A Break

Having just embarked on this journey I find myself having to take a week's pause. A dear friend is getting married in the Dominican Republic and I am going along to participate in the joyous event. I anticipate that my internet access will be intermittent at best, likely non-existent. I will return to posting on the 2nd of September. Thanks to all who have visited the site, whether they have commented or not. It is humbling that you would use up some of your valuable time on me!

Out of Many One People?

I can think of few mottoes that express a more noble sentiment. From the melange of peoples cast upon her shores, by means foul and fair, Jamaica commits herself to forging a united nation. It will surprise very few people to learn that a considerable lacuna exists between the aspiration and the comtemporary reality. Sadly, we have a very limited view of the degree to which the notion of Jamaicanness ought to be extended to the majority of our supposed fellow citizens. We have evolved a political structure that extracts the votes of the poor through the provision of goodies at election time and then abandons them to face unconscionable violence and privations of every sort immediately thereafter. The sort of sustained improvements in access to education and jobs which might ameliorate the lot of the Jamaican majority have simply not been forthcoming from the governments formed by either political party. What is more, the security organs of the state, supposedly the servants of the Jamaican people, often function as a sort of colonial gendarmerie, subjecting the masses to the cruellest and most peremptory treatment. In short, the experience of most Jamaicans for the 45 years of the country's independent life, has confirmed the old paradigm of the plantation: only a small number of the whole really counts. This subset is now larger than it was in the past, and the importance placed on gradations in colouration, whilst not entirely disappeared, is thankfully much diminished. The Jamaican leader that performed the vital task of healing this divide would earn the justified approbation of posterity, for they would have given real meaning to the aspiration inherent in our motto. It was due to her apparent suitability for this role that I, and many other Jamaicans, entertained such high hopes for Prime Minister Portia Simpson-Miller.
Not only was she the island's first female Prime Minister, an important reflection of the enormous importance of women in the national life, Mrs. Simpson-Miller arose from the long-neglected majority, bringing them, literally, to the centre of Jamaican affairs. Given the latter fact, much of the opposition to her ascent to the posts of President of the People's National Party and Prime Minister rested on middle-class prejudice. This category is wonderfully elastic in Jamaica, including the very rich alongside the traditional sort of white-collar professionals, etc. In general the dividing line can be discerned by certain linguistic markers: middle-class Jamaicans are comfortable in English, they speak it freely, without a need to concentrate to get it right. They also do not have a capricious relationship with the letter 'h', for example, dropping it in some instances and adding it in others where it does not belong. Much hilarity ensues for members of the middle-class when these and other malapropisms are committed by members of the lower orders. Arising from this ridiculous vestige of the colonial past, many fretted about the supposed embarrassment that would result from having the lady represent us in international forums. Her more hopeful supporters hoped that, with the requisite effort on her part, Mrs. Simpson-Miller could finally overturn the paradigm of the plantation by making her goverment one that truly served the majority.
Her inaugural address on becoming Prime Minister was extremely encouraging. She dedicated herself to ensuring that the rights of the majority would be respected, and that prejudice against persons based on their colour, or their degree of education, would be ended. The roughly eighteen months of her tenure were instead marked by a sort of torpor in which there was a real perception that no one was at the helm. Very little was achieved, and what one saw was a government that was exhausted, out of ideas after nearly two decades in power. As far as her personal performance was concerned, the Prime Minister seemed not to have worked sufficiently hard to be adequately informed to function effectively at her job. This failure, wedded to her acknowledged weakness as a debater, made her a poor leader of her party in the House of Representatives.
In the election campaign that had been meant to lead up to an original poll date of the 27th of August, since delayed to the 3rd of September by Hurricane Dean, the Prime Minister and her party have often seemed to be on the wrong foot. Shifting messages, poor debate performances and an overriding desire for change on the part of the electorate have put the PNP in jeopardy of defeat. Their lone salvation is an abiding personal fondness for Mrs. Simpson-Miller on the part of the majority and some doubts about the Leader of the Opposition, Bruce Golding, arising from the fact that he had left the Jamaica Labour Party to establish the New Democratic Movement due, in considerable part to the frustration of his leadership aspirations and his desire for reform of the national constitution. Jamaicans, who often bequeath political allegiances to their offspring, find the notion of leaving one's party, and returning to it, anathema. No Winston Churchill for them! Up until the arrival of Hurricane Dean polls were suggesting a wave of support for the JLP, placing them either within the margin for error, or perhaps moving clearly ahead of the PNP. It remains to be seen whether the pause induced by the hurricane will have caused this wave to crest, or whether the shambolic performance of the government, including a botched state of emergency (more about which later) will cement their fate and no amount of appeals that "Mamma P" is on the way, nor claims that her premiership is divinely ordained will save the PNP.
The job of uniting the Jamaican people lies undone. Our first female Prime Minister has made the task harder by raising and dashing the expectations of some and by apparently justifying the prejudices of others,

Dog nyam him supper

Michael Vick is the most supremely gifted athlete that I have ever seen. I mean this in purely physical terms. He combined phenomenal speed and strength with a golden arm, allowing him to make throws that other quarterbacks could only dream of. All of us who have watched the NFL in the past few years will recall instances in which he transformed a broken play into a 50-yard run, or threw an absolute laser-beam to a teammate which could not help but be caught, as failure to do so might have led to physical damage to the receiver. Vick, while tantalising us with moments of sublime brilliance, never put everything together into a truly special season. Indeed, I don't believe that he evinced signs of genuine improvement in his throwing. This was a sticking point with coaches and fans alike and when combined with a less- than- ideal off-field persona, created a reservoir of disenchantment that has now broken over him in such spectacular fashion.
As I write, days after his legal team entered into a plea-bargain with the government on the array of charges facing him, the scuttlebut is that Vick may face as much as a year to eighteen months of a maximum five year sentence for having run an illegal dog-fighting operation inter alia. What has struck me is the sheer delight that is evident at this spectacular fall. Indeed, schadenfreude has seldom been more in the ascendant than it is in this case.
It is incumbent on me to state right away that I hold no brief for those who engage in the revolting practice of dog-fighting, with all its myriad cruelties. I have been sickened by the accounts of what actually transpires at these events. The preferred breed, the pit bull, is so tenacious that it will literally fight on until it collapses in exhaustion. There were reported instances in which animals continued to fight after having a leg gnawed off. Animals that fail to meet such standards are killed off. Vick and his associates appear to have taken a particular delight in this process. Shooting, drowning and hanging were among their preferred means of despatch. One can imagine the atmosphere surrounding these appalling deeds, as these men meted out their judgments on these poor animals: machismo run amok. I cleave firmly to a basic measure of civilisation, both for a culture and for persons. This is determined by how the society and/or the person treats beings that are in their charge. It goes without saying that, for me, Vick cannot be considered civilised, on the contrary, his behaviour was redolent of a vile barbarism.
American professional sports all have an off-season, a time in which athletes unwind from the rigours of the season past, spend time with their families, and begin to train for the season to come. In recent years it has often seemed that a new tradition has emerged for this period, now very much in the ascendant. This sees athletes finding what time they can for the activities outlined immediately above, subject to the time-constraint of being arrested on a wide variety of charges. Indeed, the off-season must now be a favourite time for defence attorneys across the US. Shootings, DUIs, assault of spouses, narcotics charges, and much else besides, perpetrated by pro athletes, dot police blotters across the country. The problem has become so severe that the leagues, particularly the NFL, have made moves to protect their brand by suspending players guilty of such conduct. What is interesting is that the most odious conduct, spousal abuse, has never raised a comparable degree of wrath to that stirred up by Vick's crimes.
What can we infer from this?
I believe that the Atlanta Falcons, having given Vick a stratospheric contract, and having not seen the requisite progression of his skills, have seized upon a chance to renege on it. The NFL is positively iniquitous in this regard. All of its contracts are fictions and the teams delight in cutting players the instant that they show a hint of decline. There is also the degree to which this episode has underlined the enormously important place that pets, and particularly dogs, have in North American life. Dog-fighting might be a regional sub-culture, but it runs seriously afoul of the overall mores regarding animals. Finally, there is the question of the quarterback, and its position as an American archetype. It is a moniker that communicates a great deal: leadership, a vital rung on the road to a lifetime of success, the quintessence of 'all-americanness'. Vick, with his image straight out of hip hop culture, complete with the dodgy retainers, who ratted him out fulsomely, was an affront to these perceptions. He had not made the effort that other black quarterbacks have made to be pliant, to conform themselves to the expectations of the wider culture. When disaster struck, nobody was there to assist him and instead many celebrated his demise.

Damon, Matt Damon.

Our relationship with celebrity is as curious as it is multi-faceted. Just as we consume every morsel about their romantic lives and are conversant to an unprecedented degree with their every career manoeuvre, we also appear to award them a privileged position within our political spaces. Few important areas of public policy, chief amongst which are health and the environment, are bereft of the involvement of celebrities as advocates. Indeed, in many respects, it appears as if certain issues do not achieve traction in the minds of the public until they are attached to a celebrity spokesman/woman. I find this particularly curious as celebrities are often amongst the least-educated members of our society. It has always puzzled me that we have opted not to consult, say, plumbers, on their views on the environment, but we are keen to have one celebrity or another descend from their Olympian heights to set us mortals to right on environmentally-friendly conduct, inter alia. One would be hard-pressed to discover a more pampered elite, or one less personally involved in the issues that they seem to champion. Hollywood, by its very nature, engenders in its luminaries a degree of narcissism that simply leaves no room for detailed engagement with important issues for most of its denizens. Enter Matt Damon, an exception to our rule. Mr. Damon and his writing partner, and friend, Ben Affleck, have both exhibited a formidable commitment to a variety of issues over the years, including deep knowledge of, and participation in, the political process.
Given these facts, I was particularly surprised to learn of his recent comments on the James Bond films. On a promotional tour of England, for the third installment of the Bourne franchise, Damon described the Bond films as being redolent of the values of the 1960s and 1980s and poured withering scorn on the character James Bond as a misogynist, draped in Prada suits, who really did not like women and served his country unquestioningly. He contrasted his own realisation, Jason Bourne, favourably with Bond, as someone who questioned his superiors and the tasks which they had set him, and as a one-woman man. What is one to make of all this? It is possible that the mercilessly repetitive nature of the film junket had worn Mr. Damon down. The barrage of the same questions, over and over again, may simply have rubbed him raw. It is an acknowledged fact that the first Bourne films were instrumental in causing the Bond producers to decide to relaunch the Bond series, with a new lead and with diminished scope for the gadgets for which the Bond films had become infamous. Mr. Damon may simply have had enough of the questions which invited comparisons between the franchises. In the end, I think he gets things badly wrong.
The values which underpin Bond are actually those of a much earlier time, that of the intrepid Victorian adventurer, perhaps in the mould of Sir Richard Burton, when British sang froid and derring do triumphed over all before it. Fleming, in tapping into this, was attempting to offer a palliative to a country that was in the throes of the painful transition from imperial hegemon to mid-rank power. It is arguable that his character was a manifestation of a widely-held contemporaneous view in the 1950s that somehow Britain could play Greece to America's Rome. Retaining an importance out of all proportion to its actual power. So we have Bond leading the efforts to protect the "Free World" with Americans appearing merely as his functionaries. Given the genesis of the character, and Fleming's impeccably upper-middle class background, complete with wartime service in intelligence, Bond could not possibly have been other than a loyal servant of the Crown. On this charge, and that of being a misogynist, it is impossible to gainsay Damon. Where he loses the plot is in ascribing the underlying values of this immortal character to the 1960s and 1980s. As we have seen, Bond was wrought of earlier stuff.
What is more, Fleming vastly expanded the spy genre with his creation, indeed it hardly seems likely that Robert Ludlum was not influenced in some way by the Bond novels in his work. His spy, as depicted in the films, certainly, is the true exponent of 1960s values, exhibiting a real counter-cultural edge, so appealing to Mr. Damon. His service to his country has been extracted through deception and worse, and salvation is to be found in eliminating former superiors. In his cinematic form, Bourne is every bit as fantastical as Bond: capable of inhuman feats of athleticism and so skilled in the martial arts as to render him invulnerable. That the Bourne films affect a more 'serious' posture than those of the Bond series, though perhaps not the latest installment, Casino Royale, cannot be denied. This does not in any way diminish the need to suspend our disbelief upon seeing one. Damon is being ungenerous when he attacks the progenitor of his own franchise and his grasp of the history to which he attempts to resort is shaky. What is more, he fails to acknowledge the degree to which the Bond films have come over to his view of things. The Bond of 'Casino Royale' has none of the class-markers that existed in the books, he snarls his indifference to a bartender who dared to ask him whether he preferred his martinis shaken or stirred and he is clad throughout the film in Prada, the historic Bond would never have been seen in such frippery, indeed his clothes would all have come from Savile Row. In the end, these two least secret of agents are on convergent paths. Take a bow, Mr. Damon and spare us the snivelling!

Dean's Wake

It can now be said that, mercifully, Dean's eye never made landfall in Jamaica and that, while the South coast has been battered with heavy winds and rain, the actual effects were considerably less than was feared. What lies before Jamaica is a massive clean-up job and for us the diversion of our prayers and best wishes to the people of Mexico, as the hurricane is likely to hit there with full fury.

Crying for the Beloved Country

As I write, a concentrated form of Nature's malevolence is bearing down on Jamaica promising to sow death and destruction across the island. Hurricane Dean has already wrought havoc across the Eastern Caribbean and has only gained in strength since. Expectations are that it will hit Jamaica early on Monday morning. I invite you all to join me in directing your best wishes and prayers to the long-suffering people of Jamaica who stand again on the brink of catastrophe. Dean is currently stronger than were Gilbert and Ivan, who were both enormously destructive, so one can only contemplate, with dread, its likely effects. Until being overtaken by events, it had been my intention to write about the impending Jamaican election, the latest installment in the country's periodic Hobsonian choice between, as Jamaican wags would have it, black dog and monkey, or, more properly, between the Jamaica Labour Party and the incumbent People's National Party. It seems improper to engage with this matter at this juncture. Indeed, the impact of Dean might necessitate the postponement of the ballot. I will conclude this post by indicting both parties for the abject failures of their respective administrations. Far too many Jamaicans live in conditions of such appalling poverty that they will be unable to make the basic preparations to face the disaster, and they will tenaciously refuse to evacuate their premises, however parlously situated, for fear of losing their modest possessions in the aftermath when the inevitable looters emerge. As a consequence, many will lose their lives. For this, and many other reasons beside, our beautiful island is a cause of many tears.

Obama '08?

Resorting to the proverbial crystal ball is always a risky exercise. The future has the maddening habit of always frustrating our most informed speculations. But, dear reader, fools rush in where angels fear to tread! It seems to me that there are about three things that we can say with reasonable certainty about the American elections of 2008. First, the Bush-Cheney era will, mercifully, draw to a close. Second, the task facing their successors will be enormous and multi-faceted. Analagous in many ways to a Herculean labour (I think the cleaning of the Augean stables is the apposite one here): frayed alliances have to be mended and an urgent effort has to be made to restore America's good name. The third and perhaps related postulate to be made is that the issue-environment is spectacularly to the advantage of the Democratic Party. Indeed, the nominee of that party ought to be a prohibitive favourite against whichever candidate emerges from the Republican dunghill.
Enter the intelligent, telegenic Junior Senator from Illinois. Barack Obama comes from a compelling and improbable background. The son of a Muslim Kenyan father and a White American Mother, Obama spent his formative years in Indonesia and Hawaii before going on to an illustrious academic career which saw him being selected as the first Afro-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. Most people, with such a credential on their resume, would have beat a hurried path to a career with one of the big law firms with a life of enormous remuneration and attendant luxury in prospect. The Senator was cut from different cloth. While he did summer at such a firm, where he met his formidable wife Michelle, he went on to be a civil rights attorney and activist as well as a municipal and state politician. When he emerged as the Democratic candidate for an Illinois Senate seat, Obama had the good fortune of seeing his Republican opponent's candidacy implode in the throes of a messy divorce. At the last minute the GOP parachuted in a highly controversial black Republican called Alan Keyes, who turned out to be no competition at all. The only remarkable feature of this campaign was Barack Obama's strongly stated opposition to the Iraq war at a time when more senior Democrats were falling over themselves to ensure that they could not be portrayed as being 'unpatriotic'. In his short time in the Senate, Obama showed himself to be a deft operator, able to work across the aisles and get things done. His status as a political shooting star probably began with his speech to the Democratic Convention in 2004, but it reached a crescendo with an appearance that he made on the Oprah show in 2006. It was here that we saw that he had begun to think of making a run at the White House. Oprah was unbridled in her enthusiasm for such a move, and has become a vital backer of his. His candidacy, launched with substantial echoes of Lincoln, has been marked by a huge amount of enthusiasm and a spectacular ability to raise money. Obama has articulated a vision of a new politics in which positive appeals ought to trump character assassination. Facing interest groups, the Senator has not shied away from speaking frankly, abandoning the ususal political practice of pandering furiously. Teachers groups have been told that there are needs for greater accountability and higher standards, Black groups have been told of the need to prioritise education and of the need for increased responsibility on the part of parents. In short, this candidacy appears to be the substantiation of a dream, Bobby Kennedy reborn. Of course, RFK was trailing the front-runner in the 1968 Democratic race. This is the position that Obama finds himself in vis-a-vis Hilary Clinton. She enjoys a substantial lead over him and competes strongly with Obama for the black vote, where he is hurt both by his aforementioned frankness and a preposterous and abiding view that he is not really 'black'. Her particular asset has been the 'experience' card. This has been a real difficulty for Obama to overcome and has led him to make intemperate remarks, such as his stated willingness to attack terrorists located in Pakistan. His inability to sew up the black vote and the simmering tensions between blacks and latinos, which make it highly problematic for a black candidate to get a substantial portion of the hispanic vote, are all huge obstacles for Obama to overcome. Another difficulty which faces him is of his own making. In announcing himself as a proponent of a new, enlightened form of politics, he makes the necessary task of drawing unflattering contrasts between himself and his opponents all the more difficult. The minute he attempts to do so, his own earlier words are thrown back at him. How he manouevres out of this strait-jacket will go a long way towards determining whether he can close the gap with Mrs. Clinton. There are other unseen factors that are yet to make themselves known. How will his race factor in? The history in America has been of people telling pollsters of their willingness to support minority candidates and of their voting patterns ultimately revealing a contrary stance. It is my sincere hope that he manages to pull this off. He would represent a refreshing break from the dynastic slug-fest between the Bushes and the Clintons. And his biography, in and of itself, suggests that he might be that rarest of Americans who, despite mouthing the typical rubbish about American singularity, might actually have an understanding of the basic humanity of us all. This is really important as the American President, in some real sense, is actually the head of the world. Readers, your views?

The Belated Launch

For years I have contemplated inflicting my "thoughts' on a wider public by way of a blog and have not done so through a combination of procrastination and deep respect for what people like my brethren, Jdid, have done with the medium. Nevertheless, I sally forth, at a time when many, including the aforementioned Jdid, are inclined to the view that blogging is past its sell-by date. What am I offering here? Thoughts on Jamaica, Canada, Politics, History, Books, Sports, Entertainment, Culture and much else beside from a reasonably intelligent observer of eclectic tastes and background. Inevitably, I will offer insights into myself in the course of this journey but I will try to keep self-indulgence to minimal levels! A tall order, I know! Well, dear readers, let us embark together!