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PROPERTY, PRIVILEGE AND POVERTY
At this moment the Jamaican people are being asked to surrender their sovereignty on two fronts.
On one side it is demanded - by the privileged and propertied - that the Jamaican Constitution should be changed to accommodate the special interests of foreigners, who want to be able to have the best of two worlds, making money from Jamaica and storing it abroad. We must surrender our sovereign right to rule ourselves so that a privileged caste can make rules for us, rules to suit their interests rather than our interests.
We are told that we clearly have a duty to be poor, a duty to surrender our right to determine how we should use our land, to surrender our beaches and to pay for improvements to the amenities and lifestyles of the rich and irresponsible.
In Montego Bay, a number of Spanish 'investors' have determined that no matter what the Civil Aviation Authority, the National Environmental Planning Agency and the St James Parish Council may say, they have the right to ignore Jamaican law. Having captured one of Jamaica's loveliest public beaches and having in open defiance of the law built a vulgar and monstrous obstruction in the flight path of Sangster Airport, they demand the right to challenge the right of the Jamaican people to run our own country the way we want.
In Spain, at this moment, the Spanish government is busy dynamiting similar excrescences built, as in Jamaica, against the law and the public interest by 'investors' with much more money than social responsibility.
In the pursuit of profit it does not matter to these uncivilised bozos that when a plane in distress hits their hotel, it will be the careless Jamaicans who will be blamed. We will be sued both by the victims' families and by the investors themselves.
I remember an Avianca Lockheed Constellation crashing at Montego Bay airport as it was then called, killing about 40 people. Had that crash happened today instead of 48 years ago, the Riu hotel and everyone in it would have been incinerated.
It was out of that crash - and the recommendation of the inquest that followed - that the first known call was made for the compulsory installation of 'black boxes': flight recorders in all commercial aircraft.
Unfortunately, black boxes can record neither the stupidity nor the cupidity of so-called 'investors'.
Since the entire hotel is in breach of the Jamaican law, the Jamaican law should take its course.
The hotel should be demolished at the expense of the millionaire malefactors who put it up.
We owe them nothing, and certainly not our national integrity or our dignity.
Knock it down!
That's how it is - under the law.
And the Spanish Ambassador does not (yet) sit in our Parliament or in our High Court.
Copyright©2008 John Maxwell
[email protected]
At this moment the Jamaican people are being asked to surrender their sovereignty on two fronts.
On one side it is demanded - by the privileged and propertied - that the Jamaican Constitution should be changed to accommodate the special interests of foreigners, who want to be able to have the best of two worlds, making money from Jamaica and storing it abroad. We must surrender our sovereign right to rule ourselves so that a privileged caste can make rules for us, rules to suit their interests rather than our interests.
We are told that we clearly have a duty to be poor, a duty to surrender our right to determine how we should use our land, to surrender our beaches and to pay for improvements to the amenities and lifestyles of the rich and irresponsible.
In Montego Bay, a number of Spanish 'investors' have determined that no matter what the Civil Aviation Authority, the National Environmental Planning Agency and the St James Parish Council may say, they have the right to ignore Jamaican law. Having captured one of Jamaica's loveliest public beaches and having in open defiance of the law built a vulgar and monstrous obstruction in the flight path of Sangster Airport, they demand the right to challenge the right of the Jamaican people to run our own country the way we want.
In Spain, at this moment, the Spanish government is busy dynamiting similar excrescences built, as in Jamaica, against the law and the public interest by 'investors' with much more money than social responsibility.
In the pursuit of profit it does not matter to these uncivilised bozos that when a plane in distress hits their hotel, it will be the careless Jamaicans who will be blamed. We will be sued both by the victims' families and by the investors themselves.
I remember an Avianca Lockheed Constellation crashing at Montego Bay airport as it was then called, killing about 40 people. Had that crash happened today instead of 48 years ago, the Riu hotel and everyone in it would have been incinerated.
It was out of that crash - and the recommendation of the inquest that followed - that the first known call was made for the compulsory installation of 'black boxes': flight recorders in all commercial aircraft.
Unfortunately, black boxes can record neither the stupidity nor the cupidity of so-called 'investors'.
Since the entire hotel is in breach of the Jamaican law, the Jamaican law should take its course.
The hotel should be demolished at the expense of the millionaire malefactors who put it up.
We owe them nothing, and certainly not our national integrity or our dignity.
Knock it down!
That's how it is - under the law.
And the Spanish Ambassador does not (yet) sit in our Parliament or in our High Court.
Copyright©2008 John Maxwell
[email protected]