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Guyana Chronicle New York Edition week ending October 20, 2017
Mabaruma gets new all-weather road
WORKS on an all-weather road at Mabaruma has been completed and the contractor is expected to commence work soon on a similar project at the Kumaka Stretch, the town’s business hub. Reports are that works to the roadway linking the Mabaruma airstrip to the main public road in the Region One (Barima/Waini) town was recently completed. A three-week period is being utilised to monitor the structure’s durability, following which it will be opened to motorists. Mohammed Ramzan Ally Khan was awarded contracts earlier in the year to undertake concrete works in two
lots in the area. The contracts, which were awarded by the Ministry of Public Infrastructure, entail concrete works to the road close to the town’s airstrip ($82.1M) as well as the Kumaka Stretch ($66.2M). Works on the latter project are expected to commence soon. At the moment, the roadway is being graded while trenches are being constructed along its shoulders. Another firm is expected to construct a pavement which will complement the stretch. Rainy weather conditions were hampering the commencement of concrete road works to the roadway in the area; the all-weather roads are being built for the first
A resident walks along the all-weather road which was constructed at Mabaruma
time in the town. Region One’s first town has been plagued with potholed roads over the years. During 2016, the roadways in the region were in a deplorable state for weeks as slothfulness by the contractor was cited as a factor in remedying the situation. In September last year, Minister of Public Infrastructure, David Patterson said persons have complained of their inability to secure contracts for works across the country, but their ability to undertake works are hampered by identified challenges such as availability of equipment, since some contractors would have more than one contract and continue to bid for more.
In April this year, Minister of State, Joseph Harmon announced at a post-Cabinet press briefing that Cabinet has granted its approval for the award of contracts for the rehabilitation of six lots of all-weather roads in Mabaruma and Port Kaituma. He said Minister Patterson has undertaken to visit and witness the works to be undertaken. Mabaruma is undergoing several changes in its infrastructure as the government, as well as the town council, is working to improve the general aesthetics of the town. A mega-solar farm is among several projects which are expected to impact the town’s development.
Violence: An American Addiction (from page 7) deed, with their command position over people, the cops act out this insecurity by criminalizing individuals in advance. No legal principle need be involved. There is only the militarist principle. When the pregnant woman steps away from the cop, she is breaking no law. To force her to ground and handcuff her is far from anything intended by the principle of due process in the Constitution.”
Today, Americans do not just engage in high levels of violence, they are also entertained by it. This toxic irrationality and lure of more and more violence is mimicked by America’s aggressive foreign policy, in the sanctioning of state torture, and in the gruesome killing of civilians by drones. This return to Wild West violence-laden culture should have no place in a modern, more enlightened society but the “new normal” is based on quixotic, addictive behavior and fixation with violence as the way to settle any and all disagreements. Its is egged on and encouraged by America’s top political leaders – from the president on down – using the language of violence in their daily pronouncements and public utterings. President Donald Trump’s “I can shoot someone on 5th Avenue” statement was met with huge applause for adoring moronic supporters. We
now “kill or capture” our enemies, “take out” those we don’t like and “go after the bad guys.” For example, this normalization of violence can be seen in the fact that when some act of mass murder or terrorism happens the United States, Federal and local state governments pull out all the stops to clean up after the fact. Yet, amazingly these same governments are loath to pass one meaningful piece of legislation that would save a child’s life.
ture of violence produced, in part, by the wide and unchecked availability of guns.
It is true that America’s fascination with guns and violence functions firstly as a form of sport and entertainment, while offering the false promise of security, which even trumps a more general fear of violence on the part of terrorists. In this illogic scenario one not only kills terrorists with drones, but also makes sure that “patriotic Americans” are individually jacked up on fear juice, armed to the teeth so they can use force to protect themselves against the dangers deliberately whipped up in a culture of fear and mass hysteria produced and promoted by right-wing politicians, “expert pundits,” and the corporate controlled media.
and lurid in order to provide and infuse the pleasure quotient with more and more shocks. Americans now live in “a culture of the immediate” which functions “as an escape from the past” and a view of the future as one of menace, insecurity, and potential violence.
Finally, there is a covert structure of politics at work in this type of sanctioned irrationality. For example, advocating for gun rights provides a convenient discourse for ignoring a harsh neoliberal corporate-state order that routinely generates pervasive material suffering, social dislocation, and psychological despair—worsening conditions that ensure violence in its many expressions. It says nothing about a corrupt system of financiers, bankers and hedge fund managers who invest in the arms industries and trade in profits at the expense of human life, all the while contributing to the United States being the largest arms exporter and dealer in the world. More specifically, the call for gun rights also conveniently side steps and ignores criticizing a popular culture and corporate controlled media which uses violence to attract viewers, increase television ratings, produce Hollywood blockbusters, and sell video games that celebrate first person shooters.
The Children’s Defense Fund is correct in woefully stating, “Where is our anti-war movement here at home? Why does a nation with the largest military budget in the world refuse to protect its children from relentless gun violence and terrorism at home? No external enemy ever killed thousands of children in their neighborhoods, streets The fact is that today in Amerand schools year in and year out.” ica popular culture not only trades Indeed, it is truly a serious in violence as entertainment, but it symptom of irrationality when also delivers violence to a society American politicians repeatedly addicted to an endless barrage of lose their heads in a tizzy over the sensations, an addiction to instant mere threat of terrorism, even sacri- gratification, and a pleasure princificing our civil liberties, but conve- ple steeped in graphic and extreme niently ignore the fact that “30,000 images of human suffering, mayAmericans die in gun violence hem, and torture. Violence is now every year (compared to the 17 who represented without the need for eidied (in 2012) in terrorist attacks.” ther subtlety or critical examination. In fact, the fear of terrorism, hang- Now relieved of its pedagogical neing over the heads of every jittery cessity to instruct, violence is unViolence in America IS as post 9/11 American, appears to feed, tethered from its moral significance, American as apple pie. recuperate, and expand a toxic cul- just as it becomes more plentiful