http://voiceswithoutvotes.org Americans vote. The world speaks. Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:49:05 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/11/enjoy-moment.html http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/11/enjoy-moment.html#comments Wed, 05 Nov 2008 11:35:00 +0000 Aggregated from: Notes from Port of Spain tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29572251.post-5379278076653241197
It's enough to see the end of cowboy politics, at least for now. To see the back of Dubya and Dick and Rumsfeld and Rove, and the shame and disgrace they have brought upon America. To see the end of a man who spent eight presidential years working through private traumas concerning his father. To have avoided the possibility of a President Palin. To move away from the politics of aggression, belligerence, arrogance and pugnacity.

That's more than enough for one sun-soaked morning. Enjoy the moment while it lasts.]]> http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/11/enjoy-moment.html/feed/ 0 http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/10/aha-good-morning-doctor-faust.html http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/10/aha-good-morning-doctor-faust.html#comments Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:47:00 +0000 Aggregated from: Notes from Port of Spain tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29572251.post-3128913816517680112
By the time a man like Obama has got this far — electable, within reach of the presidency — nobody really knows any longer who he is. He probably doesn’t know himself. By raising $660m dollars in campaign funds — imagine! — he has inevitably run up debts, obligations, favours, whose nature remains obscure. By running as a candidate of change and transformation, he has raised expectations that cannot possibly be met within the constraints of the political system. He has aroused fears that could well spill over into grievous harm (it is not so long ago that other advocates of transformational change, like Luther King and the Kennedys, ended up as corpses; crazed neo-Nazi skinheads from Tennessee are not going to be the only ones wishing Obama harm).

The irresistible pull towards the centre — essential now, it seems, to electability anywhere in the west — means that Obama has had to shelve, or defer, or forget about, the things he really wants to do, the things that would mark him out as a truly reforming president. He has had to learn to spend his days jetting around a continent playing the schoolyard game (yes you did ... no I didn’t: you stand for higher taxes ... no I don’t). He has had to learn to reduce complicated policies and strategies to one-word slogans, flatten out complex nuances of meaning and vision and intent into platitudes about who will make the best commander-in-chief, the best guarantor of security, the best champion of the rich, or the poor, or whatever. He has had to become a Washington-style politician even while railing against Washington.

By the time a candidate gets to that stage, it’s doubtful whether he even remembers who is or what he used to stand for. Every ounce of time and energy is spent on raising money, mud-slinging, dodging and weaving, manufacturing sound-bites, manipulating the media, and generally struggling to survive another day. By this stage, whatever there had been of political passion is being provided by the public relations industry.

To become electable, in other words, is to leave behind all the things you wanted to be elected for. If the money doesn’t compromise you, if the crowds and the rhetoric don’t corrupt you, Machiavellian pragmatism will.]]> http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/10/aha-good-morning-doctor-faust.html/feed/ 0 http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/10/squeeze-me-tight.html http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/10/squeeze-me-tight.html#comments Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:27:00 +0000 Aggregated from: Notes from Port of Spain tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29572251.post-6391801486744892476
We give our money to the bank, the bank plays with it, makes a nice profit, and dribbles a bit back to us in interest, below the rate of inflation. We happily assume that it won’t gamble our money away, and when we want to withdraw some, it will be able to oblige.

So if it is discovered that some crooks and ruffians have indeed gambled away our money, through reckless speculation or by lending it people who can’t repay, then we assume they will get thrown into jail; they will be ordered to pay it all back, or at least be sent into retirement in the Cayman Islands.

And if they lose so much money that they bust their own banks and investment companies, and bring whole countries to the verge of ruin, then we parade them down Wall Street in rags to be publicly whipped. Yes?

......

But no, that can’t be right.

Because when this actually happened, everyone started saying, heavens, poor banks, we must move quickly to fix this, we must restore confidence in the financial system. The American “crisis” spread like a liberated cancer. Governments started pouring billions, trillions of dollars into the banks and the brokerages (all except Lehman Brothers, mysteriously) to “rescue” them, “bail them out”, “prop them up”. No questions asked, it seemed, or at least very few. We were told this was absolutely essential, and in our own interests, even though it was our money being drained off into the black hole of financial malfeasance.

Where were governments getting all these trillions from? Had they been stashed away for a rainy day? Were they borrowed from China? Nobody said. And nobody said where all the money was going, either. No banker or broker or speculator stood up to give an account of himself, to admit his wickedness and stupidity, to beat his breast in sorrow, beg for his $100 million bonus to be paid in spite of all, and ask forgiveness — let alone explain exactly what he was going to do with the $100 billion or whatever that was kindly being provided for the use of his enterprise, by enforced courtesy of you and me.

Instead, the governments said, right, with all this new finance, you can all start lending to each other again, as we need you to. Get going. But to everyone’s dismay, a great howl went up: we can’t, we can’t, we don’t know who to trust, give us more, give us more, lest the whole system come crashing down, and you wouldn’t like that, would you?

It all sounded like an unfortunate but unavoidable event, an “act of God”, a financial tsunami, beyond anyone’s control. It was all to do with mysterious difficulties with sub-prime, hedge funds, derivatives, deals not backed by the proper instruments, and so on and so on. It was “the credit squeeze”, “the credit crunch”, “the global crisis”, no author identified. It just appeared, like a UFO in the sky. It was protected by a forest of mixed metaphors too tangled for anyone to penetrate. But we did get the bottom line: no one was responsible.

Even Alan Greenspan’s jaw dropped open in astonishment. Mister Economy for four decades. He couldn’t believe it. What was happening? It wasn’t supposed to happen. So how was it happening, this thing, whatever it was?

.....

Am I getting this right? I think not.

If you said to the experts, “Isn’t this surely the end of the absurd idea that The Market is king?”, you were told:

“No no, the market may have contributed to this, but the market will sort it out. O ye of little faith! Trust in The Market!”

“But,” you might persist, “if you have to regulate The Market, doesn’t that prove that market forces cannot be trusted? If George W Bush starts buying out banks with public money, isn’t that nationalisation? Isn’t that intervening to protect The Market from itself? Isn’t that a true believer’s ultimate heresy?”

“No no, my lad,” (paternal pat on the head, slight irritation), “You don’t understand how these things work. It would have done no good to anyone if we let the system collapse. Not even you with your wretched little savings account, you could have lost it all.”

.....

No, this can’t be right. Really. It can’t.

Because if all these big boys, with their account books bulging with new capital inflows, all written in black – if they really wanted a solution, they would have gone around exuding confidence, reassuring the global population, lending money to each other as apparently they must do. “The banks are safe,” they would declare, “you don’t have to stash your savings under the bed. This is a mere aberration, it will never happen again.” That might perk the stock markets up a bit.

But instead they jump up and down yelling Recession! Depression! 1930! Unemployment! Layoffs! Trust and confidence gone! Disaster, catastrophe, emergency! And so the stock markets “plunge” again, and the pundits stoke the fire by declaring the biggest fall, the lowest point, the steepest decline, since 1987 (or whatever), making that date sound as distant as the fall of the Roman empire.

In other words, the big boys react to problems by causing more problems. They react to mistrust by spreading more mistrust.

.....

But what sense does that make? No, I feel sure now that I’m getting this wrong. Really.

Because, if this has really been going on, why did no one notice, or say something? Didn’t Blair and Brown know what was going on in the City, right under their noses? Didn’t Bush notice a nasty smell from Wall Street – or do nasty smells perhaps rejoice his little heart? Why did all this bypass Sarkozy and Merkel and the rest of the Gang of 9 which determines what goes on in this world and what does not? If they didn’t know anything, why are they still in their jobs?

But logic — O how wrong I must be — would trace the nasty smell from Wall Street southwards, to Washington and Pennsylvania Avenue and the big desk of George W Bush himself. One has to be impressed by a man who can wreck global relations, trash Iraq, run up an unimaginable debt (so large that the debt clock in Times Square has to be taken down to have more digits added to it), and leave America more divided and aggressive than at any time since Vietnam, all in one presidency. (Thank heaven for the two-term limit.)

But the man is not done yet. If all this stuff is true, then this man with his gang of fools has presided over — some might say created — a political and financial environment in which anything goes, from the corruption in Iraq and the privileging of the rich at home, to a financial system where the only sin is being found out. Gamble away, my friends (he would imply), play the market, governments don’t interfere (that wouldn’t be democratic)! You have quotas to fill, targets to meet, bonuses to earn? Go ahead! No one minds if you lend money that won’t get paid back — it’s one more deal on you record, my friend. This is the land of opportunity, remember, where you can make something from nothing once you make the right call and have the money to join the game.

No, no, this still can’t be right. Tell me it isn’t so. Tell me what’s really going on.

.....

Here in Port of Spain, the Global Financial Crisis is reported as if it’s something happening far away, unconnected to us. Another of those mysterious emergencies which so preoccupy the outside world, like a distant earthquake which buries a thousand people in China or Turkey or someplace, and then you don’t hear any more about it.

News stories about The Crisis come straight off the wire; it’s barely registering on columnists’ radar.

Perhaps this is the sort of objective sophistication to be expected of a developed nation, which is what we are supposed to be in twelve years’ time.

But but but.

If Americans and Europeans are in a financial panic, if their assets are being squeezed, if they are losing their jobs and livelihoods, if their houses are suddenly valueless or repossessed, if they can’t make ends meet ...

My faith isn’t all that strong, it seems. For surely they might review their holiday plans (“Honey, we’re going to Disneyworld this year instead of the Caribbean, OK?” “Great idea, sugar”). Caribbeans in New York and London and Toronto might not be able to send home the remittances their folks rely on. Investors might read the tealeaves and hold back. This might translate into people losing jobs and livelihoods in the Caribbean, fewer visitors, bigger deficits, less foreign exchange, less investment, less capital ...

.....

Even here in Trinidad and Tobago, awash with cash and smoking with smelters and industrial monsters of one sort and another, no one seems to have thought very much about what might happen. Last month the record 2008-9 budget of nearly TT$50 billion was based on an assumed oil price of $75 a barrel. At the time, the price was well above that. A month later, it’s below $64.

So even the richest economy in the Caribbean either has to make some serious cuts, or round up a pile of new money from somewhere.

So far, we have not heard of any hooligans at large in our own financial system. Smartmen amusing themselves by gambling away our money But who would be surprised? The Caribbean is so good at picking up the latest tricks from “away”.

I try not to believe most of this stuff. Block my ears. Quieten heretical suspicions. It has to be wrong.

For what’s the alternative? If it turned out to be true, it would be such an outrage, such an unforgivable global scam, that I can’t even think of a word to describe it (and English is a language rich in vituperation).

It would mean that the capitalist system as we have known it since World War II has buckled. It would mean that “market forces” eventually eat themselves up. It would mean that the elites of the western world are living in delusion and denial so dark and deep that they are no longer connected with reality. It would mean that ordinary people — you and me and the people we know — have become so disillusioned and disappointed and cynical and weary and apathetic that we don’t even think of tearing down these leaders and their cronies and calling them to account.

Come on, someone, tell me I’m wrong.]]> http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/10/squeeze-me-tight.html/feed/ 0 http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/09/nice-try.html http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/09/nice-try.html#comments Fri, 19 Sep 2008 01:13:00 +0000 Aggregated from: Notes from Port of Spain tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29572251.post-4000118155954944258
Twice he used the phrase "Those who would choose to harm us", showing that he was parroting thoughts from somewhere other than his brain.

Barack Obama is a brilliant man, he said. The "but" hung in the air. And "brilliant" wasn't a word he would use about McCain, he added.

So far so good.

Then he said: "But his tenaciousness ... his integrity ... his honourability ... it just chokes me up when I think of it." He sounded like a Catholic who has just seen the Virgin Mary.

I don't know what he said after that. I slammed the car radio off in a fury and nearly hit a bus.

Because what he was saying is that Barack is a smartass. He's black. He's not a warrior. He doesn't understand about defending the homeland. He's not really American in the way McCain is American.

Multiply that insight by ... a hundred million? ... and what you get is President John McCain and Vice-President Sarah Palin.

It looks to me as if Obama peaked too early, and that America is reassessing him, and rather fancying McCain. Of course a lot can happen in six weeks. And maybe Obama has a plan. Maybe even a good plan.

But events are running against him. Pundits say the present financial crisis won't make much difference. But I think it makes people nervous and afraid, and that's when they want to play safe, not take risks.

I wouldn't let that dentist anywhere near my teeth, let alone into a voting booth. People ought to be licensed to vote — show that they have reached at least a basic level of objective knowledge. But the voting booth is where Mr Dentist is going, in his scores of millions, to send a clear message: "Nice try, Obama, but we ain't ready for you yet."]]> http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/09/nice-try.html/feed/ 0 http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/08/dark-thoughts.html http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/08/dark-thoughts.html#comments Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:31:00 +0000 Aggregated from: Notes from Port of Spain tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29572251.post-4693225257199127125
I guess much of the Caribbean was watching his acceptance speech in Denver last night (except people in Jamaica and Haiti and the Dominican Republic, who had more immediate things to worry about). With its largely African ancestry and its dislike of the hard right, the Caribbean naturally gravitates towards Obama. Last night he did his best to look presidential — soberly dressed, trim, fit, authoritative, articulate, aggressive without being crude. If Americans have any brains left at all after eight years of Lil' Bush, this is the man they will elect in November.

But there's a lot of scepticism in the Caribbean about whether they will. For one thing, Americans have become so militarist that they think they are electing, not a president, but a "commander-in-chief". That's how the debate is framed: is Obama strong enough, old enough, firm enough, experienced enough, to be a "commander-in-chief"? Code: would he be willing to bomb Iran, keep possession of Iraq, protect Israel and screw the Palestinians? Sadly, Obama has to stick out his jaw and pretend that, yes, he would. But everyone can see that Obama is not a militarist: he is an instinctive peace-maker and consensus-builder. When it comes to the crunch, that may not do him much good.

But then: maybe the "commander-in-chief" thing is itself code for "The man is black." Historically, African Americans have been inferior beings in the US. Gradually accepted, integrated, allowed to vote and sit at the front of buses etc., but still, somewhere deep in the American psyche, other. The Caribbean is well used to racism in all its disguises, and knows what many Americans are thinking, maybe without knowing it. "Can we trust a black man in the [aptly named] White House? Could he really be as good as a white man? No matter how smart, does he really see things as we see them? And a black woman as First Lady? Are we ready for this?"

And they look at John McCain, already well into his seventies, looking like a genial grandfather, wisecracking and plain-talking, looking solid and dependable and totally and unmistakably American, looking how a commander-in-chief ought to look, strong jaw and silver hair. And people think: hmmm, I like Obama, but maybe I'll play safe and vote McCain ...

And McCain will be pushing that image like mad over the next two months. The firm hand on the tiller. War hero. Unchallengeable patriotism. One of us. Paid his dues for America in a Vietnamese prison camp. (Of course, if McCain was as perfect as all that, he would not have been fighting in Vietnam in the first place — it was one of the nastiest, stupidest wars ever fought, and achieved nothng but horror and pain. The people with real guts refused to to go, valuing freedom of conscience over mindless conformity. But that's another story.)

And there's another thing I've heard people asking about Obama: "What will they do to him?" They shot two Kennedys and Martin Luther King (the argument goes), turned Jimmy Carter into a helpless clown, and impeached Bill Clinton — all people positioned to effect change of one sort or another. "They" being some sinister combination of "lone gunman", mafiosi and "military-industrial complex" (a threat articulated by a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, in his farewell address in 1956).

So if Obama wins (the question goes), how long will he last, what sudden catastrophe will overtake him? For there are forces in America which will not allow structural change, especially not the sort of change this black pretender is suspected of of seeking.

So, yes: how important is it that Obama is black?]]> http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/08/dark-thoughts.html/feed/ 0 http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/08/divine-intervention.html http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/08/divine-intervention.html#comments Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:27:00 +0000 Aggregated from: Notes from Port of Spain tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29572251.post-7782940085371469180
Last Saturday’s heavy rain was part of a system that has turned into Hurricane Gustav and seems to be heading for New Orleans. But yesterday’s rain was simply localised as far as I can see, not connected with any passing tropical wave, let alone anything more serious. The Met Office said it was “normal” for the wet season. Just as the cleared, denuded hillsides are “normal”, the silted rivers are “normal”, the blocked drains are “normal”, and hence flooding is “normal”. We all expect this in the wet season, every year. We are accustomed to the press photos of distraught householders standing in their living rooms with dirty water up to their thighs or waists, their sofas floating in the background, their kids swimming down the road.

It’s odd that a country with a TT$45 billion budget, and a desire to become a “developed nation” by 2020, can’t figure out how to fix its drains. The connection between deforested hillsides, silted-up waterways, blocked drains and flooding doesn’t seem to occur to the powers-that-be. The minister of works, questioned about the regular flooding in Port of Spain every time it rains heavily, is apt to speak about a grandiose scheme for pumping water backwards out of the city, though no one seems to know how this would work, when it might start, or why it’s not necessary to clean rivers and drains in the meantime.

And if Trinidad is ever hit by a serious tropical storm or a hurricane, heaven knows what the outcome would be. Much of the ramshackle infrastructure would be blown away, along with much of the housing, and the choked drainage system would guarantee a nightmare of flooding which would certainly take lives, perhaps on a large scale.

Trinidadians say “God is a Trini”, meaning “we won’t get a hurricane”. Trinidad has actually coped with hurricanes in the past, a fact that no one remembers. But that’s when rivers and drains were kept clear, and people did not depend on divine intervention.]]> http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/08/divine-intervention.html/feed/ 0 http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/05/politics-of-aid.html http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/05/politics-of-aid.html#comments Fri, 09 May 2008 23:19:00 +0000 Aggregated from: Notes from Port of Spain tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29572251.post-73986644190597797
The need for action is blindingly obvious to everyone. Maybe 100,000 missing or dead, vast devastation, the imminent threat of severe and widespread disease and starvation. It is not a time for playing games.

But the military regime in Myanmar, which has been in power for 46 years, is in a serious dilemma. If it doesn't act quickly and on a large scale, it will be faced with desperate disease, anger and insurrection. Its reputation rests (apart from brutality) on superior power, intelligence, expertise and wisdom, the usual traits of tyrants. Failure now could tear the mask from the face of the regime.

But to let in the hordes of international "aid workers" clamouring for access could be just as catastrophic, in political terms. It would be an admission of impotence. It would put the administration of large parts of the country into the temporary hands of foreigners. There's nothing "the international community" (meaning principally the US) would like better than pour marines and contractors and intelligence officers into this closed territory to find out what's going on and spread some new ideas and lifestyles. And the generals know that all too well.

Even Lil' George Bush is not making a secret of it. Both he and Laura came on TV berating the generals for prevarication, promising conditional aid, deliberately calling Myanmar by its old name of Burma, deliberately saying they'd like to help the people "but we'd like them to live of freedom too", and generally using the occasion for political purposes. An American honour was bestowed on the house-arrested opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi: a more loaded message could not have been sent. And the generals were then expected to swing wide the long-locked doors in grovelling gratitude?

The Myanmar generals are damned if they do and damned if they don't. They have been floundering around doing photo-ops, hoping for help from China and India and other regional powers, trying to channel aid through themselves, and trying to keep the dreaded "west" out of the picture. The Americans and the Brits are having a hard time swallowing the idea that China and India have more leverage here than they have, and that they need to stand back and shut up. Some in the west have been pushing the idea that when a regime cannot protect its people, other countries have a legal responsibility to intervene; by, for example, dropping food aid from the air, regardless of who gets it (no prizes for guessing who that might be).

The bottom line is that the wretched victims of the storm, and the subsequent flooding and destruction, are not getting the help they need. They have become the victims of politics. And not just domestic politics either: they have fallen victim to the politics of the testosterone-driven west, which cannot stop telling everyone what to do, cannot bear the thought of beng thwarted by a military dictatorship, cannot tolerate deferring to China and India, and as usual is carrying on like an elephant in a china shop.

The question of who really cares about getting help to the people who need it, without political or moral preconditions, is being answered in some interesting (but unsurprising) ways.]]> http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/05/politics-of-aid.html/feed/ 0 http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/05/got-off-plane.html http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/05/got-off-plane.html#comments Wed, 07 May 2008 15:10:00 +0000 Aggregated from: Notes from Port of Spain tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29572251.post-4008003278745940487 Air Force One last night on TV, while waiting to see which of the US Democratic presidential candidates would give the most stupid victory speech.

Air Force One is the 1997 movie where Harrison Ford, playing the US president, single-handedly combats a pack of ruthless Khazak terrorists who have sneaked aboard the presidential plane, exposes the traitors, protects his family, coordinates the rescue operation by mobile phone and fax, fights each zealot to a standstill by means of bullets or strangulation, thinks up a way to save America, and manages to throw one of the terrorist leaders out of the aircraft altogether with the immortal words "Get off my plane!"

Hillary Clinton has been bragging about her decades of experience, her expertise, knowing what to do if the red phone rings at three in the morning, being the credible commander-in-chief. So here's the test question: can you see Hillary doing the Harrison Ford thing in a crisis?

(By the way: by far the most stupid victory speech last night was given by Hillary. What does she mean, for example, by suggesting that everything will be all right "once we start being Americans again"? Does that actually mean anything at all?)]]> http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/05/got-off-plane.html/feed/ 0 http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/05/just-wee-bit-out-of-balance-maybe.html http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/05/just-wee-bit-out-of-balance-maybe.html#comments Thu, 01 May 2008 08:39:00 +0000 Aggregated from: Notes from Port of Spain tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29572251.post-3717575889194547775
Hello?

After all the American deaths and maimings and traumas, after the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi civilians, after six and a half years of an all-out “war on terror” and five years of blitzkrieg in Iraq, after Blackwater and Halliburton and trillions of dollars of American money, after the devastation and the migrations and the plundering, after all the hassle imposed on millions of travellers, after Guanatanamo and Abu Ghraib, secret detentions and renditions, after the waterboarding and the outsourced torture services — after all this, al-Qaeda is still the number one threat, the terror toll is still rising, there is still no "comprehensive plan" for dealing with it?

Weighed on the US’s own evidence, would anyone dare to say that “the war on terror” is a strategy that is working?

Bill Clinton was impeached for telling a stupid fib about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. What would they have done to him after a demonstration of incompetence and corruption as massive and prolonged as this? And yet GW Bush is still strutting around telling us how wonderful and successful he has been.]]> http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/05/just-wee-bit-out-of-balance-maybe.html/feed/ 0 http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/04/talk.html http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/04/talk.html#comments Sat, 19 Apr 2008 16:56:00 +0000 Aggregated from: Notes from Port of Spain tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29572251.post-2848115325622024117
In the Middle East, Israel and Hamas and Fatah desperately need an agreement that will produce a new order. But all three have lost sight of what their real need is — peace, freedom from violence, reconstruction, secure homelands. And none is willing admit that this can only be created by talking, by building trust and understanding. To talk with your enemy is considered to be weakness.

Hence the fury which erupted this week when former US president Jimmy Carter actually talked to Hamas and to the Syrians. How dare he! The traitor!

The US particularly hates the idea of talking to the enemy (particularly when it can't control what is said, and most especially when the talking concerns its protectorate Israel). Consider the way this asinine question has become a big deal in the US presidential campaign: would you talk to our enemies without pre-conditions? (That is, without prescribing the result in advance.)

But talking is always — always — the first and inescapable step towards peace. (Which is very different from the sullen submission produced by violence.) It is what ended "the troubles" in Northern Ireland, and what could end such equally foolish conflicts as those of the Basques and the Kurds, not to mention many parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

Not that talking by itself is enough — there needs to be some deliverable advantage in dialogue and compromise. But realpolitik without renewed trust and humanisation never produces a stable outcome.

Jimmy Carter is not the world's brightest spark, but he is at heart a more decent man than any of his successors, and has made much better use of his ex-presidential status. Tony Blair, the ex-prime minister of Britain who took on the role of Middle East mediator, has achieved precisely nothing — it's not even clear if he's active, or too busy with his banking work.

Dialogue between enemies is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of strength, imagination and integrity. Why doesn't the whole world rise up and say: enough of the violence, enough of this endless spiral of retaliation! Put the three leaders in a locked and guarded villa and do not let them out until they have put their three names to a document of conciliation and given each other the sign of peace.


• The big danger of prolonged confrontation is that it becomes a habit, a mindset, a joyful occupation, for the zealots on both sides. In Gaza, they fire rockets on a point of principle towards Israeli settlements; in Israel, they pour back over the border screaming how they are going to level all the buildings and kill all the people they can find (these soldiers' voices were broadcast on the BBC last week). For these people, peace and reconstruction would be just too boring: what could possibly beat sanctioned mayhem?

The same mindset becomes entrenched in politics.

In Trinidad and Tobago this week, part of the ritual jousting concerned the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) which was set up in Port of Spain in 2005 to replace the Privy Council of the House of Lords as the Commonwealth Caribbean's final court of appeal. Twelve Caribbean states have signed the agreement to establish the court; but only Barbados and Guyana have actually accepted its authority. Last year it heard only three cases.

The CCJ has been discussed ad nauseam around the region since it was first mooted in 1970. Why should countries independent from Britain for four decades still be trekking to London to determine their court cases? Surely we can take responsibility for that? If we can elect our own governments, surely our own final appeal court can be here in the Caribbean?

Well, you would think so. In T&T, the government of the day, the United National Congress (UNC) under Basdeo Panday, was keen. Most of the other Caribbean Community members were at least warm if not hot, though many made delaying noises about the difficulty of passing enabling legislation. But the truth seems to be that, while states support the idea in principle, in practice they don't trust their own Caribbean judges, and feel safer with English lords. Whether that is a neo-colonial mindset or sensible pragmatism is a matter of dispute (personally I think it is a miserable failure on the part of Caribbean leaders, who have done everything they can to wriggle out of an agreement they were committed to).

But when the UNC lost to the People's National Movement (PNM) in the general election of 2002, it quickly did a volte face and started opposing the CCJ, as part of its blanket opposition to the new government. It screamed for "constitutional reform", and until that was delivered it would not give its support (a special majority in parliament is needed to bring T&T into the CCJ's jurisdiction; opposition votes are crucial).

So we have the ludicrous situation where T&T has set up the court, but can't use it.

This week the UNC took things a step further. The court should be closed down, it was costing too much, there were no cases, the judges spent their time drinking coffee and reading the papers. (All this is reported in today's press with no reference to the UNC's role in creating that situation.) Back to the Privy Council! Back to London!

Opposition that has become wholly detached from principle, commitment or reason. Opposition because opposition is what opposition parties are supposed to produce. And to hell with public or regional interest.

This is how confrontational politics can destroy the things it was designed to create. This is how countries march proudly backwards from the distant vision of development.]]> http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/04/talk.html/feed/ 0 http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/04/wrong-and-strong.html http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/04/wrong-and-strong.html#comments Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:13:00 +0000 Aggregated from: Notes from Port of Spain tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29572251.post-6836700988096521928 do something about them. Actually, a lot more than just "something".

The Catholic church has caused incalculable damage to individuals and families across America (not to mention anywhere else). US dioceses have paid out more than $2 billion in settlements (think what that could have done to further the church's real work—in fact, how come the church has anything like that amount stashed away in the first place, when its supposed founder taught "sell all you have and give to the poor"?). And it has shamelessly protected guilty priests and the church's interests.

No amount of money is going to heal that wound. Nor is the Pope's professed shame, sincere or otherwise. The church itself tells its flock that sinners must first feel genuine remorse for the sin, confess it, and beg for forgiveness.

So first the church needs to show some sign of genuine remorse, something not squeezed out of it by the lawyers. An apology might be nice: a formal admission that the priests sinned, the bishops who protected them sinned, and the Pope who protected the bishops sinned. This needs to be done in public, and the church needs to suffer some real embarrassment before anyone will believe it really cares a hoot about what happened.

And then the church must formally beg forgiveness for its sins, from those whom it has so grievously offended. The "ashamed" Pope has so far had the gall to refuse even to meet with representatives of the abused victims. If he really even began to understand what had happened, he would go down on his 81-year-old knees before these victims and their families, he would beg their forgiveness, and he would not get up until he had heard what they had to say and had promised to carry out whatever penance they cared to impose upon him and his shameless church.

Small chance of that happening as the Pope tours America. If it does, I shall happily eat my words.

• It's just as sickening to see politicians acting in the same kind of way, never admitting they could possibly be wrong. In Kenya, Mwai Kibaki has gotten away completely with his stolen election. In Zimbabwe, it looks as if Robert Mugabe might get away with it too, though clearly a measure of violence will still be necessary. It's a lesson to every crook in office or aspiring to it: just brazen it out long enough and the world will lose interest.

It Italy, the serpent king himself has managed to slither back into power. His method was not to rig the results, but to fix the electoral system to suit his interests last time he was prime minister, so that it worked in his favour this time. He controls all three of Italy's commercial TV stations, and still has to deal with two sets of corruption charges in court. But what the hell, vote him back.

Democracy, ha!]]> http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/04/wrong-and-strong.html/feed/ 0 http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/04/take-damn-thing-home.html http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/04/take-damn-thing-home.html#comments Tue, 08 Apr 2008 14:41:00 +0000 Aggregated from: Notes from Port of Spain tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29572251.post-3748699501024323923
• To Father Garfield Rochard, parish priest of the Assumption Church in Port of Spain: Last year you forbade your congregation to feed or support Harold Joseph, an indigent who had witnessed a murder. Your reason was that he would be executed to stop him giving evidence in court, and you didn't want any shooting on your church compound. Sure enough, on Saturday the man was executed by persons unknown. In your press interviews, published today, you sound as if you are almost gloating over a man's death since it seems to "vindicate" your decision. Is this what Christian "love" has come to in this pious Catholic country? All the resources of church and state can't protect one man against violent retribution, and he must be cast out of the church community lest your congregation suffer any risk on his behalf?

• So the violence has started in Zimbabwe, as expected. What will the "international community" do, that little group of western saints acting as the moral guardians of the world? In Kenya last December, they watched Mwai Kibaki steal an election from under their noses, with nothing more than a "Tut tut, now be good boys and try to get along". (There's new violence in Kenya today as people get exasperated with Kibaki's waiting game.) Now in Zimbabwe they watch Robert Mugabe stealing another election, again from right under their noses, and so far there's been nothing but "The results will surely be out soon and they really need to be fair ... please fellas!" To say nothing of Darfur in Sudan, or Somalia, or Rwanda. What on earth is the point of developing this doctrine of "pre-emptive intervention" to justify invading Iraq, while in eastern Africa it's "goodness me, we can't do anything about that, we cannot interfere in people's sovereign affairs". (Ooops, I forgot: oil-n'-gas. Silly me.)

• Mugabe has really excelled himself in this election. Having printed enough extra ballot papers to stuff every box in the land, it still wasn't enough, and he's had to frantically play for time to hatch Plans B, C and D. Fancy being such an idiot that you can't even rig your own election efficiently.

• Petraeus, Crocker, McCain: such a predictable chorus reporting to the Armed Services Committee in Washington today. No more troop withdrawals from Iraq! Victory is in sight! Stay the course! Don't risk reversing the successes of The Surge! Don't let Our Boys down! Well, they would say that, wouldn't they? Senator John McCain actually declared: "Our allies, Arab countries, the UN and the Iraqis themselves will not step up to their responsibilities if we recklessly retreat." (Talk about American hubris. How to insult the entire world in a single sentence. This is the guy who might be the next president?) So war equals peace. Defeat equals victory. Disagreement is undemocratic. The wonderful world of Lil' Bush.]]> http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/04/take-damn-thing-home.html/feed/ 0 http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/03/another-week.html http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/03/another-week.html#comments Sat, 29 Mar 2008 22:43:00 +0000 Aggregated from: Notes from Port of Spain tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29572251.post-8437090586950568056
• In Trinidad and Tobago, the House of Representatives went into meltdown when the opposition leader was suspended for using a laptop, which the government had kindly provided. As a result, parliamentary debate on food prices, which have risen 19 per cent in the last year, was abandoned. A policeman was in trouble for going skinny-dipping with some young Colombian women who had arrived illegally in a small boat over the Easter weekend. The murder count reached 100 for the year. A report from the Penn State Justice and Safety Institute recommended that the next police commissioner should be more "visible, aggressive and unbiased": it was not known how much the government paid to obtain this valuable information.

• Villagers did battle with officials from the National Energy Company who had been sent to start soil testing for an access road to yet another port, this one to service a steel mill which the locals do not want and claim not to have been consulted about. The company complained that every time people mounted protests like this, it lost money; and that since no Certificate of Environmental Clearance was required, no harm to the environment could be involved. It was suggested in the weekend press that the prime minister, having postponed local elections three times already, was thinking of postponing them again.

• The English swooned over Nicholas Sarkozy's new wife, and spread topless photos of her over the tabloid press during the French president's state visit. On Thursday, a new terminal was opened at London's Heathrow airport, costing US$8.6 billion; so wonderfully bungled was the project that by the weekend there were 20,000 suitcases separated from their owners, hundreds of cancelled flights and thousands upon thousands of furious travellers. Perhaps the T&T prime minister, who aspires to "developed nation status" for his country by 2020, should take comfort: we are already well ahead. Our new airport terminal only involved some leaking roofs and a little traditional corruption.]]> http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/03/another-week.html/feed/ 0 http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/03/leave-olympics-alone.html http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/03/leave-olympics-alone.html#comments Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:44:00 +0000 Aggregated from: Notes from Port of Spain tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29572251.post-7816286998313422743
But sport is not an effective vehicle for politics.

First, because the only people who are really hurt by political boycotts are the athletes themselves, who spend so much time and money and energy preparing for competition. China is not going be hurt in the same way: it is a proud and ancient country, and is not going to be bullied into submission by western moralising, right or wrong. Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao are not going to wake up one morning and think, gosh, Bush and Brown say we're being nasty to Tibet, let's give them independence right away, get the Dalai Lama on the phone.

Second, once you establish the principle that global sports meetings can be boycotted on political grounds, there's no end to it—and probably no more Olympics either. No country on earth is 100 per cent virtuous, not even the US. Some countries won't want to compete with American athletes because of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and renditions and the Iraq invasion. Some will avoid British athletes because of Tony Blair's grovelling support for George Bush. The British already don't want to play cricket with the Zimbabweans because of Robert Mugabe. Next thing you know, Indians won't compete with Pakistanis, Venezuelans with Colombians, Russians with Ukranians, or Shias with Sunnis, and half the word will want to shun Israel.

There's been more than enough of that already. Since Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party politicised the summer Olympics in Berlin in 1936, there have been boycotts over Israel, the Soviet invasion of Hungary, the British attack on Suez, South African apartheid, the status of Taiwan, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, not to mention the Atlanta bomb in 1996 and the Black September assault on the Israeli contingent in Munich in 1972.

Did any of this make a difference to anything? No. Did anything change politically? No. It merely damaged sport, damaged the athletes, and damaged the Olympics themselves, which are about bringing nations closer together at a human level, not about airing political conflicts.

Let the diplomats get to work on the politics, let demonstrators besiege the embassies if they think it will do any good. But when gifted individual human beings get together to compete at the highest level, bringing rare pleasure to billions of spectators, leave them alone to get on with it.]]> http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/03/leave-olympics-alone.html/feed/ 0 http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/03/great-race-speech.html http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/03/great-race-speech.html#comments Sun, 23 Mar 2008 22:43:00 +0000 Aggregated from: Notes from Port of Spain tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29572251.post-2974027413844813380
Excuse me? Has Barack never heard of Trinidad and Tobago, to take just one example?

It's great that Obama is not another middle-aged or elderly white man, the category which so far has had a permanent hold on the White House. Great that he is of mixed race himself, and actually has some experience of the outside world. But this sort of bragging does him no good.

For one thing, it exposes ignorance of the fact that there are other multi-ethnic countries in the world where racial mixing is taken for granted—in Trinidad and Tobago, over 20 per cent of the population is mixed—and most families have relatives scattered across other continents. He hasn't done his homework.

But worse than that, it exposes a shallow chauvinism which I at least had hoped Obama would eschew. It's a disease (only here! only us! nowhere else! we are unique! we are something else!). We have quite a bit of it in T&T (where carnival is "the greatest show on earth"). And we've all had more than a bellyful of it from GW Bush for the last eight years.

No doubt Obama feels he has to put his hand on his heart and sing this insidious tune in order to prove his loyalty and reliability. But he has to do more than that to deliver on his own promises. He has to teach America that he's not just a white man in disguise, mouthing the right, comforting things. That dealing with race is a whole lot harder than talking about it. That hollow bragging is not patriotism. And that grown-ups can love their country without having to tell fibs about it to placate the rednecks and the fundamentalists.

I don't expect Hillary Clinon or John McCain to tell the truth. They are politicians through and through. But Obama has set the bar higher, and has to show he can jump over it himself.]]> http://jeremy-taylor.blogspot.com/2008/03/great-race-speech.html/feed/ 0