As a boy in school during the 70’s I absolutely fell in love with American R&B music, I thought it was the best sound I had ever heard. Today as a grown up I still play the Temptations, commodores , Dells , Stylistics, O‑Jays and the entire litany of acts which dominated that era .I also learned to love all kinds of music including classic reggae which has the Blues and Jazz sound to thank for it’s existence.

As a lit­tle boy I was con­stant­ly singing in my high falset­to which I copied from many of the acts like Eddie Kendrick and oth­ers like the Bee Gees..I always noticed that when­ev­er I sang even my fam­i­ly who loved me uncon­di­tion­al­ly either laughed or had a fun­ny look on their faces.
Not to be deterred I con­tin­ued singing until one day I decid­ed to record myself singing , I real­ly fan­cied myself a poten­tial rock star. After record­ing myself I decid­ed to lis­ten to my record­ing , I was about to show those fam­i­ly mem­bers that they had a real star singer in the family.
Then I heard the sound which was a cross between a cat whose tail got caught in a crack and the sound of a piece of met­al scrap­ing on con­crete. I real­ly want­ed to apol­o­gize to every­one whom I ever offend­ed with my singing.

Many years lat­er I was dri­ving up the Taconic Parkway with my wife we were lis­ten­ing to (you guessed it ) clas­sic R&B on the car radio. My wife is a ter­rif­ic singer who poten­tial­ly could have a suc­cess­ful career in the sec­u­lar music world if she so desired. Of course being the woman of God she is she does not see that as an option for her.
As we sang along I was embold­ened to sug­gest to her “hey babe we should sing togeth­er, I will sing back­up “. She being the sweet­heart she is said to me, “yes babe but can I tell you, you would have to sing way way back” .
We had a great time laugh­ing for the rest of our jour­ney, I could­n’t stop laugh­ing about the way she said it.

As the mass shoot­ings across America seem to inten­si­fy I won­dered whether the peo­ple on the polit­i­cal right ever con­sid­ered record­ing them­selves and lis­ten­ing to the things they say?
Timothy Mc Veigh was a white Anglo-Saxon home grow ter­ror­ist he was American as they come. McVeigh and his accom­plice Terry Nichols det­o­nat­ed a truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.
According to his wikipedia page McVeigh McVeigh, a Persian Gulf War vet­er­an, sought revenge against the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment for its han­dling of the Waco siege, which end­ed in the deaths of 76 peo­ple exact­ly two years before the bomb­ing, as well as for the Ruby Ridge inci­dent in 1992. McVeigh hoped to inspire a revolt against what he con­sid­ered to be a tyran­ni­cal fed­er­al government.

Theodore John “Ted” Kaczynski the Una-bomber.. 

As a Harvard under­grad­u­ate, Kaczynski was among twen­ty-two stu­dents who were research sub­jects in eth­i­cal­ly ques­tion­able exper­i­ments con­duct­ed by psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Henry Murray from late 1959 to ear­ly 1962.^[5][6][7] In 1971, he moved to a remote cab­in with­out elec­tric­i­ty or run­ning water, in Lincoln, Montana, where he lived as a recluse while learn­ing sur­vival skills in an attempt to become self-suf­fi­cient.^[8] Seventeen years after begin­ning his mail bomb cam­paign, Kaczynski sent a let­ter to The New York Times on April 24, 1995 and promised “to desist from ter­ror­ism” if the Times or the Washington Post pub­lished his man­i­festo, Industrial Society and Its Future (the “Unabomber Manifesto”), in which he argued that his bomb­ings were extreme but nec­es­sary to attract atten­tion to the ero­sion of human free­dom neces­si­tat­ed by mod­ern tech­nolo­gies requir­ing large-scale organization.Wikipedia.

These two are just a cou­ple of the more recent white home grown ter­ror­ists which comes to mind when we con­sid­er ter­ror­ism in America , of course there has been a his­to­ry of local ter­ror­ism of all kinds in this coun­try includ­ing but not con­fined to those wrought on eth­nic minori­ties by oth­er groups as well as the United States Government.
It is per­haps too easy to for­get how many times this has happened.

THIS ACCORDING TO MOTHER JONES​.COM

The hor­rif­ic mas­sacre at a movie the­ater in Aurora, Colorado, in July 2012, anoth­er at a Sikh tem­ple in Wisconsin that August,anoth­er at a man­u­fac­tur­er in Minneapolis that September — and then the unthink­able night­mare at a Connecticut ele­men­tary school that December — were some of the lat­est in an epi­dem­ic of such gun vio­lence over the last three-plus decades. Since 1982, there have been at least 81 pub­lic mass shoot­ings across the coun­try, with the killings unfold­ing in 33 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii. Forty-four of these mass shoot­ings have occurred since 2006. Seven of them took place in 2012 alone, includ­ing Sandy Hook. A recent analy­sis of this data­base by researchers at Harvard University, fur­ther cor­rob­o­rat­ed by a recent FBI study, deter­mined that mass shoot­ings have been on the rise.
The per­pe­tra­tors: More than half of the cas­es involved school or work­place shoot­ings (12 and 20, respec­tive­ly); the oth­er 30 cas­es took place in loca­tions includ­ing shop­ping malls, restau­rants, and reli­gious and gov­ern­ment build­ings. Forty-four of the killers were white males. Only one was a woman. (See Goleta, Calif., in 2006.) The aver­age age of the killers was 35, though the youngest among them was a mere 11 years old. (See Jonesboro, Ark., in 1998.) A major­i­ty were men­tal­ly trou­bled—and many dis­played signs of men­tal health prob­lems before set­ting out to kill. Explore the map for fur­ther details — we do not con­sid­er it to be all-inclu­sive, but based on the cri­te­ria we used, we believe that we’ve pro­duced the most com­pre­hen­sive run­down avail­able on this par­tic­u­lar type of vio­lence. (Mass shoot­ings rep­re­sent only a sliv­er of America’s over­all gun vio­lence.) For the sto­ries of the 151 shoot­ing ram­page vic­tims of 2012, click here, and for our ground­break­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into the eco­nom­ic costs of the nation’s gun vio­lence, includ­ing mass shoot­ings. http://​www​.moth​er​jones​.com/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​2​0​1​2​/​0​7​/​m​a​s​s​-​s​h​o​o​t​i​n​g​s​-​map.

Since the vast major­i­ty of shoot­ers are white Caucasian male who are con­ve­nient­ly labeled men­tal­ly ill when they go on their ter­ror spree, why is it that if a shoot­er hap­pen to have an Arabic sound­ing name the entire Religion of Islam is on trial?
This goes to the heart of what I intend­ed to con­vey with my lit­tle open­ing sto­ry. Does the polit­i­cal hawks on the right real­ize just how stu­pid they sound? Or do they even lis­ten to the igno­rant state­ments com­ing from their own mouths?

This mon­ster walked into the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston South Carolina where parish­ioners were engaged in Bible study he sum­mar­i­ly slaugh­tered nine and injured one .He was tak­en into cus­tody with­out receiv­ing a bruise on his per­son. We are told offi­cers stopped to get him ham­burg­ers after arrest­ing him . There is white priv­i­lege if ever there was any.

The num­ber of white mis­fits who sum­mar­i­ly plot and exe­cute ter­ror plots right here in the United States are too many to men­tion . On the con­trary there are a few instances where some­one with an Arabic sound­ing name like Nidal Hasan an American also com­mits acts of ter­ror. Hasan an American con­vict­ed of fatal­ly shoot­ing 13 peo­ple and injur­ing more than 30 oth­ers in the Fort Hood mass shoot­ing on November 5, 2009 was a United States Army Medical Corps psy­chi­a­trist who admit­ted to the shoot­ings at his court-mar­tial in August 2013.^[3][4][5] A jury pan­el of 13 offi­cers con­vict­ed him of 13 counts of pre­med­i­tat­ed mur­der, 32 counts of attempt­ed mur­der, and unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend­ed he be dis­missed from the ser­vice andsen­tenced to death.

As the nation grap­ples with yet anoth­er mass shoot­ing , this time at a gay night­club in Florida the per­pe­tra­tor just hap­pen to have an Arab sound­ing name. Of course the nar­ra­tive rapid­ly defaults to Islam , and who should call Islam rad­i­cal and who is not doing so.
As the President said in his response to the Republican jack-ass of a pre­sump­tive Republican nom­i­nee ’ ”what dif­fer­ence it makes whether he calls it rad­i­cal Islam”? The fact is that the con­ver­sa­tion ought to be cen­tered around how to stem the spate of sense­less killings, instead it has become as always about begin­ning an unwinnable war with an entire reli­gion of over 2.8 bil­lion people.
Whether the ter­ror­ist act is com­mit­ted by some­one with an Arab sound­ing name or not the sit­u­a­tion is the same . America is made up of peo­ple from all over the world so of course there will be ter­ror sus­pects with Arab sound­ing names as there will be peo­ple of oth­er eth­nic­i­ty. The fact of the mat­ter is that in most cas­es where they have those eth­ic names they are not for­eign­ers at all but were born right here in America.

The prob­lem is when a polit­i­cal par­ty look­ing to replace the par­ty which con­trols the Executive branch of Government goes to the polls and elects as it’s pre­sump­tive nom­i­nee a car­ni­val bark­er and a total buf­foon. Out of a field of 17 can­di­dates this what they came up with ‚a racist xeno­phobe whose claim to fame is being a con artist. He has no idea about pol­i­cy and has no clue how his actions as com­man­der in chief of the world’s most pow­er­ful nation would impact the rest of the world.
This absolute igno­ra­mus could poten­tial­ly be elect­ed pres­i­dent while some nations are con­sid­er­ing ban­ning him from enter­ing their countries.
This is what the world faces, a con man with some mon­ey , brava­do , and a whole bunch of hatred for every­one else who is not white Anglo-Saxon.

Despite the crippling crime situation in Jamaica which is affecting every strata of the tiny society, how many of you have ever seen a contribution in any of the Nation’s silly little newspapers with a column from a Police Officer on the subject? I haven’t but some of you may have, so I stand to be corrected.…..

One of the things you who care about what I have to say on the sub­ject of crime may have read or heard me say is that crime is not being tack­led by peo­ple who know what to do about it.
I may take a lot of flack for say­ing this but who cares. There are signs every­where that crime is some­thing which politi­cians pay lip-ser­vice to but there is demon­stra­ble no will or intent to once and for all get seri­ous about it.
The appoint­ment of Robert Montague as Minister of National Security may prob­a­bly be seen in that very light.
Now for the hyper par­ti­sans who are unable to see the for­est for the trees , it has pre­cious lit­tle to do with Robert Montague’s abil­i­ty to get things done, but every­thing to do with know­ing what needs to be done craft­ing the nec­es­sary pol­i­cy and get­ting the sup­port for leg­is­la­tion which will ensure that that pol­i­cy become law. Even then it requires much more for it’s exe­cu­tion by the secu­ri­ty forces.

Having a nuclear sci­en­tist per­form trau­ma surgery is a recipe for dis­as­ter. Though supreme­ly edu­cat­ed, a nuclear sci­en­tists is not a trau­ma surgeon.
It fol­lows there­fore that in order to have the most effec­tive per­for­mance the per­son doing the admin­is­ter­ing should and must have some train­ing in the area he is being tasked with offer­ing administration.
The National secu­ri­ty port­fo­lio has being an unwant­ed step-child with­in the Jamaican polit­i­cal space for a long time. There has been rum­blings of sorts that some of the men who served as min­is­ters of nation­al secu­ri­ty have actu­al­ly seen the assign­ment as a kind of pun­ish­ment of sorts.
These men were cer­tain­ly not fools, irre­spec­tive of their polit­i­cal par­ty they knew there was no real plan of action to elim­i­nate crime with­in the con­text of the Island’s gar­ri­son cul­ture. Simply put they were being asked to take on a job in which they were guar­an­teed to fail.

Who wants that kind of a fail­ure on their resume’ ?
It has to be with­in that con­text that the pre­vi­ous min­is­ter of nation­al secu­ri­ty Peter Bunting called for divine inter­ven­tion a call the present Minister Robert Montague seem to endorse.
Over the years this port­fo­lio has been occu­pied by peo­ple of all dif­fer­ent dis­ci­pline except Security . Which begs the ques­tion why? I have my own opin­ions which will come as no sur­prise to anyone.
Logically speak­ing, it appears there were direct plans afoot to destroy the JCF when they placed retired mil­i­tary to head the police depart­ment. That worked out quite well for ruin­ing the morale of the police. Despite the abun­dance of qual­i­ty peo­ple who came up through the ranks of the JCF and exem­pli­fied them­selves when­ev­er they par­tic­i­pate in train­ing with offi­cers from oth­er coun­tries , even when they are held in high esteem across the region they are nev­er giv­en the respon­si­bil­i­ty to devel­op pol­i­cy as min­is­ter with secu­ri­ty responsibility.
This can­not be con­sumed with­in the con­text of pol­i­tics or even coin­ci­dence. The stark real­i­ty is that they do not want the per­spec­tive of law enforce­ment in draft­ing laws.
The INDECOM Act is a clas­sic exam­ple of an Ill-con­ceived reac­tionary bit of leg­is­la­tion that lacks bal­ance and as such is cost­ing count­less lives.
Unfortunately for the shrink­ing minor­i­ty of inno­cents on the Island the polit­i­cal class is beside them­selves with glee at this idi­ot­ic Law . Police shoot­ings have gone down.
What they will nev­er talk about when they talk about their ideas of suc­cess of that law is that more peo­ple are get­ting mur­dered while they crow about INDECOM.
Why ?
They take you for total fools.

Which brings me to my point.
The deni­a­bil­i­ty, ratio­nal­iz­ing and non­sen­si­cal brain-dead argu­ments we have heard about crime in Jamaica.
Of all of the argu­ments I have heard regard­ing crime on the Island this bunch of gib­ber­ish from the JAMAICA OBSERVER has got to take the cake.
Much of what we have heard over the years has large­ly been a bunch of hog­wash by wannabe secu­ri­ty experts who posi­tion them­selves as author­i­ty on secu­ri­ty even though they know noth­ing of which they speak.
Nevertheless none is more grotesque than the fol­low­ing bunch of horse manure which total­ly throws out proven estab­lished stan­dards while ask­ing us to con­sid­er a new mode of mea­sure­ment which defies all log­ic yet embraces a mirage which enforces a false sense of security.
The very foun­da­tion of this guys argu­ments are flawed , it does not war­rant a point by point de-con­struct save and except to dis­prove this bit of nonsense.
Quote : When you look at cities’ vio­lent crime rates per 100,000 peo­ple, the five cities with the high­est totals (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia) dis­ap­pear from the top of the list. They have the high­est crime rates, yet, con­sid­er­ing their pop­u­la­tions, have a low­er num­ber of vio­lent crime occur­rences than the cities with the high­est vio­lent crime rates (just because of the flawed use of rat­ing crime rates per 100,000 people).
New York City the world’s largest city has over 8 mil­lion cit­i­zens, not to men­tion those who are undoc­u­ment­ed. The city’s homi­cide rate stands at around 300 annually>
Jamaica a tiny pin-prick of a coun­try of 2.8 mil­lion which can fit twice into Connecticut one of the tini­est states in the United States, in 2005 record­ed over 1600 homi­cides alone.
Why would we even con­sid­er any­thing this guy has to say. It’s total­ly okay to make mis­takes, it is nev­er too late to make a fresh start. But when the nar­ra­tive is framed on Orwellian log­ic as the fol­low­ing is, there will sure­ly be extreme con­se­quences for that stupidity.
Surely what we need are char­tered accoun­tants inform­ing us on how we should not wor­ry about the mur­der sta­tis­tics but set­tle into a sense of “it’s not so bad”.

FROM THE JAMAICA OBSERVER

I will not, in any way what­so­ev­er, dis­count Jamaica’s crime prob­lem. However, it appears to me that many Jamaicans are mis­led by the usu­al­ly flawed crime rate reports pre­pared and pub­lished annu­al­ly by var­i­ous for­eign organisations.

For starters, because a report expressed “mur­der rates” based on per 100,000 cit­i­zens in a coun­try it does not mean that is a fair and accu­rate way to inform the world about all crimes com­mit­ted in a par­tic­u­lar coun­try and here is why: In the first place, any­one who under­stands the val­ue of fair and accu­rate quan­ti­ta­tive analy­sis will agree with me that when using a vari­able (such as the size of a country’s pop­u­la­tion) to express crime rate, coun­tries with small­er pop­u­la­tion will more like­ly than not be at a dis­ad­van­tage. Therefore, Third World coun­tries will more like­ly than not make the top 10 most dan­ger­ous coun­tries (seri­ous crimes com­mit­ted) than, say, the US with over 320 mil­lion peo­ple, or China and India with over 1 bil­lion peo­ple, respec­tive­ly. In fact, based on a recent FBI report on vio­lent crimes for every city in the US, when you look at cities’ vio­lent crime rates per 100,000 peo­ple, the five cities with the high­est totals (New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia) dis­ap­pear from the top of the list. They have the high­est crime rates, yet, con­sid­er­ing their pop­u­la­tions, have a low­er num­ber of vio­lent crime occur­rences than the cities with the high­est vio­lent crime rates (just because of the flawed use of rat­ing crime rates per 100,000 people).

In my opin­ion, the fairest way to express the over­all crime rate of any coun­try is to use a standard/​fixed mea­sure (such as time). For exam­ple, if crime rates were expressed as crimes com­mit­ted per hour in a par­tic­u­lar coun­try, I think that would be a much fair­er way to express crime rates. Let us test this the­o­ry below:

In 2014, America had a vio­lent crime rate of 365.5 per 100,000 res­i­dents (a total of 1,158,635 vio­lent crimes — based on a pop­u­la­tion of 317 mil­lion peo­ple), and a mur­der rate of 4.5 per 100,000 res­i­dents (Source: FBI Report on Violent Crimes for Every City in the US). If we focused only on the mur­der rate for America, there were 14,265 mur­ders com­mit­ted in 2014 in America (based on 317 mil­lion res­i­dents). Given that there is 8,760 hours in a year, that means 1.628 mur­ders were com­mit­ted every hour in America in 2014. In 2014, Jamaica’s mur­der rate was 36 per 100,000 res­i­dents, or 1,005 mur­ders (Source: JIS, as report­ed by the Commissioner of Police). Again, if we focused only on the mur­der rate for Jamaica, and giv­en that there is 8,760 hours in a year, it means that 0.11473 (less than one) mur­der was com­mit­ted every hour in Jamaica in 2014. Therefore, based on a fair mea­sure (time), more mur­ders are com­mit­ted per hour in the US than Jamaica. I will fur­ther posit that if this fair mea­sure (time) was used to cal­cu­lat­ed the mur­der rates of the oth­er nine so-called most vio­lent coun­tries (Honduras, Venezuela, Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Swaziland, St Kitts and Nevis, South Africa & Colombia), the US would like­ly be the most vio­lent coun­try in the world (based on the most mur­ders com­mit­ted per hour). Trevor H Francis is a char­tered accoun­tant (JA) and cer­ti­fied pub­lic accoun­tant (US).
http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​c​o​l​u​m​n​s​/​T​h​e​-​m​y​t​h​-​a​b​o​u​t​-​w​h​i​c​h​-​c​o​u​n​t​r​y​-​c​o​m​m​i​t​s​-​m​o​r​e​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​s​-​b​a​s​e​d​-​o​n​-​i​t​s​-​p​o​p​u​l​a​t​i​o​n​_​6​3​878http://​www​.jamaicaob​serv​er​.com/​c​o​l​u​m​n​s​/​T​h​e​-​m​y​t​h​-​a​b​o​u​t​-​w​h​i​c​h​-​c​o​u​n​t​r​y​-​c​o​m​m​i​t​s​-​m​o​r​e​-​m​u​r​d​e​r​s​-​b​a​s​e​d​-​o​n​-​i​t​s​-​p​o​p​u​l​a​t​i​o​n​_​6​3​878

In 2011 a young man trav­el­ling in a taxi cab had his life snuffed out because the taxi-dri­ver and anoth­er motorist had a case of road-rage which went ter­ri­bly wrong.
According to reports at the time 17 years old school­boy Khajeel Mais an inno­cent vic­tim, rid­ing in the back of a cab to a fête at a high School, became the vic­tim of a ter­ri­ble case of road rage when the cab in which he was a pas­sen­ger alleged­ly ran into the back of a BMW-x6 sport util­i­ty vehicle.
Its is alleged that the dri­ver of the sport util­i­ty vehi­cle emerged from the vehi­cle fir­ing at the cab, the cab dri­ver it is report­ed turned his cab aroound and head­ed in the oppo­site direc­tion ‚with the x6 dri­ver still firing.

I nev­er met young Khajeel Mais , nei­ther do I know his fam­i­ly . In the greater scheme of things his death was no dif­fer­ent than the hun­dreds , thou­sands even, of Jamaicans young and old who have their lives sum­mar­i­ly snuffed out.
I am not sure what it was about the killing of this young man which moved me so much that I need­ed to do some­thing about it. Out of that I decid­ed to cre­ate a blog to high­light the state of insan­i­ty in Jamaica as it relates to crime and violence.
I can just hear the naysay­ers now ” there is crime and vio­lence everywhere” .
True but I am talk­ing about Jamaica, you want to dis­cuss crime and vio­lence in the world and I am will­ing to talk about that too, just not now.

It is nev­er quite clear what trig­gers in us the desire to do some­thing when the issue we get aroused about have sim­i­lar occur­rences every­day with­out any­one even bat­ting an eye.
Many years ago while I was still serv­ing mem­ber of the force , I was asked by my sub-offi­cer in charge of crime Detective Sergeant Gerald Wallace to attend the Morgue at Maddens funer­al home and stand in on his behalf at a post Mortem Examination .
Wallace was the lead inves­ti­ga­tor in a knife mur­der of a young male on Red Hills Road . The deca­dent was stabbed in the neck right in the right angle where the kneck join the shoulder.
I did not know any of this at the time I told my sub-offi­cer I would have no prob­lem attend­ing the Post mortem , why should I it was some­thing I had done many times before?

I was one of those offi­cers who did not mind pitch­ing in when it involves murder.
I allud­ed to this fact in these blogs sev­er­al times before what I was taught while attend­ing basic crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions course “no greater task can be giv­en any man than to bring the killer/​s of the inno­cent to jus­tice” . I did not mind tes­ti­fy­ing in court to put them away. Even though the laws and the courts refus­es to make an exam­ple out of killers.
As I matured as a police offi­cer on the Island I cer­tain­ly did not mind whether these mind­less killers were brought to jus­tice or whether based on their choic­es , jus­tice was brought to them.

This time was no dif­fer­ent except that on arriv­ing at the morgue I felt real­ly queazy. Anyone fami­lar with Maddens know you have to be the oppo­site of queazy to enter that place. But I had done it before , so why was I queazy?
I told the doc­tor I would be right back , ran to a lit­tle bar, by this time I was real­ly nau­seus. I swal­lowed down some white rum , no water, no ice and threw a cou­ple of icymint sweet­ies into my mouth and went back into the morgue.
The porter slit the corpse open and all hell broke loose.
Remember when I described where the deca­dent had been stabbed in the neck ? Well there was no out­ward bleed­ing all the blood stayed inside .
The porter opened him up, out spilled all the blood, out came my break­fast, and every bit of what­ev­er else was inside my stom­ach. That was my very last post-mortem.
To this day I have no idea what sep­a­rat­ed that one from all of the pre­vi­ous others.
That one was sim­ply the straw which broke the camel’s back. The killing of Khajeel Mias spurred me to do what I can to shine alight on whats going on in Jamaica.

I nev­er quite fig­ured out what made me vom­it, I nev­er fig­ured out what was dif­fer­ent about the killing of Khajeel Mais . What I do know is that I have writ­ten thou­sands of blogs, done tons of research and spo­ken to lots and lots of peo­ple sole­ly on the killings in my coun­try. I know it can be addressed , but sad­ly rather than tak­ing dras­tic steps to show crim­i­nals that their das­tard­ly deeds will not be tol­er­at­ed, the nation con­tin­ue to fool itself that all it has to do is be nicer to the killers.

Over the years I have heard an alpha­bet stew of sug­ges­tions from vil­lage lawyers , prog­nos­ti­ca­tors, and the mon­day-morn­ing quar­ter­backs about what to do about crime.
Nothing I have heard is worth squat as it relates to seri­ous­ly tack­ling the crime epi­dem­ic in our country.
I rue every day that I sit on my hands see­ing the spilt blood yet no one has the balls to say this stops now.

Community out­reach♦ Officers in schools ♦ Better com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions♦ More police oper­a­tions♦ Police offi­cers being more sweet and loving♦
This has been tried and proven to fail through­out the last forty years . How dumb can a nation be ? The def­i­n­i­tion of a fool is doing the same thing over and over again and expect­ing a dif­fer­ent result.
There has to be a rad­i­cal shift , it’s doable, but the Government must stop lis­ten­ing to the crim­i­nal lawyers and the host of leech­es and vul­tures who parade as human rights activists.

To the peo­ple who say “Mike you are advo­cat­ing a heavy-hand­ed approach” !
To them I say Yaaaaaaaa !!!!
You real­ly get me !
You got­ta go after mur­der­ers with vengeance and fire, where the hell do you ever hear of beg­ging mass mur­der­ers to stop com­mit­ting crimes.
Jamaican crim­i­nals are some of the most vicious blood-thirsty killers any­where. They are not exact­ly dumb either.
They know they have the upper hand now and they are cap­i­tal­iz­ing on it.
Why ?
Because they know the peo­ple and their lead­ers are dumb ass­es who con­tin­ue to vac­il­late on what to do about their mur­der­ous escapades.

During the late 1980’s we had noth­ing to fight crime , we had no com­put­ers, we had no bal­lis­tic vests, we had no social media , we had noth­ing yet mur­der hov­ered around 300 annu­al­ly. At that time we thought it was way too high.
To the shit-head bleed­ing hearts who talk about police tak­ing out crim­i­nals I seri­ous­ly want the killers to vis­it your damn doors.
There is a rea­son we had three hun­dred mur­ders dur­ing the late 80’s as against the over 1600 in 2005 .
Do the damn math, to you who say “we can­not just exter­mi­nate them” , “I say sit your ass down and wait for them to exter­mi­nate you. Unfortunately the killers who roam the streets seem to avoid the damn fools and get inno­cent people.

I read a post by one of my dear friends in a social medi­um just this morn­ing in which he mis­tak­en­ly said he does­n’t believe there are ser­i­al killers in Jamaica. I know my friend was not being thor­ough in his think­ing, as that state­ment was not the cen­tral theme of what he want­ed to con­vey, far from it.
Nevertheless he was wrong.
There are many young men walk­ing around who have killed over a dozen peo­ple. “Making dup­py is a badge of hon­or”. These creeps are ser­i­al killers and for these mur­der­ing ani­mals there is no reha­bil­i­ta­tion and there should be none.

There are oth­ers who are well dressed, they don’t stand on the street cor­ners crush­ing gan­ga in the mid­dle of their palms, pants hang­ing off their ass­es, Guinness stout in back-pock­et. But these are they who order hits(con­tract-killings) .They are no dif­fer­ent that they who pull the triggers.
Most poor inner-city youths have no means of bring­ing guns into the coun­ty by the boat-loads.
Lets stop with the bull-shit and the pussy-foot­ing .In 2010 they seri­ous­ly took on the state, but for the secu­ri­ty forces the coun­try would be Somalia today. Nevertheless the ungrate­ful crim­i­nal class ordered an inves­ti­ga­tion of the actions of the secu­ri­ty forces.
They brought in a colo­nial­ist for­eign­er to sit in judge­ment of our war­riors who risked their lives, even as some some paid the ulti­mate price to save our coun­try they sit in unright­eous judge­ment with dis­dain­ful elitism.

I will stop here by say­ing over five years after Khajeel Mais was killed, the accused is yet to be tried in the cor­rupt incom­pe­tent courts system.
When you talk about nuanced approach to crime, not that it ever worked any­where, be mind­ful that the courts do not work.
There is your answer.
Crime can only be reme­died if we make seri­ous laws and enforce them regard­less of the accused stand­ing in the society.
The Opposition par­ty has zero inter­est in assist­ing with solv­ing crime on the Island, the par­ty has way too many func­tionar­ies involved in seri­ous crim­i­nal con­duct. The oth­er par­ty also have peo­ple who are invest­ed in crime as well.
The crim­i­nal lawyers and the rights lob­by are hav­ing a field day while the bod­ies pile up local and for­eign now.
In the mean­time the politi­cians twid­dle their thumbs , smile and make announce­ments, all the time try­ing to con­vince every­one but them­selves that things are just fine.
Unfortunately some real­ly good peo­ple are dying as well .
Yes the rain does fall on the just and on the unjust.….….….….…..

Cincinnati Zoo’s Gorilla Exhibit Reopens With New Protective Barrier

The Cincinnati Zoo reopened its Gorilla World exhib­it on Tuesday, more than a week after Harambe the goril­la was shot and killed to pro­tect a young boy who fell into the gorilla’s enclosure.

The exhib­it now fea­tures a new­ly con­struct­ed, taller bar­ri­er than the one the 3‑year-old boy was able to get through last month. The zoo built the new bar­ri­er to add anoth­er lay­er of pro­tec­tion to pre­vent the pub­lic from access­ing the goril­la habi­tat, which now also has new sur­veil­lance cameras.

“Our exhib­it goes above and beyond stan­dard safe­ty require­ments, but in light of what hap­pened, we have mod­i­fied the out­er pub­lic bar­ri­er to make entry even more dif­fi­cult,” Thane Maynard, direc­tor of the zoo, said in a statement.

The habitat’s reopen­ing comes a day after the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office announced it would not pur­sue charges against the young boy’s moth­er.

Many of you who fol­low my blogs are prob­a­bly of the view that I have a unhealthy fix­a­tion with what I refer to as the above cross Roads crowd and the oth­er group from what the late Wilmott (Mutty) Perkins called the intel­lec­tu­al ghetto.
Let me be clear I have no quar­rel with any par­tic­u­lar insti­tu­tion of high­er learn­ing, I believe as President Barack Obama does that edu­ca­tion is the best tick­et out of poverty.
With that said, we also rec­og­nize just how dan­ger­ous one polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy can be to a coun­try when the high­est insti­tu­tions of intel­lec­tu­al thought is heav­i­ly invest­ed in ide­o­log­i­cal indoc­tri­na­tion of those who seek education.

Jamaica has suf­fered immense­ly because of the very nature of the ide­ol­o­gy which emanat­ed out of the University of the West Indies in the 70’s ad 80’s to present day . Indisputably the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem has tak­en a tremen­dous beat­ing because of the insane­ly lib­er­al slant the politi­cians who came out of that Institution has foist­ed on the impres­sion­able devel­op­ing Island.
The judi­cia­ry and indeed the pri­vate bar from which many on the bench are farmed are large­ly and whol­ly shaped by the teach­ings and inter­pre­ta­tions of the law impart­ed to them at the Norman Manley Law School.

That polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy which nour­ished and nur­tured crime, foment­ed hatred for the rule of law , and wrecked the Island’s econ­o­my was vis­i­ble to me as a young man and was part of the rea­son I decid­ed to find a way to reach my goals elsewhere.
The gath­er­ing storm of eco­nom­ic decay , pover­ty and crime which should have been obvi­ous to every­one was ignored as Jamaicans inex­orably allowed them­selves to reck­less­ly indulge in the fal­la­cy of left­ist ide­ol­o­gy which began in the 70’s trans­form­ing the once bur­geon­ing econ­o­my into a depen­dent basket-case.

Ironically, as part of the post mortem fol­low­ing the lat­est loss some mem­bers of the oppo­si­tion par­ty have spo­ken quite can­did­ly about what the par­ty has been to the coun­try. Some have spo­ken truth­ful­ly that the par­ty’s hier­ar­chy used the Jamaican peo­ple to enrich them­selves. To get and keep polit­i­cal pow­er. Some argued the par­ty strayed from it’s social­ist roots.
Those who believe the par­ty has strayed too far from it’s roots con­tin­ue to be like blind and deaf mon­keys ‚hear no evil see no evil. All across the globe the decay­ing citadels of communism/​socialism has come crash­ing down with even the ini­tial archi­tects of Marxism/​Leninism eschew­ing that ide­ol­o­gy and latch­ing onto the freight train which is a free mar­ket sys­tem of government.
Those who blame the loss on the notion the par­ty strayed too far from it’s social­ist roots are stuck in a time-warp of clenched fists “com­rade asso­ciates ” and stu­pid­ly out­dat­ed berets.
For those the needs and aspi­ra­tions of a younger gen­er­a­tion who yearn to do for them­selves through entre­pre­neur­ship, sci­ence , tech­nol­o­gy and code-writ­ing is com­plete­ly lost.

For those dinosaurs the lure, appeal, impres­sion and pos­si­bil­i­ties of the inter­net and social media are as dis­tant as night and day.
For them the unmit­i­gat­ed free-spir­it of a younger gen­er­a­tion want­i­ng to do for them­selves rather than sub­ject them­selves to the con­fin­ing lim­its of gov­ern­ment largess is indiscernible.

The com­ments of for­mer jus­tice min­is­ter Mark Golding did not escape me as he sought to jus­ti­fy his street creds, beef up his bona-fides to rep­re­sent the moth­er of all PNP gar­risons Arnett Gardens . A com­mu­ni­ty in which each elec­tion cycle the num­ber of elec­tors who vote for the PNP alone, far exceed the num­ber of peo­ple liv­ing with­ing that enclave.
A com­mu­ni­ty which has oper­at­ed as a fief­dom sep­a­rate from the Jamaican state.
This is the com­mu­ni­ty which the Oxford edu­cat­ed uptown son of priv­i­lege want to rep­re­sent as he jock­ey to edge out Colin Campbell the epit­o­me of Garrison politics.
This is the very type of com­mu­ni­ty Golding’s edu­ca­tion and expo­sure should cause him to be revolt­ed by. The type of com­mu­ni­ty in which the state’s pow­er is sup­plant­ed by par­ty and under­world Don rule . A com­mu­ni­ty in which the forces of law and order comes from un-elect­ed, un-appoint­ed crim­i­nal under­world fig­ures who exact their own brand of jus­tice. This is the sys­tem the for­mer jus­tice min­is­ter is jock­ey­ing to head. 

Golding asked of him­self in rela­tion to a media question.

“Can I han­dle the ‘Donman’ thing?”
“It’s impor­tant that the con­stituen­cy be run for the ben­e­fit of all con­stituents and all parts of the con­stituen­cy must feel that they have effec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and the sys­tem by which patron­age is dis­pensed through one or two indi­vid­u­als who con­trol a par­tic­u­lar com­mu­ni­ty is not one which I think is demo­c­ra­t­ic or which empow­ers peo­ple. It’s one that the peo­ple of South St Andrew want to move away from,”.

“I am a for­tu­nate per­son. I was born to fam­i­ly that was rel­a­tive­ly well off in the con­text of Jamaica,”
“I have ben­e­fit­ed from excel­lent edu­ca­tion and all of that. In terms of my expe­ri­ence grow­ing up, I grew up on cam­pus (University of the West Indies, Mona) in the 1970s. My neigh­bours were peo­ple like (Professor of Economics) George Beckford and oth­er so-called rad­i­cals of the era. I was friends with their chil­dren — we are still friends, we have a cam­pus kids fra­ter­ni­ty or group that we stay in touch — and pro­gres­sive ideas I was exposed to through­out my upbring­ing,”.

Yes of course, a Campus which also had Trevor Monroe and his Worker’s Party of Jamaica and a slew of oth­er mis­guid­ed rad­i­cal ide­o­logues who had grandiose thoughts of rev­o­lu­tion influ­enc­ing our nations direc­tion. Look how well that turned out.[sic]
As I have con­sis­tent­ly said, our coun­try missed a tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty to be great when we rolled over with­out fight­ing and allowed left­ist ide­ol­o­gy by half baked idiots to per­me­ate our civic and polit­i­cal dis­course with­out fight­ing back.
Today lit­er­al­ly every coun­try which adopt­ed that regres­sive way of think­ing has suf­fered extra­or­di­nary eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al decay the lat­est being Venezuela.
Unfortunately those who are the most respon­si­ble for that social engi­neer­ing still wax nos­tal­gic in the pun­gent stench of it’s abject failures.
The likes of Mark Golding and oth­ers who were born with gold­en spoons in their mouths have con­tributed to those fail­ures yet today they still line up to have anoth­er go at polit­i­cal trough, only this time there is a lit­tle less of the ide­o­log­i­cal bull-shit, just more of the same ald style gar­ri­son politics
That should not be allowed any longer , the Jamaican peo­ple should wake up and tell them where to go.

The recent uproar over the killing of Harambe the Gorilla arguably before it killed a 4‑year-old boy expos­es the sick hypocrisy of the objectors.
Cincinnati Ohio Zoo offi­cials were forced to shoot the pri­mate after a 4‑year-old boy slipped away from his moth­er and fell into a moat which formed part of the Gorilla’s habitat.
Media report­ing on the inci­dent said the child’s moth­er was con­tend­ing with oth­er chil­dren when the lit­tle boy went through par­ti­tions and even­tu­al­ly fell into the moat where he was snatched and dragged around vio­lent­ly by the endan­gered Gorilla for almost 10 min­utes before author­i­ties were forced to take the nec­es­sary actions to save the young child’s life.

The child was report­ed­ly tak­en to area hos­pi­tal where he was treat­ed , his injuries were not con­sid­ered life threatening.
Since the inci­dent occurred hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple have tak­en to social media to demand that the police take action over the death of the primate.
The ques­tion I have regard­ing the out­cry sur­round­ing the killing of the ani­mal is this , which person(term used loose­ly) among those who are com­plain­ing would not have want­ed offi­cials to shoot the ani­mal to save their child?

What is the rea­son for the out­cry at the killing of the ani­mal when there were no alle­ga­tion of tar­di­ness or neg­li­gence by the mother?
When was the life of an ani­mal com­pa­ra­ble to that of a human being?
Was the author­i­ties sup­posed to allow the ani­mal to kill the lit­tle black boy because the child was a lit­tle black boy?
Or would things be dif­fer­ent if the child was a lit­tle blue-eyed , blond-haired Aryan?
The argu­ments about crim­i­nal­iz­ing the child’s moth­er has no basis in any reports of care­less­ness or neg­li­gence, so it has to be that the ones com­plain­ing believe the life of the child was not worth that of the gorilla.
What is the real basis for the ven­omous rage com­ing from the sanc­ti­mo­nious hyp­o­crit­i­cal lynch-mob .

A white woman who told the media she was stand­ing beside the moth­er of the lit­tle boy before he slipped away, said the lit­tle boy was the typ­i­cal lit­tle boy demand­ing he want­ed to do this and do that and the mom was very much a typ­i­cal mom say­ing ‘no you wont”. So what is the noise about ?
Many species of ani­mals prob­a­bly includ­ing the Gorilla in ques­tion are on the verge of extinc­tion because of the very same white peo­ple who took it upon them­selves to sum­mar­i­ly kill God’s crea­tures with reck­less aban­don and will­ful excess as if the earth and all in it is theirs to exploit as they see fit.
Where is their out­rage when killer-cops exe­cute human children?
Where are these vile crea­tures when the blood of inno­cent humans are being spilled using guns they refuse to keep out of the hands of deranged monsters ?

They are silent, and they are so because they have built for them­selves a false sense of moral­i­ty, a fraud­u­lent sense of right and wrong which has no basis in reality.
A val­ue sys­tem which is found­ed on a twist­ed inter­pre­ta­tion of moral­i­ty gen­e­sised in mur­der rape and geno­cide and a belief that some­how they have a right to this world which super­seded that of all others.

Nothing sums up the this faux indig­na­tion than the com­ment of a sin­gle “imbe­cile” respond­ing to one medi­um’s report­ing on the inci­dent, he said quote. “Just anoth­er father­less Black kid look­ing for his dad­dy”.
All across the Globe whites have dec­i­mat­ed the earth­’s nat­ur­al resources, to include human life with fright­en­ing cru­el­ty and aston­ish­ing brutality .
With brutish bar­barism they have ren­dered count­less species extinct dai­ly and in many cas­es for no good rea­son but because they can.

Where do they get the right to deter­mine when anoth­er ani­mal is killed, period?
Much less in a sit­u­a­tion where it is absolute­ly nec­es­sary to save human life?
These imbe­ciles have shown them­selves to be less than human, less than the Gorilla even.
Insofar as their evo­lu­tion is con­cerned the goril­la was far supe­ri­or to them.

For years this lone voice has been shouting in the wilderness about the Jamaican judiciary and the pass that branch of government has gotten. The judiciary has literally escaped unscathed as it relates to the negative perceptions of corruption in government agencies. But does the judiciary pass the smell test, or is it just better at masking the smell of the filth.

There is pre­cious lit­tle if any ques­tion about my per­son­al dis­dain for the way Government con­ducts busi­ness in Jamaica . But it must also be under­stood that my dis­dain tran­scend the tra­di­tion­al two war­ring polit­i­cal par­ties which has done irrepara­ble harm to our beau­ti­ful island but extends to agen­cies like the judi­cia­ry which pre­tend to do the right thing but is equal­ly as cul­pa­ble for the morass in which our coun­try finds itself as any­one else.

Since 1983 I have watched the work of the judi­cia­ry with keen inter­est both as a police offi­cer view­ing from inside the court­rooms and with­out as an aver­age observ­er who fol­lows the through the courts own decisions.
I saw some of the most con­sum­mate pro­fes­sion­als, yet I also wit­nessed some of the most arro­gant abuse of pow­er and one-sided appli­ca­tion of jus­tice which can only be char­ac­ter­ized as injus­tice in those very courtrooms.
The pref­er­en­tial treat­ment and def­er­ence giv­en to cer­tain mem­bers of the pri­vate bar in many instances feeds the nar­ra­tive that if one has name recog­ni­tion, mon­ey and con­nec­tions no one can touch you in Jamaica.

The judi­cia­ry is sup­posed to be the ref­er­ee between cor­rupt gov­er­nance and the peo­ple ‚using the pow­er of law . When the lines are so blurred that they are no longer dis­cernible there are no rules any­more. Chaos become the order of the day when we can no longer trust the ref­er­ee. It may be time to pick up our ball and go home.
No longer can we look at the courts and pre­tend that the ran­cid stain of cor­rup­tion which has cor­rod­ed the nation total­ly eclipsed the courts to cor­rupt all else.
We have seen the way a sin­gle Resident Magistrate made a mock­ery of the entire crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem in order to pro­tect a sin­gle politi­cian from fac­ing justice .
We have wit­nessed the way cer­tain lawyers can have the most dan­ger­ous killers grant­ed bail over and over and over again regard­less of the num­ber of times they kill and are arrested.
We have wit­nessed the slap on the wrist giv­en to many whom they could not help but with a slap, because of the strength of the evidence.
We have wit­nessed the near impos­si­bil­i­ty of get­ting a case to move for­ward depend­ing on the sta­tus of the defendant.
Cases drag on for years on pro­ce­dur­al non­sense while they blame oth­ers for the back­log . This gives cre­dence for the less than noble of intent to demand we sim­ply throw out all the cas­es over five years old and sim­ply for­get the dead vic­tims . Forget their griev­ing fam­i­lies. Forget the police and the work they put into bring­ing the charges . Simply allow the mur­der­ers to walk free to kill again .
Those are they who would head min­istries of Justice .……If only the word jus­tice could choke them leav­ing them gasp­ing for breadth for dar­ing to use a word which their very exis­tence is anti­thet­i­cal to .

(TRAFIGURA)

Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Paula Llewellyn says author­i­ties in The Netherlands have made their obser­va­tions about the Trafigura case and may have already drawn their own conclusions.

Llewellyn was speak­ing in an inter­view with The Gleaner/​Power 106 News Centrefol­low­ing a deci­sion by the Court of Appeal yes­ter­day to dis­miss an appli­ca­tion she filed to strike out an appeal by lawyers for People’s National Party (PNP) President Portia Simpson Miller and oth­er PNP func­tionar­ies. The rejec­tion of the appeal means a fur­ther delay in the Trafigura hear­ing to ques­tion Simpson Miller and oth­ers about a $31 mil­lion dona­tion to the PNP by Dutch firm Trafigura Beheer.

The case has been adjourned since November 2011 when the PNP lawyers obtained a court order that placed the pro­ceed­ings on hold until the hear­ing of an appeal ass to whether the mat­ter should hap­pen in open court. Llewellyn said her office will now write to Dutch author­i­ties out­lin­ing the deci­sion of the Appeal Court and await their instruc­tions. The DPP is the des­ig­nat­ed Central Authority under the Mutual Assistance Treaty that is act­ing on behalf of Dutch author­i­ties. Dutch author­i­ties want to ques­tion Simpson Miller, PNP chair­man Robert Pickersgill, the Party’s Region Three chair­man Phillip Paulwell, for­mer PNP gen­er­al sec­re­tary Colin Campbell and busi­ness­man Norton Hinds under oath about the $31 mil­lion dona­tion while Trafigura Beheer had a con­tract with the government.
http://​jamaica​glean​er​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​n​e​w​s​/​2​0​1​6​0​6​0​4​/​n​e​t​h​e​r​l​a​n​d​s​-​m​a​y​-​h​a​v​e​-​a​l​r​e​a​d​y​-​d​r​a​w​n​-​c​o​n​c​l​u​s​i​o​n​s​-​t​r​a​f​i​g​u​r​a​-​c​a​s​e​-​dpp

The Director of Public Prosecution laments the Dutch may have already formed their opin­ion , I have no idea what those opin­ions are , nei­ther do I know what her per­son­al feel­ings are but what I do believe is this.
The Mutual Assistance Treaty which exists between the Dutch Authorities and Jamaica is not worth the paper it is writ­ten on. Surely Dutch Authorities must smell the putrid stench of the cesspool which is the Island’s jus­tice sys­tem. A sys­tem ren­dered impo­tent by those who triple-dip as legislators,officers of the courts and as defense attorneys.
On that the Jamaican judi­cia­ry has sac­ri­ficed dig­ni­ty and hon­or on the altar of polit­i­cal expe­di­en­cy and for that we all should hang our heads in shame.

Dutch offi­cials act­ing through the ODPP under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty want to ques­tion Simpson Miller; Party chair­man Robert Pickergill; PNP Region Three chair­man Phillip Paulwell; and par­ty mem­ber Norton Hinds about a $31 mil­lion dona­tion to the PNP while the par­ty was in gov­ern­ment with an oil-lift­ing con­tract with the Dutch firm. In the mean­time, all pro­ceed­ings have been stayed. This means the mat­ter of the ques­tion­ing of the PNP offi­cials will not pro­ceed when it’s called up in court next week.(jamaicagleaner.com).

So there you have it.……

He was fast of fist and foot — lip, too — a heavy­weight cham­pi­on who promised to shock the world and did. He float­ed. He stung. Mostly, he thrilled, even after the punch­es had tak­en their toll and his voice bare­ly rose above a whis­per. He was “The Greatest.” Muhammad Ali died Friday, accord­ing to a state­ment from his fam­i­ly. He was 74. “We lost a leg­end, a hero and a great man,” Floyd Mayweather told ESPN. Ali had been hos­pi­tal­ized in the Phoenix area this week with res­pi­ra­to­ry issues, and his chil­dren had flown in from around the coun­try. One of them, Rasheda Ali, took to Twitter ear­ly Saturday morn­ing to mourn her father.

The Paradise Valley Police Department told ABC News that an emer­gency med­ical ser­vices call was made from Ali’s address in the Phoenix area on Tuesday, and the Phoenix Fire Department con­firmed that it respond­ed at that time to a call for mutu­al aid for a 74-year-old male with res­pi­ra­to­ry issues.

Retired from box­ing since 1981, Ali had bat­tled Parkinson’s dis­ease for decades. He had been hos­pi­tal­ized a few oth­er times in recent years, includ­ing in ear­ly 2015 because of a severe uri­nary tract infec­tion ini­tial­ly diag­nosed as pneumonia.

Ali had looked increas­ing­ly frail in pub­lic appear­ances, the last com­ing April 9, when he wore sun­glass­es and was hunched over at the annu­al Celebrity Fight Night din­ner in Phoenix, which rais­es funds for treat­ment of Parkinson’s.
http://​espn​.go​.com/​b​o​x​i​n​g​/​s​t​o​r​y​/​_​/​i​d​/​1​5​9​3​9​9​3​3​/​m​u​h​a​m​m​a​d​-​a​l​i​-​d​i​e​s​-74