Jamaica? No Problem!!!

[Sir X]

Jamaica? No Problem!!!
COMMON SENSE
JOHN MAXWELL

Sunday, January 03, 2010


If you've been around as long as I have, reading or listening to what passes for recent history can easily provoke the dry heaves. Mr Edward Seaga, a centre of turbulence as a politician, remains a centre of turbulence as an old-age pensioner. Some of the claims made by Mr Seaga or on his behalf are bizarre.

A couple of years ago, Martin Henry rightly castigated Seaga for his racist[my word], elitist view that it is "the masses of simpletons who determine election victories and defeats. And since the people are incapable of sophisticated political understanding, only simplistic messages can be delivered to them as entertaining sloganeering from the political platform." (Seaga, quashee and campaigning' July 19, 2007, Sunday Gleaner)

Mr Henry almost proves Seaga's point by referring to Seaga as "the creator of the first and great Independence Five-Year Development Plan, 1963-1968" -- apparently blissfully unaware that the plan was the work of Don Mills, Arthur Brown and Raphael Swaby of The Central Planning Unit working to specifications laid down by Norman Manley, David Coore, Vernon Arnett, Allan Isaacs and other members of a PNP Brains Trust. Mr Seaga has never attempted to publicise the truth. And why should he?

When he now bravely speaks of education it is from his eminence as the pro-Chancellor of the University of Technology and a Distinguished Fellow of The University of The West Indies. Mr Seaga is quoted in a story in the Gleaner of September 2, 2009:
"If the IMF is able to address [the budget deficit and the foreign exchange shortfall] and is able to lend other funds to help fund the semi-productive sector, Seaga said, the best way to use that fund is to put it into education. 'That is where I would like to see the funds go, because that is the real resource base of Jamaica that has not yet been fully utilised,' said the former prime minister..." (IMF the only option, says Seaga.) Mr Seaga's concern for education is truly touching. Preening himself on the mistaken belief that he is the only political heavyweight of the fifties still extant, Seaga no doubt forgets the big, bold JLP campaign at the end of the fifties: "Salt fish better than education." He similarly has no memory space for his government's unremitting campaign against the UWI in the sixties as a nest of intellectuals and subversives; the campaign against the Jamaica Teachers' Association which led to wage freezes for teachers and the desertion of the classroom by male teachers who turned to selling insurance and liquor or else fled to Britain or Brooklyn.

Turn Them Back

Seaga forgets the assaults he led on the PNP in the seventies when that party proposed extended vocational training in sophistication and coverage; and the fact that he destroyed the Vocational Training Institute and turned it into a college for cosmetologists as soon as he got the chance. He forgets the destruction of the Jamaica School of Agriculture and any other institution created by Norman Manley by himself and others obsessed by the idea of destroying all trace of the Father of the Nation. He forgets the corruption and destruction of the Social Welfare Commission and of its community integration and development work and the destruction of the Jamaica Youth Corps and the promise it bore for the future of our country. Mr Seaga should also remember his part in destroying the Agricultural Extension system and the network of Agricultural Experimental Stations which helped enthuse and invigorate Jamaican farming, producing, inter alia, Dr Lecky's four world-class breeds of cattle, The Jamaica Hope, the Jamaica Black, the Jamaica Red and the Jamaica Brahman. The loss in brainpower, in expertise, in biological science and in foreign exchange is incalculable. How much to restore the library at Alexandria? Seaga forgets the assault he led against free secondary and tertiary education and the fact that as soon as he became prime minister he reinstated fees for poor children and boasted that these savage cuts in the Jamaican integument were the work of the government, not of the IMF. The destruction of the JBC was a joint venture between himself and Patterson. Mr Seaga has blamed the PNP for the dreadful state of the economy, forgetting that within three years of taking power in 1980 he had doubled the debt burden and effectively put it forever beyond human control. Mr Patterson, Seaga's only close competitor for the title of worst prime minister in history, did his part, playing the Tony Blair to Seaga's Margaret Thatcher. Despite his faults, many and grievous, Patterson was not a patch on Lord Edward of St George's (Grenada).

Jamaica? No Problem!

Mr Martin Henry in his more-or-less paean to Edward Seaga two years ago, noted that "The one and only time that Edward Seaga led his party to victory in a contested general election was when the critical issues at stake were starkly clear and voters/citizens, understanding those issues and their implications, overwhelmingly took a stand. Despite his participation in pandering to the quashee in Jamaicans, this country, including even Michael Manley, owes Eddie a debt of gratitude for clarifying and communicating those crossroads issues in 1980 and winning the vote which turned back a looming disaster." It would be nice were Mr Henry to sketch, at the least, the basic parameters of the looming disaster of which he speaks. I happened to have survived those interesting times and survived Mr Seaga's attempts to starve people like me into submission. In 1980, the election year, that year of transcendental clarity, 889 murders were registered -- more than twice as many as the 351 of the year before. Within three years -- according to Carl Stone, the Gamaliel of the revisionists -- Mr Seaga would have lost his majority had there been a free and fair election, which makes one wonder about Mr Henry's 'crossroads' issues, not to speak of the Half-Way-Tree issues and the Time and Patience issues that bother people like me. These issues are provoked, as is so much else, by the Gleaner's news that "Spanish Gov't to help agriculture ministry".

The Spanish ambassador is to hand over a cheque for J$35 million (about half-a-million US dollars) towards a Centre of Excellence in Agriculture. I can imagine what Sam Motta or Hugh Miller could have done with that or Jerry Bell or any of dozens more -- some like Buddha Webster who gave their lives in the service of Jamaican farmers, not to speak of Dr Lecky and his world-class cows. Jose Marti was to have been a coeducational boarding school for young farmers to send qualified students over to the Jamaica School of Agriculture. Seaga changed Jose Marti into an ordinary school and turned the School of Agriculture into a "Police Academy". He sold the research stations for a song to build housing schemes. And now they want to turn the Usain Bolt stadium into a battery-chicken-house for Goldman Sachs. I tell you! Mr Seaga is FULL of the most wonderful ideas. Always has been. I kid you not.

Copyright © 2009 John Maxwell
jankunnu@gmail.com



var addthis_pub="jamaicaobserver";

[Sir X]

Our people have never been respected
MARK WIGNALL

Sunday, January 03, 2010


It seems as if we have been here before.

Jamaica has sun, sand and beaches. It is paradise, especially for those who have been able to carve out the opportunity to be here -- including many who do not live in Jamaica.

In 2008, while I was walking next to a rail line in Memphis, Tennesee on which street cars ran, I saw a police car pulling up beside a man who was obviously a street person. The weather was beautiful that September evening, and as a foreigner I paused to observe the interaction between the burly, white policeman who exited the blue car and the heavily-padded black man on the concrete bench.

I was less than 30 feet away from the car as the policeman exited and said, "Sir, I have received reports that you have been creating a disturbance here. Is that true, sir?"

I stopped where I was. The street was a beauty -- no garbage, no street vendors. Alongside office buildings there were flowers in gardens, which were obviously well-tended.

The giant of a policeman walked towards the man then said to him, "How long have you been here? Are you sure you haven't been creating any trouble here, sir?"

Did he say 'sir'? In Jamaica policemen hardly ever call anyone sir. Earlier that day I had left my hotel, dressed in shorts, to lazily stroll along a road which ran parallel to the great Mississippi River. The day before, I had been hosted by a scion of the city who had been close to the great singer Isaac Hayes, who had just died. She had been instrumental in placing lights on the bridge which led to the state of Arkansas. She had hosted a group of 23 journalists from many countries -- including myself -- and feted us in royal style in her penthouse overlooking the muddy Mississippi River.

So there I was the following day, watching what could be the real life of part of the city.

The man on the park bench showed no signs that he was mentally troubled, which would force the authorities to rein him in and corral him. At least, that was my impression. Unlike Jamaican street people he was fairly clean, as the bench, the street and the general surroundings would make it very difficult for him to be as dirty and decrepit as our street people usually are.

"No, I ain't giving nobody no problems," he said.

"I received reports, sir," said the policeman as he towered over the man seated on the bench, who himself was not small in stature.
"I just need to be sure about this, sir," said the policeman who then began to question the man in more detail.

I crossed the road just before an ornately designed street car passed. I paused to watch the interaction.

In Jamaica our policemen are hardly ever made popular for treating our citizens with courtesy. Our citizens, on the other hand are, too many of them, coarse and always pushing for a fight.

Here I was in another jurisdiction, another city, another country, walking around, looking for the best that its grime and underbelly could produce.

As the mountain of a policeman headed towards his car, he said to the man who sat quiet and unsmiling on his stone bench, "Sir, I hope I don't get any more reports about you."

"I ain't giving nobody no problem," the man responded.

In Jamaica in 2010 we have a mountain of problems to overcome. Our people are highly uneducated and our politicians are afraid of telling our people the 'full hundred' because the politician believes that by doing so, the people will disrespect him. There are people in this country who are willing to die just to acquire a 42-inch HD TV, yet at the same time they care little about how their neighbour is faring.

We are running off the rails and, increasingly, we are locking down interaction with others because our financial resources do not allow us to listen to what we cannot solve.

In 1968, as an 18-year-old impetuous youngster, it would be the norm for me, along with 10 or so of my friends, to walk from a street dance in Cross Roads to Pembroke Hall/Arlene Gardens at 4:00 in the morning.
In 1971 when I was courting my wife, I took a bus from Harbour View to downtown Kingston and missed the last bus to Washington Boulevard.

Unfortunately, I only had bus fare and not the $2 or so that I would need for a taxi ride. Having no other choice, I walked from Parade in downtown, along West Queen Street, past Tivoli Gardens, along Spanish Town Road, then turned onto Waltham Park Road, to the bend on Molynes Road, then onto Washington Boulevard -- at minutes after midnight. Could anyone do that now?

How did we come to this, and what can we do to return to better times? Can there ever be real civility in this country?

My answer: Not in the immediate future.

Too Many Hangers-on

The politics of this country encourage those who are most favoured. Until that is changed, this country will never move forward. There are businessmen in this country who want to move forward but they are, collectively, scared of the nasty nature of the politics. In Jamaica, the businessman who sticks his neck out and challenges the orthodoxies of the system is probably the one we will hear about taking the next flight out with his broken family.

It is not that they are cowards but the system tends to favour those who blend with the flavour of the moment.

In PNP time, PNP connected businessmen do well. In JLP time, unfortunately for that party, in tamarind season, JLP-connected businessmen do well. I happen to know that the present prime minister, Bruce Golding, wants to change that arrangement.

Didn't Michael Manley, Eddie Seaga, PJ Patterson and Portia Simpson Miller all want to change that destructive system? If they all did -- and that is a big IF -- why is it that we are still in such a terrible bind?
Why is it that our political leaders continue to laud their efforts when we the people know that those very efforts have brought this paradise of a country to its social and economic knees? Is it that they are evil, or just plain deceptive because they think we are all idiots?

Politicians like Bruce Golding, before he became prime minister, spoke like how Peter Phillips, a highly respected PNP MP, is now speaking. Both have said that the country spent too much time chasing the politics, winning at all costs while the business of actually running the country faded into nothingness.

Phillips speaks with more conviction simply because he is no longer in government. Golding spoke with conviction when he was in some nonentity called the NDM. Of late the same old NDM has been having all of the answers because it has no power.

Give a party power, the answers cease. Place it in opposition and it becomes the expert on solving the country's problems. Is it a game? Have they been taking us for a ride?

Education is key, application is the endgame

I am always amazed that the academics among us allow our high rate of literacy, 88 per cent, to remain without a whimper. I have said for years that that is a plain lie and the real literacy rate is closer to 65 per cent. Why do we do this? Do we have a need to fool ourselves?

Apart from the surveys I have done, all our cloistered academics have to do is go on the road -- at times a scary place for them. Speak to the so-called typical Jamaican, listen to him/her. It is not good news. It is shocking.

In 1989, the late Professor Carl Stone conducted a survey and literacy in Jamaica was found to be at 65 per cent at a time when the official figures were significantly higher. In the early 1990s, I conducted a survey and the numbers were not changed from the 1989 ones.

Again, at the end of the 1990s, I conducted another survey and the numbers had hardly moved. The question is, why do we need to fool ourselves?

It is my belief that the government agencies responsible for collating these numbers are beholden to the funding agencies behind these studies. Therefore, when the expected results do not manifest, they are forced to prove to them that the money was well-spent, hence the inflated numbers.

How in hell can a country be run if the leaders are in a con game, fooling themselves and, in the process, taking us all for a ride?

What we must do in this new year is force the Government to face up to our realities, because it is obvious that whatever the targets are, they are absolutely nowhere near reality.

Why has Jamaica not erupted?

In response to the JLP Government's tax package, the opposition PNP took to the streets and, from reports, the demonstrations were peaceful.
To the politically correct that means that the PNP is a responsible opposition party. Let us face one major fact. All tax packages in this country have been unpopular. If you know of one, please tell me.
The difference this time around was that the global economy was in a recession. As such, I had expected that the Government would have relaxed the standard playbook and treated us as adults, capable of dealing with bad news.

Prime Minister Golding (acting on a madman's advice) jooked us first then took back something and, according to the playbook, made us feel good.

Wasn't Bruce Golding the head boy at his high school? Is that what his role taught him -- to mess with people's patience?

The fact that the PNP took to the streets and there were no disruptions tells us two things. One, the PNP is a responsible political party, having no interest in creating mayhem in this country. Two, the PNP did not have the crowd support to create mayhem in this country.

People hark back to April 1999, when riots broke out after the PNP Government of the day had imposed a new gas tax. From my perspective -- and I was on the road early, as the stirrings occurred -- it was a spontaneous eruption which began at certain sections of Red Hills and Grants Pen roads, areas loyal to the JLP. These were areas where the normal unemployment rate was in the order of 65 per cent and over.

Most of the people who began burning debris and blocking roads were idlers, criminals and people who had been unempowered for too long. It was then that the JLP, as an official organisation, jumped on board and began to supply the troops with food and to transport debris to keep the rot going. I was there; I saw it. I was in the heart of it, on the streets while the shots were being fired (in two instances) and the looting was on.

The Government owes us the duty of governance.

Much will be the pain that will be prescribed in 2010, and I expect that the prime minister will have it in him to dish out to us the realities. One person suggested to me that our people also need to step out with their, er, cojones too, as I had suggested the prime minister should in 2010.
While I agree with that, it is simple even to the most simplistic that leaders must lead. Let no one fool you. The PNP would have been quite happy had its demonstrations resulted in significant disruptions.
As such, all plans it had for pushing for elections are now placed on hold. It is the nature of the political beast; PNP or JLP.
None of them know any better.

Can the great debater, the former head boy of his school, lead us to a better place and his own place in history?

Mr Golding, I am waiting on you. May you and everyone else survive this year.

observemark@gmail.com

[Lazie]

Now I see why so many regard Mr. Maxwell as some trailblazer in journalism. But as dem say, every hoe have dem stick a bush.

Mr. Seaga is by no means beyond criticism, but the WORST PM? Come on now?

[Don1]

Jamaica? No Problem!!!
COMMON SENSE
JOHN MAXWELL

Sunday, January 03, 2010


If you've been around as long as I have, reading or listening to what passes for recent history can easily provoke the dry heaves. Mr Edward Seaga, a centre of turbulence as a politician, remains a centre of turbulence as an old-age pensioner. Some of the claims made by Mr Seaga or on his behalf are bizarre.

A couple of years ago, Martin Henry rightly castigated Seaga for his racist[my word], elitist view that it is "the masses of simpletons who determine election victories and defeats. And since the people are incapable of sophisticated political understanding, only simplistic messages can be delivered to them as entertaining sloganeering from the political platform." (Seaga, quashee and campaigning' July 19, 2007, Sunday Gleaner)

Mr Henry almost proves Seaga's point by referring to Seaga as "the creator of the first and great Independence Five-Year Development Plan, 1963-1968" -- apparently blissfully unaware that the plan was the work of Don Mills, Arthur Brown and Raphael Swaby of The Central Planning Unit working to specifications laid down by Norman Manley, David Coore, Vernon Arnett, Allan Isaacs and other members of a PNP Brains Trust. Mr Seaga has never attempted to publicise the truth. And why should he?

When he now bravely speaks of education it is from his eminence as the pro-Chancellor of the University of Technology and a Distinguished Fellow of The University of The West Indies. Mr Seaga is quoted in a story in the Gleaner of September 2, 2009:
"If the IMF is able to address [the budget deficit and the foreign exchange shortfall] and is able to lend other funds to help fund the semi-productive sector, Seaga said, the best way to use that fund is to put it into education. 'That is where I would like to see the funds go, because that is the real resource base of Jamaica that has not yet been fully utilised,' said the former prime minister..." (IMF the only option, says Seaga.) Mr Seaga's concern for education is truly touching. Preening himself on the mistaken belief that he is the only political heavyweight of the fifties still extant, Seaga no doubt forgets the big, bold JLP campaign at the end of the fifties: "Salt fish better than education." He similarly has no memory space for his government's unremitting campaign against the UWI in the sixties as a nest of intellectuals and subversives; the campaign against the Jamaica Teachers' Association which led to wage freezes for teachers and the desertion of the classroom by male teachers who turned to selling insurance and liquor or else fled to Britain or Brooklyn.

Turn Them Back

Seaga forgets the assaults he led on the PNP in the seventies when that party proposed extended vocational training in sophistication and coverage; and the fact that he destroyed the Vocational Training Institute and turned it into a college for cosmetologists as soon as he got the chance. He forgets the destruction of the Jamaica School of Agriculture and any other institution created by Norman Manley by himself and others obsessed by the idea of destroying all trace of the Father of the Nation. He forgets the corruption and destruction of the Social Welfare Commission and of its community integration and development work and the destruction of the Jamaica Youth Corps and the promise it bore for the future of our country. Mr Seaga should also remember his part in destroying the Agricultural Extension system and the network of Agricultural Experimental Stations which helped enthuse and invigorate Jamaican farming, producing, inter alia, Dr Lecky's four world-class breeds of cattle, The Jamaica Hope, the Jamaica Black, the Jamaica Red and the Jamaica Brahman. The loss in brainpower, in expertise, in biological science and in foreign exchange is incalculable. How much to restore the library at Alexandria? Seaga forgets the assault he led against free secondary and tertiary education and the fact that as soon as he became prime minister he reinstated fees for poor children and boasted that these savage cuts in the Jamaican integument were the work of the government, not of the IMF. The destruction of the JBC was a joint venture between himself and Patterson. Mr Seaga has blamed the PNP for the dreadful state of the economy, forgetting that within three years of taking power in 1980 he had doubled the debt burden and effectively put it forever beyond human control. Mr Patterson, Seaga's only close competitor for the title of worst prime minister in history, did his part, playing the Tony Blair to Seaga's Margaret Thatcher. Despite his faults, many and grievous, Patterson was not a patch on Lord Edward of St George's (Grenada).

Jamaica? No Problem!

Mr Martin Henry in his more-or-less paean to Edward Seaga two years ago, noted that "The one and only time that Edward Seaga led his party to victory in a contested general election was when the critical issues at stake were starkly clear and voters/citizens, understanding those issues and their implications, overwhelmingly took a stand. Despite his participation in pandering to the quashee in Jamaicans, this country, including even Michael Manley, owes Eddie a debt of gratitude for clarifying and communicating those crossroads issues in 1980 and winning the vote which turned back a looming disaster." It would be nice were Mr Henry to sketch, at the least, the basic parameters of the looming disaster of which he speaks. I happened to have survived those interesting times and survived Mr Seaga's attempts to starve people like me into submission. In 1980, the election year, that year of transcendental clarity, 889 murders were registered -- more than twice as many as the 351 of the year before. Within three years -- according to Carl Stone, the Gamaliel of the revisionists -- Mr Seaga would have lost his majority had there been a free and fair election, which makes one wonder about Mr Henry's 'crossroads' issues, not to speak of the Half-Way-Tree issues and the Time and Patience issues that bother people like me. These issues are provoked, as is so much else, by the Gleaner's news that "Spanish Gov't to help agriculture ministry".

The Spanish ambassador is to hand over a cheque for J$35 million (about half-a-million US dollars) towards a Centre of Excellence in Agriculture. I can imagine what Sam Motta or Hugh Miller could have done with that or Jerry Bell or any of dozens more -- some like Buddha Webster who gave their lives in the service of Jamaican farmers, not to speak of Dr Lecky and his world-class cows. Jose Marti was to have been a coeducational boarding school for young farmers to send qualified students over to the Jamaica School of Agriculture. Seaga changed Jose Marti into an ordinary school and turned the School of Agriculture into a "Police Academy". He sold the research stations for a song to build housing schemes. And now they want to turn the Usain Bolt stadium into a battery-chicken-house for Goldman Sachs. I tell you! Mr Seaga is FULL of the most wonderful ideas. Always has been. I kid you not.

Copyright © 2009 John Maxwell
jankunnu@gmail.com



var addthis_pub="jamaicaobserver";

Maxwell on Seaga: Truths mixed with unbalanced personal vitriol.

[Sir X]

Is like im tek Seaga fi im personal beating stick , like wi tek Ben aka maudib.

[Mosiah]

truths still, right?

[Don1]

truths still, right?

yep!

[Lazie]

truths still, right?

Where? The fact that he claimed that Seaga is the worst PM clearly show that the writer have no clue about the realities of our economy.

[Mosiah]

yuh don't see any truths in the article? or everything goes out the window since him never give seaga nuh ratings?

[Lazie]

yuh don't see any truths in the article? or everything goes out the window since him never give seaga nuh ratings?

If a witness discredits himself on the stand, his entire testimony is worthless. The problem is Jamaicans nuh know good leadership. How many times did he vote for PJ? Bettah him did write bout the environment than convince us how much of a comedian he is.

The data is there for all to see. Many comrades now a call up Seaga's name, yet Maxwell claim he is the worst PM? kiss teet.

[Don1]

If a witness discredits himself on the stand, his entire testimony is worthless. The problem is Jamaicans nuh know good leadership. How many times did he vote for PJ? Bettah him did write bout the environment than convince us how much of a comedian he is.

The data is there for all to see. Many comrades now a call up Seaga's name, yet Maxwell claim he is the worst PM? kiss teet.

[Mosiah]

okay lazie.

again, forumites can draw their own conclusions!

wooieee!

[Islandman]

My earliest memory of John Maxwell is when I was a child watching the 1980 election results on JBC and watching him sweat like a cane cutter working in 90+ degree heat, when in fact he was in an air conditioned studio.

It was clear that the JLP was going to win the election and he expected that he would be fired for the disgraceful bias that he displayed while working for that institution, and he was right.

Maxwell is a good writer. I cannot consider him a good journalist as he has never made an attempt to be impartial when performing that role.

[Karl]

My earliest memory of John Maxwell is when I was a child watching the 1980 election results on JBC and watching him sweat like a cane cutter working in 90+ degree heat, when in fact he was in an air conditioned studio.

It was clear that the JLP was going to win the election and he expected that he would be fired for the disgraceful bias that he displayed while working for that institution, and he was right.

Maxwell is a good writer. I cannot consider him a good journalist as he has never made an attempt to be impartial when performing that role.

He is, I think, a much more opinionated person than a PNP person. It just so happens that the PNP is on many fronts closer to his ideas on what should be done for the country.

[Karl]

If a witness discredits himself on the stand, his entire testimony is worthless.

That is what the talking heads would like you to take as gospel. They lie!

In the worst of us, there is some good! - (Just do not remember if it is an original quote and if so, by whom! ...but it is 100% right on the money)