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Critically Examining Jamaican and World Politics!Archive for United States
‘Yes We Did!’ Barrack Obama’s Historic Inauguration
(Picture courtesy of the Associated Press)
Yes we did!’ The three simple words etched in blue, announced their presence by the static orange light of an unanswered MSN Messenger icon. They were the poignant reminder from a friend and colleague of just how historic the occasion of President Barack Hussein Obama’s Inauguration as President of the United States of America and ‘Leader of the Free World’ was. Embodied in those three words were the power of conviction and the hope of a generation. Not only were we witnessing history in the inauguration of the first African-American to the highest office of US President, we were also watching the US undergo real and palpable change, if even at the level of the emotional.
I cried, unashamedly. The tears flowed silently and then more audibly, especially just before the arrival of then President-Elect Obama to the podium. The cameras caught his tall figure, serious face and pursed lips, as he walked slowly and purposefully the length of the corridor before opening the door for his date with destiny.
I was reminded of the title of President Nelson Mandela’s autobiography: ‘Long Walk to Freedom’, chronicling his life from political activist and convict, jailed for twenty seven years for his unbroken opposition to the objectionable sins of apartheid, to become President of South Africa, then a newly minted democratic nation in 1994. Mandela took with him the hopes of generations of Africans who had drunk long and deep from the bitter cup of racial hatred, abiding oppression and segregation.
In that moment, Barack Obama and President Mandela became one. Across the boundaries of geography and even time, albeit short, their dreams seemed united; twinned in the universal demand for human rights and dignity. In it, I saw the visions of the slaves and the promise and power of their rebellions; their insistent cries of admission not just to the community of nations but also the dignity of the human family. Dr. King’s dreams were being realized and my insistent prayers had not gone unanswered.
Barack Obama would, in a few short moments, take the Oath of Office and with that become the President of the United States of America. However, before that there was the interminable walk of deep reflection and the adoration and pride of the sea of supporters just beyond those doors. Barrack Hussein Obama was scripting history with every purposeful step. His countenance showed confidence and understanding; his measured strides an indication of the challenges which awaited him, not just in America but outside of it.
The economic crisis and the foreclosures would test this great man, as would the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the POWs at Guantanamo Bay. There was Russia, Israel and the Middle East. Iran. India and Pakistan and closer to home, even Cuba. But, still he walked. And I cried some more. The tears came quicker now, almost uncontrollably in their anguished, if not victorious release from pent up anxieties. This was the cry of realization that, as my friend on Messenger had pointed out; we had come ‘from slavery to the Presidency!’
History was unfolding and even while, my silent tears did not mean much in the actual writing of this chapter, told to us through the ‘immediacy’ and global reach of the CNN and BBC news media, I had witnessed it all the same. Moved by its power and the audacity of the kind of hope that had propelled President Obama to such an important moment, I was awestruck and overwhelmed all at once. Words seemed so inadequate in giving vent to my emotions that all I could do was cry, like a small child, humbled by history’s power to self correct. I watched in complete amazement, praying all the time, fervent in my hope for this great man on whose shoulders rested so many of the world’s ills.
This must have been how the Israelites felt when the waters of the Red Sea parted and they were allowed safe passage between it, from Pharaoh’s marauding bands of Egyptians threatening to return them to a life of domination and control from which they had only recently escaped. The parallels were unmistakable. Barack Obama was the modern day Moses, in many respects, parting a different kind of sea – a new frontier of threatening economic ruin and polarizing wars fought on the premise of religious and political ideology, control of the world’s energy and, though often unspoken, nationality, race, heritage and borders.
For better or worse, the world had changed and the ‘Israelites’ of the modern age though scattered across disparate lands, different time zones and places, were now joined together by one common cause. It was much larger than ourselves; much larger than any of us could individually conceived – the gift of Hope! Barack Obama was our leader and the tides of Red Sea’s looming despair were parting with every step he made down that corridor.
With seriousness etched on his face, Barack Obama was preparing to not only take the Oath, he was preparing to lead the world and we, his throng of supporters removed by heritage, culture, nationality, language, time and even technology were all caught up in the power of the emotion. And, so I cried.
Pausing momentarily to gather myself and focus, I decided that more than anything else, my return to this blog would be marked by the momentous inauguration of President Barack Obama to the US Presidency. It symbolized a kind of achievement which allowed me to think that, notwithstanding my own personal concerns, all things were possible and that, because of that possibility we/ I could make it.
The potency of his acceptance speech and the focus on the Civil Rights Movement and the American War for Independence, as well as the Global War on Terror only served to reinforce that pride – that deep and unmistakable joy. Hope renewed and sagging spirits refreshed, the powerful words had instilled in all of us the charge, not only to Americans, to proclaim the victory in all parts of the lands in which we lived. All were joined together. The cause was universal. We were all were soldiers in the great hope of transformation.
How would it all pan out? We were not sure…yet! But one thing was certain, in this moment we were all one…And we most, certainly, could!
After all, out of many, we are one! Yes we can! Yes we did!
Picture shows the smartly dressed President and First Lady Obama at the US Presidential Inauguration Celebrations, on January 20, 2009. President Obama took the Oath of Office and became America’s forty-fourth President, the first African-American to do so. (Image courtesy of the Associated Press)
Drug Taking and the ‘Olympic Express’: Jamaican Sprinting, Victor Conte and the BBC!
Come August 15, 2008 most Jamaicans will be sure to pay special attention when the track and field component of the Games of the XXIX (29th) Olympiad, in Beijing, China, sprint out of the blocks. All eyes will be on the Men’s One Hundred Metres. Usain Bolt and Asafa Powell, the current World Record Holder in the event and the former World Record Holder, respectively, will be the major drawing cards. However, American double World Champion in the sprints, in Osaka last year, Tyson Gay has also been billed by an International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) reporter as the last third in the triumvirate of premier male sprinters. He could spoil the Jamaican party.
In fact, a noticeable pall came over the crowd at Save Our Soca (SOS) in Waterworks, St. Andrew, at which I was in attendance, two weeks ago Sunday when news broke that American double World Champion Tyson Gay had run 9.68 seconds at the United States (US) National Athletic Trials. I became instantly worried by this ‘troubling development’, notwithstanding my later discovery that Gay had not broken Usain’s World Record. I tried my best to hide my concerns, at the time, by ensuring that my clothes were soaking wet when I left the fete. But that is for another blog…!
Of immediate concern is what will happen when the showdown happens in the Men’s One Hundred Meters in Track and Fields in Beijing. Most are likely to be on the edge of our chairs even in the aftermath of Victor Conte’s very disturbing comments to the Los Angeles (LA) Times newspaper, at the weekend, that drug cheating is rampant in the Caribbean. We will not immediately concern ourselves with the ‘warnings’ of the disgraced, United States (US) based, scientific nutritionist and founder of the defamed Bay Area Laboratory (BALCO), which was at the centre of sports largest doping scandal in 2003.
All the signs of a keenly contested battle between the three stars have been in the making for some time now. News of Tyson Gay’s injury at the same US Trials sent tremors fthroughout the US Track and Field circuit, as it did here and elsewhere! What would this mean for the outcome of the Olympics for the American and what of the American sprint relay team? Then, Asafa Powell pulled out of the finals of the 100m in Paris, recently, due to the flare up of a groin injury. An audible gasp was heard across Jamaica, as many wondered whether this meant that Jamaica would get only one medal in the premier sprint event at the Olympics, as well as our World Record ambitions in the Men’s Sprint Relays (4 X 100m).
Despite news from Powell’s press agent Paul Doyle that the injury was minor and that the Jamaican would rest for a few days before running again, shockwaves not unlike the recent earthquake which disrupted our Sunday evening routines on July 13, were coming fast and furious. Finally, the Powell-Bolt clash today (Tuesday, July 22, 2008) confirmed the hype, after the bust of the Jamaican National Trials, where both athletes literally jogged to tape, denying fans the much anticipated ’showdown’. Today, Powell got the upper hand of his countryman and the current record holder Bolt, by one one-hundredths of a second. They were timed in 9.88 and 9.89 seconds, respectively.
As you can imagine, excitement is more than fever pitch! And, that is only on the men’s side ; certainly, just in the shorter sprint. Bolt’s recent 19.67 seconds over 200 meters has clearly marked him as the man to beat in both events in Beijing. In that regard, the British Broadcasting Corporation ’s (BBC) current coverage of doping violations in sports, which it is looking at as part of the run up coverage to the Olympics and Conte’s LATimes comments, only serve to train the search light even more on Jamaica.
Do not forget also that, Bolt’s May 31 World Record at the Icahn Stadium in New York was downplayed because of similar concerns about doping, at the time. Both Bolt and Glen Mills, his coach, were clear in highlighting that there was no likelihood of them failing a drug test as they are a hundred percent clean. Powell and his Maximum Velocity and Power (MVP) training camp partner Sherone Simpson, the fastest woman in both sprints in 2006, have routinely insisted that they do not take drugs and that they are tested all the time, both during as well as out of competitions. If true, Conte’s remarks about the notoriety of Caribbean athletes for missing out of competition tests would not apply either to Powell or Simpson, indeed, the entire MVP camp.
Mike Fennel, President of the Jamaica Olympic Association (JOA) solidly defended Jamaica’s testing capabilities, which Conte suggested was sadly lacking in the LA Times report. Quoted in the same story, Fennel said: “[a]ll our top athletes who are continuously performing abroad are tested every time they compete in these big meets abroad . . . so anybody who wants to make comments about our attention to testing, our anti-doping measures are doing that with malicious attempt and are just being bad-minded because we are good. And people don’t like [you] when we are good.” Fennel was speaking to Jamaica Observer, last Friday on the same matter.
So what, if any, can we learn from the Conte’s remarks and Jamaica’s sprinting prowess, especially as our Olympic Express targets Beijing in less than three weeks? If, indeed, the Jamaican sprinters are as clean, as Fennel maintains, then there is need to urgently question the integrity of the international agenda in its seemingly unusual focus on Jamaican/ Caribbean sprinting. Regardless of how you feel about Conte and his remarks, if ever proven to be true, they would most certainly implicate our much loved sporting traditions; our administrative capabilities; as well as, some of our revered heroes including current Olympic Champion Veronica Campbell-Brown (from the Athens Games) and the late, great Herb McKennley and others. The untold damage to our illustrious history as a small but potent sporting nation is obvious.
Note, I am not suggesting that Conte’s remarks, by themselves, are the only reason for this comment. After all, Conte, himself, has very little credibility. He recently spent time in prison for selling steroids to many highly decorated US athletes, including disgraced sprint sensation and former Olympic champion Marion Jones, who had constantly denied taking drugs. Last year, however, news broke that she had lied to government officials about drug taking and had also committed cheque fraud. Her connections with Conte and her former coach Trevor Graham, himself a Jamaican, effectively, made her a prime suspect in the case - a classic case of ’show me your company and I will tell you who you are’! Graham was convicted, after all, on one count of lying to federal investigators, recently, after reportedly sending a syringe with performance enhancing drugs to authorities.
‘Secrets in the Blood’
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), in its new radio series Secrets in the Blood, is also committed to ferreting out drug cheats in sports by calling into question anti-doping mechanisms used by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). According to the BBC, WADA’s current technology are not properly calibrated to catch all who try to beat the system. The programme looks, specifically, at the legitimacy of claims that substances like ‘EPO’ (Erythropoietin) are being widely abused by many athletes, especially those who will be competing in Beijing and what can realistically be done to address this. EPO which is also called hematopoietin or hemopoietin is produced by the liver and kidney, naturally. It is the hormone that regulates red blood cell production and also has other known biological functions. EPO plays an important role in the brain’s response to neuronal injury and is also involved in the wound healing process.
It is fair to assume that athletes gain an edge on the competition by administering, in controlled doses, substances like EPO as way of ensuring that their endurance and performance levels are at peak. Less time spent recovering from injuries and such like means more which is devoted to being on the track and or in the gym training. This is necessary for the career defining moments like Beijing and before that, Osaka, Japan last year. Only yesterday the BBC’s World Have Your Say Blog looked at whether athletes should be allowed to use drugs. Though not in the majority, a vast number of respondents seemed in favour of this. Why?
According to some: very little is, actually, known about the effects of drugs and how to appropriately test for them. Most notable among the views expressed were those of one blogger who goes by the moniker Uncomfortable Reality. In his/ her view, performance ehancing drugs have been given a (very) bad wrap. Athletes should only be disqualified from taking drugs because the rules say so and not because they are, necessarilly, bad. By allowing athletes to use drugs like EPO, THG (also known as ‘The Cear’) and others, more athletes get a chance to push themselves to their ‘real’ limits. Such views, as you might imagine, only creates the impression that drug taking should be a ‘natural’ part of sport. Never mind actual talent. Indeed, never mind fairness, all that matters, according to the bloggers like Uncomfortable Reality, is that athletes are able to showcase their ‘talents’ for all to see – with the help of performance enhancing drugs, of course!
On the other hand, officially, the BBC maintains that, whereas the implications of the indiscriminate use of performance enhancing substances are known, very little information is available to determine their effects when carefully administered in a laboratory or medical setting. Both China, who will be staging this year’s Olympics, and India have been identified as the primary sites for purchasing these drugs at fairly cheap prices on the Internet. According to the BBC report, they were able to purchase knock-off EPO on the Web for approximately US$50. In the process, arguing that, WADA is only able to test for and catch those who use the standard versions of this drug. However, it fails abysmally in the cases of knock-offs.
Beyond the obvious issue of the questioning of WADA’s credibility and the integrity of the Beijing Games, there is another worrrisome development here, as well. The possible conflation between suspicions about India and China, as outposts for criminality, and the reading of ‘Third World’ as a generic category to read as ‘not white and Western’ could, quite possibly, lead to the less than promising view that athletes outside of Europe and America are likely drug cheats. ‘Third World’ athletes like Jamaica’s sprinters and others might, therefore, be viewed as indiscriminate abusers of said drugs. After all, Jamaica is neither, predominantly white nor, truly, Western. There can be no doubt, then, that Conte’s remarks are, somehow, connected to these claim, if even by way of coincidence.
Questions about our standards for testing athletes of the calibre of Usain, Asafa, Veronica and Sherone, are naturally counter productive; that is, in the absence of evidence to stake the credibility of such claims. They shift focus away from the commendable achievements of these bright, young Jamaicans to highlight instead fear and embarrassment. That Fennel’s defense may also be read as a forceful rebuttal of Conte’s smear campaign speaks volumes about what to expect when the Jamaican Olympic Express rolls into Beijing. Even Dr. Herb Elliot, a Jamaican member of the International Amateur Athletics Federation’s (IAAF) Medical and Anti-Doping Commission and top enforcement official here, was quoted by the LA Times story. He is reported to have told the Christian Science Monitor last month, “We are far in advance of the U.S. record for [preventing] doping. We preach, cajole, and test. . . . Sports is such a part of our culture that the disgrace [of doping] is so great that the Jamaicans that live here wouldn’t even consider it.”
While, I am not suggesting that the BBC is complicit with the obvious nastiness of the Conte remarks, there can be no doubting the anti-Chinese sentiments embedded in such narratives which call into question China’s legitimacy as a growing world power. As a matter of fact, several weeks ago the Olympic Flame, the ultimate symbol of the goals of the Games, had been attacked several times in Paris and other parts of Europe. And that was only the start. There were reports of protest marches and several other incidents in which Chinese Secret Service personnel were called in to defend the Flame against further attacks. Why?
People were upset about the award of the Summer Games to the Peoples’ Republic of China, largely, because of its less than impressive human rights and even trade record. Note, sports and, most certainly, the Olympics which had their roots in Ancient Greece are supposed to represent the highest expressions of human courage, grit and determination, to say nothing of joy and celebration and the anguish of defeat and the disappointment of failure. In the words of CLR James, Trinidadian scholar, academic and philosopher, sports, definitely, go ‘beyond the boundary’. Under the label “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (Faster, Higher, Stronger), the Olympics represent the crowning achievements of our highest human selves.
One has to be prepared, then, to expect some sort of backlash if Jamaica wins any of the premier sprints events in greater numbers than the occasional one or two reserved for non-American athletes. Our Olympic Express rolls into the Orient, as a result, under what appears to be a cloud of suspicion a-la Victor Conte, et al.
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