Trust the People Every Time

Trust the People Every Time

John Maxwell

We should be grateful to the Gleaner for last week’s story on tourism development. Under the headline Too many rooms! - Hotel growth pressuring infrastructure it painted a frightening picture of what Icall ‘berserker development’.

The story was frightening, because it disclosed that what I had suspected was true – many of those who are supposedly responsible for guiding and regulating development don’t understand what they are doing, or, if they do, are not doing what they should be doing.

“ Winsome Townsend, director of strategic planning at NEPA, said while the agency stuck to the guidelines, it did not have the legal authority to stop development if the Parish council permits it.”

I have no iea where Miss Townsend got this idea. The local planning authoritty is and has always been subordinate to the national planning authority. The National Environmental and Planning Agency, NEPA which combines the Natural Resources Conservation Authority and the Town Planning Department has had for a very long time the authority to stop certain kinds of development if they chose to do so.

Thirty years ago when I was Chairman of the NRCA we had much less legal authority than the NEPA/NRCA now possesses. The NRCA can now issue ‘Stop Orders’ for any development and require Environmental Impact Assessment Reports on a wide range of developments which includes the building of hotels. In the case of the old NRCA, we could stop amy kind of development on any beach in Jamaica simply by withholding a licence. This meant we could prohibit wharves, dredging, land reclamation and use of the beaches for any purpose. The NRCA was an amalgamation of the Beach Control Authority, the Wildlife Protection Authority, the Watersheds Protection Authority which meant we had other recourses should we have needed to fall back on them.

We effectively stopped the mining of peat at Negril – threatening to invoke the Watersheds Protection Law, among other things, but we campaigned against it so effectively that we did not need to invoke any sanctions.

It seems to me that the new NEPA, a ‘superagency’ apparently suggested by the World Bank, has powers of which its members must be unaware. But even if it did not have the powers I think it has, the NRCA and the Town Planning Authority should have a great deal of moral weight which could be used to dissuade the more reckless of our development agencies.

The UDC managed in the 60s to gain Mr Seaga’s approval to be a local planning authority in areas over which it had sway, but this still did not allow them to do what they liked, and when we pressured them to instal sewerage works to protect Negril’s beaches, they at least pretended to obey until the government changed in 1980

What they did after that can now be seen in the depleted, muddy beaches of Negril, acres of which have been lost because of sewerage and human interference with the seafloor. The corals are dead, as well.

Part of the problem with Jamaican planning and development is that the people with power are these days, Jamaicans in name only. What they know of Jamaica is the immediate area round their houses and offices and the roads to the airports. But their hearts, minds and wallets are in Cayman, Miami and Lichtenstein

This is why Jamaican food finds such a hard time getting onto the international menu, because so many Jamaican ginnigogs either don’t know the food or think it beneath them.

Carrying Capacity

One of our major problems in Jamaica is ‘carrying capacity’. One of the Gleaner’s guests at its editor’s forum – environmental engineer Chris Burgess said the concept of carrying capacity was often misunderstood in Jamaica. “Carrying capacity is ill defined and there is no study in this country that can come forward and say that our way of determining carrying capacity is absolutely the best way or is well respected or is the way," He added: "I think that the idea that Runaway Bay can only facilitate safely 2000 (hotel room) is crazy and I believe the sustainable number is quite likely higher."

With all due respect to Mr Burgess there are several ways in which carrying capacity can be measured. For instance the availability of water is clearly a limitation on any development. If Runaway Bay can support 2,000 rooms, as Mr Burgess says, there must be a source for at least 8 million gallons of water per day. The Bahia Principe at Mammee Bay, planned to have 2,000 rooms in one place, would require a similar volume of water.

Where is it to be found?

All along the northcoast the people who actually live there are in dire straits because they cannot get enough water. In Duncans, for which my father helped secure the Dornock water sup[ply (from the Rio Bueno) about 80 years ago, there are water problems today because of overdevelopment. At Silver Sands resort there are water shortages and if the crazy new Harmony Cove development is ever built Duncans will probably have to import water from somewhere.

Already, there is severe pressure on the northcoast water supplies – from cruise ships and hotels. Some people fool themselves that cruise ships come to Jamaica for inbond shopping and other gated attractions. I have the feeling they come mainly for fairly cheap water, which is not easily available either in Florida or in the rest of the Caribbean.

Yet the National Water Authority has in its wisdom privatised the water supplies of Ocho Rios and the Runaway Bay/Discovery Bay areas, knowing that there is a huge sellers’ market for water for cruise ships, hotels and golf courses. Nut the NWA’s religious principles apparently prevent it from making money

I believe that the Prime Prime Minister should immediately take back into public ownership these water supplies. The private owners have not and will never be responsible for the maintenance of the watersheds. It is our sweat and tears which maintain them.And since that is so, it seems to me only fair that when water is to be distributed the people of Jamaica, whose forefathers died for this land, should be entitled to first dibs.

Tearing down Jamaica

The Prime Minister, Portia Simpson, is, in my view, in danger of being so surrounded by apparatchiks from the previous regime, that she will not be able to implement her own policies for some time to come..

In the meantime,, the people of Jamaica have a pretty good idea of what Portia wants; they simply want to hear her summon them to action.

For a start, in her pre-election speeches, Portia made it clear that her version of development was based on people and not on concrete. She spoke about mobilising volunteer effort and in helping people take charge of their own destinies. The berserker development now afoot in tourism is diametrically opposed to Portia’s vision.

The same is true of developments in the bauxite industry. Jamaica is approximately half bauxite and half limestone with a smattering of volcanic and other rocks to sweeten the geological pie. If the Bauxite Institute and Marc Rich have their way we will be tearing down the entire country to get at bauxite – an enterprise which has already disfigured the green face of Jamaica. AT Marlborough in Manchester, birthplace of Norman Manley, the bauxite companies have created a moonscape out of what should be a tranquil national park. The government of Mr Patterson approved plans to let these predators loose in the Cockpit Country, without any regard for the incredible beauty of that Land of Look Behind or the biological treasures contained therein.

We can’t eat bauxite and what we get from it doesn’t feed anyone. When it is gone it is gone, and when it is gone it will leave huge craters instead of land on which we could grow food and show off the beauty of our country to ourselves and our visitors for milennia to come.

The current berserker development is designed for one thing only – to make sure that the coupon clippers who own the Jamaican debt will be repaid. It will contribute nothing to the development of our people and will ravage the landscape and destroy and foreclose all sorts of prospects for real, continuing and sustainable development.

IN Anguilla, a tiny island about the size of Kingston Harbour, the government has decided to put a moratorium on development. Thee reason is that the people fear that Anguiila will become like Jamaica, an island completely surrounded by hotels, in which the locals are there only on sufferance and to provide cheap labour.

The UDC’s programme of beach stealing must be stopped im the public interest, or else there will soon be war between the people and the tourism industry.

We need to devise, with the wisdom of the ordinary people, a plan to make Jamaica at least as attractive a place for its own citizens as it is for visitors. We need to decide what we mean by development. Development cannot mean the continue exploitation of the people for the benefit of foreigners. Bauxite mining needs to be reined in before it destroys our country.

There is an island called Nauru in the South Pacific which was formed almost entirely out of the excrement of seabirds – guano – a complete fertiliser, mined profitably for more than a hundred years. The problem with once beautiful Nauru is that it has almost vanished. Most of Nauru has been exported to fertilise gardens in Europe and America and the rest will soon be consumed by the rising tide which lifts all globally warmed economic jackasses.

We have seen some of the attempts of ignoramuses to develop Jamaica. The destruction of Long Mountain is a standing reproach to our planners and politicians. We saved Hope Gardens, but it has been placed in the hands of people who didn’t give a damn about it when it was menaced by Messrs Cartade and Patterson. And of course, a few years ago we frightened off the bozos who wanted to build a facility in Jamaica to burn PCBs imported from the US. By burning their toxic waste, we would earn lots of money – so said the wise men of the Bauxite Institute that is, if any of us was alive and healthy enough to have survived this crazy experiment.

Over the last few weeks in the Ivory Coast, in West Africa, two senior French officials of a Dutch-based commodities company have been arrested and their passports confiscated in connection with a toxic waste scandal. More than 44,000 people have sought assistance at hospitals and clinics since the toxic waste was dumped from a Panamanian ship last month. Seven people have died but autopsies have not determined the cause of death.

What happened? Somebody had the bright idea that the Ivory Coast could earn some foreign exchange by accepting toxic waste from abroad for dumping. They were no doubt following the infamous reasoning of Mr Lawrence Summers, who, while a vice President of the World Bank attempted to change the Bank’s thinking on the environment. According to Summers, “since the costs of pollution depend on the foregone earnings from increased morbidity and mortality… health impairing pollution should be done in the country with the lowest cost, which will be the country with the lowest wages. … I think the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that.”

Summers wrote “ I've always though that under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low (sic) 4compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City. Only the lamentable facts that so much pollution is generated by non-tradable industries (transport, electrical generation) and that the unit transport costs of solid waste are so high prevent world welfare-enhancing trade in air pollution and waste.

“ The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high income elasticity. The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostrate (sic) cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostrate cancer than in a country where under 5 mortality is is 200 per thousand.

“ The problem with the arguments against all of these proposals for more pollution in LDCs (intrinsic rights to certain goods, moral reasons, social concerns, lack of adequate markets, etc.) could be turned around and used more or less effectively against every Bank proposal for liberalization. “

Our homegrown developers seem to think along the same lines as Dr Summers. After all, his last job was as President of Harvard where he behaved in a very Jamaican fashion; he couldn’t get along with women or with black professors.

I, being an undereducated yahoo, prefer Michael Manley’s words, “Trust the people every time”. We need to find out what we really want our country to mean to us and what we want it to represent to the world.

Copyright©2006 John Maxwell

jankunnu[at]yahoo.com

ecce cæsar nunc triumphat

stalin and hitler would have laughed out loud
at georgie w's concentration camp
but he stands alone defiantly proud

at such obfuscations made before the crowd
saying that water torture's but a bit of damp
stalin and hitler would have laughed out loud

if anyone should ever ask just how'd
he justify evil he'd get mental cramp
but he stands alone defiantly proud

dame liberty is now beneath a shroud
dull is the burnish on her copper lamp
stalin and hitler would have laughed out loud

the trumpet of freedom once rang out aloud
is now all silent instead the boots stamp
but he stands alone defiantly proud

we all are now waiting silent with heads bowed
as tired soldiers all march down the ramp
stalin and hitler would have laughed out loud
but he stands alone defiantly proud

foucauldian (in)justice

the power to set the final civic rule
requires an energy beyond the norm
but is at bottom just another tool

we study hard at each appointed school
from first to sixth in every single form
the power to set the final civic rule

rests always with the loser or the fool
who seems to tame the power of the storm
but is at bottom just another tool

avoiding heat striving ever to be cool
we end up in the middle somehat warm
the power to set the final civic rule

requires that each of us leap from the pool
into the wider sea that will not harm
but is at bottom just another tool

our governors each seated on a stool
assert that law is not the truest norm
the power to set the final civic rule
but is at bottom just another tool

equinox passing

yellow the flowers
autumn's beginning today
still is it pleasant

aroused the avians
pass above crying aloud
winter is coming

southward wings bear them
but still the air remains warm
and skies are azure

leaf fall commencing
slow quietly one by one
the trees shed colours

we know the seasons
and feel with the cooling breeze
equinox passing

A brief note on five-finger technique

An easy thing it is to make a rhyme
It takes a moment, hardly any time;
To make a sonnet is nor really hard,
Easily made, alas too easy marred.
But now, it seems, I'm being somewhat terse,
And inditing Popean heroic verse.

Formalism in its way sets free

It isn't simply that the rhythm and rhyme
Give each line motion and constrict the sense,
But that the poem, shaped in its own time,
Permits communication lacking pretence;
With rhyme and metre, shaped into a form,
The ideas and the meanings will agree,
Though this is by no means the only norm
For verse that carries meaning can be free.
Still each of us, with prosody that flies
Across the page and gives our words their wings,
Commits entirely to raise to the skies
The words that signify and voice that sings,
So that, like Shakespeare, we at last confirm
The medium is the message, in its term.

Library Thing

they will not conquer forever

the dragon waiting in the dark-leaved trees
has secret messages meant only for you
to set your angered heart and mind at ease

the scent of sulphur carried by the breeze
pervades the moment gives not time to rue
the dragon waiting in the dark-leaved trees

what though the odours all your organs freeze
it's not enough to halt all that is due
to set your angered heart and mind at ease

the breath of hope the end of all disease
is in the message that at last comes through
the dragon waiting in the dark-leaved trees

i send this missive across skies and seas
its consolational import to imbue
the dragon waiting in the dark-leaved trees
to set your angered heart and mind at ease

the villanelle is an addictive form

to deal with all that comes in fear or fright
we seek the light that heats us with its blaze
and keeps at bay the powers of the night

we stand together claiming it is right
to change the truth into a mere pat phrase
to deal with all that comes in fear or fright

our grasp on what makes all things real is slight
if simple light our dullest sense amaze
and keeps at bay the powers of the night

the evils that were done we will requite
when nature and the gods bring better days
to deal with all that comes in fear or fright

this is our hope it also is our plight
as actors in these long and boring plays
to deal with all that comes in fear or fright
and keeps at bay the powers of the night

class preparation

the airvents on the rooftops a minute ago
were full of dark menace guerrillas about to attack
but now they are pipes and the gathering light
has driven back the shadows that gave them
a momentary substance

i look out of the classroom window
it is early morning outside there are doubtless birds
making their usual noises and dropping their bombs
on those unwary enough to pass beneath
the roosting trees

this is another workday another celebration of continuing
life and business the empty chairs soon to be filled
by half-waking students the same lesson i taught last
semester will be repeated and the same questions asked
but the answers may differ

tuesday afternoon villanelle

the form requires that we know the right words
employ them in the correct way and show
our thoughts have still more staying power than birds

do things by wholes not quarters halves or thirds
explore the metre let the flowers blow
the form requires that we know the right words

seek not to know of angles nor of surds
let algebra and geometry both go
our thoughts have still more staying power than birds

poets know action are not simply nerds
their understanding with right rhythm will flow
the form requires that we know the right words

the lowing cattle pass by in their herds
the herdsmen happy their prompt slaughter crow
our thoughts have still more staying power than birds

and now the send-off comes the final turds
that fall from out that place that all men know
the form requires that we know the right words
our thoughts have still more staying power than birds

green still predominates

summery rainfall
staining the ground deeper grey
now late september

rising dampness now
reforms the clouds announcing
yet more rain to come

green still the trees are
few signs of colour showing
autumn is coming

steady the seasons
yet in this southland we know
summer is longest

robert frost got it wrong

the heat weighs down although the walls and doors
are the colours of cool water autumn seems a million
years away although already i can see leaves
beginning to turn beginning to fall but the trees still

obscure the view seduce with their cool shade on this hot day
which i long to be over but i know that i have hours yet
to work and miles to go before i eat and sleep
and the woods are not filled up with anything like snow

flashing on the moment a mistake

begin the magic with a simple glance
across a room or into deepest time
it seems but random only a mere chance
but everything that came before must prime

the moment that becomes the starting point
of something different on a different shore
that puts all time out of its normal joint
and lets what comes now differ from before

what comes we know is nothing less than change
and that we fear it is already given
but we express in our complaint a range
of thoughts that are so strongly driven

that when all motion and all actions cease
we think it death when it is merely peace

Elephant in Musth

Elephant in Musth
John Maxwell

'It is apparent, looking at Florida, that the most perfect system can
be subverted by determined saboteurs with enough money - as long as
good people keep quiet.  ... The real George Bush, if he is appointed
President, will use his time to destroy the integrity of the country he
rules, starting with the Supreme Court. Then he can start on dealing
with  the rest of us.  That's his job, and as the American Press has
made plain, nothing needs to be known about him and his  multifarious
incapacities because Big Brother in the giant corporations will tell
him what to do. We are all in a for a very rough ride'  -
"Democracy! Enough Already!" - Commonsense, Dec 10. 2000

The good people seem at last to be coming awake.
After six years of conspicuous slumber and inexplicable silence,
influential actors in the United States  are at last finding the
courage to defy the miasma threatening all of us. All over the world,
it seems, people are beginning to realise that we are being led down
the road to Armageddon by a US Administration lacking either moral
sensibilities, strategic reasoning  or elementary common sense..
The Republican Party in the US Senate has at last rebelled against Mr
Bush's maleficient defiance of International Law and world opinion.
They have been joined by the onetime designated adult in the Bush
Administration, Colin Powell.  They have  rejected George Bush's
attempt to circumvent his own Supreme Court in order to authorise the
torture of foreigners in US custody and to backdate  forgiveness for
all those who obeyed his corrupt instructions to flout the Geneva
Conventions.
This week,  as Carl Hulse says in the New York Times, "On one side
are the Republican veterans of the uniformed services, arguing that the
president's proposal would effectively gut the nearly 60-year-old
Geneva Conventions, sending a dark signal to the rest of the world and
leaving United States military without adequate protection against
torture and mistreatment."
On the other side are the dinosaurs of the Republican Party and the
President and his White House cabal.
The British establishment has long been clear about what Mr Bush has
been up to.
 Lord Steyn, perhaps Britains most respected judge. two years ago
described the US concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay as a scandalous,
"Law-free zone". A few months ago, the Lords of Appeal
unequivocally denounced the US gulag system, declaring it an
uncivilised affront to humanity and justice. And a few days ago, the
head of Britain's Judiciary, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer,
excoriated the American position in the following words:
"It is a part of the acceptance of the rule of law that the courts
will be able to exercise jurisdiction over the executive.
"Otherwise the conduct of the executive is not defined and restrained
by law.
"It is because of that principle that the USA, deliberately seeking to
put the detainees beyond the reach of the law in Guantanamo Bay, is so
shocking an affront to the principles of democracy.
"Without independent judicial control, we cannot give effect to the
essential values of our society."
It was the second time Lord Falconer had spoken out about the
controversial camp, where 450 terror suspects are thought to be
detained. In June this year the Lord Chancellor denounced Guantanamo
Bay  as a "recruiting agent" for terrorism, and described the existence
of the base as "intolerable and wrong".
In Brussells, the European Parliament this week heard the Spanish
Foreign Miniister report that  "[Spanish] territory may have been used
not to commit crimes as such but as a stopover on the way to commit
crime in other territories," Moratinos said, adding that 66 suspect
flights had made stops in Spain.
What is so shocking is that the President has boldly, flagrantly and
contemptuously attempted to defy and make meaningless, the decisions of
his country's Supreme Court.  It is a court most of whose members
were appointed by Republican Presidents wanting  to castrate the power
of the judiciary to exercise the constitutionally decreed checks and
balances which were thought to guarantee democracy in the United
States. The present Supreme Court  is even more republican than the one
which sanctified George Bush in  the Presidency of the United States
despite his losing the presidential election in 2000.
When I predicted that George Bush, would use his time to destroy the
integrity of his country  many people told me that I was simply
prejudiced against the man; but I had observed his behaviour and came
to the conclusion that he was going to be a disaster for the United
States and a catastrophe for the rest of us.
The starving, brutalised people of Palestine, Darfur and  Haiti, the
terrorised millions in Iraq and the opium growers of Afghanistan are
eloquent testimony to the accuracy of my prediction.
In addition to the attempt to subvert the law, the Bush administration
has openly attempted to samfi the world into believing all sorts of
impossible things.
This week the International Atomic Authority, IAEA, blasted the US
Administration indirectly and Congress, directly, for a brazen attempt
to sell a monumental lie as a pretext for their anticipated war against
Iran.
In an unprecedented broadside from a UN agency, the IAEA denounced a US
Congressional report as 'outrageous and dishonest" including
'serious distortions' and  "erroneous, misleading and
unsubstantiated statements."
The letter from the IAEA was addressed to Peter Hoekstra, the
Republican chairman of the committee that issued the report. The IAEA
said the report contained  a litany of misleading statements, and
falsely (and fantastically) suggested  that the IAEA sidelined an
inspector who believed that Iran was deceiving the IAAEA about the
character of its nuclear ambitions. The IAEA suggested that Congress
should check its facts.
When the congressional report was released last month, Hoekstra said
his intent was "to help increase the American public's understanding of
Iran as a threat."
 As a substantial minority still understand Saddam to have been behind
9/11.

According to the Washington Post, "Privately, several [American]
intelligence officials said the committee report included at least a
dozen claims that were either demonstrably wrong or impossible to
substantiate. Hoekstra's office said the report was reviewed by the
office of John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence.

The Committee report entitled ``Recognizing Iran as a Strategic Threat:
An Intelligence Challenge for the United States,'' was published on
Aug. 23.
The report is a classic piece of Republican propaganda. It is
reminiscent of the Administrations attempts to con world opinion to
believe that Saddam Hussein, against the odds and all his
protestations,  possessed weapons of mass destruction and was an
accessory to 9/11. The report's author author, Frederick Fleitz, was
a senior adviser to the U.S.'s UN ambassador, John Bolton, until 2005.

John Bolton in orbit

One of the most dangerous identified lying objects in the Bush
firmament is a short, self-important man named John Bolton. Like many
of the Bush neo-con brains trust, Bolton has a murky history. His most
dangerous exploit up to now was his attempt to con the world into
believing that  the US would be justified in attacking Cuba. He
falsely alleged, in official documents, that Cuba possessed biological
weapons of mass destruction and was peddling them to terrorist
organisations and regimes.
This outrageous lie was finally exploded by President jimmy Carter and
a consortium of experts who visited Cuba to disprove Bolton's
fantasies.
If war is politics by other means, as Clausewitz said, the Bolton
doctrine does not admit that war is failed politics, it holds  rather
that war is preferable to politics. Bolton has been the lead agitator
in attempting to blackmail the Security Council into adopting sanctions
against Iran,  justifying to an American attack on that country.
Bolton has a Napoleonic complex, some would say a Superman complex,
believing that the rest of the world epitomised in the United Nations,
is utterly useless except when it acts as the servant of,  and
cleaner-up for the United States.. His appointment to the United
Nations was not simply a studied insult by Bush and Cheney, it was a
deliberate provocation.
Even in the Republican dominated Congress the move was unacceptable,
and a scheduled, second hearing to confirm his nomination as Ambassador
had to be postponed because at least one republican Senator was
prepared to speak out and vote against this misguided messenger.
The hearing will now await the new Congress, and if my instincts are
accurate, it will fail ignominously in a Senate newly dominated by
Democrats with the support of disenchanted Republicans.
Subverting Democracy
The Republican Administration in the United States could easily pass as
a creation of George Orwell. Democracy is spread by invasion and war
and almost every statement of any importance conceals somewhere within
it a lie.
Right now, a galaxy of Republican Congressmen is either under lock and
key('Duke'Cunningham) under indictment ( Ney and Delay) or under
investigation for criminal misfeasance and malfeasance. The Senate
Majority leader (Frist) is himself under investigation, and if the
Democrats win in November, as I expect, boguis voting or no, even Mr
Bush may find himself impeached.
 In its last two tenancies of the White House the GOP contributed an
impressive list of malefactors up to an including the National Security
Adviser McFarlane and the Secretary of Defense Weinberger who were
saved from jail only by Presidential pardon. Lesser lights, starlets
like Elliott Abrams, Otto Reich and Roger Noriega have contributed more
than their share to the brutalisation and suffering of Latin America.
Those who contributed to the stealing of the 200o election, like John
Bolton and former Ambassador to Jamaica, Sue Cobb, were handsomely
rewarded and le t loose to wreak more havoc.
The emblem of the Republicans, the Grand Old Party -GOP, is, aptly,
an elephant.
Male elephants over a certain age periodically  go into a condition
known as musth, characterised by a huge excess of testosterone. .
Elephants in musth are as eager to fight as to mate, and they are so
aggressive that the normal tribe hierarchy is disrupted, because even
the most senior and biggest bulls will avoid smaller, younger  bulls in
musth because they are so dangerous - like teenage gunmen. Musth is the
Hindi rendering of the Urdu word mast, meaning intoxicated, which comes
from an earlier Persian expression which means poisoned. An elephant in
musth will kill anything in its way - humans including  its keepers,
other elephants or any other animal. Musth elephants are sometime known
as rogue elephants
The behaviour of the Bush administration is in my view, similar to the
behaviour of an elephant in musth. John Bolton expresses the metaphor
perfectly. He is the United States' senior diplomat though he  does
not believe in diplomacy. He is US Ambassador to the UN-  which he
believes is an unnecessary nuisance.  He deals with problems not by
dialogue, but by threats and aggressive behaviour. He is the frontman
for Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, as dangerous a group of human beings as
a whole  herd of elephants  in musth. They will not take "Yes" for
an answer. Nothing but total submission will do.
And in their mad career they are fortified by the support of the
American media.
Last week the giant media network ABC, broadcast what it claimed was a
documentary  - entitled "The Road to 9/11"
Before the so-called documentary was broadcast there were several
complaints about the accuracy of the script and it was soon clear that
the enterprise was an assault on history and the truth; it was  the
opening black propaganda  broadside against the Democrats in advance of
the crucial November elections. When the Clinton administration left
office they made sure to warn the Bush administration about the nature
of Al Qaeda and the intentions of Bin Laden. Bush was asleep at the
wheel on September 11, 2001, but the documentary blames Clinton and his
crew for 9/11 and claimed that its conclusions were based on the
official 9/11 Report.
THE ABC documentary is reminiscent of the Swift Boat affair of the last
Presidential election, when the Vietnam war hero John Kerry was painted
as an unworthy coward and Bush, who spent most of  the war in
'undisclosed locations' in Texas and Alabama,  was painted as the
hero.
In the seventies we used to be blasted when we complained about the
malign attentions paid us by the foreign - mostly American - press.
When one sees what they will do to their own heroes and others, we must
consider ourselves fortunate to have escaped without greater damage.
The Haitians, the Halestinians, the Guatemalans and the Chileans were
not so lucky.
Of course, we also forget that September 11 was the anniversary of the
American sponsored coup which killed Allende and thousands of Chileans
and subjected Chile to two decades of terror and bloodshed. The current
President of Chile, Mme Bachelet, was herself a victim of Mr
Kissinger's surrogates.
Copyright ©2006 John Maxwell
jankunnu[at]yahoo.com

ware of the lizard lieth lurking in the grass

the serpent that within the cave is curled
has patience and is quite content to lie
quiet while the still-revolving world
forgets about its presence by and by

the voice that quietly announces in our heads
that all is safe that all is now secure
will lead us all to safety in our beds
while in its cavern the snake forms new allure

forgotten all the lessons we have heard
about the dangers of the serpent war
we rise and become angered with a word
and all becomes as it once was before

the leader speaks in words that soar and fly
and thousands die for his outrageous lie

pale leaves remaining on the branches

sunlit september
greens dark to pale but glowing
autumn comes slowly

yesterday the rain
brought cold damp misery here
presaging winter

but still the sun warms
the moist earth and we see the
vapour uprising

morning clouds gather
the wind takes them they are gone
warmer is the day

yet the year cycles
equinox apace approaches
seasonal turning

time of the harvest
the yearly celebration
of productive life

the only season though
is that of work of teaching
dutiful action

orula en la pared de mi despacho

the god of wisdom beats a drum
he squats by the road a bearded man
with a cigar the smoke rising straight

high above a bird flies respecting his presence
respecting the distance and the sun
does not outshine his dark brown face

wisdom has roots in the green hills
the blue sky has secrets that will open to those
who strive to understand them who let

themselves be as the bird and feel the thermals
push them up and move them forward
accepting what is and must be but knowing

that they can act both within and against them
that they can take their freedom from the automatic
forces that grace and hold them

the god's eyes are soft what he knows he does not want
to tell you for wisdom is grief wisdom is pain
wisdom is joy and celebration but all

come combined come entwined and can untwine
life itself in a single flash that enlightens as it blinds
and the universe stands indifferent

the gods themselves await the orders of
the force that is no god but which commands
that all must change all die all be renewed

that life begins and ends in pain and no
divine mandate or power can alter the simple fact
that gods themselves will pass and not return

Fogar de Breogán

The legendary hero Breogán (Breoghan) at the Tower of Hercules in A Coruña.

Oh, what a lovely war

George said 'Saddam will erase
Our cities and set them ablaze,
Unless we invade
And thus cause to fade
In our minds this Iraqian craze.'

'Saddam's got the WMDs
To spread destruction on every breeze.
To give him what for
Is our reason for war,
Which will cause all our foemen to freeze.'

So George got the people's okay
To achieve his victorious day
With great shock and awe
He launched his great war
And then landed in triumphant array.

But what did his warriors find
As the looters robbed Iraq blind?
No WMDs
In the Iraqi leas,
But to call George a liar would be unkind.

So now after more than three years
Victory has achieved all our fears,
Our soldiers still die
For George's big lie
And their kinsfolk just cry and shed tears.

For George, and Rummy, and Dick
Continue to lay it on thick,
Proclaiming that they
Did it the right way,
Even though each of them is a prick.

11 September 2006

the images are set deep in our minds
the planes flying into the two new york towers
the one that crashed into the pentagon
the one that fell from the sky in pennsylvania

the rubble the dust the people fleeing
the men and women jumping from the heights
preferring impact to the searing fire
and the looping images of the flying bombs

five years have gone and they are still with us
we still remember we are still afraid
of what could fall upon us from the sky
or what could come like poison to our lives

and nothing seems to quell the tiny dread
that says that this will happen once again
that says that london and madrid
are right here with us not across the sea

we live on a small planet and that can seem
sometimes like a magical ideal a world without
high borders where a person can be free
to wander and to buy and sell and talk

and rest their bodies and expand their minds
but on the other side of this fair coin
are death and hatred anger and long war
the dialectic is made visible

another sunrise red and full of fire

no concord here each tends to gripe
the wisest cannot ever reach accord
the fruit of discord now is fully ripe
and misrule comes with its accustomed lord

where once a peace reigned albeit of woe
now fear and fire have their fell forms combined
who once was friend now may be direst foe
the evil and the good are intertwined

this we are told is but a passing stage
a time uncertain but one that will pass
the signs of anger passion war and rage
will vanish under a sea calm as glass

and those who rule and bear the tiresome load
insist even now that nothing will explode

Eunuchs on the doorstep

The Observer | World | Notebook: New Delhi: "Notebook: New Delhi

Dan McDougall
Sunday September 10, 2006
The Observer

Eunuchs on my doorstep

There are half a dozen grown men in high heels and garish saris camped outside the gates of our home. I can hear them outside in the darkness, above the familiar sound of the peacocks in Delhi Zoo, clapping their painted hands, shaking their cheap glass bangles and drunkenly singing raucous Hindi songs.

I've been resigned to this rather unorthodox confrontation since my son was born here 10 days ago. An advance party of three eunuchs, or hijiras, as they are known, turned up outside my house at 9am as I was returning from my morning swim. Since then three more have come along, each one wearing a more elaborate silk outfit than the next. In hideous falsetto cackles they have spent much of the day screeching not at me but at my neighbours, threatening to disrobe and urinate all over their driveways - they are publicly embarrassing me into giving in.

It's quite simple really. They are here to blackmail me and my wife, bringing hideous threats of curses against our sleeping newborn. Curses that will naturally turn to blessings if we give them a nice backhander in the shape of 10,000 rupees (£120). In the past, eunuchs often enjoyed the patronage of Hindu kings, in whose courts they would "

Five Years Later

Five Years Later
John Maxwell

Five years ago tomorrow. nineteen youngish men, middle-class Arabs,
mostly from Saudi Arabia, commandeered four commercial airplanes and
flew them into the World Trade Centre buildings in New York city, into
the Pentagon in Washington and into the ground in Pennsylvania.
I want to look back, however briefly, at my own reactions to that
horrific event.
In my column that week I wrote :
'On Tuesday I like you, watched in fascinated horror as airliners
slammed into the World Trade Centre, and desperate people threw
themselves off the buildings to certain death, preferring to kill
themselves than to await destruction by fire. The catastrophe brought
the United States of America face to face with a reality which had
always existed, but which most Americans had never faced before:
American behaviour has stimulated many people around the world to
hate the USA to the point where they will sacrifice themselves to
damage the nation and its interests.'
I thought at the time that those who were urging immediate violent
reaction were wrong;
'On the day of the latest outrage, it was easy to understand the
anger and bitterness of those who want to "declare war", those who
spoke of a second Pearl Harbour, those who looked for identifiable
enemies and found the usual suspects.
'In a column in Wednesday's New York Times , William Safire lashed
out:
'"Waiting for absolute proof is dangerous ... when we reasonably
determine our attacker's bases and camps, we must pulverize them -
minimizing but accepting the risk of collateral damage".
'Safire forgets that collateral damage is unlikely to be limited to
one side.
'Clyde Haberman in the same edition of the New York Times , tried
to explain to Americans the nature of the Enemy in the "War against
America". Haberman instanced the suicide bombers whose efforts have
brought misery, terror and suffering to hundreds of Israelis. Haberman
suggests that what has happened in Jerusalem will happen in America."
Five years later, a few days ago, Mr Bush was repeating the same
mantra:If Americans don't fight the terrorists abroad they will have
to fight them in American cities.
The basic outlines of the war on terror were, it is hard to believe,
established within days of 9/11, as if somehow, God had vouchsafed to
certain people truths unfathomable by ordinary people. I thought at the
time that the world needed to spend a little time trying to understand
what had happened.
'No matter how violent and horrific, the terrorist action on Tuesday
remains an act of criminal violence, not an act of war. Various
spokesmen and supporters of the US government, including Tony Blair,
the British PM, speak of attacking and defeating Terrorism as if there
were some central directorate, a sort of Terror International, with
identifiable officials and institutions. Retired Israeli General Efi
Eitam: "This is a declaration of war by a consortium of terrorism with
an infrastructure from Sudan to Afghanistan, and this passes through
Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank."
'Mr Bush, whose own legitimacy has been questioned,, speaks, even
more ominously, of "ending states " that support terror, as if politics
were a video-game in which the baddies can simply be zapped into
non-existence. One of his spokesmen, a Mr Wolfowitz, is even scouting
the possibility of targeted assassinations of foreign leaders. Dead
terrorists, of course, can't be punished. Someone else must therefore
pay."
Extremism was the order of the day. Erstwhile civilised people like
Jonathan Alter of Newsweek and the civil rights lawyer Alan Dershowitz,
were publicly advocating torture as an investigative technique.
This week Mr Bush denied that the United States had used torture to get
various Al Qaeda biggies to spill the beans. He was announcing his
intention to comply with the US Supreme Court ruling that all those
held in secret CIA dungeons should be brought before the courts and
tried. Mr Bush would not explain how the CIA had got these tough
criminals to babble like babies. The method was classified, but it was
clearly safe and humane!
At the time I said that we really needed to find out why these horrific
acts had been committed. For the past few weeks Mr Blair, Mr Bush and
Mr Rumsfeld have been talking about 'Islamofascism' which
apparently is dangerously contagious and is seen as the ultimate
challenge to Western Civilisation.
Five years ago I suggested another possibility.
'Globalising Desperation
"Much of the horror of last Tuesday is caused by the grisly fact that
the most peaceful symbols of international trade, passenger aeroplanes,
were turned into high explosive weapons of mass destruction against the
most potent symbols and Crown Jewels of the very culture which
produced them. The system was turned against itself, a kind of
political HIV/AIDS in which the body is made to self-destruct. Imperial
arrogance has globalised desperation.
'In all the millions of words about Tuesday's horrific tragedy, few
have been used to ask Why? to seek the real reasons. Blasting the
visible manifestations of a cancer may achieve cosmetic improvement,
but the concealed body of the parasitic tumour will not disappear.
'Injustice is the most eloquent recruiter for terrorism. Injustice
breeds desperation. Suicidal behaviour is almost always a desperate
call for help. People who are willing to destroy themselves along with
randomly selected groups of innocents are speaking the language of
violence, which they know their enemies understand. Unfortunately,
while their enemies understand the language, they do not usually listen
to the message.'
And finally, I said at the time that what was needed to deal with
terrorism was not war, but good police work. Mr Bush's speech this
week and the news from Scotland Yard over the last several weeks,
suggest that I may have been right.
Another Gulag

Now that Mr Bush has officially admitted the existence of an American
run international system of secret prisons, he may find it useful to
disclose the existence of another gulag, even larger and even more
oppressive than the system used to confine the Al Qaeda suspects. And
the disclosure may even lead to the closing down of the best known
gulag in the Caribbean, at Guantanamo Bay. But there is another, much
larger gulag in the Caribbean, also run by the United States, this one
not by the CIA but by USAID and elements of the Republican Party's
National Committee.
This gulag is called Haiti, and it has a long and often miserable
history. It wasn't always so. Two hundred years ago, after a war of
independence lasting nearly twenty years, the mainly African people of
Haiti, most of them slaves, managed to free themselves from the bondage
of the French. In the process they also had to beat back the armies of
the British and Spanish and so, by the time they declared their
independence they had driven off the three superpowers of the time. In
modern terms, the closest parallel is with the Vietnamese who chased
both the French and the Americans out of their country. The French were
more formidable in the 18th century than they were in the twentieth and
the Vietnamese had external support and arms supplies. The Haitians won
their freedom on their own. If Vietnam were to equal the Haitian
performance they would have to have beaten the Americans, the Russians
and the Chinese.
The Americans have never been able to come to terms with the idea that
the Caribbean archipelago is not an extension of the United States and
they have been particularly irritated by the independence of Cuba,
Haiti and Jamaica. Cuba and Haiti particularly offended them: Cuba when
it declared its political and economic independence of the US in 1959
and Haiti, when it elected a black, socialist Roman Catholic priest as
its president in 1991. The little black priest, Jean Bertrand Aristide
has been twice elected and twice overthrown by surrogates of the
United States. The first occasion was by the army. On the second
occasion the coup was carried out by what the Americans hoped would be
a more externally palatable combination of "civil society"
organised by USAID and the CIA, and a bunch of cutthroats left over
from the Duvalier dictatorship.
In an attempt to make the bondage of Haiti less visible and offensive
to the civilised world, the corrupt puppets installed to replace
Aristide two years ago were sent packing three months ago after
arranging an election which was designed to elect a titular president
owned by the United States. Unfortunately, the plan did not work as
designed and the election was won by a onetime protege of Aristide,
René Preval.
Preval is the titular president, but it is clear that he is not the de
facto president of Haiti.
During the American interregnum the fledgling institutions intended to
restore democracy in Haiti were destroyed by the US puppets.
And the same cutthroats who had supported the Duvaliers and the
usurpers after them were allowed to return to Haiti and be ceremonially
cleared of the horrific crimes for which they were responsible -
rapes , torture and. massacres.
The people of Haiti know they are not free and continue to try to
express their dissatisfaction with the situation. They are inhibited by
the presence of an imported force assembled by the UN Security Council
and mandated to restore order and good government. THe UN Force in
Haiti, known by the (French) acronym MINUSTAH, has proved to be a
force for repression rather than law and order.
There is considerable evidence that MINUSTAH, in the guise of restoring
peace and dealing with bandits, have been attacking and killing the
leaders of the poor Aristide supporters in the huge slums round Port au
Prince.
The people of the slums fear the MINUSTAH, considering them to be an
extension of the armed paramilitary gangs organised by the
light-skinned elite. The slum-dwellers are continually libelled. They
are accused of being lawless gangsters and their habitats are
frequently free fire zones.. The slum dwellers say that their so-called
gang leaders are in fact political ;leaders targeted by the elite.
In addition to the persecution by MINUSTAH, during the La Tortue regime
ordinary Haitians were mercilessly persecuted by the returned
gang-leaders and their private armies.
A survey conducted by US social workers and published in the English
medical journal, the Lancet two weeks ago, confirmed a massive
campaign of repression against the poor who support President Aristide.
According to the Lancet study, under La Tortue, more than 8,000
Haitians were murdered in and around the capital, Port-au-Prince,
almost half them killed by government forces or "outside political
actors" -- mostly armed gangs opposed to Mr. Aristide and his Lavalas
political party..
When Aristide was first overthrown the murder and rape of his
supporters created such a stink in the United States that it provoked
intervention by President Clinton. This time the terror was just as
fierce, but provoked no reaction from the 'civilised world'.
The Lancet study estimated that 35,000 women and girls were sexually
assaulted, more than half of them younger than 18 years old, mostly by
criminals, by the Haitian National Police (14 per cent) and armed
anti-Lavalas groups (11 per per cent). Many of the victims were
"restaveks" -- unpaid child domestic servants from rural areas who work
and live in the city.
The study reported that kidnappings and extra-judicial detentions,
physical assaults and death threats and threats of sexual violence
were also common,
Fourteen per cent of the people interviewed accused foreign soldiers
and police, including UN personnel, of all three types of threats.
Because President Preval is not in control of his country's
administration a number of outrageous abuses committed under the La
Tortue regime still remain unresolved. As Brian Concannon, director of
the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti reports, "Three
months into constitutional President René Préval's term, most of
the high-profile members of Haiti's Lavalas movement jailed by the
brutal Interim Government of Haiti over two years have been released.
But if the cases demonstrate the democratic transition's promise,
they also illustrate its pitfalls.

"The high-profile cases were all easy calls from a legal standpoint.
They were in some ways easy from a political standpoint as well,
because President Préval comes from the same Lavalas movement.
Nevertheless, the new government took three months to release the
prisoners, because of strong resistance within both the justice system
and Haitian civil society. That resistance spells delays, and trouble,
as Préval's government tackles the much harder and more numerous
cases of low-profile political prisoners." (JURIST - Forum: Haiti's
Political Prisoners: Not Preval's Fault, But His Problem)
The scandalous arrests and false imprisonment of the former Prime
Minister and other Lavalas officials and of "Sister Anne" Auguste,
(the Haitian Louise Bennett) and Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste are fairly well
known. But there are hundreds of others languishing for no good reason
in Haitian hellholes. And massacres by elite-sponsored murderers such
as Lame Timanchet (Small Machetes), continue.
There is more, much more to complain about, but I believe that what I
have reported here should give Mr Bush something to get his teeth into,
and a chance to make a really serious impression on one gulag
situation about which he, perhaps, is less well informed .
Copyright©2006 John Maxwell
jankunnu[at] yahoo.com

Misunderestimated limericks

George says 'we're a nation of laws
But our enemies have given us cause
Because of their crimes
In these terrible times
To torture them without pause.'

'Our spies now have learned how to hoover
Up al-Qaeda and send them to Cuba;
Where our soldiers' sport
In that tropic resort
Is to turn each terrorist into a goober.'

George adds 'while I've got your attention,
I feel that I've just got to mention
That while Iraq
Is no walk in the park
To criticise me will lead to detention.'

Laura smiles, for though a schmuck her
Husband for bathos is a sucker;
But as more folks die
For each horrible lie
'George' has come to mean 'motherfucker'.

the name of a rose

the god who turned a girl into a tree
(a static mode of her desire to flee)
might if he thought you had the fire
grant you your wishes and your heart's desire

it would be hard at least I so suppose
to turn a sweet girl's name into a rose
but fortune in her maddest surge and whirl
has not yet turned a rose into a girl

amazing this that i still have the time
to turn my vagrant thoughts into true rhyme

unheroic verse

the dove is dead the dragon proudly flies
master of all it sees across the skies

no matter all the wounded maimed and dead
victory alone counts when all is done and said

the tongues of flame that flash down from above
are driven the dragon says by nothing more than love

for all it stands for is the truth and right
its enemies are things that skulk at night

that may be so and human blood be green
but it accords little with what is heard and seen

the beast that mouths the sky and rules with flame
immune to thought immune as well to shame

teaches us only that all men bow to power
but that is bound to stay only for a short hour

the dragon's might the vast span of its wings
are transitory simple mortal things

but what it burns and tramples in its haste
may be forever broken and laid waste

meanwhile we wait and cower and hide
until the beast finds out the price of pride

stating the obvious

the power that floods through every branch and leaf
has its short season one that ends in grief
as all that once was green turns a dull brown
and nature's smile becomes at once a frown

we see this as life making its usual turn
what we cheered once that we now burn
autumn comes drawing us into its cooling fold
then winter making what was warm deep cold

thoughts on travelling

we travel without hesitation
are searched by some simpering fools
arrive in a different nation
without any working tools

our bags have been thoroughly vetted
but we are just left in the dark
no idea why our garments were wetted
or why the inspectors all bark

our luggage from us now is parted
and we find out when we arrive
our bags are all back where we started
and we have to learn to survive

the problem these days with air travel
is that while it is certainly fast
our nerves and our tempers unravel
and civility comes in dead last

somewhere in a cave that Bin Ladin
laughs as he greets a new wife
that western civ has been had in
an unequal barbaric strife

for we have confronted our rival
with maximum anger and fuss
but woe to the chance of survival
our enemy turns out to be us

Rumsfeld the appeaser

MotherJones.com | MoJo Blog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: Donald Rumsfeld’s Dance With the Nazis (Set Frank Rich Free!)

haikai for the war on terror

to fight for peace is
like sex for virginity
a dumb paradox

our leaders attempt
to persuade us that we are
safer under them

limiting freedom
that we may save it is just
fooling of ourselves

The crocodile hunter is gone

Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter, died this morning as a result of being stung by a stingray while diving. He had the bad luck to take the stingray's barb in his heart.

This is a sad day.

far from the african hills

we shut out the sun with light curtains their colour
recreating that of ancient tropical forests with green upon green
in shapes of leaves and flowers and the play of sun on leaves and branches

we shut out the dark with those curtains the green now deeper in the lamplight
the lightness of the night sky outside ignored as we go about
our duties our preparations for rest and sleep and the next day

we live in rooms that replicate the forests where our
forebears first roamed where the feet of men and women first felt the mould
give way beneath them and perhaps one thought that someday

the rain would be kept off and the leafmould turned to carpets
and the light supplied by wires from a distant place
and his felllows looked at him astonished and shook their heads

on beginning the semester in knowles hall

the clouds hide the light but the heat
rises from out of the earth
with sweat-raising lashes to beat
out of our clothes all their worth

we know that we work and are just
as diligent as we could be
but this is atlanta august
hot enough for the devil to flee

our offices now are so hot
that to stay in them is to be bold
but whether we like it or not
in february they'll be damned cold

so we bark and we curse and we send
memos about needed repairs
but we know without hope they will end
up in some dim creatures' lairs

our bosses know that we love
our jobs and that this is no lie
but by the blue heavens above
our love may just lead us to die

LED lighting

Technoprobing

A Trapdoor to Hell

A Trapdoor to Hell

John Maxwell

It was a real groin sniffers� week. The paladins of the US media were up to their armpits in emotional frottage and editorial voyeurism. It was not entirely inappropriate for a week which� included the anniversary of the death-by-paparazzi of Princess Diana. There won�t be another cannibal media banquet like hers for a long time.

In the meantime we had to make do with the poor, deluded John Mark Karr, caught like a wounded deer in the headlights of a speeding press, accompanied on his long trip back from Thailand by newsmen � and newswomen I presume �all� hanging on his every gesture, as if he were some prince,� taking no one knows how many photographs of his weak, expressionless visage as he was triumphantly headed home to face the music.

Except, of course, there was no music to face. Karr�s notes were quickly wiped from the score when his DNA came back innocent and his sad and mad delusions were exposed for what they were.� A more careful media might have listened more intently to the father of JonBenet Ramsay, who, interviewed� when Karr was located in Thailand, counseled the press not to jump to conclusions, having himself � experienced of the results of such media cannibalism.

All the usual suspects were out in force, with CNN�s harpy eagle, Nancy Grace,� � � thwarted as she came in for the kill, thrown back on wondering� whether there was in fact an intruder in the Ramsay house the night of the murder, in effect pointing fingers� back at Mr Ramsay notwithstanding his prior clearance by DNA.�

The harpy eagle and King would be back for another bite of the cherry, with the arrest of� the serial polygamist and alleged child molester Warren Steed Jeffs.� There was� Larry King interviewing two of Jeffs�� victims, and to my mind,� just itching to ask whether there was group sex and so on. I say this knowing that it is not a nice thing to say,� but because of a prior experience with this doyen of necrophiliac� interviewers.�

A couple of years ago two young women were abducted by a man who was killed by police after a wild chase in the countryside of some western state. Larry King, knowing that the abductor was dead and could not be charged with any crime, nevertheless made it his business to ask a hospital administrator who had care of the two young women, whether they had been raped. The hospital administrator, bless him, turned King down flat, explaining that it was no business of King�s or the press. But King persisted; in another interview, this time� with a sheriff he pestered the man until he� was informed that yes,� at least one of the girls had been sexually assaulted.

I still cannot figure out what was the importance of this fact to the general public or to Larry King, but later that night, again on CNN, a then famous woman anchor, , Connie Chung did the same thing.

�As a journalist two thousand miles away, I felt soiled.

Transcontinental frenzy

The week�s Media excitement went transcontinental with the story of the Austrian girl had been abducted eight years ago as a child of 10 and kept prisoner by another sick soul. The Austrian authorities were more discreet, and did their best to protect the young woman�s privacy against the long quivering noses of the press who wanted details of her abuse. We must presume that� the child was kidnapped to be sexually abused.�

We don�t know, but what on earth did the press want to know about her abuse? Did she enjoy it? How often did he do IT?� Was her abductor� into weird practices? S/M? witchcraft?� fetishism perhaps?� The mind boggles. Some reports managed to convey the idea that the young woman was being churlish in not stripping herself naked for the delectation and entertainment of readers and viewers. Fortunately, if Miss Kampusch is as sensible as she seems, we will never know.�

But reporters affected to be amazed by the fact that someone who had been solitarily confined� for nearly half her life,� whose attentions had been totally monopolised by one adult for that time, whose very life depended on that person, could have chosen to �mourn�� the death of her jailer. Where have they been?�

During her time in that dungeon she must have prayed for her captors� safe return, because if anything happened to him she would have perished alone and miserably. Pavlov�s dogs were luckier.

Various worthy people have been trying to get the press to focus on less important matters, like war and the brutalisation� of large sections of the human race. Messrs. Rumsfeld and Bush, having shed their Field Marshals� uniforms have taken up lecturing. Mr Rumsfeld is pretending to be an historian, attempting to slander peacemakers as cowards. The appeasers of Hitler were, in fact,� people like Mr Rumsfeld and Mr Cheney and some of the more corrupt examples of the British and American capitalist classes. They thought they could do business with Hitler, as Rumsfeld and his cohorts did with Saddam Hussein when he was fighting Iran.�

Mr Bush, who still cannot pronounce the word �nuclear; is nevertheless lecturing the world on what he calls Islamofascism, and in a speech on Thursday seemed to link all Muslin militants to Al Qaeda, despite the fact that at least two of the groups he named are reputedly bitter enemies of Bin Laden�s movement. Mr Bush has now managed to smear most of the population of Lebanon as terrorists because, according to him, the resistance movement, Hezbollah are terrorists and whoever supports them is a terrorist too.

The fact which is ignored by almost all the American and British media is that the resistance movements are direct responses to Israel. They arose because of Israeli provocation and brutality and they are fueled by Israeli provocation and brutality. Israel is painted as being the helpless victim of swarming hordes of terrorists, killing and maiming Israelis by the minute. The fact is that while CNN reports that two primitive rockets were fired into Israel on Thursday, Israel has been firing rockets and cannon and destroying houses and public works� in Gaza every day. While the highly publicised war was en train in Lebanon, 200 Palestinians died in Gaza as a result of Israeli action. The Israeli/Palestinian kill ratio is nearly ten to one in Israel�s favour. And nearly half the Hamas government has been kidnapped and now languish in Israeli prisons.�

�Palestinian officials say more than half of those killed in the past two months have been civilians - among them 39 children killed in July alone. Even the UN Secretary General has noticed. After a visit to Gaza this week he said:

"Over 200 Palestinians have been killed since the end of June. This must stop immediately," Mr Annan� intoned after meeting Palestinian officials in the occupied West Bank. "I have made my feelings known in talks with Israeli officials. Beyond preserving life, we have to sustain life, the closure of Gaza must be lifted, the crossing points must be opened, not just to allow goods but to allow Palestinian exports out as well." What he means is that Israel should open the gates of the Palestinian concentration camp

As I have pointed out before, what is happening in Gaza is nothing less than genocide � a continuing, persistent. murderous� persecution of the people by intimidation, kidnapping and killing with a background of psychological warfare against a largely� defenceless population.� In the West Bank more than a million people are squeezed into an area slightly larger than the Jamaican parish of St Catherine and more than half of them are children or youths.

�Completely immoral ��

In Lebanon, on the other side of Israel, another UN official, the Human Rights coordinator, Mr Jan Egeland was more forthright than Mr Annan.

Jan Egeland said civilians were facing "massive problems" returning home because of as many as 100,000 unexploded cluster bombs, most of which were dropped in the last days of the war.

"What's shocking - and I would say to me completely immoral - is that 90% of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when we knew there would be a resolution," Mr Egeland said. "Every day people are maimed, wounded and are killed by these ordnance."

It does seem to me that there is something dark in the Israeli spirit these days. Knowing that a ceasefire was imminent. the Israelis went and hauled out� cluster bombs dating from the Vietnam era and showered them on southern Lebanon. Whoever ordered this cannot be described as civilised,� although the Israeli government has claimed that the cluster bombs are legitimate tools of war.

They are legitimate, if used against soldiers and military positions. They are illegal if used against civilians or civilian targets. The Israelis want to get rid of Prime Minister Olmert. There can be no better reason than this.

In southern Lebanon there are cluster bomblets on the roofs of people�s houses, in their gardens and inside the houses themselves, in shops, parks and schools. The bomblets are neat little canisters, just the sort of thing an inquisitive youngster will pick up and blow himself to kingdom come or maim himself and others.�

The United Nations has counted nearly 300 sites contaminated by the cluster bombs. By last week Sunday, after the ceasefire,� the cluster bombs had killed at least a dozen people and injured many more. They continue to explode and kill and maim.

The United States says it is investigating whether Israel violated US guidelines for the US made cluster bombs. Their use is prohibited in residential areas. But that is exactly where the UN technicians and the Lebanese children are finding them. What action will the US take? Don�t hold your breath.

Four years ago in my column I compared then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to Rehoboam, the ancient� king of Israel who threatened� his enemies that while �my father has beaten you with whips I will chastise you with scorpions�.�

I said then �In his perverse search for a final solution to the �Palestinian Question� Sharon may not manage like Rehoboam, to destroy Israel, or like Samson to destroy himself, but he has certainly managed to damage Israel's reputation as one of the world's more civilised nations��

His successor, Mr Olmert, has gone even father down that path. It is a very long way from Theodor Herzl�s Zionist ideal that Israel should be a light unto the nations of the world..

When Iran�s President Ahmadinejab engages inn his virulent rodomontade, calling for Israel to be wiped off the map I don�t believe that there is anyone who really believes that he means literally what he says. He is using classic negotiating techniques, demanding far more than he expects in the hope that his opponent will be quicker to make concessions. The Egyptians once did the same. No sane person believes that Israel either should be, or can be erased.� Two of� Israel�s four� closest neighbours � Egypt and Jordan have already accepted Israel�s right to exist. Only the most fanatical fundamentalist can believe that the rest of the Arab world is ready to fight to the death to destroy Israel.

What has happened is that the Arabs having been defeated thrice already by Israel, are not eager for further bashing which would come from Israel and from the United States if Israel were really in trouble. The Arabs and their fellow Muslims are not fools nor are most of them mad. But, if cluster bombs can provoke the normally docile Lebanese Prime Minister, Mr Siniora, to declare that Lebanon will be the last Arab state to make peace with Israel, one can imagine that Israel�s continuing insults seem almost designed to provoke the Armageddon so devoutly anticipated by the fundamentalist religious lunatics in the United States.�

This week, Israel bought two more nuclear submarines.

As I said immediately after 9/11, terrorism� is not the weapon of the strong, it is the last desperate resort of the weak and defeated.�

�The real danger to Israel is that it has trained the weak and defeated to organise, a la Hizbollah, until entire populations become militant. When Israel refused to deal with Arafat what they got in his place was Hamas. When they tried to control Lebanon they got Hizbollah

TIme is running out for the forces of reason and peace.

Copyright �2006 John Maxwell

jankunnu[at]yahoo/com

a last weekend of summer

against clear sky the colours stand out
green yellow red the summer fading
but not yet done still far from done

today we do not swelter and are grateful
this is summer as we remember from the days
we were children and the light hung long

on the green and the dirty air still evoked honey
and not emphysema or cancer when the rain
that comes cleans and the light is lovely

what happened to our sense of wonder what
took its place and squats like an evil toad
on our spirits we do not know

but not knowing may be the start of liberation
freedom comes from ignoring all the limits
and this day is still one of free summer

listening to ives's second symphony

from steel and smoke we hear the music sound
in brass and woodwinds and the straining strings
the message is both subtle and profound
and seems to have both rushing feet and wings

the metre and the tone we comprehend
within our thought the powerful notes vibrate
in ways that we approve not reprehend
which make us calm and soothes all the irate

we wonder at the fact that the composer
followed a trade that seems to us prosaic
which sets for us a noticeable poser
of why he made this musical mosaic

the music comes to us across the sea
and gives us now one moment to be free

just a note

it came without my expecting
a little green package
meaning so much

cæsar may no longer be a ghost

the dove has died and now the buzzard rules
our better selves have given way unto some darker powers
our hopes and fears have now become mere tools
working to shape our minds in these fearful hours

our leaders alternate -- now smile now frown --
their messages that seek to make us tremble
the most supreme becomes a grinning clown
and all his followers delight now to dissemble

threatened with detention in a warm tropic isle
we fall at once uncomplaining to our knees
the freedoms we proclaim have disappeared meanwhile
and all our health now stands clear as disease

we only hope that it be now not too late
to resurrect the liberties of our once free state