remembered shores

what frigate bird and pelican can see

far over water they have yet to tell

so we must put up with that oily smell

and other facts that do not well agree

with ease and comfort still by this warm sea

it is so simple to ignore the yell

just keep the eye on that hypnotic swell

thinking that it is right to let things be

in other places the cold presses hard

on other faces and the nights so long

while city noise forces folk to the bars

then there is longing for the warmth of yard

brightness of seas the comfortable song

and in the night the many lovely stars

nevertheless

there is no question that the night is long

with clouds unbroken in the sky above

we want to give slow-moving time a shove

with urgent purpose we await new song

this calendar that warns of winter's wrong

our hearts demand the springtime morning dove

return of flowers reawoken love

days may be cold but hope is very strong

all that we know is how much each must rue

those painful stories of a different map

on which new facts and new lines would be writ

but now we find that not a thing was true

each noble tale  has turned out to be crap

and we need help to get out of the shit

so long a time to wait

without hard struggle there is no progress

it is by effort that we make our grace

fear must surrender at last to success

we let the fools and liars acquiesce

in our destruction by granting them space

without hard struggle there is no progress

the preachers tell us that we have to bless

the ones who curse and spit upon each face

fear must surrender at last to success

year after year we only have bad cess

watching as step by step we lose our place

without hard struggle there is no progress

only the evil seem to coalesce

they seem the victors in this ghastly chase

fear must surrender at last to success

it takes no hero's hand to clear the mess

just hope and tears of the whole human race

without hard struggle there is no progress

fear must surrender at last to success

where we must navigate

this is the point where all our natures meet

you'd think us mad were we to list the tales

so many fools have been lost on this street

one thinks himself part of the great elite

another looks and laughs when the first fails

this is the point when all our natures meet

you hide your heart and wait to see complete

the fullness of the light on all details

so many fools have been lost on this street

that when we speak it seems a huge deceit

a way to suck the wind out of our sails

this is the point where all our natures meet

no proper chance here for any retreat

we do not let the train go off the rails

so many fools have been lost on this street

and in the end there is no one to greet

nor any chance to balance all the scales

this is the point where all our natures meet

so many fools have been lost on this street

virtues

truth is best found in small silent places

you find at last the finer goods you seek

and learn that honest things are not unique

but do not come arrayed with airs and graces

honour is not reserved just to the meek

truth is best found in small silent places

love shows herself alive in joyous faces

and happiness in valley not on peak

not by great river but by little creek

truth is best found in small silent places

this tale we know

no meaning in the noise just empty rage

but meaning in the numbers we can read

a lamentation for the passing age

so much is noted in the angry deed

not one second of silence they concede

although rough bone on bone will harshly grate

they won't surrender to the ones they hate

so little of our temper they can gauge

and not a portion of our urgent need

that forces us to deepest loudest rage

at sight of all their  joyful hateful greed

the product of the nature of their breed

they name this glory and call this their state

they won't surrender to the ones they hate

with such an enemy we can't engage

without an understanding of their creed

more than the lying words upon the page

we cannot trust the man riding the steed

who tells us that like us he has to bleed

and though their pain like ours can become great

they won't surrender to the ones they hate 

they will not quit their places on the stage

nor pay our anger any sort of heed

for that we know slow death's the only wage

and harsh uprooting as with any weed

justice we know we never could exceed

since though we tell our story plain and straight

they won't surrender to the ones they hate

honour restored

each aching slave will see the pirate slain

from recollection of that stinking hold

don't name revenge that last easing of  pain

so many fools who will not see things plain

nor taste of patience that has been served cold

each aching slave will see the pirate slain

year upon year each one piles up the pain

the lone reward is simply growing old

don't name revenge that last easing of pain

a form of passion made to entertain

the ones whose enterprise was manifold

each aching slave will see the pirate slain

but silence will not fill this place again

now that the fallen have at last turned bold

don't name revenge that last easing of pain

all that we are all that our hearts contain

cannot we now declare be bought or sold

each aching slave will see the pirate slain

don't name revenge that last easing of pain

memory of morning

you wake up to the sharp scent of bush tea

before the sun has touched the eastern hill

the clock is independent of your will

and early hours and you do not agree

free education does not come so free

that you can wait till after morning chill

just hurry and don't dare a drop to spill

that's just the way that matters have to be

the voices carried on that early air

from distant places each with their strange word

you had to mark and now cannot forget

but all your duty and your hard won care

won't turn back time or make the case absurd

since age owes youth a large and heavy debt

and here's the latest news

day turns to night and night returns to day

the cycle is the same the actors not

what seems to matter is the blasted play

no one's the winner in the long affray

a little difficult to change the plot

day turns to night and night returns to day

a common fact no matter what we say

the sort of thing that no one has forgot

what seems to matter is the blasted play

the long parade has gone wholly astray

far off the road and moving at a trot

day turns to night and night returns to day

while all the towers are falling back to clay

an entire city's now an empty lot

what seems to matter is the blasted play

the only truth is knowledge of the way

out of the devastation and the rot

day turns to night and night returns to day

what seems to matter is the blasted play

Racism and Poverty

John Maxwell

The people of Haiti are as poor as human beings can be.

According to the statisticians of the World Bank and others who speculate about how many Anglos can dance on the head of a peon, Haiti may either be the second, third or fourth poorest country in the world.

In Haiti’s case, statistics are irrelevant.

 When large numbers of people are reduced to eating dirt – earth, clay – it is impossible to imagine poverty any more absolute, any more desperate, any more inhuman and degrading.

The chairman of the World Bank visited Haiti this past week. This man, Robert Zoellick, is an expert finance-capitalist, a former partner in the investment bankers Goldman Sachs, whose 22,000 ‘traders” last year averaged bonuses of more than $600,000 each.

Goldman Sachs paid out over &18 billion in bonuses to its traders last year, about 50% more than the GDP of Haiti’s 8 million people.

The chairman of Goldman took home more than $70 million and his lieutenants – as Zoellick once was – $40 million or more, each.

It should be clear that someone like Robert Zoellick is likely to be totally bemused by Haiti when his entertainment allowance could probably feed the entire population for a day or two. It is not hard to understand that Mr Zoellick cannot understand why Haiti needs debt relief.

Haiti is now forced by the World Bank and Its bloodsucking siblings like the IMF, to pay more than $1 million a week to satisfy debts incurred by the Duvaliers and the post-Duvalier tyrannies. Haiti must repay this debt to prove its fitness for ‘help’ from the Multilateral Financial Institutions (MFI).

One million dollars a week would feed everybody in Haiti even if only at a very basic level – at least they would not have to eat earth patties. Instead the Haitians export this money to pay the salaries of such as Zoellick

But Zoellick doesn’t see it that way. According to the World Bank’s website the bank is in the business of eradicating poverty. At the rate it does that in Haiti the Bank, I estimate, will be in the poverty eradication business for another 18,000 years.

The reason Haiti is in its present state is pretty simple. Canada, the United States and France, all of whom consider themselves civilised nations, colluded in the overthrow of the democratic government of Haiti four years ago. They did this for several excellent reasons:

• Haiti 200 years ago defeated the world’s then major powers, France (twice) Britain and Spain, to establish its independence and to abolish plantation slavery. This was unforgivable.

• Despite being bombed, strafed and occupied by the United States early in the past century, and despite the American endowment of a tyrannical and brutal Haitian army designed to keep the natives in their place, the Haitians insisted on re-establishing their independence. Having overthrown the Duvaliers and their successors, the Haitians proceeded to elect as president a little black parish priest who had become their hero by defying the forces of evil and tyranny.

• The new president of Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide refused to sell out (privatise) the few assets owned by the government (the public utilities mainly);

• Aristide also insisted that France owed Haiti more than $25 billion in repayment of blood money extorted from Haiti in the 19th century, as alleged compensation for France’s loss of its richest colony and to allow Haiti to gain admission to world trade;

• Aristide threatened the hegemony of a largely expatriate ruling class of so-called ‘elites’ whose American connections allowed them to continue the parasitic exploitation and economic strip mining of Haiti following the American occupation.

• Haiti, like Cuba, is believed to have in its exclusive economic zone, huge submarine oil reserves, greater than the present reserves of the United States

• Haiti would make a superb base from which to attack Cuba.

The American attitude to Haiti was historically based on American disapproval of a free black state just off the coast of their slave-based plantation economy. This attitude was  pithily expressed in Thomas Jefferson’s idea that a black man was equivalent to three fifths of a white man. It was  further apotheosized by Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan who expostulated to Wilson: “Imagine! Niggers speaking French!”

The Haitians clearly did not know their place. In February 2004, Mr John McCain’s International Republican Institute, assisted by Secretary of State Colin Powell, USAID and the CIA, kidnapped Aristide and his wife and transported them to the Central African Republic as ‘cargo’ in a plane normally used to ‘render’ terrorists for torture outsourced by the US to Egypt, Morocco and Uzbekistan.

Before Mr Zoellick went to Haiti last week, the World Bank announced that Mr. Zoellick’s visit would “emphasize the Bank's strong support for the country.” Mr. Zoellick added: "Haiti must be given a chance. The international community needs to step up to the challenge and support the efforts of the Haitian government and its people."

“If Robert Zoellick wants to give Haiti a chance, he should start by unconditionally cancelling Haiti’s debt,” says Brian Concannon of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti. “Instead the World Bank- which was established to fight poverty- continues to insist on debt payments when Haitians are starving to death and literally mired in mud.”

“After four hurricanes in a month and an escalating food crisis it is outrageous that Haiti is being told it must wait six more months for debt relief,” said Neil Watkins, National Coordinator of Jubilee USA Network.

“Haiti’s debt is both onerous and odious”, added Dr. Paul Farmer of Partners In Health. “The payments are literally killing people, as every dollar sent to Washington is a dollar Haiti could spend on healthcare, nutrition and feeding programs, desperately needed infrastructure and clean water. Half of the loans were given to the Duvaliers and other dictatorships, and spent on Presidential luxuries, not development programs for the poor. Mr. Zoellick should step up and support the Haitian government by cancelling the debt now.”

“Unconditional debt cancellation is the first step in addressing the humanitarian crisis in Haiti,” according to Nicole Lee, Executive Director of TransAfrica Forum. “There is also an urgent need for U.S. policy towards Haiti to shift from entrenching the country in future debt to supporting sustainable, domestic solutions for development.”

The above quotations are taken from an appeal by the organisations represented above.

Further comment is superfluous.

Poverty and Globalisation

President Jean Bertrand Aristide, now in enforced exile in South Africa, might be sardonically entertained by a new report just published by the world’s  Club of the Rich, the OECD –Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.

This report, titled “Growing Unequal” examines the accelerating trend toward economic inequality in the societies of the world’s richest countries.

The report contains several mind-blowing discoveries which will, no doubt, amaze journalists and policy-makers in the Western hemisphere and keep them entertained for many years.

The major finding is that globalisation and free trade have hurt millions of  people, particularly the poorest.

Another ground-breaking discovery is that “work reduces poverty”.

One of these days Jamaicans and other Caribbean people may decide to find out whether these theses are true and whether if they are, we should have signed on to the new EPA with the European Union.

If our ginnigogs were able and willing to read they might become aware of a phenomenon called the “resource curse’ which appears to condemn developing countries with enormous mineral wealth to misery, war, corruption and destitution.

If our ginnigogs could or would read, they might find it useful to discover whether an acre of land under citrus or pumpkins is not more productive, sustainable and valuable than that same acre destroyed for bauxite.

If our ginnigogs could or would read, they might become aware of the fate of the island of Nauru, ‘discovered’ less than two hundred years ago, mined for phosphate, returning a per capita national income rivaling Saudi Arabia’s two and three decades ago and now to be abandoned because the land has been mined to death and is destined to disappear shortly beneath the waves of global warming.

 

Softly, softly, catchee monkee

If our ginnigogs were able to read and willing and able to defend the interests of Jamaica and the Jamaican people they might discover that bauxite mining  will, within a relatively short time, contaminate all the water resources of Jamaica, destroy our cultural heritage, wipe out our priceless biological diversity, deprave our landscape and reduce those of us who survive to a state of penury and hopelessness. Goodbye tourism, goodbye farming, welcome hunger, welcome clay patties.

According to the experts if you drop a live lobster into a pot of boiling water the creature will make frenzied efforts to escape. If, on the other hand, you put him in a pot of cold water and bring it slowly to the boil, the lobster will perish without a struggle.

Jamaica, on the atlas, is shaped a bit like a lobster.

Bon appetit.

Copyright © 2008 John Maxwell

jankunnu@gmail.com

under the same stars

this permitted we have grace to caper

from dusk to dawn as the leaves redly fall

marking the season with a noble ball

each bright dancer bearing amber taper

notes now shining on the golden paper

make our demands seem piteously small

as watchers wonder why we had the gall

to think our hottest wishes more than vapour

now time must move in tandem with the sun

our hearts obey an older slower law

while in their nests the summer birds still wait

far to the south where warmth is never done

but nature rules with equally harsh claw

a younger person wonders at his fate

distant lightning

an echo of the past resolves to pain

no matter what we do none can escape

all stand bedraggled in the autumn rain

who thought to win was first to fall off wain

the furthest off from the finishing tape

an echo of the past resolves to pain

it takes no wisdom to note the hard strain

of those who holding matters in firm shape

all stand bedraggled in the autumn rain

not daring to look up nor to complain

while foolish mouths are all of them agape

an echo of the past resolves to pain

some facts are set out very clear and plain

as both bright angel and dull foolish ape

all stand bedraggled in the autumn rain

we must lament the loss of normal brain

which must explain how we are in this scrape

an echo of the past resolves to pain

all stand bedraggled in the autumn rain

long waiting

at this dark curve of the long mountain road

the signpost tells us just where we must go

those little places we are meant to know

but do not speak of method nor of mode

the yellow finger is a sort of goad

to warn us that our pace is yet too slow

our feet must hasten so we catch the glow

and make most certain that our goods are stowed

not here but soon a true signal will come

to clarify just who must keep the score

and who depart and lose the chance at fame

so much depends on true tone of the drum

not how or where each of us comes ashore

but only that we must accept the blame

at home the green remains

so many trees in full and golden leaf

this changing season as the days turn cold

birds have gone south and fools have become bold

nights grow too long and sunlight is too brief

you know the story it is often told

so many trees in full and golden leaf

now swiftly falling for time's a hard thief

and eager hoarding the  fast-passing gold

leaves us behind nothing that we can hold

so many trees in full and golden leaf

one leaden rule

the world is much more complex than you think

tricks that you learn when young turn out to fail

this weight of truth would drive a saint to drink

you've forged a chain of good things link by link

and then find out it's all to no avail

the world is much more complex than you think

your happy moment passes in a blink

it vanishes the second you exhale

this weight of truth would drive a saint to drink

cold winds will find the one uncovered chink

and force their way in just to make you ail

the world is much more complex than you think

so you work hard and idlers get the mink

with all the jewels that are out on sale

this weight of truth would drive a saint to drink

no one at all must be allowed to think

since their good effort will end up quite stale

the world is much more complex than you think

this weight of truth would drive a saint to drink

peaks that scrape the sky

to fear the mountains that you have not seen

strikes me as beyond odd as plain bizarre

there is no horror that could strike so far

nor any danger that might come between

that place and this you need to find the mean

of calm and order not to let things mar

the proper temper so that at the bar

to make all sober we might intervene

each new adventure has a painful price

in time and effort and we can't recall

the life so spent back to a happy place

but you don't ever want to hear advice

and are too eager to run out and fall

and then return with fresh tears on your face