Caribbean gyre

Boojum Hunting in the Caribbean

By JOHN MAXWELL

When Thor Heyerdahl crossed the Atlantic from Africa to the Caribbean nearly 40 years ago, he was shocked by -- of all things -- a garbage dump in the middle of the ocean.

In the area known as the Doldrums (wonderful word), Heyerdahl's papyrus raft Ra II was surrounded for days by a wilderness of plastic rubbish from all over the world. The Age of Plastic has bequeathed countless conveniences to humanity as well as new forms of cancer and enormous collections of litter on land, at sea and even in space.

Since Heyerdahl's observations, we now know that every ocean in the world has its own garbage dump. The largest by far is the so-called North Pacific Garbage Patch, an area covering most of the North Pacific from Alaska to Japan -- twice the size of the continental United States and discovered only in 1997. The gyres are not easily discerned, because most of the plastic rubbish has been macerated by marine forces and is composed of small particles that float just below the surface, killing fish that mistake it for food.

The Atlantic gyre, like all others, has formed at the confluence of various ocean currents, an area of slackwater circulating majestically, slowly and almost imperceptibly until you pick up -- on a Jamaican or Haitian beach -- soft drink containers thrown into the Congo or the Niger.

There is another less well-known gyre in the North Caribbean which has quite different effects from the other garbage patches.

This area of existential discombobulation is much more dangerous than its kin. It is, first of all, not composed of material fragments but of abstractions, strange apparitions that do not poison fish or litter beaches, but poison minds and litter brave new policies with the toxic detritus of ancient ignorance, hysteria and unreasonable beliefs.

It is a place where ancient racist libels still hang around, driving US politicians to distraction and the Bible. It is the place where apparitions like Pat Robertson, Roger Noriega, Otto Reich and Luigi Einaudi flourish and have their being, sustained by vicious fables invented 500 years ago to justify human slavery, revised and updated periodically to deal with black rebellion against slavery, colonialism and used today to frighten and confuse US soldiers and journalists.

Baron Samedi walks again

When I was about 12 years old, I borrowed a book from the Institute of Jamaica's Junior Centre library. It was part of a donation by the Carnegie Foundation and was almost brand new.

I cannot remember the name or author, but the book was obviously written to sell millions by frightening the wits out of its American readers.

I had, up to that time, heard nothing about Haiti or their religious system, Vodun. The novel was populated by zombies -- the living dead -- as well as other evil spirits presided over by the sulphurous presence of Baron Samedi who seemed to be in charge of everything in Haiti, from cooking to current affairs. If my memory is reliable there were incredible scenes of 'demoniac possession' mostly among the epically bloodthirsty natives but not sparing the fairest flowers of Nordic pulchritude and chastity.

Since the book was written in the first half of the twentieth century, indecencies were suggested rather than made plain, and even bloodshed was a lot less indiscriminate than, say, the latest dancehall invocation against homosexuals. What was clear was that the narrative was intended to make your skin creep; in my case it certainly succeeded.

The novel was not unusual for American colonial narratives of the time. Non-Europeans could be trusted as far as the front gate, being consumed by lust and crazed by the need to spill blood.

And the 'black magic' was integral to cultures that were brutish, repellent and totally merciless.

The Devil in the Flesh

A few years ago TIME magazine, quite seriously, printed what it said was a recipe for creating zombies. The process was not difficult, if one was not squeamish. It involved, among other things, the flowers of the Datura bush.

So, I was not surprised by the most recent eructations of Pat (Napoleon III) Robertson, a semi-literate quack who seems to have a hotline to Satan himself and is always willing to explain the latest demonic manifestations. Nor was I really surprised to learn that the US Army was so terrified of unarmed, starving and wounded Haitians that it needed about 10 soldiers to protect one aid person.

Others were not so intimidated by the Haitians.

Partners in Health, a Boston-based NGO led by Paul Farmer, was running several field hospitals from its headquarters in Cange, in Haiti's Central Plateau. Tiny Iceland (facing bankruptcy) had search-and-rescue teams on the ground in Port-au-Prince within 48 hours of the earthquake. Andri Magnason, a friend in Iceland, sent me the following:

"There is an Icelandic team of 20 rescue workers in Port-au-Prince and Leogane. They have saved a few lives with their special equipment. They have not seen the violence that has been in the news; on the contrary, they see only gratitude and goodwill and cooperation -- no hostility -- and they have even seen some hope. Strange how the world media wants to paint things black, while they could pick up many stories of human dignity from the ruins."

And, of course, the Cubans ("We Never Closed") had more than 400 medical professionals on the ground before the earthquake and doubled that number with their graduating class of 400 Haitian doctors. Doctors Without Borders complained that the US military was preventing medical assistance reaching those who needed it most.

The real problem, as I see it, is that the US has scared itself silly with the policy garbage bequeathed by Thomas Jefferson and refined by the like of William Jennings Bryan, Reich, Noriega, Einaudi and their sainted mentors, Joe McCarthy, Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms.

If the US Army had thought to drop water, nothing more, they could have saved many lives. Some people drank their own urine. Others, less knowledgeable, may have died of thirst.

The late Hedi Annabi -- the UN's man in Haiti -- died in the earthquake. He was clearly another who thought Haitians were all terrorists and his way of preparing for democracy involved the UN mission -- MINUSTAH -- making periodic forays into the slums to slaughter members of Fanmi Lavalas.

The UN secretary general is even more clueless, tolerating René Préval's de-legitimising Fanmi Lavalas and appointing Bill Clinton as his representative in Haiti. Clinton was the man who restored Aristide in 1994 to stem the flood of refugees into Miami Beach and then broke every promise he made and pressured and blackmailed the Haitians by shutting down essential foreign aid.

So, I must confess that my blood ran cold when Barack Obama proved even more clueless than Ban Ki-Moon by appointing Haiti's worst enemy, George Bush, to join Clinton to raise funds for Haitian relief. If there is anyone who believes in Haitian zombies and bogeymen, it is Bush. As far as Ban Ki-Moon, Clinton and Bush are concerned, the Haitians are only good for mindless 'jobs' in foreign-owned sweatshops.

What is so tragic about the loss of life since the earthquake is that, were it not for the boojums, zombies and Baron Samedi, so much more could have been done.

If you don't believe me, read the following:

"However, away from the glare of the international media, a team of Cuban doctors has been working among the quake-affected. The Cuban government offered its medical expertise to the governments of Pakistan and India immediately after the magnitude of the destruction caused by the quake was known. The Indian government did not even acknowledge the offer. Pakistan, where the scale of disaster was humongous, was quick to accept the offer. The first Cuban medical team was in Pakistan on October 14, six days after the earthquake." (Frontline Vol:22 Iss:26 URL: http://www.flonnet.com/fl2226/stories/20051230000606300. htm)

In short order, the Cubans had established 19 field hospitals staffed by more than 700 doctors -- half of them women -- working 12-hour shifts.

This was in Pakistan in 2005.

Pakistan is 14,000 miles from Cuba and the Cubans were working in foreign conditions, in fierce cold, in a country with whom Cuba had no diplomatic relations.

There are now more than 25,000 Cuban doctors working outside their country and an almost equal number of teachers.

If you think that boojums are a figment of my imagination, consider this: Three weeks ago the US government identified Cuba as one of the countries exporting terrorism.

John Maxwell writes for the Jamaica Observer, where this article originally appeared.

Copyright © 2010 John Maxwell

The "Bell Curve" of imperialism

500 years, 500 lashes...

John Maxwell

Sunday, December 27, 2009

SOME of what passes for commentary today would not have been considered odd by people who ran Jamaica half-a-millennium ago - people like Sir Henry Morgan and his bosom buddy and criminal accomplice, Sir Thomas Modyford.

Those two felonious financiers flourished shortly after Jamaica was first captured by the English. According to 'M&M', the English had a divine right to whatever assets, fixed or floating, happened to be within their reach. If these assets happened to have been claimed by the Taino or Inca or the Spaniards or anyone else, judgement was simple - it all depended on firepower. Morgan and Modyford probably had an aphorism to match ours: "T'ief from t'ief, God laugh!"

The Spanish should be able to accept the sacking of their cities like Panama, Porto Bello and Cartagena, the capture of their gold-laden galleons, the murder of their burghers and the rape of their wives and daughters. Globalisation is the new name for an old system - what George Soros, one of the world's richest men, calls "Gangster Capitalism".

Just about 700 columns ago, in this newspaper, in March 1997 I noted the departure of several commercial enterprises from Jamaica to happier hunting grounds, where labour costs are infinitesimal and unions non-existent.

"Jamaican development is under serious threat from The Free Market and the ethics of the slave trade," I said then.

"The UWI, itself now apparently in the grip of the free market hysteria, a mutated form of the Pyramid fever virus, is to invite Professor Jeffrey Sachs to tell us how best we can divest ourselves of our intellectual and cultural goods to follow Thatcher, Reagan and their fellow Titans into the empyrean realms of monetarist Paradise. As the newest, most fashionable cults tell us, all we have to do is to submit. ""Salvation is simple. It consists of devaluation and deregulation. If you can't compete, devalue. If laws, cultures, trade unions and ethics get in the way, deregulate and beef up your police forces."

Rule of the Cognitive Elite

In 1997 the buzz was about a book called The Bell Curve, an earnest farrago of racist theory published three years earlier but then being hailed as a prototype of a new world order. This capitalist manifesto for the 21st century would build on the ruins of socialism, altruism and humane solidarity.

As I wrote then, The Bell Curve purported to prove that there was a divinity that shaped our ends and that this divinity was Race. Inner-city Blacks, the authors Murray and Herrnstein said, were not as clever as whites (at least in the US) and were destined to become a permanent underclass, producing crime and the other primary products of which they were capable.

In their vision of the Custodial State, the cognitive elite (white) "with its commanding position, will implement an expanded welfare state for the underclass that also keeps it out from underfoot".

"In short, by custodial state, we have in mind a high-tech and more lavish version of the Indian reservation for some substantial minority of the nation's population, while the rest of America tries to go about its business. ...Extrapolating from current trends, we project that the policies of custodialism will not only be tolerated but actively supported by a consensus of the cognitive elite. To some extent, we are not even really projecting, but reporting. The main difference between the position of the cognitive elite that we portray here and the one that exists today is to some extent nothing more than the distinction between tacit and explicit.

"...The central law of the marketplace may briefly be summarised as follows: Free and competitive markets bring supply and demand into equilibrium and thereby assure the best allocation of resources. To bring these conditions about, Jeffrey Sachs and his co-religionists prescribe reforms imposed by stealth, speed and compulsion, an economic blitzkrieg in which sudden, overwhelming reform simply sweeps aside the defenders of deficient systems, their central banks and the other impedimenta of superstition. In Sachs' view it is at best a waste of time to seek a broad consensus for reform because most people don't understand why reform is necessary and will block it if possible. Deliverance brooks no argument. All we need to do is send in the economic equivalent of the Waffen SS and that will be that."

The Capitalist Threat

At the time this was written I was immensely cheered to discover that the billionaire George Soros seemed to share my thinking. In the February 1997 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Soros considered that "the untrammelled intensification of laissez-faire capitalism and the spread of market values into all areas of life is endangering our open and democratic society. The main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat."

For Soros, capitalism, like Nazism and Communism, seeks to justify its claim to ultimate truth by an appeal to science. The ultimate truth is, as Soros says, beyond the reach of mankind, because we are part of the reality we seek to comprehend. In social and political affairs the participants' perceptions help to determine reality -- as postulated in Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. [The fact of observation itself affects the thing observed.] In such situations the facts do not necessarily constitute reliable criteria for judging the truth of statements.

"... in economics, unlike the natural sciences, the material facts can influence the result of any reaction. Atoms of oxygen and carbon can only combine with each other in certain proportions. The decision of an industrialist may depend on objective facts, but may depend more on how his wife treated him last night, or on a hunch."

I will conclude my visit with Soros by another quote, even more relevant now than in 1997.

"In many parts of the world control of the state is so closely associated with the creation of private wealth that one might speak of robber capitalism or the 'gangster state'.

"In the social sphere what is effective is not necessarily identical with what is right, because of the reflexive connection between thinking and reality. ...our sense of right and wrong is endangered by our preoccupation with success, as measured by money. Anything goes, as long as you can get away with it."

This axiom is no better expressed than in the recent treatment of the people of Honduras, Haiti and Palestine. It is nowhere more succinctly expressed by President Obama's chief economic heavyweight, Lawrence Summers, who, 18 years ago was vice-president of the World Bank.

In a memo to staff of the bank, Summers wrote: "'Dirty' Industries: Just between you and me, shouldn't the World Bank be encouraging MORE migration of the dirty industries to the LDCs [Less Developed Countries]? I can think of three reasons: "...the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that; ...under-populated countries in Africa are vastly UNDER-polluted, their air quality is probably vastly inefficiently low compared to Los Angeles or Mexico City; ... The demand for a clean environment for aesthetic and health reasons is likely to have very high-income elasticity. The concern over an agent that causes a one in a million change in the odds of prostrate [sic] cancer is obviously going to be much higher in a country where people survive to get prostrate cancer than in a country where under five mortality is 200 per thousand."

Inequality and Human Rights

This is the thinking of one of the world's most influential thinkers and leaders, an adviser to two presidents of the US, and the moral and intellectual helmsman of globalisation and modern capitalism. You may now be able to understand the Copenhagen debacle.

Summers is the paradigm of those so-called investors, casino gamblers and felonious financiers whose recklessness and greed have driven the price of food out of the reach of the poor, whose speculation in sub-prime mortgages and other 'instruments' have pauperised the American working class and destroyed the savings and pensions of millions around the world. Ten years ago, in 2000, Mr Bill Gates' wealth was estimated at over $100 billion, just slightly less than the wealth of 600 million people in the least developed countries.

The World Bank's Human Development Report for that year said global inequalities had increased in the 20th century to the point where they count as violations of human rights. The inequalities have increased "by orders of magnitude out of proportion to anything experienced before". The gap between the incomes of the richest and poorest countries was about three to one in 1820, 35 to one in 1950, 44 to one in 1973, and 72 to one in 1992. Today it is more like 150 to one.

It is in the interest of the rich that Jamaicans pay an interest rate 40 times as much as Americans, Britons or Japanese. We have paid back several times as much as we borrowed to build schools, to repair hurricane damage and to buy Pajeros or whatever for ginnigogs. We are told that we must make sacrifices, must reduce the taxes paid by the rich to attract 'Development' while we watch our jobs outsourced to the Dominican Republic, China, Salvador and other happier hunting grounds, where labour costs are infinitesimal and labour unions non-existent.

We have never defaulted on our debt although the British, Americans, Mexicans, Russians, Argentinians, Germans and French and many others have done so. It is our duty to pay the usurious interest of the investors who double their money in three years. It sounds like a good reason to hand the Usain Bolt stadium over to UTech. We need to produce more cannon fodder for globalisation. Our culture and our talents are of no account.

We have never defaulted because we understand and accept the Summers/Herrnstein Bell Curve principle that we must be satisfied with our subservient status, generating crime and such other primary products as we are capable.

It is not our business to dream, to make music or to be the best in the world at anything. Our jobs are to be foot soldiers in the great march of the grey masses, the fertiliser for real wealth.

(Historical note: Under the Government Savings Bank Law, repealed by the PNP in 1958, it was illegal for the savings of Jamaicans in the bank to be invested in Jamaica. The GSB invested in the South Africa of Malan, Verwoerd and Vorster.)

Copyright ©2009 John Maxwell jankunnu@yahoo.com