Willow Walk

A Brief History of Freedom

John Maxwell

This time last year I was in the throes of preparing to dispatch a petition to the then President-elect of the United States. The petition or open letter to Barack Obama was never sent, largely because I was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer and ordered to undergo treatment urgently. It was entirely my fault that though the petition had already been signed by a couple of hundred people it was never sent. Haitians, Jamaicans, other Caribbean people, English and American people, French people, Canadians and others from all over the world, had endorsed the call for Barack Obama to seize the mantle of the Liberator and to restore to the people of Haiti their freedom, liberty, dignity and all their human rights. As I say, the letter was never sent. I wonder whether it have had any effect had it been sent. Looking at what has happened to Honduran democracy and this week's latest farce in Haiti, I have my doubts. I am excerpting the letter here. What do you think? When the Haitians spoke of Freedom they did not qualify it. They named a major promenade after John Brown, and offered Lincoln a Union Army brigade to complete the service they had begun to render in the American War of Independence. In our letter to the President-elect we began by noting the coincidence of Mr Obama's electoral victory in the bicentennial year of the end of the slave trade, an achievement owing much to the Haitian struggle. We continued

We, the undersigned, are a group of people of many nations, of all classes and callings moved by what we consider an overwhelming moral imperative to seek assistance for Haiti in breaking a vicious circle of defamation, economic oppression, external political and military interference that has unjustly constrained for nearly two centuries, the exercise of Haiti's hard-won independence, freedom and liberty.

Because of these malign factors the Haitian people have been reduced to penury; most are unemployed, many are starving and their land and environment degraded by decades of over-exploitation. A proud people whose forefathers once produced enough to make other peoples wealthy and powerful, are now prevented from exercising their own free will and genius in deciding their own destiny.

Despite these factors the Haitian spirit remains free, undaunted and optimistic. The Haitians want to be free – to be themselves, to employ their own genius and strength as they did in their unique struggle for independence, defeating powers mightier than themselves to abolish slavery and to assert their independence and freedom

Now, as they languish prisoners in their own land, justice and humanity demand that the Haitian people should be able to reclaim the dignity and respect they have earned by centuries of their struggle for human rights and dignity for themselves and for other nations and peoples.

The circumstances surrounding this demand are so important and so extraordinary that we believe it is important to set them out in some detail. This historical narrative included the following:

You are aware that two hundred and four years ago the people of Haiti, having defeated the armies of France (twice) and of Britain and Spain, the greatest powers of that time, declared their independence and simultaneously abolished slavery. The Haitians were the first and only people in the world to abolish the evil system that enslaved them.

Their struggle effectively destroyed the trans-Atlantic Trade in Africans and accelerated freedom for those enslaved in the British and other empires.

The Haitians did more: the Haitian Revolution invented the concept of universal emancipation, guaranteeing the freedom of any enslaved person who set foot on Haitian soil.

The Haitians went even further: Haiti was the first, and for a long time, the only state in the world to recognise the universal equality of rights for all human beings regardless of sex, economic condition or any other consideration. It was the first state to implement human rights universally and unconditionally at a time when the only free people in other modern states were white adult male property owners.

Human freedom was then and is now, of transcendental importance to the Haitians.

In 1816 – with their economy still in ruins after a twelve year war of independence, while blockaded by greater powers and prevented from international trade, the Haitians made an heroic and decisive contribution to the independence of six major countries in Spanish South America. Haiti gave the then-penniless and friendless liberator Simon Bolivar soldiers, ships, arms,, ammunition and provisions to prosecute the liberation of South America. The Haitians asked in return only one thing from Bolivar: that whenever he liberated a country he should also liberate those who were enslaved.

It was the Haitian support of Bolivar in his liberation of South America which made possible the Monroe Doctrine by which the US forbade European attempts to re-colonise South America.

Clearly, Haiti has made enormous contributions to the cause of human freedom and the world owes her an unpayable debt.

The world has not been as kind to Haiti. After brief review of the twentieth century history of Haiti we related how Haitian democracy had been destroyed by its enemies within Haiti and outside. First, in 1992:

"The new President's (Jean Bertrand Aristide) aims were simple: that all Haitians be treated justly as God's children, that all have food and shelter, and that all take pride in their own Kreyol language and culture. He said he wanted "to build Utopia on the dungheap" left behind by the dictators

Elements of the Duvalier army, backed by elements of the business and elite classes promoted a coup which ended with the attempted assassination and departure into exile of the lawfully elected President Aristide after only six months in office.

Mr Patrick Robinson, a distinguished Jamaican jurist (now President of the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague) went to Haiti on behalf of the Inter American Human Rights Commission in 1994. He reported

"The people in Haiti have the same emotions and aspirations as the citizens of any other state in the organisation. They have within themselves an enormous capacity for warmth and love and friendship and endurance and a great yearning for peace, justice and democracy. But a people do not endure the hardships, the deprivation, the violence, the victimisation and the enormous disappointments that the Haitians have experienced over the past 32 months without their faith in humanity and their expectations of decency and justice being challenged in a serious way .… The Commission received reports of rape and sexual abuse of the wives and relatives of men who are active supporters of President Aristide; women are also raped, not only because of their relationship to men who support President Aristide, but because they also support President Aristide; thus, sexual abuse is used as an instrument of repression and political persecution."

In 2001 former President Aristide was again inaugurated as President after another overwhelming electoral victory. A campaign, led by the same elements responsible for the first coup but this time directed and openly supported by various agencies of the US and Canadian and French governments, including the CIA, the State Department, John McCain's International Republican Institute, USAID and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) , promoted the formation of a small and divided Opposition formed by a assemblage of Haitian NGOs and supported by elements of the corrupt army dissolved by President Aristide.

This opposition, on the basis of a few disputed election results unconnected to the election of the President and before he took office, refused to work or even speak to President Aristide to resolve political problems. The opposition, which at all times represented a small minority of the Haitian people, was supported by non-Haitian elements, American, Canadian and French, in their demand that President Aristide must leave office.

No substantive reason has ever been presented to support this demand.

“Roundup-Ready” Thinkers

John Maxwell

 

By the time you read this it should be official – the end of the Triangular Trade, the traffic in human flesh, sugar and consumer goods between Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean begun 500 years ago. It will soon be transformed by "Globalisation" into a cat's cradle of exploitative relationships in which the exploiters and the exploited will remain the same, only the terms of trade will be transformed to protect the guilty. Europe's trade commissioner, Catherine Ashton, told the world's press on Wednesday that within the next few days the Europeans are close to a deal to end the world's longest-running trade dispute and bolster the World Trade Organisation, whose Doha negotiations to free up global commerce have at times been held hostage by the row. What Ms Ashton meant was that the former Caribbean, African and Pacific colonies of Europe will at long last lose the tariff protection which kept their lands addicted to producing bananas and sugar as against producing food for their people. It was a serious addiction for these nations, comparable to but worse than addiction to crack or alcohol, distracting the addicts from productive thought and activity and promoting the short-cut, Anancy mentality. In Jamaica the end of plantation banana and sugar cane may bring enormous benefits to our national health and well-being. Plantation economics depend heavily on labour-sparing techniques. No longer are weeds eliminated by hoes or harrows but by spraying ferociously poisonous chemicals which are 'biocides', in Rachel Carson's formulation, enemies of life which kill everything. In plantations such as Jamaica or Central America the biocide of choice is, as in the rest of the 'civilised' world, a Monsanto Chemicals product called Roundup. Roundup is a package deal. The farmer buys soya bean or wheat seeds from Monsanto which has altered the genes of the seed to make the emerging plant resistant to Roundup – or glyphosate as it is known in the world of chemists. Roundup is not a simple product; it contains other chemicals – catalysts – to intensify or accelerate the penetration of glyphosate, so making it more potent. The problem with these so called surfactants and accelerants is that some are even more toxic than glyphosate and they are not simply more poisonous to weeds, they are more poisonous to everything, including fungi, worms, rats and human beings.

A recent article in the journal Toxicology reports that very low doses of Roundup not only disrupt human hormone function but also kill human liver cells within 24 hours of exposure.

"The toxicity of some of the formulations was independent of how much glyphosate - the active herbicide in Roundup - they contained, suggesting it is other "inert" ingredients that may alone - or in combination with each other and/or the weed-killer - assault the cells. This study's results are similar to prior studies that find human embryo cells are affected more by the Roundup formulations and an inert ingredient than by the active ingredient."

What is even more alarming is that all formulations of the weed-killer – even and perhaps especially those with reduced glyphosate levels – were potent hormone disruptors. Hormone disruptors mimic or suppress the action of human hormones producing premature puberty in young girls, for instance, or feminising boys and deforming their genitalia.

There is worse to come. Soils are composed of organic (living) and inorganic (non-living) material. Worms and fungi are among the organic components of coil, rock and sand are inorganic. In good soils these components are in balance and harmony. In vegetation killed by Roundup the normal balance of fungi is upset, penicilliums are killed while toxic fungi of the fusarium family begin to flourish.

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.

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 and 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 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.

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.

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.

Fantasies, Follies, and Frauds

John Maxwell

If all my email could be taken seriously I should by now be able to pay off a significant portion of Jamaica's public debt. Every day I get two or three emails such as this: "You have just been awarded, £750.000.00 GBP in the Toyota Online Promo, send us your Names,Address etc, etc., " and, if I were foolish enough to comply I WOULD have entered on a long walk to real penury and not be just habitually broke. If I ever won a really big lottery prize one thing is certain; I would immediately set up a small centre for the aggressive protection of the public interest.     Some scams are only slightly more subtle than the bogus letters I get. The one I am about to relate might have succeeded because it was premised on 1/ the idea that the Jamaican government has no scientific advice available to it and 2/ the belief that all Jamaicans have swallowed the Concrete=Development Kool-Aid. A little while ago, some con-man who must consider himself a genius, managed to get the Prime Minister to unwittingly embarrass himself in public.

According to the Gleaner: A new aluminium refinery plant is to be established on Jamaica's north coast to facilitate clean coal technology, Prime Minister Bruce Golding has revealed.

"There is a proposal before us for the establishment of a new alumina refinery that is under consideration. Inherent in that proposal is the idea of establishing a clean coal plant, which will have a capacity of 100 megawatts (MW), only 40 MW of which would be required for its processing facilities and the other 60MW would be available for sale to the national grid," he said. Mr Golding went on to speak about 'combined cycle gas turbine power generation' as if this was a brand new JPS invention, instead of a process employed in this country for forty years. I wish to suggest that Mr Golding immediately arm himself with a scientific adviser to prevent his being taken advantage of by unscrupulous Public Relations experts with more nerve than conscience.

There is no such thing as "clean coal" despite the Gleaner's glib attempt to pass off the expression thus: "Clean coal is an umbrella term used to describe methods that have been developed to reduce the environmental impact of coal-based electricity."

Goodbye, 'Goggle-eye'

That is in itself an idiotic explanation; coal-based electricity has no more environmental impact than any other electricity. The environmental impact comes from the power-plants that generate electricity and the impact depends on the fuels they use. Coal is by far the most environmentally dangerous fuel and the major contributor to global warming and climate change. GREENPEACE expresses the case succinctly: "Coal is a highly polluting energy source. It emits much more carbon per unit of energy than oil and natural gas. CO2 represents the major portion of greenhouse gases. It is, therefore, one of the leading contributors to climate change.…The huge environmental and social costs associated with coal usage make it an expensive option for developing countries. From acid drainage from coal mines, polluting rivers and streams, to the release of mercury and other toxins when it is burned, as well as climate-destroying gases and fine particulates that wreak havoc on human health, COAL is unquestionably, a DIRTY BUSINESS. "It is a major contributor to climate change – the biggest environmental threat we face. It is the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, emitting 29% more carbon dioxide (CO2) than oil, 80% more … per unit of energy than gas." There are ways to make coal burning marginally less polluting but they are all expensive and some are dangerous. The most basic efforts at burning coal more 'cleanly' involve enormous amounts of fresh water. Where in Jamaica would we get that from, and what would happen to the used water? That water, if pumped into the ground would complete the poisoning of our groundwater now underway by the bauxite companies. If pumped into the sea it would acidify and poison the water and kill marine life. Goodbye goggle-eye. And the hotels would be on water-rationing. But the main challenge in 'clean coal' technology is not just sanitising the coal, it is to dispose safely of the carbon dioxide. So-called carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) involves extracting the CO2 from the smokestacks, and pressuring it until it freezes when, theoretically it will be pumped into secure salt domes and empty oil reservoirs deep underground. There are two small objections to this scenario: one is that here are no known vacant subterranean spaces in this geologic neighbourhood; and second: the elevated seismic profile of this area is, a priori, a veto on such a practice. While carbon dioxide may behave itself under pressure in sandstone, in limestone CO2 becomes chemically active and soon starts dissolving ways out of its subterranean confinement. This is probably what is meant by the expression: "All Hell breaks loose!" In this part of the world burning coal for any reason is an act of lunacy. There are a few more small problems with building a bauxite plant in the Cockpit Country. Above all is the naked threat to civilised values, the destruction of culture, the devastation of important, unique and irreplaceable biological resources, the irredeemable pollution of underground aquifers, the ethnic cleansing of history and tradition, the subversion of small farming and the eradication of our capacity to feed ourselves. From my point of view it looks a little like cultural genocide.

The Falmouth Fatuity

    A few months ago I told you about the enormous self-contained resort ships that are about to go into competition with the local tourist industry. These new Titanics, owned by the Royal Caribbean Lines, attempt to recreate a complete land based environment at sea. I wondered at the time at the wisdom of the Port Authority financing facilities designed to compete directly with our local hospitality industry. As I wrote six months ago:

"What RCCL is doing is to transform their ships into the seagoing equivalents of Montego Bay, Negril, Las Vegas or Miami Beach. On their newest ship, the oxymoronic Oasis of the Seas five thousand or so passengers will be housed in a floating resort town, with casinos, discos, nightclubs, dozens of restaurants, fitness centres, adventure playgrounds, bijou jungles, forests and beaches, parks, promenades, boardwalks, mini-golf courses, swimming pools, rock climbing walls, tennis courts, watersports, basketball courts, ice-skating rinks, jogging tracks, and of course, no importunate natives.

THe ship will be its own destination and its visits to places like Jamaica will be simply to dispose of waste, take on cheap water and give the staff some R&R and allow passengers to go molest some caged wildlife" (The Racehorse's Egg – April 30,2009)

The putative benefits of the Titanic visitations are supposedly that five thousand people a week will arrive to embark on frenzied tours of Jamaica, consuming local views, buying local goods, interacting with local people and distributing scarce benefits as they go. The reality is different

Paul Motter, editor of the enthusiast Web site Cruisemates, said. "I think it's going to be the first ship where people truly book just for the ship and hardly care where it goes." Tor Olsen, one of the ship's captains, quoted by the Washington Post said: "Our hope, of course, is that people don't get off, because this ship itself is the destination," Olsen said. "This is better than a lot of the islands."

And even if the passengers disembark in Falmouth they will be carefully shepherded into those shops and attractions which have paid the cruise line – under the table – for 'approved' status. The curio sellers can go peddle their papers somewhere else.

Human Roadblock

The Port Authority's scheme may have run into a small but significant roadblock. The PAJ, under some unknown authority, has decided to exercise its 'right' to clear the fishing village at Falmouth. The Beach Control Authority, now part of the NRCA/NEPA complex, has a prescribed duty to defend the prescriptive rights of fishermen and the public to the beach. I would advise the fishermen of Falmouth to get a lawyer to serve a writ of mandamus on the     NRCA to compel them to do their duty and to take the PAJ to court to establish and entrench the human rights and public interest in this matter. Which brings me to ask: what kind of Environmental Impact Assessment could have ignored those rights? And how could the NEPA approve such a fundamentally flawed development? Unlike some people I believe the law should be a shackle – at least to prevent the unscrupulous extinction of the public rights and the public interest. The media have not asked any serious questions about one of the largest single investments ever to be undertaken in this country – the transformation of our beautiful heirloom Falmouth into a gated them park for a specially invited clientele. Jamaica is borrowing more than it can afford to repay, to build an exclusive pleasure dome to please the billionaire owners of Royal Caribbean Lines. These people can get away with this only in Jamaica. In Port Everglades where the taxpayers are building an even bigger version of the Falmouth Fantasy, the authorities there have shown what responsible development is. In the first place, the Port Everglades facility will cost just half as much our Great Blue Elephant – US $75 million to US$140 million. In the second place Royal Caribbean is paying about half the cost of the Port Everglades facility: "As part of the agreement, Royal Caribbean will reimburse up to $37.4 million in capital expenditures for expansion and related infrastructure needs of Terminal 18, which is already one of the largest cruise passenger terminals worldwide. Along with sister brands Celebrity Cruises and Azamara Cruises, Royal Caribbean International will generate approximately 17 million in passenger volume (embarking and disembarking) at Port Everglades during the first 10-year term of the contract." And, an economic impact study (What's that?) conducted by Martin and Associates as part of the Port Everglades Master/Vision Plan, projects that homeporting the Genesis ships at Port Everglades will create more than 3,844 jobs, generate $172 million in personal income and $15.9 million state and local taxes. In addition, the analysis anticipates that more than 858 new construction jobs will be created during Terminal 18 expansion." What's really interesting about all this is that Port Everglades while spending one third of the money we are, is getting benefits worth more than twice as much – and they have a contract that says so and is enforceable. All this begs the question: Just what are the Jamaican people getting for their US$140 million investment? Do we have a contract? Do we have any guaranteed return on this enormous investment? Is the development in the public interest? If it is not, Shouldn't the investment be terminated? I believe the Contractor General and the Public Defender need to investigate this matter. Now. Copyright©2009 John Maxwell jankunnu@gmail.com

Sauce for the Goose

 

John Maxwell

A hitherto unknown group of prosecutors in California have made the international news big-time: they decided to enforce a three decade old warrant against Roman Polanski, the film director. As a result, Mr Polanski is under arrest in Switzerland – an escaped felon wanted by the United States. There are many fascinating angles to this story which I won't go into. Mr Polanski was charged in 1977 with unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl. He pleaded guilty, submitted himself to the local authorities and served a short time in prison – for psychological observation. When time came for sentencing, Polanski was told that the judge would not honour the plea bargain they had accepted and instead intended to sell him down the river. Polanski hopped a plane to London and has spent the last 30 years avoiding arrest and extradition. There are some mitigating factors on Polanski's side. At the time there was speculation that the child's mother had groomed the child to entrap Polanski for blackmail. There has never been any published evidence to support that allegation but the circumstances under which the mother handed her child over to a man she barely knew suggest that she may not have been as protective as might be expected The mother is now dead. Polanski has paid apparently substantial damages to the child, now 45 years old. The victim has said she does not want Polanski prosecuted and will refuse to testify if required. She blames her mother, the prosecutors and the press for repeatedly dragging her backward through an experience she wants to forget. The prosecutors may not be content with their 15 minutes of fame but they may yet end up looking more foolish than they already do. If they think they can get Polanski jailed because of his 1978 guilty plea Polanski has an answer – withdraw the plea as the bargain was broken long ago If he does, the prosecutors will have to proceed without a complainant. Furthermore there is substantial evidence of judicial misbehaviour in the original proceedings, misbehaviour on record from one of the original prosecutors. The governments of France and Poland have already intervened with the Swiss government and the US secretary of State for the freedom of the 76 year old Polanski who has paid, if not conventionally, for his idiotic and criminal behaviour so long ago.

Goosey, goosey, gander …

In the balmy surroundings of a millionaire's palazzo in Florida lives another aging felon. But he appears to be secure from the attentions of prosecutors although he has been charged with more than 70 murders. The United States government is aware of his presence in the country - some of its agents having assisted his arrival and domicile. This felon, one Luis Posada Carriles, has no apologies for his assaults on the people of his native land, Cuba, nor for his many other victims of various nationalities. He was an agent of the CIA and of various anti-Cuban terrorist groups and he has blown up or tried to blow up, targets ranging from Soviet ships, Cuban hotels and diplomatic missions, to a number of Latin American presidents including his bête noir, Fidel Castro. For that last plot he was imprisoned in Panama. He was sprung by some fancy footwork involving the outgoing president of Panama and some official and unofficial American agents. The Americans have refused to extradite Posada either to Cuba, or Venezuela to face charges of blowing up a planeful of young Cubans and Guyanese and of attempting to murder Fidel Castro and President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, among others. Under international law, any country can try any terrorist anytime for crimes against humanity Posada has very powerful friends. Polanski should be so lucky!

Disaster Fatigue

It was in the nineties that we began hearing about "famine fatigue" affecting the North Atlantic populations who were incessantly being asked to contribute to one or another worthy cause – usually exemplified in photographs of starving children with enormous eyes. Then, it was all about Africa. The droughts in the Sahel and in Ethiopia and Somalia, we are told, are a direct consequence of the industrial revolution in Europe changing the climate of northern Africa. THe Industrial Revolution is now worldwide and its effects are global rather than continental. There is drought in Guatemala, Australia, Kenya and the Iberian peninsula, flooding in parts of the Sahel and West Africa. The Philippines having been battered by typhoon 'Ketsana' which took more than 500 lives and left half a million homeless is as I write preparing for the onslaught of an even more dangerous typhoon. Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia received unwelcome attention from Ketsana and will probably get more of the same next week. The north and south polar regions are in rapid decline with continents of ice, thousands and perhaps millions of years old, melting into the sea. Parts of South Australia and the neighborhood are rapidly reverting to desert as the huge Murray-Darling river complex dries up and the water turns too salty to drink. The so-called 'climate refugees' will be coming from everywhere. El Nino may continue to drive storms more northward than usual, and while we may not be battered by more frequent hurricanes for a year or two, those that come this way are likely to be much more violent and murderous. As Australia dries up the price of wheat worldwide will go up, followed by prices generally. It is going to be much more difficult and more expensive for us to import food and fuel and everything else. WE need to embark on an emergency programme radically different from that being proposed by the government. We need to recognise that we are all in the same boat and that the rich must be made to pay their fair share. We cannot survive by taxing cellphones and books. We need to employ as many people as possible, building infrastructure, conserving water and energy. We need to terrace our hillsides and substantially reduce the numbers living and defecating on them. We need to take over the sugar estates to grow food – small farmer agriculture with small stock, chickens, goats and pigs. It is amazing how much food can be grown on two acres of land We need to recognise that even if all the grand schemes – like the Fantastic Folly at Falmouth – are ever built they are doomed to become expensive monuments to greed and stupidity. It is time to think small, as they have perforce learned in `Cuba. We will soon be unable to afford the vehicles, not to speak of the fuel. Ethanol can't feed hungry-belly. Although few of us appear to be aware, we are in really deep trouble. As the first law of holes tells us: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging. Where will we find space put the people of Savanna la Mar, Black River, Falmouth, Caymanas and above all, Portmore, who are displaced by global warming and rising sea levels? (The gas station in Independence City, is, at 18 feet above sea level, Portmore's Kanchenjungma) We need to clean up our environment in order to grow more food and avoid expensive sicknesses. We need to teach our children that this society really does belong to them and not to some greedy multinational in Lombard Street. We need to abolish poverty; and we have the resources to do it. And above all, we need to recognise that we have very little time to work for justice, social peace and human development. Copyright©2009 John Maxwell jankunnu@gmail.com

Revaluing People

John Maxwell

On my first visit to Amsterdam, the Netherlands, my wife's hometown, I was struck by some immense differences with Kingston, a city of the same size. Apart from the absence of slums and substandard housing the major difference was in the way people treated other people. One day I was taking a tram but the tram got to the stop before I did. I had been running and was about to stop when I noticed that several seconds after the last passenger had boarded the tram had not moved. I trotted in to find that the last passenger before me had blocked the door, stopping it from closing and preventing the tram from starting. I thanked the woman and thought to myself that I could not imagine a similar show of the kindness of strangers in any other large city I could think of. I noticed other things; how unobtrusive the police were although they were always about; how many street gardens and flower boxes there were; how many street markets flourished and lots more. In my latest visit, to be treated for advanced lung cancer at the Antoni van Leeuwenhoek /National Cancer Institute I noticed much more. Over the eight months of my treatment I cannot remember a single unpleasant encounter in the polyclinic. Everybody, from the mainly immigrant cleaners to the highly trained oncology nurses and technicians to the specialist physicians at the top of the tree clearly knew their jobs, were determined to put their patients at ease and certainly in my case, radiated optimism even knowing that my chances were not good. Having since read an internet piece on the morbid effect of depression on cancer patients I now realise that my response to the treatment –which surprised even my doctors – probably was enhanced by my own optimism and refusal to surrender, some of it owed to the people who were caring for me.