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Saturday, June 25, 2005

Since July 2, 2004 the Elbe Valley near Dresden has been in the process of becoming a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Friday saw the hand over of the documents in Castle Albrechtsberg confirming the status. Today, mayor Roßberg and Professor Bandarin will unveil a plaque in the church of Loschwitz – starting the Elbe Valley celebrations.

The cultural landscape consists of an 18 km long strip along the Elbe between Soebrigen and the Dresden bridge Flügelwegbrücke. It includes the ancient city of Dresden, the many castles along the river Elbe, the town centres of the small villages near the river as well as the very famous Castle Pillnitz.

The city of Dresden sees the status as an internationally-effecting advertisement for investors and tourists in the acknowledgment as a site of world heritage. By this status it will give no further restrictions for the UNESCO. The possibility “of a developing culture landscape” granted itself.

Wednesday, March 2, 2005

Bucharest, Romania — The city centre of Bucharest, the capital of Romania, is set to get a major facelift due to a real estate project called Esplanada (The Esplanade), which will be constructed by TriGranit Development Corporation. The total investment in the project will be greater than 800 million euro and aims to build a modern commercial pedestrian area in downtown Bucharest, with several shopping malls, office buildings, hotels and dwellings. It will be the largest real estate program in Romania since the fall of Communism in 1989.

Bucharest is currently looking at possibilities to improve its appearance and rebrand itself as a lively, creative and vibrant city. Many initiatives have sprung up to improve the city, including the organisation of CowParade later this year. Additionally, the old town centre will be restored. Due to Romania’s current economic boom, several other major construction projects are taking place.

Bucharest City Hall has blocked traffic in the city center due both to the old town restoration and to the Esplanada project.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

The Red River at Winnipeg is almost clear of ice blocks and ice jamming, however there are still dangers from the Red River flood.

Ice blocks which were as high as two storey buildings were ripping out trees, fences and railway ties. “You’ll see huge pans of ice standing vertical, up to 20 feet (6.1 m) high,” said Steve Topping, an official with the provincial Water Stewardship Department. “Ice was shoved up on the shore and took out trees with a very devastating effect. It has changed people’s view of the river.”

“It is incredible, the force. One piece of ice pushed out of the river about 20 feet. You watch the force push this up right in front of your eyes,” said Dean North, of the Selkirk Golf and Country Club.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police are ticketing sight seers who are driving through road closure signs and approaching excavators, cranes and crews breaking up the ice. Vehicles, people, boats, and kayaks are getting in the way.

An eight year old boy is in critical condition after slipping on a culvert Thursday. He was pulled underwater by the speed of the flowing water and remained under for about five to ten minutes until adults could rescue him. The air ambulance supplied by Alberta’s STARS (Shock Trauma Air Rescue Society) remains in the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba.

“This is not a spectator sport. It’s not about getting the best pictures for the family albums. I know floods are seen as a bit of an event, but some of the instances I’m hearing about, people should give their head a shake, they really should,” said Steve Ashton Manitoba Emergency Measures Minister, “Those who fall into the river or get into trouble in another way would be not only endangering themselves but the emergency response crews trying to rescue them. I don’t want to see a situation … where we’re trying our darndest to prevent flooding and save lives and somebody [who] decides to go have a white-water experience ends up killing themselves.”

Early Easter Sunday morning floodwater reached the rural municipalities of St. Andrews and St. Clements north of Winnipeg. Residents were sent an evacuation advisory Good Friday, however some residents remained. Rescue efforts commenced Saturday night to find those stranded and unable to leave as their vehicles cannot travel in the swollen overland floodwaters. Some people were rescued from roof tops as entire houses were swept off of their foundations by the large ice blocks hurtling down the river.

Highways in the area remain closed. Neil Gobelle, of Manitoba Infrastructure and Transportation said to “definitely continue to watch the Red River Valley and north of the city up in the Selkirk area. Things are changing quite a bit, quite quickly, so we’ll keep an eye on those areas.”

As of Easter Sunday, Winnipeg is expected to be ice free on the Red River. The River rose 4 feet (1.2 m) in the course of 24 hours. Rain is in the forecast and the higher temperatures of 17 °C (62.6 °F) will cause melting of snow and ice.

A weather system caused by La Niña is being watched by the United States National Weather Service and its potential effects between April 16-18 for residents along the Red River Valley. “We want people to be aware there is a very real possibility of the river going higher than what is out there,” said Mark Ewens, data manager at the NWS, “To have spring floods like this back-to-back is just an unfortunate series of events that have come along to plague us this spring. We’re wanting people to understand that this is a potentially serious problem.”

Saturday, June 13, 2020

This Monday, Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has issued a direction ordering the owner of APL England, a Singaporian cargo ship, to search for, and recover, 50 cargo containers that were lost from their vessel off New South Wales, Australia last month; Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) has classified it as a “serious incident”. AMSA has identified a priority search area of about 1000km² stretching between the Illawarra and Sydney’s southern suburbs. Drift modelling and analysis of container sightings following the incident indicates that missing containers could be in this area at water depth of up to 200m. Containers within the search area pose the most immediate environmental threat and may present a safety hazard for commercial fishers.

AMSA General Manager Response Mark Morrow said 15 containers had been recovered from the shoreline or towed in after being spotted floating off the coast, but 35 containers were still missing. The 50 cargo containers were spilled from the ship on May 24 as rough weather at the waters has been reported, which caused the vessel’s main engine to trip; resulting in loss of propulsion for a short time and the ship rolling heavily, up to 25°. Further investigations, according to a statement from AMSA, showed “inadequate lashing for cargo and heavily corroded securing points for containers on the deck”, which were the shipmaster’s responsibility.

Of the 50 spilt cargo containers, 26 were empty, according to reports. Further, another 75 containers were damaged but stayed onboard, according to a report from ABC. Some commenters had remarked this incident could have been avoided if the ship was loaded with the cargo more appropriately, such as with a lesser amount.

The AMSA surveyors conducted a seaworthiness inspection on May 26, with the ship docked at the Port of Brisbane anchorage (off Port Cartwright), to check the structural and operational condition of the ship following the collapse of container stacks on the deck. AMSA General Manager of Operations Allan Schwartz said the seaworthiness inspection would help inform if, and how, the ship might be brought safely into the Port of Brisbane.

On May 27, the ship was found to be fit to be brought safely into the Port of Brisbane by Maritime Safety Queensland and the Brisbane Harbour Master. The vessel was escorted into Moreton bay by two harbour tugs, one container salvage response vessel, two Queensland water police vessels and a Maritime Safety Queensland pollution response vessel. It arrived safely in port at midday, and was detained by AMSA on Wednesday night after its investigators discovered the cargo stowage deficiencies including inadequate lashing arrangements for cargo and heavily corroded securing points for containers on deck.

AMSA said in a statement that the ship will not be released until the issues are corrected. “These inspection findings are a clear breach of requirements under the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS). This is a now matter for the ship’s owner, American President Lines (APL), and the operator to rectify.” AMSA and Australian Transport Safety Bureau are conducting investigation into the incident; the final report is anticipated by the end of 2021 . AMSA continues to provide drift modeling and work with NSW Maritime, the lead agency responding to the incident’s shoreline impacts.

The ship master, 42-years-old Mohamad Zulkhaili Bin Alias, appeared at Wynnum Magistrates Court on May 29, 2020. According to the statement by AMSA, the offences filed against the shipmaster related to pollution and/or damage of the Australian marine environment as a result of poor cargo loading. Specifically the two charges that have been laid, as reported by ASMA, were

1. “Section 26F of the Protection of the Sea (Prevention of Pollution from Ships) Act 1983 – Discharging of garbage into the sea contrary to the Act
2. Section 141 of the Navigation Act 2012 – Master did not ensure that the vessel was operated in a manner that did not cause
   • pollution to the marine environment in the coastal sea of Australia or the exclusive economic zone of Australia and
   • damage to the marine environment in the coastal sea of Australia or the exclusive economic zone of Australia”

The orders also included the ship insurer company to pay $22 million as per the Protection of the Seas Act, before the ship can be released from detention at the Port of Brisbane.

This Friday, on June 12, the Brisbane Magistrates Court in Queensland, Australia has changed the bail conditions for shipmaster – he was now allowed to travel abroad. The ship continued to remain detained in Brisbane where Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) was investigating.

The new bail conditions allowed the ship master to leave the ship and travel abroad to Malaysia to resume his work, required him to appear in court in person when requested, and required that he would pay AUD60,000 of deposit to the court before his passport could be released to him.

On May 26, reports were received of face masks washing up in NSW between Magenta Beach and The Entrance. By May 27, the floating containers and their contents started polluting the beaches in Sydney, Australia. The AMSA released a statement in which it said the containers likely contained “medical supplies, household appliances and building materials”.

The Malabar Beach, Coogee Beach, Maroubra Beach, Bronte Beach and Bondi Beach were affected. Malabar beach was reportedly affected the most. The beaches were closed on Wednesday, May 27, and Council staff –rangers– as well as residents, including volunteers from Australian Seabird Rescue (ASR), cleaned-up what washed up on shore.

On Sunday May 31, a 12-meter container devoid of its shipment of “medical supplies, household appliances and building materials” washed up on rocks near South Maroubra Beach, in New South Wales, Australia.

The ASR branch coordinator commented on the environmental impact of the debris, by saying “It’s not going to biodegrade, it’s going to stay there for such a long time. These animals out in the ocean are going to choose to eat a lot of it as food. They don’t realise that what the ocean is providing isn’t good for them.”

The beaches were re-opened for swimming by 1st of June. After the beaches re-opened, visitors were advised to not pick up any debris (pictured). Some of the spilled cargo has also reached as far as the Central Coast, according to a report from ABC.

AMSA General Manager Response Mark Morrow said AMSA expected the owner and operator to respond to the direction with a detailed search plan in the coming days. “Failure to comply with this direction constitutes an offence under Australian law”.

The court matter was adjourned until July 24, to be mentioned at Brisbane Magistrates Court on the day.

[edit]

Sunday, August 5, 2012

The following is the ninth in a monthly series chronicling the U.S. 2012 presidential election. It features original material compiled throughout the previous month after a brief mention of some of the month’s biggest stories.

In this month’s edition on the campaign trail: the rules of third party candidate polling are examined, a third party activist causes four other parties to lose their place on the Illinois presidential ballot, and the new vice presidential nominee of the Justice Party speaks with Wikinews.

Saturday, November 4, 2006

On November 13, Torontonians will be heading to the polls to vote for their ward’s councillor and for mayor. Among Toronto’s ridings is Don Valley East (Ward 33). One candidates responded to Wikinews’ requests for an interview. This ward’s candidates include Zane Caplan, Shelley Carroll (incumbent), Jim Conlon, Sarah Tsang-Fahey, and Anderson Tung.

For more information on the election, read Toronto municipal election, 2006.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Vivien Goldman recalls with a laugh the day in 1984 when she saw her death, but the laugh fades as she becomes lost in the memory. She was in Nigeria staying in Fela Kuti‘s home; she had just arrived hours before and found people sleeping everywhere like house cats when Muhammadu Buhari‘s army showed up to haul everyone to jail. Kuti was an opponent of the government who was in jail, and they came to arrest his coterie of supporters. They grabbed Goldman and were about to throw her in a truck until Pascal Imbert, Kuti’s manager, yelled out, “Leave her alone. She just arrived from Paris! She’s my wife! She knows nothing! “

Goldman stops for a moment and then smiles plainly. “They thought I was just some stupid woman…. That time sexism worked in my favor.”

Vivien Goldman has become a living, teaching testimony of the golden era of punk and reggae. She is an adjunct professor at New York University who has taught courses on the music scene she was thrust in the middle of as a young public relations representative for Island Records. She writes a column for the BBC called “Ask the Punk Professor” where she extols the wisdom she gained as a confidant of Bob Marley; as the person who first put Flava Flav in video; as Chrissie Hynde‘s former roommate; as the woman who worked with the The Clash, Sex Pistols, The Slits and The Raincoats.

As Wikinews reporter David Shankbone found out, Goldman is one of those individuals that when you sit in her presence you realize she simply can not tell you everything she knows or has seen, either to protect the living or to respect the dead.

DS: The first biography of Bob Marley, Soul Rebel, Natural Mystic, was written by you based upon your personal experiences with him, and you have recently written a book about Marley called The Book of Exodus. How difficult is it to continue to mine his life? Is it difficult to come up with new angles?

VG: The original biography was written in a weekend and it was based upon my extensive interviews with him, whereas the Exodus book took two and a half years. I must have been a year past deadline, because it kept on growing. Even I had to acknowledge it was a more mature work. After I wrote the first one, all these other people came out with books. I read them, and they were all good in their different ways, but there was a story that had not been told but that I had lived so intensely, a deep story that had shaped my whole life. It demanded I write a book about it. Nobody else has the experience, and I still have that oompf.

DS: You were there with Marley through that time when he really caught on; was it obvious to you then that there was something amazing and unique happening?

VG: It was really something, and it was huge, but I didn’t examine it then. I believed in Bob with every fiber of my being, but it was hard to realize how everybody in the world would get it in the end, and just how towering a figure and enduring he would prove to be. He deserves everything and more; the role that he occupies is so central. It would have been hard to envisage how huge he became, though.

DS: Warhol’s Factory photographer, Billy Name, once told me he knew that what was going on was amazing, but he never thought Warhol would become the entire fabric of the art world as he is now.

VG: Especially in New York. Warhol was so associated with the punk scene.

DS: But Marley has become a fabric of sorts…

VG: Oh, he’s beyond the fabric of reggae, he’s the fabric of the rebel spirit. Now everybody just puts on a little red, green and gold and they feel it identifies them as being there in the struggle. Even if it is someone flying to the Hamptons for the weekend, they bring out Marley to expresses the rebel aspect they don’t want to completely lose.

DS: How do you define punk?

VG: There are two things. First, the aesthetic: harder, faster, louder. But the second thing is what interested me more, which was the rebel spirit and attitude. That free spirit of punk; that implicit sense of wanting to change a system that is always unfair wherever you are, except for maybe in the Netherlands. But it’s become so commodified

DS: What is the commodified version of punk selling?

VG: Edgy and dangerous. It is amazing: you open the New York Times and the free bits fall out and you get Urban Outfitters or Old Navy with lines of punk kiddie clothes. K-mart, even. I was trying to see what was so deeply punk about those clothes. They were maybe more colorful or something, but they weren’t punk. It’s like the Swarovski crystal take on punk, I mean, please!

DS: That aesthetic is everywhere, as though if one spikes his hair he is punk.

VG: Well, the punk is in the heart, to paraphrase Deee-Lite. I was writing about Good Charlotte and The Police. They adopted the trappings of punk. They aren’t bad groups, but the punk aspect is more manifested by somebody like Manu Chao. He’s one of the punkiest artists out there I can think of. It’s an inclusionary spirit that is punk.

DS: Your philosophy is that punk is not just musical, but also an aesthetic. That it can imbibe anything; that it stands for change and for changing a system. Let me give you a few names, and you to tell me how you think they are or are not punk. Britney Spears.

VG: Oh, no she’s not punk. Punk is not just about wearing smeary black eyeliner, but some sense of engagement. That’s it in a nutshell. She doesn’t have that sense of engagement. She is society.

DS: Dick Cheney.

VG: He is the essence of Babylonian, old structure capitalism, which is about greed and how much one can take for himself. I could see capitalism that is mutually beneficial, such as ‘I want a bigger customer base,’ but they don’t. Take a place I know well like Jamaica. I don’t know if you have seen that documentary Life and Debt, about how the INF squeezed everything out of Jamaica, but that’s a typical thing that happens. Instead of building these people up and paying them a living wage for their work, where we could sell more to them, we just want to suck everything out of the place. Suck the sugar, suck the labor. And that is not very punk. It’s the opposite of punk. That’s what Dick Cheney represents to me. He tries to bring about change, but change that just fattens his pocket. It’s not thinking of the community, and that’s what punk is about.

DS: Kanye West.

VG: He seems to be a positive force. In that sense, I would file him slightly under punk.

DS: Osama bin Laden.

VG: He thinks he is a punk, but he’s too destructive. If I was sitting in the madrassa in the desert chanting the Koran seven days a week, I’d think, yeah, he’s a punk. But I’m not, so I don’t.

DS: Is the definition of punk relative, then? He’s a Madrasah punk but not a Manhattan punk?

VG: Having said that, they would loathe punks, so I think we can safely say, not a punk.

DS: Pete Doherty.

VG: Oh yeah, I think he’s a punk. He’s a punk and he engages with the system in terms of how a powerful a presence he’s become. He is the Keith Richards of his day.

DS: If punk is about change, then why the maudlin sentimentality over the closing of CBGB‘s, which at times turned into demonizing a homeless shelter?

VG: Yeah, and they had not paid their rent, had they? I sided with the homeless shelter in a way, except I thought the whole thing was ridiculous because somebody should have stepped in and bought it and paid it and fixed it up, in the sense there is no shrine. They don’ think about the tourism, do they? I expect that of America now. Los Angeles just destroyed the Brown Derby, and the modernist architecture. That’s the thing about America. There seems to be very little regard for legacy. I think they should have kept CBGBs, but I think that more cynically. My students had a huge debate about it.

DS: I felt it was what it was at a certain moment, but it wasn’t that anymore. They were charging eight dollars for a beer. That’s not very punk, and that wasn’t attracting the punk crowds. It was like people who move to the Bowery because they think it’s so edgy but it’s really a boulevard of glittering condos.

VG: Nostalgie pour la boue: nostalgia for the mud. Not all of them, though. Patti Smith. Anyway, the spirit had moved on to Williamsburg.

DS: Where do you think New York’s culture is going? There are so few places on Earth with such a large concentration of creatives who meet and influence each other, but the city is becoming less affordable and cleansed of any grit. Is there a place for punk in the Manhattan of the future?

VG: They are flushing out the artists. Manhattan is now a ghetto for the very rich. When punk started it was in weird places, places you broke into and that had never been used for shows. It was never in regular venues, but now every nook and cranny is a regular venue and it doesn’t leave much space for the old punk spirit. ABC No Rio, I think they manage to work it in the system. And there are places like The Stone, John Zorn‘s place, which has avant-garde free form jazz. He subsidizes that place, so it remains a little haven. There are a few little pockets, but it has a lot do with the rent. Realistically, there’s loads of stuff happening in places like Brooklyn, more than there seems to be in Manhattan. When I jammed with The Slits, that happened at some after-hours thing in Brooklyn in some warehouse. I remember loads of things in funny places. The first time I heard Public Enemy I was on the rooftop of a building.

DS: You’re friends with Flava Flav, right?

VG: Yes, although I haven’t seen him in a very long time. I remember how I met him. I was doing this video for I Ain’t No Joke with Erik B and Rakim, and they weren’t very vibey in terms of the stagecraft, as it were. The projection. Not to diss anybody, but I needed someone to bring a bit more life into it; it was very low-budget, a vérité kind of shoot. We were in a playground in the projects and there were all these blokes hanging around, and there was one who was super-sprightly, like a live wire. I didn’t know it was Flava Flav and I shouted out, Hey, you, will you come over and be groovy for us? and he did and a lot of the action in the video is Flava Flav spinning around, doing a Dervish in the middle of the playground.

DS: At the time he wasn’t known?

VG: Well, it turned out he was in a group called Public Enemy. The first time I heard them was at a rooftop party, and it’s one of my great New York memories. It was a warehouse building that’s still there behind Houston and Bowery and I remember it was amazing because you never heard music like that before. It was blaring. It was so hot and we were in the middle of the city with graffiti on the walls, people smoking spliffs. It was very free. You don’t see that anymore. Everything is more heavily policed.

DS: Do you think apathy is a problem today?

VG: There’s less intelligent, critical content in general, and celebrity magazines pay the most and sell the most. It’s the Lowest Common Denominator. Britney Spears is an unbelievable example. She’s so young with no good guidance around her, and she is fodder for them to sell more magazines. There’s a gladiator aspect of it: the worse off she is, the better for that industry. But I’m still looking for the people who have conscience. Michael Franti, he’s one of the only ones I look to now. He had that band Spearhead. I’m looking around for conscious artists.

DS: What about G. G. Allin? He used to defecate on the stage to make a point.

VG: That’s quite extreme, and very unhygienic. I wouldn’t need to see that. I don’t think that’s necessarily punk, it’s just scatological. Some people might think it’s punk, but I personally wouldn’t dig it. It’s outrageous, but not in the way I find interesting.

DS: Well, he’s dead. Do you think people are afraid to speak out today?

VG: I guess in Vietnam you did, but now the culture isn’t nearly as organized.

DS: Is violence for the cause of social change punk?

VG: Violence will occur in social change. Violence has always been associated with punk, although punk wants peace in a way. When you look at all the bands in punk, like No Future and Blank Generation, it has implicit an aspiration to a place where you don’t have to be violent. Often it happens. The punk era was violent. Very, very violent. So many people were beaten up during those days. I’m very much a peacenik, but violence often happens, one observes, on the road to social change.

DS: Sandra Bernhard once did an homage to what she called the Big-Tittied Bitches of Rock n’ Roll: Heart, Joan Jett, Stevie Nicks. She mourned that there were no big-tittied bitches left. Who are the big-tittied bitches of Rock n’ Roll today?

VG: M.I.A. Tanya Stephens. Joan Jett, still. The Slits, who still suffer from the system and they are still brilliant. Male bands of that statute would have more deals. Big-tittied in terms of cojones, as opposed to cleavage as such.

DS: Do you have moments of extreme self-doubt where you wonder if anything you do matters to anyone?

VG: I have a lot of moments of extreme self-doubt, but you have to be humble and listen to what people say. Although I was never top of the New York Times book chart, I know people have liked my stuff, and that keeps me going. The classes have been amazing. I had done a lot of television and media, but it was the first time I had done something one-on-one. It was the old cliche that a person learns as much as they teach. Loads of my old students keep in touch with me; one wrote to me to tell me he is free-lancing for XXL and some other rap magazines, and how the classes really have been useful and he always refers to them. Even just one person is gratifying and encourages me to continue my work.

DS: You have worked for two corporations that are seen by many as the least punk in their respective communities, the BBC and NYU. How does one remain punk in such environments?

VG: I’m a freelancer. I go in, do my thing, and if they don’t like it then I don’t do it anymore. I stay true to myself, and if it doesn’t work out then I guess ‘fuck off’ on both sides. I haven’t had to compromise myself; nobody has asked me to. BBC America is a different animal than the BBC. As long as I can say what I want to say; I think people come to me because they know what they are getting.

DS: Have you ever been in a situation where you feared for your life, where you thought, this may be the way I go?

VG: There was a lot of violence in the punk times and I got beaten up in street brawls. I particularly remember once in Nigeria… I was there to make a documentary for Channel 4 about Fela Kuti. He was in jail at that time and he wanted to draw attention to his plight to showcase what was going on in Nigeria. It was hard to get through customs because my guides weren’t there to meet me. I found them hiding in the carpark because the police were after them.

We went to Fela’s house where I was going to stay; we went to the shrine and it was amazing. The whole house was covered in people sleeping. I was woken up by this little girl very early in the morning, only about two hours later. She was tapping me on the shoulder and when I looked around there was nobody there, whereas it had been covered in people. She said, “Come! Come! The army is here!”

I went outside and there was the army arresting everyone. People were lined up against the wall. Pascal Imbert, a French guy who was managing Fela, was already on the truck and they were about to take him away. There were all these really serious, heavey Nigerian soldiers with machine guns around. Not friendly, more like stone-faced Belsen guards. It was like that Bob Marley song Ambush in the Night: there were four guns aiming at me. They all turned their guns on me and said, “What should we do with her?” From the truck Pascal shouts out, “Leave her alone! She’s my wife! She’s just arrived from Paris! She doesn’t know anything!” The combination of the words “She’s my wife, she doesn’t’ know anything” were enough. Of course, I had neither arrived from Paris nor was his wife. But they just left me alone; they thought I was just some stupid woman. That time sexism worked in my favor. [Laughs] She doesn’t know anything! They were about to take Pascal away and I rushed up to the head guy very bravely—Pascal always gives me props for this—and I said, “Where are you taking my husband?!” They were actually taking him to a secret jail.

DS: What happened to him in the secret jail?

VG: There’s a documentary about it. He got very thin, he contracted dysentry and he got various diseases. No food, or terrible food. Luckily for him after some months there was an amnesty and he was amongst the prisoners who were released. That was a very heavy moment. I thought I would die, either right then or in a Nigerian jail.

DS: In Jamaica there was so much violence during the civil war.

VG: I’ve seen a lot of death. Many of the people I knew in Jamaica are dead. I think of them a lot; like my very, very close friend Massive Dread. He did so much for the community. At Christmas he’d hold a big party for the kids, and all the rival gangs would come. He was trying to break up some of the coke runnings. They started to have crack dens in Trenchtown and he worked against those. He was opening a library called the Trenchtown Reading Center, in the middle of this broken down ghetto, where kids could sit down to do homework and read books in this nice courtyard. It was really worthwhile.