Notes from a small island

Notes from a small island
A weblog by Jonathan Ali

Friday, January 31, 2003

World Cup fever is getting to everyone, it seems. First Bina weighed in with her "Cricket for dummies" article, now BC Pires in today's Guardian fires his own comic salvo with "How to watch a World Cup ODI". Howzat?!

posted by Jonathan | 9:58 AM 0 comments

Thursday, January 30, 2003

To more serious matters: as part of my continuing culinary quest, on Monday I purchased, in a Chinese grocery and for just five dollars, a packet of black beans. Wonderfully pungent, they formed the basis of two dishes I made this week.

The first was shrimps with black beans and black mushrooms in oyster sauce; the second, grilled chicken breasts with a black bean-citrus marinade. The chicken dish was a relatively simple affair. The black beans were soaked in hot water for a minute, then finely chopped with garlic, ginger and cilantro, to which orange juice was added. The chicken was then marinated in this mixture in the fridge for almost two days, then grilled; it was extremely flavourful and had a wonderful, rich crust.

The shrimp dish was more of a challenge, and the results were quite pleasing. The dried mushrooms soaked in water for about twenty minutes; the tough stalks were discarded and the caps chopped. They marinated with the shrimp, some dry white wine and cornstarch. The black beans were soaked in hot water, then chopped with garlic, ginger and scallions. Then the sauce was made with the water from the mushrooms, some bottled oyster sauce, a teaspoon of sugar, and cornstarch to thicken.

The shrimp-mushroom mix was fried for a couple of minutes then set aside. The black bean paste then fried in hot oil for a minute, the shrimp and mushrooms were added back, then the sauce added at the end, and everything was served over jasmine rice with a sprinkling of fresh-chopped scallions.

Cheap, distinctively flavourful, versatile - praise to the humble black bean!

posted by Jonathan | 10:44 PM 0 comments

The "terror threat" story has been slowly making its way overseas. There is an article on it in today's UK Independent, and a news story ran today on BBC World that asked the question "Tropical terror?" alongside an interview with the Foreign Affairs Minister, Knowlson Gift, who took the opportunity not only to reassure viewers that there was no credible terrorist threat, but also to get in a few pot shots at Basdeo Panday and the opposition. Thank you, sir, for dragging our petty local politics onto international television.

Both the Independent and BBC World stories take this terrorist threat quite seriously, with the Independent saying the idea of a secret chemical lab here is "plausibly alarming" and that the group behind it, though unknown, is "likely to be related" to the group that attempted to stage a coup in 1990, the Jamaat al-Muslimeen. I'd love to know how the reporter (writing out of Los Angeles) came to this latter conclusion; though my own feelings against Abu Bakr and the Muslimeen run deep, I think it highly unlikely they've got anything to do with this matter.

Perhaps, though, the best assessment of the matter will come in the next issue of the Economist. My friend Mark Wilson, the magazine's Caribbean correspondent, wrote a substantial article which his editor in London chopped down to four sentences, the last one being, and I paraphrase, "There may or there may not be a poison chemicals lab in Trinidad, but there certainly is a lot of poison in Trinidad politics."

posted by Jonathan | 10:09 PM 0 comments

Is there a "terror threat" in T&T?

The Express would like us all to believe there is, and under regular circumstances (meaning, the professional way in which the Express usually handles its investigative journalism) I'd be willing to take the warning with as much seriousness as hearty scepticism, as I usually do.

In this instance, however, I'm inclined to rubbish the whole thing as mere nonsense. How could any serious-minded person not? The sensationalism of the initial Sunday Express report ("Exposé: Terror Threat: Islamic group unveils secret 'chemical labs' ") with, as Denis Solomon in the Express today calls it, the "cloack-and-dagger account" of journalists being blindfolded and taken to a "secret" location, and shown luridly-coloured powdered substances arranged in neat piles (as if they were spices on sale in the Central Market - that heap of red powder looked a lot like paprika to me) would be so risible if it weren't so pathetic.

What were the powers that be at the Express thinking when they went with this story? I agree with Editor-At-Large, Keith Smith, writing today that possible threats such as these, even if - sometimes especially if - they come from a "lunatic fringe" need to be taken seriously.

But that's not what the Express did. They sensationalised and irresponsibly handled an issue that should have been treated quite differently. And, as Denis Solomon rightly asks, why weren't the police notified so that they could arrange a trail? The argument in the front page editorial of yesterday's Express that as an "independent" paper they could "play no direct role" in notifying the authorities of an issue with potential consequences for the security of the nation, seems to me a feeble cop-out.

Of course, the overarching question in all this is, would a terrorist group so graciously invite the media into its fold to report, photograph and film their potentially deadly activities?

The politicians, naturally, have not helped the matter, with the government insinuating the issue is part of an opposition plot, and the opposition claiming the government is in bed with Al-Qaeda. (What was that about lunatics, Mr Smith?)

If there is indeed a "terror lab" I do hope it is found and all those associated with it held to account. But right now I'm more concerned with the sad turn the Express has taken with this affair. The Express prides itself on its independence and journalistic strength and probity, and for the most part justifiably so - it's worth more than all the other papers combined on the strength of its best (pun intended) columnists alone.

All the more reason why their unprofessional handling of this affair is such a disappointment. They don't seem to see it that way, although I have a suspicion that down in Express House it's a different scenario. What happens in the days and weeks ahead will be quite revealing.

posted by Jonathan | 10:14 AM 0 comments

On Tuesday of this week, the national airline, BWIA, laid off 617 of its employees. Or was it 576? Or 447? If you read the lead stories in the Express, Guardian, Newsday and Wire yesterday, you would have had your pick of all three figures.

The Express and Guardian claimed a figure of 617; the Wire reported it to be 576 (as sister publication to the Guardian, you'd think they would have both had the same figure) and the Newsday weighed in with 447.

They say you can't believe everything you read in the papers. These days, I don't know if I can believe anything I read in them. More on this in my next post.

posted by Jonathan | 8:13 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, January 29, 2003

"For some time George strove to keep the liaison a secret. There was a woman in the case, that he admitted. 'And not the first either,' said Ensign Spooney to Ensign Stubble. 'That Osborne's a devil of a fellow. There was a judge's daughter at Demerara [Guyana] went almost mad about him; then there was that beautiful quadroon girl, Miss Pye, at St. Vincent...' "

- Vanity Fair, Chapter XIII

posted by Jonathan | 2:06 PM 0 comments

Monday, January 27, 2003

The novelist Julian Barnes once wrote in a New Yorker essay that he'd never read Vanity Fair by Thackeray, and that he had no intentions of doing so. Barnes's main argument was, among others (I read the essay quite some time ago and have forgotten most of it) that he knew precisely what the novel was about, and its relative importance to and influence on literature, so there really was no need for him to bother with actually reading the thing.

A stupid argument (why read anything then? why read Shakespeare? we already know what the plays are about, right?) and a bloody shame, because I've just started reading Vanity Fair myself. I'm about a hundred of almost seven hundred pages in and am absolutely enraptured. The "bright wit and attractive humour" as Charlotte Brontë put it (not to mention the sharp satire and keen irony) make it so wonderfully addictive, and Thackeray's masterful juggling of his stupenduous cast of characters is a wonder to behold.

One element that I'm finding quite interesting is Thackeray's liberal and unapologetic peppering of the novel with the exotic; from the "wolly-headed" mulatto Miss Schwarz from St. Kitts with her hundred thousand pounds, to the Sedleys's black servant Sambo, a most prominent fixture of their household, to Jos Sedley, just back from India, having curries loaded with green chilies prepared for dinner.

Poor Julian Barnes. He doesn't know what he's missing, though he may think he does.

posted by Jonathan | 8:55 PM 0 comments

Thursday, January 23, 2003

I've just finished watching the romantic comedy Serendipity, starring John Cusack. Your typical rom-com, predictable and schmaltzy, but it held my interest because of the music: some of the songs were by one of my favourite musicians, Nick Drake.

Drake, who died in 1974, was a British singer, songwriter and guitarist who, if he had to be categorised, would have been called a folk musician. While an English student at Cambridge he recorded his first album, then quit university to make music full-time. He recorded two more albums, both of which, like the first, were critically received and recognised by other musicians but commercial disappointments. While working on material for his fourth album at his parents' home, Drake died one night of an overdose of anti-depressants, aged 26. Whether the overdose was accidental or deliberate has never conclusively been established.

Many have rhapsodised and mythicised, and Drake has become something of a cult hero. Painfully shy and deeply introverted, he played live only a handful of times, only ever gave one interview, never had a girlfriend (speculation still abounds about his sexuality) and famously recorded his last album in just two nights. He has been dissected every which way including down; there have been books, documentaries, innumerable articles, stories all trying to piece together the enigma that was Nick Drake.

The first time I listened to a Nick Drake song (the title track from his last album, Pink Moon) I was in awe of the beauty, the grace, of what I was hearing: literally like nothing I'd ever heard before. Just a wonderfully strummed acoustic guitar, some gorgeous bits of piano and Drake's brittle, world-weary voice: "I saw it written and I saw it say/Pink moon is on its way/None of you stand so tall/Pink moon's gonna get ye all".

Everything else of his has that same fragile beauty to it, sometimes with deceptively simple pop instrumentation and arrangements, other times classical, others, jazz. And always that voice, and the oblique impressionist poetry of his lyrics.

A Cambridge friend, Robert Kirby, summed up Drake this way:

"Nick was in some strange way out of time. When you were with him, you always had a sad feeling of him being born in the wrong century. If he would have lived in the 17th Century, at the Elizabethan Court, together with composers like Dowland or William Byrd, he would have been alright. Nick was elegant, honest, a lost romantic - and at the same time so cool. In brief: the perfect Elizabethan."

Elegant, honest, romantic, cool - a description of the man that is more than apposite where his music is concerned as well. I'm not one for making musical recommendations much anymore unless I'm asked, but here I unhesitatingly offer Nick Drake to the uninitiated.

posted by Jonathan | 10:12 PM 0 comments

Speaking of weddings, I have good news: no, I'm not about to realise the bliss of conjugal relations, but a couple of friends, Tiphanie Yanique Galiber Gundel and Naila Maharaj, soon will. Both are getting married (not to each other) this year. Tiphanie is getting hitched in March, in her native US Virgin Islands to Patrick, who is from Ghana; Naila in August to Ricardo, from the US.

My congratulations to both couples and wishes for every conceivable happiness. Tiph, sorry I won't be able to make it - have a Cruzan and coke on me!

posted by Jonathan | 10:32 AM 0 comments

My big fat Indian wedding?

Gurinder Chadha, director of the hugely successful British Asian film Bend It Like Beckham is in the process of making her follow up, Bride & Prejudice:

"After Bend It Like Beckham's mega success, Gurinder Chadha had promised an out and out Bollywood mix as her next venture. And she seems to have stuck to her word. Gurinder has signed on Santosh Sivan as the cinematographer for her next project titled Bride & Prejudice. What's more she has managed a coup of sorts on the casting front. News is that she has convinced Aishwarya Rai to play the lead role in this film. Playing the male lead will be Hollywood star Joaquin Phoenix."

Comparisons are forever being made between the upper-crust social worlds of Jane Austen's early nineteenth century England and today's South Asia; it'll be interesting to see Chadha's take on the idea. Particularly interesting to me is the signing on of Santosh Sivan as cinematographer. Sivan directed the excellent film the Terrorist, which starred Ayesha Dharkar, who starred in the Mystic Masseur. (I knew there was a way I could make a local connection with this post.)

posted by Jonathan | 9:59 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, January 21, 2003

I've just read Nicholas' post on Nicholson Baker's A Box of Matches and the varied reviews it's been getting; mere minutes before I was reading the January 13 Newsweek (print edition) review of the novel. Reviewer David Gates thinks it's Baker's best to date:

"For Baker, at least, this is a rigourously classical work: its structural and thematic unity in plain view, the whimsy and razzle-dazzle toned down by melancholy.... his most affecting and satisfying novel yet."

I just think the idea of a book begining with a new box of matches being opened and ending when the matches run out is rather cool.

posted by Jonathan | 2:53 PM 0 comments

Nicholas noted in a post some time ago a sexist headline in the Express; today there's a sexist caption accompanying the photo on the back page of the Wire, the Guardian's coquettish younger sister. The caption reads in part: "Petite Charmaine Khan receives the 'Horse of the Year' award on behalf of her father Roland Khan."

Why "petite"? Why not just Charmaine Khan? What does her physicality have to do with her collecting an award? Why isn't the person handing her the award, Chan Chadeesingh, described according to his physical features?

Another one to think about...

posted by Jonathan | 9:18 AM 0 comments

Monday, January 20, 2003

So Bina has had her first good rant, and as a friend and fellow blogger, I am duty-bound to reply.

Bina's rather unhappy with the magazine Asian Woman and others like it, which she says "try to make you believe that while your culture can be cool, it can only be cool when it is reworked into something Western and palatable to white people. They give you the message that you can love your culture but you'd be crazy to love the place where it comes from or the people that are its original members."

Now I know little of this magazine, but I'm assuming that it's a British publication, intended primarily for the British market and specifically, British Asians. My guess then would be that what is presented in it is British Asian culture. (Calling the magazine British Asian Woman just wouldn't have had the same ring to it.) And as the name suggests, such a culture is a hybrid, partaking of both British culture (however you define it) and South Asian culture (however you define that). And naturally such a culture would be different - not better, not worse, just different - from what Bina, living in Pakistan, lays claim to.

Undoubtedly there are Asians living in Britain and the US and elsewhere in the West who feel a sense of superiority to their kin in the Subcontinent, like the ones who tell Bina she should get out of Pakistan and join them in Paradise. But to ascribe such a philosophy to a magazine, to me, is rather strange. So what if the fashions are different to how Bina's accustomed to them? What's the big deal with Meera Syal (who I also think is pretty talented, and downright funny) getting a huge chunk of celebrity? What's the matter with a short story about a promiscuous woman who settles down? (What would she have rathered, a story about a virtuous woman who morphs into the Whore of Jullundur, or, er, Brick Lane?)

As for the porn star... if she won't say anything about that, neither will I. And Bombay Dreams? Well, it's Andrew Lloyd-Webber. Enough said. If there are people out there who actually believe the world of Bombay Dreams is the real world as Indians/South Asians know it, that's unfortunate, but ultimately no great catastrophe.

My point is, if this isn't "real" South Asian culture, well, no one said it was (I don't think). This is what, in part, the coming together of cultures produces. Not everyone will like it, some will outright loathe it, others just won't get it. But it exists. It's nascent, evolving, fed by various positive (and negative) sources of energy, and in the end gives us something totally new - not one, or the other, but both, and neither. We see it in the music, film and literature (to name just three aspects of British Asian culture) which are all as complex and varied as the artists who create them. To say one source (Britain, or the West) calls the shots, and ensures that the end-product is a "sanitised" thing palatable to its tastes is to imply that Asians are guilty of prostituting themselves and their heritage for Western approbation (not to mention money), a charge that while true in some instances, certainly is the exception rather than the rule.

As for "real" South Asian culture, well, you're only going to find that in South Asia itself. That's not British Asian, or American Asian, or Caribbean Asian culture. It's Bina's reality, which, of course, is of prime concern to her, and I am honoured to say that through knowing Bina and reading her work I have come to a much greater understanding of it than I probably ever would have. But there are many other realities, including the reality of Asian Woman magazine; why should Bina being "the real thing" make them any less valid?

Just my opinion, as a Trinidadian man.

posted by Jonathan | 11:45 PM 0 comments

Sunday, January 19, 2003

Hot off the television: The Hours, based on Michael Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning homage to Virginia Woolf and her novel Mrs. Dalloway has been named best dramatic film at this year's Golden Globe awards.

I haven't read The Hours, but Mrs. Dalloway is my favourite Woolf novel; I also found the film quite engaging. I must say I am looking forward to seeing The Hours (and Nicole Kidman's prosthetic schnozz).

And I wonder what Nicholas, Virginia's #1 fan, thinks of all of this?

posted by Jonathan | 11:33 PM 0 comments

Saturday, January 18, 2003

I've thought quite a lot about the recently-concluded Pravasi Bharatia Divas, the forum in New Delhi that centred on Indians of the Diaspora, but I haven't posted anything on it. A letter in today's Guardian from Michael Rahman touches on many of the things I've been thinking about, and do think about quite often, as a fourth-generation ethnic Indian in Trinidad. While I don't endorse all of Rahman's views, particularly his opinions on India, what he says is certainly food for much thought. Thus I reprint the letter here in full.

No apology due from New Delhi

It is not without interest that I read about Sat Maharaj’s pique when he revealed his feelings about India having alienated those who constitute her Diaspora.

He was commenting on New Delhi’s announcement last week that they were offering dual citizenship to selected ethnic Indians living abroad.

Mr Maharaj has always been either famously or notoriously vocal. His expressed sentiments, therefore, are revelatory in light of his earlier silence about one of Basdeo Panday’s pet piques.

Mr Panday has long complained about feelings of alienation felt by some in Trinidad society, alluding no doubt to his natural constituents that perennially return him to the office of representing them in Parliament.

When one examines another phenomenon, that is the naked and unsolicited support by many in the local Diaspora for Indian and Pakistani cricket teams visiting these parts, then one is forced to conclude that these folks are in the throes of some sort of identity crisis and dilemma.

Never having been expelled from India, their forebears, in straightened circumstances, left for these and other shores with hopes for a better life as the opportunity presented itself.

Their clinging to their culture ensured some stability in the midst of their tumultuous circumstances and contributed, no doubt, to some of the success that their descendants now seem to enjoy.

The Diaspora took its chance, mitigated its circumstances, and eventually succeeded in the quest for a better life.

The icing on the cake is that whatever longing there has been for the Indian homeland can at long last be realised without sacrifice to anything that was built up here. (The T&T Government allows dual citizenship, so nothing is standing in anyone’s way.)

The truth, therefore, is that there are no reparations or apologies due from New Delhi.

They never alienated anyone, but have been masterfully grappling with the problems of a vast and complex society, which at one time in recent years had been the home of starving masses, but due partly to better management, they have now mostly surmounted these problems.

They now have to deal with modern woes that have come with success, such as obesity in large sectors of the population, nuclear issues and others that will accompany their quest for total modernisation by 2020.

Further, the rampant AIDS epidemic, not confined to anyone country is something that will require much resource.

The Indian Government has shown that it has the determination to deal with its problems and, like China and Israel, has quite intelligently considered that a Diaspora scattered in 110 countries might prove to be a resource. It does not need any undeserved recriminations as it looks.

Let us join India in aspiring forward, and deal with our own dilemmas and demons silently.

Michael Rahman

Woodbrook

posted by Jonathan | 7:51 PM 0 comments

This one's sure to annoy Patrick Manning, his sidekick Glenda Morean and everyone else frustrated with the government's inability to implement the death penalty: the Privy Council has ordered the release of two men who have spent the last 17 years on death row.

According to the story in today's Express, the Law Lords ordered the release because in their opinion the trial judge gave inadequate instructions to the jury. Further, the shorthand notes of the judge's summation were lost before the case came to the Appeal Court.

Once again, the shortcomings and plain incompetence of our juducial system makes it clear why, in addition to all the other reaons, the death penalty simply must go.

posted by Jonathan | 7:25 PM 0 comments

Friday, January 17, 2003

The live broadcast of Parliament. A good idea, isn't it? What would be more sensible that to give the people the opportunity to view their elected representatives as they went about their (the people's) business, as it was happening? As these representatives went about making the decisions that affect us all daily, as they decided how best to spend our tax dollars? Surely, as with the live broadcast of Parliament in the UK (most critically, Prime Minister's Question Time) and the devotion of a whole channel to broadcasting Congress in the US (C-Span), broadcasting our own Parliamentary sessions is a great idea?

Not at all, according to Public Administration & Information Minister, Lenny Saith. In a report in today's Guardian on the post-election seminar on practice and procedure, titled "Parliament and the Media" Saith disagrees with this idea, "indicating that a live broadcast would distract viewers from 'important details' discussed at meetings.

"'Broadcasting an entire Parliamentary sitting is like broadcasting a cricket game live,' said Saith."

I have watched an entire day's play of Test cricket on television; I'm sure many of my fellow citizens have as well. But that's not the point. The point is, wouldn't it be a good thing to make use of the available technology and allow people the option to watch live Parliamentary broadcasts? I think Saith and other sceptics (like independent senator and Guardian columnist Dana Seetahal) might be pleasantly surprised to find that citizens are interested enough in the affairs of their nation to make implementing the idea worthwhile. And if people don't tune in, then simply discontinue the broadcasts. To criticise the idea before it can be tested - and on the grounds that it would be "boring", to boot - is not only premature, but an insult to the intelligence of the people and their concern for national affairs.

Perhaps what bothers the politicians is that now they'll continually have to be on their P's and Q's, and actually conduct their affairs with some sort of decorum instead of their usual playground antics, as session facilitator David McGee of New Zealand noted that MPs and senators who make casual statements in Parliament run the risk of committing defamation.

Not only that, but live broadcasts would mean MPs would have to stay awake, too.

posted by Jonathan | 12:17 PM 0 comments

I've been fighting a nasty little cold the past few days; unfortunately, with pressing deadlines at work (and with my boss on leave) I've been unable to take the time off to rest and recover properly.

With all the slings and arrows we have to deal with in the normal course of things, I sometimes can't help but wonder why on top of all of that we have to deal with infirmity too. Bina, quoting the philosopher, reminded me this morning that "To know illness is to know life." (Welcome back, Bina! As short as the absence was, you were missed.)

I recognise this irony; of illness, of injury, ultimately of death, defining and giving shape to this enigma that is life. Life could not have meaning if it weren't so. And at times like this we are made more aware of that fact, and come to a sharper understanding of what life, and our humanness means. Ultimately, whatever truths we may uncover, or realisations we come to, we must engage one inescapable fact: we are here, then we are not; what, if anything happens after that we do not know. We cannot know. And, as BC Pires says in his Guardian column today:

"[W]hich of us has the cojones to contemplate that? The Rastaman on a beach in Ocho Rios numbs his reality by pulling deep on a spliff.

"The monk draped in his robes and chants, the prime minister with his motorcycle escort, the CEO in his private jet, the rock star backstage with six naked women, they all use a different drug but the aim is the same: to escape the only reality we can’t take straight: we are here and we are gone.

"Understand that and you have no choice but to live as best you can — because you can’t be sure you have a single moment more coming when you check out....

"What can rescue us from slumber? A coup or kidnap attempt? A killer rhyme in a beautiful melody, Kitch pairing “north” with “fish broth”? The Moonlight Sonata? A loaf of bread, a jug of wine and cable? We are here now. And that is all that matters."

posted by Jonathan | 9:11 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, January 15, 2003

I made my first trip to Trinidad's first American-style multiplex, Movie Towne (the "e" is, um, silent) a few weeks ago, but it was only this evening, on my second visit, that I decided to note my impressions. The reason, perhaps, had to do with the film in question. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (aka Harry Hits Puberty) was the movie I saw on my first trip, an appropriately grand piece of entertainment that seemed to fit right in with the experience and somehow not worth the mention. This evening's film, however was not a Hollywood blockbuster (though every other film on was) but an Australian drama, Rabbit Proof Fence. Adapted from the book of the same name and based on true events, the film tells the story of three half Aborigine, half white girls who were taken from their Aboriginal homeland in the 1930s, as part of a policy of forced assimilation of "half castes" by the Australian government among white Australians.

Not the sort of film you usually see at a local cinema (intelligent, non-American, etc.) and one of the reasons I'm inclined to be charitable to the Movie Towne enterprise. Yes, it's tacky, gaudy, overdone Americana, an architectural and stylistic nightmare, and yes, $35 for a film ($25 on Tuesdays) when most of our Trini lives a double's cost us $20 takes some getting used to, not to mention $9 popcorn. But consider: a parking lot that is actually part of the cinema in question. The ability to purchase tickets beforehand. Comfortable chairs. Theatre floors that aren't eager to have your footwear become one with them. Toilets you don't have to hold your nose to go into. Comfortable chairs. And yes, the chance to see an Australian film about Aborigines in the 1930s. And a very good one at that. More films of this calibre, non-American or American, and I just might be willing to part with $35 more often.

posted by Jonathan | 12:05 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, January 14, 2003

"One prominent writer has also in recent weeks announced the demise of the form of which he has been so celebrated a practitioner. Not only has V.S. Naipaul ceased to write novels: the word 'novel' itself, he tells us, makes him feel ill. [T]he author of A House for Mr. Biswas feels that the novel has outlived its historical moment, no longer fulfills any useful role, and will be replaced by factual writing. Mr. Naipaul, it will surprise no one to learn, is presently to be found at the leading edge of history, creating this new post-fictional literature."

- Salman Rushdie, "In Defense of the Novel, Yet Again" taken from Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002.

(A footnote to this passage reads: "Mr. Naipaul - now Sir Vidia - published a new novel, Half a Life, five years after making this statement. We must thank him for bringing this dead form back to life.")

posted by Jonathan | 11:13 PM 0 comments

All you need is love.

We can reform the education system. We can clean up the criminal justice system, even abolish the death penalty. We can stamp out druge abuse and poverty.

But none of this means anything without love.

So says Dr David Bratt in his Guardian column today, as he adds his voice to the debate on country's unspeakably horrific crime situation.

"The violence we are seeing around us is mainly due to the violence which children experience growing up. The first act of violence being the violence of rejection. To be unloved by your mother or father, or both, and not to find someone to love you, is violence with robbery. The robbery occurring is the theft of love and the inability to live a simple, loving life."

Flowery, new-agey flakiness? Not at all. According to Bratt:

"In order for the brain to grow and to develop, it needs to be stimulated. A rich array of sensory stimuli, of all the senses, maximises development of the brain.

"If we do not get the sensory stimulation we equate with love, bonding and intimacy during the formative periods of brain development, ie the first three years of life, we’re going to be impaired, if not crippled, in our ability to experience and express this 'language of love' later in life.

"Put in other words, when young children are not touched, held or surrounded with affection, the neural systems required to experience pleasure are not developed. This leads to an individual and a culture that is self-centred and violent."

And quoting Fr Gerard Pantin he notes our society is rife with the “conditions for the emergence of a male warrior class, viz: 1) children reared apart from their mothers, 2) male status determined by combat and sexual conquest, and 3) economic gain separated from what is needed to support one’s family and made into an end in itself.”

If this is all true, then the question that arises, as I see it, is this: considering that many of our economically disadvantaged children become criminals, is there a connection between the ability to fulfil the physiological needs and the emotional needs of a child? If the primary concern of a group or society is in seeking to ensure its physical survivial more than anything else, will the time and effort needed to provide and nurture the love, bonding and intimacy Bratt talks about be lost? Is love a function of economics? Simply: can the rich afford to love their children more than the poor can?

Bratt himself is wary of such thinking, saying that it is "a disservice, if not an insult, to poor people who strive to bring up their children properly."

Why, then, are we not giving our children the love they need? Bratt mentions mothers "for whatever reason" not being able to give their children love and security. Surely economics is a major reason. The single mother unable to provide for her child, leaving the child in the care of others, often with disastrous results is sadly a scenario that plays itself out too often in this country, and the Caribbean as a whole.

I don't pretend to have answers here, and the more I think about it the more questions I come up with. It seems we're as far away from unravelling this knot as we ever were.

posted by Jonathan | 1:03 PM 0 comments

Julian Kenny takes up the issue of capital punishment (or as he, calling a noose a noose, labels it, State killing) in today's Express. Kenny echoes my position that capital punishment is not a deterrent to murder, is fraught with error, unjust and simply immoral; he also vividly reminds us of its bloody and barbaric past (and present):

"State killing, or for that matter religious or other organised killing, has had a long history in human affairs. Methods vary from contemporary hanging that is on law books or State practice —gassing, garroting, beheading, stoning, shooting, strangulation, burning, electrocution, clubbing, burial, crushing under a wall and of course the latest lethal injection technology, an American derivative of German experiments during the 1930s and ’40s. Remember that the early German eugenic programme on homosexuality in Germany was lethal injection with phenol, later changed to gassing to cope with the larger numbers.

"In the past this broad category of killing would have been applied to an extremely wide range of 'offences', including horse stealing, theft, robbery, rape, economic plunder, forgery, pick pocketing, insurrection, war crimes, witchcraft and simply political or religious differences.... Remember also that State or official killing traditionally was done in public.

"We hang, at least we used to hang. Sentences to being hanged varied from simple stringing up or elevation by a rope around the neck from the gibbet and slow strangulation, through the neck-breaking drop, to the extreme of being hung, drawn and quartered. Most Trinidadians have little appreciation of the lineal continuity between what hopefully will never happen in secrecy in the Royal Jail and the last method. This method was meant to be slow, performed in public and on an elevated platform. If more than one was being killed, the killings would be done in sequence with the victims to be watching the proceedings before their turn. They usually fainted but were invariably revived.

"Official state killers would have been selected for their skills in drawing out the spectacle. Had Trinidad been a British colony some 400 years ago an act of treason would have been dealt with by hanging by the neck and cut down while still alive, drawn (meaning disembowelled while alive so that the intestines spilled out into the victims lap), genitalia cut off and burnt before the victims eyes and then the corpse cut into four quarters to be displayed, while the head was stuck on a pike to be picked over by carrion birds and weathered. The skill of the particular craftsman was determined actually by the length of time he could keep the victim alive while he killed him."

Today's methods of killing may have changed, but that makes capital punishment no less barbaric, no less a means of pandering to the basest of human instincts, the lust for another man's blood. But most shameful of all, as far as we are concerned is that "Trinidad and Tobago’s position on capital punishment is a rather crude position and one that is entirely political in the sense that it is kept alive in the hope of winning votes."

posted by Jonathan | 11:07 AM 0 comments

Sunday, January 12, 2003

"The best reason for the state to help pay for art is because a vibrant society thrives on self-examination. Simply, it's more exciting and fulfilling to live in a society actively engaged in wondering what's beautiful and what's truthful."

- Nicholas Hytner, director of Britian's National Theatre, from an article in today's UK Observer on the purpose of art and of the need for state funding for it. Worth reading not only as a comparison to our own situation here in T&T and in the Caribbean, but also because Hytner points to the divide between what is perceived as high-brow and low-brow art, ultimately making the the point that "we have at our best rendered art and entertainment indistinguishable. We have always required our performing artists to include us in, to keep us engaged. Our greatest artists have often been our most popular."

posted by Jonathan | 8:21 PM 0 comments

Speaking of Express women writers, Joannah Bharose, who has a column in the weekly women's magazine, comes under fire in a letter from a group calling itself ARDIA - The Association for Research and Documentation of the Indian Diaspora, for her four-part feature on mixed relationships called "Colourless Love":

"THE EDITOR: The Association for Research and Documentation of the Indian Diaspora (ARDIA) is startled and deeply disturbed by Ms Joanna Bharose’s careless approach to the delicate issue of mixed marriages, as outlined in her feature entitled “Colourless Love” in Woman magazine, Sunday Express, December 28, 2002.

"Indeed, we note the surreal fixation of Ms Bharose which led her to treat with the same subject some two years ago while working for a failed Express venture called the Independent. As has become Ms Bharose’s signature, this four-part feature was equally opportunistic, baseless, near nonsensical and quite inflammatory.

"However, it would appear that Ms Bharose has now become more assertive in some of her perverse fantasies about crossbreeding. In the interest of promoting the aberration of mixed couples, Ms Bharose has ignored critical factors of religion, compatibility, culture and, most importantly, love (for the right reasons).

[...]

"We should remind Ms Bharose that whereas there may be evidence of successful mixed marriages, we have however found overwhelming evidence to conclude that these unions are ill-fated in the majority. In this regard, we are reminded of the cases of Indrani Ramjattan, Tara George and most recently Chandroutie London (nee Sookoo).

[...]

"[T]here is no basis to say that any particular ethnic type of man is less disposed to abuse. It just leads back to the confirmed belief that a proper union begins in healthy circumstances of equality, compatibility based on religion, lifestyles and social culture. The sacred institution of marriage as ordained by God is intended to strengthen the family, not put a strain on it. Love can only grow and be sustained in an atmosphere of trust, harmony self-fulfilment, personal and parental development.

"Through our work in the community we have documented an enormous amount of friction derived from social, racial and cultural clashes within the home in interracial affairs. We have found that most times, it is the Indian woman who gives up her identity and way of life, risking ostracism in order to make the marriage 'successful'. Usually this entails a dominance of the African husband who imposes his will on her and all offspring which may arise. The result is therefore a split in the home and the children are the ones who pay the ultimate penalty. The whole question about longevity based on intrigue and adventure is really nonsense and silly trite."

I have not read Bharose's columns, but I'm pretty sure that whatever I might happen to find objectionable in what Bharose may have to say could in no way compare to the repugnant claptrap in this letter. To deem the coming together of two persons of different races as "crossbreeding" and an "aberration" exposes thinking that is regressive and racist, not to mention downright absurd, and shows that ARDIA is not simply against persons of different religions and cultural backgrounds forming partnerships, but also persons of different races.

Certainly compatability is key in any relationship or marriage, and factors such as religion, culture, economic status, and yes, even race need to be considered. But in the final analysis, why should any of these factors prevent a couple from having a relationship or getting married? ARDIA cites evidence of Indian women suffering abuse at the hands of their non-Indian mates; they also for good measure add that Indian men are no less or more likely to abuse Indian women. So what is their point? And why do they not say anything about Indian men marrying non-Indian women, or is that acceptable to them? (I won't even bother to raise the issue of gay Indians.)

They go on to claim that "friction" occurs in communities where there are interracial relationships. This may very well be so, but why should that be the couple's problem? It is for anyone else who has a problem with the relationship to come to terms with it. And the more mixed-race couplings we have, the more people will be forced to simply "deal with it".

As for the claims of "dominance" by the African man who seeks to impose his will, this is sheer racist nonsense. Such traits, if they exist, are attributable to men as a whole, not just men of African descent.

"Love can only grow and be sustained in an atmosphere of trust, harmony self-fulfilment, personal and parental development." I agree with this, though the last point is debatable. But why can't such an atmosphere exist between two people of different religions, races and cultures? I make a personal interjection here: my sister is married to a white American. Is their marriage doomed to end with my brother-in-law, as fine a gentleman as one could hope to meet, enacting some horrible form of violence upon my sister? Will they be ostracised, their half-breed children pariahs who will suffer because mummy and daddy broke the rules and married outside their tribes?

ARDIA doesn't have a leg to stand on with the bigoted, racist nonsense they spew with such miasmic self-righteousness and superiority. Aradhana Govia (isn't that Portugese?) who wrote on the group's behalf did so from New York and as far as I am concerned, she and her cohorts can stay there. T&T can well do without their kind.

posted by Jonathan | 3:02 AM 0 comments

Where are the women columnists in the Express?

I've just been reading both the Sunday Express and Guardian online editions, and going through their respective lists of columnists, I find myself asking this question. The Guardian has, of a Sunday and during the week, Kris Rampersad, Ira Mathur, Atillah Springer, Debbie Jacob (who was with the Express) and Dana Seetahal, as well as its men columnists. The Express has Lloyd Best, Raoul Pantin, Raffique Shah, Martin Daly, Kevin Baldeosingh, Tony Deyal, Keith Smith...all men; no women.

As nominally the more "liberal" paper, you'd think the Express would have at least a few women columnists in its pages. Is it just by accident none exist? Or do Caribbean Communications Network Chairman Craig Reynald and Express Editor-in-Chief Sunity Maharaj think the Sunday women's magazine is the only place women should be found, dispensing advice on sex and fashion?

One to think about...

posted by Jonathan | 1:36 AM 0 comments

Saturday, January 11, 2003

He's back, etc.

Brian Lara scored an unbeaten 71 off of 72 balls in 75 minutes today as North defeated South in the annual Gerry Gomez memorial cricket match, days before the West Indies make camp in Antigua ahead of next month's World Cup in South Africa.

Speaking of the World Cup, the International Cricket Council (ICC) has stated that if violence in Zimbabwe increases, all six World Cup matches scheduled to be played there will be moved to South Africa. This may solve the dilemma the English cricket team has found itself in, with Tony Blair calling for the team to boycott Zimbabwe, and the England and Wales Cricket Board loathe to do so.

Which leads me to wonder: what if the West Indies were scheduled to play in Zimbabwe - would we have shown our opposition to Robert Mugabe's despotic regime and boycotted? Or would we see this as an issue of erstwhile colonies and colonisers and be guided accordingly? India and Pakistan are also scheduled to play in Zimbabwe - I wonder what their respective governments' views on the issue are.

And more overarchingly, if the US launches its offensive against Saddam Hussein next month, will the World Cup go ahead?

posted by Jonathan | 10:17 PM 0 comments

In perhaps the boldest ever step by a politician in condemning capital punishment in the United States, outgoing Illinois governor George Ryan has commuted the sentences of every man and woman on death row in his state.

"In one sweep, Governor Ryan, a Republican, spared the lives of 163 men and 4 women who have served a collective 2,000 years for the murders of more than 250 people. His bold move was seen as the most significant statement questioning capital punishment since the Supreme Court struck down states' old death penalty laws in 1972. It seemed sure to secure Mr. Ryan's legacy as a leading critic of state-sponsored executions even as he faces possible indictment in a corruption scandal that stopped him from seeking re-election.

" 'The facts that I have seen in reviewing each and every one of these cases raised questions not only about the innocence of people on death row, but about the fairness of the death penalty system as a whole,' Governor Ryan said this afternoon. 'Our capital system is haunted by the demon of error: error in determining guilt and error in determining who among the guilty deserves to die.' [Excerpts, page 22.]

[...]

"The governor said that even his wife, Lura Lynn, was angry and disappointed at his decision. But after several months of intense lobbying by both sides and exhaustive review of case files, Governor Ryan said, he was left with Justice Blackmun's famous declaration in a 1994 dissent, 'I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.'

"Governor Ryan told the sympathetic crowd: 'The Legislature couldn't reform it, lawmakers won't repeal it, and I won't stand for it — I must act. Because our three-year study has found only more questions about the fairness of the sentencing, because of the spectacular failure to reform the system, because we have seen justice delayed for countless death row inmates with potentially meritorious claims, because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious — and therefore immoral.'

[...]

"Governor Ryan, a pharmacist who was among the Illinois legislators who voted in 1977 to revive the death penalty, acknowledged in his speech the unlikelihood of his crusade. But when he found himself at the helm of a state that had conducted 12 executions and exonerated 13 death row inmates, one of whom came within 48 hours of the electric chair, Mr. Ryan called a moratorium on capital punishment."

An attempt to divert attention from his corruption scandal? Only the most cynical would say that is the driving force behind this bold strike. No, Governor Ryan has simply come to the realisation that anyone who looks rationally and levelly at the death penalty must come to: capital punishment is wrong. It is almost always underlined by a desire not for justice but for revenge; it is arbitrary, unfair (even discriminatory), cruel, irreversible, does not deter crime nor improve public safety, and in some cases its existence has even been shown to increase the crime rate. It is also a huge economic burden on the state and is often even more costly that incarceration.

Any nation that is serious about building an enlightened, peaceful and civilised society must come to the realisation that endorsing killing to solve social ills sets the worst possible example for its citizenry. Caribbean governments would do wonderfully well to realise this, instead of fuming at the Privy Council for not allowing them to carry out hangings, and rushing to set up a Caribbean Court of Justice, which they desire solely to be able to carry out hangings and be seen as "doing something" about crime and hence score cheap political points.

Governor Ryan has stood up and shown that he has the courage of his convictions and I, for one, applaud him for it. If only we had a few Ryans in power in T&T: leaders truly worthy of the title.

posted by Jonathan | 9:15 PM 0 comments

Friday, January 10, 2003

In today’s Express, Reggie Dumas sets out the qualities he thinks the next president of our nation, the election of whom draws nigh, should possess:

“To my mind, the person should command widespread respect. (I do not say affection, though that would help.) The person should therefore be recognised as articulate and self-confident, and as possessing a social conscience, high intelligence, integrity, balance, good judgement and sensitivity. And, of course, independence of thought—we must not be saddled with a Prime Ministerial toady masquerading as a strict constitutionalist. The person should not be, or be seen as, divisive, politically or otherwise (but should be politically astute). He or she should be someone who not only understands this very complex society of ours but also has the sophistication to deal sensibly with its many facets, especially race and religion.

“The person does not have to be a lawyer—indeed, our Presidents should be provided with good legal advisers and not have to advise themselves. It might be considered preferable for the person to be contentedly married, though I note that the late Dame Nita Barrow, that superb Governor General of Barbados, never married and had no children of her own, which did not prevent her from being unswervingly committed to the practice of sound family values. Also, I think it’s high time we had a woman President, but we must not of course sacrifice desirable attributes on the altar of perceived gender (or other) correctness.”

I concur with Dumas on his criteria, though I’m curious to know what he means exactly when he says the president should have “the sophistication to deal sensibly with … race and religion.” What does it mean to deal “sensibly” with race and religion? Both issues are admittedly the most sensitive in our country, and often go hand in hand.

Yet in my view, they’ve been too long afforded a primacy, almost solely for political reasons, that they do not deserve. In the context of nation building, particularly in a society as plural as ours, surely what is most important is not the making of good Afro/Indo/Euro/Syrian/Chinese Trinidadians (did I cover everyone?), or good Christian/Muslim/Hindu Trinidadians, but good Trinidadians, full stop. Whatever else you consider yourself or important to your identity is personal, and shouldn’t require or deserve national approbation. A president who recognises this, and acts with such a philosophy in mind, is one I would very much like to see (though admittedly be very surprised to see).

Anyhow, with Dumas's criteria in mind, particularly his wish to see a female president (which I share), my nominee for the fourth President of the Republic of Trinidad & Tobago is Hazel Ward-Redman .

posted by Jonathan | 11:46 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, January 07, 2003

Adventures in shallot, Part II

Since my Sunday post about shallots, I received a few suggestions on how I could incorporate them in my cooking. Two I intend to try: omelette with shallots and a cold salad with a dressing of shallots in red wine vinegar and olive oil.

This evening though I made another pasta dish, a seafood dish with shrimp, tomatoes (fresh and sun dried, and a bit of canned), and olives (cocktail, which is what I had to hand, though the recipe called for black) as the main ingredients, along with the shallot, of course. A bit of garlic too, this time and fresh parsley in lieu of basil. (I need to start an herb garden; present living conditions aren't optimal.) Grated parmesan topped off the dish.

Stay tuned for further shallot instalments, if you can stand the suspense.

posted by Jonathan | 10:28 PM 0 comments

Monday, January 06, 2003

Congratulations are in order to four students of my alma mater, Fatima College, for their successes at the T&T Chess Foundation Open Junior Tournament, which ended last Saturday.

Allan Munro, the current Barbados Open Champion, won the under-20 division and led a clean sweep for Fatima as his fellows Imran Hosein and Sean Perryman, the current National Junior Champion, placed second and third respectively. Another Fatima student, Marcus Joseph copped first place in the under-16 division. Players from Barbados and Martinique won the three other divisions.

Sadly I noted only a handful of female names among the placings. Chess is one of the only sports where men and women, theoretically, compete on equal standing. Does the paucity, indeed almost a complete lack of women in chess, as it would seem, point to inherent mental differences between men and women, to complement our physical differences? Bluntly, do women just not have the mind for the game?

Or is Virginia Woolf's Shakespeare's Sister not just a reality of literature, science and other related disciplines, but of chess as well? Do Fischer's Sister and Kasparov's Sister continue to play second fiddle to their siblings simply because they're girls?

Or is chess, basically a scaled-down substitute for war, just a guy thing?

And what does all of this say about the fact that, not counting the king, the queen is the most valuable piece in the game?

Questions, questions...answers, anyone?

posted by Jonathan | 10:58 AM 0 comments

Sunday, January 05, 2003

Today I found myself investigating, for the first time, a shallot.

I've always been on the lookout for shallots in the supermarket but was always disappointed, until last week. I snapped up a package of five, about twelve dollars. (I suppose that's costly, but what price culinary exploration?)

Making a tomato sauce to go with pasta for lunch, I peeled and diced one shallot. The colour of red onion, the size of a couple of very large cloves of garlic, quite pungent. Sauteed in olive oil, its own essential oils released, it had a wonderful perfume all its own that permeated the sauce beautifully. So I was rather bemused to find the entry for the shallot in my food bible, the New Larousse Gastronomique less than enthusiastic:

"SHALLOT. Échalote. Pot vegetable which, according to Candolle (French botanist 1806-1893) is merely a derivative of the onion, with a slight taste of garlic. Some people find the shallot more readily digestible than onion." (Recipes for shallot butter and essence of shallot followed.)

Anyway. I look forward to more variations on the theme shallot, as well as experimentations with some of the other produce appearing on our supermarket shelves for the first time, particularly the different types of mushrooms.

posted by Jonathan | 1:58 PM 0 comments

Saturday, January 04, 2003

"Thing is, people love the way he raps. Even when they're agonizing over the content, they can't get enough of the form. To these people I can confirm Dina Rae's judgement: Sweet. Lovely. Shy. But even if he wasn't, so what? Salvador Dali was an asshole. So was John Milton. Eminem's life and opinions are not his art. His art is his art. Sometimes people with bad problems make good art. The interesting question is this: When the problems go, does the art go, too? Oh, and if that word 'art' is still bothering you in the context of a white-trash rapper from Detriot, here's a quick, useful definition of an artist: someone with an expressive talent most of us do not have."

- Zadie Smith, from an article entitled "The Zen of Eminem" in the November 2002 issue of Vibe magazine.

posted by Jonathan | 10:56 AM 0 comments

Friday, January 03, 2003

It's Friday, I'm in the papers...

"I was reading a really ridiculous statement on the Internet recently in which a person by the name of Jonathan said that the calls to remove the Infinity bar from UWI are part of a mindset that continues to prevent us from becoming a serious nation. What rubbish!

"This supporter of the Infinity bar on the compound of the university states that 'in any serious country, on any serious university campus, the campus bar is a hotbed of discussion, where the future leaders, thinkers, poets, artists come together with passions enflamed to debate the pressing issues, or just unwind after a day of slogging over mathematical formulae and literary theories. (It’s also a place where drunken louts go to get wasted, but in serious countries people tolerate what they personally find undesirable along with what they do find desirable.)' "

That's an excerpt from a letter to the Editor in today's Trinidad Express, from Carol James, a "past UWI graduate" (sic) in New York who didn't see it fit to mention me by my full name. The quote marks enclosing the comments from my post (which I can't seem to locate) are mine. I don't imagine Ms James wished to take credit for what I said; I'm assuming she just didn't bother to put the quote marks in.

She also quotes selectively from my post, failing to mention the last paragraph where I said perhaps Infinity should be closed after all, but for different reasons than the ones being proposed. I was half-joking, of course, but Ms James certainly isn't:

"I fully endorse this call [for the bar's closure], mainly because the university should be setting an example for young people in T&T. Allow me to point out that many of the students drinking at the Infinity bar would have been arrested in the USA because the drinking age here is 21 and over.

"Many years ago, I was a student at UWI and there were students who came into the classroom drunk after having too many beers to drink at the Infinity bar. My former husband used to brag about how good a student he was even though he was drunk. He also boasted of drinking with some of his lecturers at the UWI bar....

"I certainly do not want to have any drunken intellectuals in my home anymore. Look around at some of the clubs around UWI and you will notice the amount of students abusing alcohol and then getting home at the wee hours of the morning. Many of the landlords know what I am talking about.

"I hope you find some space in your newspaper for this letter since it may influence UWI principal Dr Bhoe Tewarie to close the Infinity and not cater to those who want to drink alcohol on the university compound. UWI is sanctioning drinking on its compound and in so doing encouraging students to drink and go to class."

I have no intention of replying to Ms James and her non-existent arguments. I am, however toying with the idea of changing this blog's title to the Drunken Intellectual.

posted by Jonathan | 8:38 AM 0 comments

Thursday, January 02, 2003

Do you give someone a meggie or a meggy?

For me it's meggie, my way of spelling the word that describes that ultimate in childhood insults, delivered by the victor when you had lost an argument, or delivered when you had done something colossally stupid, or delivered simply just to annoy you (there is nothing so annoying as being megged for the hell of it). The fingers are stretched out and bunched together, forming an elongated, duckbill-like gesture and accompanied by the gleeful cry of "Meggie!", the double-blow signalling to all around that insult had been crushingly delivered upon injury.

But is the definitive spelling meggie or meggy? The issue arises as today the Trinidad Guardian announced its Golden Meggie Awards for 2002, the paper's honours to personalities who made all year silly season in local journalism. The headline of the feature says meggy; throughout the piece it's meggie. Was this the Solomon-like decision the features editor made to please the multitiude of writers who contributed to the article and were divided on the word's spelling, or (what is more likely) was it just a snafu? (Remember that Sunday Guardian front page lead story on the Vidya/Vidia Naipaul library?)

Anyway, I consulted my two usual references in such situations, the Oxford Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage and T&T's own trusty Cote ce Cote la, the latter more often than not having the final say on the accepted spelling of local words.

No luck. The word appears in neither book. I took a straw poll in the office; most people seem to think meggy is the way to go. I still say meggie, but like hippie (which is also spelled hippy) I suppose either will do. What matters really is consistency, something I wish they'd look at more closely over at the Guardian. Today, the meggie's on them.

posted by Jonathan | 1:33 PM 0 comments

Sometime ago I wrote a post, seemingly a propos of nothing, on the Palestine issue. Specifically, I wrote on the issue of elections in Palestine, and opined that Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestinian Authority and de facto leader of Palestine, should hold elections for a new Palestinian leadership.

I say the post seemed a propos of nothing, as I had not previously declared my stance on the Middle East issue. For the record, I believe in the right of both the Israeli state and a Palestinian state to exist, and I believe both can and will co-exist peacefully side-by-side.

Both sides have to make their respective contributions to this process. Israel must remove its settlers and the forces that protect them from Palestinian territory. Needless to say, no new settlements must be built.

As for the Palestinians, they must organise themselves properly and effectively internally to provide a legitimate, unified front with which to run their internal affairs and ultimately engage in negotiations for their statehood.

The problem of course is that neither side wants to make the first move. Israel says the bombings must end first, the Palestinians say the Israeli army must withdraw from their territories first. And the violence continues, and civilians on both sides continue to die.

In the midst of all of this is the call for Palestinian elections. In my previous post, speaking of Arafat I said, “The ability to hold free, fair and transparent elections is in his hands entirely.” My friend Bina, writing from Pakistan disagrees strongly with this. She wonders about the logistics of holding elections, “When people are under heavy curfew, shot at when they emerge from their houses, and held up at checkpoints for hours to travel three miles…being under siege is no atmosphere in which to hold ‘free and fair’ elections…and don't forget that the Israeli authorities have practically blown up out of existence just about every institution and edifice that belongs to the Palestinian Authority...where would they put the ballot boxes, on the streets?

“The concept of elections under the circumstances that Israel has put the Palestinians in is just illogical. Logistically speaking, (to hold an election) takes massive communication, the ability to mobilize people, efficient organization, distribution of ballots, proper policing to ensure no rigging, safety of poll station workers, safety of voters, etc. - do you think any of those is possible under the current set of situations?

“Israel has disrupted every means and method of any sort of coordination within the Palestinian Authority - how do you propose they even set it up, let alone administer it, and how do you think they are going to get any sort of legitimacy for the result? They (the Israelis) have held his headquarters under siege several times in the last six months, cut off his water, food and electricity - how do you propose Arafat will have any sort of authority or power to administer an election that scale? Elections are challenging enough in the smoothest of countries and democracies - can you imagine what it might even be close to for a place like the West Bank?

“It took massive amounts of manpower and money to hold elections here - last year - I don't think the PA has any of that; Israel has not allowed it to remain powerful in any real sense of the word, by knocking out its strategic leadership - so how can you put the onus on their heads?”

I agree with Bina on many of her arguments. Holding an election is a huge logistic task. It takes massive amounts of resources of all kinds. And considering the horrible conditions in the West Band and Gaza – yes, directly related to the Occupation – it seems absurd to be holding elections. But what is the alternative? Writing in the Egyptian paper AL-Ahram (a password protected site; articles can be accessed through the Edward Said Archive) in mid-2002 Edward Said declared:

“I keep saying that the effort must come from us, by us, for us. I'm at least trying to suggest a different avenue of approach. Who else but the Palestinian people can construct the legitimacy they need to rule themselves and fight the occupation with weapons that don't kill innocents and lose us more support than ever before? A just cause can easily be subverted by evil or inadequate or corrupt means. The sooner this is realised the better the chance we have to lead ourselves out of the present impasse.”

I would like to know what, if not elections, Said means by “a different avenue of approach”. At any rate, writing last week (again in Al-Ahram) he denounced the call for elections, at least elections that will only see Arafat returned to power:

“What could be more preposterous than the call for Palestinian elections, which Mr Arafat of all people, imprisoned in an Israeli vice, announces, retracts, postpones, and re-announces. Everyone speaks of reform except the very people whose future depends on it, i.e. the citizens of Palestine, who have endured and sacrificed so much even as their impoverishment and misery increases. Isn't it ironic, not to say grotesque, that in the name of that long-suffering people schemes of rule are being hatched everywhere, except by that people itself? Surely the Swedes, the Spanish, the British, the Americans and even the Israelis know that the symbolic key to the future of the Middle East is Palestine, and that is why they do everything within their power to make sure that the Palestinian people are kept as far away from decisions about the future as possible. And this during a heated campaign for war against Iraq, during which numerous Americans, Europeans and Israelis have openly stated that this is the time to re-draw the map of the Middle East and bring in ‘democracy’.

“Real change can only come about when people actively will that change, make it possible themselves. In Palestine it should be possible to have elections now, but not elections to re-install Arafat's ragged crew, but rather to choose delegates for a constitutional and truly representative assembly. It is a lamentable reality that during his 10 years of misrule Arafat actively prevented the creation of a constitution despite all his ridiculous gibberish about ‘Palestinian democracy’. His legacy is neither a constitution nor even a basic law, but only a decrepit mafia.”

So perhaps Bina is right, and elections should not be held. But not because Israel has made them impossible, but because they would only see the present corrupt, inept regime maintaining hegemony. The Palestinian people have the power, and despite Arafat, despite Sharon, their voices will be heard. The only questions is when.

posted by Jonathan | 12:03 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, January 01, 2003

Last evening on the TV6 year-end review, host Sunil Ramdeen spoke of the "bacchanal, to use the local term" in politics in T&T throughout 2002. It may interest Ramdeen to know that bacchanal is not a Trinidadian expression. The word exists in standard English, and the OED definition is "an occasion of wild and drunken revelry" or "a priest, worshipper, or follower of Bacchus, the Greek or Roman god of wine".

What Ramdeen or the writer no doubt had in mind (apart from the Trinidadian meaning of the word, a synonym for scandal and controversy) was the ubiquitous usage of the word here at Carnival. With its harsh vowel sounds, the grating way it is spat out by calypsonians and soca singers (invariably made to rhyme with the word carnival, or rather the other way around) probably shames many into thinking the word an embarassing colloquialism, a legacy perhaps of our dark, disagreeable past and not the Latin derivative that it is.

And so we find ourselves prefacing its usage as Ramdeen did, or excusing its use in writing by enclosing it in reductive quotes, a practice that still extends to so many words, from mas to steups to (inexplicably) wake. (As in, "A 'wake' was held for the deceased.") And our language continues to be seen as illegitimate, a bastard of the mother tongue, and not what it is, ours.

"Listen, one kind of writer, generally the entertainer says, 'I will write in the language of the people however gross or incomprehensible'; another says: 'Nobody else go' understand this, you hear, so le' me write English'; while the third is dedicated to purifying the language of the tribe, and it is he who is jumped on by both sides for pretentiousness or playing white. He is the mulatto of style. The traitor. The assimilator."

- Derek Walcott, from the title essay of his collection, What the Twilight Says

posted by Jonathan | 10:59 AM 0 comments

I've added a link to indiawest, a blog belonging to Damien Smith, a friend of Nicholas's. Damien is a Trinidadian studying for his Masters in economics at Birbeck College, University of London and brings the economist's view to things, as with his take on the crime situation.

posted by Jonathan | 9:26 AM 0 comments