recounting the tale

 

this is the deed that falls out of my hand

your heart is open now to all our care

a touch of autumn comes upon the air

there is so little that we could demand

we look at nature and think it all grand

but know that not a thing is ever fair

that simple action is more than we dare

and each of us is forced to take a stand

my thought is open to whatever makes

sense in the morning when we first arise

to see the world fullest impure glory

not caring about all the shocks and aches

that keep us from the truest golden prize

or so we seem to tell that final story

inside the meme

 

we lack a sense of truly human mode

voices are raised when silence ought to reign

there is no way for us to read the code

 

each wants to reap what other folk have sowed

without a pause for any to explain

we lack a sense of truly human mode

 

no one waits here at the most urgent node

the place where all the symbols stand out plain

there is no way for us to read the code

 

we’ve come too far along this narrow road

to discount all the moments of small gain

we lack a sense of truly human mode

 

it’s far too easy to let time erode

the certainties for which you should campaign

there is no way for us to read the code

 

a grain of powder would make things explode

and halt at once the long-prevailing pain

we lack a sense of truly human mode

there is no way for us to read the code

so we are evaluated

it does not matter all the good we do
we are still painted in the tints of rage
since we are seen as creatures in the zoo

someone may think the present time is new
and praise the noble tenor of the age
it does not matter all the good we do

will vanish quickly into background view
and other matters will the world engage
since we are seen as creatures in the zoo

those who their oldest platitudes still spew
may think them things of beauty on the page
it does not matter all the good we do

will move no hearts there will be very few
who’ll think to break the bars upon our cage
since we are seen as creatures in the zoo

now all the glory goes to the rough crew
who have learned how to prance upon the stage
it does not matter all the good we do
since we are seen as creatures in the zoo

returning magic

there is a secret that no one is told
since when you learn it you have cause to groan
for your whole sense of right is overthrown
and what was warm and safe has turned quite cold
there’s now no surety that you can hold
and all your blood has become solid stone
icily pure you face the world alone
in that one instant you have joined the old
now that the universe is once more wild
with all the passions that you have repressed
out of your need to be part of the herd
perhaps you can see once more like a child
capture again the honest decent zest
and find true meaning in each human word

a halo round the moon

 

 there is a circle around the full moon

a thing of wonder in the warmth of night

an awful omen something not quite right

and then the rain brings life back into tune

this brilliance breaks me out of my cocoon

but chases me indoors i can’t requite

the gift of thought and of the fragile light

but do not understand it is a boon

to be caught there that moment by the rain

in natural blessing just that simple touch

of cooling water taking back to earth

both mind and body it is clear and plain

we must not love the world so very much

as to forget just what the light is worth

the politics of autumn

so much of what we learn is simply wrong
dishonest preaching to a stupid choir
we’re just supposed to hide within the throng

true honest effort takes too bloody long
for hard folk driven by the voice of ire
so much of what we learn is simply wrong

to kill our foes will serve to make us strong
and decency is nothing to admire
we’re just supposed to hide within the throng

the safest thing is just to go along
stay silent above all do not inquire
so much of what we learn is simply wrong

we let the foolish beat upon the gong
and hope that we can make it back entire
we’re just supposed to hide within the throng

all must participate in the old song
and give heed to the words of the keen liar
so much of what we learn is simply wrong
we’re just supposed to hide within the throng

eternal i endure

 

so we discover that we have found hell

right in this place beneath the smiling eyes

it seems so normal calm and lacking smell

 

you tell us not to cry out nor to yell

nor in our shock to indicate surprise

so we discover that we have found hell

 

there is not much that anyone could tell

you’d have to be right there to hear the cries

it seems so normal calm and lacking smell

 

all that we have is the remaining shell

of who we were something you would despise

so we discover that we have found hell

 

right where we thought and we could not rebel

against our very selves in our own guise

it seems so normal calm and lacking smell

 

there was no signal no last warning bell

we got there on the road of simple lies

so we discover that we have found hell

it seems so normal calm and lacking smell

morning on the ridge

what holds us up is nothing but light air
your thought is like it vanishingly weak
yet we have reached another lofty peak
and see the lowland down below us clear
as on a map since this morning is fair
the sun behind us showing what we seek
for this short moment we have the mystique
you cannot stop us doing what we dare
so this is who we are and what we need
past all the shadows that have obscured sight
secrets revealed as we announce the name
in open daylight time to set the seed
into clean earth long hours before the night
and fill each heart with joy as with a flame

lookout

so there is water out there south and west
that’s all we see and out beyond more land
and stranger places on each palm-fringed strand
will seem like us the modern dispossessed
who don’t belong but have got the bequest
of gold and green passed down from hand to hand
so that each has to make some sort of stand
or claim that they’ve been given a great test
these are the lies that little children tell
when parents think that they are fast asleep
to scare each other by pretending brave
the ones that later turn to the hard sell
making the painful seem ungodly cheap
while the blue water waits to be our grave

meditation on the hither shore

 

so much is silenced by the hungry sea

forgotten centuries that weren’t all grief

the glimmer of the waves is no relief

not urgent voices bidding us let be

ignore the past be humble bend the knee

to those far wiser suspend all mischief

and turn the raging mind back to belief

in angry gods of the smooth bourgeoisie

now we’re the ones who always must atone

not for our sins but for your fathers’ lies

making great efforts in these brighter days

not to disturb the ancient broken bone

nor to take hold of the bright golden prize

but leave to you the honour and the praise

this we have found

 

so we forget just who and what we were

in this large kingdom where the vulture reigns

honour and history have to concur

 

in some decision about what’s to stir

both hearts and visions in those swift campaigns

so we forget just who and what we were

 

the happy cat will nestle here and purr

ignoring us while we don yet more chains

honour and history have to concur

 

with what we say as time moves in a blur

of rapid actions over sad remains

so we forget just who and what we were

in these bold days the wise entrepreneur

knows well just what good matter he retains

honour and history have to concur

 

just as the bone is kicked towards the cur

the one that any better thing disdains

so we forget just who and what we were

honour and history have to concur

Singer-Man

 

John Maxwell

 

Crackle! pop! snap!

I’m not talking about cereal. That would be snap, crackle, pop. Everybody knows that.

Crackle! pop! Snap!

Watching John McCain in action reminds me of Tom Paxton’s sixties song about the marvelous toy that

“…went “Zip” when it moved,

And “Pop” when it stopped,

And, “Whirrr” when it stood still.

I never knew just what it was

And I guess I never will.

Coupling McCain with Alaska’s toxic termagant presents a fairly terrifying vision for the rest of the world. It’s a far way from John Kennedy’s promise four decades ago that the US would be a friend of  people seeking freedom, a friend to the poor and weak. McCain and Palin present a fundamentalist and revanchist face to the world, promising an even rougher ride than George Bush as the Haitians are already aware.

As I said eight years ago, when the United States elects a president they are also electing a kind of chief spokesman for much of a world with aspirations light years away from the parochial vision of civilisation imagined by Bush, Cheney, McCain and Palin. For the rest of us, the US president we hope will be a singer-man for the world, one who embodies, expresses and guarantees the deepest aspirations of people for liberty and dignity. That it is why an English worldwide poll has found that the world wants Obama to win. The preference is almost 100% across countries as disparate as Norway and Saudi Arabia.

Almost all the public opinion surveys conducted in the US over the past few weeks show the Republican ticket steadily losing ground to the Democrats, Obama and Biden. One website is devoted entirely to analysing electoral polling by all the reputable pollsters. (http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/) According to them, the odds on Obama being the next president were better than  90% as of this last week, and their projection was that he would win nearly 350 electoral votes with at least  52% of the popular vote

In elections for the Senate the projection was that the democrats would win at least 56 seats – not filibuster proof but close, with the probability of an overwhelming majority in the House of Representatives.

Major reasons for these perceptions are the toxic unpopularity of President George Bush whose approval rating is now below Nixon’s just prior to his resignation, the feeling that the US is on the wrong track (more than 80%)   and the catastrophic declines in employment, living standards and economic security.

Adele Polk, a 90 year old woman in Akron, Ohio, shot herself twice in the chest when sheriff’s deputies came to evict her from the house she and her late husband had called home for decades. Mrs Polk’s mortgage has now been forgiven while she is being treated in hospital and is expected to recover.

The bankers and financiers are now among the best hated people in the United States. One sign displayed on Wall Street a few days ago  exhorted the occupants of the office blocks to “JUMP YOU F**KERS” .

Popular opinion is turning savagely against the people FDR called “Malefactors of great wealth”  – the saboteurs of the American dream, con-men whose Ponzi schemes hollowed out the productive centre of American capitalism until the very people they  had defrauded were being asked to come to their rescue, because they were “too big to be allowed to fail” and no one but the taxpayer had the resources to save them. The bailout means the US taxpayer will end up owning huge segments of the financial industry. Will they want to give it back?

 In Illinois’ Cook County -  effectively, Chicago -  the elected Sheriff has decided that his officers will no longer carry out evictions unless he is guaranteed by the mortgage companies that the people he evicts actually owe money on the houses they inhabit. Sheriff Thomas Dart says his officers have been evicting tenants from rented houses, people who have paid their rents to owners who have defaulted. He doesn’t think that’s fair.

All over the US resentment is rising against the injustice of it all, while the Republicans are intent on blaming the victims for the mortgage meltdown. According to the GOP orthodoxy, it was the Democrats in Congress and the federally backed mortgage wholesalers who were responsible along with the poor people who borrowed to buy houses they couldn’t afford.

What really happened is that the Democrats did exert pressure on mortgage companies to lend to minorities and others traditionally segregated outside the mortgage market. The companies responded by inventing mortgages which seemed affordable, but which rapidly morphed  out of the reach of working class and middle class  borrowers who had not read the fine print on their contracts. It was a scam and a highly profitable one which might have worked longer  had it not been so all pervasive that it collapsed of its own over-reach. It extracted billions in savings from the poorest layer of Americans and financed the ability of the scammers to speculate on the basis of ‘securities’  with values notional at best and fictitious at worst.

As in all Ponzi schemes, the crunch had to come when the scam ran out of ‘greater fools’. While the black and Hispanic communities knew they were in trouble two and three years ago, their predators remained blissfully unaware, wheeling and dealing as if there would never be a reckoning.

Now, even John McCain realises that no matter how much he and his cohorts have blamed the working class borrowers, it is important to help them out of trouble. This is one more flip-flop of McCain, who has been boasting about his reformist record, even while his real history is of a serial deregulator, a rule smasher, whose fondest ideals have been for freeing up everything in the interest of the unrestricted market -a man who never met a rule he approved of.

Now, faced with the increasing disapproval of the US electorate it doesn’t seem that even the best efforts of Republican bureaucrats will be able to sabotage the election to the extent where it can be stolen as were the last two.  The disapproval is too wide, too deep. Today, polls show Obama preferred as being a better likely leader, a more compassionate leader and a more able president. McCain is still preferred as a warrior who could prosecute the Iraq war, but since most Americans don’t want to be in Iraq that advantage is nothing compared to the feeling that Obama can best get Americans out of their economic troubles.

cast the die

 

what’s missing is a sense of what is just

our vision is not shaped only by art

we have to live and so we have to trust

 

words have true power to freeze and combust

but action has received the greater part

what’s missing is a sense of what is just

 

you do not see us as strong or robust

only as weak and ready to depart

we have to live and so we have to trust

 

in what we have as more than just a crust

over the pain inflicted by each dart

what’s missing is a sense of what is just

 

we have to matter and be more than dust

stirred up by every trader in the mart

we have to live and so we have to trust

 

that what we are will raise more than disgust

but will inspire some joy in pain-filled heart

what’s missing is a sense of what is just

we have to live and so we have to trust

e:EX’a
Rr books must go into the fire

 

our presence here shall soon have never been

that is the goal at which we must conspire

our signal glory is to be denier

of that which honest folk might all believe

remove those things so no one can retrieve

and once we’ve finished simply close the door

those who thought otherwise are just naïve

yet when when we started we all knew the score

 

prince there’s so much that you will not achieve

because our target you just can’t perceive

so many good materials we abhor

since all we do is shatter and bereave

yet when we started we all knew the score

a lower form of knowledge

no one who listens notices the word
spoken by those who have forgotten speech
so further action seems yet more absurd

no greater title ever was conferred
yet now it seems so far beyond our reach
no one who listens notices the word

not even one whose choices were deterred
by sudden silence which enforced a breach
so further action seems yet more absurd

now these were matters of which we had heard
before we started well within our reach
no one who listens notices the word

that has been uttered by those who preferred
action to thought and who just had to preach
so further action seems yet more absurd

but we unbroken still see things unblurred
and have learned lessons that you did not teach
no one who listens notices the word
so further action seems yet more absurd

passion and desire

 

where passion and desire blend into sense

of who each is and how each came to be

not just alone but cast out on that sea

where navigation is without pretense

of other purpose where the smooth immense

circle of waters is the referee

and gives hard answer to each hopeful plea

since when it strikes there can be no defence

those who now smile have not the least good thought

in what might pass to others for a mind

to let you know the harshness of this scrape

nor in what trammels you might soon be caught

since they prefer that you advance so blind

as to be swiftly where you can’t escape

a sort of wager

 

this is the place where odd and even meet

in point of fact there is a choice of gloom

in how and when the fire will best consume

 

each one of those who dares not to retreat

before the voice that speaks of death and doom

this is the place where odd and even meet

 

another sort of messenger might greet

any who comes to open up the tomb

to sweep it out with an old-fashioned broom

this is the place where odd and even meet

with reason and with nature too

 

our task is to destroy the trade of kings

looking past mountains to the open plain

we reach the place we seek on outspread wings

 

of little value are the golden things

piled high upon the smiling traitor’s wain

our task is to destroy the trade of kings

 

the freshest water from the coolest springs

must serve to cool each brow and cleanse the stain

we reach the place we seek on outspread wings

 

no one expects to bear each of the swings

from past to future but we can’t abstain

our task is to destroy the trade of kings

 

and so we must withstand the constant stings

of noisy insects and ignore the pain

we reach the place we seek on outspread wings

 

you can’t ignore the loudest bell that rings

fervent with joy at the returning rain

our task is to destroy the trade of kings

we reach the place we seek on outspread wings

in the realm of the dog

 

some meaning must inhere in what’s not said

by any of the folk who claim our time

with words as filled with music as with slime

and promises to scare off all the dread

that’s come upon us now the wiser head

knows what is common and what things are prime

those measures suited for a harsher clime

like ours now that the heroes are all dead

so that we listen all the claimants shout

enough to shake the earth and raise up high

those who have passed beneath the heavy soil

but none of us knows what it’s all about

or can discern small truth from the big lie

without expenditure of too much toil

now down below

 

if you have measured breath in weight of gold

no one has spoken of the need for haste

nor of the reasons why the flock were chased

out of safe shelter back into the cold

such a short time ago now just enrolled

in this man’s army and out on the waste

not one of us but knows we are disgraced

by this sad service and now you are told

say this when time returns you to your place

in the long record of the failing years

that we have done our task and gone our way

said our defiant words right to your face

cast off our clothes and let loose our tears

but never once have we refused our pay

autumn lives

 

we break the shadow and bring out the sun

winter is coming but we know its end

this is a battle that has once been won

 

each tempest must in turn finish its run

some idiot will claim there is a trend

we break the shadow and bring out the sun

 

you can’t be sure of truth before it’s done

but know that even hardest steel must bend

this is a battle that has once been won

 

the word has force that will break down the gun

and nothing has your back  except a friend

we break the shadow and bring out the sun

 

the principle must be that it’s begun

with happy heart that good things should intend

this is a battle that has once been won

 

truth is that each of us is having fun

knowing that there are things that we transcend

we break the shadow and bring out the sun

this is a battle that has once been won

listening harder

 

this is the meaning of the open gem

word after word and not a one of praise

much will depend on what is on the stem

 

these are the matters that we would condemn

without more thought minds all within a haze

this is the meaning of the open gem

 

all has been marked and made neat on the hem

we don’t expect a change in this new phase

much will depend on what is on the stem

 

still you will be expected to show phlegm

not be the one on whom others will gaze

this is the meaning of the open gem

 

we might expect in this case to contemn

but not to execute nor to amaze

much will depend on what is on the stem

 

you do not think that you are one of them

of those who can’t be counted on these days

this is the meaning of the open gem

much will depend on what is on the stem

in the swamps

 

across the solitudes a single moan

passes and we are locked into the plight

of one far distant who is not alone

although that pain is hidden from our sight

nothing is done by you in our despite

at invocation we will light the blaze

we see again the colder harder days

 

you know the value of a simple stone

and how to make it shed a little light

that will convert to something hardly known

to those who claim to be straight and forthright

our task is not to hasten nor excite

but to take you most swiftly through the maze

we see again the colder harder days

 

we know the colour of the human bone

and how to polish it and turn it bright

as instrument to punish and atone

plain cure for darkness and the coming blight

this product of the sacrificial height

must be exposed unto the divine gaze

we see again the colder harder days

 

hopes and desires are wholly overblown

what is to come will never give us right

nor any justice since the truth is flown

out of the window into the cold night

and what is left is not for our delight

no one would want to give us love or praise

we see again the colder harder days

ballade of regulation

 

all of our efforts fall into the shade

drastic the choice but not without its crumb

of gentle hope to keep hearts unafraid

a chance of passion that would allow some

to build new life where others would be glum

or hang their hopes upon a rusty nail

for you to laugh or others to assail

those facts of business that prove not so tame

but can stand up when others simply fail

these are the rules and we must play the game

 

time with its tricks our patience must abrade

or beat a rhythm on a noisy drum

such are the practices of normal trade

when all of human life is a small sum

and nothing much splits millionaire from bum

we are blown off our course by the swift gale

and can’t expect to make an easy sale

since all we get is insult and foul blame

it’s tasks like these that make the toughest quail

these are the rules and we must play the game

 

others might seek to hide or to evade

the pains and penances that have to come

in rapid series and in swift cascade

we cannot keep these things beneath the thumb

nothing is left and we have been struck dumb

preventing the recounting of detail

all  honest words are cast outside the pale

and truth becomes a matter of ill fame

against the facts there is none who would rail

these are the rules and we must play the game

 

prince you receive no message through the mail

and find the secrets have turned very stale

there’s no one left who can ignite the flame

but many where who hard fate could bewail

these are the rules and we must play the game

beside the limestone road

 

an old marl-hole where rat-bats congregate

bears quiet witness to each hidden sin

not just to what we could not dare to win

by dint of effort and so blame on fate

this is no church for you to desecrate

but a dark place where many lives begin

and those who know will just conceal a grin

for nouns not verbs would seem to conjugate

that was the story when the night turned cold

under a sky as dark as any soul

when all the blame was placed on certain wiles

but others said the cause was merely gold

unwisdom aiming at a pretty goal

that journey will not end for many miles

peaks that scrape the sky

 

to fear the mountains that you have not seen

strikes me as beyond odd as plain bizarre

there is no horror that could strike so far

nor any danger that might come between

that place and this you need to find the mean

of calm and order not to let things mar

the proper temper so that at the bar

to make all sober we might intervene

each new adventure has a painful price

in time and effort and we can’t recall

the life so spent back to a happy place

but you don’t ever want to hear advice

and are too eager to run out and fall

and then return with fresh tears on your face

one leaden rule

 

the world is much more complex than you think

tricks that you learn when young turn out to fail

this weight of truth would drive a saint to drink

 

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

and then find out it’s all to no avail

the world is much more complex than you think

 

your happy moment passes in a blink

it vanishes the second you exhale

this weight of truth would drive a saint to drink

 

cold winds will find the one uncovered chink

and force their way in just to make you ail

the world is much more complex than you think

 

so you work hard and idlers get the mink

with all the jewels that are out on sale

this weight of truth would drive a saint to drink

 

no one at all must be allowed to think

since their good effort will end up quite stale

the world is much more complex than you think

this weight of truth would drive a saint to drink

at home the green remains

 

so many trees in full and golden leaf

this changing season as the days turn cold

birds have gone south and fools have become bold

 

nights grow too long and sunlight is too brief

you know the story it is often told

so many trees in full and golden leaf

 

now swiftly falling for time’s a hard thief

and eager hoarding the  fast-passing gold

leaves us behind nothing that we can hold

so many trees in full and golden leaf

long waiting

 

at this dark curve of the long mountain road

the signpost tells us just where we must go

those little places we are meant to know

but do not speak of method nor of mode

the yellow finger is a sort of goad

to warn us that our pace is yet too slow

our feet must hasten so we catch the glow

and make most certain that our goods are stowed

not here but soon a true signal will come

to clarify just who must keep the score

and who depart and lose the chance at fame

so much depends on true tone of the drum

not how or where each of us comes ashore

but only that we must accept the blame

distant lightning

 

an echo of the past resolves to pain

no matter what we do none can escape

all stand bedraggled in the autumn rain

 

who thought to win was first to fall off wain

the furthest off from the finishing tape

an echo of the past resolves to pain

 

it takes no wisdom to note the hard strain

of those who holding matters in firm shape

all stand bedraggled in the autumn rain

 

not daring to look up nor to complain

while foolish mouths are all of them agape

an echo of the past resolves to pain

 

some facts are set out very clear and plain

as both bright angel and dull foolish ape

all stand bedraggled in the autumn rain

 

we must lament the loss of normal brain

which must explain how we are in this scrape

an echo of the past resolves to pain

all stand bedraggled in the autumn rain

under the same stars

 

this permitted we have grace to caper

from dusk to dawn as the leaves redly fall

marking the season with a noble ball

each bright dancer bearing amber taper

notes now shining on the golden paper

make our demands seem piteously small

as watchers wonder why we had the gall

to think our hottest wishes more than vapour

now time must move in tandem with the sun

our hearts obey an older slower law

while in their nests the summer birds still wait

far to the south where warmth is never done

but nature rules with equally harsh claw

a younger person wonders at his fate

Racism and Poverty

 

 

John Maxwell

 

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

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

In Haiti’s case, statistics are irrelevant.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Haiti 200 years ago defeated the world’s then major powers, France (twice) Britain and Spain, to establish its independence and to abolish plantation slavery. This was unforgivable.
• Despite being bombed, strafed and occupied by the United States early in the past century, and despite the American endowment of a tyrannical and brutal Haitian army designed to keep the natives in their place, the Haitians insisted on re-establishing their independence. Having overthrown the Duvaliers and their successors, the Haitians proceeded to elect as president a little black parish priest who had become their hero by defying the forces of evil and tyranny.
• The new president of Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide refused to sell out (privatise) the few assets owned by the government (the public utilities mainly);
• Aristide also insisted that France owed Haiti more than $25 billion in repayment of blood money extorted from Haiti in the 19th century, as alleged compensation for France’s loss of its richest colony and to allow Haiti to gain admission to world trade;
• Aristide threatened the hegemony of a largely expatriate ruling class of so-called ‘elites’ whose American connections allowed them to continue the parasitic exploitation and economic strip mining of Haiti following the American occupation.
• Haiti, like Cuba, is believed to have in its exclusive economic zone, huge submarine oil reserves, greater than the present reserves of the United States
• Haiti would make a superb base from which to attack Cuba.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Further comment is superfluous.

and here’s the latest news

 

day turns to night and night returns to day

the cycle is the same the actors not

what seems to matter is the blasted play

 

no one’s the winner in the long affray

a little difficult to change the plot

day turns to night and night returns to day

 

a common fact no matter what we say

the sort of thing that no one has forgot

what seems to matter is the blasted play

 

the long parade has gone wholly astray

far off the road and moving at a trot

day turns to night and night returns to day

 

while all the towers are falling back to clay

an entire city’s now an empty lot

what seems to matter is the blasted play

 

the only truth is knowledge of the way

out of the devastation and the rot

day turns to night and night returns to day

what seems to matter is the blasted play

memory of morning

 

you wake up to the sharp scent of bush tea

before the sun has touched the eastern hill

the clock is independent of your will

and early hours and you do not agree

free education does not come so free

that you can wait till after morning chill

just hurry and don’t dare a drop to spill

that’s just the way that matters have to be

the voices carried on that early air

from distant places each with their strange word

you had to mark and now cannot forget

but all your duty and your hard won care

won’t turn back time or make the case absurd

since age owes youth a large and heavy debt

honour restored

 

each aching slave will see the pirate slain

from recollection of that stinking hold

don’t name revenge that last easing of  pain

 

so many fools who will not see things plain

nor taste of patience that has been served cold

each aching slave will see the pirate slain

 

year upon year each one piles up the pain

the lone reward is simply growing old

don’t name revenge that last easing of pain

 

a form of passion made to entertain

the ones whose enterprise was manifold

each aching slave will see the pirate slain

 

but silence will not fill this place again

now that the fallen have at last turned bold

don’t name revenge that last easing of pain

 

all that we are all that our hearts contain

cannot we now declare be bought or sold

each aching slave will see the pirate slain

don’t name revenge that last easing of pain

virtues

 

truth is best found in small silent places

you find at last the finer goods you seek

and learn that honest things are not unique

 

but do not come arrayed with airs and graces

honour is not reserved just to the meek

truth is best found in small silent places

 

love shows herself alive in joyous faces

and happiness in valley not on peak

not by great river but by little creek

truth is best found in small silent places

where we must navigate

 

this is the point where all our natures meet

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

so many fools have been lost on this street

 

one thinks himself part of the great elite

another looks and laughs when the first fails

this is the point when all our natures meet

 

you hide your heart and wait to see complete

the fullness of the light on all details

so many fools have been lost on this street

 

that when we speak it seems a huge deceit

a way to suck the wind out of our sails

this is the point where all our natures meet

 

no proper chance here for any retreat

we do not let the train go off the rails

so many fools have been lost on this street

 

and in the end there is no one to greet

nor any chance to balance all the scales

this is the point where all our natures meet

so many fools have been lost on this street

nevertheless

 

there is no question that the night is long

with clouds unbroken in the sky above

we want to give slow-moving time a shove

with urgent purpose we await new song

this calendar that warns of winter’s wrong

our hearts demand the springtime morning dove

return of flowers reawoken love

days may be cold but hope is very strong

all that we know is how much each must rue

those painful stories of a different map

on which new facts and new lines would be writ

but now we find that not a thing was true

each noble tale  has turned out to be crap

and we need help to get out of the shit

remembered shores

 

what frigate bird and pelican can see

far over water they have yet to tell

so we must put up with that oily smell

and other facts that do not well agree

with ease and comfort still by this warm sea

it is so simple to ignore the yell

just keep the eye on that hypnotic swell

thinking that it is right to let things be

in other places the cold presses hard

on other faces and the nights so long

while city noise forces folk to the bars

then there is longing for the warmth of yard

brightness of seas the comfortable song

and in the night the many lovely stars

not truly warm

 

the sun tells quite a story but it lies

if you think it is warm then you’re a dope

autumn is pleasant only to the eyes

 

there are so many things we must advise

that you should follow since you have to cope

the sun tells quite a story but it lies

 

each of our choices this we must surmise

has led you to the very end of rope

autumn is pleasant only to the eyes

 

thus you have seen the old year as it dies

winter is coming and there’s time to mope

the sun tells quite a story but it lies

 

white clouds against the pale blue of these skies

urge us just to give up and to elope

autumn is pleasant only to the eyes

 

someone might speak of harvest as the prize

of fruit and seed and coming spring of hope

the sun tells quite a story but it lies

autumn is pleasant only to the eyes

herding in the tropics

 

a sudden torrent washes out the road

my father speaks of an all-island rain

as little lakes expand across the plain

 

wet cattle move but slowly with a goad

thick mud resists and does not answer pain

a sudden torrent washes out the road

 

no one has told me how to read this code

nor how to hold a calm and even strain

in this wet season norms have turned arcane

a sudden torrent washes out the road

The Road Away from Serfdom

 

JOHN MAXWELL Sunday, November 02, 2008

 

John McCain’s real problem is that if it is announced on Tuesday that he has won the election for the presidency of the United States, nobody will believe it.

Every indicator – including popular sentiment worldwide – is against him.

The huge crowds – some standing in the rain to listen to Barack Obama; the millions of poor people’s dollars donated to the Obama campaign, the hundreds of thousands of volunteers for Obama, the hundreds of songs written for Obama, the number of early voters who say they have voted for Obama, and finally, the public opinion polls have embedded into the consciousness of the world the idea that Barack Obama cannot lose this election if it is conducted fairly.

The world is suspicious of John McCain and his confederates.
They, led by Rove, Cheney and Bush have so discredited the US electoral system, have so reduced US credibility over the world, that nobody really believes anything they say.

And it isn’t that they are simply unbelievable, untrustworthy and full of it, they and McCain and Palin are also viewed as socially backward and behind the times, technologically advanced but culturally primitive -unrepresentative of what the world believes the real America to be.

In a world where Liberal usually means right of centre, non-Americans are astonished to hear “Liberal’ launched as a cuss-word by people who believe that the world was created in seven days and that dinosaurs and humans once walked the earth at the same time.

A few days ago it was announced that Volkswagen had overtaken Exxon-Mobil as the world’s most highly valued company. In a world where ’socialism’ is an even more outrageous insult than ‘liberal’, it is startling to contemplate the fact that Volkswagen is a product of the post-war British Army of the Rhine directed by the 1945 British government of Clement Atlee- a bunch of socialist commissars who reinvented Hitler’s ‘People’s Car’ and put it on the road.

It was these same socialists who were responsible for civilising industrial relations in Germany by inventing the idea of Co-Determination, a system where the worker participates at every executive level of the German corporation and worker directors sit on corporate boards.

Co-Determination is an idea which has been so successful that it has transformed European social relations and flowered into the adoption of an EU social agenda – aimed at full employment and a more inclusive, participatory society. On December 9, 1989, the member states, with the historically ironic exception of the United Kingdom, adopted a declaration constituting the Community Charter of the Fundamental Social Rights of Workers.

Among the areas regulated in this charter are such matters as employment and remuneration, improvement of living and working conditions, social protection, freedom of association, collective bargaining, equal treatment of men and women, industrial health, the protection of children, elderly and disabled persons; and information, consultation and participation of workers in decision-making. Most of these principles are still, in the United States, subjects of bitter dispute.

A couple of weeks ago, President Bush, in a piteous appeal for a return to the wild, begged his fellow world leaders not to abandon the principles of laissez-faire when they come to remake the world in the aftermath of the current economic meltdown and the almost inevitable social catastrophe to follow.

The next president of the United States will need to come to terms with a world which no longer works according to American principles and rules. Free trade, globalisation, and the ideas behind the multilateral agreement on investment are obsolete.

This time, as in every crisis of capitalism, the pundits are dashing to the Internet and the libraries to reread Karl Marx.
Marx was not a sentimentalist. He hated neither capitalism nor capitalists. They were objective realities and functioned according to certain principles. Capitalism was doomed to fail because of its fundamental internal contradictions – not because of the greed of its practitioners.

These contradictions include the antagonism between the social, collective nature of production on the one hand, and private ownership of the means of production on the other; and the antagonism between the world market and the limitations of the nation state. Capitalism is based on production for profit and not for social need. The working class creates new value but receives only a portion of that new value back as wages.

The capitalists take the rest – the surplus. As a result, the working class collectively cannot afford to buy back all the goods it produces. Capitalism destroys its own markets by pauperising its workers and by over-production. Marx predicted globalisation and the worldwide effects we now experience.

The opponents of socialism, the proponents of laissez-faire, tend to believe like Margaret Thatcher that “There is no such thing as society” and like Ronald Reagan that “Government is not the answer, Government is the problem.” The ultra-capitalists and globalisers abhor what they call “the Nanny State” – the welfare state that attempts to guarantee a basic level of civilised existence for all.

In FA Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom?” the problem is stated: “In place of individual liberty, socialism offers security. It promises protection from personal economic necessities and restraints, and an equality of economic well-being.” Hayek was not a socialist.

The main architect of the latest disaster, Alan Greenspan, has proclaimed himself confounded by the turn of events. He had a set of rules which he says had always worked. Until now! He cannot understand the disaster over which he presided.

Greenspan is a disciple of Ayn Rand, one of recent history’s most eminent false prophets. Rand’s theory – so-called ‘Objectivism’ – holds that human beings must rationally be selfish, putting individual self-interest first. She therefore rejects the ethical doctrine of altruism – a moral obligation to live not only for one’s self but for the sake of others. Since Rand took millions of words to define her philosophy, any summary of it is perforce crude. I do not think, however, that I have misrepresented her, or Hayek, or Greenspan, or Thatcher or Reagan or the millions of others to whom freedom is a purely personal attribute and life is every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.

Some others of us think that none of us is free if any of us is unfree. The fascists believe that any sense of duty outside of self is a fetter, restricting real freedom. We believe that only by our mutual recognition of all our humanity are we human, and that our civilisation and survival depend on that. We are all in the same boat and on the same journey.

Individual liberty clearly means different things to different people. The International Republican Institute, headed by John McCain, no doubt believes that the people of Haiti are free, and free to starve to death, while the people of Cuba are enslaved by socialism, free education and the best health services in the world.

The IRI was one of the prime movers in usurping Haitian sovereignty to get rid of Jean Bertrand Aristide whom they consider a serious threat to real democracy as he was intent on building another socialist/welfare state alongside Cuba.

NAUGHT FOR THEIR COMFORT

The Gleaner on Wednesday betrayed the essentially parasitical view of imperial capitalism, when it headlined a soiree held at the Gleaner with the admonition “Look away from the USA”, and reported that a number of academics and a (now obligatory) theologian were urging the government to seek financial aid from world powers other than the USA.

On Sunday last Mr Edward Seaga similarly gave his considered and equally obtuse opinion that Jamaica stood to gain nothing from either Obama or McCain.

family tradition

 

each ancient mango tree marks an old grave

i listen as my father tells the tale

so each sweet fruit is memory of a slave

 

a rapid flight is all that they could crave

back to the east faster than any sail

each ancient mango tree marks an old grave

 

in those hard times folk knew how to behave

and on which side of truth to set the scale

so each sweet fruit is memory of a slave

 

we can’t know if they cursed and then forgave

that’s not recorded on the bill of sale

each ancient mango tree marks an old grave

 

so many symbols here that we could save

to make into our kind of holy grail

so each sweet fruit is memory of a slave

 

those lives were ordinary nothing brave

about survival only not to fail

each ancient mango tree marks an old grave

so each sweet fruit is memory of a slave

before sunset

 

in deepest silence thunder is most loud

so long to wait as sun falls into night

so many hope that all will turn out right

each of us hopes the world will make us proud

for far too long  heads bent beneath the cloud

we’ve let the fools define honest delight

and only said what they let us recite

it was so easy to stay in the crowd

now it is hard to be so cool and calm

as any pebble in a winter stream

when worlds depend upon more than just art

but tired bodies ache for some soft balm

it is not easy to blank out each dream

for joy insists on filling each sore heart

possibility

 

this is bright sunrise on a golden shore

a smile that ends confusion and old night

we get the honest gifts and something more

 

we’d reached the point where breathing was a chore

day after day the tales added to fright

this is bright sunshine on a golden shore

 

the face the voice that millions would adore

when at the last they come into our sight

we get the honest gifts and something more

 

knowledge that hope has evened up the score

our chances now are far better than slight

this is bright sunshine on a golden shore

 

we turn away from all that we abhor

to cleanse the stain and wash away the blight

we get the honest gifts and something more

 

together now we open this new door

and go outside to set the world aright

this is bright sunshine on a golden shore

we get the honest gifts and something more

The USA — Free At Last?

 

 

John Maxwell

 

In the first flush of her Cinderella epiphany, Sarah Palin impudently dismissed Barack Obama as a  community organiser. She was right in describing the function, wrong in assuming that scope of his organising was south-side Chicago. It turns out, after Tuesday’s elections, that Obama had been organising his entire national community and perhaps others outside.

Overnight, Obama became the human face of the United States of America; not a red or blue America, not a white or black America but what Obama, in the audacity of his  hope called “the United States of America” -  a construct not of states and institutions, but of people. As his former rival Hilary Clinton declared  on Tuesday night: “We are celebrating an historic victory for the American people.”

His own people got the message, as did a substantial proportion of the peoples outside the USA.

 

Free at Last ?

The statistics tell some of the story:

First time voters Obama won overwhelmingly  – 69% to McCain’s 30%

Men  – slightly more -49% – voted for Obama than for McCain – 48%

Women – Obama won a big maJority of the women’s vote – 56% to 43% for McCain

Ethnicity – McCain won 55% of white voters to Obama’s 43%. Obama won more white voters than either Kerry (2004) or Al Gore (2000)

Obama, as might have been expected, was backed by almost every black voter  – 95% -and  20% more of them turned out than is usual. Obama  won overwhelmingly among Hispanics – 66% -  and Asians – 62%

Age – Obama won 66% of voters under 30, 53% of voters between 30 and 44; tied with McCain -49% each – among voters 45 to 59 while  McCain won the majority only among the oldest voters, those over 60 years, at 52% to Obama’s 46%

Education – Obama won a majority among all classes, with his largest majority 63% among those who were not graduates of high school and between 51% and 53% of high school graduates and  those with some college education and college graduates.

Religion – McCain won 54% of the Protestant vote and 55% of those who go to church at least once a week. Among Catholics Obama won 53% and 77% of Jews gave him their votes.

Location – In big cities Obama won big majorities – 71%, and in small cities, 59%. In the suburbs he beat McCain by two points  – 50% to 48%. Only in small towns and rural areas did  McCain win – 53%.

These figures strongly suggest that Barack Obama has been the most cosmopolitan vote getter in the history of elections in the USA.

And he is the first since Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson whose election  did not depend on carefully selected subsets of the American demography. He has in fact uprooted the carefully constructed Republican blueprint for electoral domination -prejudicial redistricting enforced  by carefully selected judges.

This process has over the last thirty years, has made the US House of Representatives almost immune to change with a majority of seats having been made safe by gerrymandering. In April In New York state, for example, there was great consternation when a Democrat won a seat held by Republicans since 1939. That was my first clue that Obama was likely to be elected President, that there was an insurrection afoot.

I expect that the new US president and the  congress will take steps to abolish this ‘rotten borough’ system and put new life into the electoral process.

One malign result of the process of embedding permanent representatives is that the Republicans have a built in electoral advantage

The most malignant result of this long-term process has been the increasing politicisation of the US Supreme Court in support of a fundamentalist theological agenda, delicately racist and intolerant of modernity.

take a deep breath

 

only the wise know just how great is chance

so many fools think gods have things in hand

or huge and smelly demons stalk the land

and dragons must be faced with steady lance 

by men who on their fair chargers will prance

the holy folk who know facts in advance

turn out right quickly not to understand

the difference between brain and upright gland

and blame as magic what is normal dance

we who have watched in silence and in pain

for these long years as matters have got worse

could sense no sure relief from these hard jars

no certain ending to the acid rain

the world was groaning under weighty curse

but clouds have broken and we see the stars

reading significance

 

we listened hard and heard as ocean broke

on quiet beaches and the foamy white

fingers of immense force seemed to delight

in what they touched let our tired feet soak

in the warm salty pleasure of each stroke

of that great hand the day was sharp and  bright

and the whole universe seemed ours by right

we laughed and thought we understood the joke

so much of knowledge is how each can feel

a world of magics at the skin’s tight end

without a sense of energy or strain

this case is settled on the first appeal

because we find that each can best attend

to matters that are well set out and plain

Jamaica for Sale

 

 

 

John Maxwell

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the observer

 

it is my task only to note the hap

you may not ask me to take up a side

there is no honest claim here to abide

nor to pass on just listen for the clap

of daily thunder and wait for the snap

as rushing fools in their great haste collide

and will not yield because of spite or pride

when you see this you understand the trap

the only job that pays has its own cost

you won’t find out until you’ve signed the form

and by that time you are no longer whole

but fallen deep among the wholly lost

ashamed to say you had not felt the storm

but sorry at the low price of your soul

some sort of game

 

no one expects the answer to be quick

a simple matter is not what we know

still pride demands that we give the last lick

 

after warm rain cold air makes the fog thick

but it would take a fool to want breeze blow

no one expects the answer to be quick

 

you were taught long ago the price of brick

and how to make the faster ones go slow

still pride demands that we give the last lick

 

to those who demonstrate that they are thick

in spite of all the efforts that we show

no one expects the answer to be quick

 

only that some good sense be made to stick

within the hardest heads with no outflow

still pride demands that we give the last lick

 

on the behinds of those who think to prick

our solid patience and escape the blow

no one expects the answer to be quick

still pride demands that we give the last lick

no king returns

 

we wait for rescue and beseech for aid

lacking in energy to build our hope

we’d hang ourselves had we a length of rope

our teachers have worked well we are afraid

of secret forces that have been arrayed

against our interests and we cannot cope

with any hard idea we need soft soap

to soothe us now as we accept the blade

those who would warn have nothing more to say

in all this noise and might as well shut up

letting what happens simply take its course

the foolish are supposed to have their way

while we’re constrained to drink from the dark cup

and see the final cost of all their force

evaluation

 

so much was lost and now so much is found

each tiny gain has much to signify

yet still the fear that we may run aground

 

a single word can the whole world astound

and utter silence be the best reply

so much was lost and now so much is found

 

now all may see beyond the narrow bound

set by our masters and reject the lie

yet still the fear that we may run aground

 

in solemn order we shall soon expound

upon just meanings and true reasons why

so much was lost and now so much is found

 

you would have bowed if  one of them had frowned

can stand upright now under this clear sky

yet still the fear that we may run aground

 

these are the times we have with glory crowned

made into visions pleasing to each eye

so much was lost and now so much is found

yet still the fear that we may run aground

landing at midday

 those massive towers that seem to draw in cloud

on rainy days now stand revealed and clear

clean and beguiling in the autumn air

announcing more than properly allowed

to those who pass to the amazing crowd

who pause to think and to those brave who dare

to tell us what is right and what is fair

the truths that make us stand up tall and proud

now fun inheres in many things we make

both in real life and all the times we dream

hope into being for our better days

all of our joy is in what we partake

with fellow framers of the human meme

creating subjects for a higher gaze

so now applause

 

the age of miracles is not yet past

we see the light and are constrained to weep

at finding out that we have got off cheap

 

while others suffered from the sudden blast

and learned the price of what they got to keep

the age of miracles is not yet past

 

this turning world now seems to move too fast

for those of us who have no time to sleep

while others think that centuries just creep

the age of miracles is not yet past

blue

 

when the storms break change comes upon the land

new rivers rise each clearing a fresh course

having pushed up from a surprising source

that is a matter we can understand

in books and pictures we might think it grand

a fact of nature each fool would endorse

as being nothing more than goodly force

and proof that death is but a gentle hand

we let things happen and they do not slip

past our control into some roaring drain

as blank-faced masses wait to see things pass

value remains beyond each rise or dip

that has been measured or been written plain

and we see clearly through transparent glass

ill fares the land

 

you counted golden the worth of your name

now see it tarnished by this acid rain

not generations will remove the stain

of knowing you thought life and death a game

worth playing just so you won greatest fame

while blood and water swirl down every drain

and soldiers’laugh at each new orphan’s pain

you speak of cities that might feel the flame

so fools cry out and call on you for aid

while skies turn darker and rivers run dry

your mighty shadow seems to many blessed

by divine power so you lead the parade

smiling as you’re the focus of each eye

ready to guide us on with massive zest

but not so eager to confront the test

at sight of hardship your star seems to fade

and calls for effort lead your force to die

we ask for help but you won’t make the grade

instead you look down from a brazen sky

as the red sun sinks into furthest west

the journey’s long the hills hard to ascend

but choosing you is something we could mend

Foolish Virgins & the Wrath to Come

 

 

John Maxwell

 

Eighty years ago the giant American company, General Motors decided on a strategy to sell cars, not Just to sell cars but to convert first the United States into an automobile owning democracy. ‘Automobile’ – a heavy and clumsy word, conveyed subtle hints of free range, autonomy and capitalist self determination. ‘Car’ – on the other hand was redolent of old fashioned modes of transport like street cars and railway cars all public transportation.

Though it was never put in these terms, automobiles would be the motive power behind leaving the herd and joining the rat race.

Beginning in the twenties, GM conducted widespread PR campaigns against public transportation, particularly aimed at getting streetcars – trams – off the roads. streetcars, buses and trains were limiting to personal mobility GM said.  Although no one had noticed those limitations before, GM was selling the idea that cars were the ticket to the wide open spaces of America, although few roads then existed to get to those wide open spaces and there wasn’t much to be done there, except for hikers, nature-lovers and gangsters looking for places to dump dead bodies.

General Motors, through a dummy corporation, began buying up tramways and shutting them down on the ground that they were old fashioned, slow and got in the way of cars. in collusion with Standard Oil of California and Firestone (tyres) GM bought the largest makers of buses in the US so that public and private transportation would not only be controlled by Detroit but tied to the internal combustion engine.

Americans loved their cars. Some early movies seemed to be more about cars than people and pretty soon the charms of “Chattanooga Choo Choo” were blown away in the exhausts from “Route 66″ where you could get your kicks fleeing dead ends like New York and Boston for the wide open soullessness of Bakersfield Calif or Oklahoma City, which was ‘mighty pretty’.

‘A basketful of King Cobras’

Detroit built automobiles, big, clumsy vehicles with soft suspensions and inefficient engines. In the 1950s writer Tom McCahill reviewed new cars for Mechanix Illustrated magazine though he continually lambasted American automakers for their sloppy suspension and inefficient engines. He once criticised the suspension of Ford’s Edsel as so dangerous that “I wouldn’t own one except with the export kit; without stiffer suspension, a car with so much performance could prove similar to opening a Christmas basket full of King Cobras in a small room with the lights out”.

But McCahill  was also a nationalist and went along with the US auto industry as it defied  commonsense and continued building gas guzzlers. Of course, at that time, gasoline was priced in cents per gallon, not dollars. But California was already beginning to enforce fuel consumption and air pollution standards on cars,  so they can’t say they didn’t know which way the wind was blowing. McCahill did tend to laugh at the small European and Japanese cars which were beginning to nibble at GM’s near monopoly on the US market.

out past the blue

 

to reach the realm that lies beyond the sun

takes so much effort that most folk will fold

their angry hands and let their eyes grow cold

tell you their patience long ago was done

you have to finish before you’ve begun

and understand the lies you have been told

it is too hard these days to be true bold

and reach out past the stars just for the fun

what good is given we shall have to take

not with a smile but with a steady look

just so each knows the proper word to say

the world we leave is easy to forsake

and much is written in the golden book

but that is matter for a calmer day

so now change

 

the autumn flower’s not delicate of kind

but sturdy growth is what we most desire

a stunning smile then winter’s stern attire

we must take on these are the goods we find

as times grow stern to our hard tasks we bind

so many wishes and we hope the choir

sings just as clearly as the days require

for all our visions now have left us blind

so much that’s good has passed out of plain sight

into the dust where we cannot recall

just how to make what should matter suffice

but now fresh day has come out of the night

and there’s no reason for a soul to stall

while double sixes come up on the dice

a simple matrix

 

those who mean well end up not knowing much

our very reason in the end rebels

at what are simple but resounding yells

 

we cannot reach and so we have to clutch

before calm force absorbs or else impels

those who mean well end up not knowing much

 

we watch the ball bounce hard right out of touch

our ears are deafened by the warning bells

nothing remains but what we hope excels

those who mean well end up not knowing much

human veins

 

knowing the hour must mean we know the place

where justice meets with anger and they ride

the horse of pain this is where heroes stride

in open season none would fear disgrace

since not a one would dare bow or abase

his own deep need before the other side

there is a proper setting for true pride

where understanding gives each monster space

between the echoes we might hear a word

conveyed with clarity and given due force

by those whose task it is simply to speak

of matters complex and of the absurd

conditions under which we chide the weak

obliging them to step out of the course

what has been seen

 

fractions and fragments broken on the head

of tiny knowledge things that have been turned

between swift signals when the court adjourned

throwing us out into the wider dread

of rotting time and weeds in the rose-bed

such were the wages which our fear had earned

in the dry season while the forest burned

you spoke and no one heard a thing you said

justice requires a citizen must pay

for all the pleasures and the sins of state

since honour’s lash is straightforward and harsh

this rule is clear there are no shades of grey

nor compromises on the road to fate

just noisy birds that call out on the marsh

night-walker’s song

 

so now this clarity in unflawed glass

allows a truth that we must never bend

these are the days that far too swiftly pass

 

you’d challenge what is said just for its brass

words that would hurt but had no warmth to mend

so now this clarity in unflawed glass

 

not clear to us the road through the morass

nor what to do to change the downward trend

these are the days that far too swiftly pass

 

leaving us with no grace but drying grass

and sullen folk who will not comprehend

so now this clarity in unflawed glass

 

the wisest one looks foolish on his ass

nor will the servile bother to pretend

these are the days that far too swiftly pass

 

into the memory of the tardy class

as one more message that we cannot send

so now this clarity in unflawed glass

these are the days that far too swiftly pass

so much for balance

 

narrow the vision and a world’s unseen

withhold the names and much is left unsaid

a simple thing but so easy to dread

you learn the facts and then you are not keen

to face what is to come the things that mean

not merely change but that you were misled

by a false light and too soon will be dead

to all that mattered and will leave the scene

this altered light suffices to inform

our surging hearts of the firm pace of time

just as our eyes catch sight of the grim bird

that circles slowly just before the storm

clear testament to what had been a crime

that speaks as loudly as a human word

royal command

 

to mete out magics is no complex task

a sterner duty comes to try the heart

we leave the hangman to his gentle art

and do not hear the hungry when they ask

for dryest crumbs nor grant drops from the flask

compassion is not what we would call smart

just fling the bodies on the diggers’ cart

and do not seek to look behind the mask

so many lies and all upon the page

that  hide plain fact behind a scrim of glare

we would not have you see the world entire

as simple subject for your honest rage

nor yet as calling forth a word of rage

respectful silence now until the fire

ballade of doubt

 

no one will think an error self-corrects

blind folk see better than those who have led

our startled crew and learned from the effects

that it were better if they all had bled

completely flat and nothing more were said

it being time now to express true rage

and letting no kind words the mood assuage

we will not let the hero get the blame

it is our duty now to set the stage

before we pass into the final flame

 

the kind of man who his own thought collects

might think that there was time to prevent dread

but he who speaks knows best what he expects

when facing those who he with lies has fed

at the right moment when the world turns red

he has learned swiftly their weak minds to gauge

and shows himself to them as king and sage

while not revealing the whole thing is a game

there’s no defence monocyte macrophage

before we pass into the final flame

 

you might have thought of these human defects

as bringing matters to a stirring head

but not a one here fact with fact connects

or sorts the clearly living from the dead

all are just here to earn a little bread

make some small money collect daily wage

for that alone they would their time engage

you might think that a kind of mortal shame

it’s not their task to answer your hard gage

before we pass into the final flame

 

prince you might wonder at these things backstage

but they’re the matter of our dying age

we say the words and give the facts a frame

but that’s no more than simple persiflage

before we pass into the final flame

time for a change

 

your duty is to serve without a pause

those who are worse than you and who must hurt

your heart and soul and give you justest cause

to overturn them and cast into dirt

all of their forces you must disconcert

those who expect that you are just a pawn

who do not think that you get your desert

night lasts its time but the earth turns to dawn

 

the ones who always get loudest applause

are those who in their way have to assert

entitlement both to tears and guffaws

it takes you little effort to exert

your claim to justice that is not covert

against a force that is not soon withdrawn

it is no easy matter to assert

night lasts its time but the earth turns to dawn

 

we find it written in a complex clause

that scholars have no reason to pervert

reason is subject to no human laws

we must to basic principles revert

and from its course the evil power divert

by dint of honesty as well as brawn

until the force of terror lies inert

night lasts its time but the earth turns to dawn

 

prince we are flattered you have not been curt

and have not chosen our hopes to subvert

these are the times when hopes are not yet gone

we might with many choices have to flirt

night lasts its time but the earth turns to dawn

when mosquitoes come

 

at sunset when mosquitoes come to play

their urgent buzzing games of sucking blood

the darkness comes upon us like a flood

we long for cleansing light of the next day

behind the net there is not much to say

outside the frogs are croaking in the mud

a misplaced word falls now with heavy thud

this is the season when thought goes astray

smoke blends with fog in the short humid night

as all our measures pause within the heat

not one is certain and they all seem wrong

in their slow circle all the clouds move right

over the mountains to a steady beat

and deep within each heart there is a song

from the first echo

 

from the first echo of the shout of doom

there was a sense that time itself would lend

the means by which those who could best attend

would start by emptying each cluttered room

in the clear daylight no dull weight of gloom

would keep us back nor hold us from that end

which in our hearts we have to comprehend

the universe is not truly a womb

name what we suffer and it does not die

there are no magics here nor ever were

faith cannot work to save us from our fate

it always seems that we desire the lie

want one more moment simply to confer

upon ourselves the burden of deep hate

The Human Zoo

 

John Maxwell

 

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

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

wet sunday morning

 

once past the dark the bronze and gold hold sway

in this half-light the kingdom of the rain

what we name silver is a brighter grey

 

no one is certain on this sort of day

but would not venture to speak nor complain

once past the dark the bronze and gold hold sway

 

there are no shadows that is what we say

in the damp woods the leaf-mould leaves its stain

what we name silver is a brighter grey

 

with its cold hand the passing storm will slay

dry heat of summer and tie winter’s chain

once past the dark the bronze and gold h old sway

 

beneath loose dirt is nothing but hard clay

red as the rust that wants to claim its reign

what we name silver is a brighter grey

 

it is no use to shout or disobey

the dull commands of human body’s pain

once past the dark the bronze and gold hold sway

what we name silver is a brighter grey

boundary of time

 

a single moment and we see the shade

vanish abruptly as the sun appears

night seems to caution but the new day cheers

 

towards the west late birds head in parade

nobody with their movement interferes

a single moment and we see the shade

 

some other meaning must have been conveyed

in all the gathering of daily cares

just as we note the changing of the airs

a single moment and we see the shade

taking stock

 

after long shadow an uncertain light

shows wintry forest and a frosty town

but we are grateful for the end of night

 

dawn brings us matters that do not delight

the legacy of knave and fool and clown

after long shadow an uncertain light

 

nor are the guilty shame-faced or contrite

rather they think they still deserve renown

but we are grateful for the end of night

 

hope holds her breath for chances are so slight

yet no one thinks that we should talk them down

after long shadow an uncertain light

 

the criminal declares that he was right

to let the storm-wracked take their chance and drown

but we are grateful for the end of night

 

what we are left with is the thought of blight

as futures close and each has cause to frown

after long shadow an uncertain light

but we are grateful for the end of night

no need to explain

 

so foolish words and actions will run deep

enough to make a stolid watcher cry

in honest pain at the uncaring sky

while to their lairs the hungry roaches creep

leaving behind mere messes in a heap

to irritate the nose and scar the eye

of any dumb enough to pass right by

this haunts the mind even when fast asleep

no one who knows the facts dares to insist

that you remain unmoved by the desire

expressed within the heart before each death

as the proud victim falls beneath the fist

to seem more worthy of the butcher’s hire

than those that simply feared to lose their breath

a pyrrhic tale

 

we reach the boundary and cannot cross
so much of what we need is left behind
we paid for victory with greater loss

those are the symbols which we have to toss
into the bin and cast them from each mind
we reach the boundary and cannot cross

into the pleasant meadows there’s no gloss
to this clear meaning life is never kind
we paid for victory with greater loss

than we expected we received the dross
instead of gold and that is the true bind
we reach the boundary and cannot cross

the one who lost might now become the boss
in the hot quandary through which we find
we paid for victory with greater loss

the dry-stone wall turns green now with the moss
of centuries forgotten by the blind
we reach the boundary and cannot cross
we paid for victory with greater loss

proud refusal

a single maple leaf is hanging on
in dumb defiance of the dying year
on this calm street the autumn’s plain and drear

this change of seasons is time’s greatest con
from bright and colourful to deadly sere
a single maple leaf is hanging on

age teaches us to reach a rapprochement
with all those forces in their fast career
that push us forward but one thing is clear
a single maple leaf is hanging on

those who give most

 

those who give most are those who feel most hurt

when life itself is turned into a jest

by those to whom no greeting is addressed

but who have some old anger to assert

you might not think there’s much that could divert

this river from its course but being pressed

we find that those who act do so with zest

and leave us panting sadly in the dirt

these are the signals that we did not see

sent to the ones who most wanted to learn

just how to fight and make a better home

without distinction of form or degree

some things it turns out we just have to earn

and it is easier to stay than roam

The People are the Change

 

 

 

John Maxwell

 

I’m sure it is possible to second guess Barack Obama.

I’m sure it is possible to outrun Usain Bolt.

I’m pretty certain I won’t be around to witness either event.

The real value of Barack Obama is the fact that millions of people round the world have incorporated Obama into their own dreams, almost into their own personas.

After the foul miasma of the last few years has begun to clear it was almost inevitable that when our most outlandish wish came true, against all the odds, we would bundle all our hopes and aspirations into the skinny kid with the funny name who spoke of change as if it were important and -  that he meant what he said.

In this atmosphere of swirling myth and springtime tears, it is easy to forget Bismarck’s apothegm: politics is the art of the possible. “Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable – the art of the next best” said the founder of Germany; John Kenneth Galbraith’s apparent dismissal of Bismarck is in fact a confirmation -”Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.”

Thousands of bloggers and people supposedly learned in the craft of politics, have been having conniptions because Barack Obama has not chosen to break out of the American political system in some revolutionary expedition to wipe all slates clean and to dry every tear.

Obama, like Lincoln and Roosevelt before him, or Bismarck himself or Fidel Castro or Jean Bertrand Aristide – is not a freak of nature but the perfectly logical crystallisation of his people’s dreams. And these dreams have always been various, coalitions of desire which can never be wholly fulfilled because some are always at odds with others. The most fundamental ideals of all,  Freedom and Liberty, mean many different things to any different people. Harmonising these contradictions in the interest of the greater good is the essence of what we call politics.

Some pundits have declared that in choosing Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates and Lawrence Summers among others, Obama has sold out. Sold out to the past, to the Clintons, to the status quo.

They don’t understand Obama – who does? – and they don’t understand politics.

In the American presidential system it is the President who makes policy: foreign policy and domestic policy, social policy and economic. When a President Obama assembles a team he is choosing people who understand  that the US has one President at a time – even when that President is as totally unfitted for the position as was George Bush. I am not being wise after the event: I said so when Bush was about to be appointed to the job by the US Supreme Court.

As I wrote almost exactly 8 years ago, on Friday December 8, 2000 in a column published in this paper on December 10, two days later:

” Most of us still  know nothing about what is going on [in Florida's Supreme Court] of course, because our media is too busy congratulating itself to notice the titanic struggle taking place an hour’s flying time from Kingston. Like the people of the United States, we have been carefully screened from the truth. 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.”

We’ve had the ride, and I forecast some of that too, in the same column:

‘The approaching triumph of Greenspan/Ayn Rand capitalism may just be slowed down by the latest developments in the US economy, but that is not cooling down the ardour of the ‘Cognitive Elite’ to gain a handle on the whole business of corporate control of the economies and governance of the world. ‘

 

Some of us find it really easy to forget unpleasant experience particularly at the hands of someone we were told to trust.  This forgetfulness  allows us to survive all kinds of horrors, but makes it difficult to appreciate just how far the world has travelled since November 4, and how much farther we have to travel.

If we have really observed Obama we might have noticed that he is a man who writes his own script and that he likes to stick to that script, because he knows it makes sense. And he understands too that the best leaders make the best followers, because, more than most, they understand what is to be done. And in Obama they have a leader who they know, from personal experience, is not easily diverted and not willing to surrender his mandate to anyone,

Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s most significant triumph will, I predict, be in Palestine, followed by Darfur, Cuba and Haiti. Just as the anti-communist Republican Richard Nixon was peculiarly qualified to come to terms with China, so, I believe will Hillary Clinton find it possible to secure in the Middle East the peace that Obama wants and the world thirsts for. Barack Obama’s grandfather was tortured by the British in Kenya on suspicion of being tied to Mau Mau. It will be impossible for Obama, with his history, to condemn any people or nation to be the chattels of any other nation.

Even in the highly unlikely event that Mrs Clinton wished to design her own foreign policy she would find it impossible in a Cabinet that also includes Joseph Biden, Bill Richardson and Susan Rice, Obama’s ambassador to the UN. These people know how the world works and they all understand as Bush never did, that the United Sates needs, especially at this juncture, to work with the world.

Great orchestras often contain several maestros, but their pride is in the music they collectively produce under a great conductor. But the same orchestra can sound quite different with another great conductor.

spiritual healing

 

there is no meaning written on the blue

we ask and ask yet there is no reply

we make things up and claim that they are true

 

no certainties are left the world’s askew

all we’ve been told turns out to be a lie

there is no meaning written on the blue

 

there is no need for any ballyhoo

nor reason to praise those who are so sly

we make things up and claim that they are true

 

it does not matter if we change the view

or claim that evil comes to those who pry

there is no meaning written on the blue

 

we kept no secrets from the bird that flew

above our heads it merely passed us by

we make things up and claim that they are true

 

you think that your discoveries are new

yet they are old and rotten and so dry

there is no meaning written on the blue

we make things up and claim that they are true

semaphore

 

signals that are delayed upon the hill

remind us of a time when we were young

and many discords were cheerily sung

 

we face the future with uncertain will

our hopes have been sent out today among

signals that are delayed upon the hill

 

there was no reason to receive a thrill

from any touch of human hand or tongue

instead we found that other folk had hung

signals that are delayed upon the hill

areopagitica

 

words in daylight uttered without least dread

have not the echo of the chilly dark

when into emptiness we might embark

look up right now and see the bird is sped

that bore the message and now in its stead

we’re left to kindle one remaining spark

this morning when the trees are bare and stark

knowing so many words were left unsaid

some might expect a choice but if we feign

not to give in but to attempt the height

would laugh to see us fail to reach the stars

rather they’d say the clouds will promise rain

a storm is coming and behind it night

yet here we stand on the green hill of mars

simple truth

we reach for magic
and finding it we must fall
yet so much glory

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mercenary

no need to mention all that has been told

those sighs that pass when so much has been said

to fill not time but worlds entire with dread

but this belongs they tell us to the old

not those who in those ranks have been enrolled

to fight hard battles for a little bread

not wondering what happens to the dead

nor why they take such risks for tawdry gold

now we must ask for mercy and receive

what gifts we can and hope for something more

while there is light right here where no dogs bark

as the earth turns while soft voices deceive

and not so gently we are shown the door

and told to take our guerdon in the dark

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Investors in limbo

JOHN MAXWELL Sunday, December 14, 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Entitlements

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another world

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright 2008 John Maxwell
jankunnu@gmail.com

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of a xtian commonwealth

sacred police watch every word we send
to keep us safe they tell us as they strike
so we must pray or at the least pretend

into the background each one has to blend
no hostile sound should ever reach the mike
sacred police watch every word we send

there is no one on whom we can depend
into each back they’ll gladly shove the spike
so we must pray or at the least pretend

to be the ones who their message will vend
as gospel to the rich and poor alike
sacred police watch every word we send

we have to note each new official trend
who is in charge and who will take a hike
so we must pray or at the least pretend

that we are pleased to thank and to commend
the masters of this everlasting reich
sacred police watch every word we send
so we must pray or at the least pretend

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of man

our brothers are the crocodile and fox
who see the world as made up of their prey
hope fled this place and dwells among the rocks

the shepherds fled and left to us their flocks
and they grow scrawnier and waste away
our brothers are the crocodile and fox

not for us here the tyranny of clocks
our kingdom is a place of joy and play
hope fled this place and dwells among the rocks

waiting to see what else is in the box
and what new lies we will think up to say
our brothers are the crocodile and fox

we can’t take more of their assaults and shocks
before we fall into complete decay
hope fled this place and dwells among the rocks

a monster listens and then loudly mocks
since any that would win must first betray
our brothers are the crocodile and fox
hope fled this place and dwells among the rocks

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of commonwealth

 

against this massive force no one could dare

raise single hand or malign cause renew

we come together out of more than fear

 

this is a strength that will divide and share

will cut the cord as well as turn the screw

against this massive force no one could dare

 

utter a word we have the might to spare

or to destroy to break up or to glue

we come together out of more than fear

 

the leopard has to lie down with the hare

that sort of thing is proper not undue

against this massive force no one would dare

 

make their small challenge for we can declare

triumph complete with no more ballyhoo

we come together out of more than fear

 

our voices speak command over the air

our craft control wherever we can view

against this massive force no one would dare

we come together out of more than fear

of the kingdom of darkness

the empire’s ghost sits crowned upon its grave
obedience is a habit and we bow
the mind and not the body is the slave

there was no wise tradition left to save
so it was easy our weak hearts to cow
the empire’s ghost sits crowned upon its grave

its reedy music now the voice of knave
and thieving blackbird its nest will endow
the mind and not the body is the slave

to serve and cringe while holy fools will rave
of sacred duties we can’t disavow
the empire’s ghost sits crowned upon its grave

we bend our heads and study to behave
the proper way since we have learned just how
the mind and not the body is the slave

to pains and pleasures we’ve been made to crave
just so we bend and pull the heavy plough
the empire’s ghost sits crowned upon its grave
the mind and not the body is the slave

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The Wealth of the Poor

John Maxwell

It starts, as everything does, in the slums. These are high-class English slums, though, where Mrs Thatcher and her acolytes have been able to prove that when the state abandons its responsibilities there is indeed, no such thing as ‘Society”

Despite this, judges are still willing to sentence teenagers to jail sentences longer than they have been alive, and to denounce said teenagers for their “brutality and cowardice and lack of discipline, training and honour”. In an exquisitely oxymoronic Thatcherism, people deprived of their rights and their dignity by the state are to be punished by the state for their depravity.

In Britain, in Liverpool this week an 18 year old boy, disturbed, dysfunctional and the product of a dysfunctional social and economic background, was sentenced to 22 years in jail for murder. The teenager had been trying to shoot one of his teenage  enemies and hit an 11 year old innocent in error.

Fortunately, it was not Jamaica, or we would have had street-dancing to celebrate another death sentence.

listening

this is the secret spoken into night

by children and old men so many times

watching as yellow moonbeam slowly climbs

along the wall and thinking chances slight

that in the morning matters will go right

each painful turn as distant town bell chimes

provides an early punishment for crimes

not yet committed now that is our plight

what we expect is some sort of return

to better understanding of our hearts

when the sun rises from the winter deep

with all the force with which a man might yearn

for kinder days and all our human arts

brought to effect these are the thoughts we keep

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what came

what came at the beginning was mistake
words uttered by a fool and said in haste
that altered nothing and were soon erased
the wisest turning swiftly to a flake
meanings unclear and symbols made opaque
by those whose urgencies had been debased
so early on now we think it bad taste
all that is left of truth a distant ache
only the wind recalls what might have passed
simple exposure to a world of joy
a door now closed forever to our thought
as into silences our hopes are cast
we watch as others the last goods destroy
and wish them happiness with what they’ve caught

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nothing but shipwreck

nothing but shipwreck is the complete tale
from sunrise to sunset and then again
we rise never to triumph but to fail

all humanity fits here in small scale
from the bahamas right down to cayenne
nothing but shipwreck is the complete tale

our story is the oldest human wail
our fate is limited by a hard pen
we rise never to triumph but to fail

you would not think any of us were frail
and yet we seem the weakest sort of men
nothing but shipwreck is the complete tale

set down in writing in such great detail
the complete record lies within our ken
we rise to never triumph but to fail

the hurricane will tear the largest sail
and end the voyage with a last amen
nothing but shipwreck is the complete tale
we rise never to triumph but to fail

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midwinter

no place to hide it seems from all this cold
just northern sun and wind without warm rain
to ease our judgment of the season’s gain
or loss of simple sense in what was told
by no firm purpose or strong will to hold
as true or wise while light makes all so plain
under the grey that is not quite a bane
to our disloyal hearts that are not bold
justice requires that we add up the tale
of many ages in a small black book
in which clear note shall constantly be kept
while eyes examine all the facts that fail
to measure up as beauty when we look
and heart acknowledge that the world has slept

Virtual Tourism in a Floating Paradise

John Maxwell

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

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

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

Here is the core of the story:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

age of war

we tell ourselves so many foolish lies

about the past and who and what we are

reducing every symbol to a scar

and so becoming what we most despise

our only truths appear in deep disguise

as if reality has turned bizarre

or we had lost sight of our guiding star

and all the world become strange to our eyes

vision’s enhanced by what we seem to fear

as bearing us right past the edge of pain

as what we learn is given proper shape

so much we find when no one else will hear

the honest word nor see what seems most plain

instead they moan that life is one more rape

auld lang syne

this is the place where all shadows begin

beneath the broken house and greenskin tree

i walk just out of tune but hope to win

the colours do not change from out to in

and red leaves on the hedge were meant to be

this is the place where all shadows begin

a moment here when the world does not spin

as all the signs of what we are agree

i walk just out of tune but hope to win

who knows those watching might forbear to grin

as no time passing they must pause to see

this is the place where all shadows begin

that which was lost was made to seem a sin

by falling off and scattering debris

i walk just out of tune but hope to win

those who have heard know what this life has been

in all its echoes and the space left free

this is the place where all shadows begin

i walk just out of tune but hope to win

listening in january

trumpets that echo vainly in the grey

chilly slow moving winter afternoon

call to us hiding each in our cocoon

we want to turn from all the good they say

claim that the messenger’s another loon

trumpets that echo vainly in the grey

do not inform us of a better day

that is our import we see no true boon

in their loud signal they have come too soon

trumpets that echo vainly in the grey

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record of defeat

against these bonds it is not hard to chafe

not knowing what or who will keep us safe

nor where each danger lies there’s the true rub

a deadly serpent hiding under shrub

or bolt of lightning out of cloudy sky

truth hurts enough we cling to comfy lie

in hope that when the pain we feel abates

there won’t be monsters howling at our gates

no certainty was given us at birth

today we’ve plenty and tomorrow dearth

those are our choices all the while we scorn

the hard decisions made by those who torn

between the injuries of times long past

and those of futures into which we cast

not only hope but all the goods of chance

have chosen wrongly now we take the pain

not out of reason but since you abstain

from complete judgment there’s no better path

between the harvest and the aftermath

out of the vision that which we desire

is not the only evil to acquire

darkness is all the best path to forget

we are in chains because we lost the bet

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the angle means something

always the eye returns to the same view

of plain and river and the water there

forming a boundary of sun and air

so much i thought at once merged old and new

there was no voice to warn nothing to fear

always the eye returns to the same view

where each looks westward seeking for a clue

where day has vanished and the load of care

seems now to double and we are aware

always the eye returns to the same view

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A Picture Worth A Thousand Words

John Maxwell

There is a picture that has made front pages round the world. It is  fairly simple picture; against a background of bombed and burning buildings there are three people in the foreground. A woman, in a paroxysm of grief and probably terror, a man, her husband perhaps, a picture of impotent rage and in his arms, their son, an infant of majestic detachment, conscious it would seem, of everything, but not in the least disturbed. He knows too much, already – it seems.

*             *             *             *             *

Fifty New Year’s Eves ago nearly nine out of every ten people now alive weren’t born yet.

I was then 24, contemplating marriage and, with my girlfriend, celebrating the ending of the old year with a close friend and his wife in their house in Gordon Town.

We were listening to one of about 80 Cuban radio  stations we could hear in Jamaica, It was Radio Rebelde, the voice of the 26 of July Movement.  We were expecting interesting news, as over the past few days it was becoming obvious that the tide was turning against ‘la dictadura’  - despite all the US attempts to shore up the bloody tyranny of Fulgencio Batista

On New Year’s Eve the American effort came crashing down. The Radio Rebelde announcer began to shout:

“The Dictator has fled! the tyrant has gone!”  Pandemonium!

All of a sudden the disciplined broadcasters of Radio Rebelde were like high school kids, celebrating end of term.  We listened to make sure we’d heard right and then Wilmot Perkins and I and our ladies jumped up and down, singing Cuban songs and drinking toasts to Fidel, Ché, Raul, Camilo  and whoever else we could remember.  Some of them we’d met on their way through Jamaica, courtesy of Gabriel Coulthard who seemed to know everyone in Latin America and brought them round to meet us at Public Opinion. Fidel’s lawyer, Baudilio Castellanos, was one.

For most younger journalists in Jamaica at that time, Cuba was the big story and a year later, after the Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation had come into existence, I decided to go to Cuba to find out what was going on.  When my mother heard of my plans she convinced Wills Isaacs, a family friend  – to try to talk me out of it. Wills, then Minister of Trade & Industry did even better. With his good friend Aaron Matalon, Wills offered me a year on an Israeli Moshav cooperative farm – which they knew fascinated me – if only I would not go to Cuba, where I was ‘more than likely to be shot’.

At that time I was really deeply interested in the new social experiment that was Israel and like most people at that time had no real idea of what had happened to the Palestinians, no idea that the Palestinians were being made to pay in blood and treasure, for what Europe had done to the Jews. As a child I’d seen the horrific pictures of the stick figures of dead and dying Jews in the German extermination centres, Belsen, Birkenau, Buchenwald, Dachau and Auschwitz, the  names themselves seemed  to stink

I never saw pictures of the Palestinian refugees in their camps nor any documentaries of their Nabka -  their counterpart to the Jewish holocaust.

I was an admirer of Israel, of Ben Gurion and Shimon Peres, of  Abba Eban of Golda Meir and Teddy Kolleck. My first real problem with Israel came with their execution of Adolph Eichmann. I said in a newspaper commentary (1963) that for Israel to reintroduce the death penalty for Eichmann was a dangerous error. To hang him for facilitating the murder of six million Jews plus homosexuals, Gypsies blacks and others was to devalue their lives. Eichmann, I suggested, should be sentenced to work in a kibbutz, to experience at first hand, the civilisation he had tried to destroy. That would have been real punishment.

down the islands

the shine of emerald from steady growth

hides from us the smiling face of hell

we have the sunshine and the shadow both

the odour of fresh roses and the smell

of  rot and dung and none is truly hid

from those who want to look but none will tell

any large truths although if any did

there’s none who’d care or have a thing to say

since honest folk have fallen from the grid

and cultivate their gardens for the day

that they have left before the storm appears

out of the sea and sweeps the waste away

making things clean for one or two brief years

until the forest can return to place

and under branches we see the old fears

laughing and dancing and seeking embrace

of their old kingdom and their ancient arts

while on the hill some old fool says disgrace

and others tell false stories of their parts

in different dramas on this very scene

and in the process corrupt many hearts

twisting and turning away from the mean

those who had come out of the chill of night

and taken joy in the clear morning green

knaves leave their streaks wherever there is light

what the boy saw

a sluggish snake of water in morass

black against vulgar green and very slow

the map names it broad river how i know

that is a lesson for another class

where you may ask about what lay below

a sluggish snake of water in morass

as dark and hostile as volcanic glass

but lacking any memory of glow

simple and steady in its westward flow

a sluggish snake of water in morass

under the casuarinas

these mottled shadows mark a middle day

when even buzzing flies do not distract

and all the senses into calm contract

all who are wise seek shelter from the ray

desiring to keep head and heart intact

these mottled shadows mark a middle day

when we pass through we’ll catch sight of the bay

in middle distance through a glass that’s cracked

and in the haze not tell what’s dream from fact

these mottled shadows mark a middle day

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villanelle for a new beginning

if all is measured and comes up too short

at the beginning all was calm and clear

at least we know we sailed from the right port

so many words and so high their import

uttered with gravity and without fear

if all is measured and comes up too short

there is not one who would dare to distort

the grace and beauty that make this day fair

at least we know we sailed from the right port

cheered by an assemblage of every sort

of human being given to our care

if all is measured and comes up too short

there is no crime no sin of false report

to hide our faces but we have to care

at least we know we sailed from the right port

we ask no judgment since there is no court

above our heads in the still winter air

if all is measured and comes up too short

at least we know we sailed from the right port

not going the right way

those who would listen to the tricky sun

expecting that its laughter portends good

are certain that they have not understood

when they look up and see the staring gun

truth does not liberate this fact will stun

the childish mind that thinks in terms of should

and sees the living man as saint in wood

finds now that something different has been spun

into the shadow no one seeks to go

but those deep voices and their angry tone

have more to say and seem today more true

about those matters that not one could know

before the knife had cut through to the bone

exposing so much sorrow to the view

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Bullets Can’t Kill Crime

John Maxwell

There are studies enough and statistics galore to prove to the most ignorant and obscurantist amongst us that retaliatory crime and violence is not a policy to defeat crime or criminality.
Crime is a symptom of a diseased society and we can no more ’solve’ crime by killing criminals than we can solve terrorism by exterminating people identified as “terrorists”.
In Afghanistan the world is now recognising these truisms – after thousands of deaths, of American and European soldiers, of Taliban guerrillas, Al Qaeda terrorists and after spending billions on a wild goose chase and slaughter of innocent Afghans, Pakistanis and others, caught in the crossfire of a misbegotten “War on Terror”. In the process we have destroyed cultures and ecologies, economies and communities, all without making any serious progress toward the stated objective. Using the present means guarantees comprehensive failure, as in Vietnam and Cambodia, and as over and over in Afghanistan itself from the time of Alexander the Great to the present day.
Right after ‘9/11′ some of us pointed out that it was impossible to wage war on an abstraction; that terrorism was an abstraction with no central command; that ‘terrorism’ was the last resort of the hopeless, the anthem of the desperate in the last extremity of their attempts to communicate their misery, their thirst for justice. . As Fidel Castro points out, bullets can kill the poor, but bullets can’t kill poverty; bullets can kill the hopeless and the hungry; bullets cannot kill hopelessness and bullets cannot kill hunger.

A Summons to Justice

    One Friday morning more than 40 years ago I was at my Editor’s desk at Public Opinion, the weekly political review, when I got a phone call from Jamaica’s very first Director of Public Prosecutions, Huntley Monroe, QC.

“Maxwell,” he said,”I have read your editorial in this morning’s paper and I must tell you that if you cannot justify every word of it it will be my duty to put you behind bars.”
There were actually two editorials titled
Was it Murder ? – I
and
Was it Murder ? – II
Both concerned unlawful killing. The second was about the lynching of men in Padmore, Red Hills, on suspicion of being goat thieves and called for the DPP’s intervention.
The first was about the killing of a young waiter of the Courtleigh Manor Hotel by a policeman named George Porter.

George Porter was a policeman who had a year or so earlier, assaulted me and charged me with using indecent language, obstructing a policeman in his duty, resisting arrest and assaulting him and another policeman at a police roadblock at Constant Spring. The details of the fracas were recorded rather imaginatively in the Star under the headline:

“Editor charged with Cursing, Cop-beating.”

I was innocent but that was no excuse on the night. I was dragged to the Halfway Tree Police Station where Porter and some other cops, one a woman. tried to drag me upstairs to give me a ‘proper beating.’ I resisted and they eventually desisted. My then wife had meanwhile woken up my publisher, O.T. Fairclough, a JP and a man of some presence, who came and bailed me.
One result of all this was my being found guilty on the lying evidence of Cons Porter and one of his accomplices. I was fined £2 each on the ‘bad word’ and assault charges and had to pay £2 each for teeth I had allegedly knocked out of Porter’s mouth.
The other consequence was to prove much more serious for Porter. I lost my front door key in the second fracas at the cop shop.
A friend of mine, Rolly Simms, a Communist who farmed a piece of land in Mocho, now destroyed by bauxite mining, was a director of the Citrus Growers Association and stayed at my house whenever the CGA and or JAS had directors meetings in Kingston.
Sometime after my soiree with Cons Porter, Rolly came to town, went to my house and found that I wasn’t home and my door key was not in its usual place. He went down to the Courtleigh for supper and heard that one of the waiters, a person he knew, had ben shot and killed the night before as he made his way home after collecting his week’s pay.

According to the story in the Sunday Gleaner, Constable George Porter had been on duty in the Holborn Road gully area on Friday night in response to ‘numerous’ reports of a robber operating in the area. On the night, Porter had accosted a suspicious individual who, when challenged had attacked the constable with a huge clasp knife and the constable, in self-defence, had had to shoot the highwayman.

But Rolly heard a different story at the Courtleigh. The waiter, Cassells, was a slight fellow and his sole weapon was a small penknife with a picture of a naked lady on the handle. Cassells himself was not only small, he was meek and peace-loving. Further, his colleagues and family wanted to know what had happened to his pay-packet, his wallet, and the bicycle he had been riding?
When Rolly told me the story and I told him who Porter was we were both determined to follow the trail to the end.
Through the Courtleigh workers we soon found a taxi driver who had been parked in the bushes where the Towers now stand on Dominica Drive. (The area was said to be a lover’s lane.) When I heard THE TAXI DRIVER’S STORY I asked Kenny McNeill, one of Jamaica’s foremost surgeons to attend the autopsy. When Kenny got to the morgue he was told the autopsy had been held earlier than scheduled and burial ordered.
When Huntley Monroe phoned me I told him some of what the taxi driver had told us and about the phantom autopsy.
THE TAXI DRIVER SAID there had been no attack by Cassells – who was about six inches shorter than Porter and about thirty pounds lighter.
What happened was that Porter, in plain clothes, had constituted himself into a one man crime-wave. He had waylaid Cassells as he had ambushed others before; Cassells who like Porter came from Kellitts, recognised his schoolmate.
Cassels last words were something like:
“But a no you dat George?”
to which the reply was a savage ‘pistol-whipping’ ended by several gunshots, many in Cassells’ back.
When Kenny McNeill reported on the phantom autopsy, the DPP at my suggestion, ordered an exhumation of the body and a second, real autopsy. The results from Kenny, were devastating. Cassells had been savagely beaten as we contended and shot in the back.
Porter was guilty as charged and sentenced to hang.
We don’t hang policemen in Jamaica as a rule, no matter how serious their crimes. As I was a known opponent of capital punishment, Porter’s supporters knew they could count on my signature on the petition to the Governor General.
Porter’s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
In 1972 the government of Michael Manley wanted to pardon a man who had been in prison, many thought, wrongfully, for the manslaughter of several fellow policemen who had tormented the young policeman – Roy Morgrage – beyond endurance. His ‘crime’ had been committed in 1948, and he had been in prison for 24 years, well beyond the normal life sentence. He had been kept in prison by police pressure. No matter how gross the provocation they felt, Morgrage had killed policemen.
Many people had long felt that Morgrage should never have been convicted, but for what seemed a specially selected jury and that even had he been properly convicted, his sentence was excessive. When the police federation heard of Morgrage’s impending pardon all hell broke loose. The police demanded Porter’s pardon in return for not making problems about Morgrage.
In the eyes of the police the offences appeared, somehow, comparable. Morgrage, tormented, humiliated abused and sexually threatened reacted in blind desperation seizing the first instrument to hand to end a programme of merciless persecution.
George Porter, who murdered a civilian in cold blood was given full support by the police and by certain members of the press and of the legal profession. He spent one third of Morgrage’s time in prison, under considerably better conditions.
Both, I believe are now living abroad. I tell the story because there is now an artificially created frenzy, a supposed ”popular movement’ to install one of Jamaica’s most volatile men as Commissioner of Police.
I believe that the director of Public Prosecutions should do for Mr Reneto Adams what her predecessor did for me, so long ago. She should facilitate him in discharging his clear public duty, particularly because of the nature of the job he covets
Mr Adams a little while ago, while discussing the vacancy in the office of Commissioner, made some statements about criminal behaviour in certain places, in politics and among human rights organisations.
These statements were so serious that I believe if they are true they must be pursued with the utmost rigour.
I believe that Miss Paula Llewellyn QC. has a statutory duty to ask Mr Reneto Adams for further and better particulars and if he cannot produce them, to do what Huntley Monroe threatened to do to me four decades ago – prosecute for criminal libel.
Copyright©2009John Maxwell jankunnu@gmail.com

no winter farm

so often broken scented with manure

dark earth yields little without freight of pain

not yellow tubers nor yet tasty grain

that does not speak of what we must endure

this simple purpose is the only cure

beneath the moon our inner voice says plain

for what ails most but there is no great gain

nor ever hope that wisdom will come pure

here light may sting and sun will leave a burn

noon is not dark nor will we ever pine

for the lost sweetness of the rising sap

no children dance with joy at sunreturn

nor old men feel the need for warming wine

yet each must have the sense of a sprung trap

man o’war hill

we chose at last the path out of deep night

through tangled vines and withes into clean air

nothing we gained came to us just by right

 

what we’d been told was that the facts would bite

each normal mind and send us to despair

we chose at last the path out of deep night

 

not with relief but knowing that a fight

would have to come and that no one would care

nothing we gained came to us just by right

 

instead we seemed the victims of some spite

from distant past inheritors of fear

we chose at last the path out of deep night

 

although each thought that hope was truly slight

the only thing we had to do was dare

nothing we gained came to us just by right

 

we were the folk throughout bereft of light

who never thought the process could be fair

we chose at last the path out of deep night

nothing we gained came to us just by right

Why We Fail

 

 

John Maxwell

Once upon a time, it seemed, we could do no wrong. These days, it seems we can do nothing right.
Apart from the brilliant natural talent of our young men and women, everything we touch turns to lead.
But wait!
If our young people can do so well at athletic sports, at university and in competition with spellers ad chess players from all over, how come we’re not doing much better, overall? Why are so many of our kids killing themselves or being killed by other kids or getting into all kinds of bizarre trouble?
Perhaps we should ask Mr Latibeaudiere, lately governor of the bank of Jamaica, who earns in a year more than most of us would earn in several lifetimes. Anyone paid as much as he must be very, very wise indeed. Or perhaps we should ask Mr Tony Hylton, head of the Port Authority, whose weight is enough to anchor US$200+ millions in debt – no questions asked about how we will pay back this money.
On one side of our society are thousands of children who, given encouragement and the right leadership, will work like slaves to excel and do well for their country. On the other side are ladies and gentlemen of exalted degree whose mantra is development and who persistently ask a question so simple that it should be duck soup to answer: why can’t the police reduce the crime rate?
Such a simple question.
Really?
One of the good things about writing for the press is the feedback. You get it in the shops, in the newspaper columns and courtesy of some of the so-called talk-shows. I’ve got it from fishermen in Discovery Bay and Treasure Beach, from a ‘limousine’ driver in Ridgefield, Connecticut and from Rastas everywhere.
In response to my column last week there were several of the standard responses, suggesting that I am simply wrongheaded and wondering why I didn’t join the respectable classes.

They didn’t quite put it that way. A few weeks ago an item in the Gleaner’s historical highlights reminded me of a time when I provoked even more anger. The was an item about the introduction of the National Minimum Wage, (October 22, 1975) a fight begun and carried on Public Eye until it was eventually successful. But not before one stush chatelaine in her stush Benz took deliberate aim and spat at me as I walked on South Odeon Avenue.

October was a busy month for me in the Gleaner’s highlights, recounting my close encounter years earlier (October 23, 1960) with the statue of Lewis Quier Bowerbank, one of George William Gordon’s murderers. At about midnight on that October night 49 years ago, I unleashed my sledgehammer in protest against Bowerbank and the fact that Gordon was still considered a criminal. People noticed, although only a few knew who the midnight ‘vandal’ was.
Memories like these amuse me when I read something like this

“Yawn!!
Maxwell, sometimes I think you encourage slackness too much. Squatters and other so-called underprivileged are responsible for the uglification of Jamaica.
What is it that you have against progress? Do you want Jamaica to continue in poverty and ugliness because people have to “scratch out a living”? “

There exists a whole phalanx of critics who have swallowed gallons of the Globalisation Kool-Aid and who believe that Jamaica would be well on the way to “Take-Off” if only we were more “competitive”
These characters don’t realise that we are competitive where it counts: Our interest rates are among the highest in the world, to try to persuade people to rinse their money here rather than in Cayman; We have more underemployed able-bodied skilled and unskilled. people than anywhere else. Our country, instead of being able to be in any way self-reliant,has forgotten how to cook and instead depends on junk-food and imported sugar water for sustenance.
And then they wonder why people are so violent.
Is there anyone in Jamaica who makes his/her own butter? I did at my Uncle Hugh Cork’s small farm, first in Tollgate and then in Juno Gully, May Pen. I learned to manage honeybees, goats, cows, chickens, turkeys and rabbits. Our people having been driven off the land can’t tell the difference between coco and dasheen or know what you mean when you speak of renta, St Vincent, Lucea or himba. The development of bauxite has obliterated enormous areas of Jamaican culture, devastating farmland, driving fathers abroad and mothers and their children to kraals in inhospitable cities.
The sense of community is destroyed. The artisan skills of the elders is replaced by cheap shoes, cheap clothes, cheap furniture and cheap ‘food’ from abroad. Our people are adrift in the most extreme shopkeeper culture in the world, ignorant and incompetent to help themselves.
Many of the apparently Jamaican products now merchandised here are imported. No Jamaican farmers are involved. Even some coconut water is imported from southeast Asia. The merchants see no need to foster Jamaican agriculture. After all, they are helping famers, in Thailand, Brazil and California. That’s Development!

“Come on, let development proceed and we will have more people getting employment.
I don’t know about you but I don’t want to live in a country where we have all these underdeveloped establishments”

The ‘underdeveloped establishment’ would be a community owned beach, run by the community with minimal assistance, perhaps, from state agencies. That was the aim. But there were and are forces in this country determined that poor people should have no autonomy and for nearly forty years they have sabotaged, corrupted and tried to destroy that dream of Hellshire and a productive, autonomous community.

The causes of Squatting

One in every three people in Jamaica is a squatter, driven off the land by bauxite or some other ‘development’. We can’t afford to find safe housing land because, when the Constitution was being written in 1962 the rich decided that the government effectively must pay cash for any property it wanted. So housing is built on marginal farmland which has defaulted into the hands of government. We lose land for food and endanger the lives of those who live on these lands. We can’t plan to develop places like May Pen or Santa Cruz because the speculative vultures have cornered the land markets. Instead we build dormitory disasters on land subject to flooding or landslides.
    In beautiful and historic Falmouth, we are busy making a billion dollar cosy corner for the Royal Caribbean Line on the alleged promise that they will be bringing 6,000 visitors a week to Falmouth What we don’t know is that we have probably been conned…

Mr Arthur Frommer is probably the foremost travel writer/publisher in the world. He has been investigating the fabled Oasis of the Seas . Here Is Mr Frommer:

“Starting in May of 2010, Half of the Itineraries of ‘Oasis of the Seas’ Become Cruises to Nowhere
“You have only to read the actual schedules of the new, 220,000-ton, 6,000-passenger Oasis of the Seas to understand the revolutionary nature of the changes it will bring about. .…
On weekly, seven-night sailings, the mammoth ship leaves each Saturday afternoon from Ft. Lauderdale, … then sailing for six more days and nights. Every week, on all itineraries, it spends three of those six days simply at sea, stopping nowhere. And then, on an itinerary it follows every other week starting in May, it devotes the fourth of those six days to a stop at the “private island” (actually a “private beach”) of Labadee on the coast of Haiti. Labadee, as you may have experienced on one of your own cruises, is a totally isolated stretch of sand fenced in by barbed wire and guards from Haiti and Haitians. “
There’s more, much more here:http://www.frommers.com/blog/
As I reported nearly a year ago, the new megaships are no longer means of transportation; they are full-fledged resorts in their own right, offering dozens of restaurants, casinos, shops, auctions and other consumerist attractions too grandiose to mention.

The Oasis of the Seas will make land-based hotels irrelevant. Instead of bringing visitors to Jamaica the new ships will bring an ersatz Jamaica to the visitors. Each of these ships will be human zoos specially designed to bemuse their clientele…

 

‘Crapital’ (sic) of the world

According to the literature each ship’s ‘central park’ will be basically a mini ‘jungle’ themed to reflect an imaginary island, say Jamaica, no doubt with its quota of 5 iguanas, 3 crocodiles, 2 dozen parrots, a cage of humming birds and other ‘authentic’ simulacra of the ‘authentic’ island experience – about as much authentic ‘nature’ as a couch potato can stand– and making it unnecessary to actually visit the place.

One cannot help hoping that these benefactors of the sea will have the forethought to include appropriate accommodation in their casinos to display retired politicians and other ginnigogs in their natural habitat.
Given all this, the rationale for the Falmouth cruise shipping centre is simple: There’s got to be somewhere to dump the huge amounts of waste generated by such a monumentally environmentally unfriendly project. Falmouth’s destiny is to act as a relief point for the ship to be sanitised, resupplied with cheap Jamaican water and for the ship its passengers and crew to offload their excrement in what will become the cruise crapital (sic) of the world. And, thanks to the Port Authority, we get to pay for it – another taxpayer privilege like the Doomsday Highway.
You read it here first.

What is development?

The Kool Aid drinkers, waiting on Deliverance will wait in vain. They will soon discover that there is little difference between the likes of Bernard Madoff and Goldman Sachs apart from the fact that one has immeasurably more ‘backative’ than the other but they were in their own way, developers, making things happen, destroying pensions nest-eggs and lives.
We in Jamaica, particularly people like Derek Latibeaudiere, would understand this. It is a natural consequence of ‘development.’
In Germany there is a substantial number of people who feel differently. They were brought up in a society, like old time Jamaica, where people looked out for each other. This philosophy is even engrained in the law, which mandates what is called “co-determination” in which the workers have a statutory interest in their enterprise, in the goods or services they produce and in the management of their production. Workers sit on the boards of management, even of Krupp and Volksagen.
It was therefore no surprise to me to read two news items from Germany that may have startled some others but didn’t really shock me. Just as Goldman Sachs was announcing a bonus fund for its managers equivalent to the GDP of the Greater Antilles, the BMW company was announcing new bonus and pay policy.

Sustainable Culture

“BMW plans to tie executive bonuses to those of its blue-collar workers, in a bid to create a fairer and sustainable compensation environment within the company.
” Starting in 2010, the company will use a common formula to ascertain and award bonuses to its upper and lower level employees, based on the company’s performance as measured by profit, sales and other factors. That means that upper level management could potentially lose more money than their lower level counterparts for bad performance, BMW said.”
According to a spokesman BMW wanted not only to produce sustainable cars but a sustainable corporate culture.
Mr Golding should perhaps ask My Latibeaudiere to write him a short study on the possibilities of applying these principles in Jamaica
The other news item did startle a few of my friends. Some rich Germans have come together to petition their government to raise their taxes to help their country. For retired doctor Dieter Kelmkuhl, 66, it is time the wealthy came to the aid of their country.
Dr Kelmkuhl estimate that if the 2.2 million Germans who have personal fortunes of more than 500,000 euros (750,000 dollars) paid a tax of five percent this year and next, it would provide the state with 100 billion euros.
Perhaps Mr Golding could ask the Private Sector Organisation to come up with a comparable proposal. It is well known that Jamaican salaries at the top are competitive with the Developed world, and Jamaicans are famous for their generous and benevolent nature – as Lady Nugent and the Caymanians can testify.

We could easily raise the money to build our own cruise-ship. After all,seventy five years ago, the 27,000 small farmer members of the Jamaica Banana Association raised the money to build three ocean going “banana boats” – the Jamaica Producer, the Jamaica Pioneer and the Jamaica Planter, two of them sunk in wartime service.

What couldn’t we do if we could get the rich to invest in Jamaica?
If we started by putting money into education (meals, buildings, teachers, playing fields) we would certainly not find it necessary to change Commissioners of Police quite so often.
As the World Bank might say –”Trust us!”

Copyright©2009 John Maxwell – jankunnu@gmail.com

The Rape of the Public Interest

John Maxwell

In 1973, nearly forty years ago,I was one of the journalists on the new JBCTV public affairs programme, Press Conference – later renamed Firing Line. One of the first guests on the programme was Moses Matalon, the first chairman of the UDC – the Urban Development Corporation.

Mr Matalon was then – as we say in Jamaica ‘in him ackee’. He had been installed in 1968 by the JLP Finance and Development Minister Edward Seaga and confirmed by the new, PNP Prime Minister, Michael Manley when he took office in 1972.
Someone of course had to invent the aphorism: ‘JLP or PNP in office, no matter, Matalon in power!’
The UDC was then at the height of its public relations prowess, spinning out brochure after brochure detailing how the corporation was going to give Jamaica an extreme makeover and convert it into the Miami of the Caribbean.
At that time, Hellshire had only recently been rediscovered. The rugged geology conspired with the harsh climate to keep Hellshire out of sight to all but a few Jamaicans, mainly bird-shooters and crocodile hunters like James Gore, father and son, hog hunters and fishermen. The UDC decided to change all that. It was going to build another Kingston across the water – eclipsing Portmore whose prospects were pretty dim at that time.
Some of us who knew something about Hellshire would drive out on the new UDC road to swim and eat some fish with the fishermen. It was even possible to skinny dip on the deserted white sand beach with 20-ft dunes walling off parts of the beach from easy view.
It was paradise, whether you inhaled or imbibed or simply lay about in blissful, peaceful idleness.
About two or three weeks before Mr Matalon’s appearance on Press Conference a few of us found an enormous gully cut across the road to Hellshire – between Fort Clarence and Halfmoon Bay.

On Press Conference Mr Matalon expatiated on his plans to remodel Jamaica, always skirting delicately round Hellshire. In response to a direct question he admitted, yes, there was a plan to develop Hellshire as a tourist resort . I asked him whether he realised that Halfmoon Bay was the only good beach within reach of Kingston’s sweltering multitudes. He said there was Gunboat Beach. I said Gunboat was now too dirty for swimming and even with its neighbour, Buccaneer Beach there was not enough space for Kingston’s people.

Since he didn’t reply to that I asked him why had the UDC cut the road to Hellshire preventing people going to the beach?
Matalon said he didn’t know the road had been cut. I told him it had been done, when and by whom. Would he make inquiries and ensure that the road was back in operation say, by the weekend?
Somewhat sheepishly, he agreed.
Matalon regarded me, as a journalist, as a damned nuisance. In 1977, when I became Chairman of the Natural Resources Conservation Authority, he became really upset with me.

Obnoxious Obstructionist

Matalon was what they call ‘multi-faceted’: He was not only chairman of the public sector UDC Group, he was also Chairman of the Portmore Land Development Company the developers and West Indies Home Contractors, the builders of Portmore, and a director of the Adventure Inn/Forum group, etc., etc., ad nauseam.
We clashed over Portmore, further development of which we stopped, until the developers agreed to reserve land for parks, schools, public buildings including an advanced health clinic, a fire brigade station and several police stations. We also insisted on serious strengthening of the foundations of the houses, since Portmore was underlain by irregular lenses of peat, sand, quicksand, unconsolidated clay and gravels and other debris deposited by the Rio Cobre, the Sandy Gully and other streams which had formed the estuary on which Portmore was being built. The whole area was subject to liquefaction in a sufficiently violent earthquake.
We also insisted on a complete modern sewage treatment plant plus measures to mitigate hurricane storm surge and flooding from the rivers.
The upshot was that Michael Manley summoned me to Jamaica House to inform me that the houses at Waterford, originally to be sold for $7,000 would now cost $11,000.
In one particular exchange Mr Matalon was upset by some figures I had quoted on earthquake risk at Portmore. He then said: “But Mr Maxwell, you are not an engineer!”
To which I replied: “But neither are you, Mr Matalon!”.
As far as he was concerned, and as he told Vin Lawrence a few minutes later, Maxwell was simply “an obnoxious, overeducated Rasta!” In addition to which, I seemed far too fond of mangroves and mosquito-breeding swamps.

Relocating the Fishermen                    

I got along well with the Rasta fishermen of Hellshire. They had heard that they were to be ‘relocated’ and asked me to help them. Their beach was to be converted into an exclusive Beach Club and they would have to find some other place to scratch a living
Some of these men had been on Halfmoon Bay for more than thirty years, and there seem to have been fishermen on that beach since the Tainos. The UDC had come in, knocked down Fort Johnstone and other ruins or allowed freebooters to sack them for the stones. A pair of contractors told me that they had been paid to remove the dunes and transport the sand to the nascent Adventure Inn/Forum in Port Henderson.
The UDC had revised its plan for Hellshire. In that limestone desert they were going to build a collection of suburban developments but still backed by the beach club.
I argued with the UDC, wanting them to reserve wilderness and scientific reserves. I argued the despite what they thought, the hog-hunters knew that iguanas and coneys were not extinct but still lived in Hellshire.
I begged them for 32 acres of land at Halfmoon Bay for the fishermen. We wanted space for a fishing village, a secure area for boats and gear and an area behind the beach where the fishermen and the families could sell the cooked result of their labours.
I got nowhere until I went to talk to Michael Manley He deputed Hugh Small and D.K.Duncan to try to solve the problem. We were valiantly backed up by Beverley Manley.
It was agreed – in 1979 – that the UDC would turn over ten acres of land to the Fishermen’s Cooperative

Slippery customer

The UDC is by far the slipperiest customer with whom I have ever had to deal.
•A few years ago, fully aware that their legal department had already signed off on the transfer of Title to the fishermen – although the fishermen had not been informed – the UDC proceed under cover of darkness to criminally trespass on the houses of the fishermen, bulldozing them, while publicly and libellously claiming that the people were squatters.
•In or about 1980, the UDC, having been informed that what they proposed was illegal, proceeded to construct a groyne at the outlet to Jackass Water Hole, starving the fisherman’s beach of sand. now, a quarter of a century later, because the Jackass Water hole groyne has colleted enough sand on its southeastern side to make a new, small beach, additional sand is once again flowing to Haalfmoon Beach. The dunes are back and new middleclass squatters have built substantial buildings on them, contrary to law and common sense and against the interest of the original stakeholders and the public interest.

•According to the campaign now being waged in the Gleaner, the fishermen are merely leaseholders and any minute now I expect the UDC to claim that these are 24-hour leases, or some such lunacy.
The propaganda is that the beach is a hotbed of gun and drug smugglers though how these activities would go unnoticed in this community mystifies me. Perhaps the beach will be seized as the product of contraband activity and sold, perhaps to the Spaniards. I wonder who will get the finder’s fee?
It is simply the latest in a series of campaigns to demoralise the fishermen, subvert their leadership, undermine their will and spirit and drive them off the beach.

Now that the white sand is back, the beach has become ‘marketable’– the sand is valued by the ounce, and the poor fishermen and their families are about to be defrauded of their legitimate interest. The public is about to have another beach stolen, despite the existence of prescriptive rights inherent in the fishermen and in their clients such as you and me.
The state, as the Public Trustee, will betray its trust, as usual
Incredible stories have surfaced, all to suggest that poor people’s rights are not worth respecting. And all those who, over the years, refused to help defend the fishermen and to build a really attractive folk industry centre will no doubt be happy when steel gates go up across the beach and you are offered croissants instead of festival with your Dover sole a la bonne femme.

The Brutification of Falmouth.

    I haven’t seen it myself, but I do not doubt the stories I’ve been told of the savage attack now in progress on the history and archaeology of Falmouth. I know, as a boy and much more recently, that in the Falmouth nearshore it was possible to pick up 300 year old bottles and other relics of the past.
Now, people watching the dredging say they have seen historic artefacts in the material being dredged for the establishment of the proposed cruise shipping pier. These artefacts are unceremoniously dumped in the offshore deeps.
If this is true I believe the coroner for the area should be informed and that he should take immediate action to end this depraved assault on our history and our culture. Is there no one in Falmouth, or Trelawny or in Jamaica, public-spirited enough to pledge some money to fight these barbarians in court?

Copyright ©2009 John Maxwell jankunnu@gmail.com

red leaves

down south you forget the ripening leaves

and chilly mornings of bright october

no matter for redly a dying time grieves

 

sunlight on water fair smiling deceives

at dawn the frost shone hard on grass and clover

down south you forget the ripening leaves

 

yet clock there remains the swiftest of thieves

treating the same way both stayer and rover

no matter for redly a dying time grieves

 

telling each young one that what he believes

is false never true and patience is over

down south you forget the ripening leaves

 

slowly to slaughter we marched off the beeves

a suitable task for the youthful drrover

no matter how redly a dying time grieves

 

the adult must measure how much he achieves

in calm acquiescence knowingly sober

down south you forget the ripening leaves

no matter how redly a dying time grieves

villager

forbear to throw more weight upon the ass

since longer journey we must soon begin

the copper coin that the lone guide shall spin

no better guide through the hardest impasse

since at the end there may be but rough grass

and all our commons could turn out most thin

still none of that our better hope’s to win

leaving our enemies in the morass

the hardest victory is still the first

when no experience is on our side

but suffering so all we know is pain

so we must say this has to be the worst

in largest part just to protect our pride

but also to account for your huge gain

franking privilege

a single miss enough to count as grave

no one to note but you and you are sly

might grant yourself a pardon and know why

it is an easy thing to grant or save

no man or woman dares to be too brave

and nothing is less honest than the eye

or ear while happy mouth has just to lie

no one need argue they need but behave

the politic approach is what we take

in angry time when nothing matches might

and everyone needs bow before the claw

while honest people lie for hours awake

not knowing what disasters wait in night

but certain that silenced has been the law

In Defence of Life

John Maxwell

Freedom and Liberty are properties of a free society.
A free society is one which is able to govern itself because all its members have equal right to take part in making the rules by which it is governed
All of us are equal and no one is more ‘Equal’ than any other. Mr Anthony Hylton has no more right to decide the fate of Falmouth than does the most miserable homeless person on the streets of Yallahs or Heartease.
All sorts of far-reaching decisions affecting work, health, security and welfare are being taken by people who believe that their temporary authority gives them the right to change the rules under which we operate – usually to their advantage.
Obviously, governments must be able to change the ordinary rules to fit them better to public satisfaction, but there are some rules that are so important that they should always require a special mandate from the society – a certification that the people have discussed the question and agree how it should be resolved.
In modern democracies, particularly those who take their cues from the US, there has arisen a tendency to employ hysteria and expensive public relations campaigns to change laws to accommodate some private interest with the excuse that such change will benefit the public. The snow job of the 20th century was the eventually successful campaign to neuter the Glass-Steagall Act, of which you have probably never heard. What you may have observed, however, is the catastrophic human suffering and financial carnage which were consequences of the dismantling of the Act.
The Glass-Steagall Act was the last constraint preventing US banks from turning themselves into casinoes, bucket shops and high class financial brothels, evading tax, breaking laws left, right and centre while pauperising millions of working and middleclass people all over the world.
This week, a personage as august and unlikely as the Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, launched his campaign for the breaking up of the big banks, plus tough new regulations to force them to behave more like banks and less like the Mafia.
In his drive to break up the banks Mr King joins a distinguished assemblage on this side of the Atlantic. They include, mirabile dictu, Alan Greenspan, the single major factor in the recent lunacy; Mr Paul Volcker, Greenspan’s predecessor; the former eminence grise of the IMF, Stanley Fischer; Nobel prizewinning economists including Joe Stiglitz and Ed Prescott, MIT professor and former Chief Economist at the World Bank Don Johnson, the president of the Independent Community Bankers of America (5,000 members); the head of the FDIC (Bank regulator) Sheila Bair; the leading monetary economist and co-author with Milton Friedman of the leading treatise on the Great Depression, Anna Schwartz; Profs. Nouriel Roubini and Prem Sikka and a whole galaxy of economists of greater or lesser magnitude. Eliot Spitzer, former Attorney General and Governor of New York says that the only people who don’t seem to understand what’s necessary are President Obama and his advisers, Geithner, Summers and Bernanke – and, of course, Goldman Sachs.
Whatever happens, whether the banks are rationally re-sectioned or simply collapse from the weight of their criminal incompetence and corruption, it should be obvious to all of us that the cost of snow jobs may be catastrophic and may engulf entire societies.

 

Hanging for Abortion ?

More than half a century ago there was published one of the first, if not the first scientific survey of a Jamaican population. It was authored by J. Mayone Stycos and Don Mills, both of whom are now world famous. The survey was as far as I can remember called something like the Jamaican Fertility Survey and it investigated the practice and prospects of family planning among Jamaican women. I am reminded by references on the Internet that this was a groundbreaking study for several reasons, among them its developing country primacy, but also because it contained devices which could test the veracity of the respondents.
This was necessary because of the intimacy of the questions and the suspicions of a largely illiterate sample in an exercise that was totally new to them.
For me, the most surprising result of the survey was that Roman Catholics, largely middle class, were the most enthusiastic receivers of family planning information and were the most likely to practice birth control. The better educated, the more likely to accept family planning, regardless of faith.
In its latest fantasia the Don Anderson polls report that Just under 80 per cent of adult Jamaicans surveyed believe that abortion is murder, and “are strongly convinced that abortion should be regarded as murder …”

This of course brings up some serious questions, especially with the Opposition baying for capital punishment in a savage reversion to primal mores; with the leader of the Opposition asking the rest of the world to be charitable towards Jamaica’s new taste for barbarism and with the government apparently willing to ‘ do a ting’ for any interest group that can seriously allege that it has 500 votes.
Will Mr Golding consider hanging (working class) women who abort, the doctors and others who assist them? Are we preparing for American style shoot-outs at doctor’s offices?
Are we really ready for the logical consequences of our lunacy?
Before we do ourselves serious mental, physical, material, economic and political injury I would ask my readers to have a look at some thoughts of a learned Roman Catholic nun, who is also a theologian and one who has worked among poor people for most of her life.
Sister Ivonne Gebara was silenced by her Archbishop, Cardinal Cardozo Sobrinho of Recife, and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops of Brazil. In refusing to shut up, Sister Gebara replied:

In Defence of LIfe

“The question of legalized abortion has for too many years undergone a notable process of mutation, not only in society in general, but also in the church.  In the same way as the mirrors and the coloured stones of the social and religious kaleidoscope change, so too do the discussions concerning this difficult question; and this has generated a tremendous diversity of philosophical, religious, psychological, political, and legal discussions, not always with the direct participation of women. 
“Today I am in favour of decriminalizing and legalizing abortion as one means of lessening the violence against life.  I am also aware of the inherent irritations of this position, and of the difficulties, legal and otherwise, due in particular to the inefficiency of our public institutions. 
“Living in a neighbourhood on the periphery of the city and having contact with the suffering of hundreds of women (especially poor women who live under tremendous stress due to their personal problems as well as problems of survival), gives me the necessary backing for some of the affirmations that in conscience I must make.  I address the question more from the perspective of poor women because they are the main victims of this tragic situation. 
“According to statistics published by various health organizations, it is estimated that in Brazil there are millions of illegal abortions annually, with maternal mortality at 10 percent.  Such frightening figures are indicators of a serious social problem that needs to be brought under control.  Thus, it is primarily the duty of the state to guarantee order and to legislate in a way that assures that the life of all citizens is respected.  Legalizing abortion does not mean the affirmation of the ‘goodness,’ ‘innocence,’ or even ‘unconditional defence’ of the act of abortion: rather, it offers the possibility of humanizing and making safe what is already being practiced. 

 

“Legalizing abortion is merely one of the important aspects of a broader struggle within a society that condones the social abortion of its sons and daughters.  A society that does not provide the conditions of adequate employment, health, housing, and schools is an abortive society.  A society that obliges women to choose between keeping their jobs and terminating a pregnancy is an abortive society.  A society that continues to permit pregnancy testing as a requirement for hiring women is abortive.  A society that remains silent about the responsibility of the men and blames only women, disrespects their bodies and their history, that is exclusive and sexist, is an abortive society. 

“Decriminalizing abortion could be considered, according to this way of thinking, a means to perpetuate institutionalized violence; a kind of violent response to a violent situation.  But such a thesis would apply only if the thousands of abortions and women’s deaths did not in fact already exist.  As these are indisputable facts, to legislate them in the most respectful manner possible becomes a way of diminishing the violence against women and society in general. 

“In this line of thought, to focus on the ‘defense of the innocent’ from its most embryonic stage, as some people propose, is a way of concealing the indiscriminate killing of whole populations – who are equally innocent albeit in a different way – as a result of wars, or of economic, political, military, and cultural processes that take place in our societies today. 

“For me as a Christian, to defend decriminalizing and regulating abortion does not mean disavowing the traditional teachings of the Gospel of Jesus and the church; rather it is a way of entering into them more deeply given the paradox of our human history, a way of actually decreasing violence against life. 
“Christian principles, as well as others, do not always withstand the imperatives of concrete life, imperatives that make us more compliant, more merciful, more understanding, and more convinced that the law is for people and not people for the law; that the law should help us in our weakness, above all when our liberty is crushed by unjust structures that do not permit the realization of free and totally human acts. 

“My position with regard to the decriminalization and legalization of abortion, as a citizen, a Christian, and a member of a religious community is one of denouncing the evil, the institutionalized violence, the abuses, and the hypocrisy that envelop us.  It is a testimony to life; it is in defense of life.” 

Sister Gebara now teaches at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. The clipping was sent to me by one of my readers, Fred Nunes.

I think all who intend to take part in this discussion owe themselves the duty and privilege of re-reading Sister Gebara’s testimony.

Copyright©2009 John Maxwell jankunnu@gmail.com

The Truth & the Public Interest

John Maxwell

On Monday, in this newspaper I made an astonishing and disconcerting discovery. The Don Anderson poll, on the basis of 535 interviews announced that 90% of Jamaicans agreed that a foetus is a human being.
I knew that many Jamaicans were ignorant, but I had no idea that so many of us were so clueless.
I then became extremely offended by this so called poll because I am almost certain that 90% of Jamaicans cannot give any sensible definition of the word ‘foetus’. In addition the number of respondents is too small, we have no idea how they were selected (were they all churchgoers?) and the questions were unscientific and unbalanced.

My apprehension was confirmed on Wednesday, when the Observer, to my absolute incredulity published one of the most misleading news stories I have ever read.
According to the Anderson poll, reported by the Observer

“Abortions being done without knowledge that foetus is real child, poll finds.”

If the Observer can provide proof that a “foetus is a real child”, that foetuses are ‘real’ children I will donate whatever the newspaper pays me over the next year to the Mustard Seed Community or to any charity of their choice.
I would like to ask the sponsor of the poll – the Mustard Seed Community, the polltaker, Don Anderson and the Observer to publicly explain the process by which they have arrived at the determination that a foetus is a child.

This is extremely important, because if a foetus is a ‘real child’ – the rules of science will need urgent revision and the teaching of biology and sociology will be revolutionised.
I believe that public discourse, particularly public discourse designed to influence public opinion and to change the laws by which we are governed, must be conducted ethically.
That is to say all the participants must recognise the right of the public to be told the truth, so that when they make up their minds they do so rationally and not because they have been misinformed by lies or misled by hysteria.
I define a fact as a statement susceptible to independent verification. Facts will turn out to be facts whoever is looking at them and wherever. They don’t change whether the scientist is a Muslim, a Christian or an atheist.
Different belief systems have their own attitude to certain facts but the attitude does not alter the fact. Scientists may be moral persons according to their lights, but neither their DNA nor the instruments they use have any moral status.
To argue, as the so-called pro-life faction argues, that human life begins at conception is nonsense. Human life began a long time ago and conception is simply another link in a continuum which began long before human consciousness.
There is an old joke about a young woman coming aboard a tram, looking a little exhausted. Seeing all seats filled she goes to a nice young man and asks for his seat, on the ground that she is pregnant. He yields his seat and, out of shameless curiosity asks–
“And how long have you been pregnant?”
“About fifteen minutes”, she says.

Laws for Nomads

The Israelites needed as much manpower as their small tribe could muster, so when they codified the rules of their society they made an example of Onan, who spilled his seed rather than impregnating his widowed sister in law. For this he was put to death, an example enlarged and magnified to terrify young boys with the perils of masturbation.
Science has now discovered that those who masturbate or otherwise spill their seed in non-procreative events are less likely to be killed by prostate cancer than those who dont.
There are all kinds of people telling us that we must pay literal tribute to the holy books of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
They all forget who wrote the books and when. Divine inspiration is one thing, but even God has been reported to have changed his mind.
And, as we wear our invisible phylacteries it may be useful to remember that
“The Sabbath was made for man; not man for the Sabbath.”

Is a jelly coconut a tree?

To describe a foetus as a human being does violence to language, science and commonsense.
The girl on the bus may have been impregnated and one of her ova may have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of some fortunate spermatozoon, but she certainly was not pregnant and could not be described as “with child”.
Nature itself disposes of dozens of potential Einsteins, long before even their sex is determined. A woman’s heavy period may well be nature’s way of rejecting a defective gamete, despatching some hapless haploid without inquiring about personhood. Spontaneous abortions, miscalled miscarriages, are nature’s way of deleting unwanted processes, and foetuses are processes long before they become people.
A jelly coconut has encoded in it all the information it requires to become a tree – just as a foetus has all the information it needs to become a living human being. But a jelly coconut can no more be described as a tree than a foetus may be described as a person.
One well established and notorious fact ignored by those who would criminalise abortion is that criminalisation does not inhibit – even slightly – the practice of abortion. What it does do is to promote illegal, backstreet abortions which every year kill four times as many women as all the men, women and children killed in any of the first four years of the Iraq war.
I do not understand how anyone knowing this fact can, with a clear conscience, contemplate the criminalisation of abortion, because they know or ought to know that the only measurable effect of criminalisation is in killing women who do not want, for whatever reason, to have a child.
To force women to bear children they do not want has a measurable effect in domestic violence, in brutalised children and eventually in minor and major criminality. I do not understand why it is OK if the body rejects the foetus, but not if the mind does. And I cannot understand the intellectual sadism and emotional brutishness that tries to prohibit abortion even in cases of rape, including child rape.
Those who call themselves ‘pro-life’ should put their money where their mourths are. Every one of them should, as an earnest of their sincerity, adopt an unwanted child. Otherwise they are responsible for every bully, domestic brutaliser, pedophile, rapist and murderer that they let loose upon the rest of us.
Those who preach responsibility should practice it.

 

 

Making Jamaica work

The same old soothsayers are at the same old corners peddling the same old garbage.
Jamaica is in a recession and has been for a long time. But it’s going to get worse. So the same old bull is trotted out.
• Cut wages
• Cut labour forces
• Cut off our noses to spite the unions.
Nobody asks these geniuses to explain the effects their ’solutions’ will have and how soon. They are our paid ‘Theorisers and their theories are the equivalent of prayers to a God yet to be revealed.
Life is funny. According to a story this week, “Bauxite sours milk,” Jamaica is in a bind because Mr Deripaska, the Russian oligarch is having financial problems which may hurt Jamaica because one of his companies, Windalco, produces one in every four gallons of milk consumed in Jamaica.
Some of us remember when a few years ago, as a consequence of globalisation and the advice of our IMF parakeets, millions of gallons of milk were dumped into drains and gullies. Dozens of Jamaican dairies failed. One of the major beneficiaries of that policy, Nestlé, has taken its most of its business to the Dominican Republic and is now importing ice cream from Colombia.
We followed the idiot Theorists and their lies have crippled us.
FOR INSTANCE: Now that the world is looking for a small, tough drought resistant high yielding milch cow just like the Jamaica Hope, we cannot even begin to think of responding to the demand. Those who preached against import substitution and self-reliance are still doing it, and when their time runs out here will get good jobs in the World Bank and the IMF advising some other potential economic suicide.
We need to deny airspace and house room to these idiots. I remember saying so in 1994 on the Breakfast Club when our resident jackasses were advising us against subsidising interest rates for farmers.
Time, they say, longer than rope!
What we really need are some simple proven practical solutions. We have two major problems:
•     WE need more – not fewer – people working, and more money in circulation at the bottom of the society.
•     We need to prepare for global warming, climate change and all kinds of disasters.
An intelligent development policy will combine these two needs and solve both problems:
To protect our land we need to plant more trees, fruit trees on hillsides. We need to employ teenagers in this job and combine their work with literacy and skill training
We need to convert cane-land into food growing land, with diversified small farmers feeding themselves and trading their surpluses. WE need to abolish the plantation-agribusiness-slavery mentality which has destroyed farming in Jamaica.
If a man cannot make a more than adequate living off 500 acres he has no business owning land. Limiting land ownership will limit waste and improve food production.
Planting the hillsides will not only occupy many young people, it will decrease soil erosion, increase productivity especially of food; revitalise the fisheries, especially Kingston Harbour. Planting the hillsides will also increase water supply, increase water quality and help restore the beaches.
Increasing economic activity by public works must include building more schools, particularly in the most deprived areas. More schools mean more teachers so we give incentives to teachers and tax the MBAs to pay for them. WE need to build more playing fields and arts and crafts schools and to bring farming into all schools, including university.
We need to reinvent Jamaica Welfare and pump money and manpower into the building of social capital by the Jamaica Agricultural Society and the Ministry of Agriculture’s Experimental stations and hugely expanded Extension Department.
Above all, we need to put ideas like these before the people and see what they make of them and then we need to fund them to put their ideas into practice.
The murder rate, I guarantee, will go right down.

Copyright©2009 John Maxwell jankunnu@gmail.com