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A cure worse than the disease
Common Sense
John Maxwell
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Watching American television has made me aware that there are several new diseases previously unknown to me that are serious threats to human complacency.
John Maxwell
It also appears that these ailments are so dangerous that the most extreme measures must be used to defeat them.
One of them, it appears, is something known as acid reflux, which is such a dangerous ailment that extreme measures must be used to defeat it.
The panacea specific to this disease is called Nexium, and it is apparently, the medial equivalent of the blockbuster bomb that obliterates everything within sight. Nexium is apparently attended by various possible side effects, the most serious of which may be death, but before that, apparently, there is the possibility of an upset stomach and indigestion, which is what I thought Nexium was supposed to cure.
Another really dreadful business is bipolar disorder - an ailment which I am aware exists and which I sometimes suspect almost everyone (including me) suffers from. In the US, however, this threat is so widespread and so urgent, according to the commercial, that people are urged to ring up their doctors to tell them that they have the disease and to demand that he prescribe a guaranteed antidote - something called Abilify.
This one, like Nexium, has multiple possible side effects, including uncontrollable muscular spasms, diabetes, heart attack and death.
I can remember times when, as a practising alcoholic, I vainly wondered, "Oh Death, where is thy sting?" but on second thought that was an aberration which passed with the hangovers of the period.
There are obviously some cures, which are worse than the disease. In the days before antibiotics, mercury was likely to kill you before the syphilis it was meant to cure.
PATTERSON. promoted the concept of a Maroon theme park in Accompong
We in Jamaica suffer a great many complaints, among them an apparently invincible inferiority complex, which tells us that everything foreign is better and that if we are to develop we must look outward, seeking deliverance by way of foreign investment. So far, like Nexium and Abilify, the side effects seem more dangerous than the disease, but we continue to pursue the will-o'-the wisp deep into the sloughs of despond and occasional financial meltdown.
Another side-effect, of course, which is utterly predictable and apparently inevitable, is the degradation and destruction of the environment and the coarsening of the quality of life for all of us, from those in state-run confinement to those behind electronic gates and bars of their own choosing.
We have made some really astonishingly bad decisions in the name of development. Slavery and the sugar cane were the first if we don't go back to the extermination of the Tainos (Arawaks).
Since then we have driven the poor small farmer off the flat land to the hillsides where, however good his farming culture, his production inevitably destroys the land and its fertility. Burning cane for harvest is another, which has stripped the Jamaican soil of all its living components and left it useless for anything but hydroponic factory farming. Our concentration on grammar schools has defrauded most of the population of their opportunities to develop useful and profitable skills.
When our forefathers decided to dump sewage in Kingston Harbour that was another horrendous mistake, but that did not become apparent for nearly 40 years.
The development of Portmore has left nearly a million people in serious danger from flooding from land and inundation from storm surge as well as liquefaction of the soil from earthquakes.
We were about to destroy Hope Gardens in the interest of yuppie housing when enough people raised an outcry to stop this most egregious assault on our amenity and cultural integrity. The developers got Long Mountain instead, threatening the water supply of Kingston if the sewage lines up there are ever ruptured, as they will be, by an earthquake.
The destruction of Jamaican farmland by bauxite, by squatters and by housing developers is another malignant side effect of unsustainable development; destruction and de-socialisation of communities and families is another.
We are now bracing ourselves for a most comprehensive catastrophe - the destruction of the history, culture and amenity of the parish of Trelawny.
In many ways Trelawny is the Jamaican heartland, if one exists. It is there that the English prospered most with sugar, where one of Jamaica's earliest newspapers was founded, a place redolent of history and with the architecture to witness that.
It is also the site of the Cockpit Country, the geographical centre of Jamaican resistance to slavery as well as the hydro-geological nerve centre of Jamaica. It is also, just as important, the most concentrated area of biological interest in Jamaica and one of the most important such areas in the western hemisphere and the world. It is a treasure beyond valuation.
The JLP, in opposition, promised that there would be no mining in the Cockpit Country, but there are powerful interests in the civil service and outside, who will do their damnedest to reduce this promise to its least possible utility in the interest of the development of bauxite.
This is tragic, because Jamaica's bauxite is only important because it is the world's cheapest and most accessible to North America. And since Jamaica west of the Wag Water is half bauxite and half aluminum ore, the prospects for that area of Jamaica are not good.
Dr Parris Lyew Ayee of the Jamaica Bauxite Institute has already warned us that Mandeville is sitting on millions of tons of bauxite which some bauxite company may decide is a real shame, but the destruction of the town may be necessary for development. Rather as one American general said 40 years ago in Vietnam: "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."
The long-term effect of bauxite red mud on the water supplies of Jamaica are still unknown; so are the possible effects of mining anywhere near the so-called boundaries of the Cockpit Country.
Some people are clearly prepared to destroy Jamaica in order to save it. I can think of two right off the bat: the UDC and the Port Authority, both of which appear to have some transcendental purpose in view which can do without the Jamaica so many of us like to call home.
The modernisation of the Port of Kingston to accommodate the most elephantine cargo carriers was attended by two disasters, the full effect of which may not be so far into the future: the destruction of the coral reefs protecting the Palisadoes and the relocation of toxic waste from the harbour bottom.
There is of course a third major error, but it pales in comparison with the first two: the shutting down of the internal air service to accommodate imported goods. This has meant that people travelling between Jamaica's two largest towns must produce photo identification and go through customs and immigration in their own country.
The people of Falmouth may be destined for the same sort of fate - the progressive alienation from their ownership and control of all they value in their home town.
Apart from the fact that our developers are planning to annex almost the entire coastline of Trelawny for 'high net worth' investors, the remaining part, from Duncans to Falmouth is increasingly becoming 'no-Jamaican's-land' as expensive new monstrosities are constructed in what used to be the most unspoiled part of Jamaica.
Threatened from the south by bauxite, from the east by Harmony Cove, the capital city of Trelawny is now threatened by a determined onslaught on its very character and existence.
The Port Authority has decided, in its infinite wisdom, that a super new cruise shipping centre be built in Falmouth, around a huge new cruise ship pier.
The pier alone, I am informed, will destroy nearly 100 acres (40+ ha) of the floor of the sea, taking with it corals and other life forms and destroying the sea grass beds in which deep sea fish breed and which give sustenance to the enormous population of black crabs for which Trelawny is not as well known as it should be.
The new pier will accommodate at least two enormous cruise ships at a time, disgorging into Falmouth on a daily basis 12,000 people, tripling in a flash the population of that ancient and blessed town.
To accommodate this horde of anxious humanity, yearning to spend their money in tourist traps of one kind or another, Falmouth will eventually be forced to build toilet facilities and provide water for a population far above its rate-paying base.
As is the custom and tradition now, the visitors will be herded onto tour buses to visit such fabled Jamaican attractions as the in-bond shops and to watch and mingle with captive dolphins.
They will not watch or mingle with the captive Jamaicans who will be forced to do their bidding which, in my view, will be mainly directing them to the restrooms of Falmouth. Of course, people like me will miss the value of this distinction.
Falmouth will become the restroom capital of the world, having more sanitary conveniences per capita than anywhere of comparable size in the world. Of course, there will be other possibilities.
Inside Harmony Cove will be, without doubt, some of the world's glossiest, most exclusive gambling dens, where high-rolling tourists will be rolled for their greenbacks so fast that they will be broke before they realise that they are in Jamaica.
And there is another feature which we may have overlooked - Mr Patterson's plans for a sort of human zoo near Accompong, where suitably disciplined actors will reenact scenes from Jamaican history, suitably expurgated so that, in the interest of fairness and balance, of course, the Maroons are seen to lose from time to time. That's my guess, anyway.
The Maroon Theme park was a by-product of that supremely stupid scheme, the Doomsday Highway, built to get cars from Kingston to Montego Bay in a shorter time than it takes to get from Constant Spring to downtown Kingston.
I have no idea what the Port Authority envisages will be Falmouth's fate after the cruise shipping pier, but one thing is certain: the Phosphorescent Lagoon, one of just three or four in the world, will be gone.
We may also have to say good-bye to our black crabs, which make mass migrations to the sea in June, making the roads slippery in death and scaling anything in their path. The carnage on the New North Coast Highway will be something for the record books, because although Mr Patterson gave the black crabs notice to quit, they are born Trelawnyians and never give up.
What happens when they meet the high-net-worth individuals in Harmony Cove will be something to write home about, unless, of course, the promoters decide to exterminate them with the latest biocide and kill off the 'peenie wallies', the snakes and all the other unpleasant wildlife native to Trelawny, including perhaps, journalists.
Free speech
I believe so much in free speech that it has got me into more trouble than most people. Despite that, there are some aspects of the new movement for freer speech in the media that leave me unconvinced.
It is essential and salutary to consider that the only valuable capital most people possess is their good name, reputation and personal integrity.
I don't want to send people to prison for speaking too freely, but this possibility is being bruited about as one reason for the liberalisation of libel laws.
A quick look at the gossip pages in our local media should convince people that if that is free speech, extended freedom might not really be worth having.
People are traduced, all sorts of vile things said about them with enough hints and nudges to make us understand who is likely to be meant. That of course doesn't work all the time, as I discovered when two separate acquaintances assured me that they were the person targeted in one of these columns.
My feeling is that if the gossip columns are any guide to how the press and electronic media will use more liberal laws, then I don't think the loss is worth it.
The prime minister's husband, for instance, has been a target of the most egregious malice over the past several months, on the sound principle that "ef yu cyan' ketch Quaco, ketch 'im shut" (If you can't catch Quaco, catch his shirt or friend). And as Theodore Sealy once adumbrated, "Mud, once thrown, has a tendency to stick."
The press, or the media, as it is fancifully called these days, is the self-appointed informant, guide, scout, watchdog and friend of the public. We are supposed to be guardians of the public interest.
When I see, however, a news story, which flouts the law of contempt of court, arguing one side of a contentious and violent dispute without the slightest bow to legality, I have to ask myself how the journalists guilty of such an outrage could ever be trusted with the nuclear weapon of enhanced press freedom.
I regret that I cannot join the latest cavalcade of fashionistas who are aping the American demand for everything to be left open, except the secrets of the media owners and their friends and girlfriends.
When I worked at the BBC, I was often tempted to use my spare time to track down the slimy secrets of the editors of the Daily Sketch and the News of the World, for example, because I was certain that anyone who so revelled in uncovering the sexual peccadilloes of others must have some mighty dirt to hide.
The point about investigative journalism is that it does not need any liberalising of the libel laws. In libel, the truth is an absolute defence and if it is your opinion that is complained about, you have serious protection there as well. The law of privilege has already been expanded in recent judgements, giving real journalists all the protection they need to bring down anyone.
In a country which glories in being identified as one of the most corrupt in the world, the truth will never be sufficient.
Copyright©2007 John Maxwell
jankunnu@gmail.com
Common Sense
John Maxwell
Sunday, October 07, 2007
Watching American television has made me aware that there are several new diseases previously unknown to me that are serious threats to human complacency.
John MaxwellIt also appears that these ailments are so dangerous that the most extreme measures must be used to defeat them.
One of them, it appears, is something known as acid reflux, which is such a dangerous ailment that extreme measures must be used to defeat it.
The panacea specific to this disease is called Nexium, and it is apparently, the medial equivalent of the blockbuster bomb that obliterates everything within sight. Nexium is apparently attended by various possible side effects, the most serious of which may be death, but before that, apparently, there is the possibility of an upset stomach and indigestion, which is what I thought Nexium was supposed to cure.
Another really dreadful business is bipolar disorder - an ailment which I am aware exists and which I sometimes suspect almost everyone (including me) suffers from. In the US, however, this threat is so widespread and so urgent, according to the commercial, that people are urged to ring up their doctors to tell them that they have the disease and to demand that he prescribe a guaranteed antidote - something called Abilify.
This one, like Nexium, has multiple possible side effects, including uncontrollable muscular spasms, diabetes, heart attack and death.
I can remember times when, as a practising alcoholic, I vainly wondered, "Oh Death, where is thy sting?" but on second thought that was an aberration which passed with the hangovers of the period.
There are obviously some cures, which are worse than the disease. In the days before antibiotics, mercury was likely to kill you before the syphilis it was meant to cure.
PATTERSON. promoted the concept of a Maroon theme park in Accompong We in Jamaica suffer a great many complaints, among them an apparently invincible inferiority complex, which tells us that everything foreign is better and that if we are to develop we must look outward, seeking deliverance by way of foreign investment. So far, like Nexium and Abilify, the side effects seem more dangerous than the disease, but we continue to pursue the will-o'-the wisp deep into the sloughs of despond and occasional financial meltdown.
Another side-effect, of course, which is utterly predictable and apparently inevitable, is the degradation and destruction of the environment and the coarsening of the quality of life for all of us, from those in state-run confinement to those behind electronic gates and bars of their own choosing.
We have made some really astonishingly bad decisions in the name of development. Slavery and the sugar cane were the first if we don't go back to the extermination of the Tainos (Arawaks).
Since then we have driven the poor small farmer off the flat land to the hillsides where, however good his farming culture, his production inevitably destroys the land and its fertility. Burning cane for harvest is another, which has stripped the Jamaican soil of all its living components and left it useless for anything but hydroponic factory farming. Our concentration on grammar schools has defrauded most of the population of their opportunities to develop useful and profitable skills.
When our forefathers decided to dump sewage in Kingston Harbour that was another horrendous mistake, but that did not become apparent for nearly 40 years.
The development of Portmore has left nearly a million people in serious danger from flooding from land and inundation from storm surge as well as liquefaction of the soil from earthquakes.
We were about to destroy Hope Gardens in the interest of yuppie housing when enough people raised an outcry to stop this most egregious assault on our amenity and cultural integrity. The developers got Long Mountain instead, threatening the water supply of Kingston if the sewage lines up there are ever ruptured, as they will be, by an earthquake.
The destruction of Jamaican farmland by bauxite, by squatters and by housing developers is another malignant side effect of unsustainable development; destruction and de-socialisation of communities and families is another.
We are now bracing ourselves for a most comprehensive catastrophe - the destruction of the history, culture and amenity of the parish of Trelawny.
In many ways Trelawny is the Jamaican heartland, if one exists. It is there that the English prospered most with sugar, where one of Jamaica's earliest newspapers was founded, a place redolent of history and with the architecture to witness that.
It is also the site of the Cockpit Country, the geographical centre of Jamaican resistance to slavery as well as the hydro-geological nerve centre of Jamaica. It is also, just as important, the most concentrated area of biological interest in Jamaica and one of the most important such areas in the western hemisphere and the world. It is a treasure beyond valuation.
The JLP, in opposition, promised that there would be no mining in the Cockpit Country, but there are powerful interests in the civil service and outside, who will do their damnedest to reduce this promise to its least possible utility in the interest of the development of bauxite.
This is tragic, because Jamaica's bauxite is only important because it is the world's cheapest and most accessible to North America. And since Jamaica west of the Wag Water is half bauxite and half aluminum ore, the prospects for that area of Jamaica are not good.
Dr Parris Lyew Ayee of the Jamaica Bauxite Institute has already warned us that Mandeville is sitting on millions of tons of bauxite which some bauxite company may decide is a real shame, but the destruction of the town may be necessary for development. Rather as one American general said 40 years ago in Vietnam: "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."
The long-term effect of bauxite red mud on the water supplies of Jamaica are still unknown; so are the possible effects of mining anywhere near the so-called boundaries of the Cockpit Country.
Some people are clearly prepared to destroy Jamaica in order to save it. I can think of two right off the bat: the UDC and the Port Authority, both of which appear to have some transcendental purpose in view which can do without the Jamaica so many of us like to call home.
The modernisation of the Port of Kingston to accommodate the most elephantine cargo carriers was attended by two disasters, the full effect of which may not be so far into the future: the destruction of the coral reefs protecting the Palisadoes and the relocation of toxic waste from the harbour bottom.
There is of course a third major error, but it pales in comparison with the first two: the shutting down of the internal air service to accommodate imported goods. This has meant that people travelling between Jamaica's two largest towns must produce photo identification and go through customs and immigration in their own country.
The people of Falmouth may be destined for the same sort of fate - the progressive alienation from their ownership and control of all they value in their home town.
Apart from the fact that our developers are planning to annex almost the entire coastline of Trelawny for 'high net worth' investors, the remaining part, from Duncans to Falmouth is increasingly becoming 'no-Jamaican's-land' as expensive new monstrosities are constructed in what used to be the most unspoiled part of Jamaica.
Threatened from the south by bauxite, from the east by Harmony Cove, the capital city of Trelawny is now threatened by a determined onslaught on its very character and existence.
The Port Authority has decided, in its infinite wisdom, that a super new cruise shipping centre be built in Falmouth, around a huge new cruise ship pier.
The pier alone, I am informed, will destroy nearly 100 acres (40+ ha) of the floor of the sea, taking with it corals and other life forms and destroying the sea grass beds in which deep sea fish breed and which give sustenance to the enormous population of black crabs for which Trelawny is not as well known as it should be.
The new pier will accommodate at least two enormous cruise ships at a time, disgorging into Falmouth on a daily basis 12,000 people, tripling in a flash the population of that ancient and blessed town.
To accommodate this horde of anxious humanity, yearning to spend their money in tourist traps of one kind or another, Falmouth will eventually be forced to build toilet facilities and provide water for a population far above its rate-paying base.
As is the custom and tradition now, the visitors will be herded onto tour buses to visit such fabled Jamaican attractions as the in-bond shops and to watch and mingle with captive dolphins.
They will not watch or mingle with the captive Jamaicans who will be forced to do their bidding which, in my view, will be mainly directing them to the restrooms of Falmouth. Of course, people like me will miss the value of this distinction.
Falmouth will become the restroom capital of the world, having more sanitary conveniences per capita than anywhere of comparable size in the world. Of course, there will be other possibilities.
Inside Harmony Cove will be, without doubt, some of the world's glossiest, most exclusive gambling dens, where high-rolling tourists will be rolled for their greenbacks so fast that they will be broke before they realise that they are in Jamaica.
And there is another feature which we may have overlooked - Mr Patterson's plans for a sort of human zoo near Accompong, where suitably disciplined actors will reenact scenes from Jamaican history, suitably expurgated so that, in the interest of fairness and balance, of course, the Maroons are seen to lose from time to time. That's my guess, anyway.
The Maroon Theme park was a by-product of that supremely stupid scheme, the Doomsday Highway, built to get cars from Kingston to Montego Bay in a shorter time than it takes to get from Constant Spring to downtown Kingston.
I have no idea what the Port Authority envisages will be Falmouth's fate after the cruise shipping pier, but one thing is certain: the Phosphorescent Lagoon, one of just three or four in the world, will be gone.
We may also have to say good-bye to our black crabs, which make mass migrations to the sea in June, making the roads slippery in death and scaling anything in their path. The carnage on the New North Coast Highway will be something for the record books, because although Mr Patterson gave the black crabs notice to quit, they are born Trelawnyians and never give up.
What happens when they meet the high-net-worth individuals in Harmony Cove will be something to write home about, unless, of course, the promoters decide to exterminate them with the latest biocide and kill off the 'peenie wallies', the snakes and all the other unpleasant wildlife native to Trelawny, including perhaps, journalists.
Free speech
I believe so much in free speech that it has got me into more trouble than most people. Despite that, there are some aspects of the new movement for freer speech in the media that leave me unconvinced.
It is essential and salutary to consider that the only valuable capital most people possess is their good name, reputation and personal integrity.
I don't want to send people to prison for speaking too freely, but this possibility is being bruited about as one reason for the liberalisation of libel laws.
A quick look at the gossip pages in our local media should convince people that if that is free speech, extended freedom might not really be worth having.
People are traduced, all sorts of vile things said about them with enough hints and nudges to make us understand who is likely to be meant. That of course doesn't work all the time, as I discovered when two separate acquaintances assured me that they were the person targeted in one of these columns.
My feeling is that if the gossip columns are any guide to how the press and electronic media will use more liberal laws, then I don't think the loss is worth it.
The prime minister's husband, for instance, has been a target of the most egregious malice over the past several months, on the sound principle that "ef yu cyan' ketch Quaco, ketch 'im shut" (If you can't catch Quaco, catch his shirt or friend). And as Theodore Sealy once adumbrated, "Mud, once thrown, has a tendency to stick."
The press, or the media, as it is fancifully called these days, is the self-appointed informant, guide, scout, watchdog and friend of the public. We are supposed to be guardians of the public interest.
When I see, however, a news story, which flouts the law of contempt of court, arguing one side of a contentious and violent dispute without the slightest bow to legality, I have to ask myself how the journalists guilty of such an outrage could ever be trusted with the nuclear weapon of enhanced press freedom.
I regret that I cannot join the latest cavalcade of fashionistas who are aping the American demand for everything to be left open, except the secrets of the media owners and their friends and girlfriends.
When I worked at the BBC, I was often tempted to use my spare time to track down the slimy secrets of the editors of the Daily Sketch and the News of the World, for example, because I was certain that anyone who so revelled in uncovering the sexual peccadilloes of others must have some mighty dirt to hide.
The point about investigative journalism is that it does not need any liberalising of the libel laws. In libel, the truth is an absolute defence and if it is your opinion that is complained about, you have serious protection there as well. The law of privilege has already been expanded in recent judgements, giving real journalists all the protection they need to bring down anyone.
In a country which glories in being identified as one of the most corrupt in the world, the truth will never be sufficient.
Copyright©2007 John Maxwell
jankunnu@gmail.com