Greed Wrecks Jamaican Natural Beauty

On April 3, 2009, Worldpress.org published the following Op-Ed article entitled, Jamaica: Corporate Exploitation by the Bauxite Ore Industry:

"Should you wish to evaluate the management ethic and the rarefied aesthetic values of those who manage the Jamaican bauxite industry you need go no further than Roxburgh, a spot quite near the geographic center of the country and which happens to be an important place in Jamaican history.

Roxburgh, which used to be a place of tranquility and peace, of big old guangos and expansive views in all directions of the rolling green hills of Manchester, is now fatally composed of bauxite. On Melrose Hill, before the turn off to Roxburgh to the south there once was a ravine cut through meters of solid bauxite, dark red, like living flesh, frozen.

At Roxburgh, off the beaten track like most other bauxitic obscenities, the Jamaica Bauxite Institute (J.B.I.), the Commissioner Of Mines and Geology (C.M.G.), the mining companies and the Jamaican bauxite workers have combined to create a shambles out of what is supposed to be a national monument. A shambles, in the old meaning of the word, is a slaughterhouse, a vision of bloody confusion, an end to order and civilization.

So it is at Roxburgh, the birthplace of Norman Manley, the man most of us revere as the Father of the Nation. But there must be others who don't share that respect and reverence and their appetites have been unleashed at Roxburgh, where green tranquility has been butchered and gouged by men seeking to despoil this shrine. There's no accounting for tastes, nor for power.

I don't know who ordered this disaster, who approved it, or who drove the bulldozers. I don't want to know. What I want to know is, who will protect the public interest?

Half a century ago some of us were fighting trade union battles not won even now. The head of the Chamber of Commerce, Richard Youngman, the head of the Industrial Development Corporation, Robert Lightbourne and Jamaica's leading capitalist, N.N. "Dickie" Ashenheim were all busy trying to convince Jamaicans that bauxite workers' pay should be in line with the average pittance paid in sugar and other so called industries
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People like me campaigned for the union line that bauxite workers pay should reflect the companies' ability to pay. We won, and hoped the higher wages would trickle down and produce a benign multiplier effect. The reality was different. As Michael Kaufman wrote (in "Jamaica Under Manley") bauxite created a "high-income ghetto within an underdeveloped economy, representing a point of disequilibrium within the economy. … This is but one contradiction between national capitalist development and the expansion of multinational capital."

There were other malignant effects. Bauxite owned 19 percent (one in every five acres) of Jamaica's farmland — some of the best — removing them from economic production and driving the communities that lived on the land into exile into the ghettoes of Kingston, Brixton and Brooklyn.

Although the 1974 Manley initiative restored Jamaican ownership of the land previously owned by the companies, the more recent policies of the Jamaican bauxite managers have restored the status quo ante — where, legally or illegally, the J.B.I. and the C.M.G. have again sterilized Jamaican farmland and destroyed our capacity to feed ourselves.

Meanwhile, bauxite is the only remaining source of revenue for the trade unions and this makes the unions absolutely dependent on the companies for survival. To say, as I do, that bauxite is a "Bad Thing" is to court virulent hostility.

What the unions do not realize is that there are alternatives to bauxite mining that are at least as lucrative to their members and would in fact contribute to real human and economic development. The union leaders have not thought about "Life after bauxite," preferring to think of Jamaica as a gigantic quarry which, in the fullness of time, will be reduced to a limestone bas relief submerged twice a day by the Caribbean Sea. Then the whole island will be a beach.

The bauxite companies have the responsibility to clean up the mess they left behind at their red mud lakes, at least two of which — Kirkvine and Mount Rosser — pose catastrophic and immediate threats to the lives and property of tens of thousands of people in the neighboring downstream towns, villages, farms factories and highways.

Jamaica is one of the most seismically active areas in the world and we have experienced two of the most disastrous earthquakes in this hemisphere within the last three centuries. In their red mud ponds and in other depositories the bauxite managers have stored 63,000,000,000 gallons of red mud and other toxic waste. This waste is equivalent to 70,000 times the capacity of Jamaica's largest fresh water store, Mona Reservoir.

If Mona or Hermitage were to rupture, thousands of people would die from impact injuries and drowning. If the red mud lake at mount Rosser should decide to take a stroll down the mountain we would lose the refinery itself, Ewarton and Linstead, everything in the Rio Cobre gorge and the Bog Walk area, in addition to thousands of acres of citrus and other farmland, thousands of human lives and hundreds of thousands of livestock. Possibly large parts of Spanish Town and Portmore would become uninhabitable. The Kirkvine disaster would be at least as dreadful.

Since it is clear, as the United States Corps of Engineers said four years ago, that Jamaica cannot absorb any more red mud, we need to find better ways of dealing with these problems.

With the billions owed by the mining companies we could finance some intelligent, appropriate sustainable development. We could start by removing and stabilizing the red mud. The flatter, desert areas left behind by mining could be used as sites for solar power plants, since they get between 11 and 13 hours of sunshine a day. The mined-out pits should be waterproofed by leaving a patina of bauxite supplemented by rammed earth. And since the C.M.G. may not be aware that he is entitled to give directions to mining companies as to exactly how much they may mine and even the profiles of their digs — someone should tell him. Perhaps a writ of mandamus might accelerate his willingness to recover damages from the mining companies for all that they have neglected to do.

Meanwhile in the rehabilitated pits we could establish public fishponds in which people would pay per pound for the fish they caught. The pond waters could be used for irrigation and for neighborhood tourism, boating and bird watching.
The Public Defender should attempt to enforce specific performance of dishonored contracts between the companies and poor communities such as in Aboukir, Sawyers, Mocho and dozens of others who were cheated out of their livelihoods and conned into relocating to various 'no mans lands.'

Building their houses, building facilities to manufacture wind turbines and photovoioltaic cells would generate income to pay for decent new housing and to invest in cooperative family farms out of the old sugar estates.

The ordinary Jamaican knows we can do all these things and more. It is only the politicians, the bureaucrats and the merchants who believe we are helpless."


In addition to this story, the Jamaican Observer (link available on my Links of Note) published the following on March 22, 2009:

"A few years ago there was in Jamaica a Czech scientist, Dr Jasmino Karanjac, who retired as professor of hydrogeology at UWI, Mona. While he was here he carried out several studies with the co-operation of the Water Resources Authority and its head, Mr Basil Fernandez, who like him is an authority on bauxite refinery contamination. In a paper prepared for a conference, "Water Resources & Environmental Problems in Karst" in September 2006, Professor Karanjac said, inter alia, "Today, it appears that Jamaica, which has the size of 10,991 sq km, may have problems developing enough good-quality water for its population of just over 2.7 million ... ground water in Jamaica is very vulnerable. There are no feasible sites for surface water storage, and ground water remains the major source of water supply. Along the coast, aquifers are overabstracted and in the interior explorations and drilling are prohibitively expensive."

Professor Karanjac points out that under the UN definitions, Jamaica ranks as a water-stressed country and suggests that desalination/reverse osmosis plants will certainly be needed in the near future; before even considering red mud contamination. According to Basil Fernandez, billions of cubic yards of underground water have been contaminated by bauxite waste."


This story of unrestrained greed and boundless stupidity based on short term thinking made me sick. It is a shining example of a small country, whose natural resources should be regulated for the good of the entire populace, being exploited and, ultimately, abandoned. Instead, it has been stripped bare by money grubbing owners; and unchecked by politicians and trade unions who see the bauxide industry as a teat upon which to suckle.

If water is not basic to a nation's survival, I don't know what is. If private enterprise combined with complacent and/or bought-off politicians can't be trusted to keep the nation's brst interests at heart, while making a reasonable profit, then that industry must be nationalized, with currupt individuals tried in courts of law. After nationalization, periodic audits of the industry must be made to ensure both the public's safety and economic security.

After all, Jamaica depends on tourism too. If its natural beauty is wrecked, and with it a major source of income, all Hell is likely to break loose. The Jamaican people deserve better. Much better.

Thank You World For A Great Year!

On 04-17-2008 I published my first post, on this, my first blog. It was during the heat of the Obama-Clinton Democratic primary race.

Now, I want to thank some folks.

- First, a gentleman who has chosen to remain anonymous. He suggested not once, but twice, that I start a blog, and provided helpful hints. It was his statement that a blog can be like a diary that would live long after I did not, that brought me to my decision. Immortality by Internet?

- Second, my most faithful reader and commenter, Wayne in Pa. He constantly keeps me honest with his opinions, both pro and con. I look forward to my future October post about our favorite team, the Chicago Cubs, winning the World Series. After all, won't such a win reverse global warming? I mean, it will mean that Hell has finally frozen over, right?

- Third, to commenter Bfoxy, who offers that all-too-rare combination - intelligent conservative opinion. Just kidding!

- Fourth through forty-eighth, the readers from the 45 countries that have read my postings since I installed StatCounter in August, 2008. The following is a breakdown of the visits. As the most famous ad campaign of my former employer, AT&T, used to say, "Reach out and touch someone!"

974....75.39%.......United States
85......6.58%.........United Arab Emirates
43......3.33%.........United Kingdom
30......2.32%.........India
29..... 2.24%.........Canada
13..... 1.01%.........Australia
9....... 0.70%.........Germany
7....... 0.54%.........Sweden
7....... 0.54%.........Oman
7....... 0.54%.........Hong Kong
6....... 0.46%.........China
6....... 0.46%.........Mexico
6....... 0.46%.........South Africa
5....... 0.39%.........Sri Lanka
5....... 0.39%.........Japan
5....... 0.39%.........Saudi Arabia
4....... 0.31%.........Ireland
4....... 0.31%.........Singapore
4....... 0.31%.........New Zealand
4....... 0.31%.........France
3....... 0.23%.........Malaysia
3....... 0.23%.........Poland
3....... 0.23%.........Pakistan
3....... 0.23%.........Denmark
2....... 0.15%.........Romania
2....... 0.15%.........Austria
2....... 0.15%.........Finland
2....... 0.15%.........Switzerland
2....... 0.15%.........Spain
2....... 0.15%.........Russian Federation
1....... 0.08%.........Maldives
1....... 0.08%.........Korea, Republic Of
1....... 0.08%.........Bahrain
1....... 0.08%.........Chile
1....... 0.08%.........Kenya
1....... 0.08%.........Taiwan
1....... 0.08%.........Qatar
1....... 0.08%.........Philippines
1....... 0.08%.........Croatia
1....... 0.08%.........Norway
1....... 0.08%.........Slovakia
1....... 0.08%.........Serbia
1....... 0.08%.........Nigeria
1....... 0.08%.........Greece
1....... 0.08%.........Israel

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Schools Step In Where Parents Fear To Tread

On September 2, 2008, the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper published an editorial entitled, "Schools must confront root causes of violence". I quote it verbatim here:

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Thirty-five sixth-graders attended Kohn School in Chicago's Roseland neighborhood just before classes let out in June.

Counselor Lee Jones of the South Side Help Center met with sixth-graders weekly last year at Kohn School in Roseland. He taught them, according to one student, "how to express your feelings instead of fighting all the time."

Students at Schneider School, including Veronica Carter and Gessina Rodriguez gathered daily to share the good and bad things happening in their lives.

Twenty-six of those kids -- nearly 75 percent -- told a visitor from the Chicago Sun-Times that they knew someone who had been murdered. Half said they had actually seen a shooting, including Amos, who saw his 19-year-old cousin take a bullet to the head.

"He was throwing up black blood, that's how I knew he was going to die," Amos told the visitor and his classmates, who were gathered in a stuffy classroom for a weekly social skills and counseling session.

"Sometimes," Amos said quietly, "I think it could happen to me."

Since last September, 36 Chicago public school students have been killed, but the fallout extends far beyond those grieving families.

Legions of Chicago kids are traumatized by what they've seen in their neighborhoods.

Many know little about resolving problems except through violence.

Still more carry the burdens of the poverty, isolation and mental illness that fuels the violence around them.

Today, these children arrive for their first day of the new school year. There, they'll find little to salve their wounds.

The Chicago Public Schools spends $55 million on security each year to quell violence. Several high schools, such as Farragut and South Shore, spend more than $400,000 annually on security guard salaries alone.

But when it comes to confronting the root social and emotional causes of violence, the city's public schools fall woefully short.

Social workers drop by most elementary schools just a few days a week; psychologists come by even less. Almost all their time is taken up by special education students, leaving little time for anyone else.

Counselors work at schools full time, but many students never see them. In high schools, it's one counselor for every 350 students. In grammar schools, it's one counselor per school. But that just started this fall. For years, it was one elementary counselor for as many as 1,200 students, with most of the counselor's time reserved for special needs students.

Faced with limited budgets and an unyielding emphasis on raising test scores, the vast majority of schools simply get by.

We must do better.

Today, the Chicago Sun-Times is advocating for a radical rethinking in the way the Chicago Public Schools deal with the social and emotional problems plaguing many students -- the stuff that makes metal detectors and security guards necessary in the first place.

It's not enough to teach fractions: kids must be taught to get along.

It's not enough to teach American history: kids must be taught to stand in each other's shoes.

It's not enough to teach spelling: kids must be taught to express their feelings in words, not with their fists.

We're not asking schools to take on more than they're already doing. These problems are in the schools now, poisoning them. But we are urging the entire Chicago school system, not just individual teachers and schools, to confront these problems head on, instead of drowning in them.

"It's not reading, writing and arithmetic anymore -- that doesn't work," said Lisa Maggiore, a rare social worker who is assigned to just one school because her principal sets aside extra money for it. "I look around and see how many kids are hurting and feeling abandoned, and they bring it right here, into the classroom."

The good news is that some top Chicago school officials already get it. The school system, after a year of planning, is experimenting with a radically different approach this fall.

A handful of schools are launching a well-established program that systematically teaches kids the social and emotional skills many aren't getting at home: anger management, empathy and problem-solving. The program also helps schools take concrete steps to promote and reward good behavior.

Needier students will get group or individual counseling -- and not only by already-burdened social workers, counselors and psychologists. The pilot program calls for freeing up in-house staff or enlisting outside mental health professionals. It also, wisely, calls for hiring a coordinator at each school to make sure the program doesn't get shelved.

CPS hopes to bring this model to most of its schools by 2011, says Bryan Samuels, chief of staff to Schools CEO Arne Duncan and the driving force behind the new approach.

But scaling up from a handful of schools will require money, proof the model works and widespread public support.

We know there is no magic solution. We also know this model is no cure-all and won't be carried out effectively at every school. But it represents a clear break with the school system's understaffed and haphazard approach. That's a mammoth step -- a revolution, really -- and it's way overdue.

This pilot program holds promise of genuine progress. Don't let it go the way of hundreds of other CPS efforts -- here today, gone tomorrow.

Many teachers and administrators object to all this, saying a school's job is to teach, not to fix all of society's ills. We don't blame them. They were trained as teachers, not as social workers. They also say they have no time -- the demands of raising test scores trump everything else.

But a frontal assault on the social and emotional issues facing kids should make teaching easier, as any veteran teacher already knows. When kids have a place to turn, rather than blowing up in a classroom, when kids learn to manage their emotions, rather than repeating what they learn in the streets, teaching is easier and scores go up.

This isn't just intuition talking. Research backs it up.

Students completing social and emotional learning programs score 11 percentile points higher on standardized tests in reading and math than kids who don't, according to a 2007 meta-analysis of 207 studies spearheaded by the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

They are also better behaved, have better attitudes, are less depressed, and show fewer other signs of distress.

"It's not about marching in the street against violence," said Joyce Brown, who oversees high school counselors for the Chicago school system. "It's about getting to know the kids and their needs. Many just need to know someone cares."

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Whenever I hear people weep and moan about how schools should not be in the business of teaching anything besides reading, writing, and arithmetic, I agree - IN THEORY. However, I suspect they are living with their heads in the sand.

The above editorial clearly shows that people who live in the real world recognize that certain moral values are no longer being taught in families or religious institutions. Yet those values still must be imparted for the good of society at large. Hence it falls to the schools to do so. Do teachers and administrators, skilled in teaching and administrating, want to devote scarce resources to these topics? No. But they are undertaking those duties, and getting nothing but grief for their efforts.

I say they should be applauded. Of course, the public should have input into both the subject matter and the process by which it is taught. Chicago is fortunate to have democratically elected local public school councils to help in this area. People who reside in other school districts around the country are not so lucky. Every state legislature should provide for such public input. Perhaps such action would help to motivate those in the communities to take a more active interest in the education of our young people.

Once people get back to being involved in instructing their children in areas such as how to deal with differences without resorting to violence, the pressure on schools to do so will wither on the vine, and our teachers can apply 100% of their efforts and expertise on subject matter more germane to their institutions' goals.

Exploring Ajman

Ajman is one of seven emirates that comprise the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The term 'emirate' compares roughly to the old term 'shiekhdom'. It is the third of the seven that I have written about. To read about the emirates of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, please see my posts dated 02-13-09 Bye, Bye, Dubai? and 03-06-09 Exploring Abu Dhabi

The Oxford Business Group webpage has this to say about Ajman:

- Ajman was formed by the Al Nuaim tribe, who migrated to the region from Oman around 1775. Ajman’s first recognition as an autonomous state was the General Treaty of Peace with Britain (1820). It also subscribed to the Maritime Truce of 1835 and to the Perpetual Maritime Truce in 1853. An exclusive agreement was signed in 1892, placing Ajman and the other Trucial States’ foreign relations in the hands of the British government. In 1968, Britain announced its intention to withdraw from its Gulf treaty obligations by 1971. In December 1971, the British left the area permanently, leaving a path for the formation of the UAE, of which Ajman was a founding member.

- Ajman itself is the smallest of the seven emirates, with a total landmass of 260 sq km, accounting for approximately 0.3% of the total UAE. It is composed of three sections, the principal portion being landward on the Gulf coast, sharing almost its entire border with Sharjah. This section is also the capital city of Ajman and the emirate’s only urban settlement.

- Ajman’s climate is very dry, with minimal rainfall. The weather varies depending on distance from the Gulf coast. The climate is pleasant from November to April, with warm sunny days, cool evenings and low humidity. Daytime temperatures range from 18 degrees Celsius to 30 degrees Celsius. From May to September, the summer heat and often-high humidity forces most people to head to cooler climes, with daytime temperatures in excess of 45 degrees Celsius. There are occasional tropical storms from January to March.

- Ajman has granted petroleum concessions to foreign companies; however, no supplies have yet been discovered. The Al Zora gas field, off the coast of Ajman, has potential to be developed in the future, but operations have not yet begun. click here to read more

Additional interesting facts about Ajman that I found while looking up other things:

(1) From the brief history above - "Ajman was formed by the Al Nuaim tribe, who migrated to the region from Oman around 1775." One year before the colonies, which were to become the United States of America, declared their independence from England, the Al Nuaim tribe left Oman and, in a sense, declared its own independence. Why did the Al Nuaim tribe decide to leave Oman? Was there repression of some kind to escape, like what motivated the USA's founders? Was it to search for better natural resources?

After a lengthy research battle, with both Google and Dogpile as my allies, I most humbly admit scholarly defeat and refer to Wikipedia for this possible answer: "The Al Nuaim (Arabic: النعيم) tribe is an Arab bedouin tribe, based primarily in the Arab states of the Persian Gulf. The tribe is the ruling family in Ajman. In Bahrain, the traditional home of the tribe has been Halat Nuaim island. The tribe used to be involved in the lucrative pearl diving industry. The Al Nuaim tribe was one of the several bedouin tribes to move to Bahrain in 1783 after the Al Khalifa conquered the island."

(2) In 1988, the Ajman University of Science and Technology (AUST) was founded. Reading this brought to mind one of my alma maters, DeVry University, formerly known as Devry Institute of Technology. It would be interesting to sit down with some AUST students in electronics and compare notes. I suspect their coursework is now so far advanced from what I learned in 1979-1981, that we'd likely be speaking different languages (in more ways than one!). If I brought up troubleshooting a circuit board at the individual component level, they would probably laugh. Well, I enjoy a good laugh - even when it's at my expense.

(3) Traditional methods of learning about a foreign land can sometimes make what should be a vitally interesting exercise... well... boring. I mean, are population figures, Gross National Product, and budget figures really interesting? I know, I myself included some facts like this at the outset of the post. So your intrepid explorer has found a topic that truly bridges the gap between peoples of different countries: sewage disposal! In July of 2007, the website, arabianbusiness.com, carried an article entitled, "Ajman turns on sewage system". I quote the opening two paragraphs:

- The northern emirate of Ajman will soon switch on its new AED 800 million sewerage system, according to the Ajman Municipality. The addition to the emirate's infrastructure is being set up to cope with large-scale commercial and residential projects.

- "A healthy living environment for residents, a more vibrant economy, and a greener Ajman are just a few of the benefits promised by the new system," said Sheikh Rashid Bin Humaid Al Nuaimi, chairman of Ajman Sewerage Company. click here to read more

Yet another area of common interest, my memory called out. In the late 1950s, I remember new, large sewage pipes being installed in my south side Chicago neighborhood. They seemed enormous to my 8 year old self. The large piles of dirt created in order to accommodate the pipes were great fun to climb, and being modestly dangerous was a bonus too. Did the children in Ajman have similar fun experiences? I'd like to hope so.

(4) Finally, what better bridge-builder between peoples is there than sports? When members of racial minorities were permitted to play in the major USA sports, resistance was experienced at first. But soon, you had white Americans cheering for African American, Hispanic, and Asian players. And what is rarely mentioned, is the reverse. You had minority group kids and adults cheering for white athletes. It gets tougher and tougher to hate someone when you're cheering for them.

So I close this week's post with this item from the March 18, 2009 Gulf Daily News:

- Al Nuaim Boys School clinched the Secondary Schools Handball Championship after a 44-32 victory over Ahmed Al Omran School at Al Shabab Club gym in Jedhafs.

- The final match was held under the patronage of Education Ministry's physical education and scouts director Dr Shaikha Al Jeeb who presented the trophy and other individual prizes to the winners at the awarding ceremony in presence of physical education head Ghazi Al Marzooq and other ministry officials.

Impress your friends, coworkers, and neighbors by mentioning that sports item at your next get-together!