A Massacre in Jamaica: New Yorker

[mountaingal]

A Reporter at Large
<span style="font-size: 14pt"><span style="font-weight: bold">A Massacre in Jamaica</span></span>
<span style="font-style: italic">After the United States demanded the extradition of a drug lord, a bloodletting ensued.</span>
by Mattathias Schwartz December 12, 2011

Most cemeteries replace the illusion of life’s permanence with another illusion: the permanence of a name carved in stone. Not so May Pen Cemetery, in Kingston, Jamaica, where bodies are buried on top of bodies, weeds grow over the old markers, and time humbles even a rich man’s grave.

The most forsaken burial places lie at the end of a dirt path that follows a fetid gully across two bridges and through an open meadow, far enough south to hear the white noise coming off the harbor and the highway. Fifty-two concrete posts are set into the earth in haphazard groups of two and three. Each bears a small disk of black metal and a stencilled number. <span style="font-weight: bold">The majority of these mark the unclaimed dead from the last days of May, 2010, when the police and the Army assaulted the neighborhood of Tivoli Gardens, in West Kingston</span>. The rest mark the graves of paupers.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...#ixzz1hrgR3Zl1

[mountaingal]

Re: A Massacre in Jamaica: New Yorker

Soldiers told Freeman and three other men to stay where they were; everyone else was ordered to walk a few hundred feet to a street called Sangster Crescent. Nikeita remembers seeing her father sitting peacefully under a tree in the custody of soldiers and a few policemen. She walked on with the rest of the group to Sangster Crescent, where hundreds of residents sat on the pavement as gunshots continued to echo.

After sundown, Nikeita was released. She returned to Building Two but was unable to find her father. She spent the night at a neighbor’s flat. The next morning, she encountered a soldier whom she recognized from Campbell’s apartment. He was stocky, she says, with a dark complexion and a wrinkled face. <span style="font-weight: bold">“Hey, your father is the short man?” he asked, in a voice that seemed to her full of contempt and satisfaction. “Your father dead, you know.”</span>

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...#ixzz1hrh78TZn

[mountaingal]

Re: A Massacre in Jamaica: New Yorker

Tivoli was designed in the early nineteen-sixties, after an American-born, Harvard-educated sociologist named Edward Seaga visited Back-o-Wall, a stretch of wasteland beside the Kingston harbor. The houses there were made of old matchboards, sacking, and mud. Some had floors of pressed dung. There was no plumbing in Back-o-Wall, no electricity, and little work.

<span style="font-weight: bold">Seaga, a shy, cerebral man with the aristocratic airs and light skin favored by the Jamaican electorate</span>, ran for office as a member of the conservative Jamaica Labor Party. In 1962, the year Britain granted the country full independence, he won West Kingston’s parliament seat. Seaga cleared Back-o-Wall and replaced it with Tivoli Gardens. The units were given to Party loyalists, and the neighborhood has been faithful to the J.L.P. ever since.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...#ixzz1hrhU0900

[jah_yout]

Re: A Massacre in Jamaica: New Yorker

back-o-wall built on anti-rastafari terrorism...

a lot of aspects of jamaican history not reconciled...

yet they think these political parties represent the interests of the common person

[jah_yout]

Re: A Massacre in Jamaica: New Yorker

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: MGee</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
. <span style="font-weight: bold">The majority of these mark the unclaimed dead from the last days of May, 2010, when the police and the Army assaulted the neighborhood of Tivoli Gardens, in West Kingston</span>. The rest mark the graves of paupers.

</div></div>

while holness says he was on &quot;the extreme periphery&quot; of jlp business during that massacre...

while doing big brother usa's work for them of course..
these spineless politrixxxters couldn't tell the real deal if their life depended on it

[Tuff Gong]

Re: A Massacre in Jamaica: New Yorker

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah_yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body">back-o-wall built on anti-rastafari terrorism...

a lot of aspects of jamaican history not reconciled...

yet they think these political parties represent the interests of the common person </div></div>

You are talking nonsense!

[Tuff Gong]

Re: A Massacre in Jamaica: New Yorker

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: jah_yout</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
while doing big brother usa's work for them of course </div></div>

You mean Comrades got their friends in the USA to demand Dudus (who they had petted and powdered for over a decade), at just the right moment to fix the JLP GOJ's business
In any case Tivoli has been under physical attract since the time it was built so what is the big noise when 73 more folks were killed?
Wasn't it for a good cause?

[evanovitch]

Re: A Massacre in Jamaica: New Yorker


The Leonard Lopate Show




A Massacre in Jamaica

Wednesday, December 07, 2011



New Yorker contributor Mattathias Schwartz discusses a police and military assault on the Tivoli Gardens neighborhood of Kingston, Jamaica, in May 2010, that resulted in the deaths of more than seventy people. The article “A Massacre in Jamaica” appears in the December 12 issue of The New Yorker.


Guests:
Mattathias Schwartz


<span style="font-weight: bold">RSS Feed for Comments </span>

Comments [9]



Patriot from Kingston


One has to understand the jamaica culture and political landsscape,one that is entrenched in political tribalism ever since independence, secondly, the US government, during the early 80s actually armed plitical thugs alignedo the JLP in the name of anti-communism, well this is the end result, thanks to Edward Seaga also

Dec. 08 2011 06:49 PM
Score: 0/0




L.Williams


If you ignorant Americans would take the time to do the research, you would know that Jamaica's downward spiral was a direct result of America's hatred for Cuba and suspicion of its relationship with Jamaica, which led to the CIA arming street thugs as a way of destabilizing the Country. Well, it worked.

Dec. 07 2011 05:54 PM
Score: 0/0




DarkSymbolist from NYC!


@ John from the KKK

You know absolutely NOTHING about Jamaica to make such a blanket statement. But why should that get in the way of you furthering your stupid, ignorant and ill-informed white supremacist agenda,right?

Dec. 07 2011 04:01 PM
Score: 0/0




john from office


The issue is culture and upbringing. Unfortunatley it is lacking here. You need to care about the guy next door and that does not exist.

Dec. 07 2011 01:56 PM
Score: 0/0




john from office


What is the point here?? To blame the US?? This is the police of another nation. I see our drone was to blame, now I understand.

Dec. 07 2011 01:54 PM
Score: 0/0




jgarbuz from Queens


to John

It has nothing to do with race, or being &quot;another black country&quot; that can't get its act together. IT has to do with internalizing democratic beliefs and belief in the rights of the individual. It took Europeans a long time to get to that notion, that crystalized more distinctly in America, because had no entrenched royalty, aristocracy, hierarchy, or even a dominant race that could claim that this was their indigenous country. Democracy was natural to America because it had no former system to fall back on. It had to create a social contract, our mostly secular constitution because no ethnicity or religion could claim some prior right to it. Except for the marginalized and decimated natives, who didn't count.

Dec. 07 2011 01:52 PM
Score: 0/0




John from office


Jgarbuz, you are a one trick pony, I am a friend of Israel but it is not the end all and be all.

No one will bring up the obivious, another poorly run black country. Looking to Scar Face and music for inspiration. Imagine if they put the same effort into legal, worthy pursuits, but that would not be COOL.

Dec. 07 2011 01:46 PM
Score: 0/0




marco from new york


Jamaica has become a dangerous crime ridden place. Can't blame that on the Americans.

Dec. 07 2011 01:46 PM
Score: 0/0




jgarbuz from Queens


One of the things that SHOULD have been learned from the 1930s, is that you do not have democracy when parties have militias or armies of thugs. In so many countries, parties like Hamas and Hezbollah have their own armies, as did the Bolsheviks and the Nazis in the first half of the 20th century. The rule has to be, you are either a political party, or you are a gang/militia. It's EITHER ballots OR bullets. It cannot be both and still be called a democracy.

Dec. 07 2011 01:41 PM

[Tuff Gong]

Re: A Massacre in Jamaica: New Yorker

In 2007 I publicly tried to warn the JLP about Dudus and how the Comrades was going to play it. I can say that just as I showed them, it played out exactly as I said it would.
No surprises.
I know how Comrades operate, I have been in the trenches long enough!