27 May 2010

adieu foulard

the dark disaster broken by harsh light

patter of voices sound of running feet

these lives that ended they were not so sweet

that does not matter for we had no right

to trample these brief hopes in the hot night

ignoring the short cry of mi nu dweet

the blotless orders always seem so neat

not so the blood and ordure in our sight

the noble man no brute can't bear the blame

see how the sorrow weighs upon his face

adding it seems another dozen years

we will not think of yet another name

the one whose presence we can't seem to trace

who sums up all our terrors and our fears

23 May 2010

raining bling

you think the time's a ghost of what has been

these clumsy children heading into strife

our parents knew that call of drum and fife

but could not tell the world they sought to win

how much was lost not now beneath the din

of horn and trumpet in clamour that's rife

with heavy anger at the joke of life

can we yet say that hope is turned a sin

the price we paid for wisdom in hard rain

and toil under the sun you will forget

since each alone must walk the final mile

as each conspires to hide the honest pain

persuade the child that parasite's a pet

and go to darkness bearing a bright smile

17 May 2010

liberation

what tears were shed we never have to ask

nor need to see the terrors or the pains

the horror of the years the heavy chains

we know the reasons and we had the task

to break them off nor do we want to bask

in one moment's approval these old stains

have yet to fade and so much yet remains

of all the sorrow that you had to mask

now use the word and give the song full voice

do not let memory fade into a dim

and distant sort of half-forgotten past

but now's the moment to shout and rejoice

turn agony and anger to a hymn

and know that evil was not made to last

11 May 2010

scene from the stage

attendant lords check out the easy meat

look out and see what girls and lads are there

ready and hopeful thinking life is fair

and o so eager for the hearty beat

of rhyme and rhythm that now seem so sweet

almost divine and so the ones who dare

can sweep them up almost without a care

and leave them go done wholly to a treat

the play's the thing to catch not just the eye

but also that most fickle gland the heart

and waken into being so much more

that would not be there under open sky

but ripens swiftly if one knows the art

of how to open and to seal the door

09 May 2010

Student Bloomers Spring 2010

In between their frequent breakups Wollstonecraft had committed suicide twice.

Many people were applaud and disgusted, not knowing how many slaves being actually treated.

In 1788 Mary became a translator and an advisor to Joseph Johnson, the publisher to radical thoughts.

Mary and William gave birth to a daughter whom was born on September 10, 1797.

Both Gouges and Wollstonecraft was extreme feminist.

De Gouges writes that woman's degradation steams from the subjection of subordination by men.

John Stuart Mill was a Western Philosopher who theories were way ahead of time.

In many regions, particularly in France, nationality was partial to males.

In fact she often times abused the rights she did have and drew pass the lines of the rights she did not have access to.

The privatization of the Pineal System, allowing innocent people or those with misdemeanour drug charges to receive cruel and unusual punishment while judges or governing bodies make extra profit (Judge receiving monies from a private juvenile facility to send more teens to their institutions because they owners of the facility receiving state monies).

Vatican City is beginning to isolate from many international partners such as India, Egypt, and Portugal in an attempt to increase trade values and economic assurance with Italy.

What Really Happened to Detroit's Economy and Why More Cities Alike are Next?

The years of Detroit manufactured vehicles in the U.S being made is a thing of the past.

Ho is to blame?

The education system in this country is not what it should be compared to some of the other countries around the globe that America is competing with and in time if the USA does not have the best and brightest students in the country it will no longer lead the world as the most powerful country.

The question that arose to Emma was how could anyone limited and intelligent wield the power of censor and dictator over a supposedly democratic nation?

It is the morality which condoms woman to the position of a celibate, a prostitute, or a reckless, incessant breeder of hapless children.

Emma Goldman not only focused on birth control, but on seal freedom for women in general.

This statement is stating that a man was able to sleep around with other women, but a woman couldn't do that unless she was willing to accept her identity as a prostitute and face separation from her family.

Her actions considered her as the "rebellious one" to society because her freedom of speech and expression.

Max Weber, who had already established his reputation as the founder of modern social science, sought that human evolution or of science as a whole, such as sociology is futile; indeed it should claim universal validity.

Freud's inconspicuous discovery of the unconscious mind at the end of the nineteenth century bids fair to be the defining moment in the intellectual life after World War I.

As Beauvoir has the opportunity to go to school and the type of education she received was unexpected.

According to Beauvoir in the 20th century men characterized women and always have.

In 1906, John Stuart Mill of London was born. He was a British philosopher whose goal was to gain a good view of well-beings.

He was a man of liberty and felt strongly about it.

He [Mussolini] focused on nationalist unity within Italy and outside of its border.

She was a very radical and outspoken woman who believed in having her voice heard whether it's through writing or voice.

The women in Saudi Arabian societies were viewed by men as the "place holders" of society and did not contribute any productivity to society.

The concept of fascism does not recognize the rights of human's individual rights.

Emma Goldman was born June 27, 1869 and died on May 27, 1869.

She is then tied down to man who doesn't please her with honor but is forced to breed children with him.

It have to have the best education, they should at least be literate.

Muslims came from different diverse nationalities, ethnic and tribal groups. The largest of the Muslims live in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, and Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Iran.

The Sharia is the Islamic legislation and it is common to the Bible as a source of legislation.

The United States has a productive and profitable agricultural industry, and experienced and skilful military and government, and also many national business such as Federal, State and Local government, as well as small businesses that continue to stimulate the United States economy.

The purpose of the Clinton Doctrine was to eliminate a large number of countries that United States influences such as Bosnia, Somalia, and Sudan.

According to Machiavelli, founders of the free state (republic) deserve parties, and those who corrupt the free state and create tyrannies deserves " eternal infamy.

The main goal of the foreign policy plan that was instituted by Bhutan was a ban on all television that influenced other countries; mainly the United States.

Feminist analysis is needed because females tend to get an inferior bias in the community.

The issue over children's healthcare is a particularly significant area within healthcare that is most important.

We have the assertion to be dependant if society will stop demanding us to play a specific gender role.

Though Dubois sympathized with the Marxisonian philosophies, he did criticize certain principals.

Frantz Fanon strongly believed that one should have the courage to lean on their understanding and that one should be ready to stand behind their beliefs.

These ways of business have left the majority, which is the minority, out of the playing field.

Some hate crimes are war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity; these crimes mostly occur in Third World countries such as Belgium, Belarus and Denmark, and many other places.

No one man has ever so misunderstood.

Thomas Hobbes carefully used words to signify common ideas in the people.

For people consider his [Machiavelli's] teachings to be immoralist or anomalism.

The infamous reputation of The Prince is misunderstood in many cases, but it appears to be a source of 1 inspiration in Washington, D.C.

Political science often traces its beginnings to ancient Greece and the teachings of political thinkers such as Confucius, Mencius, and Han Feizi.

Aristotle believes in a monarchy, aristocracy, oligarchy, and democracy, governments. His ideas helped shape many governments with the development of philosophers such as Confucius, Mencius, and Han Feizi. They have collaborated in their field, sharing their knowledge and skills to develop a better political order.

Confucius was first of the physiological teachers to teach in China.

If the United States Army did not implement civic pride in their country it would be impossible for us to succeed.

Wollstonecraft also closely examined the act of moral degradation.

A relationship in which men are depicted as subjugating women to through terror is now created.

He sought this development fault to grow as human beings because women make of half of society if not more and they are unable to contribute.

Comstockery was strictly against women being able to express their sexuality. He felt that things such as condoms should be information that is unavailable to the public. This forced women to have sex knowing that there was a great chance of pregnancy.

Beauvoir attacks the male dominated society by inducing the idea that men only dominate the society due to their fear of losing everything. With power women will understand that men are not necessarily needed in the society.

Emma Goldman argues for sexual identity for woman and Beauvoir argues for general identity and for woman to be accepted into the society through all outlets.

Although today the ideas of Frantz Fanon have been occurring in society such as violence, Fanon saw violence as a cleansing force in which the United States have encountered a lot of it, although today war is not as bad as it was two years ago.

With Dr. Martin Luther King Jr African American people were still being beaten, killed and washed away by water holes during these sit-in boy cotts and protest.

This study of how many voters in Ohio especially those in democratic precincts were robbed of their right to vote.

Feminist analysis is needed because females tend to get an inferior bias when trying to access goods and services in their community.

However, another point that was highly regarded in the Clinton Doctrine was the intent of the Clinton Doctrine.

Since the beginning of time people have struggled to keep their children alive and well yet the government still beats around the bush when it comes to healthcare.

In the literature review, the sources will confer the history of healthcare reform in the United States and also background information on this issue.

For example the United States has a plethora of widely varying costs that accomplish the same thing but they are mostly cheaper when acquired abroad.

The organizations she founded to maintain its status of social justice.

Mill sought for women rights before anyone else did, which contributes to the start of women gaining rights.

They are being paid barley minimum wage to support their families.

The modern world has been in a state of crisis because of confusion and weary among citizens.

Although the major changes brought about during the eighteenth century did have many positive effects on the world, they're also the reason for which the modern world exits to be hostile.

But the French Revolutionaries proclaimed the "rights of man". This brought about feminist conflict.

Although, in the United States, human rights of people have been protected by law, this is not the case all over the world and there is still discrimination and conspiracy within U.S. society itself.

Max Weber was Germany's leading scholar at the end of the war. His theories along with Mills and Freud can be used to solve the current crisis of human destructiveness.

According to Freud, War is the product of the aggressive instinct which holds truth as well.

In understanding the crisis of modernity, self-destructiveness, Michel Foucault gives explanation.

They are identified differently so their political thoughts as a result, differ.


 

Political theory can be distinguished in many ways. It is a very broad subject and encompasses many views that may or may not differ in the central theme.

If there was no difference in the thought of black and white political theory, that would reverse the rights gained for blacks and put them back not only into a segregationist state but also will ultimately reverse back to slavery.

We all are living in the Modern World in which has destroyed it self. World War 1 and World War 2 was the two most deadliest wars in which occurred in our live, in which is filled with significance for the history of our world.

The War in Iraq was intended to bring regime change for the United States.

Frantz Fanon believes that "violence is man re-cresting himself".

The United States knows that showing stuff love is the best rout top gain respect as a country among others.

John Stuart Mill was a very indicative philosophical radical.

Born in Paris, Simone de Beauvoir, a French feminist, called herself an author and she stood for women's rights.

Michael Walzer is also correct because people should have the opportunity to achieve finical equality.

The authority of men over women had been the result of a conscientious comparison between different modes of comprise of society.

However during this time men were establishing their rights and re-fining their freedom but women were left without a voice.

King Jr. stated, that freedom is never voluntary and that it should be demanded by the oppressor.

Within the U.S. Constitution, we see that liberty is granted to all citizens the Bill of Rights.

Hispaniola is the island where tobacco was first founded.

08 May 2010

at a stone wall

what is desired not all may now attain

in honest time so shorten the coarse rope

shut down the store and fence off the last slope

in case some folk will climb against the pain

you can refuse the effort and the stain

but cannot tell the massive one to cope

with what is left of what was once great scope

and now is gone we all wait for the rain

this is no season for the less-than-strong

nor for a language moderate and weak

words won't endure and so for pity's sake

just give it up and give us one last song

about the sort who did not have to seek

the shiny gold but only had to take

30 April 2010

iris amaryllis and rose

we take the signs of spring and call them grand

each knows they'll weep some day to see them pass

immortal symbols set by mortal hand


 

words tell us little but they have to stand

for all our knowledge of the wind on grass

we take the signs of spring and call them grand


 

since each bright sigil comes at sun's command

and all together form a joyous mass

immortal symbols set by mortal hand


 

reflection of the heart sprung from the land

for one short season then they're gone alas

we take the signs of spring and call them grand


 

inadequate the words so brief and bland

lacking in strength and grace like so much gas

immortal symbols set by mortal hand


 

need so much more for sentiments they fanned

their colours cannot stay within the glass

we take the signs of spring and call them grand

immortal symbols set by mortal hand

28 April 2010

23 April 2010

shipwrack

there's no occasion to admit defeat

beneath an empty sky of callous blue

in this proud season when we must renew

so many hopes our senses cannot treat

these many messages of the hard street

as what they are and the time's overdue

for easy answers so the young must rue

what they can't know and old ones lose the beat

we change the era as we change our socks

in solemn mode but yet with little thought

of any deeper meaning in the act

one moment free the next cast on the rocks

with every motion seeming overwrought

our species lost now between truth and fact

17 April 2010

sort of arrival

no one who feels the changing seasons' bite

can be assured that growth is purely good

since each tall tree each ancient of the wood

that waits there leafless through the winter night

with chilly taproot is in the same plight

as you might be and has for long withstood

the final pain in ways you wish you could

but it wont matter there'll be a last rite

spring is too short and one day sap won't rise

to renew bud and energise new leaf

but for the moment all we have is time

and universes open to our eyes

the products none of them of our belief

while every limb towards the sun must climb

15 April 2010

spring leaves

the saplings in the yard are in first leaf

their spring has now begun but it is late

maples they are and ruddy in relief


 

we ask the world for hope and no mischief

to strike us as we come out through the gate

the saplings in the yard are in first leaf


 

the pleasant season but we know it's brief

yet we are forced each year to a long wait

maples they are and ruddy in relief


 

time strikes us now as a harsh nasty thief

we look in pain at every passing date

the saplings in the yard are in first leaf


 

but life's revival brings no great relief

we're in the season of pain and debate

maples they are and ruddy in relief


 

all they can do now is recall hard grief

not reconcile us to eventual fate

the saplings in the yard are in first leaf

maples they are and ruddy in relief

04 April 2010

resurrection

hyacinths and daffs in the flowerbed

those eager plantings of last summer's heat

they are the voices of our dearest dead


 

we have not asked just what the blossoms said

nor listened long to the black loamy beat

hyacinths and daffs in the flowerbed


 

have no regret nor signal any dread

their meaning is not evil it is sweet

they are the voices of our dearest dead


 

returning to us in the garden spread

in sudden colour in the light complete

hyacinths and daffs in the flowerbed


 

each shocking signal sent right to the head

and heart that with old sorrow is replete

these are the voices of our dearest dead


 

gone now but leaving us with souls full fed

since life refuses to accept defeat

hyacinths and daffs in the flowerbed

they are the voices of our dearest dead

01 April 2010

creation song

this is the choice that we defy the night

for a short time and keep alive a spark

timid perhaps but worthy to remark

a simple thing of note to honest sight

rejection of the vast kingdom of blight

a wisdom that calls on us to skylark

with laughter to ignore the final dark

empowering the fragile human light

each one is a beginning we are told

to be recorded and to be advised

of what's around below and what's above

to find out what is clay and what true gold

what's best admired and what's best despised

the fruit of all our hope and all our love

21 March 2010

vineyard

unmentioned here the long count of pages

letters unnumbered like fruit on a vine

symbols growing through their proper stages


 

one knows or guesses or else just gauges

the costs of being humble or supine

unmentioned here the long count of pages


 

listing completely the rate of wages

for farm and factory and shop and mine

symbols growing through their proper stages


 

not hidden nor kept secret by old mages

but open and inviting as inn-sign

unmentioned here the long count of pages


 

the record now as then of the sad ages

the means by which we know how to divine

symbols growing through their proper stages


 

just so we can confound the older sages

and give the learned reason to repine

unmentioned here the long count of pages

symbols growing through their proper stages

07 March 2010

marking papers

not given much to metaphor as fact

the student struggles to relate her tale

each sentence on its own will sag or fail

the effort turns out bloated not compact

her model is the sermon and the tract

and writing comes to her like time in gaol

the style is cold the images are stale

and the whole enterprise with pain is packed

the reader wants so much to go outside

and take his whirling thoughts for a long walk

but finishing the job is all his pride

so from the horrid task he dare not balk

no leave nor yet excuse he has to plead

so the next essay he picks up to read

Classic John Maxwell: Black Holes in the Global Reich


 


 

by John Maxwell

In my one excursion out of the ranks of the working press, half a century ago I was the first Information Officer for the Industrial Development Corporation, preaching the benefits of industrialisation by invitation.

At that time, Norman Manley was Premier and the government was a great admirer of the Puerto Rican model of development. The western world was also convinced that underdeveloped countries would find in this model a sovereign remedy for underdevelopment. If we could attract capital we would create jobs and find our way onto the runway for 'Take-off' into the realm of First World Development.

Fifty years later we are no further forward than we were then and in some ways we are behind where we were.

Oddly enough, the same is true of our model, Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico seemed to have all the advantages. Their people were citizens of the US and at that time, nearly half of all Puerto Ricans lived in the US. Today there are more Puerto Ricans in the US than in Puerto Rico.

A few months ago the New York Times published an editorial "Puerto Rico, an Island in Distress" in which that other blessed isle was described in terms normally reserved for places like Jamaica. In January, the Miami Herald published a news story entitled "Puerto Rican killings may bring out National Guard" in which it was revealed that in the first 15 days of this year there were 46 homicides in Puerto Rico, just about the same level as in Jamaica.

The NYT editorial was a commentary on "The most exhaustive study of the Puerto Rican economy done in the past 75 years " This study, done jointly by the Brookings Institution and a Puerto Rican think tank, said that Puerto Rico's "hoped-for renaissance will require that the private sector and government join together to create thousands of jobs and that tax and other policies have to be developed to make this happen." Just what was needed fifty years ago.

The situation is indeed dire. According to the study "About 48 percent of Puerto Rico's 3.8 million people live below the federal poverty line, according to the 2000 Census. Despite the advances the island has made through the years, it has a per capita income of $8,185 -- about half that of Mississippi. Unemployment hovers at 13 percent.

This is odd, since Puerto Rico with only fifty percent more people than Jamaica, gets in one year assistance from the United States equivalent to Jamaica's entire National Public debt. "The island receives about $11 billion from Washington, $6 billion of which is through Social Security and federal worker pensions and salaries." That s, PR receives nearly one billion dollars in aid every month.

In the fifties and sixties Puerto Rico became a showcase for private sector investment and development. US government assistance enabled Puerto Rico to offer huge subsidies to manufacturers wishing to relocate to the island, but it soon became apparent that it was costing the US taxpayer about US$70,000 to bring an American job to PR, nearly twice as much as the real cost.

In addition to this, as in Jamaica, screwdriver industries began to leave the country as soon as there appeared to be cheaper labour elsewhere. The same process has been in train in the United States itself, which is de-industrialising as American capitalists find lusher pastures in China, which now supplies the US with manufactured goods of every description, from computers to ships.

Some of us have always contended that the so-called paradigm of 'competitiveness' meant nothing in a world in which levels of living and pay were functions more of culture and history than of economic development. The answer was, of course, Globalisation, designed to make everybody competitive.

What this really means is that the world is now engaged in a race to the bottom of the barrel, in which manufacturers forsake their own homegrounds to seek maximum profits in foreign parts, mainly Far Eastern.

It seems to have escaped most economists in the west that in order for the so-called free market system to function rationally, the essential component in production Labour should be free to relocate just like capital, but racism and nationalism prevented most people from understanding Adam Smith's truism that like water, all productive forces should be free to find their own levels.

The Chinese are for the time being, in a prison of their own culture. Having escaped the inflation and consumer-driven extravagances of the West, Chinese labour is up to now, satisfied with relatively picayune rewards. But, as soon as their productivity rises there will be demands for better pay so that workers can afford the products they produce.

In the United States that was the secret of their industrial success: thriving markets based on the increased productivity and earnings of their workers.

But in the United States, as in Puerto Rico and Jamaica, the pull to the bottom has become irresistible; American workers are no longer competitive and the giants of the last century, General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, are busy closing factories and laying off hundreds of thousands of workers.

It has not occurred to many people that if people are out of work they can't afford to buy SUVs. If the money paid to labour goes to China it is the Chinese who will be able to buy cars and expensive appliances. That's one of the reasons stock markets round the world shuddered over the last few days. The de-industrialisation of the United States has up to now been buffered by the middleclass and working class. They've been borrowing money to buy â€" following President Bush's advice a few years ago to shop till they drop to help boost the economy. But loans have to be repaid and money borrowed on rising values has a tendency to become due and payable when values are dropping. That means that ordinary Americas who bought houses in a rising market or borrowed on the apparently increased value of their houses for the same reason, are finding it difficult to repay the money they borrowed.

Running out of Money

This is partly due to the de-industrialisation process and massive job losses, but also to the fact that American workers are not properly rewarded for increased productivity. The productivity gains are siphoned off by the bosses, who have also hijacked their shareholders' interest by paying themselves enormous salaries and other benefits.

As I pointed out six years ago, The United States is the world's largest financial black hole, attracting investments from bashful millionaires in Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Burkina Faso you name it by way of places like Cayman, Anguilla and the Isle of Man. This constant swallowing of foreign money is what keeps the American enterprise machine and stock and bond markets booming. It also impoverishes the rest of the world.

The result, as in Jamaica and other Third World countries, is that while productivity and GDP are apparently increasing, the working classes are getting ever smaller shares of the increased pie.

So when it becomes apparent to the Chinese and others that the US as a whole is defaulting or about to default on its loans, both private and public, the Chinese stock market takes a hit when the US stock market takes a hit and the effect is knocked on round the world.

The catastrophic deceleration of the world's largest economy has only just begun, and it will gain speed as panicked investors rush to cut their losses As more of them come into the market the stock tickers will soon become unable to keep up with the runaway elevator. The result: recession and perhaps, even depression.

Depression is not as outlandish as it seems, with the United States not only overextended in its foreign borrowing, but also overextended in its defense spending. The billions draining away down the rat hole of Iraq are not recoverable, and when the American taxpayer proves unable to cough up the ready cash, the foreign lenders will find their willingness to lend even more severely tested.

All of this is the result of globalisation or extreme capitalism, in which no thought is given to the basic principles of Adam Smith which briefly stated, are that income and outgo should fairly regularly come into balance.

We will soon feel the knock on effect. We will soon find that in the new atmosphere of economic stringency, the people who have lent us money will want it back rather more quickly than they'd promised. Since we have made our economy totally open, we have nothing to produce to pay for our purchases, the remittances from our expatriates will begin to fall, because many will be out of work and the earnings from tourism will crash because many middleclass Americans will no longer be able to afford the kinds of holidays to which they have become accustomed. With gasoline at $100 a liter how much in tolls will our new superhighways be able to collect?

What will happen to places such as Puerto Rico and Jamaica?

Eating cats, rats and dogs

Jamaica has swallowed the globalisation bait hook, line and sinker. We have opened up all our markets to unbridled foreign investment and competition, and, as I pointed out several years ago, this means that ordinary jamaicans are going to pay through the nose for the inestimable privilege of becoming for the second time round, a slave society. Our beaches, our forests and our farmland will become hostages to the foreign parasites. We will re-enter slavery.

And just in case you don't know what slavery was, l;et me quote a sympathetic observer who wrote 250 years ago:

"Negroes who are now computed to be more than 120000 [120,000] in number; and by whose labours and industry almost alone, the colony flourisheth, and its productions are cultivated and manufactured. The Negroes are, for the most part, the property of the Whites; and bought and sold like every other commodity in the country"

"When we consider the inconveniences under which these creatures labour, the toils they are obliged to undergo, the vicissitudes of heat and cold, to which they are exposed, and the grossness of their food in general; we ought not to be surprized they had been still more slothful and sickly than they are

commonly observed to be;

In a footnote, Dr Patrick Browne writes:

"(a)in the country parts of the island every plantation Negroe is allowed a Saturday afternoon or some other afternoon …to stock and manure his particular patch of ground, which he generally plants in cassada (sic) yams, potatoes, Indian and Guinea corn and on Sunday they provide provisions for the ensuing week, and send some to market, to supply themselves with a little salt beef or pork or fish, and a little rum, which are the greatest dainties they can come at, unless a cat, a rat or dog fall in their way . It is true, many of them raise a little poultry, and other stock; but these they generally sell to enable them to purchase some decent as well as necessary cloathes (sic) for their wives and themselves.." ( pp 24-25 The Civil and Natural History of Jamaica by Patrick Browne, M.D., Grays Inn, London 1756)

What Dr Patrick Browne is saying is that he is surprised that the slaves were able to work as hard as they did given the treatment they received. Not only were they poorly and badly fed, but they had to supplement the estate food by growing their own. The day off they got was in fact an additional slave labour so that they could eat and dress decently. And it is clear that if they were forced by hunger to eat cats, dogs and rats, their situation was wretched in the extreme.

That is where we are headed when we beg the WTO for special treatment for bananas and sugar and when we buy the garbage about producing ethanol and aluminum. What we get is mines which will destroy our precious landscape, flora and fauna, screwdriver industries consisting only of worksites removable overnight. as we have seen and are seeing again in the "garment industry". When that goes the women are reduced to whoring and the men to driving 'robots'.

Eventually, of course, the laws of supply and demand will mean that as in Germany after the first World War, a woman may be had for a pack of cigarettes and you will need a wheelbarrow of worthless currency to buy a loaf of bread. We have seen it happen in the largest countries in Latin America, in Argentina and Brazil within the last two decades.

In protecting the bloodsucking industries of sugar and bananas and aluminum, we are sterilising our land, rendering it unfit for growing food and we will have to import food from countries where the farmers fly Cessnas to work.

Our real assets, our land and our people, remain unprotected. As I said six years ago, Jamaica is another kind of Black Hole, " sucked dry of inspiration, brainpower and resources, busy burning the furniture to keep warm. We are going to destroy world-class biological reserves in Long Mountain, heedless of the fact that our crime rate is closely connected to the fact that children have nowhere to play and have no idea of their rich history or the fact that Jamaica's 'biological heritage is one of the richest in the world and that Long Mountain and Hellshire and the Cockpit Country are among our crown jewels. We, prefer to cast our pearls before developers." – and now, before Marc Rich and Alcoa.

"Instead of giving our children space to roam, to play, to learn and to study and socialise, we foreclose their options by blitzing green space and confining them to their barracoons on the same places which were slave yards 150 years ago. Having failed them, deprived them and corrupted them, we will, by another end of pipe solution, be making criminals of them.

Jamaica and Puerto Rico, meet Haiti.

Copyright ©2007 John Maxwell

jankunnu@gmail.com

28 February 2010

Free at Last!


John Maxwell

As a toddler on Derby Beach, now Silver Sands, I remember asking my father what was the roaring sound we heard when we put seashells to our ears. His answer, I believe, was to the effect that the shell concentrated all the sounds around us, the wind, the waves, the sand, every noise in the universe, into the shells and perhaps, with enough patience, we could unravel and make sense of some of it.
If my grandchildren were in the neighbourhood I don't think I'd need to answer that question, since I doubt that they would now be able to find a whole seashell on any Jamaican beach.
My father died when I was 12, of a heart broken (it was said) by the electorate of Northern Trelawny, who had forgotten the hard labour he'd put in as Member of the Legislative Council for the whole parish. His brother-in-law, Morris Thelwell, a comparative unknown, had won Southern Trelawny for the Jamaica Labour Party while the totally obscure Clement Aitcheson, head-teacher of the Duncans Elementary School, selected for that job by my father, had won in Northern Trelawny also for the JLP. Another brother in law, Hugh Cork, had won southern Clarendon for the JLP.
I remember as a ten year old cowering in my father's library in astonishment as my father excoriated Bustamante who wanted to recruit him to run for the JLP in 1944. It was an unforgettable confrontation: my father, all 5'6' of him facing down Bustamante, nearly a foot taller with a hairdo that exaggerated his height. Busta, furious, simply went across the street and recruited Aitcheson.
My father had refused to join the PNP because he thought that there was still a place in Jamaican politics for independents. His sympathies were with the PNP and he really admired Manley, but a decade earlier, Manley had been the lawyer whose arguments unseated him on the ground that he was not wealthy enough to be elected. It wasn't Manley's choice; in those days lawyers were more or less obliged to accept the first brief offered and the first brief was from the losing candidate, the richest man on the north coast, the manager of the building society, the chairman of the Parish Council, the Custos of the Parish, the MLC and the attorney for more than half the land and sugar estates in Trelawny – Mr W.U.Guy S. Ewen.
Manley regretted the result – as he wrote the Chief Justice afterward – why should people be prevented from being represented by the delegate of their choice simply because he was poor?

A few years later Manley joined a ferment with O.T Fairclough, Ken and Frank Hill, W.A.Domingo, Adolphe Roberts, Amy Bailey and the rest to first energise the Jamaica Progressive League in New York then Public Opinion in Jamaica and finally the People's National Party which was determined to give every man a vote and to bring universal human rights to Jamaica.

So, despite my father's defeat at the hands of Manley, he would tell me, as a toddler, that I had to grow up to become a lawyer like Mr Manley, to defend poor people.
Shortly after the case Ewen's solicitors distrained on my father for the costs of the case. They were determined to finish him off. The bailiffs seized everything in the house, including my baby crib and announced that they were coming back for the "body" – they were going to arrest my father for debt and cast him into the debtor's jail in the St Catherine District Prison.
This animus was provoked by the fact that shortly after winning the case against my father Mr Ewen dropped dead, felled according to the gossipmongers, by my grandmother's obeah.Dad won the ensuing bye-election with all his papers in order
When the sale of my father's pitiful possessions failed to satisfy the lawyers a commitment warrant was issued for his arrest and incarceration. My father's roots are in Accompong and in Maroon Town and he vanished into the Cockpit Country. Not even my mother knew where he was.
The plan was that he could not be 'attached' once he was sworn in to the Legislative Council. But Trelawny is a long way from Kingston; in those days of marl roads the drive was anywhere between four and five hours.
My father's best friend, Mr A.B. Lowe, MLC for St James and a very sober and upright Baptist deacon was the unlikely agent. By prior arrangement Lowe picked up my father somewhere on the Burnt Hill Road and then drove south, through Manchester, Clarendon and St Catherine, outwitting the small army of scouts on the expected North coast route.
In Kingston my father was stowed on the back seat of the car, covered by empty luggage and a carpet. Instead of coming through Duke Street and the northern approaches to Headquarters House, Lowe came from the East on Beeston Street. When he drove around Headquarters House seeking a place to park, special constables alerted to his friendship with my father, asked Lowe if he had seen Maxwell. Telling what was probably the only lie in his life Lowe said he'd seen someone resembling my father at the Beeston Street entrance and the bailiffs dashed off. Lowe and one or two confederates, pulled some of the luggage out of the car, blocking the sidewalk while my father sprinted up the steps, escaping capture by inches.
He was duly sworn in and in time paid his debt to the solicitors.

Like Mr Manley

My mother and various family members pressured me for years to become a what the Americans call a trial lawyer. Unfortunately as a teenager I had become hopelessly enmeshed in journalism.

Since January 29, 1952, except for 18 months or so spent as the first press officer for the Industrial Development Corporation( now Jamaica Trade & Invest) I have been employed or unemployed entirely as a journalist. Last month made it 58 years hard labour and there is nobody in Jamaican journalism, living or dead, who has spent more time at it.

There are others still alive who may have become reporters before me but they have spent most of their lives in other, more lucrative pursuits.
Over that time there must be quite a paper trail, millions of words, hundreds of lost causes. Some of this is because my career paralleled to a certain extent, the development of modern media. In broadcasting for instance, I did things in the fifties that no one in Jamaica had thought of doing, a weekly political commentary and a thrice weekly economics-made-easy commentary called Progress report. We did things because we didn't know they were impossible. I did an audio montage of the people who lived on and off, the Kingston Dump. C.L.R.James said he'd never heard anything as moving.
Moving back into print journalism in 1963 Having been fired by the Prime Minister, (and a certain Edward Seaga) brought me into direct conflict with the new government of Jamaica who behaved, as I and others said at the time – as if they had simply assumed the prerogatives of the British colonial dictatorship. I don't think any current Jamaican politician would even think about jailing a journalist; fifty yeas ago I was threatened with prison for my "rude, insolent, indecent" remarks, which verged, it seemed, on sacrilege. The threats were made in Parliament. THe government tried to shut down my paper and eventually forced me into exile.
I spent a few years in Britain, doing what I'd been doing at the JBC, but half the work for twice the money.
I have never fancied myself a politician, contrary to my detractors. I returned from Britain to contest West KIngston in 1972 because the sad truth was that every other plausible PNP candidate was too afraid to run. I ran to prevent the seat being handed to the JLP on Nomination Day. Some JLP people who know the facts, feel I should have graciously allowed a coronation in West Kingston in 1972,

Perhaps the single thing of which I am most proud is the invention of the talk-show –the Public Eye. There had been other talk shows, but none combining news, commentary and public participation. WE changed things. Despite attempts, there has never been anything similar.

Rosina Wiltshire and Gillian Monroe gave the programme a vital push soon after we started . They had done a study of working conditions among domestic helpers, then, as now, the largest single class of workers in Jamaica. I interviewed them, let them talk and was amazed at the horrors they revealed. When I asked domestic helpers to phone in,giving their side of the story it was as if a a massive dam of years of hurt, oppression and cruelty had suddenly burst, sweeping away all the pretensions of the Jamaican upper classes to civilisation.
In those days we used dial telephones and you could buy locks for them. It soon became a joke in Jamaica that every shipment of telephone locks was swept up within hours of arrival.
I have reported here before, how we recruited first the Prime Minister's wife, Beverley and then Michael Manley himself to the idea that only a national minimum wage with enforcement could rescue the workers.

Public Eye went on to campaign for other workers causes, equal pay, housing, against capital punishment and police brutality, and for what I and others thought was the essential framework of a civilised society.


It was my opinion that radio could be used to mobilise pubic opinion in the non partisan process of what Norman Manley called nation building.
At that time I was also the unpaid chair of the Natural Resources Conservation Authority,(the Beach Control, Wildlife Protection and Watershed Protection Authorities) and the National Gallery.
We managed to do some serious work including organising public opinion to clean up Kingston Harbour, , to alert people to the government sponsored theft of public beaches and other lands – Hellshire, Long Mountain etc) and to the need to guarantee safe land for housing.
Over the years I have accumulated some really good stories, for instance how I solved two murder cases that baffled the police,but the real story of my life has been in the small stories about the human rights of people without friends and most of all, the story of the defamation and despoliation of Haiti.
As I once wrote in this column, sometimes I think I can smell the blood of Haiti from here.
This column is the last one from me for a little while.
Some of you may know that I continued writing every week through my one year course of radiation and chemotherapy for advanced lung cancer.
The cancers are no longer in evidence thanks to the esprit de corps, optimism, determination and skill of dedicated practitioners in Jamaica and the Netherlands.
Having come out of what seemed a very long dark tunnel and having lost a slew of friends – Sonny Bradshaw, Trevor Rhone, Wayne Brown,Albert Huie, Rex Nettleford, to name only the most prominent, I remember that I want to publish my columns on Haiti, on Jamaican politics and on the Environment. I also want to select from and publish some of the 6,000 pictures I call 'Portraits of Jamaican birds.


 


So, if you see my column only occasionally, depending on my arrangement with my editors, it is not because I have abandoned you, just that I'm taking things a bit easier.
After all I've been working for longer than most people have been alive.
The problem of course is that no journalist is ever free.
Copyright ©2010 John Maxwell jankunnu@yahoo.com

27 February 2010

ballade of unexpected disaster

you haven't got the sense to make things short

when length must matter brevity's the key

to bridge the immense gap from is to ought

which many of us do not want to see

since clarity of vision makes us flee

straight to the place where no one wants to hide

afraid of all the facts that cannot be

but truth and passion have to coincide


 

your choices do not lead us to support

the cause that we learnt at our parents' knee

when we were told that it was dearly bought

and at that time all things seemed to agree

with what we wanted and no absentee

masters abroad were eager to deride

nor wail and whimper like a mad banshee

but truth and passion have to coincide


 

you think the vessel won't get into port

since nothing you commanded came to be

while those you ordered have to face a court

and some of then will hang from gallows-tree

or lie beneath a dark and angry sea

as fate and anguish either may decide

since neither time nor force will hear your plea

but truth and passion have to coincide


 

prince you have given cause to disagree

with all your actions but you've shown esprit

the problem is you've chosen the wrong side

the time has come to fight or else to flee

but truth and passion have to coincide