000 per hectare. In addition the companies owe the people of Jamaica an additional US 2,500 per hectare for every year the land is not rehabilitated. According to my calculations, which are probably an underestimate, the companies owe us another US $150 to 350 million. We are talking real money here, our money– between US$200 million and US$400 million.

When is the government going to collect this debt?

        In addition to all this the companies are liable under international law to reclaim and make harmless nearly 100 million tons of red mud – an enterprise that would solve our unemployment problems for a decade or two and pay pensions to the bauxite workers.. In addition we are entitled to seek damages for the reclamation of the aquifers poisoned by red mud, under the Polluter Pays principle, endorsed in 1992 by P. J. Patterson in Rio.

The Red Mud Scandal

Listen to what the USArmy Corps of Engineers says about bauxite mining in Jamaica:

"Bauxite mining is surface mining, which is land-intensive, noisy, and dusty.

'Jamaica can produce about three million tons of alumina per year. The refining process creates a thick fluid called "red mud" which has high levels of sodium and hydroxide ions, iron oxides, and organic substances.

'About one ton of red mud waste or residue will be produced from each ton of alumina. The land mass cannot accommodate this high volume of waste. This waste is often ponded into lakes, either man-made or karst depressions, with no consideration of the environmental effects.

'The effluent is free to seep into the subsurface, or to mix with precipitation, creating caustic ponds. The disposal of the wastes from alumina processing is a major environmental problem. Discoloration, turbidity, and high coliform bacteria counts, due to the high organic content." –Water Resources Assessment of Jamaica; February 2001. – US Army Corps of Engineers.

A few years ago there was in Jamaica, a Czech scientist, Dr Jasmino Karanjac, who retired as professor of hydrogeology at UWI, Mona. While he was here he carried out several studies with the co-operation of the Water Resources Authority and its head, Mr Basil Fernandez, who like him is an authority on bauxite refinery contamination. In a paper prepared for a Conference 'Water Resources & Environmental Problems in Karst' in September 2006, Professor Karanjac said, inter alia, ""Today, it appears that Jamaica, which has the size of 10,991 sq km, may have problems developing enough good-quality water for its population of just over 2.7 million ...  ground water in Jamaica is very vulnerable. There are no feasible sites for surface water storage and ground water remains the major source of water supply. Along the coast, aquifers are overabstracted and in the interior explorations and drilling are prohibitively expensive.

Professor Karanjac points out that under the UN  definitions, Jamaica ranks as a water-stressed country and suggests that desalination/reverse osmosis plants will certainly be needed in the near future; before even considering red mud contamination. According to Basil Fernandez billions of cubic yards of underground water  has been contaminated by bauxite waste.

With these factors in mind, it would seem totally insane for anyone to contemplate any activity which has the capacity of reducing Jamaica’s water resources capacity. Any bauxite mining will certainly have that effect:

“Recent readings obtained from domestic water wells in the vicinity of Jamaican alumina refineries have indicated elevated sodium and PH readings. Also, the escape of caustic soda (which is used to extract alumina from raw bauxite) into the groundwater supply significantly increases sodium concentration of domestic well water mostly in the rural areas. Sodium is associated with a higher incidence of hypertension. As a result of its genetic composition, the Jamaican population is particularly subject to hypertension, which can be aggravated by high levels of sodium.”

It is known that disturbing the Jamaican red earth liberates cobalt, arsenic and other toxic metals. The problem is that no one knows the extent of the damage.The JBI may know, but it won’t tell its employers, the Jamaican people. And, bizarre as it may seem, in a situation as dangerous as this one, the JBI conducts studies into red mud  infiltration of aquifers only once every five years .

The levels of cadmium in some Jamaican soils have been found by ICENS (International Centre for Environmental & Nuclear Studies, UWI, Jamaica) to be 40 times the  world mean of 0.5 mg/kg). [In]The soils with the highest levels …About 40% of Cd is bioavailable and could enter the food cycle.

I could go on – but I do believe it is time for the ginnigogs to answer the charges against them.

  John Maxwell

  Mr Warren Buffett may still  be the world’s  richest person and  is worth more than the combined GDPs of  Jamaica, Zambia, Gabon, Uganda, Paraguay, and Brunei. although he lost the equivalent of Jamaica, last year. As you may imagine, lots of very rich and influential people listen carefully to Mr Buffett as to a modern day prophet. Last year he admitted to losing nearly 11 billion dollars in misplaced investments; He prophesies or forecasts that the world economy will be in a shambles throughout this year and “for that matter, well beyond.”

  In another development this week, the Spectrem (sic) Group’s Millionaire Investor Index hit its lowest level since the company unveiled it in February 2004. The index fell 15 points in November to a level of negative 39, deep into bearish territory. The index is based on a survey of the economic confidence of American households with more than $1 million in investable assets.

  Wealthy investors have a huge effect on investment markets because of the disproportionate amount of money they control. The wealthiest 20% of Americans account for more than half of U.S. household income.

  Judging from a wide reading of investment advice, financial papers and news stories about the current financial disaster, it would seem fairly clear to me that it is not the time for speculative bets involving large amounts of money.

  On Thursday the Jamaican Ministry of Finance said: "The Government of Jamaica remains committed to fiscal prudence and policy initiatives geared towards the preservation of sound macroeconomic fundamentals." This was in response to the news that the deepening global financial crisis has caused one of the world's leading rating agencies, Moody's Investors Service, taking the decision to downgrade Jamaica's government bonds.

  This downgrade of course, makes it harder to borrow money and more expensive to borrow if you are able to find a lender.

  Late last year the Port Authority had not apparently found any answer to its huge unfunded debt burden which the PAJ itself suggested was overpowering its balance sheet The PAJ sought advice from Merrill Lynch but eventually apparently, decided not to take it

  Merrill itself has been one of the most spectacular casualties of the global financial disaster so it may not be politic to mention them in this connection.

  Nevertheless, the PAJ seems to be pressing ahead with its plan to destroy the town of Falmouth and to replace it with the world’s largest sewage disposal plant for ships. For this coprophagic extravaganza, the PAJ is all on its own, undertaking to borrow somewhere in the region of 200 million US dollars

  This facility is to attract the word’s most environmentally hostile enterprise, a floating property development called the Oasis of the Seas. It will be five times the size of the Titanic and is meant to house 10,000 people at a time, divided between paying guests and employees.

  This monstrosity will be a self contained floating theme park and condo/resort, designed to make is unnecessary for the paying guests to set foot on land, except when the property requires to be cleaned and sanitised.

  The Oasis of the Seas is being built in Finland for Royal Caribbean Cruise Line on an 80% bridging loan from the government of Finland.  But RCCL says it  cannot guarantee that the company will be able to finance the project.

  The company has told the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the SEC, "Although we believe that we will be able to (finance the ship), there can be no assurance that we will be able to do so or that we will be able to do so on acceptable terms."

  "The disruption in the credit markets has resulted in a lack of liquidity worldwide (that) may affect our ability to successfully raise capital or to do so on acceptable terms," RCCL warned.

  Royal Caribbean noted that credit rating agencies Standard & Poors and Moody's have both lowered its credit rating over the past year, and cash flow at the company is under pressure due to the decrease in consumer cruise spending as a result of the current economic climate. In fact RCCCL bonds are currently rated as ‘junk’.

  Worse, the company announced net income of US$8.8 million for the first quarter of 2007, down from US$119.5 million a year earlier, a drop of 98%.

  In all of this confusion, one or two things appear to be clear:

1.     RCCL is as the Americans say, in deep doo doo.

2.     Jamaica’s PAJ is in effect backing RCCL’s speculative enterprise, but does not stand to gain any profit in the unlikely event that the ship is built and operated successfully on schedule.. If we are to invest one fifth of the cost of the ship, there should be corresponding equity in it for us.

  If the project collapses as seems likely in the present crisis, we will be left holding the bag, forced to pay for a benefit we have not had while hundreds of thousands of poor and starving Jamaicans demand a piece of the action.

  There seems to be no parliamentary approval for this assault on the Consolidated Fund. Is someone personally guaranteeing our $200 million adventure into deep-sea property development?

  Bye-elections 

  I do not understand the logic or the law behind the recent electoral petition decisions.

  AS I understand it, under the Representation of the People Act,  if only one qualified candidate presents himself on Nomination Day, that candidate is judged to have been elected, unopposed.

  That means that Abe Dabdoub is the rightful Member of Parliament for Western Portland and there is no vacancy for which any by-election may be called. The same principle holds in all the other constituencies.

  What riles me is that much of this confusion was due to the direct intervention of a man who must have been well aware that he was himself unqualified to make any determination on the legitimacy or otherwise, of any candidate in the election. Should the DPP not have taken notice.

  Masters of Hypocrisy

   One of the most instructive morality plays has recently been presented by the British press. The villain is Britain’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown and the cartoonists and columnists have clearly declared open season on him. Recently Mr Brown has been attacked from all sides including his own party, for failing to apologise for not preventing the recent worldwide depression and the criminal activity that led to it.

  The SUN may have given the game away with its warning that no matter how successful he was abroad, Brown could not escape from the criticism at home that he was partly to blame for the economic crisis in Britain.

  His every action has been damned with faint praise, culminating in the reviews of Mr Brown’s official  visit to the US. Before he got there the British press was reporting thst he had been snubbed by President Obama, because the customary Rose Garden press conference had not  been scheduled.  It was only later that the British figured out  that a Rose Garden press conference in sub-zero weather was unlikely to be either popular or healthy.

  The behaviour of the British press was so peculiar that some  of the US coverage has been concerned more  with how the British media reported the story, than the significance  of Mr Brown's trip

  The reviews of Mr Brown’s appearance before the joint session of  congress were even more bizarre; it did not occur to most of the British press authorities that an invitation to address  a joint session of `congress was a very rare honour indeed.

  The Brits tried to play down Brown’s 35 minute speech,  despite the fact that US news agencies said  it  had been  interrupted by applause almost once per minute.

  If you want to understand how the British can turn triumph into disaster, read on:

  KEVIN CONNOLLY, BBC ‘We were discussing whether or not Mr Brown had been "snubbed" by the White House before he had reached the sanctuary of the British Embassy on the night he arrived - and that debate probably helped to shape British perceptions of the trip before it was properly under way.’

  GUARDIAN  ‘It went down pretty well - although the repeated standing ovations have to be seen in context. The joint houses are almost as well-drilled as the National Assembly of North Korea in recognising the key moments in a speech which call for you to leap to your feet applauding.’

  But what he said was so full of echoes from other writers that he never found his own voice and was able to inspire a not much more than respectful ovation when he finished.

  TIMES:  ‘While both prime ministers  [Blair 2003 and Brown 2009] received 19 standing ovations, it was notable yesterday that many Republicans could be seen sitting on their hands while Democrats were repeatedly rising to their feet.’

  EUAN MCCASKILL, GUARDIAN:

’They rewarded him with 19 standing ovations while he was speaking but as they filed from the chamber of the House of Representatives after Gordon Brown's 36-minute address, US legislators offered somewhat less effusive praise.’

  JULIAN GLOVER, GUARDIAN: ‘The response differed too. Blair received 19 standing ovations in his speech, which was ecstatically received. … Brown got 19 too, but some - especially in response to passages on the sacrifices of the American military - appeared somewhat routine.’

  ANDREW GIMSON, Daily Telegraph, reporting from London was able to say:

  ‘Somehow the speech was sagging. Mr Brown spoke over and over again about optimism, but was not making his listeners feel any more optimistic.… was able to inspire a not much more than respectful ovation when he finished.’

  The American view was different:

  BOSTON GLOBE : ‘Neal joined several other Irish-American lawmakers in escorting Brown down the aisle of the House floor, a courtesy that would have been unthinkable during the darkest days of the conflict.’

  Ben Pershing , Washington Post : ‘Brown's 35-minute address to the dignitaries and lawmakers assembled in the House chamber was interrupted nearly 30 times by applause …’

  ... ‘Brown's reception on the Hill yesterday was warm, as many lawmakers jockeyed for seats along the aisle of the House chamber so they could shake the prime minister's hand and get his autograph.’

  The New York Times's Brian Knowlton also noted the ‘warm welcome’ that Mr Brown received. And he added that attendance had been good: ‘The Capitol interns who are sometimes summoned to fill empty seats on such occasions were relatively few in number.’

  TIME magazine's Michael Scherer perhaps best summed up the whole sorry business when he described as ‘kind of pathetic’ the British media's ‘obsession’ with how the UK is viewed by America, and how Mr Brown is viewed by Mr Obama.

  A final note on British spinmania: The severely handicapped toddler son of the leader of the British opposition has just died. He had never been expected to survive long and Gordon Brown, who has also lost a child in infancy, cancelled Prime Minister’s question time to deliver an emotional message of sympathy to David Cameron and his wife.. What the British press did with the story afterwards was unbelievable. The front pages were filled with pictures of the child and his father, never his mother, in what seemed a transparent attempt at political PR. This went on for days for no discernible good reason. David Cameron, having lost a child, seemed well on the way to canonisation.

  The Tories may well need the PR; despite being well ahead in the polls, unanticipated swings to Labour lost the   Tories a couple of very recent bye elections.

  Copyright© 2009 John Maxwell

  jankunnu@gmail.com

John Maxwell

Some of the most amazing things happened within the last two weeks. Hundreds of miles above the earth, an obsolete Russian satellite collided over Siberia with an American communication satellite, and the odds against that happening are so astronomic that nobody had bothered to calculate them.

So, many of us were more than surprised when we heard a few days later that two nuclear submarines, one British, the other French, had collided deep under the Atlantic That was scary, each sub was armed with enough nuclear warheads to destroy a couple of continents. They were patrolling in stealth mode, trying t ensure that the evil Russians didn't steal a march on the rest of us by destroying Switzerland or the Cayman Islands and thus throwing the world financial system into so much more confusion.

Some says the likelihood of these sub colliding was about as great as someone winning the top prize in the same lottery four times in succession.

Natural and unnatural phenomena keep defying the odds. The global financial system has vaporised, destroyed by its own greed, criminality and selfishness. Capitalist journalists, conservative politicians and people once considered Gods in Jamaica, like Professor Jeffrey Sachs are busy calling for socialist or proto-socialist solutions to get the world out of the mess we're in.

Only in the Caribbean are people unaware of what's happening in the rest of the world. Our politicians, central planners and central bankers, immobilised by the super-glue of globalisation, are still speaking the language of the IMF and World Bank, still calling for the poor to be disciplined so that the rich can generate the kind of profits which once pleased Sandy Weill, David Rockefeller and Richard Fuld. The people who paid a million dollars fora tin of an Italian 'artist's excrement ten years ago may still e in the markets in Jamaica.

Deep in the DooDoo

For one thing, the Jamaican Port Authority is still fixated on destroying Falmouth to create the world's largest and most expensive excrement  disposal facility– the so-called homeport for the world's single largest floating generator of human waste –the cruise liner called the Oasis of the Seas.

The essential thinking behind the Port Authority's planned destruction of Falmouth is very simply to provide a sewage disposal facility for the 15,000 passengers and crew of this ship after a few week's cruising and then, once ever so often, to allow the Oasis time to release its captive audience to molest dolphins and other innocent denizens of Jamaica. In addition to the enormous amount of faecal matter to be deposited in the sewage disposal plant the new Falmouth will require hundreds of 'comfort stations' to deal with the tourists  ashore

That, is of course,, if the ship ever manages to make it to Falmouth. Our ginnigogs do not appear o have heard of the great capitalist meltdown, with Goldman Sachs  and other investment banks laying off hundreds of thousand of workers. These are the people whose  droppings fertilise the markets for cruise ships and, when they are gone, the cruise ships and their patrons also disappear.

But our ginnigogs  apparently cannot read and so, they are investing for the ultimate rainy day, building on sand for an economic hurricane.

When our Caribbean knights like Allen Sandford go up in smoke, when the Union Bank of Switzerland agrees to tell the US about the criminal activity  formerly protected in its numbered accounts, when the Germans, the French and the British take off after the money laundering industries of the Bahamas, Cayman, Bermuda, Antigua, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and Zurich to name a few, the bottom is likely to drop out of the Caribbean sewage disposal market.

In the meantime, Mr Sandford has created some really hairy problems for West Indies cricket. If his activities are as shady as the SEC and FBI allege, all the money he caused the WI Board to distribute to Chris Gayle, for instance, will have to be repaid. The WICB is going to end us owing an enormous amount to the criminal estate, and they won’t be able to get it back from Gayle and Co.

Perhaps the Port Authority might be able to help?

The secret to this crazy investment is quite simple. Our ginnigogs believe the globalisation myths and truisms of four and five years ago, such as: Water is the new oil which means that anything to do with sewage and the sale of water in large quantities, such as cruise shipping, is sure to make a  few millionaires. The Contractor General and the Public Defender should have a look.

Additionally, the PAJ does not appear to realise that super cruise ships like the Oasis are aimed directly at the destruction of the Jamaican hotel industry, providing the modern 'tourist' with no excuse to go ashore and mingle with the natives.

Bankers a go go

The world is beginning to recognise that there is no function that bankers perform that entitles them to live at such gargantuan  removes from the rest of us.  Basically, Bankers are supposed to be bookkeepers and custodians of our savings. Over the last few decades, the bookkeepers and finance managers of this world have carried out a wave of coups, taking control of our savings; and under the guise of 'improving shareholder value' – i.e. our prospects) have employed our wealth to criminally enrich themselves, oppress workers, reduce the workers levels of skill and job satisfaction, destroy productive diversity in the interest of more raw profit.

The market has turned out – as Marx and others forecast, to be an antihuman machine, creating misery, promoting conflict and destroying the conditions for happy and sustainable futures.

As we gaze at the ruins of the Enrons, the Lehman Brothers, the Allen Sandford and Madoff houses of cards, many of us will be tempted to seek qualitative difference between them, to try and find something good that distinguishes them from the generically criminal and elevates them into something that advances the public interest.

I should like to be informed when you make those discoveries.

Long ago the state – that is us in corporate guise – was the trustee for the public interest, that is, us in plain clothes.

In every country, for instance, there were laws against usury, imposing limits n the levels of interest a lender could charge a borrower.

In the seventies the IMF and World bank persuaded many of us to abolish the laws on usury, and the result was what the IMF and World Bank called growth.  Usury, which used not only to be a crime, but a sin, became the hobby of perfectly respectable folk who went to church every week and did not commit adultery.

Then, the more adventurous set off on their piratical excursions into globalised capitalism. What is most strange is that this Gadarene adventure was led by, of all people, the sober, starchy accountants and bookkeepers who in losing their inhibitions have also lost their own souls and destroyed an enormous quantum of human savings and satisfaction. The World Bank and the IMF are even now embroiled in huge financial scandals going to the very top of these organisations, but they are still pretending that it is the poor who are dishonest, that it is the mendicants who are corrupt.

All over the world there are people trying to assemble hanging parties for the financiers. In New York a few months ago, remember that placard on Wall Street – 'JUMP, YOU F**KERS!"

In the present context it is going to take a great deal of persuasion to convince voters around the word that they should put their trust in anything resembling the old financial systems.

When Jeffrey Sachs and people of his ilk begin calling for nationalising the banks, even our Jamaican ginnigogs should take notice.

Of course, some of them may be waiting to hear from the once celebrated Professor Grassl.

I wish the Port Authority and the political parties the best of luck. I am old enough to remember, however, walking into the JBC newsroom more than half a century ago, to be confronted by an AP story which said inter alia, that the citizens of Istanbul had awakened that morning to find their entire cabinet hanging from lampposts in the centre of the city. The prime Minister, Mr Menderes, and his ministers with charming names like Cayalangil and Menemencioglu were all among those pendent. No one was spared.

The army apparently, had had enough.

Copyright© 2009 John Maxwell

jankunnu@gmail.com

John Maxwell

Dr Wesley Hughes, head of Jamaica’s economic unit, says the country must brace for more economic storms – several years of economic decline “ heightened by the onslaught of the global financial crisis.”

Dr Hughes says Jamaica is now experiencing the outer bands of the global financial storm and he warned Jamaicans to batten down for the gale-force winds.

I believe we should be battening down for extreme hurricane force winds, forces so extreme and severe that most of us will not recognise Jamaica in five years.

Lots of people ignored the warnings for hurricane Charlie in 1951. One week later, with 200 people dead and thousands of houses and farms destroyed, another storm was rumoured to be gathering strength somewhere off Antigua. That time  Jamaica was a cacophony of hammering and sawing as Jamaicans did what they should have done for “Charlie.”  Fortunately, Hurricane ‘Dog’ was never a threat and disintegrated a few days later about 400 miles southwest of Jamaica.

Some of us  have been warning of the approach of the Globalisation  hurricane for a long time.

In a column just a year ago (Trouble Don’t Set Like Rain”) I suggested that we had finally run out of time to fix or to start fixing Jamaica

“If we didn’t know it before, we are now at the time when our development must be sustainable in the protection of everything we value and all of the people of this once and future blessed isle. We need to understand the need to begin eradicating poverty and developing a survival Agenda – fifteen years late – for the 21st century. Even so, better late than total catastrophe.”

I believe Jamaicans should be more than a little alarmed by the government’s announced reactions to the worldwide crisis. Alone in the world we seem to believe that nothing needs to be changed. When I say ‘alone in the world’, I am  forgetting the Republican party of the United States who seem to believe that there s nothing a tax cut can’t cure. The problem, as our government is on the point of finding out, is that tax cuts don’t matter to those who don’t pay taxes and those are

a– The poor

b–The rich

All those in between will see their taxable incomes evaporate anyway.

In Jamaica we are staring at disaster.

Sugar is dead.

Bauxite and Alumina are dead

Air Jamaica is on its last legs.

We can’t outsource our miseries any more.

No one wants to buy depleted sugar land.

No one wants to buy Air Jamaica at any reasonable price.

What to we do next?

Regaining our sovereignty

The government is clearly averse to doing anything that might even appear to discommode the rich. Our public debt is the single most dangerous millstone around our necks and since most of it is owned by rich Jamaicans it is inevitable that they must be at least, somewhat incommoded.

While our production is sinking fast, three quarters of whatever we produce in the way of government revenue is headed straight into the pockets of our creditors. According to Nouriel Roubini’s Global Economic Monitor, things are different in some places. In Argentina, where the whole society has already had a dress rehearsal  for economic disaster, “the government has announced that 97% of the domestic investors, holding $4.3 billion in "guaranteed loan" bonds maturing over the next two years, have agreed to swap these instruments for new debt (Bonar bonds with a maturity date of 2014). The swap will save Argentina around $1 billion in the short term, making it easier for Buenos Aires to finance the roughly $20 billion in debt repayments due in 2009.”

The Argentines understand that while they may not be as rich as they once were, it may be a good idea  to have a country they can call home. Our Jamaican plutocrats need to learn this.

Of course, some Jamaicans believe that real life is possible in the Cayman Islands  – where their bank accounts are. They may not yet be aware that the British government in concert with the Germans and other Europeans, are going looking for tax havens and the other places where national revenues and other ill gotten gains find discreet houses of accommodation.

The essentially criminal mismanagement  of the international capitalist financial system is being exposed around the world, as journalists and others find their tongues and their courage.

Gangsta Capitalism

There are other who have spoken out before but have not been heeded. One such is the Professor of Accounting at Essex University, Prem Sikka, who has been taking his profession to task in a series of hard hitting, no-holds-barred articles in the Guardian.

He asks the kinds of questions big name journalists should be asking about the conduct of the world’s expensive and multinational audit firms.

In a column last October Sikka said:

“The deepening financial crisis brings daily news of corporate collapses and bailouts that plunder the taxpayers' pockets at an unprecedented scale. Innocent people are losing jobs, homes, pensions and investments. Each collapse shows that highly paid directors had little idea of the value of company assets, liabilities, income, costs, profits and financial health. This has been accompanied by one constant factor: the silence of the auditors. Auditors collected large amounts in fees and dished out clean bills of health. As he pointed out in another column, “within a short period of receiving clean bills of health Bear Stearns, Carlyle Capital Corporation and Thornburg Mortgage hit the financial buffers, closely followed by Lehman Brothers.”

Professor Sikka is one of not very many asking these questions, which lie at the heart of the rot in the free market system. To overlook Lehman’s exposure to toxic derivatives – nearly $700 billion (with a b) – is to overlook the equivalent of the combined GDPs of Greece and South Africa.

How can anyone take any of these bozos seriously?

The same questions need to be asked of those most exquisite tastemakers in the valuation and assessment of risk, the ratings agencies, who can wake up one morning and defeat a political movement in Jamaica or perhaps, Peru, by changing the rating of their sovereign bonds. I have for long railed against these nutters, who consistently rate our sovereign debt below American sub-prime mortgages.

People do not understand that it is normally faceless malefactors like these  who produce famines, panics and  civil war, hundreds and thousands die and millions are uprooted because some ‘country specialist’ is dissatisfied with her boyfriend’s performance the night before the ratings are decided.

Twelve years ago in a column in this paper I quoted an observation by the billionaire George Soros, an observation I thought self-evident.

”In the absence of equilibrium, the contention that free markets lead to the optimum allocation of resources loses its justification. The supposedly scientific theory that has been used to validate it turns out to be an axiomatic structure whose conclusions are contained in its assumptions and are not necessarily supported by the empirical evidence. The resemblance to Marxism, which also claimed scientific status for its tenets, is too close for comfort.”

It doesn’t worry me that my prognostications are not taken seriously. If people like George Soros and Warren Buffet are not taken seriously, who am I to cavil at my insignificance? The point I want to make is that we urgently need to slaughter a few sacred cows, because if we don’t, they will cause even more damage than they already have.

Ideology Negotiable

Thirty years of World Bank/IMF indoctrination  have produced a Jamaica committed to fundamentalist capitalism, where concepts of social justice are even more primitive than in the southern United States and its GOP. It is amusing at first, then peculiarly nauseating to read an analysis in the Los Angeles Times which equates the Obama Administration’s  attempt to rescue the American economy with the return of “Big Government’. This is the same lunacy which got all of us into the present mess:

 Reagan says “Government is not the answer, Government is the Problem.”

The even more witless Thatcher says –’There is no such thing as society’, and the patron saint of Friedmanism, Alan Greenspan, slept with Ayn Rand texts by his bedside - while the world economy went up in pipe-dreams of unimaginable wealth and ease. Out of this farrago of idiocy has come the whole derivatives scandal, the sub-prime mortgage bubble and the idea that if money is to be printed it is best printed by the likes of  Goldman Sachs, the Royal Bank of Scotland and Bernard Madoff.

We have to burn down these temples of Moloch and return to our humanity.

In Cuba last week the government handed over 45,000 parcels of unused land to private farmers, not because agrarian reform had failed, but because it had not worked as well as it should have. There is a place in every sector for private enterprise. What we cannot allow houseroom to is exploitative, drive-by capitalism which reduces people to serfdom and values them by their ‘economic competitiveness’.

That’s why I fault the Jamaican government for two of its most recent decisions:the not to increase the minimum wage and the refusal to legalise the right to strike.

If we are to create a jamaica in which we can all live, prosper, be safe and happy, we need to realise that if we are not partners we are either dead or living in prison.

Two year ago and again last year, I suggested that our political parties need to come together, not to surrender but to lead jamaica to victory over its real enemy, poverty/injustice.

Reading about how a Philippine community rescued itself by farming seaweed I thought  how easy it would be to do the same in jamaica if we were willing to give up some of our cherished ignorance. In four years from a standing start the Filipinos had an industry exporting more than US $30 million annually.

If we put our sugar lands to work we can – using purely organic methods –, restore their fertility while producing food and slashing our foreign exchange deficit. In Florida, an area the size of Monymusk produces citrus worth $60 million annually. If we understand that we cannot produce any commodity to satisfy global demand, but that we can produce star-apples, or honey, or mamey, or sarsaparilla or pepper, or turmeric in quantities which we can easily market to other small enterprisers, we can be well on our way in five years to transforming this country, putting every child in school and reducing the crime rate to insignificant proportions.

We need to look inside Jamaica, to our history and culture which prove that we can do these things, We have done some before. Because of wartime shortages we planted corn and grew enough to feed ourselves and to export. In 1919 the Jamaica Government Railway brought 50 tons of jamaican butter from the countryside into Kingston markets.

We need to set people free from their mass-production slavery and their mass-production education and fundamentalist superstition and ignorance.

As I said nine months ago, “the thousands of young Goldman Sachs traders are mostly unconscious of the fact that their million-dollar bonuses mean the destruction of whole communities and the transition of many of their fellows from citizens to prostitutes and jailbirds. The hedge fund managers who have cornered the market in rice, corn and ethanol may claim not to be aware that they also own much of the market in hunger, starvation, misery and death”.

We, who bought into this nonsense more heavily than most, have a duty to ourselves and our neighbours to achieve a second, real emancipation. The time is now.

Seize the day

We can and must make our country work

We have absolutely no choice.

Copyright ©2009 John Maxwell

jankunnu@gmail.com

John Maxwell

Some of  those waiting to take part in the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States had been standing for hours, many  with tears streaming down their cheeks.   Some others had been standing for decades and others for centuries – King Affonso, the Mani Kongo,  Crispus Attucks, the Barbadian, Bouckman, the Jamaican/Haitian,  Henri Christophe, the Haitian and  John Brown, and Sohourner Truth and Rosa Parkes and Fanny Lou Hamer, all American. Marcus Garvey no longer has to ask where are the black Presidents and men of great affairs, and Nkrumah and Lumumba, Fidel Castro, Sukarno, Ho Chi Minh and Nelson Mandela all know that the Long Walk to Freedom has really only just begun, and Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King would know that the dream of freedom belongs to all of us and that we have the power to make that dream reality.

Yes! We Can and We Have and We Will.

According to the statisticians the inauguration of President Obama ignited 35,000 news stories round the world, more than 30 times the number published about the last such occasion.

And I, as a Jamaican who has had so many quarrels with the United States, reflected on why the tears were streaming down my face as I watched the proceedings in Washington.

I remembered being at a party in Jamaica in 1965 at the house of the American charge d’affaires in Stony Hill, when Martin Luther King, the guest of honour, said that he had felt in Jamaica, and for the first time in his life, that he was a full and complete human being. That was part of his dream, that people should be judged by their character rather than by the colour of their skins. We are not there yet. We are certainly not there yet in Jamaica and the election and inauguration of a black President in the United States is not much more than another signpost on the road we travel. But it is an important signpost.

Children go to School

There are at this moment circulating on the internet, two pictures of children going to school, attended by massive security. The first is of one of the children the so-called Little Rock Nine, being escorted into the segregated Little Rock Central High School in 1957 by federal marshals.

The other picture is of two little girls, Malia and Sasha Obama, being escorted to school by members of the Presidential bodyguard. The pictures are separated by 42 years and oceans of struggle and suffering, of tragedy and of triumph.

I remember Little Rock. The world stood fascinated to learn whether the President of the United States, Dwight Eisenhower, would tolerate the challenge to federal law and authority posed by the Governor of Arkansas, one Orval Faubus. When Faubus used his National Guard to prevent  black children entering Little Rock’ Central High School, someone suggested that Eisenhower himself should take the children by the hand and himself lead them into school. Eisenhower, who allegedly spent more time golfing than on any other activity, was mocked by the comedian Mort Sahl. Sahl said Eisenhower  was perfectly willing to take the children by the hand; what was giving the President pause was whether to use an overlapping [golfing] grip.

But Eisenhower did send the soldiers.

In his inaugural speech Obama related how ‘less than sixty years ago’ a black man like his father would not have been served in restaurants in Washington DC. Fifty years ago, in March 1959, when I was in Washington as a guest of the State Department, black Americans I met were amazed to learn that I had been served at DC restaurants, albeit in the company of my State department handler. One of my new black friends was a man named Taylor, who drove a taxi (Capitol Cabs) when he wasn’t working at his daytime job, a janitor at the State Department. We decided to see if we would be served in one or two of the places I had spoken about.

Washington had recently been officially desegregated because of the independence of Ghana and Guinea and the expected influx of black diplomats.

It was too soon, we discovered, to expect civilised behaviour. We sat, and sat, but, to all intents and purposes, we were invisible to the staff.

Race prejudice has long been an integral component of US society. The ecoomic backbone of the thirteen colonies and later of the United States was slavery and the Civil War was a disputation about economic development and not about slavery. Lincoln, the ‘Great Emancipator’ had the courage and the political wit to abolish slavery as a means of weakening the Confederates and attracting more  hlacks to the cause of the Union.

Lincoln like Obama, was a principled pragmatist, a politician who understood his duty to the people he represented. In Lincoln’s case he was also conscious of his duty to those without representation, unable to regard them as  had Jefferson, as being three-fifths human. One wonders how Jefferson squared his conscience as he mated with his black slave, Sally Hemmings and whether he considered their progeny altogether human.

 There are still people in the United States and in places where American influence was most significant, who still have their doubts about the humanity of blacks. Many white South Africans - not all - bought the insane logic of Malan, Verwoerd and the others and supported not only a system to permanently oppress and subjugate blacks, but even set up a scientific programme to devise medical strategies and to invent new diseases to exterminate them. The director of this programme, a medical doctor named Wouter Basson, still lives, unmolested and un-prosecuted, among his inrtended victims in South Africa.

Tuskegee

Among the people at Obama’s inaugural you may have noticed some old men wearing blue caps. These were some of the most valiant fighters of the second world war, a group of black airmen in a segregated unit  called the Tuskegee airmen. Recognition escaped most of them, but Obama made sure they were invited to witness his taking office.

Another group, also named after Tuskegee, was not among those present. These were the black victims of an official experiment run by the US Public Health Service. Beginning in 1932 the USPHS used 399 black men as laboratory animals. The men, mainly illiterate small farmers, had been infected with syphilis but were never told what disease they were suffering from

They were told they were being treated for ‘bad blood’, by doctors who had no intention of curing them. The data was to be collected from autopsie,  and they were thus deliberately left to suffer  unspeakable misery under the ravages of tertiary syphilis—which can include tumors, heart disease, paralysis, blindness, insanity, and death. “As I see it,” one of the doctors involved explained, “we have no further interest in these patients until they die.”

Despite the fact that one dose of penicillin could have cured many, decades earlier, the depraved experiment continued until 1972

In 1997, seventeen years later, President Clinton apologised to the 7 survivors – 

“The United States government did something that was wrong—deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens. . . . clearly racist.

There was curiously, another connection to Tuskegee. The founder of the Tuskegee Institute, the first black college, was a man named Booker T Washington, and he was the first black visitor officially invited to the White House.

And then there was the eerie coincidence that King’s 80th birthday was the day before Obama’s inauguration.

One of those present on the inaugural platform was one who was subject to hatred, ridicule and contempt when,  young, feisty and the best boxer in history, he decided to become a Muslim, changed his ‘slave name’ from Cassius Marcellus Clay to Muhammad Ali. Worse, he refused even symbolic service as a soldier in Viet Nam. He had nothing against the Viet Cong, he said, they had never attacked him. Nobody expected a pugilist, a showman, an entertainer, to have a conscience or to be capable of expressing it.

Against all ideas of justice (and even against the canons of free enterprise)  he was stripped of his hard-won championships. No matter, in law and the courts he finally prevailed, as he prevailed in the ring, disposing of all the pretenders, and he survived at last in the consciences of his fellow citizens when they too awoke to the iniquities of a wicked war. He sat on the platform along with his contemporary,  only the second man to be head of the US armed forces and Secretary of State, another black, of Jamaican parentage, Colin Powell. And with them was Eli  Weisel, the champion of the millions of those who died and of those who survived Hitler’s final solution of the ‘Jewish problem’.

The chair of the proceedings, Senator Dianne Feinstein, could not bring herself to call the new president by his full name.   The sergeant at arms went one better. He called out ‘Barack H. Obama’. It was the President himself who first proudly announced his full name, Barack Hussein Obama, forcing his countrymen to abandon euphemism and to face facts and their whole heritage. And he was not afraid to address the Muslims of the world, despite the blanket libels of the past eight years, promising to meet them and all people with due regard and respect to try to make a new beginning.

As we reflect on Tuesday, it may be possible to discern not only why the world believes Obama belongs to them, but why the world believes that the dream of liberty belongs to them too.

Ho Chi Minh said that when he was a waiter in a Paris restaurant he was fired by the words of Marcus Garvey. Freedom and Liberty are transcendent and they are not the property of any race, country or political system.

Bob Marley, the poet laureate of the last century got it right:

“We can make it work!”

YES, WE CAN!

Copyright 2009 John Maxwell

jankunnu@gmail.com

1951
Homeless in Gaza
From a correspondent lately in Gaza: To most people the name of Gaza brings a picture of blind Samson pulling down the pillars of the house upon the Philistines and himself.

Today, the reputed tomb of Samson is inhabited by a family of Arab refugees. They form part of the horde of some 200,000 people from Palestine who poured into the "Gaza Strip" in 1948, during the troubles between the Arabs and Jews which broke out after the partition plan was announced.

. In December 1948, the United Nations Assembly resolved that "the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so." The Arab League took its stand on this and insisted on the refugees' repatriation as a condition of peace negotiations. It has since taken a more realistic view and, while still maintaining the principle of repatriation, has agreed that efforts shall be made to resettle the refugees in the lands where they now are.

. The only exit from the Gaza Strip, which is hemmed in by Israel, is to Egypt, and there the refugees are not welcome. They are virtually imprisoned in the area, their only means of escape being a dangerous moonlight flit through Jewish territory.

Explosive forces
. Colonel Howard Kennedy concluded his report to the United Nations Political Committee on November I with the words: As director of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, I feel it my duty to bring these matters to the attention of the United Nations, because explosive forces are being generated which should be dealt with before the point of detonation is reached . Grave difficulties and dangers elsewhere should not blind us to this great human tragedy of the Middle ."if the refugees be left forgotten and desolate in their misery, peace will recede yet farther from these distracted lands". - The Times [March 2, 1951], Times Archive

1956

Gaza escape route choked with Arab refugees
From our (The Times) correspondent in Tel Aviv, Nov 1 (Delayed) 1956: Gaza, with its minarets and white houses glowing through green palm fronds, looked like a pretty Oriental picture. There was a lemon-coloured sky with a low sun turning red and thrusting broad, fanlike rays into the sea. The only sound was of sparrows somewhere, settling down. But the watcher, standing on a ploughed hillside about a mile out of the town, could not long be unaware of the presence of other concealed watchers. Here and there, in the dry grasses, a slight movement could be detected, perhaps of a steel helmet, perhaps of the muzzle of some weapon. Then, just as the red sun brushed the surface of the sea, the pretty scene exploded. Aircraft had come out of the sky and smoke and dust spouted out of the earth round Gaza like huge, spreading shrubs. There was the sound of bursting bombs, of anti-aircraft fire, of light artillery and mortars. The Israelis attack on Gaza and the Gaza Strip had begun.

. It became evident, as darkly flashing Spitfires and Mustangs dived over Gaza and violet dust rose where shells and bombs had just burst, that the Israelis were simultaneously putting the defences of Gaza out of action and lunging across the southern part of the corridor, which is about 25 miles long and of varying width, to cut off the only line of retreat. That line had dwindled a few thousand yards by the time the sun had set. It ran then through the narrow opening between El Arish and the sea. Earlier this afternoon that narrow gateway was choked with fleeing Arab refugees, bare-footed or riding distracted donkeys. Many of the refugees had taken to the sea in frail little boats... - The Times [Nov 2, 1956], Times Archive

2002

As reported in the Guardian (London) on October 17, 2002:
An embryonic US peace initiative for the Middle East was shattered yesterday as Palestinian militants assassinated an Israeli cabinet minister seen as an icon of the far right. According to the New York Times: Zeevi was elected to Parliament in 1988, after proposing that the problems [of Israel] could be solved if most Arabs were transferred, if not directly expelled, to regions east of the Jordan River. His public statements were uncompromising: Mr Arafat was a 'viper', 'scorpion' or 'Hitler'. In July, as minister of tourism, he suggested that Palestinians working in Israel illegally were 'lice' and a 'cancer'. As I said at the time, Zeevi's death gave Sharon the excuse that he had been waiting for to destroy Gaza, demolish Jenin and generally terrorise the Palestinians. In his autobiography published in 1989, Sharon said he "wanted to prove that Jewish blood could no longer be shed with impunity. From this point on, there would be a heavy price to pay." That was in regard to a village whose inhabitants he had murdered in 1953. In 2002, after blasting Yasser Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah he said, "The Palestinians must be dealt a heavy blow, which will come from every direction. Anyone wishing to conduct negotiations with the Palestinians must first hit them hard, so that it is clear to them that they will achieve nothing through terror. If it is not made clear to them that they are overpowered, we will be unable to return to negotiations." (Before the latest onslaught Israel's leaders used almost identical words to explain why Hamas had to be destroyed.) Sharon's demolitions of houses, of farms, the harassment of the Red Cross, the targeted assassinations continued, provoking the expected 'terrorist' response. The aim was to demolish the Palestinian Authority once and for all and to take out Arafat if possible. One of the results of Sharon's 2002 campaign was the destruction of the credibility of Arafat's Fatah and the promotion of Hamas.

2008-2009

The frame of reference for the pro-Israel camp is Israel's right to exist, while the context for the pro-Palestine argument is the perceived injustice underlying modern Israel's creation. At the core of the conflict is the reality that redress for the Jewish victims of centuries of European pogroms, which culminated in the Holocaust, made victims out of Palestinians, non-Europeans who had nothing to do with the repression of Jews on the Continent. The central, unbridgeable chasm between the two sides is captured in the divergent narratives of events surrounding Israel's birth. Did the Zionists perpetrate pre-planned, deliberate ethnic cleansing, without which the Jewish state could not have been Jewish? Or was it merely the winds of war that created Palestinian refugees, a phenomenon for which Israel's founding fathers bear no responsibility? Taking the latter question first raises yet another question. If, as the Zionist narrative claims, the Palestinian exodus was self-propelled, a flight of panic induced by fear of the ravages of war, does that negate the right of return? Doesn't the world - at its forefront America - support the right of millions of Iraqi war refugees to return to their homes? . the majority of Gaza's inhabitants are refugees (or their descendants) who were displaced from their homes in 1947-1948 in what was then Palestine and is now Israel. Whether it was ethnic cleansing or self-induced flight, Israel disallows them the basic human right to return to their homes, for no other reason than the fact that they are not Jewish. - Tarif Abboushi, Houston Chronicle, Jan 2, 2009, 9:30 pm

. The White House said only Hamas could end the cycle of violence by putting a stop to the rocket fire on Israel. "These people are nothing but thugs, and so Israel is going to defend its people against terrorists like Hamas," spokesman Gordon Johndroe said at George W Bush's Texas ranch, where the president is preparing to spend the new year.

. In the working-class border town of Sderot, which has been targeted by relentless Gaza rocket salvoes, residents were pleased with the military offensive.

"It's about time," said Victor Turjeman, a 33-year-old electrician. "We've been waiting for this for eight years." Sderot has been pounded with several thousand projectiles since 2001. The rockets have killed eight, injured hundreds more and made daily life unbearable. Turjeman said his four children have been traumatised by the near daily attacks, his home has been damaged and his brother had a heart attack after a rocket exploded nearby. He fears escalation, but said he was consoled that Hamas was finally being punished. "We should keep pounding them until they beg for mercy," Turjeman said. "As far as I'm concerned, all of Gaza can be erased." - Associated Press, December 30

. Furious and frightened after thousands of projectiles had rained down on the south over several years, Israelis yearned for a traditional Zionist warrior to rally around and send a harsh message to Hamas. For months, Mr Barak, the natural candidate for that warrior role, declined. - "Gaza War Role Is Political Lift for Ex-Premier", Ethan Bronner, New York Times, January 7, 2009

. This is the harshest IDF assault on Gaza since the territory was captured during the Six-Day War in 1967. ... From Israel's standpoint, Hamas, which persistently fires rockets while using the civilian population as cover, had plenty of opportunities to save face and lower their demands. In stubbornly continuing to launch rockets during the course of recent weeks, it brought this assault on itself. - Haaretz, December 27, 2008

. "We will stand up, we will defend our own people, we will defend our land, and we will not give up," senior Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan said. Hamdan also denied accusations that Hamas had provoked Israel attacks by violating the ceasefire with rocket attacks. "Hamas did not fire rockets through the ceasefire. It's clear that the one who violated the ceasefire is the Israelis," Hamdan told CNN. "For half the period of ceasefire, they closed all the checkpoints, and they killed 28 Palestinians." - CNN, January 4, 2008
. Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi also accused Israel of ignoring the terms of the cease-fire that expired December 19.

"This is certainly a very cruel escalation, a relentless bombardment of a captive civilian population that has already been under siege for months, that has been deprived of basic requirements like food and medicines and fuel and power," she said from Ramallah in the West Bank. Christopher Gunness, the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) spokesman, said the idea that there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza was absurd. "The organisation for which I work - UNRWA - has approximately 9,000 to 10,000 workers on the ground. They are speaking with the ordinary civilians in Gaza... People are suffering. A quarter of all those being killed now are civilians. So when I hear people say we're doing our best to avoid civilian casualties that rings very hollow indeed." About 250,000 people in the northern part of Gaza are also reported to be without electricity. The main power plant has been shut down for lack of fuel due to Israel's blockade.

. Heba, a Gaza resident and mother of two, told Al Jazeera there was no place left in Gaza that can be considered safe.

"What happened in the school was a hugely offensive and inhumane thing. We never expected that people who sought refuge in a UN building would be attacked and killed," she said. Randa Seniora, from the Independent Commission on Human Rights, told Al Jazeera: "What is happening in Gaza are crimes against humanity. "Israel cannot claim, as an occupying authority, that it is acting in self-defence because simply it is considered a war crime to create harm and damage among civilian populations." - Al Jazeera

. Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general of the United Nations, branding the incident "unacceptable" said, "These attacks by Israeli military forces which endanger UN facilities acting as places of refuge are totally unacceptable, and should not be repeated.

"Equally unacceptable are any actions by Hamas militants which endanger the Palestinian civilian population," he said, before again calling for an immediate ceasefire. Half the population of Gaza consists of children under 17 years old.

jankunnu@gmail.com

John Maxwell

The Port Authority of Jamaica is clearly one of Jamaica’s most sophisticated public entities; they even appear to have a vice-president in charge of delivering bad news. This gentleman, Mr Pat Belinfanti was quoted round the world, according to Google, about 34,000 times two weeks ago as saying ‘Jamaica suspends port expansion, blames economy’.

Papers as diverse as the Seattle Times, the International Herald Tribune and the Taiwan News reported that “ Jamaica is suspending plans for a multimillion-dollar expansion of a popular tourist port in Kingston because no one wants to finance it.”

I was bemused by the mention of a ‘popular tourist port in Kingston’ since I couldn’t figure out where such a place might be.

Here is the core of the story:

”A spokesman for the island's port authority says the $122 million project at the Kingston Wharf will be pushed back one year. Pat Belinfanti says construction might start in 2011.

He said Friday that several international banks backed off, citing the global financial crisis after initially saying they might finance the project.

The development would include construction of duty-free shops and a renovation of the nearby Port Royal town as a cruise ship destination.”

The figure of US$122 million appeared to indicate that what might actually have been zapped was the monstrous Falmouth Cruise ship facility Phase One of the Human Zoo planned for Trelawny. The rest of the story appearing to be simply journalistic confetti, scattered to deflect the anti=spin missiles of the foreign press. No such luck.

What is admirable about the Port Authority is that, like their paragon, the UDC (Ultimate Devastation Conglomerate) they gallantly refuse to take no for an answer and like the Light Brigade, will continue charging into the jaws of death, into the gates of hell, if only to deliver their latest press release or to try to borrow even more money while they cannot service their current debt, incurred while no one was looking.

 What really seems to have happened is that the Port Authority has recently suffered some serious financial setbacks and is in the process of drawing in its horns.

In the Gleaner of Dec 11  a story written by Arthur Hall says “The worldwide financial meltdown has started to hit Jamaica's ports, delaying one major project and causing some international financiers to shy away from another.

In addition, there has been a 15 per cent decline in domestic cargo moving through the ports since August. A noisily trumpeted 5 year contract with Maersk, the world’s largest shipping line (2005) disintegrated before the contract was even halfway done.

Chairman of the Port Authority of Jamaica, Noel Hylton, said plans to begin the expansion of the transshipment port in the Fort Augusta area of St Catherine in 2010 have been shelved, with the project now slated to begin a year later.”

Reality is clearly setting in this area. In another area I am not so sure. Arthur Hall’s story says that the high cost of capital may also  be damaging the immediate prospects of the amazing proposed cruise shipping pier in Falmouth where the PA needs $US122 million to seal the deal

As the world’s risk takers sprint for the exits, Jamaica’s gallant Port Authority stands unfazed :  ”we have about eight banks which have indicated a willingness to offer financing," Hylton said; "The question of getting the financing is not the problem for us ... The problem is the cost of the financing and in today's world, financing costs can be very high," said Hylton.

You can say that again, but you shouldn’t need to. Jamaica has lots of experience with usury. (Eight banks!)

Why anyone should consider destroying Falmouth has never been clear to me, especially to replace it with the Disneyfied monstrosity proposed by the Port Authority in cahoots with Royal Caribbean. Everything is being done at a very high level of course and environmentally concerned people like us just need to shut up and take our medicine.

The medicine is going to be potent. While parliamentary committees gave been reassured that Falmouth will be no danger to the cruise shipping industry, no such guarantees have been given to the  Jamaican hoteliers whose customers regard Jamaica as the attraction.

Travelling Cities

THe challenge of the new mega-cruise ships is to the land based hotels and their employees.

Look at the picture accompanying this column.

The Oasis of the Seas will make land-based hotels irrelevant. Instead of bringing visitors to Jamaica the new ships will offer an ersatz Jamaica to the visitors. Each of these ships will be human zoos specially designed to so bemuse their clientele that it will soon be possible to offer -- in a plain brown wrapper -- a virtual tourism product in the privacy of your own home. I’m sure they’re working on it. In the meantime Royal Caribbean says The  Oasis of the Seas  will be a state-of-the-art 'travelling city' – the largest and most revolutionary cruise ship in the world. The Oasis  will feature seven distinct neighbourhoods including a shopping mall and a Green zone: The cruise liner will have its own ‘Central Park’. (Applause!!!)

The liner’s 220,000 gross registered tons (GRT)will carry 5,400 guests in 2,700 staterooms on 16 decks (and 5,000 crew)

Oasis  will be the first ship to demonstrate the Royal Caribbean’s concept of seven distinct themed neighborhood areas, which include a Central Park, Boardwalk, the Royal Promenade, the Pool and Sports Zone, Vitality at Sea Spa and Fitness Center, Entertainment Place and Youth Zone.

Do not Pass GO!

According to the literature each ship’s central park will be basically a mini ‘jungle’ themed to reflect an imaginary island, say Jamaica, no doubt with its quota of  iguanas, crocodiles, parrots, humming birds and other “authentic’ simulacra of the ‘authentic’ island experience, about as much authentic ‘nature’ as a couch potato can stand and making it unnecessary to actually visit the place.

One cannot help hoping that these benefactors of the sea will have the forethought to include appropriate accommodation to display retired politicians and other ginnigogs  in their natural habitat.

Given all this, the rationale for the Falmouth cruise shipping centre is simple: There’s got to be somewhere to dump the huge amounts of waste generated by such an environmentally unfriendly project. Falmouth’s destiny is to act as a relief point for the ship to be sanitised, resupplied with cheap Jamaican water and for the ship its passengers and crew to offload their excrement in what will become the tourist crapital (sic) of the world.

You read it here first.

Copyright ©2008 John Maxwell

Jankunnu@gmail.com

There is one fault line in American life that not even Barack Obama can heal; it is the chasm between those who believe OJ Simpson killed his wife and those who don't.

I must make it clear at once that I don't believe OJ did it.

My reason is simple: I cannot imagine anyone, having just butchered two people, being able to make himself and his house presentable within an hour or so of the bloody killings, and then embarking on an aeroplane flight halfway across the United States, leaving his house open to be searched by any police force - even one as incompetent as the Keystone Kops of the Los Angeles Police.

In the days they had to examine Simpson's house the LAPD could not find one single piece of incriminating evidence - nothing to connect Simpson to the crime. To rid his house of bloodstained clothing and any trace of incriminating DNA in an hour is beyond the capacities, I believe, of even highly trained decontamination experts and, in my view, stratospherically out of reach to a booby like Simpson.

Only an innocent booby could have dared to write a book speculating how he could have committed the murders of his wife and her friend Ron Goldman. And only a booby would not have realised that there was something very odd about the expedition he was persuaded to lead to recover his property from a Las Vegas hotel room.

The Goldman and Brown families, who obviously hate Simpson from the word go, have never wavered in their belief that OJ was the killer. They know, and like all fundamentalists their knowledge is absolute, immanent and incontrovertible.

They have managed to trap Simpson twice, with two hand-picked juries - getting a wrongful death civil verdict against Simpson and now, getting him jailed on the most obviously rigged evidence in proceedings which I would think do not dignify even such a state as Nevada.

It all came out in the wash. The gang behind Simpson, including the lone gunman, have all got away more or less scot-free. The goat, Simpson, will probably spend the rest of his life in jail if a real court cannot be found to end this travesty of justice.
If people are to be jailed because they are fools, the world would clearly have more people in jail than outside. OJ Simpson will die for their sins.

OJ's sin was that he 'wanted to live like a white man', according to Newsweek at the time, a capital offence on the same order as Saddam Hussein's pretensions. The difference, of course, was that Saddam actually killed people, like some other leaders more powerful than he.

I really don't believe that Simpson killed anyone. But to say this is extremely unfashionable.

Entitlements

John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson both believed that black people had been so historically disadvantaged that a century after the abolition of slavery, some reparation in kind would be only just. They were persuaded in this by the advocacy of the Civil Rights Movement of the '60s and Affirmative Action was one result. Affirmative Action was designed to help all of the oppressed, women, ethnic minorities and other politically handicapped classes to get to a position where they could compete on approximately level terms with those who had historically enjoyed privileges out of the reach of ordinary people.

In the '80s and '90s, after the Reagan revolution, it became an article of faith that welfare subsidies - standard in most civilised countries - were in the United States a means to give excessive privilege to women and blacks, especially to the poorest. Mr Bush's so-called Justice Department actually entered appearance as a friend of the court in a celebrated case five years ago on the ground that using quotas to determine ethnic diversity in universities was unconstitutional and breached the right to equal protection under the law.

In capitalist society, of course, inequality is built into the system. Some are owners and others are workers. In the development of the market system in the US, however, some workers are clearly more equal than others. Over the past 50 years some white-collar workers have captured the commanding heights of corporations, and the owners, the stockholders, have been relegated to being bit players in their own productions. With the departure of the first entrepreneurs, the second and third generations of owners have become spectators as professional "managers" have taken control of the corporations and have enriched themselves beyond the dreams of commonplace avarice. They pay themselves bonuses in the millions whether their companies are booming or failing.

This week one of the Napoleons of the new capitalism demanded a bonus of $10 million after 11 months as chairman and CEO of Merrill Lynch, perhaps the most famous financial services company in the world. John Thain's basic compensation is about $15 million a year, and in the time that he has been with Merrill, the company became the most high-profile casualty of the current financial disaster, having to be rescued in a takeover by the Bank of America financed by the government of the United States.

Despite this disaster, or perhaps because of it, Thain seemed to believe he was entitled to some super profit. The immediate howl from newspapers, bloggers and others appeared to have persuaded him to withdraw his claim. Thain and others like him are the people most vociferous in attacking the wicked trade unions, particularly the United Autoworkers whose members are derided as parasites battening on poor, helpless companies like General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. Suddenly the US press has begun to examine the claims against the unions and have discovered that the imaginary millionaires of the UAW are paid just a little more than the non-unionised workers in the American factories of Toyota and Honda. They have discovered that it isn't the unions that are responsible for the state of the US auto industry, but the exorbitantly paid bosses, still building cars for the fifties while the Japanese and Europeans are building cars people actually want to buy.

The government's rescue of the auto industry will bring some unlooked-for changes in US motor vehicle manufacture. Congress and Barack Obama are thought to want more environmentally friendly cars. They also want the manufacturers to change their focus to include railway engines and other forms of public transportation. When the taxpayer owns GM, life for everybody will be very different.

Unlike wealthy countries like Messrs Golding's and Shaw's Jamaica, the US will soon confront a future in which private transportation will be a luxury.

Another world

In Jamaica important facts surface briefly like drowning fish in Kingston Harbour, never to be heard from again. While Mr Golding was busy backing the Spanish hotel developers it was reported almost by the way:

"The project is receiving funding of US$100 million from Spanish investors and US$80 million from Jamaica's National Commercial Bank and will provide employment for more than 1,000 Jamaicans at a time when other hotel projects, including Trelawny's multi-billion-dollar Harmony Cove and the 2,000-room Excellence Group rest in limbo.(http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20081207/lead/lead2.html)

Resting in limbo, indeed. And this despite the enormous sums of Jamaican taxpayers' money spent on the expensive physical infrastructure for these Arabian nights fantasies.

The problem is that all the super-fancy resort developments are in trouble or will be soon. They are facing the double whammy of worldwide tight credit and an evaporating high-end consumer market. I confidently expect to hear that the monstrous cruise ship, Oasis of the Seas, is on hold, to be followed by immediate comfort statements from Jamaica telling us all not to worry: Falmouth will be destroyed anyway.

David Jessop asked last week what we are going to do now that the British and the Europeans are imposing new taxes on air travel to faraway places like the Caribbean, designed to slash the effect of aviation on global warming.

We are not planning any responses to these disasters, depending instead on rescue by Brazilian investors in ethanol - food for cars - when we need to get people to plant backyard food gardens and transform idle sugar land to growing food. I pointed out a few years ago that, on acreage equal to that of Monymusk - one of the smallest Jamaican sugar estates - farmers in Florida were producing US$60 million worth of citrus. We are clearly too advanced for anything like that.

We will, of course, be able to eat bauxite.

Copyright 2008 John Maxwell
jankunnu@gmail.com

John Maxwell

There is an ancient joke about an American tourist being shepherded round Europe on a package tour, collecting places without ever experiencing them. One morning his wife asked him: “Where are we? His bemused answer:  ‘If this is Tuesday this must be Paris.’

The cruise ship business is even more soulless than the land based package tour. Cruise ships are floating amusement parks designed to delude you into believing that you are taking part  in  a mind expanding experience – travelling to foreign countries to partake of the local culture. In fact the stops in the various islands of convenience are basically to buy cheap water and to allow the crew a day to clean the ship and make it ready for the next day of cruising and boozing and goofing off at great expense.

Ginnigogs Rule

Aeons ago, shortly after returning from my exile in the UK, I attended a press conference called by the entity called the Urban Development Corporation and featuring the UDC’s Chairman  Moses Matalon and the Minister under whose portfolio the UDC then fell –Mining and Natural Resources. The Minister was Allan Isaacs and I will never forget his astonishment and then rage when in answer to one of my questions, Mr  Matalon admitted that the UDC, then five years old, had never published an annual report, as it was supposedly bound to do.

The Minister publicly exacted an undertaking from Mr Matalon to publish annual reports covering the UDC’s first five years.

And that may have been the reason that Mr Matalon later described me as an over-educated Rasta – wrong on both counts. His five annual reports were combined in one short lavishly illustrated brochure, in which it was revealed that the Universal Devastation Conglomerate had incurred a significant proportion of Jamaica's public debt, without the authorisation of parliament. The UDC had simply issued IOUs to American banks, to finance its destruction of downtown Kingston preliminary to reconstructing the city as a modern Miami in the Caribbean. We are still waiting, 35 years later, for the reconstruction. What astonished me then was the fact that Mr Matalon, on his own, could mortgage Jamaica to American banks without the knowledge of Parliament. It did not appear that his former Minister, the famously oversightful Edward Seaga, either knew or cared what was happening.

This week, in a statement to the Gleaner, the head of the Port Authority sounded as if he had inherited Matalon's powers. According to the Financial Gleaner of November 21:

‘The US$102 million that Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines Limited (RCCL) is fronting on the Falmouth cruise pier project will not give the American company an equity stake in the port, the Port Authority of Jamaica has said.

‘The funds representing 45.5 per cent of the total project cost of US$224 million is, according to PAJ president and chairman Noel Hylton, a loan to be repaid on a negotiated schedule.’

Repayment

"The matter of repayment is well under consideration; it is expected to take place over an extended period.

The Prime Minister, Mr Golding is clearly au fait with this arrangement. On November 10 the press published a release from the PM’s office to the effect that three days earlier, Mr Golding “ was met by Adam Goldstein, CEO of Royal Caribbean International (RCI) in Kingston, ahead of signing a US$224 M contract to develop the Falmouth Pier to accommodate the world's largest cruise ship in May 2010. Under the contract, the government will invest US$122M to dredge the harbour and construct the pier. RCI will develop the land-based facilities, including shops and attractions.

 According to Mr Hylton, however, there is no joint venture. The Jamaican taxpayer will foot every penny of this extravagant and in my view, mad scheme. The PM’s release hinted otherwise:

‘Under the contract, US$122M will be utilised for harbour dredging and to build the facilities for ships to dock. The other US$102M will be used by RCCL to lease land from the Government, for the construction of all infrastructural development. The facility is due to receive the largest ship in the world come May 2010.’

Crazier and crazier

The world is now in the toils of the worst economic crisis in history. Even on CNN, the journalist-millionaire anchors are publicly worrying about their 401(k) nest eggs, rotting away with the stock market. All over the world credit is acutely short. Jamaica owing 137% of its GDP to usurers of various stripes has had its sovereign bonds downgraded to little more than junk. The only source of funds is going to be the IMF, and they will compel us to fire more people and strip our cupboard even barer than it is already. The world’s tourism industries are bawling about the crunch coming from the contraction in disposable incomes. And yet, with our Jamaican hotels on the bones of their balance sheets, we are going to borrow money to destroy the integrity of Jamaica’s loveliest town,, dilapidated though it may be now, in the interest of a foreign corporation. We are prostituting ourselves for a foreign entity with no obligation or loyalty to Jamaica.

It is instructive to learn how the decision was made.

The Custos of Trelawny, speaking at what was alleged to have been a consultation about an Environmental Impact Assessment of the proposed cruise shipping port, said, inter alia “Now, the Port Authority has taken upon itself to make this bold move, and that is to reincarnate as it were, not only the ports of Falmouth but the attendance and glory and historical heritage of the town of Falmouth”

Mr Hylton explained why he was doing all that he was doing for Falmouth. Having developed the ports of Kingston, Montego Bay, Ocho Rios and Port Antonio it was Falmouth’s turn to be blessed by the attentions of the Authority.

 Mr Hylton explained what provoked him to build the new port:

“There is a new ship that is being built, which is called 'The Genesis of the Sea', and this ship is capable of taking ten thousand (10, 000) passengers and crew, and we would like to host that ship in Jamaica.”

That is clearly good and sufficient reason to undertake a quarter of a billion US dollar debt. It will allow a foreign corporation to show off the largest and most vulgar expression of  capitalist excess in existence.

The process of site selection, was as one would expect, painstaking and thorough, although Mr Hylton did provoke laughter at one point:

“So, one Sunday morning I drove along the North coast and on arriving in Falmouth I went over the wharf area – actually I had to jump the wall.”

[LAUGHTER]

“And I looked at the place and I thought this is such a beautiful place that we should develop [it] Looking at the historical charm of the place and so on, I thought here it is.”

From the horse’s mouth, as it were, you get confirmation of something I have been saying for years. Nothing so satisfies our developers as the prospect of obliterating natural beauty and charm with concrete and asphalt.

“So, we invited one of the major shipping lines down and we walked this whole town on foot. We walked the whole town, and we thought that there was sufficient materials here to reconstruct the waterfront of this city to bring it back to its original glory. [APPLAUSE] And that morning when the shipping line and myself walked this place, we sat down and we said, let's do it.”

And that was how the decision to brutify Falmouth was taken, with care, deliberation and extensive research.

After more careful deliberation the Port Authority decided to hire a firm to redesign Falmouth

The artist selected for this job was, surprisingly and purely coincidentally no doubt, a firm called Idea Inc. which Mr Hylton described as “an International Design and Entertainment Company. It has developed story lines and thematic approaches for destinations all over the world, and is currently developing port projects in four other Caribbean Islands and Mexico, also a consultant to the world's two major cruise lines, Royal Caribbean and the Carnival Cruise Lines. Its president is with us today, Mr. Hugh Darley, he is the Projects Vision Planner. He is a past Walt Disney Imagineer and has experience in developing projects in over 70 countries. He has developed concepts for the Walt Disney Company, Universal Studios and Paramount.”

 Mr Darley, being a man of great imagination will no doubt bring an entirely new vision to Falmouth, unsullied by his past affiliations and visions. We are going to pay him to mess up Jamaica to the specifications of a foreign corporation

Although the new cruise liners will dominate the landscape and obliterate the view of  Falmouth from the sea, Mr Darley promises to make it so that the two cruise ships with their fifteen or twenty thousand passengers do not ‘overpower’ the seven and a half thousand who live in Falmouth.

As he described it, whatever is architecturally valuable in Falmouth will be incorporated into the new development which will become in effect, a gated community stretching the entire waterfront of Falmouth. There will be a facility to allow nearly two hundred large buses and an unknown number of taxis, to transport the fifteen thousand or so guests to approved attractions, and after their labours, return them to a segregated Market Square and a Merchant Square where nearly half a million square feet of shopping mall will be built and which will incorporate the historic Falmouth Courthouse as a museum including a ‘Rum Bar’

Chaos to be built-in

“The idea is that the courthouse could be a living museum; it would be restored and developed to represent what was originally there” according to Mr Darley. This fidelity to history will probably include people playing the parts of the slaves who were originally there. I am not being malicious. In several of the North American examples of historic recreations, blacks are hired to play the parts of slaves to make the experience as true to history as possible. Maybe the one thousand jobs promised for Jamaicans as part of the development will include these, or perhaps they will be part of the fruit and vegetable stalls and the fish stalls and curio stalls which will be among Mr Darley’s “ opportunities for locals to participate in sales within the development through these types of chaos opportunities  all along the waterfront.”[sic]

Wendy Lee, the tireless engine of the Northern Jamaica Conservation Association, was, as usual, a voice crying in the wilderness. “"If this is the complete EIA, it means the terms of reference have not been met because there is no adequate archaeological assessment of the town which is the heritage gem of the north coast,"

She, and many others deplore the extensive, mindless destruction of the phosphorescent lagoon, the wetlands and the other characteristics that make Falmouth uniquely Falmouth.

Trelawny’s famous black crabs will get even shorter shrift than the human inhabitants of Jamaica and Falmouth.

Jamaica is a small country and every development affects all of us. Developers get away with EIAs that treat the immediate neighbours of any development as the ‘interested public’ – as in the Doomsday Highway, where the EIA was debated in a small restaurant in Spanish Town. Projects which should be discussed in Parliament are explained to small audiences in hurriedly arranged meetings in obscure places.

The fallout from these brazen assaults on the Jamaican physical – natural and built – environment is not important; twenty vigorous claqueurs in some church  hall are thought adequate to give Jamaica’s assent to some of the most monumentally destructive and environmentally unsustainable enterprises on earth.

Pretty soon, our people will find themselves cut off from their ocean, with their biodiversity destroyed, their natural heritage and culture debased and their national patrimony owned by others. We won’t be able to swim in our beaches, see our coastline, or explore the intellectually stimulating casinos which will provide the prism and prison bars through which we can view twenty-first century reality where courthouses become museums and justice becomes a rum bar joke.

Copyright ©2008 John Maxwell

jankunnu@gmail.com

John Maxwell

In 1989, before the General Elections of that year, the PNP Opposition accused Edward Seaga’s government of having a “Going out of business sale”  of Jamaica’s assets, privatising left, right, and centre.

That sale was as nothing compared to the present ‘madness’ sale, initiated by P. J. Patterson  and enthusiastically endorsed by Bruce Golding. If Seaga was selling the furniture, Patterson and Golding have been scrapping the house itself, selling the verandah, the doors and windows  and the flooring.

The Jamaica Environment Trust and Vagabond Media , two entirely Jamaican organisations, have teamed up to produce a cool, calm documentary examination of the methodical, brutal and unsustainable development of the tourism industry of Jamaica.

What they say is not new: most Jamaicans already have a pretty good idea of what is happening. The wanton destruction of the Jamaican landscape, an integral component of the Jamaican “tourism product”, has made the pages of the New York Times, the National Geographic, countless internet blogs and lots of other places. What is new is that the whole horror story is presented about Jamaicans, by Jamaicans, for Jamaicans.

Jamaica for sale allows the Jamaican victims of our fantasy development to speak: the craft vendors, the construction workers, the hotel workers, the fishermen, hotel owners and managers  and the ordinary citizens who see themselves under siege by unscrupulous  people with much more money than sense and with no recognisable aesthetic or environmental values and no feeling for  the Jamaican people or the Jamaican reality.

One of the construction workers says near the beginning of the video:

“Dem is like ticks ‘pon we back” an eloquent expression of the reality of the new tourism, parasitic and dangerous to health. The workers tell of dreadful working conditions, 12 hour days for $800 – below the already inadequate Jamaican minimum wage – and their employers are not poor companies. Their rules and laws are enforced by the Jamaican constabulary whose interest is not justice but “Law and Order.”

The people attracted to the worksites and to the tourism development areas find nowhere to live and many become squatters. Even the squatters in the wetlands are turfed off, bulldozers come by night and demolish their miserable dwellings, destroying their furniture, their few personal possessions and wrecking their lives. Their rivers, streams and beaches are polluted by wastes of all kinds.  I have taken photographs of human excrement in the sea at the formerly pristine Pear Tree Bottom Beach. What remains of the gazetted public beach and public fishing beach is now off limits to the public, by the illegal order of the National Works Agency which has erected a sign warning that ‘Trespassers will be Prosecuted’.

 In Negril there is a new development afoot that will reconstruct the coastline, building artificial inlets  and beaches al la Dubai – to maximise their profit at the expense of the Jamaican environment which, in this area, is largely unexploited and  unspoiled.

One Negril hotelier, a Jamaican, with tears in his voice, describes the plight of workers whose children have no schools and who have to take two or three buses to get to work, spending up to a third of their meagre wages on transportation. There is, he laments, no social development to match the commercial development.

All this despite the alleged fact that Tourism is Jamaica’s leading earner of foreign exchange.

But where does this foreign exchange go? The craft vendors complain that hotel guests are warned off the Jamaica outside the hotels: they will be robbed and murdered – they are told. So the few who venture outside are mobbed by vendors and others wanting a piece of the action, terrifying hotel guests who have been comprehensively warned of the badness of the people they will meet outside.

The video was shot before the tourist mecca of Ocho Rios was overwhelmed by mudslides and human excrement from the unplanned squatter settlements above the town. No one seems to have learned anything from this disaster. There are no plans to build a new town for the thousands of people who need accommodation, many of whom work in the hotels but who live in subhuman conditions or have to travel miles to work every day.

The current worldwide economic disaster will eventually catch up with the lunacies of fantasy development. The price of oil will increase rapidly as it becomes more scarce and will put airlines and cruise-ships out of business. But, sadly, not before we transform beautiful Jamaican towns like Falmouth into tourist only communities ‘attractions’ a la Colonial Williamsburg and Disneyland. These guys are not only stealing beaches, they are stealing whole towns.

In the meantime the burgeoning people-processing industry is busy destroying the foundation on which its real attraction is built. The bozos who are building the monstrous concrete ramparts  by the sea were attracted to Jamaica because it is Jamaica, but they are determined, like other uncivilised people, to distort and deform what is natural but foreign to them to suit their tiny-minded fantasies of ‘Treasure Island’ and similar mythical European versions of paradise. They will mistreat wild animals like dolphins and killer whales until they go extinct, like the tigers which now mainly and for the time being may only be found in zoos.

Eating biodiversity

On the hotel coast there is another serious threat to the Jamaican environment. Imported foreign workers have discovered that we have snakes and turtles and they are eating them to extinction. The hotels are closing down turtle nesting sites and hotel excrement and spoil are killing our reefs at an increasing pace. In the video, fishermen from all along the north and west coasts are complaining that the reefs are dying, fouled by over-fertilisation from the hotels or other land based sources of pollution.

The beaches themselves are going, either stolen by the truckload by night or destroyed by interference with the sea-floor or the wetlands that nourish the beaches. In the video one man testified to what I know from personal experience. Even a few years ago, the beaches in Negril, alone in all Jamaica, extended up to a hundred meters into the sea. Today, the sea-floor at Negril is no longer sandy but mainly mud. As we told the Urban Development Corporation more than 30 years ago, most of Negril’s sand was made by argillaceous algae, “seaweed” that absorbed calcium from the water and crystallised it as flakes of ‘sand’ which gave Negril’s beaches their unique powdery feel. If these flakes of calcium carbonate are not constantly refreshed by the algae, the beaches will die – as they  have died.

Part of this problem arose from the UDC’s determination to use the Negril Morass as a sink for hotel sewage, poisoning the South Negril River which nourished the argillaceous algae.

Another problem with Negril is that the UDC – unlike King Canute – refused to believe that  they could not control the tides. We at the Natural Resources Conservation Authority told them thirty years ago that they should not build a groyne at the point on which Hedonism Two (then Negril Beach Village) was sited. At that time, NRCA had an oceanographer on staff, a Jamaican who became so fed up with the bureaucracy’s unwillingness to listen to reason that he gave up and went off to study law instead. The illegal UDC groyne interrupted the flow of sand from the north of the seven mile strip, thus interfering with the supply of regular sand that provided the foundation for the powdery flakes from the south. Between these two deficits, Negril’s famous beaches are now reduced to thin, mostly muddy strips, attracting hosts of sandflies (Sandflies, paradoxically, prefer mud to sand).

Now, on the North coast, hoteliers who do not steal sand from other beaches dredge it from beyond the reefs that guard the coast.

Since the living corals preserve the integrity of the inshore beaches, subtracting sand from the seaward side of dead reefs will eventually undermine them and destroy them. At that time, the beaches built by theft or by illegal dredging will disappear and ‘Jamaica – No Problem” will become ‘Jamaica – Big Problem’.

Unknown to the foreign hoteliers, Jamaica was always more than a beach. In a few years they will discover what life is like without beaches. The vulgar people processing plants on the cutting edge of unsustainable development will be besieged by rising seas in their lobbies and and storm surge on their third and fourth floors.

Then perhaps, we can build a sound tourism industry on the rubble of our fantasy hotels, new reefs, manmade and offering accommodation to starfish and swarms of jellyfish.

The video Jamaica for Sale, is much more polite than this column and its producers are not responsible for my comments. But I urge you to see the video when it is next shown on television sometime in December. Before that there will be a special fundraising showing at the Red Bones Cafe  You should look out for notices in the press.

Walk good and take care where you swim.

Copyright© 208 John Maxwell

jankunnu@gmail.com