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Was it all on behalf of Dudus?
Wignall's World
Mark Wignall
Sunday, February 20, 2011
AT first it was just sheer cynicism. Then as the actors made their appearances, it morphed into a circus where the clowns became the ringmasters and the ringmasters assumed the roles of the clowns.
We expected little, have been getting much, some believe too much. Lawyers representing the various sides have attempted, some of them, to punch holes into nothingness, as if the show is their show and let the truth be damned. Much we have got, little have we confirmed and the 'more' to come will certainly destroy the little faith we had left that men whom we once lauded will deliver or are capable of delivering us out of a belief in their infamy.
Towards the end, it is just sheer cynicism.
Informed by the realities of the past and the distrust of politics, a reader wrote me the following:
Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke in the custody of United States DEA agents in New York last year.
1/4 
"Whether empanelled to exonerate wholesale death and destruction by friends or agents of the state or sanitise a done deal or extricate the ones with authority to appoint them, commissions of enquiry in Jamaica have generally followed the odious formula devised by those who set them up in the England of a bygone day when politicians saw themselves as close to the monarchy they were gradually replacing. Certainly leaders of that era considered the exercise of power to be similar in nature to divine right.
As usual we seem drawn to emulate the least desirable examples from our colonial history."
Attached to his transmittal were the last five verses from Rudyard Kipling's grand poem, 'Cleared.'
'The secret half a county keeps, the whisper in the lane,
The shriek that tells the shot went home behind the broken pane,
The dry blood crisping in the sun that scares the honest bees,
And shows the boys have heard your talk — what do they know of these?
'But you — you know — ay, ten times more; the secrets of the dead,
Dark terror on the country-side by word and whisper bred,
The mangled stallion's scream at night, the tail-cropped heifer's low.
Who set the whisper going first? You know, and well you know!
'My soul! I'd sooner lie in jail for murder plain and straight,
Pure crime I'd done with my own hand for money, lust, or hate,
Than take a seat in Parliament by fellow-felons cheered,
While one of those "not provens" proved me cleared as you are cleared.
'Cleared — you that "lost" the League accounts — go, guard our honour still,
Go, help to make our country's laws that broke God's law at will —
One hand stuck out behind the back, to signal "strike again";
The other on your dress-shirt-front to show your heart is clean.
'If black is black or white is white, in black and white it's down,
You're only traitors to the Queen and rebels to the Crown.
If print is print or words are words, the learned Court perpends: —
We are not ruled by murderers, but only — by their friends.'
Much has been made by lawyers for JLP interests at the Manatt enquiry that somehow an individual like former Commissioner of Police Hardley Lewin was a 'busybody' in his early efforts to determine the status of extradition proceedings of 'Dudus' Coke.
Tied in to the prime minister's 'threat' early last year to put his career on the line for defending the rights of the Jamaican people in extradition matters, the impression has been given that once the US request for Coke's extradition was received by the Jamaican authorities, the allegations as set out in the extradition documents would somehow not ring any special bells, and impel the foreign affairs ministry, the attorney general's office, the DPP, the police and the army into the mode of, 'Oh, it's just another guy, just another request'.
The sad part of that is, the 'just another guy' scenarios were usually done with much dispatch.
Former National Security Minister Dr Peter Phillips in his testimony has painted Dudus as head of the Shower Posse and he was non-political enough to declare that the links of the Shower Posse went across political lines. It wasn't just a JLP 'cosa nostra'.
Very few of us expect the prime minister and the attorney general to admit that the extradition was stalled because Dudus was a key supporter of the JLP. They would be quite foolish to do so. But if it wasn't so, based on testimony which has so far come from the majority of the key public servants involved, there were really no solid grounds for the delay.
Many of us knew then that because he was not just another guy and wielded enormous power from his home base of Tivoli Gardens, the heart of the JLP's street power and part of the prime minister's constituency, extraditing him could have created a national nightmare. To me, even though the Government knew that it could have invoked a 'creation of national unrest' clause in the treaty agreement, it would have been stupid to do so because that would have made it appear that the prime minister was using a 'technicality' to avert the extradition.
It was therefore understood that once the request was received, even assuming that the prime minister was not briefed from 2007 that 'something was in the making', the JLP and the Government it formed was between hell and the spawn of the devil.
Something had to give.
If the Manatt engagement was not done on behalf of Dudus, certainly the prime minister, when he appears, will have to convince us that Manatt's lobbying effort to the US State Department yielded much more in clarifying matters under the extradition treaty between the US and Jamaica than just the then proximate matter of 'ending the stonewalling' which he said existed then.
As I have previously stated, almost all of the paths which have run through the Attorney General's Department and the prime minister have ended up in roadblocks, if we are to assume that the testimonies given so far have been truthful.
In other words, the testimonies do not add up to the statements given to the Commission by Golding and Lightbourne. What if the oral submissions given by, and the cross-examinations of Golding and Lightbourne when they appear before the enquiry, do not tie into each other?
One or both will have to go. And we will have ended up where we were about eight months ago when just about everyone was calling for their resignations.
Early days of the Sound System
WHEN I along with Derrick Brandt and Sterling Gareave operated a minor sound system called Eternity in the middle of the 1970s, one of our amplifiers was of the tube type that utilised KT 88s.
Before the full application of the transistor to sound amplification in Jamaica, in the late 1940s and in the 1950s the tube amp was the norm, and when we left Leslie Galbraith's story last week, he had built just such an amplifier which could handle multiple speakers and had sold it to Tom Wong who, according to 95-year-old Hedley Brown, operated a hardware store at Upper Luke Lane. That amplifier launched the sound system known as Tom the Great Sebastian. We continue his story.
History of the Jamaican Sound System by Leslie Galbraith - Part 4
'The word went out and within only a few days we began to get inquiries, and later took orders, for building similar units. Since the object of reproducing records (and producing these amplifiers) was to simulate live music, it was imperative to match the amplifier to the speakers and to the speaker enclosures (boxes). To this end we obtained different brands of speakers and, with the expertise of Ewan Reid, constructed various sizes and dimensions: square, tall, thin, deep speaker cabinets, with open and closed backs.
'Eventually, by experimenting, we found that a box with a closed back and a slot at the bottom (bass reflex) worked best. This slot -- in the front panel, below the hole for the speaker -- allowed for the bass frequencies to emerge with greater 'volume' from the boxes. Speaker boxes had to be made of one-inch thick furniture wood with corner blocks and wood braces and panels. These were screwed and glued to be able to withstand rough treatment (including falling off trucks!) and yet still be able to perform. Frank Williams was the first person to manufacture some of these original boxes.
'Within a few months there were sound system dances all over Kingston at various lodge halls, open-air lawns and anywhere that could hold a crowd of 100 people and up. We supplied amplifiers to sound systems all over Kingston and the country parishes. Among the sound systems we supplied amplifiers to were Nicks, Prof, V Rocket, Hoshue, Duke Reid, Coxon Dodd (Downbeat) and many others all over Jamaica.
'Because of the interest shown by many radio technicians and people in the trade, we made available the circuits and information necessary to construct similar units and we handled the demand for parts to build these amplifiers. Many technicians, amongst them Lloyd Daley, Matador, Fred Stanford, Copeland, George Lee, Morton, and many others were building amplifiers on their own. We imported the tubes and other components from [the] USA, England and Germany, and later from Japan. Massicore and Ashworth transformers came from England, as also Rola and Celestion speakers and Grampion horn speakers. Mr Soares had relocated to Victoria Avenue and with Mr Binns and Mr Green were making transformers and metal chassis and cases for amplifier construction. Milton Haughton (Teletronics) also made transformers.
'The usual suppliers of records -- Times Store, Motta's and Depass -- were soon unable to supply the demand for the latest hits we heard over the radio nightly. Therefore, together with our large variety of electronic amplifier and radio parts, we now opened our own record department. The range of popular music ranged from rhythm and blues, solo female and male vocalists, popular music groups, famous orchestras, groups, bands and country and western. Soon there were also many small record shops on upper King Street, Church Street and Orange Street to meet the demands of the music-loving public.
'Names such as, Pottinger, Savoy, Leroy Riley, Prince Buster, KG in Crossroads and Beverly's come to mind.
'As now, the popularity of the sound system depended not only on the quality of the music, but also on having the latest hits. Each sound system operator found his own contacts abroad to obtain music and many returning farm workers and workers on cruise ships came home with the latest records.'
In next week's final part, the 78 rpm record becomes obsolete and gives way to the 45 rpm and the long-playing 33 1/3 rpm record. Galbraith builds the 'House of Joy' speaker. Don't miss it. Also, 95-year-old musician, former band leader, electronics guru, inventor of the solid-wood body electric guitar (seven years before the American Les Paul patented it) and columnist for the Western Mirror gives his take on the development of the Sound System in Jamaica.
Not good enough, Minister Nelson
IT was truly painful for me to watch National Security Minister Dwight Nelson being cross-examined by ace attorney-at-law KD Knight, the main Queen's Counsel appearing for the PNP at the Manatt enquiry.
I kept saying to myself, 'Is that really my security minister?' Although it may have been my own perception, calls I made to others who watched confirmed that the minister looked, to use an understatement, uncomfortable.
Prior to that we had seen fireworks between Frank Phipps, QC, representing the JLP, and former security minister Dr Peter Phillips, but what occurred in that intriguing interface could be considered the result of a face-off between two titans.
Somehow, I didn't get the impression that my present security minister was wearing the title of 'titan' comfortably.
Senator Nelson is, as far as I am aware, not a run-of-the-mill politician. Indeed, it is my belief that Nelson is more a 'people' man than a politician and that seems to be tied into the fact that he never desired the status of an elected representative.
Nelson guards his integrity like a deep moat around a castle. He is unshakeable there. I have never sensed that the security minister has ever been the sort to ingratiate himself with the desirable elements of politics or has ever given any of us who track and keep a keen eye on the politics of the times the impression that he is anything other than a decent man.
At the time of writing this column (Thursday PM) he was to appear again. May I suggest to him some music: Melody Of Love by David Caroll; Claire de Lune by Debussy; and One Drop by Bob Marley. Whenever I am tied up in knots, those soothing bits work wonders for me... with a glass of wine, of course, and my special lady in view.
observemark@gmail.com
Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/colum...#ixzz1EVT53N6g
Wignall's World
Mark Wignall
Sunday, February 20, 2011
AT first it was just sheer cynicism. Then as the actors made their appearances, it morphed into a circus where the clowns became the ringmasters and the ringmasters assumed the roles of the clowns.
We expected little, have been getting much, some believe too much. Lawyers representing the various sides have attempted, some of them, to punch holes into nothingness, as if the show is their show and let the truth be damned. Much we have got, little have we confirmed and the 'more' to come will certainly destroy the little faith we had left that men whom we once lauded will deliver or are capable of delivering us out of a belief in their infamy.
Towards the end, it is just sheer cynicism.
Informed by the realities of the past and the distrust of politics, a reader wrote me the following:
Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke in the custody of United States DEA agents in New York last year. 1/4 "Whether empanelled to exonerate wholesale death and destruction by friends or agents of the state or sanitise a done deal or extricate the ones with authority to appoint them, commissions of enquiry in Jamaica have generally followed the odious formula devised by those who set them up in the England of a bygone day when politicians saw themselves as close to the monarchy they were gradually replacing. Certainly leaders of that era considered the exercise of power to be similar in nature to divine right.
As usual we seem drawn to emulate the least desirable examples from our colonial history."
Attached to his transmittal were the last five verses from Rudyard Kipling's grand poem, 'Cleared.'
'The secret half a county keeps, the whisper in the lane,
The shriek that tells the shot went home behind the broken pane,
The dry blood crisping in the sun that scares the honest bees,
And shows the boys have heard your talk — what do they know of these?
'But you — you know — ay, ten times more; the secrets of the dead,
Dark terror on the country-side by word and whisper bred,
The mangled stallion's scream at night, the tail-cropped heifer's low.
Who set the whisper going first? You know, and well you know!
'My soul! I'd sooner lie in jail for murder plain and straight,
Pure crime I'd done with my own hand for money, lust, or hate,
Than take a seat in Parliament by fellow-felons cheered,
While one of those "not provens" proved me cleared as you are cleared.
'Cleared — you that "lost" the League accounts — go, guard our honour still,
Go, help to make our country's laws that broke God's law at will —
One hand stuck out behind the back, to signal "strike again";
The other on your dress-shirt-front to show your heart is clean.
'If black is black or white is white, in black and white it's down,
You're only traitors to the Queen and rebels to the Crown.
If print is print or words are words, the learned Court perpends: —
We are not ruled by murderers, but only — by their friends.'
Much has been made by lawyers for JLP interests at the Manatt enquiry that somehow an individual like former Commissioner of Police Hardley Lewin was a 'busybody' in his early efforts to determine the status of extradition proceedings of 'Dudus' Coke.
Tied in to the prime minister's 'threat' early last year to put his career on the line for defending the rights of the Jamaican people in extradition matters, the impression has been given that once the US request for Coke's extradition was received by the Jamaican authorities, the allegations as set out in the extradition documents would somehow not ring any special bells, and impel the foreign affairs ministry, the attorney general's office, the DPP, the police and the army into the mode of, 'Oh, it's just another guy, just another request'.
The sad part of that is, the 'just another guy' scenarios were usually done with much dispatch.
Former National Security Minister Dr Peter Phillips in his testimony has painted Dudus as head of the Shower Posse and he was non-political enough to declare that the links of the Shower Posse went across political lines. It wasn't just a JLP 'cosa nostra'.
Very few of us expect the prime minister and the attorney general to admit that the extradition was stalled because Dudus was a key supporter of the JLP. They would be quite foolish to do so. But if it wasn't so, based on testimony which has so far come from the majority of the key public servants involved, there were really no solid grounds for the delay.
Many of us knew then that because he was not just another guy and wielded enormous power from his home base of Tivoli Gardens, the heart of the JLP's street power and part of the prime minister's constituency, extraditing him could have created a national nightmare. To me, even though the Government knew that it could have invoked a 'creation of national unrest' clause in the treaty agreement, it would have been stupid to do so because that would have made it appear that the prime minister was using a 'technicality' to avert the extradition.
It was therefore understood that once the request was received, even assuming that the prime minister was not briefed from 2007 that 'something was in the making', the JLP and the Government it formed was between hell and the spawn of the devil.
Something had to give.
If the Manatt engagement was not done on behalf of Dudus, certainly the prime minister, when he appears, will have to convince us that Manatt's lobbying effort to the US State Department yielded much more in clarifying matters under the extradition treaty between the US and Jamaica than just the then proximate matter of 'ending the stonewalling' which he said existed then.
As I have previously stated, almost all of the paths which have run through the Attorney General's Department and the prime minister have ended up in roadblocks, if we are to assume that the testimonies given so far have been truthful.
In other words, the testimonies do not add up to the statements given to the Commission by Golding and Lightbourne. What if the oral submissions given by, and the cross-examinations of Golding and Lightbourne when they appear before the enquiry, do not tie into each other?
One or both will have to go. And we will have ended up where we were about eight months ago when just about everyone was calling for their resignations.
Early days of the Sound System
WHEN I along with Derrick Brandt and Sterling Gareave operated a minor sound system called Eternity in the middle of the 1970s, one of our amplifiers was of the tube type that utilised KT 88s.
Before the full application of the transistor to sound amplification in Jamaica, in the late 1940s and in the 1950s the tube amp was the norm, and when we left Leslie Galbraith's story last week, he had built just such an amplifier which could handle multiple speakers and had sold it to Tom Wong who, according to 95-year-old Hedley Brown, operated a hardware store at Upper Luke Lane. That amplifier launched the sound system known as Tom the Great Sebastian. We continue his story.
History of the Jamaican Sound System by Leslie Galbraith - Part 4
'The word went out and within only a few days we began to get inquiries, and later took orders, for building similar units. Since the object of reproducing records (and producing these amplifiers) was to simulate live music, it was imperative to match the amplifier to the speakers and to the speaker enclosures (boxes). To this end we obtained different brands of speakers and, with the expertise of Ewan Reid, constructed various sizes and dimensions: square, tall, thin, deep speaker cabinets, with open and closed backs.
'Eventually, by experimenting, we found that a box with a closed back and a slot at the bottom (bass reflex) worked best. This slot -- in the front panel, below the hole for the speaker -- allowed for the bass frequencies to emerge with greater 'volume' from the boxes. Speaker boxes had to be made of one-inch thick furniture wood with corner blocks and wood braces and panels. These were screwed and glued to be able to withstand rough treatment (including falling off trucks!) and yet still be able to perform. Frank Williams was the first person to manufacture some of these original boxes.
'Within a few months there were sound system dances all over Kingston at various lodge halls, open-air lawns and anywhere that could hold a crowd of 100 people and up. We supplied amplifiers to sound systems all over Kingston and the country parishes. Among the sound systems we supplied amplifiers to were Nicks, Prof, V Rocket, Hoshue, Duke Reid, Coxon Dodd (Downbeat) and many others all over Jamaica.
'Because of the interest shown by many radio technicians and people in the trade, we made available the circuits and information necessary to construct similar units and we handled the demand for parts to build these amplifiers. Many technicians, amongst them Lloyd Daley, Matador, Fred Stanford, Copeland, George Lee, Morton, and many others were building amplifiers on their own. We imported the tubes and other components from [the] USA, England and Germany, and later from Japan. Massicore and Ashworth transformers came from England, as also Rola and Celestion speakers and Grampion horn speakers. Mr Soares had relocated to Victoria Avenue and with Mr Binns and Mr Green were making transformers and metal chassis and cases for amplifier construction. Milton Haughton (Teletronics) also made transformers.
'The usual suppliers of records -- Times Store, Motta's and Depass -- were soon unable to supply the demand for the latest hits we heard over the radio nightly. Therefore, together with our large variety of electronic amplifier and radio parts, we now opened our own record department. The range of popular music ranged from rhythm and blues, solo female and male vocalists, popular music groups, famous orchestras, groups, bands and country and western. Soon there were also many small record shops on upper King Street, Church Street and Orange Street to meet the demands of the music-loving public.
'Names such as, Pottinger, Savoy, Leroy Riley, Prince Buster, KG in Crossroads and Beverly's come to mind.
'As now, the popularity of the sound system depended not only on the quality of the music, but also on having the latest hits. Each sound system operator found his own contacts abroad to obtain music and many returning farm workers and workers on cruise ships came home with the latest records.'
In next week's final part, the 78 rpm record becomes obsolete and gives way to the 45 rpm and the long-playing 33 1/3 rpm record. Galbraith builds the 'House of Joy' speaker. Don't miss it. Also, 95-year-old musician, former band leader, electronics guru, inventor of the solid-wood body electric guitar (seven years before the American Les Paul patented it) and columnist for the Western Mirror gives his take on the development of the Sound System in Jamaica.
Not good enough, Minister Nelson
IT was truly painful for me to watch National Security Minister Dwight Nelson being cross-examined by ace attorney-at-law KD Knight, the main Queen's Counsel appearing for the PNP at the Manatt enquiry.
I kept saying to myself, 'Is that really my security minister?' Although it may have been my own perception, calls I made to others who watched confirmed that the minister looked, to use an understatement, uncomfortable.
Prior to that we had seen fireworks between Frank Phipps, QC, representing the JLP, and former security minister Dr Peter Phillips, but what occurred in that intriguing interface could be considered the result of a face-off between two titans.
Somehow, I didn't get the impression that my present security minister was wearing the title of 'titan' comfortably.
Senator Nelson is, as far as I am aware, not a run-of-the-mill politician. Indeed, it is my belief that Nelson is more a 'people' man than a politician and that seems to be tied into the fact that he never desired the status of an elected representative.
Nelson guards his integrity like a deep moat around a castle. He is unshakeable there. I have never sensed that the security minister has ever been the sort to ingratiate himself with the desirable elements of politics or has ever given any of us who track and keep a keen eye on the politics of the times the impression that he is anything other than a decent man.
At the time of writing this column (Thursday PM) he was to appear again. May I suggest to him some music: Melody Of Love by David Caroll; Claire de Lune by Debussy; and One Drop by Bob Marley. Whenever I am tied up in knots, those soothing bits work wonders for me... with a glass of wine, of course, and my special lady in view.
observemark@gmail.com
Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/colum...#ixzz1EVT53N6g
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