Probably you are I told Afflicted. On one hand Bruce Golding’s become the fall guy for decades of garrison politics from both parties but on the other hand, he did lie.

And then, our Prime Minister was the politician who famously distanced himself from garrison politics far, far over the hill with the National Democratic Movement. Well, until he wanted the top job and had to rejoin the Jamaica Labour Party to get it.

And so he took up the ultimate JLP garrison seat of West Kingston. And after a massive tropical storms and recession (c’mon the poor guy’s just salt!), the United States (bigger hypocrites) make a move for Dudus, the biggest Don of the party they helped arm during the Cold War.

Poor Bruce, all alone as a one man fable for the failure of Jamaican society and politics. It sucks being left on your own. How about the other 59 MPs join him in purgatory?

Today’s tweets by @afflictedyard (marginally more sense than Daryl Vaz):

• RT @bruceJLP: Am I the only person who feels sorry for Bruce…? /via @afflictedyard•Nah you can be damn sure I feel sorry for myself…
• Nayga dem run up and dung with AK rifle and big up Prezzi at dance and uptown brown girl a dance to dat…#hypocrites
• Since most people see Dudus as Jamaican Robin Hood why dem vexx now that the Sherrif hire big lawyer fi defend against Yankee badmine?
• But Bruce a defend di Prezident and if him nuh hire big lawyer fi him di people a go call him battyman at dancehall session
• So Bruce is a PARIAH because 1) he defend Don that the people big up every day 2) Peter Phillips seh he’s a Liard 3) Dancehall CD nah sell

Read more:

Jamaica’s great hypocritical outrage by Sherman (Sherman in farin who don’t like Bruce)
http://twitter.com/afflictedyard

Jamaica has become a violent and heartless country where most people have become desensitised to things that would make people in civilised places pass out. Something is blatantly wrong but everyone goes on with their daily life like everything is fine, wake up my people and smell the stench of death around us.

We need to stop hiding behind the excuse that the person must have been involved in some kind of mix up to justify the violence that is perpetrated against them. This is the excuse we use to reassure ourselves that things are not as bad as it seems. Some will wait for a general feel good march or some kind of PR feel good stunt that makes uptown people go back home feeling like they have done their part in curbing the violence…

After the apparent attempted assassination of Oneil Edwards from the group Voicemail the other day, the emotional bandwagonists were out in full force on Facebook, Twitter and the other social media. There were people gathering in Half-Way-Tree and outside Kingston Public Hospital.

I am truly sorry for Oneil, I do not know him personally but my anger is the same for any innocent hard working person who is gunned down by these animals. I however will not be a part of the hypocrisy that the music and media fraternity is promoting.

Where was their anger and sympathy when two children were brutally murdered last week? Where was the mourning and condemnation for the assassination for Dennis Hamilton, soon after he participated in exposing alleged fraud at the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica? This man died for an honourable cause and all he got was three sentences written about him in one of the major newspapers, yet we give coverage to any dribble these entertainers utter?

We are a hypocritical set of people and I am waiting for Beenie Man and company’s self-satisfying musical tributes to come out. The usual suspects, including the Minister of Culture will do the media walk and talk; The church will jump in with calls for various peace marches, the talk shows will have the usual rhetoric and the calls for the death penalty, then finally the ultimate cry of “Bring Back Adams!”.

We have seen it already. STOP!

When the nation is appalled at student athletes being denied visa’s to participate at the Penn Relays but not a blip when women and children and viciously being raped and murdered every single day, something is definitely wrong with our priorities. Jamaica’s murder rate for 2010 is about four-and-a-half persons per day and people who have lived in civilised country are supposed to move back to that?

I think about my uncle who was so optimistic about the formation of the National Democratic Movement and the prospect of being a part of a new movement in Jamaica, that illusion was quickly erased when a gun was stuck in his face at the entrance to his home in Meadowbrook with his two children in his car that the gunmen wanted.

My uncle now lives happily outside of Toronto in a place that he calls civilised and has no plans to move back to Jamaica, This was a man who swore that his son had to follow in his footstep and go to his alma mater in Jamaica. I use to think he was a sellout but now I realise that he just saw the decay through very clear eyes.

I am angry, angry that I need more fingers than I have to count the number of friends and acquaintances that have been brutally murdered in Jamaica in the past 15 years. I am scared for my family that still live in Jamaica because it can be any one of them the next time. Some people are going to be offended but I don’t care if I can get some kind of movement going. The night is turning to day and eventually a lot of you same hypocrites will have to run away because some of you are the breeders, supporters and instigators of these murderers.

I am suggesting that we start having an intelligent national conversation, without the ignorant rhetoric amongst ourselves to find solutions to this murderous cancer that is devouring our country. Time and history has proven that violence against violence has not worked and Senior Superintendent Renato Adams is not our saviour.

It is time to make real demands for action from our failed MPs that have been cuddling and serving gunmen and criminals instead of creating a safe atmosphere for business to strive. Full support must be given but pressure must be kept on our new police commissioner to be vigilant in his drive to arrest and eliminate the criminals in the Jamaica Constabulary Force.

Finally, everyone has to make a serious call for Prime Minister Bruce Golding to resign because he has deserted his leadership of the country to serve the interest of his garrison.

Previously by Sherman:
Jamaica nuff problems…by Sherman
The Cancer in Jamaican music
This is Stone Love at The Tropics Nightclub in 1985…

Contact Sherman:
Email: blazetv@gmail.com
Twitter: Twitter.com/justsherman

Dubious fame:
Sherman in Observer

The Art A[u]ction for Haiti Committee, in association with the Edna Manley Foundation, the National Gallery of Jamaica, Hi-Qo Galleries, Harmony Hall, the Mutual Gallery and Art Centre, and Roktowa, is pleased to present: Art A[u]ction for Haiti, a fundraiser to assist with the recovery of the Haitian art world.

Included in the auction will be prints by FIRST photographers Peter Dean Rickards and Marlon ‘Biggybigz’ Reid.

The proceeds of this benefit will support the reconstruction and revival of the Centre d’Art, and the sculptors’ collective of the Grand Rue inner city community, which had in December 2009 hosted the Ghetto Biennale in which Jamaica’s Ebony Patterson participated. A portion of the proceeds will also go the upcoming residency of nine Haitian artists, including three Grand Rue sculptors, at the Roktowa studio facility in West Kingston.

The sale section consists of works of art that will be offered at fixed price and that will be on view at the National Gallery, along with the auction preview, from Wednesday, April 14 to Sunday, April 18. Viewing and sales hours are: Wednesday and Thursday: 10 am to 4:30 pm, Friday: 10 am to 4 pm, Saturday 10 am to 3 pm, Sunday: 11 am to 3 pm.

See the National Gallery of Jamaica blog for the full catalogue.

More from FIRST’s trip to Haiti:

VIDEO: Return to the Trembling Heart: Grand Rue, Port-au-Prince
PHOTO-ESSAY: Into the Trembling Heart: Five hours in Port-au-Prince

Three months after the earthquake that devastated our neighbouring island of Haiti, 22-year-old Haitian writer/filmmaker Claudel ‘Zaka’ Chery takes FIRST on a short tour around Grand Rue, a main street running through the heart of the commercial district in Port au Prince.

Zaka is part of a collective of Haitian artists who have been chosen to work on The Trembling Heart, which is a limited edition book of sculptural artwork – just 20 copies will be created. The book is intended to serve as a historical testimonial of the cataclysmic events in Port-au-Prince following the earthquake and its’ aftermath.

Each page will be executed by some of the most respected contemporary artists in Haiti today. Jean-Euphele Milce (Alphabet of the Night, Pushkin Press) is writing 20 original short stories based on personal experiences of the cataclysm of January 12 2010. The accompanying pages will be wrought from metal (Sculptor’s of the Gran Rue, Guyodo and Cheby) Wood (Lionel St Eloi, Jean Frederic and Nathalie Fanfan) and Beads (Myrlande Constant, Drapo Artist).

During the creation of the work interviews with the artists and studio sessions will be broadcast online to build anticipation for the auction of the completed work. The proceeds of the auction will be split with 50 per cent going towards a permanent residency programme for Haitian and Caribbean cultural exchange and the remaining 50 per cent divided amongst the participating artists.

In its completed form the giant book will be a freestanding work of art which will stand on sculptural legs and be targeted for inclusion in museum collections around the world.

For more information about the Trembling Heart Project contact: Melinda@rocktower.org

More from FIRST’s trip to Haiti:

PHOTO-ESSAY: Into the Trembling Heart: Five hours in Port-au-Prince
MORE PHOTOS: Port-au-Prince: In Living Colour

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – walking around in the rubble on Grand Rue, one gets the distinct feeling that people are putting on a brave face. Three months after the earthquake that took the lives of more than 200,000 people, life continues despite the indescribable destruction as its residents continue the painstaking process of rebuilding the capital – arguably the most important cultural and historical city in the Caribbean.

Coming from Kingston, the scenes of poverty are not entirely alien, and yet, despite its obvious economic disadvantages there’s something distinctly developed about the Haitian people. Amid the piles of broken concrete, trash and flattened buildings, there’s no begging, no wailing, no time for anything but digging upward and outward for the inhabitants of this rebel nation.

On Grand Rue I follow the unconquerable Melinda Brown to the studio of her fellow artist Andre Eugene. Brown’s got some bad news to tell the sculptors who’ve gathered there: their visa applications to visit Jamaica have been rejected. While Brown has received no official explanation (yet) as to why some of Haiti’s most respected visual artists were denied entry to Jamaica, one can’t help but feel a sense of shame as she relates the news to the disappointed faces.

“We’ll find out why and try again in June,” Brown tells the artists she handpicked to create a one-of-a-kind testimonial to the Haitian cataclysm aptly titled The Trembling Heart.

The Australian-born Brown is no stranger to the process of rebuilding places that most people would never tread. Back when the Meatpacking district in New York City still had rampant crime, fish guts and beef blood running in the streets, Brown was running Bombora House. Years later she arrived in downtown Kingston where she set about doing the same in places like Church Street and Rose Town.

Months before the earthquake, Brown had been noticeably missing from the Kingston landscape as she had begun working with sculptors and artists from Port-au-Prince and Grand Rue. For Brown, the Haitian earthquake was no ‘hot charity’ – she was in the narrow alleys of Grand Rue long before the tragedy of January 12.

Back into the streets I follow Zaka, a 22-year-old filmmaker (and primary translator for us hopelessly monolingual Jamaicans) who was just granted a US$10,000 artist residency at the prestigious Vermont Studio Centre in the United States.

As we walk through a tent city and the remnants of a destroyed church, Zaka tells me about the people he lost and the chance for renewal: “Grand Rue can be a symbol to world,” he says with almost bizarre confidence, “a chance to show how the people of Haiti can create good from so much destruction.”

Click on more to see the rest of the photographs:

For a horizontal view of the photographs visit: The Afflicted Yard

More from FIRST’s trip to Haiti:

VIDEO: Return to the Trembling Heart: Grand Rue, Port-au-Prince
PHOTOS: Port-au-Prince: In Living Colour

Readers of this blog should by now be familiar with the wisdom of Sherman Escoffery, husband, father, jerk specialist, kite-flyer and panty importer.

Sherman doesn’t actually live here anymore – he’s in New York City – but like any other Jamaican in big foreign, that gives him the confidence to pontificate about happenings in the backward place where he sends his remittances (thank you, really).

Latterly he’s become a noted commentator among the Diaspora about reggae and the government he couldn’t vote for – because he making too much money to actually live here. Published on FIRST, his ‘Jamaica nuff problems’ post also made ‘Letter of the Day’ in the Sunday Gleaner, while ‘Cancer in Jamaican Music’ has exposed him to others who like to hear the sound of their own voices.

Today, live on air you can hear his latest reggae-related rant, this time on the Reggae Nation show, audience of you, the producer and possibly Sherman’s sympathetic family. Listen, consider and then attack him either here or via @DatNiggaSherman.

Listen at 6:00 pm DST (7:00 pm Jamaican time) tonight: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/e2-reggae-nation

How did you get on the show?
They read the Cancer In Jamaican Music and I once quoted Michael Manley so they thought I was deep.

What will you rant about?
How the radio DJ’s and groupies who say that they are radio DJ’s only play music from artist they are sleeping with or extorting.

And why should anybody care?
Because it means that LA Lewis or Goofy could be the top dancehall DJ’s if they spend enough money or give ******* the right sex.

Previously by Sherman:
Jamaica nuff problems…by Sherman
The Cancer in Jamaican music
This is Stone Love at The Tropics Nightclub in 1985…

Like the rest of us you’re likely struggling with the current drought: bathing from water bottles and negotiating with water truck drivers. All at great cost and annoyance.

While we can’t blame the government for failing to deliver showers of blessings – that’d be El Niño – there’s no doubt that successive administrations have failed to implement proper water management.

We may continue to pray on the weekends but as this video from TuffChin.com observes, maybe we could spend the weeks actually doing something about it. Y’know, take action for ourselves, not just jump up and down in green and orange shirts?

Meantime water threatens to be just another resource we’ve allowed to run to waste while blaming outside influences only – in this case the weather – while refusing to do anything but talk, blame and defer responsibility.

Just so long as there’s always another party to go to…