Sardines, IMF models, Lula and the blue-eyed bankers

[malaise]

Hubby and I don't eat canned food. I stopped eating red meat and canned food back in the seventies.

We have one cat but feed the strays that come on our property. Since our dollar is now 88.49 to US$1, the cost of cat food has increased at an alarming rate so we thought about ways to cut down on the cost of feeding them.

We look for specials on canned fish to mix with the dry food. We used to mix it with regular cat food for the strays.

The last time I bought a can of sardines, it was 21cents and had three or four sardines packed tightly. Tinned cat food is now J$80 a can and we can find specials on sardines or mackerel for $J60. So we bought a case of sardines and a case of 'fish steaks'. Imagine the shock when we opened the first can of sardines and found one sardine cut in three. The fish steaks were even more hilarious - one sardine cut up in slices.


We dug up some data on the cost of basic food and some other stuff before we were 'structurally adjusted' with IMF/World Bank models. In 1975 the Jamaican dollar was 1.35 to 1.00US.

At the start of the 1970s, you could get a kg of cod fish…for 54 cents. By 1978 it was $1.37. Mackerel 34 cents in 1970 was 69 cents in 1978, wheat moved from $65 a ton to $147 a ton, flour from 8 cents to 25 cents. Likewise mahogany moved from $64 per 420 board feet to $187.
In 1970, 20 tons of sugar could buy a 75 horse power Ford model tractor. By 1979, it took 59 tons of sugar for the same tractor. Likewise a Toyota Corolla moved from US$1,400 to US$3,688 over the same period.

Today a Toyota Corolla costs US$15,350 and is sold in Jamaica for $J2.4 million. We bought mine in 2004 for $1.2 million. When we bought our home in the early 80s, our dollar was 5-1US and we paid JA$110,000. There is no home in our range available for under JA$25 million today.

Our professionals have been migrating in droves because there is no way they can purchase a home, send children to school and feed them given the cost of living on this island. Now the US, Britain and Canada send the recruiters here to attract our doctors (40% have migrated), our nurses (38% have migrated), our teachers, engineers, etc.

Our pensioners- the teachers, nurses, doctors who served our island, saved their money, bought insurance, etc. can barely buy food. They sure didn't plan for our dollar to be devalued in this manner.

We were told to privatize - government was too big - hundreds of thousands have been laid off, utility companies have been sold and resold. The electricity company threatens the government that if they are not given a 93% increase in rates, they will stop improving the grid. We're not even sure who actually owns that now since they sell and resell, merge and purge with gay abandon.

All the American politicians who are so worried about illegal migration should have thought out the implications of impoverishing developing nations so that US corporations could loot and plunder for greed.

Of course foreigners can buy prime land dirt cheap. Jamaica is not only for sale - we have been sold out.

I remember the days when we were protesting in the streets with placards reading IMF - there's got to be a better way. We were right - we have been vindicated but at what cost.

And people here on DU say Lula was wrong to say the blue eyed bankers destroyed us. Spare me!!! They fucking destroyed us.

Thank you Milton Friedman, IMF/World Bank, Reagan and Bush.

And yes we'll still feed the stray cats because we're the lucky ones who refuse to leave and still have decent jobs.

[BlooInBloo]

1. :)

[malaise]

2. Why are you smiling?

Do you smell a flame war? I expect these uncomfortable facts to sink like a stone.

add

[BlooInBloo]

4. About 3 times, I started saying something, and then decided you had covered it sufficiently...

So I just it go, and put a smiley.

[malaise]

6. Cool

:D

[formercia]

11. You can still roll your own cones

and it will grow anywhere for free.

[malaise]

12. LOL

The last time a Ganja don was extradited to the US the city merchants in the West were very upset since the don also funded the construction of the new shopping mall. :D

[msongs]

3. so....why did YOU and your government allow this to happen? Jamaica has choices besides pot use nt

[malaise]

5. One day I'll post the story of Jamaica between 1978 and 1980

and the arrival of Kissinger followed by the M16s, the violence, the subversion by the Chamber of Commerce and the merchants and the way the nearly starved us to remove a government they hated. Phillip Agree had a lot to say about the destabilization of the Jamaican government and the imposition of the 'shock doctrine'. Did you know our Prime Minister at that time was nearly shot by soldiers during a political meeting?

Watch this.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5277094596195828118&ei=4EafSb6HOYvCrQL3tcjXDw&q=life+and+debt

add.

[Karenina]

38. Brown skin girl, stay home and mind baby

Now I tell you de story 'bout Millie
Well she made a nice blue-eyed baby
And dey say she fancy the mother
But the blue-eyed baby ain't know she father

Your polite response leaves me in awe! :yourock:

[Judi Lynn]

41. My gosh. Thanks for taking this opportunity to share this excellent link.

I'm looking foward to sharing it with others, myself, and won't forget where I found it.

Thank you so much, and for your deeper approach to the life we do share. Always read your posts when I see them, am sure so many other people do, too.

Tremendous link.

[TahitiNut]

15. Bauxite

:shrug:

[malaise]

25. Are you serious?

http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20090322/lead/lead4.html

[TahitiNut]

28. It's my impression that the history of Jamaica is written in bauxite.

It's been what has attracted the greedy and colonialists. It's role in Jamaica is akin to the role of coal in West Virginia. Mining it has been an ecological nightmare and labor fiasco. It's one of those resources that become an addiction in a small economy.

Some might think of rum. I think about bauxite. It's tragic.

[malaise]

31. That's long after British sugar and the United Fruit Company

banana industry.

You're right about bauxite, the ecological nightmare and the labor fiasco.

[EFerrari]

7. Kick

[Grey]

9. kick

[ensho]

8. Lula is right - the white male neo cons did it

why we aren't putting them in jail is driving me angry.

[malaise]

10. People seem preoccupied with the description of the

banksters rather than the size and scale of the robbery.
sp.

[EFerrari]

13. I didn't realize that there were huge stikes going on until

I saw Amy this morning. Wow.

[malaise]

14. It's getting ugly

and will get uglier. People are losing their jobs, their homes, their savings. They can't buy food, can't pay for utilities. People across the planet are getting really angry.

[formercia]

16. The consumer society is like a drug

The only way to free yourself is to quit. Learn the old ways. Learn to grow and raise your own food. Enjoy the stars at night: turn out the lights. Make love, not babies without forethought. Enjoy life instead of slaving for the things the man says you need to be happy.

[malaise]

19. I know the old ways bro and we can survive

Indeed we do following hurricanes. And we do have a vegetable garden.

And yes we do love nature, but we are not starving with children to feed, unemployed, homeless or destitute.

Our rural people survive but the urban poor have no chance.

[formercia]

20. Cuba could teach us a lot

Thanks to the embargo, they are way ahead of us in the post-consumer society.

The cities are a death trap.

[malaise]

23. That's absolutely correct

I was looking at some data on social spending in the Caribbean this week and it turns out that Cuba still invests more in education than every one of the free markets basket cases that make up the rest of us.

http://hdrstats.undp.org/buildtables/rc_report.cfm

Build your own table using public expenditure on health and education as a percentage of GDP

[formercia]

17. During Colonial times

People lit their houses with oil pressed from Hemp seed. Then came Whale oil and afterwords,coal oil and Kerosene.

Hempstead Long Island was once a hemp plantation, thus the name .

When the lights go out, light your home with candles and lamps that use vegetable oil and non-petroleum waxes. Your lungs will thank you for it.

Vegetable oil makes a great lamp oil.

[SoCalDem]

22. It's all so sad.. Jamaica is one of my favorite places on earth

We spent 3 weeks there (1972), and it reminded me of "my home" (Panama of the 50s & 60s).. It had a genteel friendliness and a easy "slowness" of life.. at least it seemed that way to us..

Of course, the "interference" was probably only months away, but people could not have known it then..

"Progress" , for the sake of progress, is no panacea.


Those "rich white people with blue eyes", know pretty beaches , nice weather, and cheap exploitable labor when they see it, and they have NO qualms about "developing" it..

It's not just Jamaica..it's wordwide.

The feeling I get, is that indigenous people are treated as "unworthy" of living "the good" life in those beautiful places....and must be pushed into laboring at hotels, restaurants, and of course in the extraction of the natural resourses..

Mahogany is truly a beautiful wood, but the trees are even more beautiful when left in the ground:grr:

When we went to Tahiti, the guy driving us to our hotel on the other side of the island was giving us running commentary about Moorea, and when I saw mahogany peeking through the treeline, I commented about how happy I was to see it standing there.. He said "we don't let them cut the mahogany down"... and yet.. a few miles around the bend, there was a huge swath of freshly cut mahogany..being "cleared"..:grr:

I am sorry so many exploiters have gotten hold of jamaica :cry:

[malaise]

24. You wouldn't recognize the place

the coast is now full of megahotels.

[SoCalDem]

26. Remember the old "Colony"? (down the road from Rose Hall?)

That's where we stayed.. no electricity every afternoon, like clockwork.. no A/C..:).. Just a quaint little place with cute little cottages & a short walk to the beach..

The Holiday Inn had just been built ..(It's probably been torn down by now too):)

We stumbled upon Negril one afternoon..an open-air barbershop/market a roundabout & a mini-post office.. that was it.. except for the miles of gorgeous beaches:)

[malaise]

35. Negril was so beautiful

Now we don't go there often - too painful.

[alarimer]

18. Read Confessions of an Economic Hitman.

Those IMF bankers are fucking evil, blue-eyed or otherwise. We have destroyed other countries in the name of corporations. NAFTA, WTO, and any other trade organization.

[malaise]

21. I have a copy

but I also know the story from experience. And you're right - they sure have destroyed lots of countries. I heard that bimbo Contessa Brewer a while ago saying people will be shocked when they hear what Lula said - only people who don't read or observe reality on this planet will be shocked.

From my perspective his comment was as obvious as the sun rising.

[EFerrari]

29. The shock shocks the heck out of me.

This morning it occurred to me that I didn't see "color" until I was almost a teenager because when we went to El Salvador for the summer, I was 11 and didn't see it. Poverty, profound, abject poverty was everywhere and I saw that. But never noticed, "my family is lighter than all these people and there are no white faces in this earthquake camp".

But the funny thing is, I did see it by the time we got home because the right wing nutcase oligarchs that my elders hung out with talked about little else. Can you imagine that? It took me three months to figure out what the hell they were talking about. And what's worse is, once the scales fall, it's everywhere. For many years, I refused to go back to El Salvador to repeat that experience and probably won't until my elders are gone because I don't want to cause them to stroke out from my mouth.

For people to expect that situation never to be named seems wildly unreasonable to me, even delusional.

[malaise]

32. I grew up at the height of anti-colonial nationalism so

even as a child I knew the issues, but there was no racism in our family. We're all mixed up anyway but people of every race and ethnicity walked in and out of our home. As I grew up what I saw was the class issue although my folks were respectful to everyone and made sure we were as well.

All my grandparents were preoccupied with the value of an education and my maternal grandfather gave me an original copy of Booker T Washington's autobiography. He also taught us about Garvey and Gandhi. Dad's aunts migrated to the US so we knew lots of the heroes of that period. They were all Democrats.

[EFerrari]

36. My family is all mixed up now but we're all coastal types.

Some uncles from New England that joined the service during Korea, sister in-laws from the Phillipines, from Mexico, El Salvador, one cousin married a business man from Hong Kong. My brother married a Jewish schoolmate from Malibu. Our glue seems to be we were all born on some coast somewhere and decided to hop on a boat. And education, too. No one has been here long enough to pick up the attitude that education isn't an end in itself. Education and beaches. :)

[malaise]

37. Yep we're coastal people

as well.

[Hannah Bell]

27. Those who own/control money & jobs can force migration anytime they wish.

Unless all the people have a say in production & government, they don't own shit.

Jamaica is a pretty island, it will be a nice gated resort for the super-rich.

[smellycats99]

30. agree

i have to agree with that,,, : )

[Karenina]

33. Until the waters rise...

[malaise]

34. It's heading that way

Watch the new documentary Jamaica for Sale.

[Hannah Bell]

39. It's always been that way. A lot of history's mass migrations have been about this.

e.g. the Irish potato famine & migration was less about the blight than about removal of the means of subsistence from the people by the British overlords.

Thanks for the rec on the film.

[malaise]

42. Excellent point

Greed and power rule.

[Peace Patriot]

43. Read Michael Pollan's book, "The Botany of Desire," about the Irish potato famine.

It's very interesting what he says. The poor Irish turned to the potato because it grows anywhere, even on bad land, and the English lords had taken all the good farm land. But they didn't realize that the potato, which came from Peru, when grown in its native land by the indigenous, was grown in 20 to 30 varieties, as a hedge against potato plagues, based on ancient indigenous farming techniques and wisdom about Nature. So, when the plague hit the Irish potato, it hit everywhere, every crop, all at once. The indigenous Peruvian farmers never had such a problem. If one crop failed, they had many others to fall back on.

This is both a lesson in "globalization"--as manifested, early on, in the British Empire--and a lesson in HEARING the wisdom of the indigenous on environmental issues. And I am so glad to see the indigenous coming into their as a political power in places like Bolivia and Ecuador. One of the first things the indigenous have done, in Bolivia--after electing the first indigenous president of Bolivia, Evo Morales--is to legalize the use of coca leaves for chewing and for tea, and even sanctifying the leaf in the new Constitution. The coca leaf is not evil--it is an ancient indigenous medicine, high in nutrients, and essential for survival in the high-altitude, icy climates of the Andes. It is a mild stimulant like coffee, but it is much, MUCH better for you than coffee. These same Bolivians hate cocaine (an artificial creation) and its associated drugs/weapons trafficking, mafias and crime, and have been much more effective at controlling the cocaine trade than the corrupt, failed, murderous U.S. "war on drugs"--which, for instance, involved toxic pesticide spraying of small peasant farms just for growing a few coca leaves, and thus destroying food crops and animals, poisoning the soil and damaging human and animal DNA.

Maybe this SANE drug policy--coming from the indigenous--will, at long last, influence our own society and help us dismantle our INSANE, hugely expensive and destructive police state and its "prison-industrial complex."

Organic farming (which is based on VARIETY, and on helper companion plants that fight disease, and other such principles that work WITH nature, not against it, and that produces a much, MUCH higher quality of food), is another gift from the indigenous. If the Irish had only known!

-----

(Pollan discusses four plants and their relationship with humans, in this book: the potato, the apple, the tulip and marijuana. Fabulous book!)

[Karenina]

40. . .